Wartburg Castle Court

Epiphany 6, Series B

2012-02-12T09:00:00.000-06:00

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

2012-02-05T09:00:00.000-06:00

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

2012-01-29T09:00:00.000-06:00

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

2012-01-22T09:00:00.000-06:00

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

2012-01-15T09:00:00.000-06:00

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

2012-01-08T09:00:00.000-06:00

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

2012-01-01T09:00:00.000-06:00

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 +

Christmas Day, Series B

2011-12-25T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on John 1:1-18
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
December 25, 2011 (The Nativity of Our Lord – Christmas Day, Series B)

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness He called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.” “Now, wait a minute, Pastor,” you might be saying, “this is a Christmas service. Why are you reading from Genesis?” The reason is that the creation story in Genesis forms the background to what John tells us about Jesus in our text.

You see, what John gives us is not all the details about Christ’s birth — the census, the stable, the manger, the shepherds, the angels, the star, the wise men (Matthew and Luke tell us about all those things) — rather John tells us “the story behind the story.” John tells us Who the Baby in the manger really is: the Son of God. At this point you may be asking, “Well, why doesn’t John just say that? Why does he use all these other words like Word and Light?” Remember that John is trying to tell us who the Baby Jesus really is by reminding us of the creation story in Genesis. His point is that the Son of God existed from eternity. He is true God as well as true man. As such, He was the One through whom the Father created everything.

Let us look at two of John’s terms for Christ a little more closely. John calls Christ the Word, and he calls Him the Light. What do these two terms tell us about the Baby whose birth we celebrate this morning? The first thing John calls Christ is the Word. When someone speaks a word, that word tells others what is in his heart. Christ is the Word of the Father. He shows us what is in the Father’s heart. When God created the Heavens and the Earth, He did so by speaking His word. It’s just that God is so powerful and so perfect a being that even His Word is a person. His Word is such a perfect expression of what is in His heart that it is, itself, a person within the Godhead, namely, God the Son.

John also calls Christ the Light. When God created the physical world, light was the first thing He created. We could not exist, we could not live, without light. Not only would we be stumbling around, bumping into things, but we would have no food, because plants need light to grow, we would have no fuel for heat, because fuel comes from plants, and so forth. The energy for life to exist on earth comes here by means of light from the sun. This is how God sustains our lives. Christ is called the Light because it is through Him that the Father gives us what we need to live eternally.

Of course, we all know that even though God created the world perfect it did not stay that way. Mankind fell into sin. We remember that Satan tempted Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, telling her, “You will be like God!” What does that mean, “You will be like God?” God is the one who gives us everything we need to support this body and life. This is part of what He does as Creator. If we think that we are the ones who provide for our own needs, then we are making ourselves into our own gods. Now, of course, in the physical world God gives sunshine and rain and so forth even to those who think that they don’t need God to provide for them. But God will not do this forever. God will eventually destroy this world, and when He does those who rely on themselves will be cut off from God’s help and will go to eternal torment. These people have cut themselves off from the true source of their light, and so they will find themselves in horrible darkness.

So much for the atheists and the agnostics. But what about us? We know there is a God, and we know He gives us everything we need. Are we any better off? Well, if we rely on ourselves to please God, no we aren’t. Not only is God the one who gives us physical life, He is the only one who can save us from the sinful condition we are in. He is the One who gives us everything we need for our spiritual lives as well as our physical lives. If we rely on our own good works to try to earn His favor, we are cutting ourselves off from Christ, the Light of the World, and rejecting Him. How often do we come to Church not to hear the Good News but because we have to? How often do we try to bribe God to overlook some pet sin by putting more in the offering plate? (I’m not saying that giving a little extra is wrong — it’s great. Trying to buy God’s favor with money, however, is wrong.) God has given His Son to save us. If we try to save ourselves, we reject Him. We reject His Light, His Life, as John puts it, and find ourselves in the darkness of sin and death. We become one with the darkness in our text which rejected Christ.

However, God is so gracious that He sent His Word, His Light, to save us from our sins. On the cross, Christ took upon Himself the punishment we face for our sins and for our self-righteous attitude. This was the entire purpose for God to send His Word to take on human flesh and dwell among us. He became one of us in order to be punished in our place. By doing this, he showed us the love in the Father’s heart.

When we don’t talk about what is in our heart, our family and friends have no way of knowing what we are thinking. It’s the same way with God. If He hadn’t spoken His Word to us, we would have no way of knowing what was in His heart. Sometimes Christians try to find out what God thinks about them not by looking to His Word but by looking into their own hearts and seeing how they feel about God. They figure if they have the “right” emotions about God, feelings of peace, joy, love for God or whatever, then God probably loves them. But there is no way to be sure of this. Our feelings can and do change, even though God’s love for us does not. The only way we can be sure that He loves us is that He spoke his Word to us, that is, He sent his Son to bear the punishment for us.

Because Christ has suffered in our place, He is the one we look to for the forgiveness of sins. Instead of our own good works, we rely on Christ to reconcile us with the Father. He is the only source we have of spiritual life. He is the only source we have of eternal life. That’s why He is called our Light. When we hear the Word and receive the Sacrament, we receive this Light, which gives us the ability to live. We receive the ability to do good works and to thank and praise God in truth. And most importantly, we receive citizenship in that place where there is no darkness at all, because He is our light eternally. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Christmas Eve, Series B

2011-12-24T19:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on Luke 2:1-20
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
December 24, 2011 (The Nativity of Our Lord – Christmas Eve, Series B)

“Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” These words are very familiar to us, both as part of the liturgy, and because the King James Version of this Gospel lesson is probably engraved in our memories, although for the younger generation at least, our memory has it associated with the voice of the Peanuts character Linus. In any case, these words are so familiar to us that we hardly blink when we hear them. But when the shepherds first heard it, now that was an extraordinary experience. Think of it. These words were first said by the angels, not in a synagogue or in the temple, but in the sky above the fields outside the small town of Bethlehem. They were said, not to the very religious people of the day, the Pharisees, but to ordinary shepherds who were spending yet another night out in their fields making sure their sheep didn’t wander off and get themselves into trouble, or get attacked or stolen as they grazed upon the hillside. And while the message that the angel had given those shepherds was pretty extraordinary, His birth didn’t look like anything to make a big deal about. A woman from out of town had given birth in an animal stall, because, not surprisingly given the crowding caused by Caesar’s census, there was no place else for her and her husband to stay. The whole Christmas story is one paradox right after another, where the extraordinary and the incredible meets the ordinary and the commonplace.

Mary and her husband were pious believers in the promises of the Old Testament, but there were a fair number of Jews who expected the Messiah at the time, as we can see when we look at how many people often came to hear Jesus preach later in the Gospels. There was nothing special about the Holy Family that made them especially worthy for Christ to come and dwell with them. And even the Child who was born that night didn’t look all that extraordinary; He looked like an ordinary baby. More than that, He was really beneath the notice of many people, having been born in the lowliest of places at a highly awkward time for His mother and her husband. There didn’t seem to be anything special about what happened in that stable that night.

While we all know the story, the paradox that we see in the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ defies comprehension and drives the mind to awe and wonder at what is taking place here. The Almighty, while He governs heaven and earth, must be breast-fed and have His diaper changed, He is that helpless. The Light of the World relies on strips of cloth and on His mother’s care to keep Him warm and comfortable in the cold night. The King of Kings has as His throne a feed-trough for animals. When you meditate upon what really happened that night in Bethlehem, the mind cannot comprehend it all. Human words cannot describe the incredible wonder that is shown to us when Christ becomes incarnate and is now born of the Virgin Mary.

And the sense of awe and wonder becomes even deeper when we consider that it was for us that all of this happened. God the Son became man so that mankind might be restored to fellowship with God. He was born, grew as a normal human being, bore our sins to the cross, suffered and died, rose again, and ascended to God’s right hand so that humankind, whose nature He now has, might go with Him through it all and be restored to fellowship with our Creator. All of this He did for us, poor sinful beings.

Even the announcement of His birth is full of paradoxes. As I mentioned before, the angels come, not to Caesar or Herod or to the High Priest but to simple shepherds outside Bethlehem. The angels whose song fills the highest heaven with music and praise of the Creator of heaven and earth, sing for the benefit of the poor, miserable shepherds who have to pull an all-nighter to make sure their flocks stay safe. The fact that it was the shepherds and not the rulers of the world at that time who heard the angels’ song should be a great comfort to us. The angels came to those who were best able to receive the message. It was the common people of that day who were ready for Messiah to come. The rulers were only upset by the birth of Christ. The massacre of babies that Herod commanded when he found out about the birth of Christ was only a foretaste of what would happen to Christ throughout His life, leading ultimately to His death on the cross. The leaders of those times did not want Messiah to come and upset their comfortable lives. But the common people were ready, and those shepherds were their representatives on this night, as were Mary and Joseph themselves.

Likewise it is to us that the Messiah comes today. It is not to those who are comfortable in their lives on this earth, who are secure in their sins and think only about life in this world, that Christ comes today. Rather, He comes to those who know that they are sinners and that they need the forgiveness and salvation that He can bring. He comes to the common people whose lives aren’t wonderful or perfect, who experience all sorts of trouble and problems. The reason, of course, is that the forgiveness of sins is only possible where there are sins to forgive. It is precisely when we confess our sinfulness that we are ready to receive God’s forgiveness. Absolution, preaching, and especially the Holy Supper are not for people who feel especially good about themselves or who feel especially holy; rather they are for people who know that they are sinners and that they need the forgiveness and healing that only Christ can bring. It is to the poor in spirit, the meek, the humble, and those who know their true unworthiness to receive Him that Jesus comes. They are the ones who will welcome Him and let Him be their life and their light.

We can see this by the reactions of the characters in this story. Mary, evidently a quiet, meditative person, treasured up everything that had happened to her in her heart. We can imagine that she sang the Magnificat to herself many, many times over the years as she considered how God had blessed her. The shepherds were bursting at the seams. They told everyone they could about the tiny Messiah whom they had just bowed down and worshiped. It is the same way with us today. We who receive Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and the strengthening of our faith today cannot help but meditate upon His blessings, as Mary did, and declare to all the world what He has done for us, as the shepherds did. It is to us that Christ has now come through Word and Sacrament. Come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Advent 4, Series B

2011-12-18T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on Luke 1:26-38
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
December 18, 2011 (The Fourth Sunday of Advent, Series B)

Being reminded of our own sinfulness is not pleasant. Most people go out of their way to avoid it if they can. Of course, it’s not just the reminders of the end of the world that do this to us. Our old selves flee from any reminder that God’s Law makes demands of us that we have not, and cannot fulfill. And this includes the reminders of His Law that come to our minds when we see or encounter one of His messengers. Even human pastors make some people uncomfortable, because of the reminder we represent, even without saying anything, when someone sees one of us wearing a clerical collar in public, of whatever has been bothering that person’s conscience. Even my co-workers at Walmart take an extra second or two to recognize me if I stop by the store where I work to pick up something while I’m wearing my clerical collar, because they see that collar and are suddenly blind to everything else about me, including my face. If that’s the reaction that God’s human messengers get from their fellow sinners, it’s not surprising that God’s supernatural messengers provoke outright fear in the hearts of those who see them, even in the heart of the virgin Mary.

But Gabriel says to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” And he then goes on to tell her what will happen to her, that she will become the mother of the boy-child who is God Himself, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. It is through the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God on the lips of His messenger, His angel, that God the Son comes to dwell within her. And the Word does what it says, as always. God the Son does, in fact, come to dwell within her. He is conceived as an infant in her womb, but He also comes to dwell within her in an even more miraculous way, the same way He comes to dwell within each of us by the power of the Word. He comes to dwell within her heart, to put to death the fears and doubt that come from her old self, so that a new heart can be created within her, a right spirit renewed within her.

That’s what God’s Word does for us. Remember, God can’t lie. Not so much because He’s good and won’t tell a lie, but because His Word is powerful and creative, and whatever He says comes true even if it wasn’t true before. For those who don’t know or refuse to acknowledge their sin, God’s Law comes and crushes us and causes us to fear God’s wrath and punishment. But more importantly, the Gospel, the good news of what God has done for us, tell us that we should not be afraid. The old Adam is right to be afraid; Christ’s coming to us means that he gets drowned underneath the waters of Holy Baptism, and that this old life and the ability to pretend God doesn’t exist and we can continue living comfortably in our sin are themselves temporary. But what God says to us then is, “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God.” And that’s the whole point of what we’re about as the Christian Church. That’s the whole point of my job as your pastor. Because of Christ’s innocent life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection, we have found favor with God. God comes to dwell with us, and we have the promise that we will dwell forever with him. What happens to Mary physically happens to us spiritually. God favors us by coming to dwell within us.

As we examine ourselves according to God’s Law, this doesn’t seem possible. We see our sin, our selfishness, our tendency to do even outwardly good things for the wrong reasons. We know we aren’t worthy to have God’s messenger speak to us, let alone for Christ to come and dwell with us. But what is impossible with men is possible with God. What we couldn’t do for ourselves, He did for us. He lived a perfect life, died an innocent death, rose again, and ascended into heaven, so that we could die to our sins and live a perfect new life with Him. For Christ’s sake, we also have found favor with God. It may look impossible that this could be true, but with God, nothing shall be impossible. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Advent 3, Series B

2011-12-11T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on John 1:6-8, 19-28
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
December 11, 2011 (The Third Sunday of Advent, Series B)

There is something striking about the way John’s testimony is described in this Gospel lesson. He is asked who he is, and the evangelist tells us that he confessed and did not deny. What did he confess? That he is not the Christ! John’s answer to those who asked him who he is, was to tell them who he is not. His purpose is not to testify of himself, his purpose is not to give a personal testimony of the great things God had done for him, but to testify of the One who is preferred before him, whose sandal strap he is not even worthy to loose. That one, of course, is Jesus Christ, the coming Messiah.

John was the last, and the greatest, Old Testament prophet. Jesus himself pointed out that among those born of women none is greater than John the Baptist. He was greater than Isaiah, Jeremiah, David, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, and all of them. This could have been a bragging point. And yet, he does not brag. He does not focus on himself. He focuses on the One coming after him who is preferred before him. How tempting it must have been for John to toot his own horn when the Pharisees came to ask him about himself. And it wasn’t just the one question, either. Even after he denied that he was the Christ, they kept after him to find out who he was. Are you Elijah? Are you the Prophet? Who are you? And John does not answer other than to say, “No.” Finally he does answer, but even there his answer doesn’t point to himself, but to the One coming after Him. He quotes from Isaiah 40:3, which prophesies John the Baptist as one who comes before the Christ, preparing His way. John’s identity is not his own. He’s just a voice sent to prepare the way for the Son of God. Who he is in himself, is not important.

John’s example is of course, one that we do well to follow. We are not put on this earth to promote ourselves, but to confess in word and deed our Lord Jesus Christ. And yet we are so often tempted to let our own pride get in the way of that confession. Even when we think we are proclaiming Jesus, so often we allow ourselves to get in the way, especially when we end up talking primarily about “what Jesus has done in my life” rather than what Jesus has done for all of us on the Cross and through Word and Sacrament. It may sound at first like we’re giving all the glory to God, but the more we talk about things that are unique to us as individuals, things that relate to blessings we may have received in this life or ways that our own lifestyles have become better, rather than the salvation that has been worked for all mankind in eternity by Christ on the cross, the more we end up sounding like the Pharisee who prayed in the Temple, “Lord, I thank you that I am not like other men.”

Of course, there is the opposite error, too. Satan loves to use this one against us. The other way of focusing entirely on ourselves is the one which focuses entirely on our sinfulness and the many small and great ways that corruption of our natures has shown itself in our lives. It is good to examine oneself and know that one is a sinner in need of forgiveness. But where self-examination becomes morbid self-condemnation, then again you set yourself up against Jesus Christ and try to promote yourself over against Him in a perverse way. The idea that your sins are too big to be forgiven. This, too, is a sinful and wrong focus on self. Jesus has died for your sin, it’s forgiven and forgotten and done away with. As far as God is concerned it never happened. That’s what the words “I forgive you” mean. To continue focusing on our sin after we have heard Christ’s own messenger, sent to prepare His way, say, “In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” is also to promote yourself at the expense of Christ who has taken your sin and given you His righteousness in its place.

You see, that is the point. We are nothing, Christ is everything. Both as sinners and as saints, our focus is not on ourselves. Who we are doesn’t matter. Christ and His word of Law, crushing overconfident, self-righteous hearts, and of Gospel, rebuilding those who know their sins and their wretchedness so that they become the saints God created them to be, these things are what matter. It’s all about God. It’s all about Christ and His Word. Even in the Divine Service, we don’t express ourselves, we confess what God has first said to us concerning those great things He has done for all of us. That’s why, by the way, I wear these robes. I’m not here as Tim Schellenbach to tell you about Tim Schellenbach. Tim Schellenbach is nobody. These robes, and the uniform I wear underneath these robes, the black shirt and white clerical collar, is there to cover me up so that I end up looking like just another pastor. I’m just a voice, like John the Baptist, calling in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”

And that is what all of us are as we confess back to God, to each other, and to those around us who do not know Christ yet, the great things God has done for us. We do not promote ourselves or even our congregation. Yes, we’re a lot smaller than we once were, and yes, that’s worrisome. But if someone is brought to faith through our confession of faith to them and they end up hearing God’s Word and receiving His body and blood on a regular basis at Grace or Pentecost or Faith or Messiah or somewhere else, so what? We’ve done our job. Whether or not they come to this place to continue to feed on God’s Word is really beside the point, so long as they continue to feed on God’s Word. We’re not here to promote ourselves but to prepare hearts for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

After all, it’s His coming among us that church is all about. And thank goodness. If we came so that we could do something for Him first and foremost, we’d always fall woefully short. Even the largest churches in our Synod have their share of mistakes and mishaps during the service. Their organists also play one too many or too few verses sometimes, their pastors also occasionally say things that don’t quite come out right despite the best of intentions, their secretaries also commit typos in the service folder. And so we shouldn’t be surprised that our little congregation is no different. We try our best, but our best could never compare to the angels and archangels in heaven if you look and listen with earthly eyes and ears. But it is the one who comes among us in His body and blood, whose way His messenger stands in the pulpit right now to prepare, who is the real star of this show. And He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What He brings to you is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He came, He was born, grew up, lived a perfect life in your place, died for your sins, and rose again for your salvation. He gives you that perfect life, innocent death, and glorious resurrection to eternal life here and now. And He will come again in glory to take you to that place where you will experience the fullness of these joys, these blessings, these gifts from His hand. That’s what this service is all about. God does it all. I am merely the voice preparing His way, as are you all as you confess back to Him and to one another what you have heard. He is the one who is really important. We aren’t even worthy to loose the straps of His sandals. And yet, of His mercy, He gives us Himself, for our salvation. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Advent 2, Series B

2011-12-04T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on Mark 1:1-8
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
December 4, 2011 (The Second Sunday of Advent, Series B)

“You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry, you’d better not pout, I’m telling you why . . .” A children’s Christmas song, written originally about a legendary figure who will come on Christmas day, rewarding those who do good and punishing those who do evil. Of course, there’s not much room for forgiveness or the Gospel in the stories we tell children about St. Nicholas, as the difference between toys and a lump of coal is based entirely on how “naughty” or “nice” you’ve been for the past year. Which, of course, is more than a little bit unfair to poor St. Nicholas. Santa Claus as we know him today, living at the North Pole, with elves who seem to be exempt from intellectual property laws as they manufacture toys that bear an uncanny resemblance to those produced in China and sold at Walmart, and flying reindeer, one of whom has a rare medical condition that causes his nose to light up, may be a myth, but there really was a Santa Claus, a St. Nicholas, who really did exist, centuries ago. In Kenosha there’s actually a Greek Orthodox Church named for him, and the Christian Church has traditionally remembered his life and ministry on December 6, just a couple of days from now (which is probably why the Church’s celebration of him became tangled up in the Christmas celebrations over the centuries). In real life, St. Nicholas was a Christian pastor and bishop, in the Turkish town of Myra, who preached the full and free forgiveness of sins because of the death on the cross of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, the one who came on Christmas Day to give us the biggest and best gift of all, His death on the cross so that we might have life and salvation through the forgiveness of our sins. The real St. Nicholas, in other words, was not the one coming on Christmas day, but the one who announced His coming. By the way, he became associated with gifts in stockings because of his charity towards some young women in his congregation who were desperately poor. He would secretly put gold coins in their stockings when they hung them out to dry at night, so that they would not have to break God’s law in order to survive, thus depicting our Lord’s charity to us despite our spiritual poverty and unworthiness. The historical Santa Claus was more in line with John the Baptist than he was a competitor to his Lord, Jesus Christ.

Now, at first glance, John the Baptist’s message might sound a bit like the unrelenting law message of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” And, of course, there’s an element of truth there. The purpose of John’s message was the forgiveness of sins, but in order to rightly understand and receive the forgiveness of sins you have to understand your own sinfulness. A person who thinks his relationship with God is already doing pretty good, isn’t going to think much of the forgiveness of sins. In fact, he’s going to be downright insulted at it. “What do you mean, my sins are forgiven? What makes you think I have sins that need forgiving? How dare you judge me like that!” Of course, that’s what the old Adam in all of us thinks about John’s preaching, and about all true Christian preaching of Law and Gospel. He doesn’t like it, because it means he’s got to admit that things are not okay with God and that he can’t fix the situation on his own. That’s what the Pharisees thought, and that’s why John in another place calls them a “brood of vipers.” That’s what many Christians even today think, and why many think that Lutheran preaching is all about the Law precisely when it is the Gospel that is actually being preached. “He keeps talking about the forgiveness of sins. He keeps talking about the law, about sin. I want to hear how I can please God better. This talk of sins that I can’t fix but only Jesus can, is depressing. I want to hear what I can do to improve my standing with God.” And thus the Law gets turned into Gospel, and the Gospel into Law, and the glory goes to the Christian rather than to Christ. That’s the difference between what the songs tell us about Santa Claus today, and what the real St. Nicholas preached centuries ago in the church at Myra: One tells us that we can and should try to earn the favor of the gift-giver (which is really wrong-headed anyway since gifts and rewards are two very different things), while the other tells us that we are helpless but that the One who is both Giver and Gift has already taken care of it for us.

And so the reminder to examine our lives, to prepare the way of the Lord by recognizing that we are dead in trespasses and sins, is a necessary prelude to the preaching of the Gospel. The recognition that we are helpless and in need of a Savior is precisely what we need to hear in preparation for His coming among us to forgive us our sins. John the Baptist points not to himself, but to the one coming after him, whose sandals he is not worthy to untie. The Law is preached, not as a way of saving ourselves or earning anything from God, but as a way of showing us how much we need the precious Gift that is given to us on Christmas day. John the Baptist, like Pastor Nicholas, like every true Christian pastor, preaches not himself but the one coming after him.

But the message to repent, by itself, isn’t the point, even though it receives a greater focus during this season of Advent as well as during Lent. The fact that the kingdom of heaven is near is the real point here. The Law always serves the Gospel by showing us our need for a Savior. John prepared the way for Jesus’ earthly ministry among His ancient people, and all Christian pastors prepare their people for His coming again to judge the quick and the dead, by announcing to them the verdict of judgment day, a verdict of “not guilty” which was pronounced already from the cross when He cried out, “It is finished,” and was sealed by His resurrection three days later.

But it’s not just the possibility that Jesus might come soon to judge the living and the dead, nor even the possibility that any of us as individuals could face that judgment at any time because we don’t know the day or hour of our own deaths, that we are prepared for here. In fact, the verdict of judgment day, which was pronounced on you in Holy Absolution at the beginning of the service, is also given to you as He comes to you now in His body and blood. Heaven itself is not a far-off reality for Christians, but Christ Himself who is the Kingdom of Heaven personified, comes to us today with His body and blood. He gives us the heavenly feast of victory, the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom, which has no end. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near, says St. John. And it is near. It’s right here in this room, where two or three gather in His name. Every Sunday, God’s people join with John the Baptist, St. Nicholas, and all the rest of His Christians, along with all the host of heaven, in feasting upon Jesus Himself, the Priest and the Sacrifice, the Giver and the Gift. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

2011-11-27T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on Mark 11:1-10
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
November 27, 2011 (The First Sunday of Advent)

The Gospel lesson for today is the account of the events we celebrate every year on Palm Sunday. I suspect that this may have seemed a little strange to many of you. Why tell a story that takes place less than a week before Jesus’ death, to start off a season leading up to His birth? Especially since there’s another Sunday in the Church year, Palm Sunday, devoted to this event? Well, the reason the Church has historically read this lesson today is because it depicts for us what the season of Advent is all about: preparing for and meditating upon the coming of our King to us, His people. In fact, for those of you who did not know, that’s what the word Advent means: “coming.” When we talk about Jesus’ advent, we are talking about His coming. Of course, there are many ways in which our Lord comes to us. For the sake of convenience, we usually talk about our Lord’s advent in three ways: past, present, and future. He has come to us, referring to Christ’s incarnation at Christmastime, which we will celebrate in less than a month, He comes to us now in Word and Sacrament, and He will come to us again when He returns in glory on the last day. Just as Christ came to Jerusalem lowly and riding on a donkey, He came to this world lowly, born of a poor young virgin named Mary, in a cave that functioned as a stable because there was no place else to stay. Just as when He came to Jerusalem the people sang, “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest,” when He comes to His Church Sunday after Sunday we sing these very same words that He has first given to us in Holy Scripture. When He comes again in glory there will be no stopping Him despite the wishes of those who would rather He stayed away, just as the Pharisees couldn’t stop Him or His disciples when He entered into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. All in all, the entry into Jerusalem is a good picture for us of what Advent is all about.

The first thing we notice about what happened on that Palm Sunday is that Jesus chose to ride into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey, a lowly beast of burden. We might have expected Him to ride on a fine horse or a chariot drawn by several horses, instead of this lowly donkey. But then, we might have expected Him to choose a more glorious method of becoming man than to become an infant and be born in the normal manner from the womb of a young carpenter’s fiancee named Mary. And when He comes to us now in the Divine Service we would expect Him to come in a way more glorious or noble than water, the words of a pastor who is a sinful human being like everyone else, and bread and wine. But God doesn’t do things in the way we might expect. He comes to us in simple, lowly things out of love, so that we in our sinfulness can be healed by His forgiveness rather than destroyed by His righteousness. Only when He comes again in glory will His divine power and majesty be shown forth to the world. When He came to us at Bethlehem, and when He comes to us now, he shields His power and majesty under lowly and ordinary things, just like He did when He came to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

But because He comes to us in this lowly and simple way, it becomes too easy for our sinful human nature to think that there is nothing special here. It is too easy for us to dismiss the words of the pastor in Holy Absolution and in Preaching as just the pastor’s words, and not as God’s Word. It is too easy to forget about the glorious reality of death and resurrection that Christ works in a person being baptized, and instead focus on the cuteness of the baby and how he reacts to having water poured upon his head. In the same way, it is too easy to forget the purpose for which Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, namely to die and rise again, and simply focus upon the cuteness of the baby lying in the manger. It is too easy to forget the glorious reality of the heavenly feast of victory of which we partake in the Lord’s Supper, and simply focus on the fact that it adds to the service time. But I suspect that’s not the whole problem. You see, it’s a lot easier to sit and talk about a Jesus who is safely “up there” in heaven, but it makes us uncomfortable when we remember what our Lord came to do for us, and what He does for us when He comes to us now. Our pride doesn’t like the idea that we needed Christ to die on the cross. Our pride doesn’t like the idea that we need Christ to forgive our sins, to wash us clean in Baptism, to give us His body and blood. We like to think we can do it ourselves. The old Adam in us would rather Christ didn’t come, because His coming shows us our own unworthiness, and we’d rather pretend that everything is alright.

Since the old Adam has been drowned and died in Holy Baptism, however, the new, resurrected Christian in us joins that large multitude of His disciples who worshiped Him and sang His praises. These disciples had been born again through the Word of Christ and lived no longer for themselves but for the Lord who was going to Jerusalem to win their freedom from sin, death, and hell. Despite the lowliness of the donkey upon which Jesus rode, His disciples gave Him the treatment fit for a king. They made the dusty road into a royal, cushioned highway using their own cloaks, and waved palm branches, and sang His praises. Even though Jesus did not exalt Himself but rather humbled Himself, He was still the Lord of heaven and earth, the creator who ruled in heaven over all of creation. His people, those who had been born again through His Word, saw Him for what He was, and they treated Him as well as they were able like the mighty ruler He is. And even though He was humble and lowly in that manger in Bethlehem, His praises were sung by angels, and He was worshiped by the shepherds and even by the wise men from the east.

We do the same thing when He comes to us in the Divine Service. When He comes to us in the Word, on most Sundays we sing the same song the angels sang on Christmas night, “Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” To be sure, because Advent is a penitential season we didn’t sing it this morning, but the next time we will sing it again, on Christmas day, we will join with the angels who sang His praises that first Christmas. And when He comes to us in His body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar, we echo the words of Psalm 118, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest,” just as the people on the road that day did. Despite the common appearance of water, human speech, bread and wine, it is Christ who comes to us, and we his people recognize Him and praise Him for it.

When He comes again in glory, the majesty and power and glory which have been hidden under His seeming lowliness will be seen by everyone, and whether or not they want to, all people will acknowledge Him as the Lord of the universe. We who have received Him in Word and Sacrament will be overjoyed at His coming, and even those who would rather ignore His coming will for once not be able to complain, because they will see their true Lord coming to judge them. His coming again will fulfill everything that we have received in His life on earth and His coming in Word and Sacrament. During this season we focus on preparing for His coming to us, and we do that by receiving Him in His Word and His body and blood. By His grace, we will be ready to sing His praises when He comes in glory. Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Day of National Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on Luke 17:11-19
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
November 24, 2011 (Day of National Thanksgiving)

“What is the Second Commandment? You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.” In other words, it’s not just this one day out of the year (a day which wasn’t established by Church tradition but by national tradition anyway) that we are to give thanks to God, it is our duty to do so all the time. The danger in a day like Thanksgiving Day, as with any other day devoted to a specific theme, whether it’s a church holiday or a national holiday, is that people might get the idea that since we’ve got a day set aside for this, we can ignore it the rest of the year. Okay, that’s over with. What’s next, Christmas? But, as the catechism reminds us, to call on God’s name in thanksgiving for His blessings to us is something that we are always to do. However, since we do have this day to celebrate, it is meet, right, and salutary for us to take the opportunity to hear what God’s Word says about the subject of thankfulness, and so be encouraged to heed the Second Commandment at all times, not just on this one day out of the year.

Of course, giving thanks to God is not natural for us. It’s not something we do when we’re left to our own devices. Left to our own devices, we’d rather forget who it is who provides us with clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all that we have. Our old sinful natures can’t stand the idea that we’re dependent on anybody or anything else. That’s what really causes the sort of rebellion against God’s intention for human behavior and human relationships we see all around us. It’s not just a matter of wanting to do these certain things even though God says not to do them. It’s a matter of wanting to turn the relationship around, to show God and everyone else who’s boss. I suspect that many of the sins we find rampant around us today would not be nearly so popular if it weren’t for the fact that God said not to do these things. The fundamental problem isn’t so much the disobedience to parents and others in authority, the greed, the murder, the abortion, the adultery, the homosexuality, etc., as it is the rebellion which refuses to acknowledge that we are His creatures and are dependent upon him. All these other things wouldn’t be nearly so attractive to people if it weren’t for the fact that they are ways of expressing rebellion and independence against God.

It is this false attitude of independence over against God that is the opposite of thankfulness toward Him. We could talk about all the different ways in which we show thankfulness to him, by praying to Him, coming to His house regularly to hear His Word and confess back to Him what He first said to us, by obeying His commandments for us in our daily lives, by saying prayers of thanksgiving before or after our meals, by confessing Him before the world especially when challenged to provide a reason for the hope that is within us, and so on. But the real difference between a thankful person and an ungrateful person is in the heart. We train children to say, “thank you” when someone gives them a gift, because that’s polite. And it is good to train children this way. But such outward habits don’t necessarily reflect what is in the heart. What is in the heart of natural man is the sort of self-centeredness that not only will not, but can not thank God, because it will not and can not admit that anyone besides himself should be the center of his attention. And that’s what we all are by nature, because we are descendants of Adam and Eve.

And so thanksgiving, like everything else we do that is good, right, and salutary, is not something that we can bring forth on our own. It’s something we can only do because God has first put to death our old selves and recreated us in the image of His Son Jesus Christ. We love because He first loved us. We forgive because He first forgave us. And we give thanks because He has created in us a clean heart and renewed a right spirit within us. The outward actions of praise, thanksgiving, and worship are only pleasing to God if they flow from a heart that knows that He has given us all of our blessings and is truly grateful for them. Otherwise it’s mere show that doesn’t help anybody.

But that sort of a heart is precisely what He gives us. You see, God’s blessings to us extend beyond clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all that we have. They extend to the white robe of Christ’s righteousness, His body and blood in the great wedding feast of victory which has no end, the heavenly mansions. God didn’t just give us a bunch of stuff, He gave us Himself. And He did so while we were His enemies, refusing to recognize Him as the one who made us and gave us everything. And He has remade us to be what He originally created us to be. His Son became naked, hungry, thirsty, homeless, friendless, lonely, sick and even dead for us on the first Good Friday, so that we could be put to death with Him and rise with Him that first Easter morning as those who do know their Creator and the giver of all good gifts.

And so we give thanks to Him. Not just for giving us the blessings we enjoy in this life (which are truly remarkable, as even those who are considered “poor” in our country have more conveniences and comfort than kings did in Biblical times), but for the blessing of eternal life. And the giving of thanks is not only the outward words or actions or songs or liturgy, although those are meet, right, and salutary when done for the right reasons. The giving of thanks is in a heart which recognizes who our God is, who our Giver of all good things is, and looks to Him for these things. When the heart knows who God is, the mouth will too. So will the eyes and the hands. We thank Him by acknowledging Him as the one who gave us all this. And we show that we know Him as the Giver by continuing to receive in faith what He has to give, not just for this life, but especially for the life to come.

At the end of this Gospel lesson, Jesus says to the one leper who returned to worship Him, “Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.” Actually, what the original Greek says is, “Your faith has saved you.” The word that is translated “made you well” is actually the same word that is translated as “saved” or “salvation” when we’re talking about spiritual things. True faith recognizes God not just as the giver of things in this old, corrupt, and temporary life, but as the giver of that eternal life where there will be no more leprosy or any other effects of sin. And that is the faith God grants you through His Word. Go your way. Your faith has saved you. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Last Sunday of the Church Year, Series A

2011-11-20T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on Matthew 25:31-46
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
November 20, 2011 (Proper 29, Series A)

One thing that’s always struck me about this particular Gospel lesson is the fact that neither the sheep nor the goats knew that they did or didn’t do these things for our Lord. “Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?” the sheep ask. And the goats ask a similar question: “Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?” Of course, we all know Jesus’ answer, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did (or did not) do it to the least of these My brethren, you did it (or did not do it) to Me.” When we serve our neighbor in love, it is really God we are serving, as we are acting as His hands to give them what they need, whether in terms of the things we do every day in our daily vocation which helps provide food for our own families or others, or in terms of the things we make a point of giving to others out of pure charity, it is through these things that God provides their daily bread. And so when we do these things to the best of our ability, when we serve our neighbor in love, we are in reality serving God.

Of course, we never do these things totally with a pure heart, do we? The work we do to make a living, we do for ourselves, so that we can get the paycheck and buy food. We don’t think of it as serving our neighbor. And when we do give to the Church or to charity (which none of us does as much as he should), the left hand manages to find out what the right hand is doing, and we still end up thinking of it as something that we’re doing so that someone, somewhere will reward us. Either we’re thinking that God will be more pleased with us because we’re doing as He wants, or, especially in the case of donations to the Church or of work done serving in offices for the church, we might possibly think it gives us some say in the direction of the church, as if the fact that we help the congregation out gives us the right to tell the congregation what to do. It’s still all about ourselves, isn’t it. It’s not about our neighbor and it’s definitely not about Jesus.

And that poses a problem, because the judgment scene depicted in today’s Gospel lesson is something that we could face at any time. Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. And even if that doesn’t happen for a long time yet, the verdict is already “locked in” when you die, which is also something that could happen to any of us at any time. What we see in ourselves, however, matches pretty closely the description of those on Jesus’ left. Even when we outwardly seem to be serving God and our neighbor, we’re doing it for ourselves. And even outwardly we haven’t done as good a job as we could have.

The thing to remember here, though, is that those on His right are also surprised when Jesus points out that they have done all these things for Him. Just as those on His left think they’ve done a pretty good job of serving God and their neighbor and are surprised to find out that they hadn’t, those on His right are surprised to find out that they have served God and their neighbor in a manner that pleases God. God sees us opposite of how we see ourselves. If you think you’re doing a pretty good job of serving God and your neighbor, through God’s eyes you will fall short, because you’re not doing nearly as good as you think you are. But if you realize that you’ve fallen short, and you know that there’s no way for you to do as well as God expects of you, then you’re one of those who will be surprised to find out that you and your good works are, in fact, pleasing to God and done in service to Him.

After all, when God looks at you, He sees Christ. And Christ did all these things for us, when we were spiritually in need. He visited us when we were sick and in the prison of this sinful world. And not only did He visit us, becoming one of us and bearing all our sin and infirmity; but He healed the sickness of our sin, just as He healed those who were sick with frail and diseased bodies in His Ministry on earth. He freed us from the prison of our sinfulness. And just as He clothed Adam and Eve with skins after their Fall into sin, so He clothed the nakedness of our sinfulness with the pure white garments of His perfect righteousness in the waters of Holy Baptism. He feeds the spiritually hungry and gives drink to those who spiritually thirst with His Body and His Blood in the Holy Supper.

And yet, He did all this by taking it on Himself. He fed us and quenched our thirst by becoming hungry and thirsty Himself. He said so on the cross: “I thirst.” He resolved our separation and estrangement from God by becoming estranged from the whole world and even His own Father. He clothed the shame of our sin by being exposed to the elements on the cross, while the soldiers divided his garments and cast lots for his cloak. He healed our disease of sin by becoming “sick” to the point of death for us. He released us from Satan’s bondage by becoming a prisoner of the Sanhedrin and the Romans despite his innocence. He took all of sin upon Himself, and so all the effects of sin in the world afflicted Him as well. He did all these things for us, and so now all those who are suffering under the effects of sin in the world become pictures for us of our Lord.

That’s why Jesus says, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did (or did not) do it to the least of these My brethren, you did it (or did not do it) to Me.” Because all the suffering that is in the world on account of sin, which we still see around us every day, was actually taken by Jesus into Himself and nailed to the cross. And so when we in some small way try to alleviate that suffering, whether by providing a shoulder to cry on or a kind word, or whether we offer more substantive help in the form of charitable donations, we are doing it for Him who already took all of it upon Himself. And, further, we are also preaching by our actions about that place where there is no hunger or thirst, no estrangement or nakedness, no sickness and no prison. That’s what Jesus won for us by becoming all these things, and that’s what we ultimately have to offer. Not just temporary help for this life, but eternal life without any problems or suffering or grief ever again. And that’s what we ourselves will inherit, and that’s what we receive even now as our hunger and thirst is satisfied by Jesus’ own body and blood, His righteousness clothes our unrighteousness, and we even now enjoy the visitations of Him whose separation from His Father unites us to both Himself and His Father. It was Christ’s charity to us that got us this, not anything we did or could do. And it is Christ’s charity working through us that He will see in us on that last day. Come, you blessed of the Father. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 22 (Proper 28), Series A

2011-11-13T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on Matthew 25:14-30
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
November 13, 2011 (Proper 28, Series A)

The word talent as we know it in modern English actually comes from today’s Gospel lesson. In today’s language, talent is defined as “a special natural ability or aptitude,” such as the ability to be good with numbers, good with music, great at basketball or running, or any of a thousand other things a person might be good at. But in the Greek of the New Testament, a talent was a unit of money, specifically, a large gold coin. Now, many interpreters of this parable have taught that the gold coins given out to the servants represent various gifts and abilities God gives to His Christians, which He then expects to use them in His service. The association between these natural or special abilities and the gold coins of today’s Gospel lesson has historically been so strong that the Greek word for these gold coins became the English word for these abilities.

And that interpretation of this parable has some merit to it. Each of us is unique, and each of us has unique abilities and areas of life that are our particular strong suit. As we consider our place in life under the Ten Commandments, one of the things we must look at as we consider our place in life, is the various abilities which God has given each of us. After all, that’s part of how our particular place in life is determined. Some are good at physical labor, others are good at intellectual pursuits and abstract thinking. Some are talented in music, others in visual art. Some have the ability to read facial expressions and body language very well and are thus able to figure out the politics of a situation when others of us are totally clueless. And the list could go on. As we think about how we serve God and our neighbor in our own place in life, our own particular talents do figure into the picture. A strong swimmer has an opportunity to keep the Fifth Commandment by helping and supporting his drowning neighbor in every physical need in the way that a man who can’t swim simply can’t do. And so it can be useful to see the parable in this way, as an exhortation to actually use the abilities that God has given us and not to hide them or cover them up out of fear of messing things up.

The problem, of course, is that, just as with all the other gifts that God has given us in this life, we have been unfaithful stewards of the abilities God has given us. Music can glorify God; it can also glorify as god things that are not God. Intellectual ability can be used to deny Him as well as to understand the world He has created. Physical prowess can be used to hurt as well as to help. And so on. And so the mere use (as opposed to hiding away) of our abilities is not what gets us right with God. In fact, if we glory in ourselves and our own abilities instead of glorifying God, our abilities can drive us farther away from Him. That was what the third servant was afraid of doing; that’s why he hid the talent he had been given in the ground; he was afraid of what using it might do to hurt his relationship with his master. Because apart from the Gospel, apart from Christ, our God really is “a hard man, reaping where He has not sown, and gathering where He has not scattered.” There really is zero tolerance for those who abuse God’s gifts if their transgressions are not covered by Christ. And that’s where we find ourselves as we look in the mirror of God’s law: we are either abusers of His gifts, or we are those who are afraid and hide them away.

Here is where I think we need to look at this parable a little differently. If the talents of the parable are our natural abilities, then we have all failed to use them properly, if not failing to use them at all in God’s service. That doesn’t really help us much. However, if the talents in the parable are seen as something different, something special that God has given His Christians, then it changes the whole picture. I’m not speaking here of any particular “spiritual gift” of the sort that many churches give their members surveys for. Most such “spiritual gifts” are actually only natural talents, and, depending on how the survey is designed, often what is measured is not a person’s aptitude for a particular position in the church, but merely how much they happen to enjoy doing that thing. You don’t have to be good at something to enjoy doing it, or even to think that you’re good at it, for that matter. No, there really is only one thing that God gives to Christians and not to everyone else. All the blessings we have in this life are things that God gives both to the just and the unjust; as Luther reminds us in his explanation to the Fourth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone, even the wicked, without our prayers.” No, what God gives specifically to Christians is faith and trust in the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation which was won for us by Christ on the cross and proclaimed to the world in the empty tomb.

That faith, that trust, is what works in us to produce all sorts of other good works. That faith that God forgives, loves, and will save us is what gives us the freedom to serve God and our neighbor with whatever else He may have given us without fear. It is precisely the absence of that faith that the third servant showed when he buried the coin in the ground. He was so afraid of using the gift wrongly that he failed to receive the gift as a gift, but instead saw it as a burden. And that is the exact wrong thing to do with the gift of faith. In fact, to do that with the faith God has given you is to deny the content of that faith. True Christian faith trusts in the forgiveness of sins. It is doubt, not faith, that causes us to see God according to His wrath against sinners. There is no wrath for those who trust in the forgiveness of sins, only the joyous freedom to go about our lives and do whatever we do to His glory and out of love for our neighbors. To bury faith is to doubt God’s goodness. But the gift here is God’s own demonstration of His love for us: while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. It’s true that faith buried is no faith at all. To see God as a harsh master is to see Him outside of Christ. But that’s the beauty of His gift to us: faith gives us Christ Himself. And it is He that works in and through us to love and serve our neighbor, both in the ordinary ways that come about as we go about our daily work, as well as in that most extraordinary way that God gives us, namely of telling our neighbor about Christ and thus giving him that eternal life where we will all share in the joy of our master. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

All Saints (transferred)

2011-11-06T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon on Matthew 5:1-12
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
November 6, 2011 (All Saints Day, transferred)

There are a number of days during the course of the Church Year that are known as “Saints’ Days,” or festivals of various saints. These festivals are devoted to remembering the lives of certain Biblical saints, not because they themselves were especially good and holy—they were sinners like the rest of us—but because God was able to work through them in a significant way. The saints honored in this way include the 12 apostles, the Evangelists (in other words, the authors of the four Gospels), as well as several other men and women from the Bible whose role in salvation history was especially significant. These days are usually attached to a particular date rather than being a Sunday observance, and so we only end up celebrating most of them an average of once every seven years or so, give or take how the leap years mess things up. The Roman Catholic Church traditionally celebrates significantly more saints than we do, so that almost every day on the calendar has somebody associated with it. There’s nothing wrong with that, but traditionally for the sake of simplicity and in an attempt to restrict certain superstitious abuses that have sometimes become associated with remembrances of specific saints among the Roman church, Lutherans have tended to restrict ourselves to only celebrating specific days for characters from the Bible and a few other significant individuals in Church history.

But if these men were sinners just like us, and they only became famous and significant in the history of the Church because God chose them by His mercy and grace to work through them in His kingdom, then what about all the other saints? What about us? After all, we work in God’s kingdom, and even though what we do may not be as spectacular and world-changing as the Biblical saints, each of us plays a part in how God provides for His people, both physically and spiritually. Or, if we aren’t inclined to toot our own horns, what about the millions who have gone before us? What about those who have died in the faith whose names are known only to God? When do we celebrate them?

Well, there is a festival to celebrate them and us, known as All Saints’ Day. Now, technically All Saints’ Day is November 1st, which is why Halloween is on October 31st. Halloween is an archaic way of saying, “All Hallows’ Eve,” or, “All Saints’ Eve.” During the middle ages, All Saints’ Day was a very important holiday, almost as important as Christmas and Easter. Anyway, on October 31st some people, especially the more superstitious peasants, were afraid that demons would try to disrupt the high festival that was going to take place the next day, especially since October 31st was also the ancient pagan high festival of Samhain, and so they would try to scare the demons away by carving faces onto pumpkins and dressing up in outlandish costumes. Now, of course, Halloween has mostly lost its nominally Christian origins and become a secular holiday in its own right, much like the “Festival of Santa Claus” and the “Festival of the Easter Bunny” have. In fact, Halloween has become an opportunity for many people to act more than a little bit demonic themselves, a celebration of ancient, pagan Samhain rather than a repudiation of it. However, this Christian festival of All Saints is, in fact, the origin of Halloween.

In any case, All Saints’ Day is set aside to remember the lives of all of God’s holy people, both those still living in the Church Militant, and those who have been transferred to the Church Triumphant through death, especially those members of the Church who have died in the past year. It is about all Christians. In today’s Gospel lesson we have a description from our Lord of these saints, these holy ones. This is a fairly well-known section of Scripture called the “beatitudes.” They get that name from the word blessed, which stands at the beginning of each section. The word beatitude is a Latin word which means “blessing,” and so in calling these the Beatitudes we are really calling them the Blessings. Many of us have heard the Beatitudes many times. But have you ever stopped to think about the Beatitudes? Of course, we were born sinners, born under the law, and so we by nature tend to think that blessings come as rewards for good works on our part. And so, when we read these lines, what we are tempted to see is a series of commands or a series of Biblical principles on how we are to live our lives, if we want the blessings mentioned by Jesus in the second part of each verse. In fact, they have sometimes been referred to by various people as “be-attitudes,” with a hyphen in the middle. This is silly from a linguistic perspective, because beatitude is a Latin word meaning “blessing” that has nothing to do with either the word be or the word attitude. And the Beatitudes aren’t really intended as a series of moral instructions for us to follow if we want to get the rewards listed from God. After all, we can’t keep these completely, any more than we can keep the Ten Commandments perfectly. And two, at least, of the Beatitudes, aren’t something that we do to fulfill God’s Law anyway. “Blessed are those who mourn.” Mourning is not something we do deliberately in order to please God. Mourning simply comes upon us because we live in a sin-filled world, where death and suffering are unfortunate realities. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” Again, this is not something that you do to fulfill the Law. It’s something that happens to you because you live out who you are as a Christian and the world doesn’t like to see it.

The other Beatitudes can, of course, be understood in some sense as moral exhortations; after all, being poor in spirit, being meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, being peacemakers, these are things that we can in some ways try to do. And it is good to examine ourselves according to these Beatitudes so that we can get an honest picture of ourselves. Are you poor in spirit? You should be; everything you have is a gift from God, the way a rich man gives a coin to a beggar. Are you meek? You should be; the Christian is humble and does not exalt himself. Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? You should; after all, being righteous is how God wants us to be. Are you merciful? You should be; God was merciful to you. Are you pure in heart? You should be; God has taken up residence within you and your heart is to be His temple. Are you a peacemaker? You should be; God has made peace with you, so you should make peace with others. To a point, it can be useful to look at the beatitudes in this way. But only to a point.

You see, the real reason Jesus gave these beatitudes, is as a description of who and what Christian saints already are. You and I, and those of our loved ones who have joined our Lord in heaven before us, are these things whether we can see it or not. They are these things because Christ is these things. The Beatitudes are first and foremost a description of Christ Himself. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” “Blessed are those who mourn.” We remember Jesus weeping at the tomb of His friend Lazarus. “Blessed are the meek.” Here we remember how Jesus was led away to the trial from Gethsemane without fighting or complaining. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” “Blessed are the merciful.” “And Jesus went out and saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them and healed their sick.” “Blessed are the pure in heart.” Here we remember that Jesus was without sin. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Jesus is the one who makes the ultimate peace, the peace between God and man. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.” Is there any greater persecution than what Jesus suffered on the cross?

When you were Baptized, as your baptism is renewed and restored through daily prayer, when you hear the Word of Absolution and hear the Gospel preached to you, and especially when you receive Christ’s body and blood, these attributes of Christ become yours as well. Christ’s righteousness covers your sin, and that’s why you are acceptable to God, but it also enters you and makes you perfect and holy like He is. It makes you a saint. And so therefore all of these descriptions of saints we find in the Beatitudes are descriptions of you as well. And because of this, the blessings which are listed here are yours as well. To you belongs the kingdom of heaven. You shall be comforted. You shall inherit the earth. You shall be filled with righteousness. You shall obtain mercy. You shall see God. You shall be called sons of God. And again it is said, yours is the kingdom of heaven. And finally, because you share to some extent in the sufferings of the prophets and the saints who were before you, sufferings which depict in us the sufferings of Christ Himself, you shall share in their reward. The saints in heaven are gathered around the throne of the Lamb, singing His praises and receiving His victory banquet. There we shall be as well. In fact, there we already are as we eat His body and drink His blood, joining with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven lauding and magnifying His glorious name. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Reformation Day (transferred)

2011-10-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on John 8:31-36

For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI

October 30, 2011 (Reformation Day, transferred)

Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. With these words Jesus shatters a whole world full of illusions and self-deception. Most people think of the ability to commit sin as a matter of freedom and rights. The more options you have open to you, the more choices you can make, the freer you are. Especially in areas where Christianity and most other religions for that matter have identified your behavior as wrong. That’s the way most people think. To say that sin leads not to freedom but slavery, as Jesus does, seems alien to many people in the world today.

But it’s true. God created us in such a way that we are to serve Him and our neighbor. Our hereditary defect of sin, however, causes us to always be looking out for ourselves, to always be trying to figure out what I can get out of any situation. And the sins we commit themselves capture us. Habits form. Even when we no longer want to be the way we are, it’s so much easier to keep making the choices we’ve made before rather than break those habits. Even when we know its wrong, even when we know it will be hurtful to ourselves or to our relationships with each other or our God, we find ourselves doing the same things, committing the same sins, over and over again, often without even realizing we did it until after the fact. Sin enslaves us. It doesn’t seem so bad at first, but when the consequences catch up, they catch up with a vengeance, and usually only after the sin has become habitual and very difficult to resist. Especially when you consider that even outward righteousness doesn’t really free you from this slavery. Even the Pharisees, the most outwardly righteous people who lived in Jesus’ day, are slaves to sin, because their behavior shows that their decisions are dominated by it. The fear of sinning which causes a person to follow an overly-complex set of man-made rules and regulations is itself a form of slavery, and it was also this kind of slavery from which Jesus came to free us, and against which Martin Luther later fought so hard in terms of the Roman papacy of his day. The Pharisees followed their complex system because they were afraid of sinning. The medieval church also created that kind of fear in the hearts of the people, as we can see from the amount of money they were willing to shell out for indulgences. A person who is constantly afraid of sinning is dominated by sin just as much as is someone who is constantly giving in to the temptation. He is simply not free. And besides, often this extreme fear of sinning also causes people not to do good when they have the opportunity, for fear of sinning. Fear of sin paralyzes a person and causes him to sin by not doing what he should do, because he’s afraid of sinning by doing what he shouldn’t. And this only makes the cycle worse.

Over against the slavery to sin, both the slavery of indulgence and the slavery of fear of sin which leads to the sale of indulgences, Christ stands and promises to set us free. “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” He is the one who can set us free, for He as God has authority over sin, death, and the devil which have enslaved us. He is the Son of God the Father, and as the Son he can free those who are slaves. The power of sin is not broken when we try our hardest to not sin. The power of sin is broken when the sins we have committed, and those we will yet commit, are forgiven and no longer held against us. This breaks the fear and the despair which lead us either into works-righteousness and paralysis or deeper into the addiction to actual outward sins. Forgiveness carries with it the power of the Holy Spirit to amend our sinful lives, and to live as God’s free children rather than as hired servants in His world.

We have become the adopted children of God’s house because the Son of God became one of us and became our brother. His innocent life, his suffering and death, and His resurrection and ascension set the pattern for our life, death, resurrection, and eternal life. Where Christ has gone there we shall go, and in fact we have already gone through those things in Holy Baptism. We already in this world partake of the feast of Heaven in the body and blood of Christ Jesus. We already have a life that is free from sin, though while we yet live in this world this is hidden underneath the old sinful nature and the old troubles, pains and hurts. But even while we are troubled by temptations and by guilt from our sins, and even while we suffer and must put up with life in this sinful world, we are already living the new life which Christ has given us. We have already died and been raised with Christ, and this freedom gives us the ability to live as God’s free people in this sinful world.

This is the kind of freedom that the Reformation was about: not a political freedom, not a freedom from government authority, not a freedom to do whatever we want, and not even the noble freedoms we enjoy as Americans, but freedom from sin, freedom from condemnation, freedom from hell. The Gospel, which grants us this freedom, is what the Reformation was all about, and it is still what the Lutheran Church is all about. The Festival of the Reformation is not just a celebration of an old historical event or the Lutheran equivalent of a patriotic party. The Reformation is not about bashing other Christians, even though we must recognize and clearly point out that many other Christian church bodies are indeed wrong about what this freedom means for us as well as about certain other things the Bible teaches. The Reformation is not even about the church war between the Lutherans and the Pope, even though it’s true that many of the concerns Luther raised in his day are still a concern to us Lutherans today. Instead, the Reformation is a commemoration of the larger war against sin, death, and the devil which was won by Jesus Christ by dying on the cross and rising again for our justification. Sin, death, and the devil no longer enslave you. The Son has set you free, and so you are free indeed. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

St. James of Jerusalem

2011-10-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermonon Matthew 13:54-58

ForHoly Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI

October23, 2011 (St. James of Jerusalem)

Oneof the main thing that distinguishes Christianity from all otherreligions is that the events that stand at the center of our faithtook place at a specific point in history, at a time we can place notonly from the accounts in Scripture but also from the writings ofother historians who lived at that time, and they took place at aspecific place that you and I can go and visit today. In otherwords, the story that forms the heart of what we believe asChristians is not a myth that begins, “Once upon a time,” or “Along time ago in a galaxy far away.” Rather, these are actualeyewitness accounts of things that took place at a definite time inthe history of our world, the same world in which you and I areliving right now.

Anotherway we can tell that these stories are not myths but real history ofreal people, is that, unlike mythological accounts, the history ofGod’s people is recorded not only in terms of the heroic orrighteous things that these people did, but also in terms of thestupid or wicked or faithless things they did as well. These men aredepicted not as heroes but as humans. And all humans descended inthe natural way from Adam and Eve do stupid, wicked, and selfishthings. Even those most closely related, humanly speaking, to theone perfect human, Jesus Christ, were sinners. James, whom theChurch remembers today, grew up in the same household as JesusHimself. Now, we don’t know for sure whether James was Joseph’sson by a previous marriage, or whether he was Jesus’ half-brother,the natural son of Mary and Joseph. There’s an ancient traditionthat Mary remained a virgin throughout her life, and whether youthink James is Jesus’ half-brother or step-brother will depend onwhether you happen to believe that ancient tradition or not. Buteither way, James was raised as Jesus’ brother. You would thinkthat a man raised in the same family as our Lord Himself would be ashining example of what Christians ought to be, and that the earliestChurch in Jerusalem, which he later served as “bishop” or seniorpastor, would be a model of what the Church is supposed to be.

Well,it just isn’t so. James didn’t become a Christian until afterhis brother and Lord had risen from the dead. On one occasion, heand his other brothers, along with Mary, came to get Jesus becausethey thought He wasn’t right in the head for calling Himself theSon of God. As today’s Gospel lesson points out, it is often thosewho are biologically closest to a prophet or preacher who have thehardest time believing what that prophet has to say, which is whyit’s usually not a good idea for a pastor to serve the church hegrew up in.

Andeven after James became a Christian and a pastor, the church heserved, which was in many respects the preeminent congregation inthose earliest times, since they were the church at Jerusalem, wasdivided by controversy. James is remembered perhaps most clearly asthe pastor who presided over the very first “Synodical Convention,”if you want to put it in Missouri Synod terms, namely the firstJerusalem Council, which is recorded for us in the First Lessontoday. And it wasn’t all sweetness and light, either. It was adivided council, and it dealt with a controversial issue, namely thequestion of how much of the old Mosaic law Gentiles should be askedto follow in order to be considered Christians. There has never beena time when the external church has been perfectly united and withoutpolitics and agendas and division coming from various places in hermidst. There is no such thing as a pure and pristine early churchwhich, if we could just be exactly like them and do things exactlythe way they did, all our problems would be over. There have alwaysbeen divisions and controversy in the Church. Every generation hashad at least one, and usually more than one, controversy or divisioncausing strife and political unrest in visible Christendom. TheChurch is made up of forgiven sinners, and it always has been.

Butthat’s the point, isn’t it? The whole reason Jesus became man,was born of the virgin Mary, suffered and died under Pontius Pilate,rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven is so that wepoor, miserable sinners could be reunited with our Creator. Thewhole reason the Church exists is to distribute far and wide theforgiveness that Jesus came to win for us by His cross andresurrection. If there were such a thing as a perfect Christian or aperfect Church, such a creature wouldn’t need Jesus and theforgiveness of sins, and thus it wouldn’t really be a Christian ora Church. It is precisely because we are weak that God is glorifiedamong us, because if we were strong, we could just as well glorifyourselves. It is precisely in our weakness that God’s strength isseen. As James himself reminds us in today’s epistle lesson, it’sprecisely when troubles and trials and, yes, controversies come thatGod’s strength is shown in us.

Idon’t know if Holy Cross congregation was in the habit of observingthe various saints’ days when they fall on Sundays or not. What weare doing today may be a new thing for many of you. Rest assured,however, that when we remember the lives and the works of various menin the history of the Church, we are not glorifying those men, butrather we are glorifying God for what He has done in and through themdespite their own weaknesses and sins. James wasn’t always aChristian, despite being raised in the same home as Christ Himself. And after he became a Christian and a pastor, he presided not over avictorious, growing, vibrant church, but a church scattered bypersecution and divided by controversy. All he had to offer them waswhat he himself was given by his brother Jesus when He appeared tohim after his resurrection: the forgiveness of sins, life, andsalvation. That’s all we have to offer as well. But theforgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, while it may not seem likemuch while we live in this old world, is everything. It’s nothingless than being reunited with the One who has become our Father andHis Son Jesus, who has now become our adopted brother along withJames, and who will share all good things with us in the heavenlymansions forever. Amen.

+Soli Deo Gloria+

Pentecost 18 (Proper 24), Series A

2011-10-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermonon Matthew 22:15-22

ForHoly Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI

October16, 2011 (Proper 24, Series A)

Accordingto today’s text, the Pharisees and the Herodians were not honestlyseeking to learn from Jesus by asking the question they asked. Theywere trying to trap Him. They purposely asked a question for whichboth answers were problematic. If Jesus had said, “Yes, it islawful to pay taxes to Caesar,” then He would have made an enemy ofthe patriotic Jews who wished to rid themselves of the hated Romanoppressors. In fact, that’s what many people thought Jesus wasabout: they thought He was going to kick the Romans out of Israel andrestore the ancient Israelite monarchy, with Himself as David’sheir on the throne. Even His own disciples thought this way, as wecan tell from certain things they said and asked Jesus throughout theGospels. And so for Jesus to support the right of the Romans to taxthe Jews, would anger just about everyone who supported Him, and leadto a riot. On the other hand, if He were to say, “No, it isn’tlawful,” then he would have been charged with undermining the Romanauthorities, imprisoned, and executed. Of course, that’s what Hewas later charged with and executed for anyway, but if He would havesaid that, the charge would actually have been true. The question isa trap. Either answer is bad for him. It’s like the question,“Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” Either a yes or a noanswer is bad for the person, because the assumption behind thequestion is wrong.

ButJesus gets out of the trap by pointing out that it was Caesar whoissued the money in the first place. His face and his inscriptionare on it, and so it really belongs to him anyway. Since Caesarissued the money, he has a right to demand it back. But, by the sametoken, we are also to render to God the things that belong to Him. And that means that there are certain boundary lines Caesar shouldnot cross. If Caesar demands that his subjects do things that areagainst God, those subjects have the duty to disobey him, even thoughthey still obey him when his commands are within the sphere ofauthority God has given him. Render to Caesar the things that areCaesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.

Now,that’s not to say that any one particular form or government enjoysGod’s special favor. We happen to live in a constitutionalrepublic (sometimes mistakenly referred to as a democracy). And,since the highest law of our land guarantees us the freedom ofreligion, we do give thanks that God has graciously allowed us to berelatively free of religious persecution here. This is a good thing. But obviously Jesus wasn’t talking about the United States here;it would be some 1800 years before our Constitution would be written. He was talking about the hated oppressor Caesar. Every government,even ones that we would regard as oppressive and horrible, are usedby God to keep peace and order in society. Saddam Hussein’sdictatorship was very effective from keeping the Islamic majority inIraq from killing or driving out the Christians in that country, andironically it was the ancient Christian communities in Iraq thatsuffered the most when his regime was ended. Even Communist regimeskeep the roads paved and the electricity flowing, which are blessingseven for those who have to worship in secret. And so governmentsare to be respected, precisely because it is God who is keeping peaceand order in society for our benefit through them. That doesn’tmean we have to obey when they command us to sin; after all, “Wemust obey God rather than men.” But it does mean that we cansimply disregard them just because they aren’t perfect and don’talways do a perfect job of respecting everyone’s rights and beingfair to everyone, either.

Buthow to tell the difference? What does our Lord say? How do we knowwhat things are Caesar’s and what things are God’s? The cointhey brought to Him had the image of Caesar and the inscription ofCaesar stamped upon it. And so, because it bore Caesar’s image andHis inscription, it was Caesar’s. But how do we know what isGod’s? The same way. By God’s image and God’s inscription. And where do we find that image of God? What things bear the imageof God? We learn from Genesis that mankind was created in the imageof God. This means that everything we are and everything we have isGod’s, because we bear His image within ourselves. This isn’tjust a matter of giving to Church or to charity, although one way weconfess the fact that we are His is by giving generously to theChurch and to those who need our help in our midst. This is a matterof confessing that everything we are and everything we have is His. There is no part of our life, no aspect of our being, that He doesnot claim. His image is upon all of it. We are created in Hisimage.

Ofcourse, mankind lost that image when he fell into sin. We have allinherited that sin from Adam and so are separated from our Creator. This is why He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die and rise again sothat our old sinful nature could be drowned and die in Holy Baptism,and a new man come forth and arise to live before God inrighteousness and purity forever. In Holy Baptism a new name wasinscribed on your hearts, the name of Jesus Christ. Christ claimedyou again as His own, so that you could live under Him in Hiskingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence andblessedness. You were recreated, reborn, in that font, so that nowyou have once again the image of God in you, not only in your heartbut in your whole being and in the living out of your life. Where dowe find that which is God’s? Where His image and inscription are. Where are that image and inscription? On our hearts and in ourlives. He has called us by name, and we are His.

AsI mentioned before, one of the ways in which we show that we are Hisis by obeying those who are placed in authority over us. Thisincludes not only the secular government, but whomever is inauthority over us in society and family. This includes our boss atwork, our parents, for wives it includes your husband, and in matterswhere the Word of God speaks it also includes your pastor, whoseauthority it is to speak that Word of God in your midst. To renderunto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s is really one way in whichwe render unto God the things that are God’s, since He is the onewho stands behind and upholds those in authority over us. “Weshould fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger ourparents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them,love and cherish them.” This is the explanation Luther gives ofthese matters, in connection with the Fourth Commandment. It is Godwhom we are serving when we obey and honor those who are in authorityover us.

Butmost important is to remember to Whom it is that we belong: God. Yes, that is a great responsibility, but it is also a great comfort. Part of the duty of the government is to watch over and protect usfrom those who would hurt us. But the police and the sheriff’sdeputies can’t be everywhere at once, and even though in our nationwe also have the right to keep and bear arms to defend ourselves, wealso can’t be everywhere at once. Sometimes our fellow sinners arestill able to take advantage of us, to rob us or even rape or murderus. But God’s vigilance over us never fails. Nothing happens thatHe does not know about and use for our benefit. Even the ultimateevil that could happen to us, namely death, is now the gate of lifefor us. We have eternal life itself, and so nothing in this worldcan truly harm us. How do we know we have eternal life? We haveGod’s image and His inscription. We belong to Him. And He willdefend and keep what is His own. Amen.

+Soli Deo Gloria+

Pentecost 17 (Proper 23), series A

2011-10-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermonon Matthew 22:1-14

ForHoly Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI

October9, 2011 (Proper 23, Series A)

Thisparable is a description of the Church. The wedding feast that ismentioned here is the great wedding between God and His creation, thewedding between Christ the heavenly Bridegroom and the Church Hisbride. This wedding feast will be celebrated eternally in themansions of the Heavenly Father following Christ’s return tojudgement. But most people in our world, even though they areinvited to this feast, aren’t planning on attending it. Manysimply don’t believe there is going to be a feast. Others don’tthink that this wedding feast is something that is important to them,and so they ignore the invitation. Others get so angry at themessengers that they persecute and kill them. Still others may haveheard some hint of the invitation, but what they heard was so garbledby false doctrine and moralism that the message never really gotthrough. Still others simply have not heard the invitation yet atall. And yet, this wedding feast is important to everyone. To beinvited and choose not to attend is to incur the wrath of theHeavenly Father who gives this feast, and he and His armies willdestroy those who reject the invitation in the eternal fires of Hell. And so it is urgent that the invitation to the heavenly weddingbanquet go out to all the world as quickly as possible.

Thisis the reason why the Church sends missionaries into foreigncountries as well as into various areas of our own country where theGospel is not currently being preached in its truth and purity. Thisis the reason why the Church encourages and exhorts all her membersto share this invitation, this message, with all with whom they comeinto contact. This is why various organizations have beenestablished to promote the mission of the Church, both by poolingfunds and resources, and by encouraging local groups and projectswhich promote the spreading of this glorious invitation to the wholeworld. The Lutheran Women’s Missionary League is one such group,and in fact of all our Synod’s missionary auxiliaries, the LWML isthe one whose local society, the “Cross and Crown,” is the mostactive in this particular congregation. We give thanks to God thisday for the work of these ladies on behalf of the Gospel of JesusChrist, and we pledge our continuing support to their efforts togather all who will hear together from the ends of the earth tocelebrate with all the faithful the marriage feast of the Lamb in HisKingdom, which has no end.

Butof course, we recognize from this parable that going to the worldwith this invitation is an activity that is not without its hazards. You can get killed doing this. Some of the servants who were sent bythe king in the parable were killed by those to whom they were sent. Now, today, here in America, that isn’t the danger. The danger tous is that we will be treated spitefully and ridiculed. In someways, it’s easier to give up your life for Christ once than it isto have to face peer pressure and ridicule against Him day after dayafter day. And so it is imperative that we band together, not onlyas a Church, even though that is the primary gathering of Christiansto be strengthened and nourished for this battle, but also in othergroups and organizations, so that we can be strengthened andencouraged for this battle. This is why we have Bible study groupsas well as the Cross and Crown Society. Going out with Christ’sinvitation is not easy, but when you do it together with others, Godshows His help and care through those others, and it does seemeasier.

Andwhat is the purpose of this going forth with the invitation to thewedding banquet? So that those who are thus invited can be unitedwith Christ. Toward the end of this parable we hear about a man whosomehow managed to get in to the feast without the appropriateclothing. This man is taken out and cast into the outer darkness. This seems like a harsh and judgmental picture, but it reminds us ofwhat it is that happens when a person is united with Christ. Christcovers him like a garment, like a white robe of purity. Our sins,our selfishness, our lack of holiness and righteousness before God,are covered up with the white robe that God gives us in Holy Baptism. Without this covering, our sinfulness is offensive to our God and weare subject to destruction. But with this covering, with Christbecoming our white, pure, and holy robe, we are pleasing to God, andour presence is a joy to Him at the wedding feast.

Andso it is necessary that those who come to the feast be given thewedding garment. All men are born sinful and must be covered withChrist’s righteousness in order to be acceptable to God. Thistakes place in Holy Baptism and is renewed when we hear the Word offorgiveness preached, read, and proclaimed to us. What we do when weinvite those who are outside our fellowship right now to come andparticipate with us in the wedding feast is not a matter of gettingas many warm bodies as possible in the pews. A missionary approachthat focuses itself on the number of warm bodies in the pews andwhich tones down the seriousness of the Christian message of Law andGospel, replacing it with motivational speeches for better living orthe like, will only result in having more people who cast aside thewhite robe of Christ’s righteousness and try to remain in thewedding feast without it. In other words, seeking numbers at allcosts doesn’t help the kingdom of God. It only hurts it. As Jesuswarns us at the end of the parable, many are called, but few arechosen. We can’t get around that fact.

Butfor those who do hear the invitation and who do not cast asideChrist’s righteousness which is given to them but instead weartheir wedding garment which God has given them proudly andthankfully, the blessings of being at this wedding feast are beyondcompare. This wedding feast is nothing other than heaven itself. Infact, the bride is no one else than the Church herself. Which meansthat you and I are not just invited guests to this feast, we are,collectively, one of the parties to the union. The union between Godand Man which takes place in heaven means joy and happiness beyondcompare for us. Some religions teach about a god who is high, holy,and remote. Other religions teach about a god, or a whole series ofgods, that is contained within creation, such as “mother earth”or something like that. Our religion is the only one that has thebest of both worlds. Our religion teaches about a God who, eventhough He is high and holy and powerful, is not remote from us butrather has entered our existence and taken on human flesh in theperson of Jesus Christ. God is not “watching us from a distance,”thank you Whitney Houston, but rather He is with us. This is theunion that we celebrate in the marriage feast of the lamb which hasno end. This is the union that all men are invited to. Nothing lessthan the love and the fellowship of the high, holy, and powerfulcreator of heaven and earth.

Andthis wedding feast isn’t just something that we have to wait forthe end of the world to experience either, even though that is whenour experience of it will be fulfilled and complete and eternal. Weparticipate in this wedding feast, this union of love between God andHis creation, every Sunday as we eat the body of our heavenlybridegroom and drink His blood. We, who have received the white robeof Christ’s righteousness in Holy Baptism, now enter into thefellowship of God Himself through eating His Son’s body anddrinking His blood. We can’t see this aspect of the DivineService, but it is real. We receive nothing less here than theforgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. For where there is theforgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation. We nowpartake of the marriage feast of the lamb, which has no end. Our ownsinfulness does not hinder us from being here, for we are coveredwith the white robe, the wedding garment of Christ’s holiness andrighteousness. Come to the feast! Amen.

+Soli Deo Gloria+

Pentecost 15 (Proper 21), Series A

2011-09-25T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermonon Matthew 21:23-32

ForHoly Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI

September25, 2011 (Proper 21, Series A)

Today’sGospel lesson takes place on Holy Monday, the day after Jesus’triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Sunday morning, and His cleansingof the Temple on Sunday afternoon. So, when the chief priests comeup to Him and ask by what authority He is doing these things, they’vegot reason to ask. They’re not just asking an abstract, academicquestion here. They’re not just asking about Jesus’ preachingand ministry in general. They’re asking about something He didthat affected them personally. They’re asking Him about the factthat He went through and destroyed the profitable little gig they hadset up, using the Temple and the people’s faithfulness to their Godas a way to make a bit of extra money over and above what was donatedby the people out of their own free will.

Andso, instead of answering them straightforwardly, Jesus answers themwith a question of His own, regarding what John had been doing in thewilderness, baptizing those who came to him for repentance and theforgiveness of sins. And this also isn’t an academic, abstractquestion. This cuts right to the heart of whether or not these menreally believe, teach, and confess the truth about the God they claimto be serving. It’s also a question that gets right to their ownpride and willingness (or lack thereof) to repent and believe thatJesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Repentance will not be easyfor these men, because it would involve a very public apology to thewhole ancient Jewish community who came to the temple from all overthe known world to worship, about the most basic doctrine these menwere supposed to be teaching. Is Jesus the Messiah, come to bringpeace with God through His innocent death and glorious resurrection,or is peace with God something that must be earned and bought withgood works which, you know, to really do things right and get reallyright with God you’ve got to change your money to the temple coinsand get your sacrificial animals right here.

Andthat sort of repentance is just hard. If repentance were simply amatter of making a new year’s resolution to do better at resistingsin and obeying God’s principles for living, well, that’s not sobad. Once you reduce the perfect Law of God down to a few thingsthat you can improve upon in your life, a few principles that you canwork on, a few bad habits that you can teach yourself to give up,repentance looks easy. And if some preacher on TV tells you that acertain donation will improve your chances of getting God’sblessings, that’s not so bad either. When the coin in the cofferrings, the soul from purgatory springs, you know? That little sloganfrom the pope’s fundraisers in Luther’s time is no different fromwhat many so-called “evangelical” preachers are trying to sellyou today. Money is relatively easy to give up, even in these tougheconomic times, compared to giving up pride and admitting you weresimply wrong about everything, which is what true repentancerequires.

Andthat’s the problem. True repentance means giving up any claim wehave on God’s blessings on the basis of what we do. God doesn’twant right and proper animal sacrifices if they’re being abused asa substitute for true repentance. God was the one who instituted thesacrificial system, but even in the Old Testament several of theprophets are told to tell the people that God hates their sacrifices. God doesn’t want a great big show of being a good and holy person,if the reason is to hide from others, God, and even ourselves that weare really selfish, corrupt enemies of God deep down on the inside. Good works are a stench to Him, something that comes from a den ofthieves rather than a house of prayer, if they’re done to promoteour own righteousness at the expense of His gifts.

Andthat’s why Jesus tells the next parable. It’s not the one who,in front of God and everyone else, tells you about his ownrighteousness that is the true disciple of Christ. It’s not theone who proclaims to the world how much he’s doing for God that isreally working in the Father’s vineyard. It’s the one who looksfor all the world like a rebellious teenager but who is crushed bythe Law, repents, and believes that salvation is his for Christ’ssake alone who is really doing the will of the Father. It’s notabout image, it’s about what is really going on in your heart. Andwhat is really going on in the heart of the sinner is a rebelliousrefusal to do the Father’s will.

Butwhat is the Father’s will? Not outward good works, first andforemost (though those will follow), but repentance and faith. Thehighest and holiest good work we can do is simply to agree with Godin what He says. As the Lutheran Confessions remind us, the highestworship of God is simply to believe in Him, to have faith in Him(which is just another way of saying that we agree with Him and whatHe says). Sounds easy, right? Well, what God says about you is thatyou’re a poor, miserable sinner who is completely helpless andhopeless to do anything to restore, let alone improve, yourrelationship with your God. Agreeing with thatis not so easy. In fact, it’s downright impossible by our ownreason and strength. And what God says about Himself is that He isthe only one who can restore you to a right relationship withHimself. Believing thatis no more possible than believing you’re a sinner, because the twogo together. The good news that only God can save us, and that Hehas done so in Jesus Christ, is only good news once we realize justhow helpless and lost we are without Him. Otherwise it’s simplyoffensive to our human pride that thinks we can do it on our own,with some advice and counsel, and a few generous donations, to thechief priests or the traveling fundraiser for the new basilica atRome in Luther’s day, or the TV preachers today. It’s only whenwe realize how lost we are that repentance and faith are somethingthat can be worked in us. The son who made a big show of going andworking, but never actually got there, is what we are by nature. Theone who knew he was a miserable wretch and had his thinking turnedaround by the Holy Spirit through Law and Gospel and ended up workingin the vineyard after all, is what we can (and do!) become by God’sfree gift through the Word, the water, and Christ’s body and blood. Amen.

+Soli Deo Gloria+

Pentecost 14 (Proper 20), Series A

2011-09-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermonon Matthew 20:1-16

ForHoly Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI

September18, 2011 (Proper 20, Series A)

Lifeisn’t fair. Some people who hardly ever do any work get paid morethan some others who do very difficult, dangerous, or dirty jobs fora living. And some have money they inherited from their parents anddon’t have to work at all. And of course some of those who do aconsiderable amount of physical labor for the functioning of societydon’t get paid for it at all because they’re staying at home,maintaining their own households and raising their children whiletheir spouses are away at work. Even those who own their ownbusinesses get taken advantage of sometimes, so that what was earnedby their hard work ends up going to those who don’t work as hardbut are sharper businessmen. Sometimes it seems like it’s the evilwho don’t do any work but have all the advantages, while the gooddo all the work and never seem to get ahead. Life just isn’t fair.

It’stempting, isn’t it, to blame God for this. After all, He isall-powerful, which means more than just that He can do anything. Itmeans that He spoke everything that exists by His Word and thattherefore it’s His Word that keeps it all in existence even today. And that means that nothing happens that He isn’t aware of or whichHe doesn’t have power to control or stop. The fact that the goodguys seem to finish last while the lazy and evil do as well or betteris something that God could put a stop to. And so it’s tempting todoubt His goodness when we see how unfair life often is.

Whatneeds to be kept in mind, however, is that if life were truly fair,none of us would have made it this far. In fact, if God were to dealwith each of us as we deserve, none of us would have been bornbecause our ancestors would have died out long ago. Adam and Evewould have been killed on the spot after they ate the forbiddenfruit, rather than dying of old age several hundred years laterhaving been given a promise that there would come a Messiah, aSavior, from their descendants who would crush Satan’s head andrescue us from this old, sin-filled life. There is no one who hasdone good. Before God we are all just as sinful and corrupt as thosewhose advantages in this life we sometime resent. There is no onewho has truly earned anything that he has. It’s all a gift fromGod despite our unworthiness. A God who dealt with human beings asthey deserve, a God who dealt with human beings “fairly,” inother words, would have dispensed with all of us a long time ago.

Intoday’s Gospel lesson, the owner of the vineyard doesn’t doanything shady or dishonest by paying the last workers hired the sameas those who worked all day. He promised them a denarius, and that’swhat he pays them. But it doesn’t seem fair that those who onlyworked one hour would get paid the same as those who worked most ofthe day or even all day. After all, someone who has done more workought to get paid more, right? That’s the way we tend to think ofit, and that’s why often large companies will make salaryinformation a confidential matter, to head off these sorts ofcomplaints.

Butit isn’t the way God thinks of it. You see, from God’sperspective it’s not about earning wages or food or clothing oranything else, it’s about giving. As far as God is concerned, whatwe receive in this life, and more importantly what we receive interms of forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation, are things that Hegives us freely, not rewards or wages that we have worked for orearned. Even the things that He gives us by means of our daily workare really gifts from Him and not rewards. And what we do in ourdaily work is supposed to be done in service to Him and love for theneighbor, not for the motivation of earning money for ourselves.

It’sbad enough when the mentality of earning and rewards affects how wethink of the things God gives us in this world. What is worse,however, is when that mentality creeps into our thinking abouteternal life. There it is literally deadly. Eternal life is a freegift. And thank goodness it’s a free gift. If we had to earn itwe’d be lost. What keeps us out of God’s loving fellowship isour own sinfulness, and that means not just that we’ve done somebad things but that we were born His enemies. Even trying to earnour way back into His favor is offensive to Him because who He is asGod is the giver of gifts, and trying to earn His gifts is a denialof His goodness in giving them freely. Many things that people dowhich are outwardly good and loving, are from God’s perspective theworst blasphemy and sacrilege, because they are done with the idea oftaking away God’s identity as gracious giver of all good things.

Andso it’s good news that God “isn’t fair.” He’s not supposedto follow our selfish and picky little concept of fairness. He’sbigger than that. What He wants is not to hand out rewards or wages,but to give gifts. And the gifts he has to give are better and morelasting than anything we could possibly earn. What could we possiblydo on this earth that would earn us eternal life? What could wepossibly accomplish that would be worth the absence of sickness,disease, or hunger? How could we possibly repay Him for the gift ofspending eternal life in His presence? We can’t. But we don’thave to.

Hegives the same eternal life to the infant who dies only a few daysafter Baptism, to the old man who only came to faith in the nursinghome, as well as to those who have spent their entire lives servingGod and their neighbor. Now, He does expect us to serve Him and ourneighbor as He gives us opportunity. He does expect us to confessHim to our friends and neighbors, to teach our children the faith, aswell as all the things we do to serve our neighbors in terms ofphysical needs as well. But His gifts to us remain just that: gifts. They don’t become wages just because we’re working. Rather, ourwork is itself a gift to Him and to each other, a gift that can onlyhappen because He has first given to us. Amen.

+Soli Deo Gloria+

Pentecost 13

2011-09-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 18:21-35For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WISeptember 11, 2011 (Proper 19, Series A)“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” What does this mean? “We pray in this petition that our Father in heaven would not look at our sins, or deny our prayer because of them. We are neither worthy of the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them, but we ask that He would give them all to us by grace, for we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us.” Forgiveness is the very center of the Christian religion. The whole reason Christ became man, lived a perfect life, and died an innocent death, was so that we might be forgiven. Forgiveness is what we come here on Sunday mornings to receive. Its what is given to us in Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion. The fact that God graciously and freely forgives us our sins is what Christianity is all about.But the fact that God graciously and freely forgives us our sins has implications. We live our lives in this old world, and both we and those around us remain sinners. And so as we go through life we will be offended by others and we will offend others. We will gossip, we will make poor assumptions about what is going on in others’ lives based on flimsy evidence, we will be prideful and boastful and put our wishes in front of everyone else. In other words, forgiveness is something that governs not only our relationship with God, it is something that is to govern our relationship with one another as well.The parable that Jesus tells Peter today illustrates for us what this means. The servant in the parable owed a grand total of ten thousand talents to his master. A talent was a rather large gold coin, and ten thousand of them would be worth millions and millions of dollars. Most of us can’t even imagine having, let alone spending, the amount of money that this man was in debt. But like him, we are deeply in debt to our Lord. We are born sinners. We haven’t just done some things wrong in our lives, we were born oriented against God. We were born with God as our enemy. Even now, there is still that Old Adam in us that is nothing less than a stubborn, unrepentant enemy of God. We cannot truly comprehend how offensive we are by nature to our God, not only because of our actions but because of the corruption that is simply inside of us which we have inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve. The debt we owe God because of our sinfulness is so huge that we cannot hope to pay it off, just as the servant could not hope to pay off his debt to his master because it was too huge.But God does forgive us. Unlike the master in the text, God doesn’t simply say, “Oh don’t worry about it,” however. Instead, he applies our punishment to His own Son in our place, sending Him to die on the cross. It’s easy to take God’s forgiveness for granted. We hear it every Sunday, when we make the general confession before the service and the pastor says, “In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” That declaration is most certainly true, but it’s too easy to forget that our Lord Jesus Himself had to die and rise again in order for that absolution to be true. God is not some tolerant grandfather who sits up in heaven and spoils his children by letting them do whatever they please. And God did not give us His forgiveness so that we can have an excuse to continue doing things that are an offense and a mockery to Him. He gave us His forgiveness so that we can be with Him and be restored to His fellowship, and that includes being willing to fight against our sin, and not to indulge in it, and that includes the sin of not forgiving our fellow sinners.You are forgiven. Your sin was borne by Christ, and so it no longer applies to you. Great. Wonderful. But now let’s think about the implications of that. You are supposed to forgive those around you too, since they have also been forgiven by God just as you were. I know it hurts when someone sins against you, lies about you, says hurtful words or even hurts you physically. I know it hurts when someone you trusted betrays you, cheats you, or otherwise uses you. It hurts when someone else does the very thing I’m talking about, being unforgiving towards your mistakes. But how do you think God feels when you sin against Him? Just like you feel when you are sinned against, except infinitely worse. And, since He has forgiven you, He has given you the ability and the duty of forgiving those who sin against you. The fact of the matter is, the forgiveness that applies to you from God also applies to the person who has sinned against you. If you don’t forgive them, even though God has forgiven them, then you are setting yourself up against God. You are calling God a liar. And if you call God a liar when He says, “I forgive you” to your neighbor, you are also, whether you realize it or not, calling God a liar when he says the same thing to you. After all, what you owe God because of the absolute corruption of your sinfulness is much greater than the small amount that your neighbor has done against you. And because of this, if you do not forgive you are by that action refusing God’s forgiveness, and your debt still applies to you, just as the unmerciful servant was called back into his master’s office and then thrown into prison after he refused to pardon the debt that was owed to him by a fellow servant. That servant was only owed a small amount of money. It was larger than could be paid right away, but it was payable on an installment basis. We might think of a debt of three or four hundred dollars in this connection, which is hardly a drop in the bucket compared to what the first servant owed his master.When I pronounce the absolution upon the congregation, it not only applies to each of you personally, it applies to the guy sitting across from you as well. This is also true of those fellow church members that maybe you haven’t been getting along with. Not only are we forgiven, but our neighbor is forgiven as well, and if God has forgiven them, we dare not do otherwise. To do so is to call God a liar. And the thing of it is, if you call God a liar when He says, “I forgive you” to your neighbor, you’re calling Him a liar when He says it to you, too, since both you and your neighbor are forgiven by the same Word, based on the same once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on the cross. By the way, this is one good reason for greeting those around you with the words, “The peace of the Lord” right after the Absolution. God has declared the war between Himself and us over by forgiving us, and so therefore whatever petty warfare there may be between ourselves and our fellow Christians is now also covered by that peace treaty.Even though we are not worthy of it, God has had mercy on us. Our sins are forgiven. It is precisely through us, then, that God has mercy on those around us, through me as the one who preaches the Word and administers the Sacraments, and through you as you love each other because God has first loved you. His forgiveness is a precious thing. It is literally the difference between eternal life and eternal death for us. And thus we live as those who are forgiven, and therefore we also live as those whose neighbors are also forgiven. Christ died for them at the same time He died for us. We forgive because He has forgiven us. Amen.+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 12 (Proper 18), Series A

2011-09-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 18:1-20
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
September 4, 2011 (Proper 18, Series A)

Well, if I were the President of the United States, I’d do things differently. I’d do them right. If only I had the power to get things done, by golly, I’d do them the way they were supposed to be done. How many of us have said that, at least, inside our own minds? Well, the fact is, you do have a very great power over people, even greater than that of the President. The President can only affect what happens to people in this life. The Church, on the other hand, has the power which can make the difference whether someone spends eternity with God or apart from Him in Hell. The catechism calls this power the “office of the keys.”

Unfortunately, many Christians misuse and abuse this power. The power to forgive the sins of another human being is abused if we see another Christian sin, and we ignore the fact that he did anything wrong, instead of telling him what was wrong with what he did. The fact is, when we see someone commit a sin and then try to hide it, we are already involved, as God points out to St. Ezekiel in today’s Old Testament lesson. By ignoring what this person did, we become accomplices. But that’s not the worst part. When we ignore or gloss over sin, we deprive the sinner of the Good News of Christ’s forgiveness, because it is only sinners for whom Christ died.

Another abuse of this power happens when we go and blab the problem to a third or fourth party, or even to a whole group, maybe even the whole Church, instead of going to the sinning brother privately and keeping it all as low-key as possible. Often we make this mistake if the sinning brother happens to be our “enemy” for one reason or another, or some type of rival for power and influence. The problem here is once again that we cut the person off from Christ, because instead of using our power as Christians to bring someone back to Christ, we are using it to turn other Christians away from him, and that will drive him away from the Church. When we drive someone away from the Church, we drive him away from Christ.

You see, the purpose for telling a person he is a sinner is so that he can see that he has a Savior from sin. Christ didn’t die for righteous people; even if there had been any people in the world that were righteous in and of themselves, the fact that these people would have been righteous means that Christ didn’t need to die for them. But Christ died to pay for the sins of sinners, and He rose to show them that their sins are conquered and can no longer trouble them. The reason why we reprove sin, whether privately or, if necessary, publicly, is the same as the reason why I preach the Law in general terms from this pulpit. It is only sinners who have a Savior. It is precisely sinners that Jesus came to save. And the neat part about that is that whenever we remind someone of what Christ has done for them, we remind ourselves at the same time. Not one of us is so well-grounded in the Christian faith that he doesn’t forget from time to time that Christ has paid for his sins already. But when we have the opportunity to remind someone else, this reminds us as well of the wonderful gift Christ has given us in His death and resurrection.

But that still causes us to wonder, why did God give this thing to us sinful human beings? The reason is that if you read the Law or the Gospel in a book, even if that book is a Bible, it probably won’t connect with your life the way it does if someone comes up to you and tells you flat out what’s what. When we sit and read something, we sit in judgment over what we read, even if we don’t mean to. It’s the way we are wired as human beings. It’s why Paul says that faith comes by hearing. If you have been doing something wrong, you can easily skip over those verses in the bible which make you a little uncomfortable. You can’t ignore it when someone tells you that what you’re doing is wrong. Even more importantly, however, when you feel really guilty about our sins, something on the printed page, even the page of a Bible, sounds hollow compared to the comfort you get when someone who knows exactly what sins you have committed tells you that God has forgiven you. In some churches, they don’t believe in this power. Instead of teaching what we teach, namely that the message of forgiveness actually creates the faith in your heart which trusts the promises of Christ’s death and resurrection, they teach that a person has to decide to accept Christ and that the message of forgiveness has no power of the Holy Spirit by itself. The problem is that when a person who believes this falls again into a habitual sin, he thinks his decision wasn’t really good enough, and either resolves to really commit himself to Christ this time, or he falls into despair. We, on the other hand, know that what our brothers and sisters in Christ tell us about ourselves and what Christ did for us is true, because, according to our text, what they say about us on earth, is what God says about us in heaven.

Another reason God gave this power to us sinful human beings is, oddly enough, precisely because we are sinful. If there were perfect people in the world, and they were the ones who went around telling everyone about Christ, who would we be grateful to, assuming we believed? We could just as easily give thanks and praise to them, couldn’t we, because they would be on a level above us. But the fact is, we are sinners, so when we tell someone about their sin and about the forgiveness which is in Christ, we can’t take any of the credit, because we are in the same boat as those we accuse and comfort; the glory all belongs to God. In fact, His glory is even greater, because only a really powerful God can get things done using sinful people as His tools.

There is one final question about this text which may be in some of your minds and I just want to clear it up since there is a lot of discussion about it in the Church at large these days: When Jesus says that whatever we bind or loose on earth is bound or loosed in heaven, is he talking only about the disciples, and therefore about the called ministers of the church, or is he talking about all of us individually as well? After all, Jesus says something similar in John 20, and there the Catechism reminds us that he is talking about the “called ministers of Christ.” Well, again, the answer is, both! The primary and central presentation of the Gospel to all of us is in the Sacraments and in the Word publicly preached. Our Baptism, when we were washed clean of all sin, Holy Communion, where we receive the very body and blood which bought our forgiveness, and Holy Absolution, the direct personal statement by the called minister that your sins are forgiven in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: these are the center of what Jesus is speaking about here. Whenever two or three are gathered in My name, that is the Christian congregation. That is Holy Cross Lutheran Church. But even though the work of a called Pastor is more central, more regular, and more public than what every Christian can do, when we remind our fellow Christians of their sins and of Christ’s love, what we do then is not any less powerful than what the Pastor does. The Holy Spirit works just as much through the word on our lips out in the community, in the home or in the workplace, as He does through everything which happens in this room. But, since the publicly preached Word and the Sacraments are more regular and public, and, in the case of the Sacraments, more tangible and real to our senses, than our private conversations are, perhaps the best way for us as individuals to counsel and comfort our brothers and sisters is to remind them of what takes place here in worship, to remind them of their Baptism where they died and rose with Christ, and that they have eaten and drunk our Lord’s body and blood which were crucified and shed, died and rose again for our eternal salvation. Not only will this take away their burden of sin, but it will lead them to the place where they can be continually strengthened in that trust in Christ, where they gather with us around the heavenly throne and feast with us on the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 11 (Proper 17), Series A

2011-08-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 16:21-28
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
August 28, 2011 (Proper 17, Series A)

The Gospel Lesson for today gives us a picture of St. Peter both at his best and at his worst, one right after the other. Isn’t that often how it is with you and me? Sometimes our worst failures, our greatest humiliations, and yes, our worst sins, come right after some of our best successes, our greatest good works. Why is that? The answer is pride. We forget that it is God who works through us when we do good works, not ourselves. We want to take the credit for what we have done well, and that pride and that self-centeredness becomes the first sin that leads to all the others. Peter had just, on the spur of the moment, spoken one of the greatest and clearest confessions of the central truth of Christianity found in all of Holy Scripture. “You are the Christ.” Now, of course, today’s Gospel Lesson is from St. Mark. But when St. Matthew tells this story, he also tells us what our Lord told Peter after he had said this. He told him that these things had not been revealed to him by men but by the Father in heaven. Evidently Peter didn’t listen, because he became overconfident of his own theological abilities and tried to rebuke our Lord when He went on to talk about His death. In Peter’s mind, what Jesus was saying that didn’t fit with Peter’s own picture of how God’s salvation was supposed to work. Peter thought he was doing the right thing in telling our Lord that He shouldn’t go and die. But what Peter said was very, very wrong. What he said would have resulted in there being no such thing as Christianity, because without Jesus dying on the cross we would not have had a sacrifice for our sins. There would be no way for us sinners to be saved. Peter’s objections to what our Lord said came straight from Satan himself. And yet despite this, Christ forgives Peter. We know this because He later becomes the leader among the Apostles and eventually gives up his life as a witness (martyr) to the Christ whose death saved him.

What is going on here? We see a young disciple whose pride has led him to say something Satanic. And this is hardly the only time Peter manages to get his foot into his mouth, either. He denied our Lord mere hours after saying that he would never do so. But this man became one of the most significant apostles of the earliest church. St. Paul, another unlikely candidate for greatness in the kingdom of God due to his persecution of the church, explains it this way in 1 Corinthians 3: “Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’; and again, ‘The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.’” In other words, God doesn’t do things the way we expect Him to. After all, the redemption that is ours through Christ was hardly done in the way men expected either. A poor man from the back country of Galilee became an itinerant preacher who was eventually put to death because his message was too controversial. But it was by that death that the world’s salvation was won. And the angels proclaimed the resurrection on that first Easter morning not to the kings and princes by the angels, but to the frightened and miserable disciples and the women who had followed Him from Galilee, just as at His birth they proclaimed the message to shepherds rather than to Herod or the Emperor Augustus. If that is the way God works through His own Son, is it any surprise that he works in this “foolish” way through Christ’s followers? The one who was referred to as Satan for trying to stop Jesus from going to the cross, and who denied Him three times during His trial, becomes the leader of the Twelve Apostles. The one who persecuted and killed the Christians becomes the Apostle to the Gentiles.

God still works that way today. How does he make us Christians and keep us in the faith? Not through great and powerful signs and wonders but through water, through the words of a man who is a sinner just like yourself, and through bread and wine. Who are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven today? Not the television preachers, not the highest officials in the various churches, not the laymen and clergy who are always active in church politics. The greatest in the kingdom of heaven are those Christians, both the pastors and the members of the Church, who simply and humbly do what God has given them to do in their day to day jobs and callings, and who through words and through good works serve as living invitations for those who are as yet outside the Church to come to the waters of Holy Baptism and receive Christ and His salvation. These humble Christian people, just like you and me, are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. It is not that their own works are so great; they are sinners like everyone else. But Christ works in and through them to do great things, just as he worked in and through the most unlikely candidates, including Peter. When I as pastor and you as Christian people do our daily tasks out of faith that God will bless our work, and when we by word and example confess to the world that it is Christ who is the center of our lives, we who are the saints of God in this place today are following in the example of these saints who have gone before us.

One final comment about Peter: not only does he serve as examples of Christ’s work in and through every Christian, including those who have a tendency to plant their feet in their own mouths, they also serve as examples to pastors such as myself. They did not preach themselves, they preached Christ crucified. As our Old Testament lesson says, they preached the Law to those who were secure in themselves, and to the poor and miserable they gave the comfort of the Gospel. I have been called to be your pastor here at Holy Cross Lutheran Church. Through the coming years, I expect you to watch me as I proclaim God’s Word to you. I am a sinner just like Peter, and just like you. I will at times mess up the job God has given me to do in this place. If and when I begin to talk as if what happens here is a result of my abilities or of my work, I expect you to tell me I’m wrong in no uncertain terms. Also, if something I say doesn’t match up with God’s Word, you may need to say “get behind me, Satan” to me. I am here to speak God’s Word to you, and when I do it is not my authority but God’s that is at work. But when I contradict God’s Word or even go beyond it, it is the devil’s work. My prayer as we move forward as pastor and congregation is that we hold each other to God’s Word and to the confidence we have that through Christ our sins are forgiven and eternity is ours, and that we are unafraid to correct one another if we begin to drift away from that central message. That’s what we’re here for, and that is enough, and more than enough. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 10 (Proper 16), Series A

2011-08-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 16:13-20
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
August 21, 2011 (Proper 16, Series A)

“Who do people say the Son of Man is?” If you took a survey today and asked people what they thought of Jesus, the answers you would get back would be just as varied as the answers the people gave when Jesus asked the question in our text. Some would say that He was a great teacher. Others, like the Jews, would say that He was a fraud. Some might say that He was a good example for us to follow. Others, such as the Muslims, might call Him a great prophet, one of the more honored predecessors of their own prophet Mohammed. Other people you ask might not care who Jesus was. This last group are the ones we are more likely to meet, in fact, many of them are our friends, neighbors, and even relatives. They have never even given the question of who Jesus is much thought.

But the question is an important one. It is important because who Jesus is determines who we are. This is why after hearing the answers the apostles had gleaned from the people around them, He asked the question again, only now it was personal. “Who do you say that I am?” This is a question we all must face if we are to be sure that what God has to give us, namely salvation and eternal life, is indeed ours. It is a question we face as we examine ourselves in preparation to confess our sins and receive Holy Absolution, as we examine ourselves in preparation for the Lord’s Supper, and especially as we daily examine ourselves in preparation for Judgement Day, which could come at any time. Who do you say that I am? What do you believe about Jesus? Who is He? How do you answer that question?

In our text, Peter spoke up in behalf of all the apostles when he said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Peter confesses his faith that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, the Creator of the Universe, who has become man in order to save us. Peter’s confession is not just his own, it is the confession of all the apostles. Peter becomes their representative, their spokesman. In fact, Peter represents the entire Church, both of the Old Testament saints who expected Christ’s coming, and of the New Testament saints such as you and me who look back to His first coming and forward to His return in glory. All of us were represented by Peter when he spoke those words. You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. The one in whom we believe, in whose name we pray, is the Christ, the anointed one of God, who is Himself God the Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. This is the root form of the Church’s confession throughout the ages. Even the creeds we say on Sunday morning are simply an expansion of this basic confession.

Jesus points this out when he says to Peter (a name which means “rock”) that on the rock of this confession He will build His church. Of course this does not mean that the Church is built upon Peter as a man, since no man is perfect enough to serve as the foundation stone for the Christian Church except the God-Man, Jesus Christ. But it does mean that it was the confession that Peter spoke which would indicate, at the most basic level, where the Christian Church is to be found. Peter himself, of course, was one of the more prominent apostles, being one of the three disciples closest to Jesus, and playing a very prominent role in the first half of the book of Acts. But it was not anything worthy in Peter that made him this way. Peter was an impulsive, headstrong individual who often got himself into trouble by letting his mouth get ahead of his brain. Peter became a leader in the Christian Church because of what God had given him, namely the confession of the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

Jesus points this out to Peter in our text. “This was not revealed to you by man, but by My Father in heaven.” The knowledge that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, came only from God Himself. It was only because God had first revealed this to Peter that he could confess it to the world. It is the same way with us. God must first speak to us before we can speak back to Him. After all, like Peter, we are sinners. We are not able to believe what God wants us to believe in our natural minds. The fact that this Man Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, is a fact that seems impossible to human reason, and in our sinful pride we think that our reason must be the judge of all truth and falsehood. Our sinfulness causes us to reject Jesus our Savior because who He is and what He is don’t go along with our reason and our senses. It is only when God reveals the truth to us and gives us the ability to believe it by creating within us a clean heart that we are able to believe, and to confess, what He has said to us.

And that’s what “confession” is. It is saying back to God, and to each other, and to the world around us, what He has first said to us. He tells us that we are sinners. We repeat back to Him what He has said to us when we say that, yes, we are sinners, as we do every Sunday morning and every day when we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” God then tells us that we are forgiven for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. We repeat back to Him what He has said to us by confessing our faith, as we do on Sunday morning in the words of the creed, as well as in all the other words of the liturgy which speak of our salvation through Christ. We also confess to each other and to those around us as we comfort and encourage one another in Christ and testify to those outside the Church what Christ has done for us. We speak what God has first spoken to us.
Through our speaking what God has spoken to us, God Himself speaks through us. God has given me the vocation of preaching His Word to this congregation and administering His Sacraments. Through my mouth and my hands, Christ’s Word and Christ’s hands work on you to give you salvation. I don’t speak my own word, but God’s Word (and of course one of your responsibilities is to make sure that what I say is in fact God’s Word by cross-checking my preaching against the Holy Scriptures). If I speak God’s Word, which He has first spoken to Me, then He is speaking through me to you. As you confess to your neighbors who do not know Christ concerning the salvation that He has given you, as you comfort and encourage one another with the Gospel, and even as you confess your faith through the words of the liturgy and hymns here on Sunday morning, God is speaking through you. He is speaking the words He has first spoken to you, but He is now speaking through you.
God continues to speak to us. He continues to give us life through the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, as well as through the conversations and the comforts we receive from each other. It is only through God’s speaking to us, both in the spoken Word and in the edible and drinkable Word of the Sacrament where He gives us the body and blood of Jesus, that God strengthens us. To receive the Lord’s Supper is also to confess your faith that this Jesus whose body and blood we receive is in fact the Christ, the Son of the Living God. This body and blood will strengthen us in our confession to God and our neighbor of what He has done for us. And our confession is blessed, for this was not revealed to us by men, but by our Father, who art in heaven. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Better late than never . . .

2011-08-20T22:53:00.002-05:00

A couple of things I should have posted here several weeks ago, but here they are.

July 24, 2011

Dear Fellow Redeemed:

This letter is to acknowledge that I have received the call to become the pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran
Church. Since I have been serving as your vacancy pastor for over half a year now, I do not intend to take
much time to consider this call. However, since I am currently called as an assistant pastor to Lamb of
God Lutheran Church in Pleasant Prairie, I do think it proper to inform the senior pastor, deacons, and
members of that congregation of this call and invite their feedback before announcing my final decision.
To that end, I will be asking Pastor Smallwood and the deacons at Lamb of God to distribute this letter to
Lamb of God’s membership as soon as possible with the invitation to direct any comments or feedback to
my e-mail address or phone number within the next week. God willing, I will announce my decision at
Holy Cross’ Divine Service on July 31, 2011. I will also communicate my decision to Pastor Smallwood
prior to that service so that he can announce it to Lamb of God at their Divine Service the same day as
well.

In Christ,

Timothy D. Schellenbach
Assistant Pastor, Lamb of God Lutheran Church
Vacancy Pastor, Holy Cross Lutheran Church

=======================================================
July 31, 2011

Dear Fellow Redeemed:

After prayerful consideration, I have decided to accept the call you have extended to me to be your pastor.
My wife and I appreciate the fact that you have accepted us as part of your congregation, and I appreciate
the opportunity to continue to serve you on a permanent basis. The members of Lamb of God have
communicated to me through their pastor that they are happy for me to have received this call and have
wished me God's blessings as I minister to His people here at Holy Cross. The people of Lamb of God
also send you their greetings and will continue to keep you in their prayers that God would continue to
bless your congregation.

I am tentatively planning to hold the installation service on August 28, 2011, and I have asked the Rev.
Jack Kirk, USN, CHC, CMDR, Ret., of Bremen, Kansas, to preach for the installation service. Pastor
Kirk is also my father-in-law. Either President Wille or Pastor Chryst will officiate the rite of installation,
depending on their schedules. If that date is not acceptable, please contact me so that we can schedule the
service on a different date.

Again, I appreciate the opportunity to bring you God's Word and look forward to working with you on a
permanent basis.

In Christ,

Timothy D. Schellenbach
Assistant Pastor, Lamb of God Lutheran Church
Vacancy Pastor and pastor-elect, Holy Cross Lutheran Church

Pentecost 9 (Proper 15), Series A

2011-08-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 15:21-28
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
August 14, 2011 (Proper 15, Series A)

Why did God allow this woman’s daughter to be possessed by a demon? Since God is all-powerful, and Satan and his fellow fallen angels are just that, mere fallen angels, why didn’t God stop that demon from entering the woman’s daughter in the first place? And then, when she asks God for help with the situation, why does He act so impolite toward her and make her go through all of that begging and humiliation before He will consent to heal the daughter? Why? For that matter, if God can do anything, why does He allow us to be tempted and afflicted in various ways? Why does He allow us to have to fight and struggle against the temptations of the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh? After all, if Jesus already won the victory over the temptations that the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh bring us, then why do we still have to fight against these things? Why do we still have trouble in this world? Why do the righteous so often seem to suffer while the evil so often seem to be so well off? You would think, that if God is both good and loving on the one hand, and almighty and all-powerful on the other hand, then these kinds of things wouldn’t happen to us. Demons wouldn’t be able to torment people like they do in various ways.

These questions, why do bad things happen to good people, why doesn’t God help me out when I’m suffering, why doesn’t He seem to care if He’s supposedly such a good God, are questions that theologians and philosophers have pondered over for thousands of years. And they’re not just an academic exercise, either. Suffering is very real all around us and in our own lives. And very often God’s response to our prayers seems to be the same kind of seemingly callous and insulting response we read that Jesus gave to the woman in today’s Gospel.

Now, many times we can’t know specifically the reason why God allows these sorts of things. But in general, we know from Scripture that God uses these things to make us rely on His promises more firmly. God’s promises to be with us and to preserve us and to comfort us depend only on the fact that it was He who spoke them. His promises to us are true even if the whole world and everything we see and feel seems to contradict them. His promises to us are true even if He Himself seems to be ignoring us and rejecting us. Sometimes God puts us through experiences like that of this woman to remind us of that fact, and to strengthen our faith so that we rely more firmly on the promises rather than testing Him and trying to see physical evidence of His care for us. Our confidence in God’s protection and care, and more importantly our confidence in His salvation, should not depend on whether or not we feel or see His care and protection in our lives. Our confidence in God’s love for us and His care for us depends solely upon His promises to us in the Holy Scriptures. But all too often we like to rely upon other things besides God’s promises to support our faith, whether those things be our emotions or good feelings about God, or whether those things be the fact that things are going well for us, or whatever it may be. For this reason, sometimes these blessings are taken away from us precisely because we are using them as a crutch in the place of our faith or making our faith depend on them rather than Him.

Notice also that even though Jesus didn’t come right out and call the woman a dog, she more or less admitted herself to be one when she said that even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from the master’s table. God’s care for us and His protection of us also don’t depend on our own worthiness. We can’t come to Him and say that He should do things for us because we’re such good people or because we have tried to do what is right or whatever. The fact of the matter is that we aren’t good people. None of us have done what God required. Before God’s throne we have to admit that we are nothing but poor, miserable sinners. And many of us can name specific sins we have committed that are pretty terrible. If we were to have a conversation with God the way this woman did, we too would be forced to admit that we aren’t worthy for God to do anything for us. We too would have to admit that we are nothing and worse than nothing, and that God would be perfectly within His rights to ignore us and to forget about us and allow us to go straight to hell after our deaths.

But God has promised not to do that. And it is His promises that give us the reassurance that He won’t do that. It is His promises in the Holy Scriptures that we hold on to. God keeps His promises. This woman stubbornly held God to His promises after He had cut out from under her any other reason for Him to help her. He wasn’t going to help her because of her nationality, because she was not of Israel. She was a Canaanite, a group of people whom the Jews of those times often referred to as “dogs.” He wasn’t going to help her because of her crying and yelling after Him. He helped her only because His nature was of love and mercy. He helped her because not only the Israelites but all people were among those who are to humbly and thankfully receive God’s gifts. He helped her not because she was worthy of the help but because He is the one who helps people and upholds them. That’s who He is, that’s His identity: the life-giver and life-sustainer, both here and in eternity.

God has not promised to take away all our pains and griefs and troubles in this world. After all, if He did away with everything that’s wrong with this world the easy way, He’d do away with us sinners too. He has not promised that we will always feel very good or that we will always have the greatest feelings of joy and peace. But He has promised to take away the guilt of our sins and to give us eternal life. In eternal life we will have no more problems, troubles, and fears. In eternal life every tear will be wiped away from our eyes. In this life we may experience times that feel an awful lot like hell to us. Sometimes those hells are of our own making, whether because we have refused God’s Law and done what we ought not, or whether we have refused the Gospel, disobeyed the First Commandment, and imprisoned ourselves in a nightmare of guilt and self-blame. But we have His promise that this too shall pass. And we believe His promise, we have faith in His promise, not because we see Him working, not because we feel Him working, but because He is the one who gave us this promise. Despite everything we might see and feel, He is still there watching out for us and providing us with daily bread, and more importantly with the forgiveness of sins, eternal life and salvation. Even we dogs, we poor miserable sinners, get to eat the crumbs which fall from the master’s table. And these “crumbs” are nothing less than the body and blood of Jesus Christ Himself. These “crumbs” grant nothing less than eternal life and salvation to those who receive them. We don’t deserve it, but God has given us to participate in the eternal feast of victory which has no end. God may not always seem to be gracious to us if we only use our five senses. But to the eyes of faith, which see the promises of His Word and the body and blood of His Supper for what they are, the richest blessings imaginable are ours. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 8 (Proper 14), Series A

2011-08-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 14:22-33
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
August 7, 2011 (Proper 14, Series A)

Try to picture yourself in Peter’s place for a moment. Here you are, standing on top of the water, water that should never be able to hold you up, with waves crashing all around you and wind threatening to knock you over at any moment. It’s bad enough that you’re standing on top of a liquid, a liquid which should by all known laws of nature allow you to sink into its depths and drown. It’s even worse that the wind is whistling around you, pushing against you and trying to make you fall. And then there’s those waves coming your direction, waves which, even if you manage to stay on top of the water, will almost certainly bury you and drag you down into a watery grave. It looked so easy when Jesus did it. In fact, He made it look so easy that you just had to try it, thinking maybe it would even be fun. And that’s probably the worst part about the whole situation. You got yourself into it. You put yourself where you had no business being, and now the water, the waves, and the wind are going to swallow you up and take you to a watery grave on the bottom of the sea of Galilee.

Now, I’m sure most of us have never tried to walk on top of water, so we have never been in Peter’s situation here. But we have all been in situations where we felt like we were doomed. There have been times in all of our lives when there are so many demands on our time, our energy and our abilities that we cannot even concentrate on our ordinary, day-to-day tasks. Whether we have been overcommitted at work, or at school, or found it difficult to balance family with other obligations, or even something as simple as forgetting an important family anniversary or birthday, this kind of hopeless feeling is not all that uncommon, especially in our busy age. The hopeless, sinking feeling we get is the figurative equivalent of the hopelessness and doom Peter felt when he was literally sinking into the waters of Galilee. And as with Peter, the worst part of it all is the fact that we are to blame for the impossible situation we are in. We are responsible, and we will be doomed when the whole thing comes crashing down around us. In extreme cases, we feel our life will be over. Sometimes those who cannot face the consequences of their actions may even commit suicide to avoid the condemnation they are sure the world is going to heap upon them.

I suspect that there is a reason that we human beings so easily give in to despair and overwhelming guilt. We know deep down that we are at least partially to blame for many of our problems. And even the non-Christian knows, even though many of them won’t admit it, that there is a God who made the universe, who is angry over sin, and who will condemn the sinner. And the truly frightening thing is that apart from Christ, they’re right. Apart from Christ and His Gospel and His Sacraments, God is an angry God who condemns the sinner. This knowledge colors everything a man does and thinks, especially when he is burdened with guilt.

The reaction of depression and despair is natural in those who know nothing of a loving God in Christ Jesus. However, to us who know Christ, whose foreheads are marked with His cross in Baptism, the reaction of helpless, paralyzing despair that many of us experience, the reaction that Peter probably was experiencing as he sank into the waves, is a reaction that demonstrates unbelief. It is a reaction that shows doubt in a God who loves and cares about us and will see us through these kinds of problems. Our Lord chastised Peter for his lack of faith. That admonition applies to us as well.

But when you are in the midst of a situation where it seems the world is caving in on you, where nothing you do can avert disaster, simply saying that your reaction to the situation is a symptom of doubt and unbelief doesn’t help. It only increases the guilt and despair, for not only have I let down everyone on this earth I love, but I’ve let down God as well. Indeed, there is only one thing that does help such a person in any truly lasting sense, and that is for God Himself to come to that person in His Word, His baptismal water, His body and blood, and tell that person that his sins are forgiven, and that no matter what the outcome of his current problems he will be with God in heaven for eternity. This is what our Lord did for Peter in the sea of Galilee. He pulled him out of the water. He demonstrated His love and His forgiveness by saving the very man who was doubting His promises. It was only after Peter was safe that he scolded him for his lack of faith. His first response was to restore that faith by saving Peter.

But Peter did die in the sea of Galilee that day. That’s right, I said that Peter died there in the water. Now, before you go accusing me of saying that the Bible is lying to us, let me explain. The Peter who doubted our Lord’s promises, the Peter who gave in to despair and fear, that Peter did not survive. When Jesus stretched out His hand and pulled Peter out of the water, it was a different Peter he pulled out, a Peter who believed our Lord’s promises and relied confidently on His ability to save. In a sense, the old Peter, or rather the old Adam in Peter, was drowned so that a new Peter, a new man in Christ, might come forth and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. By saving Peter, Jesus killed the old Adam who thought that Jesus could not save him.

What really happened out there on the sea of Galilee was that Peter was returned to the time when he was baptized. Most scholars assume that the disciples Jesus chose had been baptized by John the Baptist, since we never read of them being baptized by Jesus. Back there at the Jordan river, God worked though the hands of John the Baptist to drown the old Peter so that a new Peter could arise. Just like every one of us, though, the old Peter refused to die, and so he had to be drowned again every day. As Luther says in the Catechism, “Baptism signifies that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins, and that daily a new man should come forth to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” What happened to Peter on that day in the sea of Galilee was simply an unusually graphic example of this process at work.

Now, this daily renewal of our Baptism doesn’t usually happen in such an extraordinary way. But God is rich in His grace. Often in the midst of the worst despair a verse of Scripture, the memory of a particularly powerful sermon, the forgiveness of a caring friend, or on Sunday morning the forgiveness of God Himself in the words of the pastor’s absolution, or any one of a host of other things will come into our minds and reassure us that we do have a loving God who will see us safely through all our earthly troubles so that we can be forever with Him in heaven. We have all experienced such comforts in times of trial. But we don’t usually think of them in terms of death. But that is what happens when God speaks through a friend or a pastor to remind us of God’s promises. The old Adam is put to death, and the new man, the new Christ in us, comes out of the Baptismal water to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Martin Luther was often assailed by doubts and fears. After all, he had a big job. There have been Lutherans around for almost 5 centuries, so we may not realize what he was up against. In Luther’s day, the true doctrine seemed new. False doctrine had been taught by the Church’s highest officials for centuries. In this kind of environment, its not surprising that even Luther himself sometimes doubted whether or not what he was doing was right. Satan would taunt him mercilessly, trying to get him to forsake the reformation he had started. But in the moments of his worst doubt, his worst despair, Luther would cry out, “Nevertheless, I am baptized!” The fact of Luther’s Baptism was his comfort against the doubts and tricks planted by Satan in his heart. He knew that even if some of his ideas were a little off (they weren’t), even if what he had done was more of a harm to the church than a help (it wasn’t), that God had still claimed him as His own and would still take his soul to be with Him at the end. He knew that on the last day his body would be raised, and he would, as he put it, “live before God in righteous and purity forever.” Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 7 (Proper 13), Series A

2011-07-31T09:00:00.001-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 14:13-21
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
July 31, 2011 (Proper 13, Series A)

Following Jesus has consequences. Confessing Him in the midst of a world that would rather not hear it, including perhaps some of our own friends and neighbors who would rather not face the questions of sin and death and salvation and eternal life, all that has consequences. It sometimes means making decisions that run counter to what common sense would tell us is best for us. It means sometimes getting ourselves into situations from which there isn’t necessarily an easy way out, humanly speaking. It means sometimes setting ourselves up to be persecuted and slandered by the world around us. In some times and places, it has even meant the death of Christians, or at least arrest and imprisonment. Certainly in recent times the doctrine that all religions do not worship the same god, but that the only way to the Father is through Jesus Christ, has become a highly unpopular idea in our own nation, with those who agree with the position of the Scriptures being compared to the Taliban and other sorts of violent religious extremists by some commentators. And even apart from criticism or hardship that comes from outside ourselves, we also have to deal with the energy-draining battle inside ourselves, the battle against temptation and sin and carelessness regarding God’s Commandments, and this too takes its toll on us.

For the crowd on the occasion recorded in our text, following Jesus meant getting themselves into a situation they didn’t plan for in terms of their own personal food supplies. Of course, unlike some of the situations I mentioned before, this wasn’t a matter of either following Jesus or denying their faith in Him; if they had followed Him only one or two days and then went back home before their food ran out, no one would accuse them of denying the faith. Nevertheless, to these people hearing Jesus’ preaching was so important that they were willing to risk starving to death rather than missing what He had to say. Jesus was the Messiah whom the prophets had promised for centuries. He was the One whose coming was the entire point of the Old Testament, the One whose birth was the entire reason for ancient Israel to exist in the first place. And He taught with authority, not like the scribes and Pharisees whom the people were accustomed to hearing. And so, even though it wasn’t a matter of either following Him out into the desert or denying Him, we still can’t blame these people for putting themselves in this situation in order to hear and learn what the Messiah had to teach them. In fact, we really need to seriously consider if we measure up to their level of commitment to hearing and following Jesus Christ, or whether we in our day have become too soft and complacent for that.

What Jesus says when He looks out at this crowd who had risked their lives coming out to hear him is a statement that could form the theme, not just of this text or of this Sunday in the Church Year, but of all Christian preaching in general. “I have compassion on the multitude.” Jesus has compassion. To have compassion means to be aware of others’ distress and to desire to alleviate it. Literally it means to “suffer with” them. After all, that’s what He came to earth to do: to relieve the distress that we are in because of our own sin and the sin of everyone else in the world around us by forgiving us that sin and taking us to a new, eternal life where sin and its effects no longer trouble us. And what’s more, he does that precisely by “suffering with” us, by living our life and dying the death we deserved. Jesus’ compassion on all of us, and on the whole world, is the entire point of what we come here to celebrate each Sunday.

But that’s not all that easy to remember, is it? After all, when push comes to shove, the devil, the world, and our own old sinful natures are right there, tempting us to see only the trouble and the hardship we endure, and to forget about the salvation and eternal life that await us after our struggle is over. The temptation then is to give up and give in. Eternal life seems so far away, and the troubles come with following our Lord so near. It is then that remembering that our Lord is right along with us is so important. He’s not just awaiting us at the end of our journey, He’s here all along the way to sustain and uphold us. Even though He might not always do a miracle to meet our physical needs like feeding 5,000 people with only a few loaves of bread and a few fish, He is constantly doing miracles to support our faith in Him and eternal life. Every Sunday His body is present in bread and His blood is present in wine for Christians to eat and to drink, and further, His body and blood are present on thousands of altars simultaneously, and given to millions of Christians. And no matter how many partake of Him Sunday after Sunday, His body and blood are never used up, just as the bread and the fish were not used up no matter how many ate of them.

And in fact He does also provide for our physical needs as we follow Him as well. Usually it’s not in the form of miracles, but even the ordinary means of making a living and getting our daily bread are actually means that God uses to provide for us. Even such simple things as a helping hand from a neighbor, a kind word in the midst of a difficult time, are reminders to us of Jesus’ compassion on us. They are reminders to us of the fact that where we belong and where we are going, none of the troubles we experience now, neither those that are simply part of life in this old world, nor those that come upon us because we are following Jesus Christ, none of these will ever bother us again.

And so Jesus has compassion on us, especially in those times when our problems and troubles are a direct result of the fact that we’re following Him. He strengthens and nourishes our faith in Him by His Word and by His body and blood, which is a miracle even greater than the one we read about in today’s Gospel. And He provides for our needs even when it seems like He won’t or can’t do so. Sometimes the way He provides for us is by taking us to that place where we will never hunger nor thirst again, and very often it is by the ordinary things He gives us in this life. And He uses our friends and neighbors as well, both to remind us of the Word we have heard and the Sacrament we have received, as well as to provide us with more ordinary means of facing life in the world in terms of daily bread. Our God has compassion on us. He suffers with us and for us. And because He suffered for us, our sufferings will have an end. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 6 (Proper 12), Series A

2011-07-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 13:44-52
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
July 24, 2011 (Proper 12, Series A)

The first two parables in today’s Gospel both portray for us men who find one thing that is so important or valuable to them that they give up everything they have to get that one thing. Now, in today’s society, surrounded as we are by all sorts of “stuff,” it’s hard to imagine anything being so valuable that someone would want to sell everything he has for it. But that is, in fact, what the kingdom of heaven is compared to here: something so valuable that it is worth giving up everything a person has in order to get it. And that does make sense. After all, the kingdom of heaven will last forever, while we only spend a few decades here. Nothing in this old world will last forever. What doesn’t rust or wear out or break down will be left behind when we ourselves rust and wear out and break down. As the old saying goes, you can’t take it with you.

But what God demands of us is not just that the “stuff” we will have in eternity be more important than the “stuff” we have here. What He demands in the First Commandment is that He be more important to us than everything and everyone else. After all, He is the One who made us. He is the One who gave us our very lives, and still sustains us, not to mention that He created and gave us everyone and everything we have here in this life. And the most important part of eternity is not just that we will have perfect bodies not subject to illness or infirmity, nor that we will have all our loved ones who died in the faith with us, nor that the things we have will not be subject to rust or decay or manufacturing defects (leaving aside the fact that we have so little understanding of eternity that we really have no idea what “things” we might have there anyway). The most important thing about eternity is that we will be united with our Creator and share in the love and fellowship that exists within the Trinity Himself, because we will be, and already are by faith, members of the Second Person of that Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The problem, of course, is that here in this old world we can’t really see any of that. We can’t see or measure what lies ahead for us on the other side of the grave. For that matter, we can’t even really prove from a scientific perspective that God exists, let alone that He is Triune, that He loves His creation, and that the historical Man named Jesus of Nazareth is, in fact, His eternal Son sent into the world to redeem us and bring us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Granted, the very existence of the world strongly suggests the existence of some sort of creator, but who He is and how He sees us and what happens after we die is a complete mystery apart from the Holy Scriptures, while the people around us in this life, and the things we have, such as houses and cars and food and clothing, are very real. Thus the temptation to disregard eternity in favor of what we can see and feel here and now is very strong, and it’s a temptation we give in to more often than not. How many of us are being completely honest when we sing that line in “A Mighty Fortress:” “And take they our life, goods, fame, child, and wife, let these all be gone, they yet have nothing won. The kingdom ours remaineth.” If you think you can, with your whole heart, pray that line honestly, you are simply fooling yourself. Nobody is completely free of the idolatry that attaches us to this old world.

That’s why God had to come to us: by nature we can’t free ourselves of this old world’s entanglements. That’s why God the Son had to condescend to be born among us, become one of us, live our life in this old world, suffer and die our death. As far as anyone could tell, we were like a vacant field with no special value to anyone. He died for us while we were still sinners. He gave up everything for us. Only He could see the hidden treasure, the new man in Christ, recreated in His image, to live before Him in righteousness and purity forever.

So, which is it? Are these two parables about how nothing should be more important to us than God, or about how nothing is more important to Him than us? I’d say the answer is both. After all, we can only love God because He first loved us. We are only capable of giving up everything for Him because He gave up everything for us. It’s only because He redeemed us while we were still sinners that we can see, and obtain the treasure that is eternal life. He bought us so that now we can see Him where He has hidden Himself. An ordinary field with buried treasure doesn’t look like anything special. Neither does an ordinary man standing in front of church on Sunday morning. Neither does ordinary water poured on someone’s head. Neither do ordinary unleavened wafers and wine. But there’s treasure hidden there, too. The forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are hidden here, but revealed to those who have faith in God’s Word. Nothing is more important than that. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 5 (Proper 11), Series A

2011-07-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
July 17, 2011 (Proper 11, Series A)

Why is there evil in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people? If God is good, and He is all-powerful, then there shouldn’t be such a thing as evil, should there? Why isn’t life fair? Why do good people so often suffer, while bad people so often prosper and do well for themselves? Questions like these have occupied theologians and philosophers since the beginning of history. These questions have been wrestled with, poked, prodded, and pondered over in every generation. And, of course, it’s not just the scholarly theologians and philosophers up in their ivory towers who have pondered these questions either. The everyday, common, garden-variety, working-class theologians and philosophers such as you and I have pondered them at great length, too. After all, for those of us who aren’t in ivory towers, these are not abstract questions. They are very real and personal. We see the evil that goes along with life in this world every day, all around us. Often it has had an impact on our own lives, where someone who has cheated, lied, or stolen has gotten the better of us by doing so. Or when a random accident claims the life of a bright and talented young person. Or when we who worship God faithfully and receive His body and blood Sunday after Sunday must struggle to make ends meet while many with sinful and disgusting lifestyles get rich and live lives of luxury. These questions are not mere abstract academic exercises; they are very real. Evil is real, and it is in the world around us, and also within our own hearts.

But if God is all-powerful, why doesn’t He do something about it? How can an all-powerful God who claims to be good and just and righteous simply stand by while there is suffering and injustice and wars and persecutions and disease and poverty? Why doesn’t He simply wave His hand and get rid of the evil in the world? Why does He let it go on? This form of the question is similar to what the slaves asked their master in today’s Gospel lesson. “Do you want us then to go and gather the weeds up?” The master’s answer is surprising. “No, I don’t. Let them grow together until the harvest, and then we will gather all the plants and separate them out.” The reason he gives for this surprising command? “If you try to uproot the tares, you will probably damage the wheat as you do so.” The fact is, evil is not just something that exists “out there” in the world. All the evil in the world, all the suffering, pain, injustice, poverty, sorrow, and so forth, is a result of the corruption of men’s hearts, and that includes your heart and my heart. The worst and most decadent sinner is only showing forth the symptoms of the same corruption that we were born with as well. The reason why God doesn’t just simply destroy all the evil and unfairness in the world is because if He did so, we would also be caught up in the destruction, because we, as sinners, are part of it.

This is the reason why, by the way, the Lutheran Church does not have as one of its primary goals the reform of the society around us. There are many other Christian Churches and individuals who see it as their duty, precisely as Churches, to conform the society around them to God’s moral laws. There have even been those recently who have argued that everything that was punished by capital punishment in the Old Testament, including believing differently than what the Bible teaches, should be grounds for capital punishment among us today. The medieval Roman Catholic Church followed this principle as well; being excommunicated from the Church for a moral or doctrinal lapse also meant that one would face execution or exile. But this is not to be a primary goal of the Christian Church. After all, if we started hunting down all who were morally impure, sooner or later we would be hunting down ourselves, because all of us have fallen into some sort of sin at one point or another in our lives. And so that is not how God wishes to deal with the fact that there is evil in the world, nor is it how He wants us to deal with it either.

By the way, I need to mention that some have used this parable as a reason why the Church should not exercise Church discipline. However, that is a misunderstanding of this parable. As Jesus Himself points out, the field in which the wheat and tares are growing together is the world, not the Church. It is true that we don’t seek civil penalties against those who deny our faith or who live in ways which are sinful but legal in our country. In fact, we don’t even seek civil penalties as a Church against those who live in ways that are illegal in our country. That’s the government’s job, not the Church’s job; it may be our job as citizens, especially those whose vocation it is to enforce the law, but it is not our job as Church members. But at the same time we don’t simply allow public, unrepentant sinners to continue as members of the Church in good standing, either. This is not done out of a desire to “purify” the Church, but rather out of love for them so that they may be able to see how serious their sin is, and repent and believe the Gospel. We don’t go out of our way to seek out “sinners” among the Church, nor do we solicit rumor-mongering, but where a sin is public and ongoing and the sinner is unrepentant of it, we need to let the person know, not only in words but also in actions, that if they are not repentant of their sins the Gospel does not apply to them, because the Gospel is for poor, miserable sinners, not stubborn, prideful, unrepentant sinners.

In any case, God does not wish to destroy all the evil in the world the way we might think He should, because in doing so He would end up destroying all of humanity, including you and me. Evil and good are so enmeshed in one another, even within our own hearts, that they cannot be separated while we remain in this life. Even our good works are often damnable sins, because we do them for the wrong reason. We do something that is outwardly in keeping with God’s Law, and then what do we think? “Hey, I’m a pretty good person! Hey, look at me, God!” And by thinking that, and we all end up thinking that when we do something right, we have just broken the First Commandment by praising ourselves rather than God. And so there is no way to separate the evil from the good in us without putting us as a whole to death.

But there does come a time when this will happen. There will come a time, of God’s own choosing, when the evil in us and in the world will be eradicated. Either at the time of our own deaths, or when Christ comes again and this old sinful world is entirely destroyed. The harvest time will come. In fact, in a certain sense, this has already happened. Jesus has already destroyed the sinfulness of humanity by taking it to the cross and killing it in his own body. And it was killed in us when we were baptized into His death through water and the Word. What happens when we die and then when Christ comes again and we are resurrected is merely the fulfillment of what has already happened to us.

The fact that the weeds will eventually be separated from the wheat is a warning for secure and impenitent sinners, but it is a comfort for us. You see, we will eventually be gathered into our heavenly Father’s barns, there to live forever in His presence, free from all sorrows and pains and hurts and death. The question of evil in the world will not trouble us, because there will be no evil in the world. But we can’t see it now. What we see with our human eyes is the pain and suffering around us, and the sin and malice in our hearts. Thus faith is needed, and faith is only given through the Word and the Sacraments. You can’t see it with your eyes, but you can hear it with your ears. Your sins are forgiven. The tares in your own heart are removed. Take and eat, this is My body; take, drink, this is My blood. Our Lord accepts us as His wheat, feeds us with His heavenly food, and joins us together with those who have already been gathered and are celebrating the heavenly thanksgiving banquet in His heavenly storehouse even now. You are His wheat, and you will be gathered into His barns at the end, there to praise and live before Him eternally. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 4 (Proper 10), Series A

2011-07-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
July 10, 2011 (Proper 10, Series A)

It may seem stupid to fling the seed randomly at every type of soil instead of carefully testing the soil by doing market surveys and using other techniques to find out where the best soil is. But it’s the only thing we can do in the Christian church. Despite what it seems like to human reason, there is no way to tell whether a particular person, a particular neighborhood, a particular region of the country will react in any of the four ways we see in our text. Often it’s tempting for church officials to “invest” the mission dollars where the money is, in growing suburbs populated by those who have money to spare and who would seem therefore to be better able to support their congregation and the church body to which it belongs. Of course, that ends up being a way of making decisions based on what the church can get out of people rather than the love for people and concern for their eternal well-being which Jesus would have us exhibit. But apart from the question of selfishness, the fact is, all of the sociology in the world is useless in figuring out who will and will not bear the fruit of salvation. After all, the fruit we are looking for isn’t an externally healthy church (though that’s certainly helpful). It isn’t a lot of mission dollars for the District or Synod (though that can be an important way we as a congregation give thanks for the blessings God has given us). The fruit we are looking for is souls in heaven. And that’s something you can’t predict or analyze with human reason. Jesus’ statement about those who hear yet don’t hear means that in every plot of ground there will be some of each of the four categories. And the seed can often bear fruit in places that look to human wisdom as completely unlikely and wrong. Indeed, those whose lifestyles have been overtly contrary to God’s will are often more receptive to the Gospel of forgiveness than are those who think of themselves as good, upstanding citizens. And so instead of engaging in marketing tactics and all the other nonsense that so many refer to as evangelism in our day, we simply preach the Word and administer the sacraments here on Sunday morning, and we confess our faith to those we encounter in our lives. Whether it be in our day-to-day business or in some intentional outreach project, we still simply confess what we have heard. That’s how God’s kingdom grows even in the most unlikely places.

The next question that this parable raises in our minds, of course, is the question about us as individuals. What kind of soil am I? Am I the hard soil that doesn’t even let the Word sink in but lets the devil snatch it away? Am I the rocky soil which, even though the Word begins growing in my heart, it is not allowed to get very deep roots and so it doesn’t survive long? Am I the thorn-infested soil that simply has too many other things going on around me to allow my faith to grow and mature? What kind of soil am I? This question is, of course, a natural question to ask for anyone who is concerned with their own salvation. And it may be helpful for us to see if any of these things is true of us so that we can fight against these things in ourselves. But it can also be a dangerous question, because if I conclude that in some ways I’m like the hard path or the rocky or thorny soil, then I might give in to despair because I can’t hope to be saved. It’s too easy to look at these four categories and assume that everybody falls into only one of the four, and that’s that.

Fortunately it’s not that simple. All of us fall into all of these four categories. We are by nature sinful and unclean, and we are constantly bombarded with the attacks of the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh as we hear the Word of God. According to our old sinful nature we are hard-packed, rocky, and thorn-infested all at the same time. But according to the new person that has been recreated in us by Christ, we are good soil, which will produce the hundredfold fruit of everlasting life.

The hard-packed soil didn’t even let the seed in. Sometimes the Word simply doesn’t make it into our minds and hearts at all. Sometimes we think that we are too busy to stay and listen to God’s Word in the first place. We don’t even come to where it is being preached at all. Or we come and we doubt the truthfulness of what we are told. Or the preacher says something in his sermon that hits us the wrong way and we tune out the rest of what he has to say because of anger. Or we are simply too tired to stay awake during the preaching of the Word. These kinds of things can happen to any one of us, and in this way the devil snatches the Word of God away from us and prevents it from taking root in us that day.

The rocky soil allowed the seed to start growing, but it didn’t allow a good, stable root system to develop. We are always tempted to base our confidence in God in things that are shallow. Emotions such as feelings of happiness and warmth are a good thing; they are a good response to the Christian message. But they are shallow and they can change. The true joy and peace that Christ gives are not the same thing as warm feelings. The true joy and peace of Christ are still ours even when we don’t feel particularly happy or particularly peaceful. Too many people in our world think that they have lost their faith because they don’t feel the same way about God or about going to Church as they did when they were younger. And so when things in this world go badly for them they don’t think that Christ is still there for them to rely upon. The world is a cruel enemy of the Christian, and often things do go badly for people precisely because they do believe in Christ. Unless faith is grounded in something deeper than feelings and emotions, it’s not going to be able to stand up to the blistering heat of the world’s attacks against Christianity. Only God’s Word itself can create the truly deep roots that a Christian needs to survive even when everything in the world seems to be going against him and his shallow emotions no longer hold him upright steady in the faith.

The thorny soil allowed the seed to grow, but then it cut off the light that it needed to continue to grow and bear fruit. Our old sinful flesh pays attention to all sorts of other things besides the Word of God. We are by nature easily distracted from God. Even perfectly innocent and good things can distract us from God’s Word. Things like our work, our hobbies, sports, caring for our families, and the desire to sleep in at least one day a week can distract us from continuing to bask in the light of God’s Son. Our old sinful flesh wants to keep our energies away from sustaining the faith that has been planted in us.

But God has recreated our hearts. His Word acts as a plow to break up the hard soil, to turn up the rocks and remove them, and to destroy the thorn bushes. The rocky soil may not bear fruit one season, but the roots that the plants tried to put down will eventually over the course of the years break up the rocks and turn them into good soil. The same thing is true of the hard path. Plants and even big, strong trees can grow even in hills composed largely of flint and limestone. The devil, the world, and our sinful flesh are beat down and killed by the dying and rising again of Christ our Lord. He is the good soil, because ultimately He is the one who bears the fruit of eternal life. His good soil is spread upon our poor soil through Baptism, preaching, and the Lord’s supper, just as good, black dirt is often put on a garden or a flower bed to make up for the poor soil already there. In this way he remakes us in His image. We become part of Him. And through Him we will become a hundred times more than we are right now, because we will be reborn, perfect, on the last day when He comes to harvest us and take us into the barns of His eternal presence and joy. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 3 (Proper 9), Series A

2011-07-03T09:00:00.001-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 11:25-30
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
July 3, 2011 (Proper 9, Series A)

“My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Um, really? Doesn’t He also say that we are to love God with all our heart, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves? Doesn’t He say that we will endure suffering and even death for His name? That we can expect to be treated by the world the same way He was treated? That the road to eternal life is the narrow one that only a few find? That (as last Sunday’s Gospel teaches) He came not to bring peace but a sword? How can He say that His burden is light? When you consider all that becoming a disciple of Jesus entails, it doesn’t look all that easy or light at all.

That is, unless you compare it to the alternative. Every religion in which man’s relationship to his god is dependent upon what man does, involves a hellish merry-go-round of good works. In Hindu societies, it is forbidden to give charity to those of a lower caste than you, because if you help them to much you will mess with their karma and they may end up reincarnated as a lower form rather than a higher one. Which, of course, means that life is incredibly hard for those of the “untouchable” caste. Of course, we are all aware of how harsh many of the different Muslim sects can be in terms of what they demand of their followers. And many of the ancient polytheistic religions, such as those of the Canaanites or even the Greeks and the Romans, involved horrific rituals, sometimes involving self-mutilation or even human sacrifice.

But even within Christianity, when Christians misunderstand their religion as one where our works are the important part of our relationship with God, the merry-go-round is there too. Luther pretty much destroyed his health during his early adulthood when he was trying to find assurance that God was pleased with him by following the monastic regimen of works and fasting and daily devotion and prayer. He scrubbed and scrubbed the floors, symbolical of his own heart; he prayed and prayed, and still it wasn’t good enough. And many Protestant groups aren’t much better. Many Christians spend their entire lives unsure of their standing with God. They make a decision for Him, they dedicate their lives to Him, they promise their sincere intention to make Jesus the Lord of their life as well as their Savior, but it never quite works out that way. The pet sins are still there. The doubts are still there. And so they make another decision for Christ, and they’re really, really sincere this time, since the last one apparently didn’t “take.” But the pet sin rears its ugly head again, whether it’s a tendency toward anger and rage, or gossip, or covetousness, or alcoholism, or lust, or simply a tendency to be lazy and sleep in on Sunday mornings. Many modern “evangelical” churches teach that consecrating your life to Jesus will give you a victory over those sins, but they never seem to go away completely. And so, since the person apparently wasn’t sincere enough or consecrated enough, he goes through the whole process again, and again, and again. But he’s still imperfect, still a sinner, and he still doesn’t really know what his standing is before God, and often he ends up spiritually exhausted and willing to give up on the whole “religion” thing entirely.

A couple of years ago, the Willow Creek Association published a survey of church members who attend many of the mega-churches that are members of that association and strive to follow the example of Willow Creek Church, a mega-church located in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. It was called the “Reveal Now” study. The startling finding, not only at Willow Creek itself, but at just about all of the other “seeker-sensitive” churches that follow its example, was that it was those who were considered most mature in the faith, the ones who were the most active in the programs and activities of their church, who were also the ones most likely to be seriously thinking about leaving the church entirely. They were simply burned out. What their church was giving them was a steady diet of law, law, and more law, and they were trying and failing to keep all of it, and the only encouragement they ever got was that God would help them to do better next time. Full and free forgiveness of sins, which is the only message that can actually help a person in that situation, is in most cases, simply not talked or preached about at all in those churches. If it’s talked about at all, it’s addressed to those who are visiting, as a means of encouraging them to join the church in the first place. But once a person joins, the Gospel is almost never mentioned again. It’s no wonder the most committed and most active Christians were the most burned out. When you think about it, that sort of life is not all that different from what Luther went through as a monk.

Compared to all that, Jesus’ yoke really is easy, and His burden really is light. You see, our relationship with our God, where we stand in His sight, doesn’t depend on how well we’ve done at keeping His law. No matter how hard we’ve tried, we’ve at best kept it very poorly, and if you include the thoughts and desires of the mind and heart, we haven’t even come close to keeping it at all. But because our relationship with him is dependent not on how well we’re doing, but on what He has done for us, and the promises he makes to us in the Scriptures, we can be confident that our heavenly Father is still our true Father and we are His true children. Should we strive to do good and avoid sin? Yes, of course we should. Do our failures affect our relationship with God? No they do not. Our confidence is not in what we do, but in what He has done.

And that is just plain liberating. As one of my professors at Fort Wayne, Dr. David Scaer, puts it in his commentary on James, the forgiveness of sins gives us a certain recklessness in doing good. Because our relationship with God is secure, our failures, including our future failures, are already forgiven. Now, that doesn’t mean we should carelessly or deliberately sin. But it does mean that we are free to serve God and our neighbor as well as we can without worrying about the fact that we won’t be perfect at it. Our relationship with God is grounded in His forgiveness and love, not in our commitment or decision. And so we really do have an easy yoke and a light burden. What we do in service to God and our neighbor isn’t weighed down by the fact that we never quite get it right. Our heavenly future is secure, even though we may stumble and fall during our earthly walk. God has already forgiven us. We already know what the verdict on Judgment Day will be: “It is finished.” And so our burden really is light, because eternity with God doesn’t hang in the balance. That’s been taken care of by Christ on the cross, and given you day after day and Sunday after Sunday in His Word and His body and blood. You’ve got heaven. You don’t need to work for it. Your burden is light indeed. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost 2 (Proper 8), Series A

2011-06-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 10:34-42
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
June 26, 2011 (Proper 8, Series A)

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Okay, that sounds more than a little bit shocking, coming from our Lord’s mouth. What happened to “Blessed are the peacemakers?” Isn’t peace one of the blessings we receive from following Jesus and trusting in His promises of salvation and eternal life? So what is this talk of warfare and division all about? Especially since it involves divisions among close family members. The relationships among husband and wife, father, mother, and children are among the closest and most basic vocations He has created us to fill. And here He is, the One who made us for the roles of husband and wife, parents and children, saying that His coming among us will rend asunder those very relationships that He has created and blessed.

The problem, of course, is not His. The reason why His coming into the world causes strife and division is not His fault, but ours. He comes to fix what was broken back in Genesis 3 when our first parents fell into sin. The fact is, strife and division, even among husbands and wives, parents and children, has always been part of this old fallen world, going all the way back to when Cain murdered Abel. And trusting Jesus for forgiveness and rescue from this old and broken world only makes the problem worse, because this world is not prepared, and never will be prepared, to be at peace with God on its own. And so, the fact that the Word Himself has come into the world creates divisions and strife, is not the Word’s fault, it’s the world’s. It’s sinful humanity that rebels against its Creator. The Creator doesn’t purposely come to ruin the relationships He has created, but His coming causes those relationships to be ruined, simply because some will die to sin and be reborn to eternal life, and others won’t.

You see, our relationship with God, the one relationship we cannot ever no way no how fix on our own, is to be more important to us even than our own families are. And family is pretty important, from God’s perspective, because He created us to live in families, to give us a picture of the relationships that exist within Himself, between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. After all, the Fourth Commandment, the one that tells us to love our fathers and mothers, is the first one in the second table of the Ten Commandments. Out of all the commandments that deal with our relationships with our fellow human beings, the one that guards and defends family relationships comes first. And so, something has to be pretty darned important to be more important than our own families. In fact, there is to be nothing more important than our families, except for God Himself. And that’s where the problem comes in.

You see, since fear, love, and trust in God above all things is more important even than families, and since all of us have been corrupted and broken by the sin we inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve, turning to trust and follow Christ is going to cause problems for us in this world. We could lose friends, or even family members, over our faithfulness to God’s promises. That’s why Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword: some will receive His free gifts, others will refuse them. And even the fundamental relationships within the family itself will fall victim to that particular division between believer and unbeliever.

But even this aspect of the cross we bear as Christians, Jesus can sympathize with. You see, the divisions brought about by sin are not limited to human fathers and sons. The Son of God Himself became sin for us and went through the pain of separation from His Father’s gracious presence on the cross. “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” It is precisely the ultimate pain, that of separation from God Himself, that Jesus came to experience. He came not just to set a man against his father, but to be set against His own Father in our place. He came not just to call us to a life lived under the cross of suffering that goes along with being a new creation in Christ in the midst of the old, broken creation, but to suffer on the physical cross itself to reconcile us to His Father. He came not to save His own life, but to lose it for us.

And because He lost His life for us, He was able to rise again and bring us with Him. While it is true that following Jesus brings opposition and hostility from the world, it is also true that the world will eventually pass away. He does come to bring peace, but the peace He comes to bring is peace with God, the declaration that the warfare is over. Those who still see God as their enemy, of course, will regard us as traitors, and that’s why the sword comes into it. But we are at peace with God, and that’s what matters. He has declared the war between Himself and us to be finished, and so it is. We have fellowship with Him, and that’s what matters. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

The Holy Trinity, Series A

2011-06-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 28:16-20
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
June 19, 2011 (The Holy Trinity, Series A)

The Trinity is one of those teachings of Christianity that doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant to us as we struggle to live our Christian lives here in this world. Especially for those Christians who understand Christianity (and religion in general) to be a matter primarily of faithfulness and morality in this life rather than of trust in the promises of God which lead to eternal life, the doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t seem to have anything to do with anything at all. And that’s what we all are according to our old sinful nature, namely people who understand religion and relationship with God as being primarily a matter of how we live our lives rather than what God tells us about His eternal life. We all tend to think religion is about our behavior rather than God’s gifts. How does it help us to be better people who live better lives to believe in the abstract and illogical idea that God is neither just one nor just three, but three-in-one?

And yet, the Athanasian Creed (which we will confess together in a few moments) asserts that unless we believe this doctrine of the Holy Trinity faithfully and firmly, we cannot be saved. And, in fact, it goes into a rather large amount of detail as to what we are to believe and not to believe about the Trinity and the three Persons in one God. This seems unreasonable to our natural minds. And it would be unreasonable if the idea our natural minds hold about religion were actually true. The doctrine of the Trinity really is irrelevant to a religion that focuses on man’s life in this world, man’s good works and avoidance of sin, and man’s happiness and healthiness. If that’s all that religion were about, namely helping us to live a more moral life, or a happier life, or a healthier and more well-adjusted life, the doctrine of the Trinity would not only be unnecessary, it would be a problematic and dangerous source of conflict and argument. After all, having conflict and controversy with one’s fellow human beings is not exactly conducive to healthiness or happiness in this life.

The reason why the doctrine of the Trinity is so important that one cannot be saved without it, is precisely because all of that isn’t what Christianity is primarily about. Christianity isn’t primarily about helping us live better, happier, healthier, more purpose-driven, and more well-adjusted lives here, it is about our eternal destiny after we die to this world. It isn’t primarily about what we do in service to God or our neighbor (though God does have plenty to say about that in His Law) it’s about what God has done for us. The most important message of Christianity, in other words, is not Law but Gospel. It’s a religion of creeds rather than deeds. It’s a matter of trusting God’s promises rather than obeying His commands first and foremost. And in order to trust in His promises, one must understand what He did for us. And in order to grasp that, one must have at least a basic understanding of who He is that He can do such a wondrous thing for us as die for our sins and take away our punishment and give us His perfection in its place. And that’s not something the natural heart of man is able to grasp. Which is why all other religions besides Christianity are religions that focus on what we do, how we live our lives here. And its also why Christianity itself is so often misunderstood in the same way by those both inside and outside the Christian Church.

If Christianity were a religion that was primarily about what we do, then Christianity could be understood and studied rationally, the way one studies and understands the owner’s manual of a car. But since it is a matter of trusting in the promises that come from outside of ourselves, it is a matter of having a relationship with the one who made the promise. And you can’t understand or study a relationship between living persons unless you’re part of that relationship. That’s why the new birth in Holy Baptism, which is instituted in today’s Gospel lesson, is essential to being a Christian. The old sinful self wants to base its relationship with God on its own reason or strength, on its own merit or worthiness. And if you base your relationship with God on what you do, it really doesn’t matter whether God is three-in-one or not. But the old sinful self always falls short, and is always going to fall short. The only way we can enter into that relationship in which He is our heavenly Father and we are His true children who trust His promises to give us eternal life and salvation, is if that old self is put to death and a new self comes forth and arises to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. Which is why being baptized into the community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is how one becomes a disciple. It’s about what He did for us and does in us, not about what we do.

God gives us that blessed death and resurrection in Holy Baptism, where the old sinful self who wants to be a spiritual loner is drowned and the new you who is created in the image of the true God, was brought to life. You now live in that new life, a life lived in relationship with the Triune God. After all, God did not create you to be alone. It’s the old, fallen self that wants to do his own thing in spiritual matters, whether that be in terms of ignoring God’s commandments or in terms of trying and failing to earn his way back into God’s good graces. Instead, God created us to be in relationship with, and therefore dependent upon, other persons. And of course, the most important relationship of all in this connection is the relationship with Himself. After all, we are created in His image. And He is not alone, but is both three and one. Each Person of the Trinity is in an eternal relationship of giving and receiving with the others. And so it is not surprising that our salvation, our life, is to be found in dependence on Him, in trust in His promises, in being recreated by Him, rather than in what we do or decide.

And this is true not only of the beginning of our Christian life in Holy Baptism, it is true of the entire life we live as Christians. We are sustained not by treating the Bible as an owner’s manual showing us what we’re supposed to do, but by what God does through His living and active Word which is what He gave us the Bible for, the living and active Word which, read and proclaimed, renews in us daily and weekly that trust in the promises of our Father who has adopted us through rebirth into His kingdom. And we are further nourished and sustained by that Word incarnate, Jesus Christ Himself, who not only washes us in the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, but causes us to eat and drink that forgiveness by giving us His own body and blood as our food and drink. It is precisely the Son of God who is in eternal fellowship with His Father and the Holy Spirit whom we eat and drink today. No wonder this is called the “medicine of immortality.” It joins us with the Creator himself, and does so for eternity. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Pentecost, Series A

2011-06-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on John 7:37-39
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
June 12, 2011 (The Day of Pentecost, Series A)

Today’s Gospel lesson takes place on the day of Pentecost. Not the “first (Christian) Pentecost” we celebrate today, and about which Jesus is prophesying here. We tend to think of the events in today’s reading from the book of Acts as the “first Pentecost,” because it was on that day that the Christian Church was founded, and it took place ten days after the first Ascension, or fifty days after the first Easter. But Pentecost was actually a festival on the ancient Israelite calendar. The name means “fifty days,” and we of course think of it as fifty days after Easter. To the Jews who gathered both in today’s Gospel and a couple of years later in today’s second reading, it meant fifty days after the Passover. Pentecost was a festival that commemorated the giving of the Law by Moses on Mt. Sinai.

One of the ceremonies that took place in connection with the Israelite feast of Pentecost was that a pitcher of water would be taken from the pool of Siloam (which functioned as Jerusalem’s water supply and was also the pool that many people thought had healing properties when the water was stirred) and poured out as a drink offering in the temple, commemorating the water from the rock which God gave to quench the people’s thirst. And that forms the background for what Jesus says in this Gospel lesson.

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” As John points out in v. 39, Jesus is prophesying about the giving of the Holy Spirit which would take place at this same festival in a couple of years. He says that to receive the Holy Spirit and have the water which, if one drinks it, he will never be thirsty again, they needed to come to Him.

Now, many Christians are obsessed with the Holy Spirit. We Lutherans are often accused of not emphasizing the Holy Spirit enough, because our worship services aren’t focused on our emotions or on spectacular signs and wonders, but on the reading and preaching of God’s Word and receiving Jesus’ body and blood in the Sacrament. But that’s actually the way the Holy Spirit wants it to be. His job is to testify about Jesus. It is precisely by coming to Jesus, listening to Him and partaking of the living water of His blood, in which we are washed in Holy Baptism and which we drink in Holy Communion, that we receive the living water of the Holy Spirit to sustain us in the faith. The Holy Spirit’s job is to testify about Christ, not about Himself. He’s kind of like John the Baptizer in that way. It wasn’t the tongues of flame or the speaking in many languages that brought 3,000 to the living waters of Holy Baptism, it was the clear and plainly-spoken sermon by St. Peter regarding the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that should be a comfort to us. Yes, there are times when our emotions of love and gratitude for the salvation accomplished for us by our Lord on the cross are so overwhelming that we could just burst, and, if it weren’t for the fact that our fellow Lutherans would probably give us weird looks, we would even be tempted to jump up and shout “Alleluia! Amen!” But those emotions aren’t always there. There are times when the Word that is preached doesn’t seem to have an impact on us at all. But it is the Word itself, not our reaction to it, that is the vehicle for the Holy Spirit to come to us. Even when our emotions are full of darkness and despair, when we are in the middle of some crisis in our lives or patiently awaiting relief from some ongoing suffering or grief, the living water is still planted within us by the Word. We may not see the spring that comes forth from our heart to sustain and nourish our growth in the faith, but it is there. And it will continue watering the soil of our hearts even when all we see inside ourselves are rocks, a hard path, or thorns and thistles. The Holy Spirit dwelling within us doesn’t always make His presence obvious. Sometimes it’s downright hidden under the sorrows and troubles of life in this old, sin-infested world. But the living water is still there. The promise of resurrection and ascension with our Lord to dwell with Him eternally at the Father’s right hand is still there. Our baptism into the Holy Trinity, our eating and drinking of Jesus’ body and blood, is still there. The spring of living water is still there, and it will continue to sustain and nourish us, no matter what may come our way, until we reach the eternal feast in the new Jerusalem, where the tree of life and the river of life, God Himself, will sustain us until eternity. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Ascension, Series A

2011-06-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Luke 24:44-53
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
June 5, 2011 (The Ascension of our Lord, Transferred, Series A)

Ascension Day is one of those Church festivals that seems to be overlooked more often than not. We talk about it during the Sundays before and after, and sometimes we celebrate it on the Sunday after, we confess it in the Creeds, we don’t forget that the Ascension happened, but not many Lutheran churches in America today have services on the day of the festival itself, and those that do don’t have very many of their members in attendance. Of course, it doesn’t help that it falls on a Thursday every year. In today’s secularized society, there are very few Church festivals that employers and the government actually recognize, for which they allow their employees to take time off. Even Sundays aren’t a day off any more for most people who work in retail, so it’s not surprising that the only non-Sunday Church festival the rest of the world recognizes is Christmas. And so Ascension Day services are usually held in the evening, if at all, and usually not very well-attended.

But while it isn’t surprising given the realities of the world in which we live, it’s also very unfortunate. The Ascension of our Lord is one of the three high festivals that make up the Easter Season. Easter itself and Pentecost are the beginning and end of this most festive season in the Church Year, but the Ascension is just as high and important a festival as the other two. It’s an integral part of the events that lead from Jesus’ resurrection to the institution of the Holy Christian Church at Pentecost. In fact, it’s an integral part of the salvation Christ won for us.

Now, that last statement may seem odd at first glance. From a human perspective, the Ascension doesn’t even seem to be a happy occasion. Jesus ascends upward from the earth, and then vanishes from the disciples’ sight. He is no longer visible to physical human eyes. It sounds downright disappointing at first glance. Why would Jesus leave them now, only ten days before they were to begin their ministries as apostles and pastors in the Church? Why wouldn’t He, now that He is risen from the dead, stay with them to guide and teach the young Church?

Well, there are a couple of reasons why the Ascension had to happen. Firstly, and most importantly, Jesus is showing the disciples the fact that He is seated at His Father’s right hand, not just as God, but also as Man. He, our human brother, born of the virgin Mary, is now seated at the right hand of God the Father. Where the head of the Church is, there the rest of the Church is as well. The Ascension teaches us that we human beings are now restored to the fellowship of God the Father. Not only that, but God’s right hand is not so much a physical place as it is a status, a position within the Godhead. God is everywhere, so being seated at the right hand of the Father means Jesus as man is everywhere as well. Not only His divine nature but also His human nature is part of our God’s gracious presence for our salvation. Which means that His body and blood can be, and are, present on thousands of altars every Sunday, eaten and drunk by millions of Christians, without being divided or used up, while at the same time remaining a real human body and real human blood. The Ascension is the festival that teaches us, in other words, that we now have access to the Creator Himself through His Son, and that our human nature now is part of what is saved through the forgiveness of sins won by Christ on the cross. Salvation isn’t a matter of entering some dreamlike state or becoming some sort of angel or other spiritual being; rather what is saved includes every part of our human nature, including our physical bodies, which will be raised up when Christ returns in glory and which will live forever with Him in eternal righteousness and purity. The physical is also redeemed.

And that’s part of what makes it so unfortunate that the Ascension gets ignored by the Church so often these days. Religion seems to be so often made into a private matter that deals solely with the spiritual realm and therefore doesn’t have anything to do with “real life.” In fact, many Americans are suspicious of, or even openly hostile to, politicians and other important people who allow religious considerations to influence their decision-making in any way. The idea that “religion is a private matter” no longer means that Government can’t interfere in religious affairs, but that religion is not supposed to have anything at all to do with the physical, real world, and that those who are influenced by it are themselves not living in the real world. The Ascension is a healthy corrective to that idea, because it is precisely Christ’s physical body, and therefore through Baptism into Him, our physical bodies, that are redeemed and perfected by the salvation won for us by Christ on the cross. It’s precisely the physical world He created that He has now redeemed. It’s precisely the physical, everyday lives we all live, the physical, everyday vocations we all have, that are sanctified by the physical, human body of Christ which is now part of the new creation and eaten and drunk in the Lord’s Supper. The physical is redeemed. We are reunited with our Creator. Amen. +SDG+

Linda Schoeffler Funeral

2011-05-23T19:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on John 10:11-15, 27-30
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
May 23, 2011 (Funeral of Linda Schoeffler)

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” With these words our Lord tells us who it is that He is looking out for. He isn’t looking out for “number one,” as so many in today’s society are. He’s looking out for His sheep. He is giving His life, not for Himself, but for others. This is in direct contrast to so many in today’s world, who are mostly concerned with, “number one,” namely themselves. Of course, this selfishness is not really anything new in contemporary society. Jesus describes just such a person in the Gospel lesson when he talks about the “hireling” who flees when danger threatens the sheep. Fortunately, Jesus is not like that. He is the Good Shepherd who goes even so far as to lay down His own life so that the sheep might be saved.

From what has been told me by Linda’s family, she was a person who tried during her life to follow our Lord’s example in this. She was constantly giving of herself to serve others. But that’s not what saved her. As are we all, Linda was born of parents who were by nature sinful and unclean, as we all must confess to God that we are, and her good works, her works of service to her neighbors could not undo that basic fact. Linda’s selfless service to her neighbors was not what has now caused her to be blessed forever in our Lord’s presence.

If it wasn’t her selflessness and service to others which has gotten her into heaven, then what was it? The answer is in the first verse of the Gospel lesson. It wasn’t Linda’s selflessness and service in others’ behalf that earned her eternal salvation; it was Christ’s selflessness and service to her and to all mankind that has caused her to be blessed in Christ’s presence forever. As noble and sacrificial as Linda’s life of service was, Christ’s sacrifice on her behalf was infinitely greater. He gave His very life so that she could be saved. He rescued her from the jaws of sin, death, and the devil and delivered her into the hands of His father, by dying on the cross for her sake. His entire life became hers through Holy Baptism. And all of her sins, and all of the sins of the whole world, became His to pay for through His suffering and death. I don’t think we can imagine how unselfish, how absolutely contrary to all the selfishness that we all display every day, this is. Nothing that Christ did throughout His entire life applied to Himself. It was all for us. Even His death was not for Himself. It was for us. Nothing Linda did in her life, and nothing any of us do in our lives, can even begin to compare to what Christ did so that we might be saved.

And not only does the Good Shepherd lay down His life for the sheep, He also cares for them and guards them and watches over them during the course of their lives. Through the Word and Sacraments He feeds His sheep so that they can grow up into the full stature of those who have inherited eternal life. Even though we pass through the valley of the shadow of death, the Good Shepherd comforts us with His Word and His presence.

The psalm which we prayed together at the beginning of this service, Psalm 23, speaks of this care and protection which our Good Shepherd gives us throughout our lives. As most of you know, Linda had cancer three years ago. She thought they had gotten all of it, but cancer is almost impossible to get 100% (it’s kind of an illustration of original sin itself in that way). She spent the last few months of her life in a nursing home, knowing it was unlikely that the cancer that had quietly grown in her spinal column for the last three years would be able to be removed. She knew death was coming. She lived in the valley of its shadow, especially these last few months. But her Good Shepherd was with her. His rod and His staff comforted her even in the midst of the suffering she endured. Now, after this most recent cancer was diagnosed, I didn’t know she had moved to the nursing home in Union Grove. I had tried to call her at her apartment several times but never heard back from her. But the Missouri Synod pastor out there, Pastor James Keuch, found out she was from Holy Cross and was visiting her often (he didn’t contact me because he didn’t know I was helping out here). Finally, only a few weeks ago, I found out where she was and went to go see her and bring her Holy Communion, and I talked with her about what she was going through. It happened to be mother’s day, and even though she was never married and had no children of her own I wished her a “happy aunt’s day.” She knew where she was going, not just to death but to what our Good Shepherd has won for us by laying down His life. She knew she had eternity with that Good Shepherd in store for her. Despite what she suffered, goodness and mercy has followed Hazel all the days of her life. What we celebrate today is that she now dwells in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Series A

2011-05-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, this is largely based on previous sermons for Rogate Sunday. I've got at least one, possibly two, funerals in the next few days, so time is at a premium. God's word is still God's word, though, and that's what's important.

Sermon on John 14:1-14
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
May 22, 2011 (The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Series A)

“Whatever you ask in My name I will do,” says Jesus toward the end of today’s Gospel lesson. So, why didn’t I get that new bike when I was a kid? Why did grandma still die, even though I prayed that she would live? I’m sure many of you could name off all sorts of examples that you asked the Father for over the years, which you didn’t get. Of course, there are those preachers, some of whom have television shows, which will tell you that you didn’t pray with enough faith, or you doubted, or you didn’t make your request specific enough. These advocates of the “name it and claim it” theology would make the person praying feel guilty every time God doesn’t do what he wants. These advocates of having “your best life now” would make the person doubt his Christianity every time something bad happens in life. They also, in a sense, would make God our slave.

Jesus is not promising that whatever we may happen to want, God’s gotta give us if we pray the right way. Every so often you hear the slogan, “Prayer is powerful.” Well, folks, it’s not true. Prayer isn’t powerful; prayer is just us talking to God, and our talking, our words, don’t have any power at all. God is the one who is powerful. To pray in Jesus’ name is to pray in accord with God’s will. To pray in the name of our adopted Brother is to pray to Him who has become our true Father, who gives His blessings to us because we are His true children. Children don’t get everything they want. Sometimes what they want isn’t good for them. To pray in Jesus’ name is to pray that the Father would give us what we need, not necessarily what we want. In other words, to pray in Jesus’ name is to pray that God’s will be done, not necessarily our own. It is to pray, first and foremost, for those things God has already promised to give us, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer, knowing that these petitions are pleasing to our Father in heaven and are heard by Him, for He Himself has commanded us to pray in this way, and has promised to hear us. Anything we might pray for that God hasn’t promised, is subject to His will, and should be prayed with the understanding that His will comes before our own in such matters. He is, after all, our true Father, and He knows better than we do what’s good for us.

Of course, that’s not the way we like to look at God. We want what we want, when we want it. If we don’t get it, we are tempted to be upset or angry with Him, and may even try to get whatever it is on our own without Him. When that happens, the result goes against the Fourth through Tenth Commandments, as if breaking the first three by our selfish attitude weren’t bad enough. We want Him to serve us in an inferior role, as a servant serves his master, rather than serving us in a superior role, as parents serve and provide for their children. In order for us to pray rightly, therefore, He needs to put us to death and raise us up again so that we can be those who recognize their true Father for who He is. We need Him to come to us, to speak His Word to us, thereby killing us and raising us up to newness of life. That’s the only way that we will ever be able to talk to Him rightly, if He opens our mouths and puts in there His Word in place of our own selfish and impotent words. That’s the only way prayer is powerful, is if what is prayed is His all-powerful Word which was first spoken to us.

Like the other Gospel lessons during this part of the Easter season, Jesus spoke these words in the upper room on the first Maundy Thursday. He spoke them as He was preparing His disciples to witness His upcoming passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. He was promising them that the Father would still be with them, even during the worst moments of Good Friday, and that Jesus Himself would still be with them, even though He would be hidden from their physical eyes on Ascension Day. He was promising them that the Holy Spirit would come through Word and Sacrament in response to their prayers for comfort and courage, and most of all their prayers that He would continue to be with them.

The ultimate prayer, the most important, most basic thing that we can pray for, is that we can be with our Creator and He with us. This is the most basic need of every human being, even though it’s also a need that fallen human beings cannot and will not recognize rightly. That’s why even the mass of humanity that is in rebellion against the true God needs to find some sort of a god to worship, some sort of a religion to follow, no matter how false or even kooky it is. But this most basic prayer, that God would be with us and be merciful and gracious towards us, He has fulfilled in sending His Son. He fulfilled it by sending His Son to die on the cross. He fulfilled it in raising Him from the grave, and by sending His Holy Spirit through the Word and His body and blood to sustain and guide us. Our prayer that God would be with us is fulfilled in the most real and concrete way when we receive His Son’s body and blood in our physical mouths in, with, and under the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. And that prayer will be fulfilled for all time when we are taken to be with Him in heaven, to sit at the heavenly marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, which has no end. He is the way, the truth, and the life. The reason He is the only way, is because He did it all for us, which is something no false god ever even tries to claim; all the rest want us to do something to get right with them. Since sin is what would separate us from God, prayers to be with Him are really prayers for the forgiveness of sins, which carries with it nothing less than life and salvation, “For where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.” That’s what you receive in the Gospel Word and the Sacrament of the Altar here today. The forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. God is fulfilling your prayers here today, and thereby giving you a foretaste of eternity. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Series A

2011-05-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on John 10:1-10
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
May 15, 2011 (The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Series A)

Sheep don’t have a very good reputation. Not only are they defenseless and mild, they’re also pretty stupid. They tend to play follow the leader in a manner that shows an utter disregard for the fact that the leader may be heading into disaster and death. To be referred to as “sheep” indicates a helplessness and a foolishness that most people would consider insulting. And yet, that is what we as the Church call ourselves. We are God’s sheep. We are His flock, and He is our Good Shepherd. It’s not a nickname that is very good for the Church’s public relations, of course. After all, many worldly people already think that we Christians are being duped by our leaders into giving money and time to a cause which doesn’t really exist (since they deny that God really exists) and that religion is only an elaborate fraud being perpetrated on the people of our country by the pastors and other religious leaders who profit from it. The idea that Christians are “sheep” would seem to lend itself directly into this way of thinking, because of the uniquely stupid and blindly following nature of real sheep. This is especially true since unfortunately there have been some Christian and quasi-Christian leaders (I hesitate to call them “pastors” since the word pastor means “shepherd” and these were the hirelings Jesus describes in today’s text rather than true pastors) who have, in fact, fleeced their flocks in the name of religion, defrauding them of millions of dollars for causes which profit these so-called pastors rather than the work of God’s kingdom. For that matter, even when following our true Shepherd, Jesus Christ, we engage in things that seem like foolishness to the world. We follow Him, but He leads us to the cross, to our own deaths. We know that’s not the end of the story, of course, since the death of the Son of God leads to His resurrection and ours, but the world doesn’t know that. And so, for us Christians to call ourselves “sheep” would seem to be an absolute public-relations disaster.

And yet, at the same time, sheep is what we are. We can look at this in several ways. One way in which we are sheep is that we must admit the simple fact that we are easily led astray. Our sinful natures easily cause us to want to “go along with the crowd,” to give into peer pressure and become involved in that which is popular in the world but which compromises our Christian confession and perhaps even leads us into outright sin. This sheeplike character we have is not something we easily admit; we like to think we are strong and independent, but it’s a simple fact. That’s what we’re often like when faced with the direction in which our fellow human beings are moving. In this sense, admitting that we are sheep is a way of admitting that we are sinful and unclean, and that we are easily swayed by the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh. We are sheep who need a shepherd to keep us in the green pastures and quiet waters, to comfort and protect us even in the valley of the shadow of death. Not to admit this need is simply to deceive ourselves.
But to admit that we are sheep is also to claim the Shepherd who has bought us. After all, this Shepherd Himself became a sheep, a lamb, so that He could be slaughtered in our place. Now, it’s true that in the middle east of Jesus’ time, shepherds viewed their flocks as much more a part of the family than a modern sheep rancher out in Wyoming would. They cared for them and watched over them and even faced dangers such as wolves and lions so that their sheep could survive, as David did. But this Good Shepherd, David’s descendant, did even more than any shepherd of Jesus’ time ever would. He became a lamb, a baby sheep, and submitted Himself to the power of the lion. He faced Satan, the roaring lion who prowls about this world, seeking whom he may devour, by submitting Himself to that lion’s teeth, having his hands and feet pierced with nails and his side pierced with a spear. That was how He protected His sheep, by becoming one of them and sacrificing Himself in their place.

That sacrifice was, of course, what we celebrated only a few weeks ago. And of course, we know the rest of the story. The Good Shepherd who was also the Lamb of God was not subject to death. But He died. And so, by doing that, He broke the power of death over His flock. He transformed death so that it is now the gate of everlasting life for us. As Luther put it in the hymn we sang two weeks ago during our Easter celebration, “It was a strange and dreadful strife when Life and Death contended; the victory remained with Life, the reign of Death was ended; Holy Scripture plainly saith that Death is swallowed up by Death, his sting is lost forever. Hallelujah!” It is in this way that our Good Shepherd has led us into the pastures of eternal life, by dying our death and transforming it into the road that leads to the green pastures and quiet waters of eternal fellowship with Himself.

It’s also there, on the Cross, that our Good Shepherd gave us those green pastures and quiet waters to sustain us even now as we journey through this valley of the shadow of death. Out of His side came blood and water, the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Thus He provides us with the quiet waters and the green pastures of the rich food of heaven even now while we journey here on earth. We are sheep because we follow the Good Shepherd. We may look like foolish sheep because the Good Shepherd died, and we too shall die, but the fact is that He transformed death into the door of His eternal sheepfold for us. And so as we follow Him into death we are really following Him into eternal life. All of us must die, one way or another. We don’t gain anything by dying apart from our Good Shepherd, led astray by hirelings and false shepherds given us by the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh. But by dying trusting in our Good Shepherd who died on the cross for us, we follow Him through the valley of the shadow of death into eternal life. And we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Third Sunday of Easter, Series A

2011-05-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Luke 24:13-35
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
May 8, 2011 (The Third Sunday of Easter, Series A)

If someone were to ask any of you about their feelings regarding Easter Sunday, and the Church’s celebration of it, you might get a variety of answers, but I suspect that not many people would say that their feelings regarding the Resurrection of our Lord include being perplexed or sad. Of course, most of us have known the whole story for much of our lives, while the two disciples in today’s Gospel lesson had just lived through the first Good Friday and Easter Sunday. In fact, the reports of the resurrection had reached them only hours before the events St. Luke records here. But we still would like to think that we would have been joyful, overflowing with happiness and confidence and excitement that Jesus had been resurrected, not perplexed and sad about the whole thing.

And yet, perplexed and sad is what we all too often are. Of course, when it comes to the Easter celebration itself, we’re properly joyful and exuberant. But as we go about our lives, as we serve our neighbors in the various callings God has given us in this life, as we experience and hear about the many pains and sorrows, illnesses and injuries, calamities, wars, and rumors of wars that surround us in this old world, we do think and act as if Christ were not raised, and thus we end up perplexed and sad, confused and anxious, unsettled and unbalanced as we go about our daily lives.

Now, to be sure, I’m not saying that sadness or confusion is itself a sin. This old world really is messed up, and things really do happen that don’t make sense to us, and may never make sense to us until we arrive before our Father’s face and can ask Him directly what His intentions were in this or that situation. And in the meanwhile, the emotions of sadness or grief or confusion as we look at these things are perfectly natural. It’s unrealistic to expect Christians to simply float above these things and always be smiling and cheerful and happy.

What I am saying, however, is that our feelings and reactions to life in this old world should not dominate or control us to the point that we lose sight of the greater victory Christ won for us on the cross and proclaimed to us in the resurrection. When that happens, we do become like the two disciples on the road.

The kinds of things that happen in this old world, the unfairness, the random hurt that nature and man can inflict upon us and our fellow human beings, really can make us wonder if God really is watching out for us and taking care of us. They can make us doubt whether the message of the resurrection, that God in Christ has reconciled the world to Himself and rescued us from the perils of sin and death, is really true. When that happens, we are in grave danger of losing the faith entirely. And of course, it doesn’t help at all that many of our fellow Christians have been misled by the health and wealth, name it and claim it (or, as one Lutheran podcast host recently put it, blab it and grab it) preachers into thinking that when things go wrong for us it means we’re lacking in faith or being punished somehow by means of what we’re suffering. During my ministry I’ve had several of my sheep in the hospital who were, at some point during their stay, visited by a relative or friend or even some random ambulance-chasing evangelist who told them that if only they had more faith they wouldn’t still be sick or injured. This, first of all, is not true, and secondly it is spiritual poison of the worst sort, because it causes us to look at ourselves for the key to our relationship with God, and not to Him who has already provided us with that key in His Son’s death and resurrection.

Of course, looking inward, at ourselves, is what the Old Adam likes to do most of all. We are born with ourselves as our own gods. And so all the things that happen to us in this old world, whether good or bad, are going to look like a reward or punishment for our own actions and behavior. That’s why the solution to the problem we face, and the problem the disciples on the road faced, is not found in simply criticizing the lack of faith. Pointing out the lack of faith, or the weakness of faith, may be a correct diagnosis of the problem, but it doesn’t fix it. Which is why after Jesus points out the disciples’ weakness of faith, He goes on to fix the problem in the way Jesus always fixes Christians’ faith problems: Word and Sacrament.

You see, faith is not created or sustained by pointing out that it is weak or dead. Faith is created and sustained by the good news in which faith trusts. Which is why we Lutherans always almost obsessively focus on the Gospel, the good news of what God did for us in Jesus Christ, and not on principles or steps we’re supposed to take to bring us closer to Him. God must be the one to do the work, not only because for us to try to fix our relationship with Him ourselves is to break the First Commandment, but also because He’s the only one that can fix things.

And so, Jesus remedies these two disciples’ lack of faith the same way He creates and sustains faith in all believers: Word and Sacrament. He preaches to them from the Scriptures, and He feeds them with His body and blood. For the earliest Church to whom Luke was writing, “the breaking of the bread” was a nickname for the Lord’s Supper. In the sequel to Luke’s Gospel, He refers to “the breaking of the bread” quite a few times when describing the participation of Christians in the Lord’s Supper. That’s why I believe that what Jesus shared with these two men was not simply an ordinary meal, but the Holy Supper itself. And so Jesus the Good Shepherd feeds His two wandering, lost sheep in the same good pasture and quiet waters which He always feeds us. He proclaims to them Himself, from the Holy Scriptures, thus giving them perspective to see the things that happened on Good Friday and Easter Sunday as salvation rather than failure, and He feeds them Himself, nourishing their new selves which will live before Him in righteousness and purity forever. He feeds them, and us, Himself, thereby reassuring them, and us, that He is to be found for our blessing, for our strengthening in faith, in the Word and in the breaking of the bread. He may speak through the mouths of human pastors, men who are just as sinful as everyone else, but it is His powerful Word and His body and blood that He gives us here. He is the one speaking, absolving, preaching, and His body and blood are what we eat and drink. He is recognized, also by us today, in the breaking of the bread. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Second Sunday of Easter, Series A

2011-05-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on John 20:19-31
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
May 1, 2011 (The Second Sunday of Easter, Series A)

Seeing is believing. It’s necessary to operate with this idea in mind, because all of our fellow human beings are corrupted by the sin that we have all inherited from Adam and Eve, and so you can’t always trust the other person with whom you have dealings. You can’t always trust what the advertisers say about their products. You can’t always trust what people say about their own abilities. Even people who mean well may make claims that they can’t back up because they don’t really understand what they’re up against. And so we are naturally, and rightly, inclined to be suspicious of what people say. It’s not their words that matter, it’s what they do. Actions speak louder than words. A picture is worth a thousand words. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Seeing is believing.

This is the way Thomas thought when the disciples told him about Jesus’ resurrection. He thought that the story about Jesus being resurrected was just “too good to be true.” He wanted to see with his own eyes and feel with his own hands before he would believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. He wasn’t willing to accept the word of the other disciples about Jesus; the news about Jesus’ resurrection was too impossible, too wonderful, to be believed on the basis of their word alone. He had to see Jesus in the flesh in order to believe. He had to see Him for himself in order to be convinced of the truthfulness of what he was being told.

We can certainly understand Thomas’ reluctance to believe his fellow disciples. After all, only a few days ago he had his entire world turned upside down. His Lord and Teacher, the one he confessed as the Son of God, had died. God isn’t supposed to die. And He had not only died, He had been brutally murdered by the Jewish leadership in collaboration with the Roman authorities. He was the one who was supposed to save his people, and now here He had died. Of course, Thomas had heard the things Jesus said about His death being the way it was supposed to happen and that this was how salvation would come to men and that He would be raised up again on the third day, but with everything that had happened, Thomas couldn’t bring himself to believe that all of that had been what Jesus had intended. And in all his fear, uncertainty, and doubt, he wanted to see Jesus for himself to make sure.
We are by nature a lot like Thomas. We see sin in the world around us, we see God’s will for the lives of His creatures being ignored and spit upon daily. We see increasing acceptance of lifestyles such as homosexuality, living together before marriage, divorce for casual reasons, lifestyles which God has prohibited to His creatures for their own good. We see increasing selfishness and callousness toward those who are in need of help. In the Church herself we see all kinds of people who don’t act very Christian toward each other. We see old hurts and grudges carried on over the course of years and even decades, despite the damage it does to the work of the Church. We see a mentality imported from the world of big business that wants to measure success rather than faithfulness to God’s word. What we don’t see is Jesus. And so we begin to doubt Him and His word, and wish for some sign from Him that He really is there watching over us and taking care of us, some sign that our own sins really are forgiven and that our sacrifices and our struggles against sin are in fact all worthwhile. Like Thomas, we want to see Him with our own eyes and feel Him with our own senses in order to believe.

But what Christ says to Thomas reminds us that we are looking for God with the wrong sense. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” In other words, in matters having to do with faith, we are to trust our ears rather than our eyes. Instead of relying on what we actually see for ourselves, we are to rely on the words that are spoken to us for our salvation. We are to rely upon faith, which trusts in what is not seen, instead of testing God, trying to force Him to prove Himself. As St. Paul says in Romans 10, “Faith comes by hearing.” It does not come by seeing.

Elsewhere in the same chapter, Paul elaborates on this. “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?” What St. Paul says here has to do with the first part of our text this morning. Jesus met the disciples, breathed on them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them, but if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” As St. Paul points out, if faith comes by hearing, the Church needs preachers. When Jesus told Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” he was talking about the people to whom he and the other apostles would preach, as well as the rest of us Christians down through the ages who have believed by hearing the Word. When Jesus gave the apostles the Holy Spirit and told them that they were to forgive and to retain sins, He was ordaining the apostles into their office as apostles and as pastors of the Church. The Fifth Chief Part of the Small Catechism refers to today’s Gospel lesson, and then it asks, “What do you believe according to these words?” The response we confess together with the Catechism is, “I believe that when the called ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command, in particular when they exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who repent of their sins and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself.” You can’t see Jesus with your physical eyes. You can, however, hear His words.

Christ tells the apostles that when they proclaim the forgiveness of sins to someone, either by a specific announcement such as what we call Holy Absolution, or by preaching, or by baptizing, or by allowing someone to come to the Lord’s Supper, that their sins are actually forgiven. What a pastor does is not simply to talk about something that has already happened. Through a pastor’s declaration of forgiveness, God Himself actually acts to forgive a person. Now, that forgiveness which is granted to a person first in Baptism lasts through his whole life; it’s not as if you aren’t forgiven until you come to Church again the next Sunday. And, of course, anybody can tell his neighbor that God has forgiven their sins for Christ’s sake, and this message creates and sustains faith just as much as does the direct action of the pastor in administering the Means of Grace. But the pastor’s job is to speak Christ’s own words, “I forgive you,” directly into your ears, first person to second person. While the objective power of the Gospel is the same either way, it is especially comforting to hear God’s own words spoken through the mouth of his servants as opposed to a third-party news report about what God has done for us. God has instituted the Office of the Holy Ministry so that you can hear with your own ears that yes, you are forgiven.

This principle that faith comes by hearing and not by seeing is not only true of Holy Absolution, however. It is also true of the preaching of the Word and most especially of the Sacraments. All that the eye sees in Baptism is water. All that the eye sees in Holy Communion is bread and wine. It doesn’t see the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Ghost that takes place in Baptism, nor does the eye see or the fingers feel or the mouth taste the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. But we know that they are there because the ear hears the words, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost” in Baptism, and “This is My body, this is My blood” in the Lord’s Supper. There too we hear and believe what Christ gives us even though we cannot see these things.

Today’s Gospel records for us God’s institution of the Office of the Holy Ministry. God has given pastors to His Church so that they can proclaim the forgiveness of sins, for the eternal salvation of God’s people. As Jesus says to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” You have heard the message, and you have believed, though you have not yet seen the risen Christ with your own eyes. Blessed are you. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

The Resurrection of Our Lord, Series A

2011-04-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 28:1-10
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
April 24, 2011 (Easter, Series A)

Happy birthday! Huh? Did he just say what I thought he said? Pastor, are you okay? Or did all those extra Holy Week sermons plus having to work at Walmart mess up your mind? No, I said what I meant to say. Happy birthday! Today is the commemoration of your rebirth into the new life of Christ. When you were baptized, however many years ago that was, you were born again into a new life, a life lived by faith before God, and you died to your old life, the life of sin leading to destruction. Of course, most of you probably weren’t baptized on April 24th, or on Easter Sunday whatever date it fell on for that matter, so you’re probably still confused about what I’m talking about. The fact of the matter is, when you died to sin and were reborn to God in your baptism, what happened was that you joined Christ on the cross and were reborn from His tomb. And so, in a sense, your Baptism took place not on whatever date is on your baptismal certificate, but in 33A.D., on a hill called Golgotha, as well as a couple of days later in a new tomb belonging to one Joseph of Arimathea. God is outside of time, and so the key events having to do with our salvation don’t obey the normal laws of time. Christ’s death on the cross, His resurrection, your baptism, your physical death, and your resurrection on the last day, are really all the same event as far as God is concerned, even though they show up at various points on the time line from our perspective. As St. Paul points out in Romans 6, you died with Christ on the cross, and you were born again in Christ’s resurrection. So, happy birthday!

In the Gospel lesson, we see two groups of people at the tomb, besides the angel who comes down and rolls away the stone. One is the soldiers, the other is the small group of women who had come to mourn and to finish preparing His body for burial. When the angel came down and opened the tomb up, and the earth shook, our text says that the guards “became like dead men.” And this isn’t surprising, considering that these men were indeed dead in trespasses and sins. The guards were at the tomb to prevent anyone from stealing Christ’s body. They were there to make sure that no one would be able to say that Christ rose from the grave. Their mission was to make sure that, since Christ had been eliminated as a possible threat to the power and the pride of the high priests, He would stay out of the way. Of course, they didn’t seriously believe that Christ would rise again, but they were there to make sure that nobody would be able to claim that He had.

In this respect, the guards, and the priests who had hired them to do this, are a picture of what we are according to our fallen sinful nature. The Old Adam in each of us wants Christ out of the way. We don’t like it when somebody tells us that we haven’t fulfilled God’s law, and worse yet that we cannot do so. We like to think that we are pretty good people, that we can get along pretty well without God’s help. When Christ comes along and tells us that we are sinners who need what only He can give us, we wish that we could ignore Him, get away from Him, get Him out of our way. This was why the Jewish leaders had Jesus killed in the first place, and why they had posted guards to make sure that He stayed dead.

But when Christ is risen, the old sinful nature dies. The guards, who represented the unbelieving world that wanted Jesus killed and out of its way, become like dead men. In baptism, the Old Adam was drowned, was killed with Christ on the cross, so that a new man might come forth and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. That which is sinful and unclean cannot live in the presence of a holy and righteous God. If we wind up in the presence of God, as all of us will at one time or another, without Christ’s righteousness covering us, we will suffer eternal death in Hell.

Fortunately when God came to us in Holy Baptism, and when He comes to us now in Holy Absolution, Preaching, and in His Holy Supper, He comes to us in such a way that we don’t suffer eternal death, but rather He gives us a new life. Yes, you died in Holy Baptism, but you died to sin and you are now alive to God, and all the blessings that God has to give you are yours. In our text, the characters that depict this are the women who came to the tomb. Instead of depressed, sorrowful, hurting people who wanted to die because their Lord had been killed, they became joyful people, people who have a new life. When Christ Himself met them, he greeted them with one word. The ESV renders it as “Greetings,” but it can also be translated “Rejoice!” Because He lives, we too now live in His presence. We have been transformed from His enemies into His brothers by His death and resurrection. And that’s how He refers to the disciples in His instruction to the women: “My brothers.” We have been adopted into Christ’s family, we have become sons of God. We are now among those who are welcomed into His house and who receive His bountiful gifts to us. We can eat with Him and drink with Him and not die, because He has transformed us from sinners who would be killed by His presence into His saints.
Today, when Christ rose from the grave, you were born again. You who were dead in trespasses and sins are now alive to God in Christ Jesus. So again I say, “Happy birthday!” to all of you. But instead of a birthday dinner, with a cake and candles for desert, we have something better to celebrate today. We have the feast of victory itself. We have our Lord’s own body and blood which He gave for us to win us this victory. Let us feast, for the Lamb who was slain has begun His reign. Alleluia! Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Good Friday, Series A

2011-04-22T19:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on John 18-19
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
April 22, 2011 (Good Friday, Series A)

According to the way many Christians think, Good Friday is a depressing day, a day to mourn the terrible things which happened to our Lord, a day which we only observe so that Easter will seem that much more joyful in comparison. It looks to human eyes like Christ is defeated, like His ministry ended in tragedy. Death is the end of it, is what human reason tells us, and it isn’t a victorious thing. Certainly it’s true that Good Friday is very somber and serious, since what Christ endured for our salvation is neither pleasant nor easy. He suffered through just about the worst sort of torture and execution that mankind has ever devised, and even that physical suffering was nothing compared to the fact that He did it with the guilt of our sins weighing upon His heart. Since it was we who put Him there through our sinfulness and rebellion against God, Good Friday is a day to reflect penitently and seriously on our sin. And so it’s appropriate that the mood be serious and somber. After all, even though it was done out of love for us, to win us the victory, it was still painful and bloody for our Lord.

But Good Friday is not a defeat for Christ. Easter is not the undoing of Good Friday, it is rather the fulfillment of Good Friday. Christ doesn’t win the victory by rising again from the dead on Easter Sunday, He wins the victory by suffering and dying on Good Friday. Easter is the proclamation, the fulfillment, of what was really happening on Good Friday. We can see this from Christ’s word from the cross in our sermon text. Christ says, “It is finished.” This is not a word of despair, a word which pronounces the end upon His message or His ministry. Rather it is a word of fulfillment, a word by which Christ proclaims to the world that everything is accomplished, that our redemption is complete. It is finished. Since it was our sins that led Him to the cross, it is our sins, our death, and our eternal damnation that are now completely destroyed.

This word, “It is finished,” reminds us that there is nothing more that needs to be done, or even can be done, for our salvation. Christ has done it all, and our part is simply to receive His completed work through Word and Sacrament. By nature we tend to think that we should have something to contribute to our own salvation. We tend to think that our living a good life should be part of how we “get right with God.” That’s the idea that keeps people away from Church or away from Holy Communion sometimes, because they think that they need to do something, to achieve a certain level of sanctification, before they can come and share in God’s blessings to us. But Jesus tells you in this text that none of this is necessary. He makes you right with Him. Everything that is necessary was done by Him on the cross. Your salvation is completed. Heaven is open to you. Your sins are paid for. It is finished. And the Word and Sacraments you receive here are not something you do to please Him or get right with Him, rather they are the means by which He comes to you to give you the blessings He won for you, blessings which were perfected and completed on the cross.

And so we see that Good Friday is not the opposite of Easter at all. The salvation and the eternal life which we will celebrate on Sunday were won on Good Friday. Christ couldn’t have been resurrected as the firstfruits of the new creation, the new heavens and the new earth, if He had not first died to this old world and all of its sin and death. Yes, it was our sin that put Him there. It was the punishment we deserved that He suffered. But it was a victorious suffering. It was a suffering that freed us from suffering. It was a death that freed us from death. Christ bore our sin so that we can share in His righteousness. He who was not a sinner and therefore not subject to death died to free us from the eternal death that we deserved. If Christ had not died on Good Friday, He would not have risen on Easter Sunday. The joy and the wonder of Easter, the celebration of new life which has been granted to us who have been made partakers in Christ our risen Lord, is not possible without the death of Christ on the cross. You can’t resurrect something that hasn’t died. Christ’s death on the cross was necessary for our salvation just as our own deaths to sin in Holy Baptism are necessary for us to receive the newness of life which God grants us through water and the Word.

It is only because Christ dies that the Church is born. It is only because He sheds His blood that the Church can be cleansed in it and renewed. It is only when water and blood come forth from Christ’s side that we are able to be partakers of that water and that blood through Holy Baptism and through the Lord’s Supper. The sacraments which gave us birth in the faith and which nourish and sustain our faith have their root in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Just as Eve was born out of the side of Adam, whom the Lord caused to fall into a deep sleep and took one of his ribs and formed the woman from it, so also the Church, the bride of Christ, is formed when Christ sleeps the sleep of death and from His side comes out the elements from which the Church is reborn into eternal life. Here is the tree of life, which, if a man eat of its fruit, he will live forever. This tree, the tree of the cross, bears a fruit that gives us eternal life itself, the fruit of Christ’s body and blood, given us in the Lord’s Super. Here, on the cross, is the source of our eternal life. Here is the center of our salvation. We eat that which was broken for us, and drink what was shed for us, and in so doing we receive the perfect, complete, and, yes, finished salvation which He won for us today. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Maundy Thursday, Series A

2011-04-21T19:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on John 13:1-15, 34-35
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
April 21, 2011 (Maundy Thursday, Series A)

Why do we have the Lord’s Supper? What is the purpose for it? What is the benefit of this eating and drinking? The Catechism’s answer is that we receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, for where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation. But for many people, and perhaps even some of you, that doesn’t completely answer the question. We also receive the forgiveness of sins through Absolution and through God’s Word. If what we receive in the Lord’s Supper is the forgiveness of sins, if the whole point of receiving Christ’s own body and blood is the forgiveness of sins, then why do we need to come to the Lord’s Supper? After all, we receive the forgiveness of sins in Holy Baptism and Holy Absolution and through the word of the Holy Gospel which is preached to us. Why do we need the Lord’s Supper at all, let alone as frequently as it is offered, every week and more often than that during special times of the year such as Holy Week? If the whole point of the Lord’s Supper is the forgiveness of sins, and we already have forgiveness of sins, then what’s the point?

Let’s think about that question for a minute. “Why do we have to have the Lord’s Supper?” It sounds like a small child asking why does he have to clean his room. When did the Lord’s Supper become like chores or housework? Why should the Lord’s Supper be something we only do if we “have to”? The whole question implies that partaking of Jesus’ body and blood is something that is a burden on us, or a chore or a drudgery. It implies that the person asking such a question wants to get away with doing as little as possible and still meet God’s requirements. It implies that the Lord’s Supper is something negative and frightening and dangerous and that we should try to get out of it if at all possible. But if this were a true picture of the Supper, then if God were truly loving and gracious He wouldn’t put us through it at all in the first place.

To be sure, sometimes we get the idea that this is what the Holy Supper is: an opportunity for God to test us, a frightening encounter with a God who is just waiting to “zap” us if our minds wander for a moment. In times past, it was thought by some folks, who belonged to a group called the “Pietists,” that if taking the Lord’s Supper wasn’t some huge emotional experience for a person, then they were taking the Lord’s Supper to their judgment. Even as recently as the early part of last century there were a number of Lutherans who would only come to the Holy Supper four times a year, and burst into tears every time they came. Of course, you can’t go through that much emotional upheaval every Sunday, or even twice a month for that matter, and not destroy your health in the process. And so that’s why these people would only come four times a year. After all, if you come more often, then the Supper isn’t “special” enough to you, and therefore you’re taking it to your judgment. Granted there’s nothing wrong with emotions when they result from what God does for us in Word and Sacrament, but our worthiness to receive the Sacrament should not depend upon our emotions.

For that matter, the Lord’s Supper doesn’t depend on anything that we do. It doesn’t depend on how earnestly or carefully we have prepared for it. It doesn’t even depend on whether or not we are able to keep our minds from wandering while we are receiving it. Many people think that if your mind wanders while you are taking the Lord’s Supper, you have taken it unworthily and to your judgment. They get worried that if they take it too often their mind is going to wander more often and that they’ll take it to their judgment more often. Well, it just isn’t true. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. If the Lord’s Supper depended upon how worthy we were and how carefully we are paying attention for its benefits, then quite frankly every single one of us partakes to his judgment every single time we take it. None of us is focused enough or prepared enough to earn our worthiness to receive Christ’s body and blood.

It is true, of course, we should examine ourselves as St. Paul tells us to do. We should make sure of three things when we come to the Holy Supper. The first is, “Are you a Christian? Do you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and that you are saved because of His sacrifice?” The second is, “Are you living in some deliberate sin and being unrepentant of that sin, which casts the Holy Ghost out of your heart?” And the third is, “Do you believe what Christ says, that His body and blood are truly given you to eat and drink in the bread and wine of this Sacrament?” The reason for this is because if you’re not a Christian then your heart is only hardened in its unbelief, and that’s what partaking to one’s judgment means. But the same thing is true of a person who hears the Gospel in a sermon and uses it to excuse his sin instead of repenting of it. The Gospel causes such a person to become worse than he was before. It’s simply the Lutheran distinction between Law and Gospel that is at work. That’s why we in the Missouri Synod practice close communion and why there is such a thing as excommunication. For a person who doesn’t repent of his sins or doesn’t believe, the Lord’s Supper makes them secure in their sins and leads them further down the road to hell. And by the way, when we turn those from other denominations away, we aren’t saying that they personally don’t have faith, but we are saying that the public doctrinal confession of their denomination, a confession which they also share because of their membership, is against Scripture and therefore it is not a true confession of the faith into which we are baptized.

And so we should take care about the Lord’s Supper. But we should also heed Luther’s words: “He is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words, ‘Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’” If you believe this, then it doesn’t matter what other preparations you forgot to make or how distracted and harried you might be that particular Sunday morning. Granted, fasting and so on are indeed fine outward training. And I’m not arguing for carelessness in approaching the Sacrament of the Altar. But if your mind does wander while you are up at the altar, or if you realize after receiving the Supper that you weren’t concentrating on what you were doing, don’t despair. Don’t think that you just received it to your judgement. Instead, think, “Christ is so good to me that He is willing to give me these blessings despite how weak and frail, I am.” Instead of meditating on how bad you are, meditate on how good God is that His blood which you just received, covers even the weaknesses you just showed while you were receiving it.
The Lord’s Supper is the center of the Church’s life. It is here that we partake with all of our senses in Christ Jesus. Here God touches us, not just through our eyes and ears to our brain, but He Himself enters our bodies and sprinkles our hearts with His blood. Here God serves us just as Jesus served the disciples by washing their feet. He is our Lord precisely by becoming our servant. Here we partake already here and now in the eternal feast of victory which has no end, the great marriage feast of the lamb who was slain and is risen again. Here we receive the body and blood of Him who died, the body and blood of Him who in His resurrection has become the beginning of the new creation in which we will live eternally. Here we are returned to the garden of Eden to receive the food which causes us to live forever. Here we see God at His best. God identifies Himself as the giver of life, as the God who is love. In the Lord’s Supper He feeds us with the food of eternity. God is shown most clearly as a good and loving God by feeding us with His Son’s body and blood.

Why do we have to have the Lord’s Supper? As well might a child ask why he has to eat his chocolate cake. As well might we all ask why we have to go to heaven. It’s not something you have to do, it’s something you get to do. If you don’t want to do it, it doesn’t mean that you’re in trouble, it means that the Old Adam is putting up a fight inside you. And in that case you need it most of all, because, unless you are an outright unbeliever or a willful, unrepentant sinner, it means your faith needs all the help it can get. And there is no help for our faith that is more powerful than Christ’s body and blood. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Palm Sunday, Series A

2011-04-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Matthew 21:1-9, 26:1-27:66
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
April 17, 2011 (The Sixth Sunday in Lent, Series A)

Which are you? Of the two Gospel lessons we read today, the Palm Sunday story at the beginning of the service and the Passion account just now, which crowd do you find yourself in? The one crowd welcomed their heavenly King joyfully and shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” The others shouted, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Away with Him!” Which are you? I’m sure most of us would prefer to see ourselves as being part of that crowd on Palm Sunday rather than Good Friday. We would rather join the Palm Sunday crowd in singing the Sanctus as we do during the Communion liturgy, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of Thy glory! Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” But I suspect that most of you found it a bit difficult to recite the part of the crowd just now in the passion account. When we did the same thing at my first parish in Minnesota, some of them told me exactly that. We don’t like to see ourselves in the place of those who demanded the death of Jesus Christ. We don’t like to see ourselves as wanting Him to be crucified.

But that is what happens. We were not only among those who were shouting Hosanna on Palm Sunday, we were also among those who were shouting Crucify on Good Friday. You see, Christ suffered and died on the cross to bear the punishment we deserved by our sins. It was our sins that nailed Him there. Every time we commit sin, it is as if we shout out again, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Away with Him!” Every time we commit sin we increase the pain and the suffering that Jesus bore on that cross. His death covers even the sins we will commit in the future, and so when we sin now, two thousand years later, it is as if we are still pounding nails into His hands and feet.

Today is kind of an interesting day in the Church Year. In ancient times this entire week was devoted to meditation on Jesus’ Passion. Historically the passion according to St. Matthew would be read today, that according to St. Mark on Tuesday, St. Luke on Wednesday, and St. John on Friday. This tradition was also followed by the Old Lutherans in Europe, with musical “passions” based on each of the four Gospels being performed on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday of Holy Week, with the pastor performing the part of Christ from the pulpit, and other parts being performed by soloists, the choir, and even the whole congregation. J. S. Bach’s famous Passions according to St. Matthew and St. John are only the most well-known examples of this musical tradition.

We are recovering part of this practice today, partially because too many Christians skip over Good Friday as “too depressing” and go right from Palm Sunday to Easter. This is not good, because Jesus’ suffering and death are of vital importance to our faith. The Palm Sunday celebration would historically have been a separate service that has its historical roots in an actual procession through the city of Jerusalem that the ancient church did every year, culminating in the arrival at the Church and the beginning of the Divine Service. And so we end up with these two very different Gospel lessons in two different parts of the service. When you first look at it, the whole service ends up seeming a little bit weird because of this. At first glance, Palm Sunday and Good Friday don’t seem to have all that much in common.
But in fact, there is actually a very close connection between what happened on Palm Sunday and what happened on Good Friday. The mood is different, but they are both part of the same event. You see, Good Friday is not some sort of a defeat for Christ, which is what we all too often end up thinking it is. Of course, it’s natural to think that way. Good Friday, on the surface, is a pretty gruesome and depressing thing. There are even some who call themselves Christians today which teach that the death of Jesus Christ was some sort of a mistake, that it wasn’t supposed to happen, and that the Church is sort of a stopgap solution that is holding the fort until Christ can come again and do what He really intended to do, namely to reign on earth for a thousand years. That’s not the true Biblical picture of Good Friday at all (aside from the fact that it’s not the Biblical picture of the end times, either). Yes, Christ suffered an extraordinary amount of pain and grief and sorrow because of our sins. Yes, He was in agony and temptation. Yes, He was abandoned by all of His loved ones in this world. Yes, He even experienced the hell of separation from His heavenly Father. But He did all of this willingly. It wasn’t a mistake or a defeat or a setback. It was all done according to His plan. This is what was supposed to happen. When He entered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, He entered to die. He entered the city on the day in which the lambs would be chosen for slaughter during the Passover Sacrifices. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world was choosing to go and give Himself up for the sacrifice.

The King of the Jews was coming to claim His throne, but His throne was made of wood. It was a throne from which He would hang rather than being seated. He was coming to claim His crown, but that crown was made of thorns. The crowd on Good Friday were reacting to Christ out of the hate and anger that was in their sinful hearts—the same hate and anger toward God and toward authority that is in all of our sinful hearts—but they were asking for what Christ had come to do in the first place. They were asking for Jesus to be crucified, which is precisely what He had come to do. We might be horrified and sickened by the sight of Christ on the cross. And many Christians are made uncomfortable by the crucifix. Many times I have heard people saying that we Lutherans shouldn’t have crucifixes because we believe in a resurrected Christ (which is a little bit silly, because all that an empty cross means is that He was taken down and buried, not that He was resurrected) or because the crucifix is “too Catholic,” but that’s not really why people don’t like crucifixes. The crucifix reminds us that sin has consequences. It reminds us that the forgiveness of sin is not just a matter of saying, “Oh, God will forgive me because He’s just a nice God.” It reminds us that the forgiveness of sins is a matter of Jesus suffering and dying a horrid, bloody, painful execution in our place, which means that sin, including our sin, is serious, bloody, painful business. But He does it willingly. He does it out of love for His creatures. He does it because He is a God who is love, and that means that he will give Himself up to death so that we might have eternal life.

It is from this perspective that we can truly understand what the crowd was saying when they welcomed Jesus as their King that first Palm Sunday. That crowd probably didn’t understand fully what they were doing themselves. After all, they were probably expecting an earthly king. But they were correct in welcoming Jesus as their King, because that’s what He was. That’s what He is. He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He is God Himself, who reigns over us from the cross. He reigns over us by giving Himself up for our sakes so that we might have life. Just as the crowd did, we welcome His coming among us with His body crucified and His blood shed in the Communion liturgy with the very same words: “Hosanna! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” He rules over us in love, by giving us Himself, and by granting us eternal life and fellowship with Him forever in heaven. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Lent 5 Midweek

2011-04-13T19:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on Romans 6:6
For Lamb of God Lutheran Church, Pleasant Prairie, WI
April 13, 2011 (Lent Midweek 5)

Everyone must die. That’s the reality of life in a world cursed by sin. It happens to all of us, sooner or later. As Paul points out further on in this same chapter of Romans, the wages of sin is death. It’s what happens to everyone descended from Adam and Eve. We all bear its symptoms. Some of us wear glasses. We all get the common cold every so often. We are subject to cancer and other serious illnesses. Our bodies are less and less able to handle exercise and injury as we age. Limbs or even vital organs may even need to be amputated or replaced with artificial substitutes. Hair turns gray and eventually falls out. In a sense, we are all the walking dead, because all the sickness and aging we see and feel in ourselves and around us remind us that death claims everyone descended from Adam and Eve.
But death isn’t natural. It isn’t the way we were originally made. There are those who would tell you otherwise, that death is simply part of the natural cycle of life, and that we must accept it as such. And we can see why they say that, since all living things die sooner or later. This is simply wrong. We were not made to die. We were made to live. Death is only part of this world because sin is. We know this instinctively, which is why we mourn even when someone has lived a long, full life by earthly standards. We all die far sooner than we ought, even those who live past 100, even if we were to live longer than Methuselah’s 900-odd years. Death is still wrong and disruptive to how we were made.
Now, for those who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, Paul points out that there is another sense, a completely different sense, in which it can be said that we have already died. You see, the washing of Holy Baptism unites us with the One who died sinlessly. It washes us in the blood and water that flowed from His side. God Himself entered our worldwide tomb and died a death He did not deserve. And so now the washing He instituted gives us a special kind of death. There is an old spiritual that asks “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” I personally am not very fond of that song, because it never answers the question but instead focuses on the songwriter’s emotional reaction to the event. But the question that song asks is a good one. And it has an answer. That answer is yes. You were there. Not just standing by, but you were there with Him on the cross. You died in, with, and under our Lord when you were baptized. You won’t experience that death with your senses until you physically die to this old world, but since your death is, was, and will be the death Christ died, your death is now transformed into resurrection. All men since Adam have been the walking dead, but all who are in Christ are the walking resurrected. You can’t see your new, resurrected self, but he is there, dwelling in you as well as at the same time dwelling in heaven before God’s face eternally.
Death is still part of this old world. This old world itself will die sooner or later. But in the One who died and shed His blood for you, we have no more sickness or death. We have life with Him forever. His death is our life. The Roman sword piercing His pericardium is the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit. You were there when they crucified my Lord. Amen. + Soli Deo Gloria +

Lent 5, Series A

2011-04-10T09:00:00.001-05:00

Sermon on John 11:1-53

For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI

April 10, 2011 (The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Series A)

I need to admit something. This Gospel lesson has me a bit puzzled. For most of my ministry I’ve followed the old one-year series of readings which Lutheranism has followed for most of its history, the series on which Luther and the other reformers preached, having inherited it from the united western Church of the middle ages, the series that CFW Walther, the first President of the LCMS preached, and which is found in our Synod’s 1941 worship book, The Lutheran Hymnal, as well as being one of the options given in our most recent worship book, Lutheran Service Book. These past few months serving as your vacancy pastor have been the first time I have used the three-year series in a long while. And so, as I said, when I looked up the Gospel lesson for today, I was confused. Why read a section of Scripture which tells us and shows us how Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, on the fifth Sunday in Lent, immediately before we enter Holy Week? It certainly made picking the hymns more difficult, as most of the hymns listed as being related to this text in Lutheran Service Builder, the electronic version of our hymnal, are Easter hymns which contain the word alleluia, a word which we customarily don’t use in worship during Lent. Not to mention that it seems to break the mood of Lent in general, previewing as it does the fact that Jesus not only can raise the dead, but that He Himself is the Resurrection and the Life, and so death itself will not be able to hold Him captive either. When you look at it from a thematic perspective within the Church Year, this Gospel lesson seems totally out of place.

But when you look at it from the perspective of the history of Jesus’ progress toward Jerusalem and toward His own death on Good Friday and resurrection on the first Easter Sunday, it makes a lot more sense. You see, this was the event that finally convinced the religious leaders in Jerusalem once and for all that He needed to die. They couldn’t simply try to discredit Him or make Him look foolish any more. Bethany was not far from Jerusalem, and many from Jerusalem knew Lazarus had died, and now saw him walking around alive. There was no longer any way to convince the people that Jesus wasn’t who He claimed to be: the Son of God, the promised Messiah, come to rescue the world from sin and death. Now the only course of action left to the Sanhedrin, if they wanted to hold on to their power over the people, was to eliminate Jesus entirely, by finding a way to have Him executed.

It’s kind of ironic that it was precisely by demonstrating that He is the Resurrection and the Life, the One over whom Death itself had no power, that He put Himself in a situation where His own death became inevitable. It shows just how perverse was the thinking of the Jewish leaders of the time. They had to have figured out by now that Jesus really was who He claimed to be. That’s what made Him so dangerous. You can’t argue with or discredit the true Messiah. You can’t simply ignore or publicly embarrass God Himself. It’s precisely because He really was who He said He was that the chief priests wanted Him dead. It’s precisely because He represented God’s own condemnation of their leadership that they needed to get Him out of the picture.

And we are no different than they were. It’s precisely because Jesus is God Himself in human flesh that we would rather He stay safely away from us. We may call on Him now and again when things aren’t going so well for us, we might like to think of Him as an example for how to live an upright and moral life, or as a great teacher, or any of a thousand other things. But to have Him come to us and take away from us any illusions we may have about our ability to please God on our own, to have Him come to us, not only to insult us by telling us even our best good works are filthy rags as far as He is concerned, but to give us salvation as a free gift and thereby destroy any hope we thought we had of pleasing God on our own, is simply intolerable. And yet that’s what He does. He comes to shatter any illusions we may have had that we are in any sort of control over our own relationship with God. He comes to show us that only He who made us can restore us to the perfection we were meant to be. He comes to take away any power we thought we had over our own lives. And so we, with the chief priests, want Him dead, gone, and away from us.

But you can’t keep the one who is the Resurrection and the Life dead. That’s the thing about God. He’s God. Even death itself is not an obstacle to Him, because He’s the one who made life in the first place. Jesus is the Word the Father spoke at the beginning of creation, the Word that is so powerful that it speaks into existence what it says. He is the life-giver, the one who sustains us and gives us everything we need to support this body and life. He became man precisely so that He could die, but He’s still God, and so death itself is fatally poisoned by the attempt to swallow Him. He spoke creation itself into existence, His word speaks Lazarus out of his tomb, free of whatever disease killed him, and free of the decay that ravaged his body afterward. His word speaks life into us again, despite our wish that He leave us alone here in this tomb of an old, sin-filled world. You can’t keep God dead, since He is life.

And so we who have become part of Him can’t be kept dead either. The old, dead Adam in us thinks he can hold onto life by killing the Son of God, but he only ends up getting himself crucified with Him in the process. He only ends up getting himself drowned in the water and blood that flowed from Jesus’ side, in which we were washed in Holy Baptism. And since we joined Him in His death, we also join Him in His resurrection. We also sit with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, not at their home in Bethany with the Sadducees looking on and gnashing their teeth, but in His home, where He is the host and the meal, where Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and all who have died in the faith gather, with the angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven, praising God eternally, eating His body crucified and drinking His blood shed for us. We eat and drink the Resurrection and the Life, and receive eternal life itself in the process. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Lent 4, Series A

2011-04-03T09:00:00.001-05:00

Sermon on John 9:1-41

For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI

April 3, 2011 (The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Series A)

There is an old saying that goes, “There are none so blind as those who do not want to see.” In other words, people who physically cannot see usually still want to find out what is really happening around them, and often they will get a pretty good idea by using their other four senses, especially hearing. However, when someone, whether physically sighted or blind, does not want to admit to the reality of something, they will find all sorts of excuses to pretend that they haven’t just seen that thing. A child is asked to clean up the mess his room, and one of the first responses, in many cases, is, “what mess?” (Men often respond like that to their wives, too.) Sinful human beings will deny reality itself before they will admit to even plain and obvious facts that point out their own sin or their own duty that they would rather avoid.

This is the meaning behind what Jesus tells the Pharisees at the very end of today’s Gospel lesson. It is those who claim to see reality but deny it that are guilty, rather than those who know their blindness and wish to be enlightened. It is those who think that their relationship with God is on pretty good footing on the basis of what they do, that are most likely to ignore the very first Commandment, namely that God is the giver of everything, including salvation; God is the one in whom we are to trust for all good things. Those who know themselves to be poor, miserable sinners who cannot see God with their own reason or strength are the ones whom God has already prepared to receive the good news that God has come down to us by grace, in sending His Son, Jesus Christ, and in bringing that same Jesus Christ to them in water, words, bread, and wine, by the Holy Spirit’s power.

Our sinful, selfish pride causes us to be like the Pharisees. We want to do it ourselves. We want God to be pleased with us on the basis of our own works. We want Him to see all the things we are doing for Him, and congratulate us, pat us on the back, and tell us we’ve earned a spot in His kingdom, or, if you believe Rick Warren, that we’ve earned a better spot in His kingdom than we otherwise would have had. We want our own eyes, our own reason and strength, our own good works, to be good enough to get us something from God. And whenever it is pointed out to us that even our best good works, even our most ardent zeal at witnessing or volunteering for the Church or whatever, is like filthy rags as far as God is concerned, that offends us and just makes us angry. We want to ignore the fact that by trying to earn something from God we are breaking the First Commandment, the most important one from which all the others flow, and so it doesn’t matter how good the things we may be doing are for our church or our fellow human beings, God is not pleased. We become blind as only anger can make us blind, and will not see the evidence that only He can, and has, bridged the gap between us and God.

But He has, in fact, bridged that gap, not from our end, but from His. It was not because of anything special in the blind man that he was able to see. It was a pure gift. That’s what God does. He gives gifts. He’s not in the rewards business. You can’t earn enough points with him to earn a little extra benefit. Yes, the Scriptures do say that there will be different positions or vocations within eternal life, just as there are here on this earth, and that who we have been given to be in this world to some extent will be related to who we are given to be in eternity. But it’s not a rewards system per se. It’s a free gift system, because who we are in this life is determined by His gift of providence in placing us in our vocations, and so who we are in the next life is also determined by the uniqueness of who we are and where He has placed us in that world. Focusing on rewards for our own works in heaven, even if we admit that getting there in the first place is a free gift, is still a selfish focus on what I can get out of the deal, and not a focus on love for God or the neighbor. I’ll be blunt here: Rick Warren is simply dead wrong on this point, and he’s leading millions of Christians into a false motivation for doing good works, one which denies and forgets that God is a Father who loves to give gifts to His children, and instead makes Him into a rewards machine.

God is a giver. God is the creator, which means that He is the one who gives restoration of that creation. He will sometimes open the eyes of the blind, either through the purely miraculous, as we see here (though even here, notice how it is that He uses ordinary and even, well, yukky things to do it), or through the gift of technological and medical advances, or whatever. All the blind who trust in Him as their Savior from sin, death, and the devil will have their sight completely and miraculously restored in the resurrection at the last day. Even those of us who simply need glasses won’t need them then, and we will see Him clearly, face to face, in His glory. We can’t ever do enough to earn that. Thank God, we don’t have to. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Lent 3 Midweek

2011-03-30T19:00:00.000-05:00

Part of the midweek Lenten sermon series at Lamb of God (Holy Cross is only having Lenten midweek services on Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday).

Sermon on Mark 15:39
For Lamb of God Lutheran Church, Pleasant Prairie, WI
March 30, 2011 (Lent Midweek 3)

“Truly this man was the Son of God.” A confession of faith. No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul reminds us. This means that the centurion became a Christian because he witnessed the crucifixion. Granted, he probably also heard about Jesus’ teaching and the claims that were made about him by the chief priests, not to mention that the inscription above His head also pointed to His identity. There probably wasn’t a soul in or around Jerusalem who hadn’t heard something of Jesus’ teaching, and probably even His claims that his death would be the atonement for the whole world’s sin. But it was by witnessing the crucifixion that all the pieces of the puzzle came together for this Roman soldier, such that only moments after Jesus’ death, and even before His resurrection, this man confessed faith in God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, and in His saving work for sinners.

Now, we don’t live in or around Jerusalem in the first century. We live in southeast Wisconsin and northeast Illinois in the twenty-first century. We can’t hear for ourselves the cries of “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me,” and “It is finished,” nor can we see for ourselves the darkness or the saints walking around or the temple curtain torn in two. Certainly we have a statue of the crucifixion in front of our eyes, we have the apostles’ testimony in the Holy Scriptures, and we can go rent “The Passion of the Christ” or pop it in the DVD player again if we happen to own it. But we can’t witness the actual events themselves with our own five senses.

But that doesn’t mean that we weren’t there. St. Paul reminds us in Romans 6 that we were there in a more intimate and mysterious way than the centurion was. We actually were nailed to the cross in, with, and under Him when we were washed in the font of Holy Baptism. We actually rose from the dead with Him at the same time. And His own body and blood, which the centurion witnessed being tortured, torn open, and dying, is our food for eternity in the Holy Supper. Of course, the centurion received those things too when he was baptized and became part of the earliest church, we can assume. But the point is, what God gives us in Word and Sacrament is an even more wonderful and intimate revelation of who He is and what He has done for us than even the centurion received when he witnessed these events. How dare we treat these gifts with anything less than complete devotion? How dare we presume to wish we were there at the centurion’s side, when in fact we, and he, were on the cross itself with our Lord that day?

But that’s the point, isn’t it? We were there. And so even though our focus is sometimes wrong, even though we want to see with our physical eyes and hear with our physical ears even though God has given us something much more wonderful, He does still come to us and bring us paradise itself. We are still there with Him on the cross and rising from the empty tomb. We are still at the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, which has no end. He is merciful, just as His father is merciful. This whole chain of events, leading from the Annunciation, which the Church celebrated only a few days ago, to His death and resurrection, was out of mercy for us. God is love, which is can also be translated, God is mercy. And in bringing that mercy to us by the cross, through the water and His body and blood, He shows that He is merciful as only God can be. Truly this was the Son of God. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Lent 3, Series A

2011-03-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon on John 4:5-26
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
March 27, 2011 (The Third Sunday in Lent, Series A)

The well was the ancient equivalent of a singles’ bar. The well was where Abraham’s servant met Rebekah, who would be Isaac’s wife, and where Jacob met Rachel and Leah. Moses met his wife Zipporah at the well. And so it’s more than a little odd that Jesus sits and has a conversation with this woman here. Some would say it’s downright scandalous. After all, as she points out, she’s a Samaritan, and shouldn’t be associating with Jesus, a Jew, especially in this place which is traditionally where people meet and find out about members of the opposite sex. Not to mention that Jesus is the Son of God, the promised messiah, and this woman has not exactly kept the Sixth Commandment, You shall not commit adultery. And so if we were among the disciples that day, we too would be more than a little uncomfortable and put off seeing Jesus talking to this woman at Jacob’s well.

Of course, Jesus isn’t flirting with her or courting her. He is, rather, teaching her about the kingdom of God and about how the ancient Israelite religion was established for the purpose of pointing to Himself, and that while the Jewish worship of those days was, in fact, closer to what God had established than the Samaritan worship was, it was still not complete in itself, but only pointed forward to the day when Messiah Himself would come and bring forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to everyone, and that God would be present not just on this mountain or that, but wherever God’s people gather to receive the Holy Spirit through the preaching of God’s Word and the administration of His Sacraments.

Now, it is true that Jesus wasn’t flirting with or courting this woman in the normal, earthly way of speaking. However, I do think that He chose this venue to have a conversation with this woman in order to make a point, both to His disciples and to us. You see, He came to bring the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to sinners. You can’t get the forgiveness of sins if you’re not a sinner. As He points out elsewhere, it’s not those who are well that need a physician, but those who are sick. The Church is more of a hospital than a gymnasium. It’s a place where God comes to us to heal us, not a place where we do spiritual exercises to improve ourselves. And so, the fact that He talks to this woman, just like the fact that He eats with tax collectors and other sinners elsewhere in the Gospels, stands as a reminder to us that it is precisely those who are lost that are to be welcome here; it is precisely those who have not always lived good and decent lives that here can receive forgiveness and healing. None of us is any better than this woman from God’s perspective. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and it is only because He comes to us with the forgiveness He won on the cross that we can presume to stand here before Him at all.

Now, as I said, Jesus wasn’t courting this woman in any earthly sense. He was teaching her, catechising her, to give her faith in His promises and thereby a recipient of salvation, a member of the one, holy, universal, apostolic Church. But isn’t that, in a spiritual sense, a form of courtship? After all, the Church is described in Ephesians 5 and elsewhere as the Bride of Christ. Which means that Jesus was asking this woman to be part of His Bride, the Church. He was asking her to meet Him by the true well, which gives water for eternity, and have her sins washed away in that baptismal water. He was asking her to become a partaker in His eternal wedding feast, in which He is both the host and the meal. He was asking her, in short, to become joined to, part of, His Bride.

And that’s the way God always courts those whom He meets and whom He invites to join Him in eternal bliss. He meets them at the well which gives the water of eternal life, yes, that one right there, and washes away their sin, and makes them new creatures who really are what He created them to be, perfect and holy in His sight. And he invites them to the wedding feast, in which He feeds them with His body and blood. That’s what our God does. He condescends to even the worst sinner, and brings them forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation through His word and His body and blood. That’s what He did for each of you. He made you, the Church, collectively, into His bride, worthy and well-prepared for His coming, looking forward to sharing with Him an eternity of love and joy that we can’t even describe using earthly terms. We are His bride, His beloved. He has come to rescue us from our life of sin and receive us to Himself. Welcome to the feast. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Reminiscere

2011-03-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

Because I am still a called assistant pastor at Lamb of God, Pr. Smallwood and I do a pulpit exchange every couple of months so that I can still be carrying out my call to that congregation. Today is one such pulpit exchange.

Sermon on Matthew 15:21-28
For Lamb of God Lutheran Church, Pleasant Prairie, WI
March 20, 2011 (Reminiscere)

Why did God allow this woman’s daughter to be possessed by a demon? Since God is all-powerful, and Satan and his fellow fallen angels are just that, mere fallen angels, why didn’t God stop that demon from entering the woman’s daughter in the first place? And then, when she asks God for help with the situation, why does He act so impolite toward her and make her go through all of that begging and humiliation before He will consent to heal the daughter? Why? For that matter, if God can do anything, why does He allow us to be tempted and afflicted in various ways? Why does He allow us to have to fight and struggle against the temptations of the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh? After all, if Jesus already won the victory over the temptations that the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh bring us, then why do we still have to fight against these things? Why do we still have trouble in this world? Why do the righteous so often seem to suffer while the evil so often seem to be so well off? You would think, that if God is both good and loving on the one hand, and almighty and all-powerful on the other hand, then these kinds of things wouldn’t happen to us. Demons wouldn’t be able to torment people like they do in various ways.

These questions, why do bad things happen to good people, why doesn’t God help me out when I’m suffering, why doesn’t He seem to care if He’s supposedly such a good God, are questions that theologians and philosophers have pondered over for thousands of years. And they’re not just an academic exercise, either. Suffering is very real all around us and in our own lives. And very often God’s response to our prayers seems to be the same kind of seemingly callous and insulting response we read that Jesus gave to the woman in today’s Gospel.

Now, many times we can’t know specifically the reason why God allows these sorts of things. But in general, we know from Scripture that God uses these things to make us rely on His promises more firmly. God’s promises to be with us and to preserve us and to comfort us depend only on the fact that it was He who spoke them. His promises to us are true even if the whole world and everything we see and feel seems to contradict them. His promises to us are true even if He Himself seems to be ignoring us and rejecting us. Sometimes God puts us through experiences like that of this woman to remind us of that fact, and to strengthen our faith so that we rely more firmly on the promises rather than testing Him and trying to see physical evidence of His care for us. Our confidence in God’s protection and care, and more importantly our confidence in His salvation, should not depend on whether or not we feel or see His care and protection in our lives. Our confidence in God’s love for us and His care for us depends solely upon His promises to us in the Holy Scriptures. But all too often we like to rely upon other things besides God’s promises to support our faith, whether those things be our emotions or good feelings about God, or whether those things be the fact that things are going well for us, or whatever it may be. For this reason, sometimes these blessings are taken away from us precisely because we are using them as a crutch in the place of our faith or making our faith depend on them rather than Him.

Notice also that even though Jesus didn’t come right out and call the woman a dog, she more or less admitted herself to be one when she said that even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from the master’s table. God’s care for us and His protection of us also don’t depend on our own worthiness. We can’t come to Him and say that He should do things for us because we’re such good people or because we have tried to do what is right or whatever. The fact of the matter is that we aren’t good people. None of us have done what God required. Before God’s throne we have to admit that we are nothing but poor, miserable sinners. And many of us can name specific sins we have committed that are pretty terrible. If we were to have a conversation with God the way this woman did, we too would be forced to admit that we aren’t worthy for God to do anything for us. We too would have to admit that we are nothing and worse than nothing, and that God would be perfectly within His rights to ignore us and to forget about us and allow us to go straight to hell after our deaths.

But God has promised not to do that. And it is His promises that give us the reassurance that He won’t do that. It is His promises in the Holy Scriptures that we hold on to. God keeps His promises. This woman stubbornly held God to His promises after He had cut out from under her any other reason for Him to help her. He wasn’t going to help her because of her nationality, because she was not of Israel. She was a Canaanite, a group of people whom the Jews of those times often referred to as “dogs.” He wasn’t going to help her because of her crying and yelling after Him. He helped her only because His nature was of love and mercy. He helped her because not only the Israelites but all people were among those who are to humbly and thankfully receive God’s gifts. He helped her not because she was worthy of the help but because He is the one who helps people and upholds them. That’s who He is, that’s His identity: the life-giver and life-sustainer, both here and in eternity.

God has not promised to take away all our pains and griefs and troubles in this world. After all, if He did away with everything that’s wrong with this world the easy way, He’d do away with us sinners too. He has not promised that we will always feel very good or that we will always have the greatest feelings of joy and peace. But He has promised to take away the guilt of our sins and to give us eternal life. In eternal life we will have no more problems, troubles, and fears. In eternal life every tear will be wiped away from our eyes. In this life we may experience times that feel an awful lot like hell to us. Sometimes those hells are of our own making, whether because we have refused God’s Law and done what we ought not, or whether we have refused the Gospel, disobeyed the First Commandment, and imprisoned ourselves in a nightmare of guilt and self-blame. But we have His promise that this too shall pass. And we believe His promise, we have faith in His promise, not because we see Him working, not because we feel Him working, but because He is the one who gave us this promise. Despite everything we might see and feel, He is still there watching out for us and providing us with daily bread, and more importantly with the forgiveness of sins, eternal life and salvation. Even we dogs, we poor miserable sinners, get to eat the crumbs which fall from the master’s table. And these “crumbs” are nothing less than the body and blood of Jesus Christ Himself. These “crumbs” grant nothing less than eternal life and salvation to those who receive them. We don’t deserve it, but God has given us to participate in the eternal feast of victory which has no end. God may not always seem to be gracious to us if we only use our five senses. But to the eyes of faith, which see the promises of His Word and the body and blood of His Supper for what they are, the richest blessings imaginable are ours. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +