60 http://www.htlcms.org en-us The weekly preaching of Pr. William M. Cwirla of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hacienda Heights, CA. "We preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified for the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation of all." Pr. William M. Cwirla Holy Trinity Lutheran Church webmaster@htlcms.org clean revcwirla Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:43:40 +0000
Now the temptation in today’s Gospel reading from Luke would be to label this “the cost of discipleship.” Hardly encouraging words! Jesus is talking about hating, yes hating, one’s own family - father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters. Wow! Just when you think that Christians are supposed to be focused on the family, Jesus comes along and says you have to hate your family in order to follow Him. This is definitely one of those passages that the atheist types love to parade around to show how crazy religion, and specifically Christianity, can be. On the one hand you’re supposed to love your enemies, and then on the other hand, you have to hate your family. On the one hand you are commanded to honor father and mother, and then on the other hand, you are told you must hate father and mother along with the rest of clan.

And if that’s not bad enough, it gets even worse. Not only your family, but also your own life. The life God gave you in the first place, the life we cling to with all our, well - life, Jesus now wants you to renounce and even hate in order to be His disciples. It’s a wonder Jesus had any disciples left at all after this. He puts it as bluntly as possible. “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” While crucifixions have fallen from favor as cruel and unusual punishment, the metaphor still holds quite nicely. Crosses kill. They’re inevitably fatal. This isn’t some sort of superficial flesh wound of self-mortification Jesus is talking about here, like giving up chocolate or bacon or cheese for Lent. This is plain as day dropping dead to your entire life - your family, your friends, your health, wealth, loves, and everything you can’t possibly live without. “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

We’re not talking inconvenience here. We’re talking dropping dead. We’re not talking about enduring a random insult or having one’s civil rights taken away or having the family disinherit you because you are a Christian. Well, maybe the last part. Jesus is talking about losing your life, everything you are, everything you have, your entire life support system, in order to save your life.

And to drive the point home, He fires off a couple of rhetorical parables about counting the cost. Who among you, desiring to build a tower, or say, a home in the hills, doesn’t count the cost to make sure he has enough to complete the project? And you know the embarrassment when the foundation is laid, the walls are half built and the project comes to a grinding halt due to lack of funds. Karen and I rode our bicycles past such a house in St. Louis when we were living there. Nothing grinds a building project to a halt better or faster than a divorce. Just as the McCourts.

Or, what king goes out to encounter another king in war without first calculating whether his ten thousand troops can stand up to his enemy’s twenty thousand? And if not, then he sends a peace delegation post haste. It’s all pretty much common sense. And so in the same way, in the very words of Jesus, “any one of you who does not renounce all that he has, who does not hate father, mother, husband, wife, children, even his own life, cannot be my disciple.”

Any volunteers?

Remember to whom Jesus is speaking. The crowds. The great hordes of humanity that were following Jesus all over the place, seeking miracles, favors, special dispensations, and other divine favors because Jesus was dishing them out left and right. There were the looky-los and the religiously curious. There were the theology wonks and people trying to trap Jesus in HIs own words. Jesus couldn’t go anywhere without drawing this sort of crowd. But did they have any idea where He was heading?

Therein lies the key. Jesus is heading to Jerusalem, to His cross, to His atoning death as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He has counted the cost. He’s run the numbers in collaboration with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He was going to depart from the right hand of the Father, empty Himself of HIs divine honor and glory, humble Himself under His own Law as the obedient Servant of the Lord, take up His cross and die on it to redeem lost and sinful humanity from sin, death, devil, and the condemnation of the Law. He was going to build His church, laying the foundation by His own death and resurrection. He was going to do battle with Sin, Death, and devil, not with an army of soldiers willing to die for the cause, but entirely on His own. Not 20,000 versus 10,000 but singlehandedly. He had counted the cost, and did not consider it something to be grasped but laid down His life to save the world.

So while everyone else is bugging Jesus for some little favor to make this life a little easier and a little more convenient and a little less painful and stressful, Jesus was taking up the ultimate battle to win our eternal life with God, to restore fallen humanity to the image of God, to bring us up from death to life. He renounced all - family, friends, wealth, power, influence, His whole life. To save us. To save you.

Jesus counted the cost of your salvation, and considered you worth the price of HIs Blood. Not with gold or silver were you purchased and won for God, but with the holy precious Blood and the innocent suffering and death of Jesus, so that you may be God’s own, a child of God, and live under Him in HIs kingdom, and serve Him in His everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness that He gives you as a free gift of His grace.

Here’s the truth: None of us would be disciples of Jesus if we counted the cost. We’d never dig the foundation. We’d never send the troops to battle. We’re dead. Born dead in sin. We can’t free ourselves and no amount of cost accounting and bookkeeping is going to help.

You want to build a tower to God like they tried to do at Babel? Good luck! Our stairways to heaven fall far short of the glory of God and simply become a laughingstock among the religious. You want to do battle with Sin, Death, and devil? You want to deal with the wrath of God under the Law on your own terms? Count the cost, and see if you have enough to justify yourself. You don’t.

Your cross won’t save you. It will kill you. Simply dying doesn’t save you. Dying in Christ is what saves you. Being buried with Christ is what saves you. Being joined to Him through Baptism into His death on His cross saves you. “Hating your life” in this life means letting go of your life as you hold it so that you can receive it as Christ hold it. Renouncing your life means letting go of your control of it recognizing that Christ has better control of it. Hating father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister, does not mean dishonoring them or doing evil to them, or even feeling negatively toward them.

This is not about “hate” the feeling. This is about the two ways of having things - the way of death and the way of life. We can hold things, including our own life, in a death grip, and in the end we will lose everything. Or we can recognize that God in Christ holds these things for us in a way that we cannot, and instead hold everything with an open, dead hand of faith. That’s the way of life- loving the Lord, hearkening to His voice, holding fast to Him in faith. “For He is your life,” as Deuteronomy says.

We die in Christ in order to live. This is what makes us Christians. We die to live. We see the cross of Jesus as an instrument of life, not of death. This is the “salt” that makes us salty, that seasons the world with the savor of Jesus’ death and life. And if we lose that, if we lose the one needful thing, if we lose Jesus’ death and resurrection as the heart and center of what it means to be a disciple, then we are indeed not fit for the soil or the manure pile. And the same holds for the church. A church that doesn’t hold fast to the death and resurrection of Jesus, that focuses on this life, whether family, health, wealth, or whatever, is not worthy of even being tossed on the manure pile for compost. It has lost its saltiness, as much of Christianity in America has, being focused as it is on being comfortable rather than crucified, of saving one’s life rather than losing it, of being a winner rather than a loser.

This is about dying in Jesus in order to live. This is about being crucified with Christ in order to have life to God. This is about the way of life instead of the way of death. Father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, brother, sister - they can’t save your life, they can’t give you life. You can’t save your life. Only Jesus can. Only His death and resurrection can do it.

Count the cost of discipleship, and give thanks and praise to Jesus that because of Him, the cost is paid in full.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/334/20100905235241/audio/lk_14.25-35_05september2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 29 Aug 2010 08:58:48 +0000
In today’s Gospel reading from St. Luke, Jesus is at the home of a prominent Pharisee who invited all his pharisee friends for a Sabbath meal. These were the high powered religious types. Kind of like a table of clergy and professional theologians. “Lawyers” in this reading are not lawyers as we think of them, as in barristers before the court, but experts in the Law of Moses, the Torah. Their job was to study the Torah of Moses and figure out what you were supposed to do to do the works of God.

Don’t think for a moment that this was some casual social gathering. All eyes were fixed on Jesus, watching His every move. Every ear was tuned to Jesus, parsing His every word. In my mind’s eye, I can almost picture Jesus waiting for the opportunity to tweak this stuffy bunch of clergy and theological professors and perhaps thinking, “Man, the tax collectors and sinners are a lot more fun to hang around with than this bunch of losers.” There is nothing worse than a table load of canon lawyers and theology wonks.

Well, it just so happens that some guy with dropsy shows up. Am uninvited crasher at the pharisee’s little dinner party of dignitaries. How convenient, if not mildly unappetizing. You’re just getting the first coarse of dinner going and some guy with a bloated gut wanders in and stands in front of Jesus. Couldn’t he at least have made an appointment or something?

This is what teachers call a teachable moment, and Jesus, ever the Master Teacher, seizes it. “So what do you think? Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” There’s a stumper for you. The Sabbath law said no work. The Pharisees specified 32 different kinds of work you couldn’t do on the Sabbath. I think this is a testimony to the inherent sinfulness of man, that God can make a commandment that says “Don’t work” and we want God to be more specific. “What do you mean by work?”

Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Great question. Only God can heal, right? God is the source of all healing. And He’s the source of the Sabbath and the Sabbath commandment. So what’s the answer? “They remained silent,” Luke says. Of course they did! This is what legalism, reliance on the Law to please God and earn His favor will do to you. It will paralyze you. Either way, you’re going to break some kind of law. If you keep the Sabbath, you’ll fail to love your neighbor, if you can help him. If you heal your neighbor, you’ve broken the Sabbath. This precisely where the Law leaves us. Painted in a corner. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.

And this is precisely the sort of situation where Luther, seeing Christ as freedom from the Law says, “Sin boldly, and trust Christ even more boldly.”

And then Jesus does it. He gives them God’s answer. He heals the man on the Sabbath, because that’s what God does. And He chides the religious types for their legalisms. Wouldn’t you pull out a son or an ox from a well on the Sabbath? Would they? I’m not so sure they would! They could not respond; they were silent.

It’s like the parable Jesus told of the man who fell among the thieves. The priest and the Levite who saw the man lying in the ditch could not help him. They were bound by the Law. Only the Samaritan was free to be neighbor. Only one who is free from the Law can answer Jesus’ question with a confident “yes, it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath” But you can say that only as you are free. Jesus is free. He comes to bring freedom and life. He is the Sabbath fulfilled, and for that sick man, He is the epitome of the Sabbath. Rest from illness, rest from sin, rest from death. Rest that only God in the Flesh can give.

Now Jesus has the table exactly where He wants them. Now they’re really watching this Sabbath breaker who has the power of God to heal diseases with a word and a touch. He points out how the guests all jockey for positions of honor at the table, to the right and the left of the host. And He says, “When you are invited, don’t take the honored seats lest you be embarrassed. It would be like taking the seats of honor at a wedding reception when you’re not in the wedding party and being told that your table is over in the corner next to the cake. Take your place among the least, so that when the host comes you’ll be honored when he says, “Friend, come up to a better place.”

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Now if you think all that Jesus has in mind is the seating arrangements at the next dinner party you’re invited to, think again. He has in mind first of all His own work. Though He was the Son of God, seated at the right hand of the Father, the place of highest honor, He left that seat to take on human flesh and become a servant. He left the highest place to take up the lowest seat in the house, a cross and a grave. It doesn’t get any lower than that. He humbled Himself to death for our sakes. And from that place of humility, the Father highly exalted Him and seated Him in our humanity at His right hand. And in Him, we are seated there too.

Recognizing that and believing that, we don’t presume the honored place at His table either. We don’t waltz in to the Lord’s Supper as though we’ve earned the right to be there and God should be honored that we bothered to show up. No, we take the lowest place with the least, the lost, the lowly, the dead. We say, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” We come as chief of sinners seeking mercy, humbled by the Law that reminds us there is no good in us. And Christ says to us, “Friend, I forgive you. Come up to a higher place. Sit with me at my table.

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.” Boast in your goodness, and the Law will put you in your place. Credential yourself with all the good you’ve done, and you will be revealed as a gate crasher at the Lord’s wedding party. Take your place with the losers of the religious world, with sinners, and you will be exalted. All you need to bring to the Lord’s table is your confession and a plea for mercy, and you will hear “Friend, come up to a higher place.”

Then Jesus turns to His host, whose nice little Sabbath dinner party now lay in shambles at the feet of Jesus, and He notes all the dignitaries. “When you give a dinner party, don’t invite your rich friends and relatives lest they do the same and repay you. But instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, that man with dropsy who crashed your party, all those types you avoid, invite them, and you will be blessed precisely because they can’t repay you. Your reward comes in the resurrection.”

And again, Jesus isn’t talking so much about whom to invite to your next birthday party as He is talking about the party He is throwing, the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end. He isn’t inviting people who can repay Him. Not at all. He’s inviting empty-handed, broken beggars, the likes of you and me in our sinfulness. We can’t repay the Lord for what He has done for us. Nothing we can do in this life, no offering, no prayer, no dedication, no amount of purpose-driven living can repay Jesus for His service to us, His sacrifice, His saving us. We come as as the poor, the lame, the blind. That’s what we are under God’s Law. Impoverished of anything remotely called righteousness before God. Crippled to the holiness God demands of us. Blind to Him.

Yes in our brokenness and poverty, we are invited guests, welcomed to a feast of salvation that literally has no end. Why does Jesus do it? Why bother with a table full of losers? Well, if you’re looking for spiritual winners in this world, you won’t find any because there are none. Without God’s mercy in Jesus, without Jesus’ death on the cross, without the forgiveness of sins that comes in His name, there would be no one at the wedding feast of the Lamb save the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Oh, and a bunch of angels.

Jesus’ reward, the joy that was set before Him, is the resurrection of the righteous. The joy of a resurrected humanity declared righteous by what He has done. You, standing before the Father, clothed in the righteousness of the Son, raised from death to life - that’s why Jesus suffered, died, and rose again. So that you would have a place at His table.

So as you take that place today, as one of His baptized believers, don’t think of yourself as a winner, as one deserving to be there. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Humble yourselves, and He will lift you up.



In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/333/20100905234249/audio/lk_14.1-14_29august2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 22 Aug 2010 14:14:40 +0000

In Nomine Iesu

So why do you come to worship? What do you expect from worship? Worship today means different things to different people. For some it’s inspiration. For some, instruction. An opportunity to pray, to praise, to give thanks. For some it’s a fact; for others it’s a feeling. Some people expect to feel closer to God. Some expect God to speak directly to them in some manner. But what about you? Why do you come here to worship? And what do you expect to find?

The writer of the book of Hebrews tackles the worship question in this morning’s reading. Hebrews is probably a sermon put down in written form. Some believe it was written by the apostle Paul, which is why it’s parked next to Paul’s letters in the canon. Some believe it was Apollos. The style is definitely preaching with a big dose of teaching. And the main point addressed in the book of Hebrews is people falling away from worship. People forsaking the Word and the Supper and some even returning to the synagogue and the temple, which still appears to be in operation.

They were feeling pressure apparently. Things weren’t going well for Christians. In fact, it was easier to be Jewish and return to the temple. Doubts were setting in. Perhaps Jesus wasn’t the one they were waiting for. Some got discouraged. They stopped assembling together for worship. Some were following strange and esoteric teachings about angels and other things.

Can you imagine what it would be like if Christianity were illegal? I’m not talking here about putting crosses in the public square or ten commandments on the wall of the courthouse. I’m talking about making it illegal for Christians to congregate, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, to own Bibles, to baptize their children, to hear the Word of God preached to them. Imagine what it would be like if someone were to stop you on the way to church and interrogate you as to what you were doing and where you were going. Imagine, in this time of economic downturn, that it was perfectly permissible to discriminate against Christians so that Christians were never hired or others were favored over them. Imagine losing your job because you were identified as a Christian.

Do you think there would be more or fewer people here this morning under those conditions? Would you be here this morning under those conditions? Would I?

The sermon to the Hebrews was written in that kind of climate. And the preacher/author, whoever he was, has a lot to say about Christ, and how He is superior in every way to Moses - having a superior priesthood, offering a superior sacrifice, bringing a superior covenant. In other words, if you abandon Christ and go back to Moses, you are going from the greater back to the lesser. You are going literally downhill and in the wrong direction.

He holds out the great men and women of faith in the OT, those who lost their lives believing in the Promise of God but never in this life receiving what was promised. He compares the life of faith to long distance relay race, where the runners who have gone ahead of us are on the sidelines cheering us on and Jesus is at the finish line with the victor’s crown ready to put it on our heads. And the preacher of Hebrews says, “Keep your eyes focused on Jesus - the author and perfector of your faith, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame.

He encourages us to run the race, not looking backward at our past, our sideways, comparing ourselves to our fellow runners (which is a sure way to trip over your own two running feet), but to look to Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus and not get distracted by anything else. He reminds them that they have not yet suffered to the point of shedding their blood, and all the suffering and inconveniences they’ve experienced up to now is nothing else that the discipline of a loving Father in heaven who loves His children enough to give them a swat on the rear end once and a while.

Now, of course, we don’t like that, and especially that inner brat called the “Old Adam” hates the notion that God is not our Permissive Parent in heaven but our Father in heaven who disciplines the children He loves. You’re His children, and like all fathers, He protects you from yourself, sometimes with a firm hand that seems painful at the time, but in the end turns out to be a blessing.

He warns his hearers, and us in our overhearing, against complacency, bitterness, immorality and everything that distracts, deflects, and otherwise messes up our running the race set before us. And then he gets to worship and hits a major high note because Christian worship is utterly unique in the world of religion. In all other religions, you reach up to your god, whether corporately or individually, and you offer your god stuff so he/she/it will do you favors in return. But in Christian worship, God comes to you in Christ. Eternity and time coalesce; heaven and earth join together, and the Father through the Son in the Spirit bless us.

For those who were tempted to go back to Moses and the worship of the synagogue and the temple, the preacher reminds them of what Mt. Sinai was like. In a word, scary. Frightening. Untouchable, ablaze with fire, trumpet, and voice from God that made everyone hold their ears and beg that God be silent. No one but Moses was permitted on that mountain. Even an animal that set foot on the mountain was stoned to death.

Do you want that kind of worship? I don’t. That’s ultimately the worship of the Law, you realize. The Law says do this and don’t do that. Do this and you’ll life; don’t do this and you’ll die. That’s the worship of commandments and principles and all the stuff that God demands from you and you as a sinner can’t deliver. Even Moses, who was covered with a promise that he wouldn’t be harmed, trembled in fear.

One of the problems we face today is that people no longer tremble with fear at the thought of coming into the presence of God. When bad things happen - floods, fires, earthquakes, storms - we no longer consider them acts of God but simply acts of nature. Mother Nature, perhaps. It’s interesting don’t you think, that we’d rather blame Mother than Father? We’ll let the psychologists unpack that one. My point is that we leave God out of the picture, and if we have any notion of God at all, it’s the kind of God at whose house you can put your feet up on the furniture.

The Law basically says that if you, a sinner, dare to come into the presence of God, who is holy beyond holy, you will be toast. So don’t you dare come near with your commandment keeping, or you’ll wind up like one of the goats who stuck his foot on Sinai.

But that’s not the mountain you, as a baptized believer, have come to. You have come not to Sinai, the mountain burning with God’s wrath, but to Zion, to God’s city, to the heavenly Jerusalem. Not the disputed piece of real estate over there in what is called “Israel” today. But Jerusalem that comes down “from above,” from heaven, the city of which God is the architect and builder. So when you,, baptized believer in Jesus, come to worship, you’re not coming to a bunch of commandments and to God’s wrath, but to God’s city where you yourself are one of its free citizens.

You come to angels, countless angels in festal gathering, which means they’re having a party. Just as we say in the liturgy, “with angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven.” You know, it can get discouraging when attendance is down, but think of the fact that in worship what you see is not all that you get. In fact, it’s with the unseen where the action is. The angels worship with us. Wouldn’t you like to hear their liturgy? You will one day. And for now, they hear you.

You’ve come to the assembly of the first-born, the congregation of the elect whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life, and your name is among them. You are coming to God, who is the judge of all, not to be judged guilty under the Law, but to be judged “not guilty,” “innocent,” perfect, blameless, and even holy not because of what you have done but because of what Jesus has done for you.

You have come to the spirits of the justified, the righteous made perfect. Those are all the believers who have died ahead of us and are now “with the Lord.” In some way, and I have no idea how, they are with us. Where Christ is, there His saints are, for they are saints only in Him. That means that the closest we can be to those who have gone before us, including our own loved ones, is in worship, in the liturgy, in the gathering where Christ comes to us and the Spirit gather us as one body around Christ.

You have come to Jesus. Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, in which God forgives and forgets. He forgives our iniquities and He remembers our sins no more. Moses came with books and a bookkeeping spreadsheet - the Ten Commandments. That’s how you keep book on your sin. Jesus came with no commandments. Yes, He preached the commandments to their sheer undoability. And then He died under the same Law, shedding the blood that the Law requires. And you have come to that sprinkled Blood, the blood of Jesus that cleanses you from all sin, the blood shed on the cross for the sin of the world, the Blood of the covenant poured out for you into the chalice of the Lord’s Supper as wine to gladden your hearts.

And when you look at worship that way, not as something we do for God but something God in Christ does for us - His city, His righteousness, His covenant, His blood - then you don’t need to look for reasons to worship. You already have them.

In the Name of Jesus,
Amen
]]> http://www.htlcms.org/332/20100905234241/audio/lk_13.22-30_22august2010%20.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 08 Aug 2010 09:33:41 +0000
That would appear to run counter to the prevailing opinion here in southern California. Life seems to be defined by food and clothing, coupled with endless entertainment and an almost insatiable desire for electronic gadgets. Life is more than food? You wouldn’t know it by our grand obsessions with calories, fat grams, and carbs. The body more than clothing? Well, shoes too. You have to have the right shoes, don’t you?

We need clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home. Those are primary needs, in fact, we’re not going to worry about anything else until those are taken care of. And Jesus comes to us this morning and says, “Don’t worry. Don’t be anxious about your life, or even the most basic of your needs. Your Father in heaven has you covered. Don’t worry.”

Don’t worry? Has Jesus looked at the economy lately? My retirement fund? 
The unemployment statistics? The gross domestic product? Health care? Come on, who is alive and aware these days and not worried about something having to do with the means to support this body and life? Don’t be anxious? Get real!

But here is the reality: Anxiety is a liturgy. It’s the worship we offer our false gods when they’ve failed to deliver on the goods. When we realize that our religious transactions aren’t working and we are left without an apparent safety net under us, the anxiety mounts and grows. Sleepless night, churning stomachs, headaches, heart palpitations, stress, the list goes on. Anxiety is like a cancer of the soul, consuming us from the inside, paralyzing us, disordering our lives, our eating, our drinking, our priorities. Anxiety eats away at us like rust, corroding our souls until we are nothing be a shell.

Don’t be anxious, Jesus says. He knows what He’s talking about. He’s the Lord of creation. He’s the One who died and rose again. And He’s intimately familiar with our anxieties. He worked the family trade. He knew the uncertainties of a family business. He came to bear the sin of the world on His shoulders. He was the “Man of Sorrows,” intimately acquainted with our suffering. Do you imagine that didn’t involve some potential anxiety?

Jesus knew His disciples’ hearts and He knows our own. He knew that He had called them away from their fishing boats and tax collectors office. And there were probably days when they wondered aloud, “What are we going to eat today? How will we afford clothing when ours wears out?” They were following someone who had no place to lay His head, who didn’t promise them wealth and prosperity like the prosperity preachers you hear today. Jesus never promised them any of that. Instead He promised them hardship and persecutions in this life and eternal life in a kingdom that has no end.

Consider the ravens, Jesus says to His anxious disciples. Look at the birds. They neither sow nor reap nor store in barns, and yet God feeds them. Yes, they spend the bulk of their day looking for food. And yes, they work their feathered tails off building nests. But in the end, they can only play the hand they are dealt. They can’t rearrange their environment the way we can. They are completely dependent on their environment. “And yet God feeds them.” The hidden hand of God cares even for the birds of the air. And if He cares about the birds, don’t you think He cares about you? You are worth so much more that a bird.

Consider the lilly and all their beauty. They don’t weave or spin or shop at Nordstroms, yet even Solomon in all his over the top bling wasn’t decked out like them. And aren’t you worth more than plants, which are here today and gone tomorrow?

Does anxiety put daily bread on the table? Not a crumb. Does anxiety put clothes on your children? Not a stitch. Does anxiety pay the mortgage or the rent? Not a dime. Does anxiety add a single hour to your life? No. And it will make the hours you have most miserable.

Jesus calls His anxiety-ridden disciples “little faith ones.” Little faith is better than no faith, I suppose, but it’s still not the way of faith to be anxious over things. Faith is trust, trust that your Father in heaven knows what you need even before you ask. Trust that you value to God is so much greater than the birds and the flowers.

Our other readings this morning speak about faith as trust. There is Abram, 99 years old and his wife nearly as old, childless, and the only heir to his fortune is some relative named Eliezer of Damascus. And the Lord says to childless Abram, “Look up in the sky and take a census of the stars. Count them, if you can. Here’s my promise to you, Abram. So shall your offspring be. You will have descendant as numerous as the stars in the sky even though you don’t even have a kid at this moment.

Abram believed the Lord. He trusted. He took the Lord at His Word, as improbable and unlike as that Word was. He trusted the Promise that against all odds, against all that he knew of reproductive biology, against all common sense, he would be the father of many, that through his offspring, all nations of the world would be blessed. He believed, that is, he trusted. And God counted this faith of Abram as righteousness.

This is a key verse in the new testament. It is a key and central verse with the apostle Paul, that a sinner stands justified before God by grace through faith, and that faith, trust in the promise, is counted as righteousness before God. The book of Hebrews devotes an entire chapter to faith. It begins with a definition: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is trust in a promise without having the thing in your hand. It’s being so sure of the outcome, even before it happens, that you bank your entire life on it. You orient yourself around it.

Faith is much like a little kid who is promised a candy bar the next time they go to the store. He waits for it, expects it, can’t wait to go to the store and get it. And finally, the store trip comes, and the little guy can’t wait for the candy aisle. When they get to it, he runs and grabs his favorite one in complete confidence. And if there is the slightest piece of parental hesitation, he’ll say with a quivering lower lip, “But you promised.”

Hebrews goes on to list a kind of hall of fame of faith - Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and others who trust God, who took Him at His Word and whose lives were oriented around the Promise. They died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar. They knew there was a better country awaiting them, a better city built by God, and they oriented their entire lives around this promise. And yes, the world thought them crazy and deluded and deranged, but God is not ashamed to be called their God.

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” That’s the Gospel good news today that speaks to your anxieties and fears. Your Father’s good pleasure is to give you the kingdom, and He works everything together for you to receive the kingdom. You have it all, thanks to Jesus. His death and life has purchased what you cannot afford on your own. LIfe with God. You have His Word on it. He clothes you in Baptism; He feeds you in HIs Supper. You have the kingdom. You trust Him with the big stuff. Why not also trust Him with the little things of this life?

This doesn’t mean we don’t work and plan and store in this life. But we hold things loosely, lightly, with a dead hand of faith. Give freely. Take care of the poor. Do your banking where your life is. Store up treasures in heaven, eternal treasures that don’t corrode or decay, that can’t be stolen, that moths can eat, that won’t wear out like all the things we have in this life. Seek first the kingdom and God’s righteousness, trusting that your Father in heaven who has saved you by the blood of His Son, knows what you need.

In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul speaks of anxiety and prayer. He wrote to the Philippians from jail. They had just sent him a generous gift of support, and he was writing to thank and encourage them. If anyone had reason to be anxious, it was Paul. His liberty had been taken from him, his work hindered, he had no guaranteed means of support. And he writes this:

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

You have the kingdom. The Father has promised it; the Son has won it; the Spirit delivers it. Don’t be anxious about your life. The Lord has you covered.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/331/20100818173742/audio/lk_12.22-34_08august2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 01 Aug 2010 07:57:58 +0000 It’s all about money this morning. And stuff. And how you can’t take it with you, and how foolish it is to try. And how you’ll never enjoy whatever riches you have if you make a religion out of wealth and an idol out of riches.

When it comes to wealth, the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, is an expert. Most people think he’s Solomon, the Son of David, the richest king in the history of Israel. He had it all. To put it in modern terms - cars, houses, women, personal chefs, a wine cellar, horses, gardens. You name it. He was the middle eastern version of excess. Over the top consumption.

And now he’s writing to us to tell us what it’s like. His report from the lap of luxury? Vanity. Emptiness. Nothing. Chasing after wind. Boxing the air. You work and work and work and some fool enjoys all the benefits. Or the economic bubble bursts. Or your paper profits evaporate. And all that you’ve worked so hard for, all that you planned to have is gone. Like the wind. Vanity. Emptiness.

We don’t like to hear that. That’s why prosperity preachers are so popular. That’s how Joel Osteen can pack them in like crazy. He promises the abundant life to those who do it his way. God is going to give you in abundance, whatever you want, and more, pressed own, overflowing. Cars, clothes, houses. Ask and it will be given you. I wonder if he ever read this morning’s Gospel, that a man’s life “does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” When Jesus promises life in abundance, He doesn’t mean an abundance of stuff. In fact, the parable of the four kinds of soil tells us that an abundance of stuff can get in the way of life in abundance, the cares and riches of this world choking out life-giving Word.

We learn early in life to idolize our money. It comes with the first allowance and all the rules about not spending it all in one place, etc. We learn the power in money as stored wealth, how we don’t have to build bigger barns like the rich man in today’s parable, but we can simply gather our money, put it in the bank or stuff it in the mattress, or if you don’t want to take the government’s word on currency, buy some gold and bury it somewhere. The beauty of money is that you can store your wealth, and unlike grain, it won’t get moldy. It may not earn much interest these days, but at least it won’t rot, though the deficit will certain devalue it.

We learn early in life to envy the kids with more money, the latest video games, the latest X-box or whatever is the thing to have. We grow up coveting even more, there seems to be no end to the things we want, and we mistake the abundant life for an abundance of stuff, a hefty portfolio, bigger houses, faster cars, a celebrity lifestyle. The cost is great. Just consider the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Solomon tried to warn us. There is nothing there there. Do we listen?
Two brothers came to Jesus. They were fighting over an inheritance and wanted Jesus to serve as mediator. Jesus refuses to get involved. “Man, who made me judge or arbitrator over you?” Think of this from what you know. Jesus had come to die and rise, and here were two brothers bickering over their share of their folks’ inheritance. You’d think they know better. How many families have been torn apart by inheritance disputes, with everyone demanding their fair share?

Jesus uses the incident as a warning to His disciples. Watch out! Be on guard against all covetousness. That seemingly polite almost secret sin of the heart unbuckled from God. The heart is like velcro and will stick to anything. St. Paul calls covetousness “idolatry,” because idols are made in the heart. Luther said that the sinful human heart is a veritable idol factory, cranking out one idol after another. An idol is whatever you bow down and worship in your heart. Whatever you fear, love, and trust above all things. It usually isn’t in God we trust but in gold we trust. And that love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. We will do most anything for money.

Jesus goes on to tell a parable of a rich man who had an unusual bumper crop on year. “The land of a rich man produced plentifully.” Notice that it’s the land. Like most riches, the man had little to do with it. It was just plain dumb luck, being at the right place at the right time. And this excess created a crisis. What to do with it? Where to store it? And so he embarks on an ambitious building program, which so often happens when you fall into unexpected wealth. You get ambitious. Tear down the old barns and build bigger ones to store “my grain and my goods” And then, after he was done building and storing, he could finally retire. Enjoy life. Relax, eat, drink, kick back, have some fun after all this hard work.

One small problem. There was a little blood vessel that was set to pop at about 2 AM, and his life would be over. And all the things he labored over and worried about and planned would wind up in probate court. And then what? It’s a tragedy, played out all too often - a rich man who has no joy in his riches. Or someone planning for a retirement that never comes, a plan cut short by cancer or a heart attack or an accident. As the Preacher of Ecclesiastes says, it’s all vanity, emptiness, nothing. Chasing after the wind.

So then what? What’s the alternative? Is there a better way to live? The answer, of course, if yes. The apostle Paul lays it out for us in the 3rd chapter of Colossians. He basis what he has to say on the fact that in Christ we are already raised and glorified. We died to this life, even before our death. Baptism buried us in Jesus’ death. “If you have been raised with Christ (and you have been raised with Christ), seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. “Seek first the kingdom of God,” Jesus said, “and all these things, the stuff of your life, will be added.” First the kingdom. The things that are above. The eternal things. What you will have forever, thanks to Jesus.

“Set your minds on things that are above and not on things that are on earth.” Again, fix your minds that are renewed in Christ on eternal things, not temporal things. Why? You died. That’s right. You’re already dead to the world, and one of the nice things about being dead to the world is that you have nothing in the world to lose. All that stuff you own that’s piling up in your garage and the attics and closets of your life, is not your life. That’s just your stuff. Your life, your real life, the true you as God created and intended, is hidden with Christ in God. HIdden. You can’t see it. You must be told or you wouldn’t know it.

What does this mean? It means, contrary to what Joel Osteen and the prosperity preachers tell you, that the abundance of your life is not having an abundance of things but being in Christ and receiving the abundance of life that He gives. It means that your life, as you now live it, is not a matter of building bigger barns to store more grain so you can enjoy life in the future, but living by faith in the Son of God who loved you and laid down His life to save you, and who gives you life in an abundance you cannot now even imagine.

It means that we hold our possessions loosely, with a dead, open hand of faith. There is nothing wrong with having stuff. Abraham had stuff. David had stuff. Solomon had lots of stuff, and he wrote to warn us about it too. But stuff can only be held loosely or you won’t enjoy it. Think about it. You buy a brand new car. And it’s all shiny and the finish is perfect. What’s your biggest fear? Someone is going to ram it with a shopping cart in the parking lot and put a ding in that flawless finish. And so you park it way off in a lonely corner somewhere. And you size up the neighbors and try not to park it next to junkie looking cars. Like mine, for instance. No one wants to park their late model beauty next to me. I don’t even wash my car. That’s why it’s better to buy your cars pre-dinged. You don’t care, and you’re free to enjoy driving the thing. And if a piece of freeway junk hits it, so what?

You do not know the day or the hour your life in this life will end. And what’s the point wasting it worrying over your stuff like that foolish rich guy agonizing over his barns when we has less than twelve hours to live? That’s where idolatry will get you. Your idols will wind up consuming you, robbing you of every last ounce of joy that the gifts of God can bring you. But holding them with the dead hand of faith, trusting that even if we lose everything, we’ve lost noting, there is the freedom to enjoy and to give away and to employ. One church father remarked of that rich man in the parable, “There was plenty of storage space for his surplus grain in the empty mouths of the poor.”

Solomon in all his wisdom said this: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in his toil. This also is from the hand of God, for apart from Him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” Ah. There’s the secret. Apart from God who can have enjoyment? Without God at the center, without Jesus in the middle redeeming all things, reconciling all things, making all things new, there is no lasting enjoyment. Just a race against decay, a futile running after the wind, an emptiness that can’t be filled no matter how many ways you indulge yourself.

That’s no way to live, my friends. And it’s no way to have a life. But you are baptized into Christ who holds your life in a way that you cannot. And when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

Until then, enjoy your work, enjoy your food, enjoy your drink. That is a gift from God. As the Hebrew toast goes: L’chaim. To life in Jesus. Abundant, eternal life.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/330/20100803043359/audio/lk_12.13-21_01august2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:03:06 +0000
Prayer is one of those least common denominator religious activity. Whenever people get religious, prayer is involved. People who are “spiritual without being religious” usually pray, or at least meditate, or thing “God-ward” thoughts.

Prayer is also one of the more misunderstood religious activities. LIke any other bit of religion, prayer can become a transaction, a deal, some sort of bargain where we try to extract some favor from God by saying the right words. Kind of like God as vending machine. Put in the right combination of petition, prayer, and praise and out pops your miracle, blessing, or whatever you are seeking from God. Many people have stumbled on this way of thinking. And when God fails to deliver the goods on demand, that marks the end of their religious phase.

Prayer is not a bargain. Nor is it informing God of something He isn’t aware of. “Hey God. Over here. It’s me. I’m sick, in case you haven’t noticed, and wouldn’t mind feeling better. So could you please send some healing my way?” Doesn’t work that way. Jesus told His disciples, “Your Father in heaven knows what you need even before you ask.” Our catechism says the same thing: God’s name is hallowed, His kingdom comes, His will is done without our prayer. So there. Ponder that for a while. God already knows what you need, and promises to give you what is best. Shoot, He even causes the rain and sunshine to fall on the heathen.

So then, why pray? Ah, good question! Why pray when your Father in heaven has it all covered anyway? Well, why bother talking to your earthly father if he’s going to give you the keys to the car anyway? Why talk to your wife if she already knows what you’re going to say? Why talk to your friend who already knows what you’re thinking?

If you stop and think about it, most of our talk is not about getting things out of others. Most of our talk is just talk, chat, saying what’s on our minds and hearts, sharing our secrets, our fears, our hopes, our longings. Most of our conversation is not so much communication as it is communion. And there is the Gospel key to prayer. Prayer is not communicating with God, but communion with God. Holy conversation. Dear children coming to their dear Father in heaven and saying, Abba. Papa. And the Son insisting that the Father listen to us. And the Spirit packaging and delivering our words to the Father.

Jesus prayed. That’s the beginning of our Gospel reading and also the beginning of our prayer. Jesus, the eternal Son in human flesh, prayed. Luke makes a point of it more than the others. If anyone didn’t need to pray, it was Jesus. He knew the mind of God perfectly. He and the Father were one. Why did He need to pray? He was God in the flesh. What did He pray about? Luke doesn’t tell us here, but in other prayers of Jesus, He prays for HIs disciples, for the world, for us. He is our High Priest and intercessor, who prays for us. And because He prays for us, we are able to pray. We pray through Him, through HIs sacrifice, through HIs blood, through HIs death and resurrection.

Jesus taught His disciples to pray. This is the second thing. Prayer is not a natural activity, like eating or breathing. Prayer must be taught the Lord and learned by the disciple. The disciples recognize this. “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” We don’t know what John taught about prayer, and this is the only mention of it. But that doesn’t matter. The One greater than John is speaking.

He gives them words to pray. Father. Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us Lead us not into temptation. You’ll recognize what we call the Lord’s Prayer or the Our Father, at least five of seven petitions. It’s a perfect prayer, embracing all that we need. Daily bread, certainly. Enough for the day, each and every day. But surrounding that God’s name and His kingdom, the Name by which we are claimed and saved, the kingdom that comes by Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus teaches us to pray on the front end for the big stuff, the eternal stuff, the stuff that lasts forever. God’s Name, HIs kingdom, and in the longer version, HIs will.

This has nothing to do with getting favors from God; it has everything to do with His favor for Jesus’ sake. May your name be holy, Father. On our lips and in our lives. God owns us. He has stamped His claim on us in Baptism. We are His children. We bear His Name. And that Name burnishes our lips like the hot coal that touched the lips of Isaiah. He opens our lips that praise might come forth. He claims our lives for HIs own that we might serve Him without fear.

May your kingdom come, Father. Rule us! Be our Lord as you already are. Overrule every competing rule - the devil, the world, and yes, oh yes, my own sinful self that wants to be king. Lord Jesus’ death and resurrection over me. Let the Word be preached and heard. Let faith take hold and love flow. That’s what we’re praying for. Nothing less than the reign of Christ over us. Big stuff. Eternal stuff. Stuff that matters forever. We might call it “spiritual stuff.” You can’t take it to the bank, and it’s not going to pay the rent, but in the end, it’s what we need to see us through death to life.

Yes, it comes “without our prayer,” but in praying we are reminding ourselves from whom it all comes. And when you’re praying that God’s Name be holy and HIs kingdom come, you’re not so much praying to get stuff as you are praying that God would be gracious to you and establish His reign in your life.

On the other side of daily bread is forgiveness and our being guarded against temptation. That’s the agenda for prayer, then, according to Jesus, and He gives a perfect prayer for us to pray, which means we don’t even have to worry about getting the words right, because, let’s face it, sinners that we are, we’d mess up even something as simple as prayer.

Third, Jesus encourages us to pray. He tells a funny parable of a person who has unexpected out of town company and is three loaves short at midnight and so goes and pounds on the door of his neighbor who’s already sound asleep. Outrageous? Of course! It’s over the top. The point of the parable lies in the Greek word anaideion, which gets translated as impudence but I think is better translated with Yiddish word chutzpah. Prayer is an act of sheer chutzpah, like pounding on your neighbor’s door at midnight. And the only reason we get away with this is that our Father is that crazy neighbor who actually listens to our prayers and petitions and doesn’t mind the midnight intrusion. In fact, He delights in it! He thinks it’s great. But then, what parent doesn’t like to hear from their kids?

Fourth, He promises that prayers do not go unanswered. Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened. He doesn’t promise that you will get precisely what you ask for, or find exactly what you seek, or that every door you knock on will be opened. Fathers know to give good gifts to their children. Right gifts. Gifts that will bless and benefit them. He promises the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. And with the Spirit, every good and perfect gift.

I dare say that every petition of the Lord’s prayer is answered fully. His name is hallowed. His kingdom comes. His will is done. He sustains your life with daily bread. You are forgiven, guarded from temptation, delivered from evil. Every single petition of that perfect prayer is fulfilled in your life every single day. Maybe not in ways you might expect, but our expectation fall far short of what our Father in heaven wants to give us.

I started by saying that prayer is the least common denominator religious activity. Religious people pray. I’m going to end by saying don’t look at prayer in a religious way. Don’t think of prayer as something you do to get something from God, but something you do because you believe you already have everything you need and more. Don’t pray to earn God’s favor or to get favors. Pray because you have God’s favor in Jesus. Don’t pray as though you were coming to a king or some powerful political bigshot looking; pray as children coming to their dear Father in heaven. Don’t pray as the religious types do; pray as Jesus, your Savior, has taught you. Short, sweet, to the point.

And remember this. Prayer doesn’t begin with you. It begins with Jesus. His prayer. His words. His sacrificial life and death. His resurrection. Your Baptism into Him that makes you a child of God who dares to knock on the Father’s door at midnight. He has to answer. You’re one of the family.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/329/20100727050608/audio/lk_11.1-13_25july2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:52:03 +0000
That was Martha. Busy, busy, busy beyond imagination. She was all excited over Jesus coming to her house. What an honor! Jesus the great teacher and healer whom everyone was talking about was coming to her house. Her house! Of all the houses in Bethany, Jesus was coming to her house. Wow!

Now you know what happens when you get whipped into this kind of frenzy, don’t you? I’m sure it’s happened to you. You get so wound up in preparations, you get so absorbed in your seven course meal and fancy dessert, you are so obsessed over how clean the bathrooms are and how scrubbed the floor is, that you actually forget about the guest of honor; You’re busy in the kitchen, and your guests are left to fend for themselves in the living room. And all your plans of hospitality turn into a disaster that would make Martha Steward faint away as though dead. Your best intentions work against you, and you wind up missing you on the company of your guest.

Martha was distracted with much serving. It happens. It’s natural to want to impress your guests, and when your guest is the Lord, even more so. Of course, you would want to do the same for Jesus! He’s ...well… Jesus after all! But Martha’s serving turned out to be a distraction to her being with Jesus. While she’s stuck in the kitchen clanging pots and pans, Jesus is sitting in the living room with her sister Mary sitting at His feet, taking in every word.

That’s when the fireworks begin. It’s like a scene straight out of Chef Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen. The pasta water is boiling over, the sauce won’t thicken, the roast is in danger of being overcooked, the vegetables are getting soggy, the temperature in the kitchen is rising, and Martha finally snaps. She slams her spoon down on the counter and storms out of the kitchen. And who does she lash out at? Not her sister! No. Her guest! The one she was totally focused on, the reason for all her preparations. She lashes out at Jesus!

“Don’t you care? Don’t you care, Lord, that my sister has left me to serve all alone? Don’t you care that I’m in the kitchen slaving away over a steaming stove while she sits there doe-eyed at your feet doing nothing? Don’t you care that I’m pulling all the weight around here and she does nothing? How about cutting the chit chat and telling her to get her lazy rear end in the ktichen to help me!”

In a way, this real life episode illustrates the point of the parable of the man in the ditch which comes just before. The Law says “love God and love your neighbor.” And yet, the Law cannot produce this love. If you think you can work up love for God and love for neighbor by your doing, you will wind up as frustrated and angry as Martha was with Jesus and her sister. The very guest she loved and wanted to serve became the object of her anger, which spilled over to her sister. If all we had to work with was divine rules and regulations, whether ten commandments or twelve biblical principles or 613 dos and donts of the pharisees, if all we have is the Law, we will wind up hating God and hating our neighbor.

Martha’s problem was not her service, but her lack of freedom. She wanted to please Jesus. She wanted to impress Him with her house and a nice dinner. She wanted to serve Him with her very best. And yet, it all failed. She wound up yelling at Jesus and angry at her sister. She was occupied with many things, when one thing was needful. She was busy preparing a seven course dinner that would have earned her four stars in the Michelin guide, but Jesus would have been content with carryout.

It was not Martha’s service that Jesus wanted. It was Martha. Jesus came not to be served but to serve. He came to give, not to get. He came not to be the guest, but to be the host, to lay down His life as a sacrifice for sinful humanity, to offer Himself up for the life of the world, to be the Bread of Life and wine from heaven to bring refreshment, forgiveness, life, and salvation to all. As far as Jesus was concerned, Martha’s house could have been a wreck, she could have laid out cold cuts and sandwich bread, she could have simply offered a loaf of bread and a dried fish. What mattered most to Jesus was that she have communion with Him, that she hear His word.

Jesus doesn’t need our service. He’s the Lord. He has heaven and earth at His beck and call. What can we give God that He does not already have? What can we do for God that He has not already done? Martha is the way of the Law; Mary is the way of the Gospel. Martha is about works, busyness, ultimately frustration; Mary is about faith and freedom, trust in Jesus and freedom to sit at His feet and take in His Word. Martha seeks to be justified by her works of service, and in the end winds up frustrated and angry. Mary is justified by grace through faith for Jesus’ sake. She does nothing but be given to; Jesus does everything. He is the one needful thing, for her and for you. You need nothing else but Jesus and His Word.

And yet. Don’t we often find ourselves in Martha’s shoes? Busy with so many things that we have no time fto rest in Jesus? So busy we have no time to hear His Word, to receive His body and blood. Distracted by this, that, and the other thing. Thinking that we must do in order to please God. But if we are to please God at all, there must first be faith. And faith comes by hearing, sitting with Mary at Jesus’ feet and being given to.

We need to repent of our busyness. We’ve let many things get ahead of the one important thing. We’ve let many things get between us and Jesus. The symptoms are all there. Frustration, anger, snapping at each other, complaining, griping, pointing the finger, accusing. Tell them to get in the kitchen with me and help. When you sense that in yourself, read the symptoms of busyness and hear the words of Jesus, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Just be quiet for a while and listen. I know it’s hard to do, because we are tuned to being busy. The way of our world is Martha, not Mary. Sit and listen. Jesus is here to give to you. He wants to spend time with you. There’s plenty of opportunity to serve, but what good is our service if it simply burns us out on the Lord and on each other?

I had an interesting Sunday a couple of Sundays ago when I was in Nashville. Our group had arrived late. We were staying in a hotel at the airport. We were getting our rental vehicle the next morning. We’d been up very late the night before. Now mind you, we had just come from a youth conference in Logan, where our youth were. Two divine services and worship three times a day. So here we were on Sunday between conferences. We decided to sleep in as long as possible and then shuttle over to Vanderbilt University, the site of our second conference. Then we went out to brunch.

At brunch, I realized we had just enacted the unbelievers version of Sunday. We slept in and then we went out to brunch with friends. I said to everyone, “I get it! Now I know why it’s hard to sell people on the idea of coming to church on Sunday when you could sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast, read the paper, watch TV, and then go and hang with friends. It’s terribly easy to let most anything get between you and Jesus, whether our work or our play.

We live most of our lives under the Law. We have duties to execute, obligations to fulfill, expectations to meet, quotas, goals, you name it. We are busy people, running from one thing to the next at freeway speeds, rarely taking the time to sit still. We even make our play into work. They say that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. This is true. If we are defined solely by our work, we become bored and boring. The story of Mary and Martha would remind us that all work and play and no worship will burn us out in our own busyness, chasing after the wind, as Ecclesiastes says, until we burn out like a candle that’s run out of wick.

You are here this morning to receive. God brought you here. Yes, you drove yourself or were driven by someone. But the Spirit gathered you and drew you to the feet of Jesus. To be given to. To worship is to sit with Mary, to rest in Jesus, to have His Word have its way with you, to participate in His rest. You sometimes hear that worship is work, the “work of the people.” No. Worship is rest. Sabbath. To rest in Jesus and His Word, HIs saving death, HIs life, His glory. It’s a busy world out there. But there is rest and refreshment in Jesus, and in Him strength to do what your calling demands, not in bitterness but in joy, not to please God but in thanksgiving that you are pleasing to God.

There are many things to occupy you; one thing is needful, necessary, indispensable. Be given to, my friends. Be given to.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/328/20100719054805/audio/lk_10.38-42_18july2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:37:58 +0000
A lawyer, an expert in the Torah, came up to Jesus in order to test Him. That was his first mistake. Test Jesus, and you yourself will be tested. He will shatter your presuppositions and topple your notions. This lawyer was an expert in biblical principles, in making the law doable, practical, relevant to today’s living. He believed that with the right combination of knowledge and discipline, one could keep the law of God. And so testing Jesus he asks him the key question: What shall I do to inherit eternal life? That’s the question on the table this morning with the parable of the man who fell among the thieves and the kind Samaritan who rescued him.

It’s an important question, perhaps the most important question one could ask. What must I do to inherit salvation? What must I do to be saved? You might notice that there is already something wrong with the question. What does one do to inherit? Nothing. To inherit, you must be in the good graces of someone who dies and they will you the inheritance. It is by grace, gratis, a gift.

This was the fundamental error of the synagogue at the time of Jesus. The Pharisees, who controlled the synagogue saw the Torah as a Torah of works, works that need to be done to accomplish the righteousness of God. In other words, do these 613 or so things and you’re in. You have eternal life with God. But then, it’s not an inheritance but wages earned. Something you do to deserve it, not something God does.

That’s the way it is, I’m afraid. The gospel, good news, gift of God always deteriorates and degenerates into a religion of works. This is what prompted the Reformation in the first place. The good news of sins forgiven for Christ’s sake through faith and degenerated into a religion of good works aimed at meriting God’s grace.

Jesus never answers the question, but instead poses one in return. What does the Torah say? You’re an expert in it, how do you read it? Now the tables are turned, as they always are with Jesus. Now the lawyer is the one on the stand, and Jesus is running the questions. So what does the Torah say: Love God, love your neighbor. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus doesn’t argue with him. “Bravo. Go to the head of the class. You have answered correctly. Bang on. Now, go and do this, and you will live.” Try it for a few days and see how it works out for you. Love God with everything that you are, everything that you have, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. You’ve heard of “taking care of number one,” meaning taking care of myself. Fine. Now treat your neighbor as number one and take care of him or her, whomever he or she may be. Try it and see how it goes for you the rest of today. Then Monday. Then Tuesday and on through the week. How long do you think you could go? Could you even make it out of here in church in this morning?

The lawyer realizes that he’s been nailed and so tries to wriggle out of it by justifying himself. “Who then is my neighbor?” The self-justifying question, the question that seeks to get the questioner off the hook. We ask it too. What’s the least I have to do to make the grade? How often do I have to go to church? To communion? Who is this neighbor whom I am to love as myself? Is he like me? Will I like him?

To the self-justifying question, Jesus tells a parable of a man who fell among thieves on the well traveled road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The pilgrim road was a popular hangout for bands of thieves, who had robbed and beaten this poor man to near death and left him to die in the ditch. Three men came by him that day. Three men had opportunity to be neighbor to the man in the ditch.

The first was a priest returning home from his priestly duties in the temple in Jerusalem. He sees the crumpled shadow of the man lying in the ditch but quickly moves to the other ditch to avoid even a hint of contact. He had to remain pure to do his priestly work. If the man were dead, the priest would have to undergo a lengthy and costly process of purification.

The second was a Levite, a priest’s assistant, going in the same direction. He comes a bit closer and takes a look, but like the priest walks around at a safe distance. The law is the same for him as well. The same law that said love your neighbor also demanded ritual purity of priest and Levite. So what were they to do? What would you have done?

What do you do when the Law of God paints you into a corner and then demands that you act? What do you do when you must break a commandment to fulfill the law? There are two answers here: Legalism and Liberty. Legalism says you must keep the law. The priest and Levite were not bad people. They were legalists. They knew what the purity law required. And that’s what the law will do in this fallen world. The law can say “love God and love your neighbor,” but it can’t produce even the slightest love. You can legislate morality but you can’t legislate love. Almost by definition. Love is an act of freedom, not the law. Which brings us to the kind Samaritan.

I call him “kind” rather “good,” since he was no more good than the priest and Levite were bad. He was simply free, and that makes all the difference. The Samaritan is, for all intents and purposes, free. There is no law restricting him. He is free to stop, act on his compassion, to go to the man, treat his wounds, put him up at a local inn, and even pay for his expenses in advance.

Samaritans were despised by the Jews for being half-breed Jews and heretical worshippers. They were a separate sect of Judaism that worshipped on a different mountain. For Jesus to make the hero of the story a Samaritan was to rub salt into the wounded pride of the synagogue lawyer. He would have to identify with a Samaritan instead of his heroes, the priest and the Levite.

Which of the three proved to be neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? The answer, of course, is obvious. The one who showed him mercy. The Samaritan who stopped, bent down, and helped the man in the ditch. And Jesus said, “Now you go, and do likewise.” If you want to do the works necessary to inherit eternal life, you go and stop asking questions and be neighbor to the man in the ditch. Whomever God places in your path. Whenever, wherever, no matter how inconvenient it might be. That’s what it means to love God and love your neighbor.

Are you satisfied with that? I hope not. And if you are, I challenge you to go and do likewise with the understanding that if you fail, you will not inherit the kingdom. Is Jesus serious? Of course He is. He is also a teacher, the greatest teacher that ever walked this earth, who perfectly knew the hearts of those who came to Him with their questions. The only way to pierce through the hardened heart of legalism is to take the Law and amplify it, to paint the legalist into a corner so that he must choose which law he will break and then try to make up the difference.

Only one who is free from the Law can do the Law. Remember that. Only one who is free from the Law can do the Law, even remotely. Until we hear and believe that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” until we recognize and trust that “Christ is the end of the Law to all who believe,” we will never have the Samaritan freedom to love our neighbor. Quite the contrary - without the freedom that comes in Christ, we will hate God and hate our neighbor.

God became our neighbor in Jesus. He joined us in the ditch of our sin and death. The Word became flesh to dwell among us, to be God with us, to do the Law for us, to free us from the burden of the Law. Christ became our neighbor, embracing us in our death, healing our wounds with His wounds, applying the healing wine and oil of Word and Body and Blood to us. He forgives and frees us from the Law that we might actually do the Law - love God and love our neighbor, that broken, bleeding dying man in the ditch.

Look at him, look closely. Does he resemble someone you know? That’s right. “For as often as you have done it to the least of these, my brothers, you have done it to me.” That broken man in the ditch is Christ in cognito to serve. Do you have to help the man in the ditch? Yes, if you wish to earn eternal life. You must, and you must do it perfectly. But for you, baptized believer, living in Samaritan freedom thanks to Jesus, you get to help him. He is gift and opportunity to serve as you have been served, to love as you have been loved by Jesus.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Nothing. It is given you. What may I do now that I have eternal life? Do you really need to ask?

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/327/20100714002759/audio/lk_10.25-37_11july2010pcr.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 27 Jun 2010 06:02:33 +0000
His journey took Him through Samaria. He sent messengers ahead to prepare for His coming. The Samaritans refused Him, because His sights were set to Jerusalem. Samaritans worshipped on Mt. Gerazim, not Jerusalem. Samaritans and Judeans were at odds over this, and Jesus’ single-minded focus on Jerusalem just rubbed salt into those festering religious wounds. This was not about place but purpose. Jesus had to die in Jerusalem. It was the appointed place, the place prepared for Him. The Samaritans did not understand, nor could they. Nor did the disciples.

James and John, the “sons of thunder,” the hot-headed fishermen wanted to call down fire and brimstone from heaven. Do a Sodom and Gomorrah number on them. That’ll show them. “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” If ever there was an episode that makes the apostles look bad, this is one. They’re supposed to be in the Gospel business, and here they are, acting as if heavenly fire obeyed their beck and call!

And we too, we must admit. We forget, when we look on the world, especially those parts of the world that do not share our confession much less our “values” and opinions that these are people for whom Jesus died. He set His face to Jerusalem also for the Samaritans, even those who turned Him away and slammed the door in His resolute face. You can walk down the streets, any street at any time of any day, and look in the face of any random person, be they rich or poor, young or old, well-dressed or not, and you can truthfully say to yourself, “Jesus gave His life on the cross to save that person.” He set His face to the cross of Jerusalem to save this person. So maybe they’ve been rude to you, or ignored you, or slammed their door in your face. No matter. Jesus died on a cross to save this person.

It isn’t for us, as it was not for James and John, to call down fire from heaven to consume those who aren’t nice to us. “Judge not, and you will not be judged.” The same fire and brimstone you call down on others, they very well might be calling down on you. Mutual assured heavenly destruction. That’s not why fire from heaven exists. Fire from heaven is for God’s judgment, not our petty squabbles. And God determined to judge the world in His Son. Jesus’ grim determination to go to the cross reflects His consuming desire to seek and to save the lost. He goes to the greatest length possible, to death on a cross, to seek and to save a world lost in sin and death.

Jesus turned and rebuked James and John. There would be no fire from heaven. It was not for them to call it, much less suggest it. And they went on to another village.

On the road, three would-be disciples put in their disciple application with Jesus. It wasn’t unusual for people to step up and approach a rabbi seeking to be one of his disciples. All three have a little hitch, something that holds them back, something that keeps their commitment from being whole-hearted.

“I will follow you wherever you go,” one says. Does he know where Jesus is going? Is he following the resolute gaze? Does he realize the trajectory? Jesus clues him in, that his road has no comfortable rest stops, no comfy pillows under your head at night. At least the foxes and birds have homes to go to, but the Son of Man, God’s anointed One, the Christ, has no place to lay His head.” You want to follow me, Jesus is saying, prepare to be uncomfortable, Prepare for those sleepless nights on hard ground, cold and destitute. Prepare to join the homeless.

Another says, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” It was the honorable thing to do. The right thing. The compassionate thing. But this Jesus with His face fixed on Jerusalem seems to have no compassion for a grieving son who only wants to bury his father. “Let the dead bury their own. You go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yes, that’s right. Let the dead bury their own. Death is about to meet it’s match in Jesus. Death doesn’t have the last say here. Jesus does. The kingdom He brings with His dying and rising.

A third says, “I will follow you , Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my house.” A simple goodbye. What could be so wrong with that? Maybe a little going away party. A cake or something. Jesus says, “No one who takes up the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Any farmer will tell you that. You can’t plow straight looking over your shoulder. You can’t plow ahead while you are pining for the past.

Tough words? You bet they are! Jesus means serious business. HIs words are urgent, hard, edgy, demanding. His claim on the disciple is radical. It’s all or nothing. No halfway disciples. There are no compromises here. His face, remember,is fixed toward Jerusalem. And each of these three disciple wanna-bes, each in their own way, diminishes the cost that Jesus is about to pay. What does it mean to follow Jesus? To follow HIs rules? Well, He doesn’t have any, really. Moses had rules and we can’t keep them. The last thing we need is rules 2.0. We won’t keep those either.

To follow Jesus is to go the way of His resolute gaze. To follow Jesus is to die and rise with Jesus. To lose your life in order to save it. To become least in order to receive greatness. To become as nothing in order to receive everything. To die in order to live.

Do you know what Jesus had in His vision as He set His face to Jerusalem? it wasn’t the cross, though His vision was certainly cross-focused. It wasn’t the suffering He was to endure. It wasn’t death. It was you. It was the joy of saving you. His focus was like that of a lifeguard venturing out into the dangerous waves and currents with only one thing in his or her focus. You. The person who is drowning and in need of aid. That’s Jesus, who for the joy, that is the joy of your salvation, that was set before Him “endured the cross, scorning its shame.” The cross was the focal point through which He had to bring everything. But the focus of His gaze was you. He came to rescue you.

Just so, the disciple’s focus is on Jesus, the author of our faith, the perfecter of our faith, the beginning and the end of faith. We don’t look to ourselves. When we do, we’ll get it wrong. When the prophet Elijah, great as he was, looked to himself and started whining about how he was the only faithful one left in all of Israel and how everyone was trying to kill him, that’s when he got it wrong. He goes to Mt. Horeb (Mt. Sinai) for a little pity party. He’s upset that Queen Jezebel is issuing death threats against him. He’s expecting God to flex some muscle. He thinks he’s the only faithful Israelite left on the face of the earth. We even call it an “Elijah complex” today, when you think you’re the only one who sees it, the only one who has it right.

Elijah essentially got fired that day. God ordered him to appoint his own successor, Elisha. His work was done. Oh, he’d get a nice ride to heaven in a fiery chariot. But Elijah learned a couple of things that day in the cave. He learned that it was not about him. That the kingdom didn’t rest on his shoulders. That he wasn’t alone, though he wasn’t aware of it. Seven thousand that haven’t bowed the knee to the idol Baal. That may be a symbolic number, the fulness of the believing remnant of Israel. Or it may be the actual headcount. What matters is that Elijah was not the only one. God has his secret agents scattered all over the place. You’re one of them too.

The Church is such a hidden mystery. You can’t see it in its fulness. You can only hear the Word and see the activity of Christ in the sacraments. The Church remains hidden. The glory remains hidden. We won’t know what God has accomplished until the Last Day, and we trust that the sight will be glorious.

Elijah also learned that God works hiddenly and subversively. Elijah had seen the power and glory as fire rained down from heaven to consume the 400 prophets of Baal. But he also learned the fire from heaven was not God’s ultimate purpose. Salvation is. Eternal life. Forgiving sin. Showing mercy. Justifying sinners. God wasn’t in the strong wind, the earthquake, the fire. God was hidden in the soft whisper. We expect God to shout, and He whispers. Hiddenly, humbly, rejectibly. Almost overlooked by all the religious noise going on around him.

My friends, fix your eyes on Jesus. Jesus had His Jerusalem so that you would have your Jesus, a focal point. LIfe presents you with a whole bunch of rabbit trails, all sorts of things to worry about, all kinds of things to distract you from the one, needful thing - and that is to die and rise with Jesus. Like a sailor setting a course in the storm, or like a runner pushing toward the finish line, fix your eyes on Jesus. His cross, His resurrection. His life. His Baptism, Body and Blood. That’s where the action is. That’s where the life is. That’s where forgiveness is. That’s where He is for you.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/326/20100627223734/audio/lk_9.51-62_27june2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 20 Jun 2010 21:38:06 +0000
Now the story of this man is just as weird, if not downright creepy. For a long time, he ran around without any clothes on, which in the Gospels tends to be a sign that something isn’t going quite right. You’ll recall that the young men who greeted the women at Jesus’ open, empty tomb were clothed in white, while the young man who fled dark Gethsemane on the night of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest ran off naked. So while streaking may have been a funny college prank back in the 70s, it’s no laughing matter in the Gospel. The devils seems to have the upper hand here. And not just one, but a legion of them.

Moreover, the man did not live in a house, but among the tombs, with all the dead. Preoccupation with the dead seems to be a demonic thing. So that’s pretty creepy too. Luke adds that he was often kept under guard and was frequently bound with chains and fetters, which is the 1st century equivalent of being put in a straightjacket and restraints, but the demons were so strong they broke the restraints and drove him away from the city into the wilderness. The wilderness, as you recall from Jesus’ temptation, is the devil’s playground. Mark tells us that the man would cry out night and day and cut himself with sharp stones, which is probably why he was put in restraints in the first place.

Now our modern, scientific, skeptical minds are already spinning a bit here and wondering about this demon stuff. Today, we might consider the man deranged and put him on drugs or some such thing. But make no mistake about it. The demonic realm is real. It’s the opposite side of the angelic realm. There’s a whole spiritual realm that we confess with the “invisibles” and some of it isn’t good.

A colleague of mine once remarked that in lands where the devil is taken seriously, he shows himself even more seriously. Take Haiti as an example. There are weird stories always coming out of Haiti where voodoo is alive and well. In places where the devil isn’t taken very seriously, he shows himself even less serious. The Halloween kind of devil. Horns, tail, red suit. Comical. Funny. But either way, the devil and his demons are serious business and not to be played with. “On earth is not his equal,” ends the first stanza of A Mighty Fortress and it’s referring not to Jesus but to the devil. There is none on earth that can stand up to him.

The devils knew who Jesus was and shouted it as loud as they could. “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” That’s about as good a confession as there is. And it comes from a demon. But you see, in the devil’s hands, even the truth becomes a lie. When the devil tempted Jesus, he quoted from the psalms to try to get Jesus to jump off the pinnacle of the temple. You see, even the Bible in the hands of the devil will be used in service of the lie. He’s a liar and the father of all lies. His demons are liars too. They tell the truth. Jesus is the Son of the Most High God. But they tell it in a way that subverts His mission.

Jesus came to do battle with the devil on his own playground. He came to undo the works of the devil and his demons and to cast them into the eternal pit, which is what hell was prepared for by God. Not for people. For the devil and his demons. And the way in which the devil was going to be defeated was by Jesus dying on a cross and descending into Death. He stormed the prison to bind the devil and free the captives - you and me and the rest of humanity. The reason the demons are so interested in Jesus is that they want to head him off at the pass. Send Him down a glory detour. Make a celebrity out of Him and try to divert HIm from His appointed hour with the cross.

They even try to bind Jesus with the name of God. Now that’s a cute trick. They invoke God’s name against God! “I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” But Jesus has the upper hand here. He’s their Lord too, and they know it. He asks their name. That’s how you assert your dominion. They must respond. Legion. A Roman legion is four to six thousand soldiers. You can only imagine the horror.

They beg Jesus not to send them into the “abyss,” the hell hole where they belong. They know what Jesus is there for. They offer a large herd of pigs instead. “Let us enter them.” The story gets even weirder. With Jesus’ permission, the demons take over a herd of 2000 pigs who promptly throw themselves off a cliff into the sea. Now if you’re Jewish, you’re OK with this, because pigs were unclean, so it all makes sense. Unclean spirits, unclean pigs, over they go into the sea. Bye, bye. But this is Gentile country, and pork belly futures just took a steep jump not to mention the stench of rotting pig carcasses on the beach. So it’s little wonder the people ask Jesus to please pack His bags and leave.

The formerly demon possessed man is now sitting with Jesus. He’s clothed and in his right mind, and he wants to join Jesus’ followers. But Jesus said no, and sent him back to his own people as a living testimony to the mercy of God. And what a testimony it was! A demon possessed man who used to live among the tombs and cut himself now goes all around the ten cities of the Gentiles, proclaiming the good news. And 2000 pigs plummet to their death after being taken over by a legion of demons. Weird. Just plain weird.

The demonic realm is real, my friends. Don’t think for a moment it isn’t. You do so at your own peril. The devil prowls around like a lion, looking for someone to devour. It could be you. He is resistible as you stand firm in Jesus. He is defeated. Jesus is stronger than the devil and his hordes of demons. Whatever darkness plagues you; whatever way the devil seeks to have his way with you, you are safe in Jesus. Apart from Jesus, you don’t stand a chance. In fact, we are all by our human nature, in league with the devil. And just because he doesn’t show himself like this, his work is all around us. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes subtle. But it’s all around us.. A weird story like this, one that actually happened, serves as a reminder to all of us that the spiritual realm is both wonderful and terrifying and that there is no firewall to protect us save the death of Jesus, His blood, His baptism, His victory.

Jesus went to the tomb for us. He was scarred, wounded for us. It’s not our scars that heal, but His. It’s not our death that saves, but His. It’s not our word that conquers the devil, but His. What He did to that legion of demons that day in the Gerasenes is but a small picture of what He will do at the end, at His coming in power and glory and might, when He will make visible the victory that He won on the cross, and bind the devil and his demons forever and cast them into the lake of fire prepared for them.

We’re not there yet. We’re living in the in-between time, the now and not yet between Christ’s disappearing and His reappearing. And in that time, the Bible speaks of Satan’s “little season,” a time when the devil and his demons will be let loose on earth. Perhaps we are there already, or it is soon to come. I have no idea what that will be like. Probably weird. But then, things are already pretty weird.

There is nothing to fear for those who are in Christ Jesus. He’s got you covered. You baptized, covered with Christ, filled with His Spirit, safe in His death and life. His wounds are your healing; His cross is your victory; His righteousness is your clothing. Your sins are put far away from you, as far as the east is from the west. As far as that legion of demons from the poor man.

There is something more going on here too. Not weird but wondrous. The prophet Isaiah saw it and spoke of it. “I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to found by those who did not seek me.” Those who sit in tombs and spend the night in secret places; who eat pig’s flesh and broth of tainted meat is in ther vessels. The gentiles. The outsiders to Israel. One of Jesus’ greatest and weirdest displays of divine power and authority was not even in Israel but across the sea. In Gentile territory.

Israel’s messiah is the world’s savior. Jesus’ victory over the darkness and death and the demonic is for all. He knows no boundaries in seeking the lost. He seeks those who do not even look for Him. And in the end, even the devil and his demons wind up serving HIm and HIs mission to save. Jesus would not let that man come to Israel with Him, as much as He wanted to. He might have made a great disciple. Much better than Judas! But his calling was to tell his own people, in his own place, the greatness and goodness of God’s mercy. Yours too. Jesus has freed you. Broken the chains that held you. Rescued you from the grave. Purchased and won you. Tell others what He has done, not only for you but also for them.

“Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” In Word and Supper. Forgiveness, Body and Blood. Freedom and life. Much more than we would ever dare to ask of Him. Weirdly and wonderfully so.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/325/20100626065107/audio/lk_08.26-39_20june2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:34:40 +0000
He had invited Jesus, along with some of his other religious friends. You can safely assume that the table was populated by religious men, the pillars of the religious community. Leaders. Why he invited Jesus, we don’t know. Perhaps he wanted to impress Jesus, or pick his brain, or impress his friends. Here he was, hanging out with the new young rabbi who was making all the headlines.

The woman slipped in unnoticed at first. She crept quietly around the table until she was directly behind Jesus. Surely they noticed her by then. She bent down near His feet, ignoring all the hard stares of the religious men who were judging her. She knew what was going through their minds. She heard what they hissed behind her back. “Sinner,” they called her. Or worse. How dare she intrude on their nice little dinner party? How dare she even show herself in the company of these respectable men? There was certainly no place at their table for so much as a woman, much less a woman of her reputation.

These men at the table are all outcasts of the kingdom too, every bit as much as she is. But their religion prevents them for seeing their own sinfulness. And failing that, they fail to see Jesus for who He is - the Savior of sinners. The fact is, if you don’t think you are a sinner, if you think that God is just tickled blue over you for all the nice things you do, then you have no need for a crucified Savior.

That’s the danger of religion. It gives you a pretense of respectability, a thin veneer of piety, a mask. We call it our “Sunday best.” We wear it when we want others to see how religious we are, how we’ve made all the right choices, and hang out with all the right friends, and how you should do the same. Oh we wear it well, and sad to say, we’d be right at home at Simon’s table. We would like the company of these men who probably lamented the lack of morality in their culture and nodded soberly at the sorry state of affairs.

You can only imagine the harsh, judgmental stares of these men at this woman of the streets. Did they know her name? Did they know anything about her? Why did she have to sell her body to men who used her and discarded her? Had any of them been with her? Do you wonder about that? You know, the guilty always protest the loudest.

She has no mask behind which to hide. She has no pretensions of piety. There are only tears of shame that bathe Jesus’ feet. She anoints them with her perfume from a precious alabaster flask, likely the most precious thing she owned, perhaps a tool of her trade. When Jesus was little, the wise men from the East offered Him gold, incense, and myrrh. Now this woman of the street offers her perfume, hair, and tears . She gently massages the ointment into Jesus’ tired feet, and if this weren’t outrage enough, she lets down her hair (what no decent woman of her day would have done), and dries Jesus’ feet with it.

For her, Jesus is a man, perhaps the only man in the world, who understands her, who accepts her, who loves her, and most importantly who forgives her. She trusts that Jesus will not rebuke or shame her in front of these harsh, religious men. He came to seek and to save the lost. He came to rescue sinners. He came for her, and she believed it. And He is not ashamed to receive her acts of devotion, even though they tweak the sensibilities of the religiously proper.

You can only imagine the outrage at the table, the looks on those hardened faces as the perfume fills the air along with her sobbing. What kind of prophet is Jesus who would allow such a thing? How can this man claim to be the Messiah, the Holy One of God, and let such a woman touch Him?

That’s right. We say Jesus is a friend of sinners. “Jesus sinners doth receive.” We preach it. “Christ died to save sinners of whom I am chief.” Do we actually mean that? We confess we are sinners, yes, but do we see ourselves in solidarity with this woman of the streets? What if some genuine sinners showed up in our midst, could we handle it? What if genuinely broken people brought their actually broken lives to the only place where brokenness is a virtue, where sin is not judged but forgiven, where God comes to keep company with sinners? Would we welcome this woman into our midst or would be grumble with the religious over how outrageously good God’s free grace is? “If the pastor only knew what sort of person she was, he wouldn’t be communing her.”

“I have something to say to you, Simon.” And our Pharisaical friend Simon was all ears. What an honor! Jesus had something to say just for me. A parable. Oh oh. Watch out for the parables. They’re traps. They’ll catch you when you are least suspecting. Just ask David. He thought he’d gotten away with adultery and murder. He’d gotten the wife of Uriah pregnant and arranged for Uriah’s death in the battlefield so he could marry the widow and look like hero in the eyes of Israel. But God sent Nathan the prophet to David with a little parable. And the parable nailed him. “You are the man!” David was dead to rights. All he could do was say, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And all Nathan had to say was “The Lord has put away your sin.”

A certain money lender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii (a denarius is roughly a day’s wages for a day laborer); the other owed fifty. He forgave them both. Which one loved him more? Simon realizes he’s been caught. “I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” Ah. The bigger the sinner, the greater the gratitude. “See, Simon, that’s why you gave me no water to wash my feet, no kiss of greeting when I walked through the door, no oil to anoint my head. You have no idea how great a sinner you are. You think you’re a little sinner in need of just a little forgiveness. And so your love is just as little. But this woman, she knows how great a sinner she is, and you keep reminding her so she doesn’t forget, and she knows how great a Savior of sinners I am, and so she washes my feet with her tears, and anoints them, and wipes them with her hair, and kisses them. She loves much because she has been forgiven much.

The fact is, those who think they have no sin, have no need for Jesus. Oh, they might try to use Him to win friends and influence people, perhaps. Make a name for themselves. Show off for their friends. But they had no need for why Jesus came - to forgive sins and justify sinners.

Only as we see ourselves in her position, not in Simon’s, do we get it, do we see who Jesus is for us. I find it interesting to look at the three women mentioned in this reading. Luke has a particular accent on the women who followed Jesus. A prostitute who anoints Jesus’ feet. Mary Magdalene who had seven demons chased from her by Jesus. Joanna, the wife of Herod’s chief of staff. A high ranking woman of considerable power and means. A demon distressed woman. And a woman of the street. And all three are forgiven much; all three love much. And, by the way, two out of those three are witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection and were among the first to go the tomb that morning.

“Your sins are forgiven you.” These the the first words Jesus speaks to the woman. Right in front of those men who would accuse and judge her, Jesus absolves her. Outrageous forgiveness. Does God have no sense of decency? He forgives David, an adulterer and a murderer? He forgives this woman? If her tears and hair and perfume and little foot massage weren’t bad enough, Jesus’ rubs salt into the religious wound. He publicly pronounces forgiveness? Who can forgive like this except...well…God?

That’s the faith point. “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” She trusted Jesus - nothing else, nothing more. Faith is like that woman, risking everything including the scorn of religion, offering nothing except a broken, sinful life and tears and a humble offering that Jesus doesn’t need anyway but receives as the greatest gift of love there is. She was forgiven much, even before Jesus said those words to her. She knew it. She believed it. And because of that, she loved much and worshipped.

You are forgiven much too. More than you realize. The commandments will tally the size of the debt, and it isn’t a small one. We too are adulterers and murderers and thieves. We don’t want or like to think of ourselves as big sinners, and as a result we look in judgment on others. We would be very wrong. To know the greatness of your sin is also to know the greatness of your Savior. No matter how great the sin, no matter how messed up the life, Jesus is always greater. Greater than our sin, greater than our death, greater than the Law that condemns us.

There is a place at Jesus’ table for sinners - for David, for that woman of the streets, for troubled Mary Magdalene, for the religious and the unreligious, for the good and the bad, and for you. Bring nothing but your sin, and He will forgive. Bring nothing but your tears, and He will dry them. Bring nothing but your emptiness, and He will fill it. Bring nothing but your sorrow, and He will bring you joy. Bring nothing but a hunger and thirst for God, and He will satisfy it. Let His great forgiveness have its way with you, and there will be great love - for Him and for others.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/324/20100626070141/audio/lk_07.36-50_13june2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:26:55 +0000
He heads south to Mt. Tabor, along the Great Trunk Road. His disciples are with Him, along with a great crowd following Him closely. Pressing in on Him. Religious lookie lous and all sorts of people demanding a miracle, a cure, a favor. As He drew near the gate of the city, Jesus and His crowd meet another crowd. A funeral procession. A young man had died, the only son of his mother. The crowd was considerable. The crowd is always large when the person who dies is young. We can make sense of death for someone old and sick. Funerals of older people tend to be calmer and more peaceful. There is even a sense of relief.

When the young die, there is outrage and bitterness and anger. It’s not supposed to be this way. First this poor woman lost her husband to death, and now her only son. Who was going to take care of her? We can only imagine her grief and despair. She buried a husband and now must bury a son. No mother ever expects to bury her only son. Her eyes surely were swollen with tears; her face contorted with grief; her heart broken.

Their eyes met. Jesus looked into those tear-filled eyes and saw the grief, the anguish, the uncertainty, the fear, the anger, the overwhelming sadness. This is what Death does to us. It robs us of those we love. It separates husband from wife, son from mother. It insults our humanity. This is what Jesus came for, to encounter Death in His death and defeat it on its on home court. Jesus came in the flesh precisely to be Death’s undoing, to overthrow the curse of the Law, to deal with the consequences of Adam’s sin and ours. “The wages of sin is death.” Jesus came to collect the just wages of our sin.

Luke says Jesus had compassion on her. It means He felt this grief and anguish in His guts. We would say, “His heart went out to her.” In Jesus’ day, they would say, “His guts went out to her,” because that’s where you feel compassion, in the guts. It literally wrenches His guts what death has done to this poor woman. You’ll notice that she does not say a word to Him. She doesn’t have to. He knows her. He knows her pain and her need. His look said everything there needed to be said. She says nothing at all to Jesus, not before or after. Unlike the centurion in the prior episode, we have no evidence of this woman’s faith, whether it was strong or weak or even there at all.

In the prior episode with the centurion, it was about faith in the Word of Jesus, that all Jesus had to do was speak the Word, wherever and whenever, and the servant would be healed. But in this episode, the woman says nothing. What is she to think or believe? Healing the sick is one thing. It goes on in our hospitals all the time. But raising the dead is quite another thing. This woman may not have been as scientifically sophisticated as we are, but she knew one thing, the dead don’t rise from their funeral processions.

Jesus looks at her with compassion. “Do not weep,” He tells her. Not the thing you usually say to the grieving, and I don’t recommend you do. But this is the Lord who wipes every tear from our grieving eyes. This is the Lord who is greater than our sin, greater than Death itself. This is the Lord of Life standing before her. He touches the bier and the pallbearers stop still in their tracks. You can imagine the two crowds coming together as one, with Jesus and this woman and her dead son in the middle of it all.

“Do not weep.” Only the Lord can say this in the face of death and loss. Only the Lord can say this to a grieving widow burying her only son. And it’s not some pious fond wish, He offers her. No, “there, there it will all be set right one day.” Jesus means it. There is no need to weep when He is there. “He lives to silence all my fears; He lives to wipe away my tears.” With Jesus, her sorrow becomes joy; her loss is restored; life is pulled out of death, for even Death must obey its Lord and Master.

“Young man, I say to you, arise.” The previous episode showed that Jesus’ word does what it says, even from a distance. This episode shows how far the Word of Jesus reaches. Even to death and the grave. The dead hear His voice and they obey His word. He says “arise” and that’s precisely what happens! The dead sit up. And just to demonstrate that this wasn’t some freaky rigor mortis reflex like you see in the horror movies, the man spoke. He was conscious and alive. Wouldn’t you love to know what he said? Of course you do! We’re endlessly curious about these things. What was it like? What did you see? Today he would have written a book and appeared on Oprah, I suppose. Thankfully, it happened then and not now.

Jesus gave him back to his mother. Resurrection and reunion. Like all miracles, this is not about some reward for right believing or strong believing. We really don’t know whether the woman believed anything at all. Faith is not the issue here. This is about Jesus, not about the woman or her believing. Like all miracles, this is a snapshot preview of what Jesus is up to, and what He will do for all in the power of HIs own death and resurrection. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.”

We see in this miracle a glimpse of our destiny in Christ, of resurrection to life, of reunion with loved ones who have died in the Lord. It is a reminder that weeping may remain for a grieving night, but rejoicing always comes in the morning of Jesus’ resurrection. What Jesus did for the young man lying on his funeral bier, He will do for each of us, as He has pledged to do in our Baptism. Raise us to life and restore us. The Grave could not hold Jesus, and it cannot hold against His Word. When He says “rise,” the dead rise. It’s not a matter of faith, it’s simply a matter of fact.

What Jesus did for the poor widow lady so stricken with grief, He will do for each us. Reuniting parent and child, breaking down the walls of the Grave. swallowing up Death in His victory. “Oh Death, where is your sting? O Grave, where is your victory? The sting of Death is sin, and the power of Sin is the Law. But thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Victory. You have it in Jesus. It’s yours. Wrapped in weakness, cloaked in death, appearing as God in the Flesh hanging dead on a cross. It appears as hopeless defeat in this world, as defeated as a dead man being carried to his grave; as hopeless as a widow who has just lost her only son, as dark as Good Friday. But see what happens when Jesus appears. See what happens when Jesus touches that coffin. See what happens when Jesus speaks to the dead. They rise. They live. Jesus is life. He came to give life, abundant life, eternal life.

How much people shortchange Jesus and what He comes to do! How often we ourselves sell Jesus short! Seeking favors from Him. Expecting exceptions and exemptions from the suffering of this life. That woman’s life was changed that day all because her son died. Had her son not died, she would never have encountered Jesus on the road, she would never have known the power of His resurrection, she would not have known whom to trust with her own death and the death of her son and loved ones.

Her momentary grief became eternal joy; her temporal tears became a spring of happiness; her time of sorrow became an eternity of praise; her moment of anguish became a unique encounter with Jesus who was completely there for her in her time of need and made good out of her son’s death in a a way she could not have dared to ask.

There is a sense in which this has already taken place for us in Baptism. It is a present reality to faith. God has spoken the Word and it is so. God has declared declared dead to Sin but alive to Him in Christ. We have already been raised from death and given back to our mother, the Church. We glorify God, rejoicing that a great prophet has indeed come among us, the Word is with us in the fulness of His glory. God has indeed visited His people, become one with us so that we might die and rise with Him.

Today’s Gospel reminds us that the last word is not Death but Life. Death remains as a next to last word, the final word on our sinful condition, but not the end of life and certainly not the end of us, thanks to Jesus. We will all join that widow at Nain in her grief. We will all ride in our slow moving processions to the graveside to bury our loved ones. We will weep with her. And we will all one day join her son in death too. That is inevitable. But as surely as Jesus looked on her with compassion, so He looks upon us in our time of sorrow. And as surely as He raised that young man from the dead, so He will raise us.

He is committed. He has spoken. You have His Word on it.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/323/20100626072356/audio/lk_07.11-17_06june2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 30 May 2010 20:16:18 +0000
“And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing eh persons nor dividing the substance.” Not three gods but one God in essence. And yet not one Person but three Persons. Tri-une. Three in One and One in Three. Got it?

Of course you do! Or do you? Well, today is Holy Trinity Sunday, the day we celebrate the central paradox of the Christian faith, namely, that God is both Three and One at the same time. Three Persons in One Divine Essence, one Divine Essence in three Persons. Strange? You bet it is. Irrational? Yes, though you can understand it well enough to repeat it. We do every week in the Creed. And we will shortly in the words of the Athanasian Creed, which summarizes four hundred years of struggling to say it just the right way. And still we can only come to an approximation, as though looking through a dirty window pane. We can describe God using words like “person” and “being” and “essence” and “substance” but we can’t really explain God or get a bead on Him. How can something be both Three and One?

There are some failed attempts to makes analogies. A cube, for, has three distinct dimensions - height, width, depth, which together make a cube. Without all three, you don’t have a cube at all. You’d have a square or a line. But the problem is that each dimension is not a cube but only one side of a cube.

There is the hat analogy, that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are like someone wear three distinct hats, for example one man may be a father, a husband, and a son at the same time. So God has three hats - a Father hat, a Son hat, and a Holy Spirit hat. Clever, but again, it fails. When Jesus prays, He does not pray to Himself but to His Father. And Jesus didn’t send Himself to die, but the Father sent the Son with all authority in heaven and on earth.

There is the triple point of water analogy. At it’s triple point, water co-exists as solid ice, liquid water, and vapor all at the same time. All are essentially “water” H2O, but they are simply different states of the same thing. But that doesn’t quite do the trick either. Father, Son, and Spirit are not states of God or modes of God’s existence, but distinct Persons with a distinct relationship to each other.

The error is called “modalism,” where you don’t have three distinct persons but you have three modes of God’s presence. That’s one of the two ditches you end up in when you try to resolve the tri-une paradox. Most analogies fail in this way. They’re modalistic. The other ditch is tri-theism - three gods. That’s what Islam accuses Christianity of. Tritheism. They even call us tri-theists. If you lose the Persons, you will end up as either a modalist or a unitarian. If you lose the one Essence, you will wind up with three separate gods.

The closest that anyone has come to a decent analogy is St. Augustines who used the analogy of love - the Father is the Lover, the Son the beloved, the Spirit love. And still that fails somehow. All we can do is distinguish the Persons - the Father is uncreated, unbegotten, unproceeding. The Son is begotten of the Father. And the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. That’s what distinguishes them. And yet there is but one God, and whenever God deals with us, all three Persons deal with us, each according to what is properly His.

The trick to all paradoxes is to stay on the road, confessing both but favoring neither. It’s not really that hard to say back, just impossible to rationalize. We worship three Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in one Being or Essence called “God.” It’s really as simple as that.

And the Trinity is literally all over the Scriptures. From the opening verses of Genesis in which the Father speaks the Word as the Spirit hovers over the waters of the deep to the Revelation, in which the Lamb who was slain but lives is enthroned at the right hand of the Father and the Spirit flows like a river of life from Father and Son.

In today’s OT reading from the Proverbs, the Son is personified as Wisdom, begotten from all eternity, from before the beginning of the earth. In his Gospel, John states it this way: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. With God and was God. Paradox. Two things held together at once.

You heard it in the epistle reading and Peter’s quoting of the psalm: “The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Jesus confronted His detractors with that psalm and asked them, paradoxically, “How can David’s son be David’s Lord?” And how can “the Lord” and “my Lord” talk to each other and sit next to each other?

Finally, in today’s Gospel we have Jesus Himself being confronted with the paradox of who He is as the Son of God in the flesh. The religious types thought He was nuts. “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” That’s another way of saying, “You’re nuts.” And anyone who claims to be the Son of God in the flesh is nuts or delusional or demon possessed or at least a Samaritan heretic. It’s a crazy claim and worthy of all dismissal. If I made that claim to you, that God Himself is my Father, you’d have every right to ignore me and tell me to get some help. You can’t really blame the Jews for doubting Jesus. Here He was, a carpenter from Nazareth, claiming not simply to be the Messiah, the Christ. But also claiming that God Himself was His Father, that He was sent by the Father, that the Father glorifies Him with a glory not given to Abraham or to Moses or to any of the prophets.

Jesus even rubs it in a little bit by indicating that Father Abraham rejoiced by faith that he would see Jesus’ day. He acted as though He and Abraham were on a first name basis, which they were, and had seen each other, which they had. And then Jesus pushes the big button and flat out says it, “Before Abraham was, I am.” And this doesn’t simply mean that Jesus is chronologically older than Abraham, but that Jesus is the I AM who Moses say in the burning bush, YHWH of the ineffable name, the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who keeps covenant and shows mercy.

They understood precisely what Jesus was saying. There was not mistake in hearing. They immediately took up stones to throw at Him. He claimed to be “I AM” in the flesh, an audacious claim, a crazy claim really.

The core truth of today is that the doctrine of the Trinity centers on Jesus. It’s really all about Jesus and His being sent to save the world, to save you. If the Son of God had not come in the flesh, there would be no need for all this triune paradox. We could all be unitarians and worship the Father or Jehovah or whatever we wanted to call Him or Her. But when the Son of God shows His face to the world and suffers, dies on a cross, and rises from the dead, when He reveals the Father to us, and sends the Spirit out as His breath, all religious bets concerning God are off.

Luther was fond of saying that he knew no other God than the one who nurses at the breast of His virgin mother and who hands dead on the cross bearing the world’s sin. It’s very tempting to speculate about God and come up with clever analogies and theories and alternative theologies. But that is nothing more than subtle idolatry in the end, our fashioning gods for ourselves in our own image and likeness. God comes to His in the eternal Son. We know God in knowing Jesus. And we know no other God but this Jesus who suffers, dies, and rises, who sends His Spirit, who brings us to the Father.

The triune life of God is also our life in Holy Baptism. We are baptized into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We live, move, and have our being within this Triunity, worshipping the Father in the Spirit and in the Truth who is Jesus, having God as our Father, Jesus as our brother, and the Spirit as our Advocate and Guide. We are loved by the Father in the Beloved Son who bears our humanity and are drawn by the Spirit.

They wanted to take up stones and throw them at Jesus. They wanted to kill Him for saying He was the Son of God. They couldn’t bear the thought that the Word could become flesh and dwell among them. They wanted God “out there” in heaven somewhere, safely transcendent, big and mighty, powerful and remote. But that’s not a God who can save from sin and rescue from death. The God must draw near, empty Himself of HIs divine glory and take on our humanity, become one of us, and in our humanity humble Himself under His own Law in obedience to death. And being humbled in death, He must be raised to life again and glorified at the right hand of the Father, now bearing our humanity so that we too are glorified in Him.

“If I glorify myself,” Jesus said, “my glory is nothing.” Self-glory is vain glory, empty glory, narcissistic vanity. The Father glorifies the Son. And the Son glorifies us in His dying and rising by the Spirit whom He breathes out over us in our Baptism. And we, trusting that this mysterious Triune God is merciful and gracious to us for His Son’s sake worship the trinity in unity and the unity in trinity.

Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the Undivided Unity.
Blessed be God - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God in three Persons, now and forever.

Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/322/20100626140919/audio/jn_8.48-59_30may2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 23 May 2010 08:32:43 +0000
Today is the Holy Spirit’s day, Pentecost Day, a day full of grace and favor. It is the day the crucified, risen, and reigning Lord Jesus Christ breathed out on His church - 120 believers gathered together in a room. Pentecost means “fifty” in Greek. Fifty days. In the Old Testament, it was the harvest festival of the winter wheat, fifty days after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In the rabbinic tradition, it celebrated the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai fifty days after the Exodus.

The Lord employs the symbolism of the day to its maximum effect. It was now fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus. Seven weeks. Fifty days after Jesus’ “exodus” from death to life comes the outpouring of the Spirit and the “new Torah” the Gospel of Jesus is preached to the world in all of its languages. Fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection from the grave, the first-fruits of the resurrection’s harvest is gathered - 3000 people heard the proclamation of salvation in the name of Jesus, believed, and were baptized.

Pentecost also indicates the beginning of the “last days,” the days leading up to the Last Day. Everything has been done for your salvation. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ has ascended to the throne of glory at the Father’s right hand. It is finished. Nothing more needs to be done except to broadcast the victory. Proclaim it. Preach it. Make it known far and wide. That takes breath. The Church must have breath if she is to proclaim the victory and reign of Christ. Before you can shout or sing, you need to inhale, take in a good deep breath. That’s Pentecost. The Spirit is the Church’s breath. The rushing wind and tongues of fire. That’s Jesus breathing the living Breath of God into the Church giving life and vitality and breath to speak.

The breath of God blew through the church like a mighty wind. Divided tongues of fire rested on each of the disciples gathered there. Wind and fire were Sinai signs. Jesus promised He would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. They were all filled with the Spirit and began to speak in various languages and dialects. And the people who were gathered in Jerusalem from all over the Mediterranean world heard the good news of Jesus in their very own language and dialect. Pentecost is a miracle of both speaking and hearing. The Holy Spirit works both at the mouth and at the ear to convey the Word.

That’s why to people can get two different things from the same sermon, or react in two different ways. I’ve learned that over 17 years of preaching. No two people hear the same sermon the same way. And sometimes what I plan to say and what is said are two different things as well. I believe, on the basis on Pentecost, that this is precisely how the Holy Spirit works. He always works through means, in this case words. Nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, subjects, predicates. Human language. It is one of the most amazing gifts of the Spirit that the Word of God that kills and makes alive, that tears down and builds up, that is sharper than any two edged sword, can be conveyed in ordinary human language. It’s really no different than Baptism using ordinary water, or ordinary bread and wine being the Body and Blood of Christ. God works through means. Ordinary, creaturely, earthy means.

The languages spoken here were coherent human languages. People heard the Gospel in their own native tongues. It was God’s way of saying “for you.” This death and life of Jesus, this Baptism, this forgiveness is “for you.” Take it personally and trust it. Own it. The words “for you” require hearts to believe.

Our OT reading spoke of a different language event - the tower at Babel where God intervened in the ambitious plans of men to build a city and a tower to the heavens by confusing their languages. It’s wonderfully simple and subversive. If you want people to scatter, make it so they don’t understand each other’s subjects and predicates. confuse languages and people scatter.

It was a protective act of judgment, lest a united humanity do something worse. It reveals God’s mistrust of our unity as sinners. You always hear talk about everyone all being together as one and how great that would be. The Lord doesn’t appear to think that one world anything is a good idea. God knows the mischief that sinners will make if they “just all get together.”

The place where God confused the languages of men was called Babel. It sounds like what it is - babbling. It forms the root for Babylon, the city that man builds, the city destined for final destruction on the last day. We are reminded, by way of this narrative, that the ambitions of man without God will result in nothing but confusion and chaos. All of our attempts to be united, to be “one people,” will be nothing more than tower building without the Lord. It also reminds us of who runs the verbs, if not the nouns. We don’t, God does. We don’t reach up to him, neither with with our towers reaching to the heavens nor with our religions that attempt to do the same. God comes down to us. God becomes one of us and one with us. “The Word became Flesh.”

At Pentecost, the confusion of Babel is not undone. The diversity of languages remains. Instead, God uses the diversity of tongues as a sign of His Spirit, and He brings people together not by giving them a common language but by giving them a common Savior. “There is one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all. There is one Spirit, one bread, one cup. Our union in Christ is the true unity of the Church and the only way in which we can be united without our destroying one another in the process.

The world remains skeptical. Some thought the disciples were drunk at nine in the morning, though I’ve never met anyone whose language skills improved much less expanded with drinking. As the last days play out, the skepticism is bound to increase, as will false teaching and teachers, deceptive spirits and spiritualities, any distraction from Jesus and His cross. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in the later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.” Our day is one of many spirits and many beliefs. It’s a religious Babel out there, and sometimes that babbling confusion even leaks into the church.

We ourselves are tempted too. We have this itch for things new. We are fascinated by things spiritual. Some people expect the church always to be like its opening day, with wind and tongues of fire and speaking in languages and thousands baptized at one time. And that may indeed happen here and there where it’s needed. But that’s not the ordinary way. That’s opening day.

The ordinary way of Pentecost is the preaching of Jesus. Baptism. Body and blood. Immediately after this episode in the book of Acts it says of those who were gathered, “They continued in the doctrine of the apostles, in the fellowship, the Breaking of the Bread, and in the prayers.” In other words, they worshipped together in much the same way that we do here. Preaching, teaching, fellowship in the Bread which is the Body of Christ and the cup that is His blood, and in prayer.

Can you imagine what would happen if wind and fire and tongues were part of every service every Sunday? We’d get bored with it within a month or two. We’d complain about the wind, we’d worry that the tongues of fire were going to singe the carpet or our hair. And that chatter of all those languages. Couldn’t we just settle on one?

Jesus knows this. He knows what is best for His Church. And He’s promised always to be with us. The Spirit is how Jesus can both “go away” and “come to us.” In one sense, Jesus “went away” when He ascended. He didn’t go “somewhere” in the sense of place, but He withdraw His visible and touchable presence. We can’t see Him as His disciples did, nor would we want to, not in His glory. But in another greater sense, He comes to us. He comes to us by the Spirit He sends, in the Spirit-ed Word that has Jesus’ own imprimatur, that the apostles who wrote did so guided by the Spirit who brought everything to their remembrance.

That same Spirit is at work here among us. Subtly, humbly, hiddenly. Delivering the peace of Jesus. “Peace, I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” That’s the peace of sins forgiven. The peace of standing before God justified. The peace of having death conquered for you. The peace of eternal life and the promise of resurrection to life. Pentecost peace and joy.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/317/20100526000145/audio/acts_2.1-23_23may2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 16 May 2010 08:37:03 +0000
When you look out over 2000 years of church history, when you consider the Church that began as 120 believers gathered in one room on the eve of Pentecost, you have to ask yourself how has the Church managed to survive throughout the centuries. Empires have come and gone. Nations have fallen and risen. Great cultures have reached their pinnacle and then disappeared. Antagonists have risen up: Islam, communism, atheism, rationalism, agnosticism, skepticism. There have been enemies from within too: heresies, false teachers, egocentric leaders, corrupt clergy, faithless laity. 2000 years of mismanagement that would have driven a corporation or even a country into the ground.

And yet, like the dandelions in your Spring lawn or weeds in your vegetable garden or the Energizer bunny that keeps on ticking and ticking, the Church seems to march on, popping up here and there all over the world. Oh, it isn’t uniformly strong and vibrant everywhere at the same time. It’s like that field with the four kinds of soil in the parable that Jesus told. Some parts of the Church are simply unproductive hard pavement, where the Word gets barely a hearing. Some are like the shallow soil that spring up with rapid growth that wilts in the heat of persecution. Some are like the weedy soil where riches, comforts, and cares choke out the Word before it ever becomes fruitful. And some parts are like that deeply plowed soil that receives the Word and in which the Word bears generous fruit.

Luther recognized this. He called the Gospel a “local rain,” that showers for a while in one place and then moves on to another. Churches that once were busting full with people now stand nearly empty, while churches pop up somewhere else. We see it in our own area here in southern California. Churches that were once the great mother churches of the region are barely alive; while areas that barely had a presence of the Church is not thriving. The greatest resurgence of Christianity is found not in America but in Africa. And through it all, there remains one Lord Jesus Christ, one faith, one Baptism, one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

Jesus promised that He would build His church on the confession that He is the Christ, the Son of God, and that the gates of Hades would not prevail against that Church. That doesn’t mean every congregation is bullet-proof. Certainly not. Sometimes growth in one part of the Church entails loss in another part. The Church is a living, dynamic body, not a static institution or corporation.

The Church is also not our doing. We comprise it but we don’t construct it. The Church is not of our doing, nor is the Church’s unity our doing, nor her glory our doing. These are the Lord’s doing. He purchased and won her with His blood shed on the cross. He washes her with the water and Word of Holy Baptism. He clothes her in the seamless robe of His own righteousness. And He prays for her. Jesus prays for His Church, as a loving husband prays for his wife. He is one flesh with her. He prays for her, and in praying for the Church, Christ also prays for you. This part of Jesus’ high priestly prayer, you get to take personally.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” He prays, first of all, for our union with Him in the Father, that just as He and the Father are one, united in the godhead, so we would be one with Him and the Father, that we would dwell in God and God in us, that we would live in the love God has for us in sending His Son to save us.

Notice that it is not simply for ourselves. It is “so that the world may believe that you sent Me.” The Church exists for the benefit and blessing of the world, just as OT Israel existed for the benefit and blessing of itself, as though it were some kind of holiness club that had exclusive dining room privileges with the Lord, but Israel and its NT counterpart the Church exist “for the life of the world.” “That the world may know and believe that the Father sent the Son to save the world by His death.

This is the first place where churches go wrong. They become institutionalized, self-protective, worried about themselves instead of others, concerned with their own affairs and not with the unbaptized, unbelieving world. We cease to see a world reconciled to God in the blood of Jesus, and instead look at the world in terms of “us” and “them,” drawing a line and building a wall instead of breaking through walls. Jesus’ desire and His prayer is that our unity with Him and the Father would manifest God’s love to the world in Christ so that the world would be drawn into the dragnet of salvation. Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

Second, after union with Him, Jesus wants you to share in His glory. “The glory that you have given me I have given to them.” This past Thursday, we celebrated Jesus’ ascension, the withdrawal of His visible (but not actual!) presence. In ascending to the highest majesty of rule and dominion at the right hand of the Father, Jesus has glorified our humanity. Think about it. Jesus embodies all of humanity in His human body as the second Adam, the new head of humanity. In Christ, all died. In Christ, all are raised from the dead (which is why all rise in the resurrection). In Christ, all are glorified, humanity is glorified at the right hand of the Father.

And it is this glory that He shares with you as one of His baptized believers. You are glorified in Him and you possess a share of that glory, the down payment of which is the Holy Spirit which was given you in your Baptism. Things may appear anything but glorious at the moment. The Church may not appear terribly glorious in this world. And let’s face it, much of the what passes as glorious in the church is man-made glitter, like so much make-up and a hair dye job. It is superficial glitter, as man applies it. But God looks to and sees the inner beauty, the radiance of Christ and His perfection shining through His bride. The Church doesn’t need make up, as much as she thinks she does. She is beautiful to Christ as she is, clothed with Him, her spots and wrinkles and blemishes covered by Him.

Third, Jesus’ desire and prayer is that we be with Him and the Father. “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” It’s not enough that we believe in Him unseeing; Jesus’ desire is that we see what we now believe. That the glory that is now ours by faith in Him would one day be seen in all its glory.

The apostle Paul described this present life as seeing through a glass dimly. Glass was a fascination in the ancient world. Especially clear glass. That’s why the streets of heavenly Jerusalem are depicted as paved with gold as clear as glass. That’s why the city itself is characterized by clarity; wherever you look, everything is as clear as glass. That’s why the river of the water of life, the Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son is a crystal clear river. Clear means that the light of Christ shines perfectly through it, without any cloudiness, without any obstruction, without anything getting in the way. What we now see dimly and reflect dimly, we will soon see in all its shining glory, bathed in the light of Jesus.

Only then will what goes on in this life make any sense or achieve its full clarity. There are certain things that can only be seen under special light, UV light, for example. Similarly the sufferings and hardships of this world as we now see it will only make sense when held under the lamp who is Jesus Christ. Now as we speak, the smudges of sin cover things. We can see only dimly; sometimes not at all. But on the day of Jesus’ appearing, when He shows Himself for who He is and for all the world to see, you too will see and understand and marvel at what God has done.

Until then, the Spirit and the Church say, “Come,” inviting all to drink freely of that Spirit-ed water of life that flows from the Son and the Father. Come and be refreshed. Come and be renewed by Him who makes all things new.

Jesus prays for the Church; He prays for you. And you are held safely in that prayer forever. In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/318/20100526000607/audio/jn_17.20-26_16may2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 09 May 2010 08:40:21 +0000
Viewed through the lens of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the future looks bright even as the present descends into darkness and death. The labor contractions of the new creation seem to be growing in intensity and frequency these days. I don’t know about you, but I wake up every morning wondering what the disaster du jure is going to be: earthquake, flood, fire, volcano, oil slick covering the Gulf of Mexico, market declines, global financial meltdowns. The daily headlines are looking more and more like an apocalyptic checklist from the book of the Revelation. I’m just waiting for famine, plague and pestilence to enter stage right.

It’s terribly easy, and indeed tempting, to get caught up in despair, to abandon all hope for the future, to live radically in the present with a kind of “let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die” attitude. I’m afraid many in our culture have already succumbed to this already. Grab for all you can today because we don’t know about tomorrow. People rack up enormous debt with no intent to repay. Young people walk around aimlessly with no coherent plan or purpose, living day to day from one Frappachino to the next. Perhaps you yourself have wondered what the point of it all is when it seems that nothing is lasting, everything is disposable, today we live, tomorrow we die, so what the heck.

Jesus was preparing His disciples for His impending death and resurrection and ascension. He was “leaving the world,” visibly speaking, and going back to the Father from whence I came. He was about to accomplish the Father’s plan and purpose in giving His life as the atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world. And He would rise again too, demonstrating the power of His death over Death itself, showing that the Death and the grave had lost their sting. And He would ascend to His glory, glorifying our humanity in His. That’s our future - resurrection to life and glory, all thanks and praise to Jesus.

When we despair of the future, when we can as though there is no hope, no glory, no life awaiting us, we betray our own unbelief. We have forgotten the past - Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ now reigns. We have failed to embrace our present sufferings as signs of future glory, as the birth pangs of the new creation that they are. In other words, when we despair of the future, we have failed to grasp in faith the present “now” of our salvation. Now we already have everything in Christ. We have been crucified with Him, raised with Him, glorified with Him. Everything that He died to win for you, you already have in Christ, held in trust for you until you take possession of it. And you have the gift of the Holy Spirit as “earnest money,” as a pledge toward a future filled with resurrection from the dead and life everlasting. You have a future in Jesus.

Our faith in Christ is anchored in the past. It is tied to a cross driven into the earth outside of Jerusalem, the tree on which the incarnate Son of God gave His life for you. That’s the anchor point. This is why the Church is mandated by Christ to proclaim His death until He comes. This is why the Sacrament of His Body and Blood is so central to the worship of the Christian. This is the very point of our Baptism, that we are united with Jesus in His death. That once for all people, once for all times death on a cross is ours. Without the death of Jesus, we have a free-floating faith, perhaps even verging on idolatry, but we have no concrete reference point. Without the sacrificial death of Jesus, our faith would be nothing more than a philosophy of life and pie-in-the sky- by and by optimism at best. Philosophy cannot raise you from the dead, nor can optimism change the course of the future.

This is what is so incredibly toxic about many religions that pass themselves off as authentic Christianity today. They are oriented entirely in the present and in the self. It’s all about now and it’s all about me. The reality of “now” is that we live by faith and not by sight. We live in love toward God and others in spite of and in tension with the lovelessness that resides in our own hearts that really cares only for ourselves. What passes as true religion today, is little more than pandering to the self. If past ages bowed down before idols of wood and stone, this present age bows down before the mirror and worships the self. Even faith itself comes an idolatry when we speak of having “great faith” or a “strong faith.” The question is faith in what? What is the object. I can say, “I trust, I trust” but you will quickly ask in what or in whom do you trust? I may trust that the elevator I am about to step into is in good working order, but my trust won’t make it go or down safely.

I saw a spot on television this past week about Half Dome, the rock in Yosemite and the cable trail that people take up the back side of Half Dome to get to the top. These are not experienced climbers, mind you, but ordinary tourists who trudge up the near vertical trail clinging in trust to a cable. If that cable isn’t any good or if that cable isn’t tied down and anchored properly, it doesn’t matter how great your trust is or how firm your grip is. If the cable lets loose, you may hang on to it with all your might, it won’t save you.

The death of Jesus on the cross is the anchor point of your faith. Without it, “faith” is really nothing more than wishful thinking, and nothing more sure than clinging tightly to a cable tied to nothing. The cable that connects you to the cross is your Baptism, a cord that extends from the wounded side of Jesus to you in this present time. “Now is the time of your salvation.” That “now” is fraught with tension. We Lutherans have a number of ways of saying it. We are now both sinners in Adam and saints in Christ, simul justus et peccator, simultaneously justified and sinner. We are now both dead in ourselves and alive in Christ. We are now residents of this earthly city and citizens of the heavenly city that comes down from above. We now possess all things in Christ, and yet we do not now possess all things for ourselves. We now have peace in Christ, and yet, as Jesus told HIs disciples, we also have trouble, tribulation, hardship. There is now, and there is not yet.

Jesus spoke to His disciples of a coming day and a coming hour when theology would no longer be analogy as it now is, but the Father would be known plainly, when Jesus would no longer be the intermediary of their prayers but they would be able to deal directly with the Father and everything for which they asked in His name would be granted. How often we’ve been mistaken or mislead into thinking that day and hour is now, that all we have to do is append “in the name of Jesus” to whatever we ask and we will receive it like a can of soda from a vending machine.

Even the disciples thought this. They said, “Ah, now you’re speaking plainly and we know you know all things and we believe you….” And Jesus looked at them and said, “Really? Do you think you now believe? No. The hour has come when you will scatter and hide and leave me all alone. That’s how great your faith is. So get your eyes off of yourselves and look to me. In me you have peace, but only in me. In the world in which you live, you will have trouble and heartache and sorrow. But take heart, I have overcome the world.”

The death and resurrection of Jesus have overcome the world. The crucified and risen Lord Jesus now reigns over all things, even though all things do not yet appear to be under His reign. And you’ve undoubtedly heard the questions or perhaps have asked them for yourselves, “If there is a God why does He allow….” Fill in the blank for yourself. If Christ has already overcome the world, if Christ now reign over all things at the right hand of the Father, if all things are now put under His feet, why is there yet tribulation, suffering, disaster, disease, death?

We have no simple answer, and any answer would be trite. It is the way God wishes to do things. He leaves the old and dying in place, even as He brings the new. He allows the city of Man to decay and collapse under its own idolatries, even as His city comes down from heaven glorious as a bride on her wedding day. The sufferings of the present, together with all the doubts and ambiguities of living by faith and not by sight, do not compare with the glory that will be revealed on that Day we see what we now must believe.

John caught a glimpse in the Revelation. A perfected, symmetrical city made of translucent gold with Israelite gates and apostolic foundations, a city paved in gold unlike any gold in this world, transparent as glass. A city of endless day and light illuminated by a single lamp, Christ the Lamb who was slain but lives. A city where all the achievements, all the good that was done in this life, all the glory of the nations is seen in the light of Christ without the stain of sin, with all the greasy fingerprints of Adam wiped away. A city with no temple, no sacrament, where worshippers see face to face the object of their worship - the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb He sent to save us. The vision reminds us that this city does not rise up from below by our work and ambition. That was Babel, the city of man’s ambition. This city comes down from above, whose architect and builder is God.

It is a city whose boardrooms and bedrooms and staterooms are pure and holy. Nothing unclean shall enter through its gates. Nor anyone who does what is false and detestable. That would exclude you and me as well, were it not for the blood of the Lamb and His writing our names in His baptismal book of life. We enter those gates of pearl by God’s undeserved kindness, by grace, through faith, for Jesus’ sake.

Then we will know in full, what we now can only experience in part, dimly. Then we will see what we now must believe. Then every prayer, every petition, every supplication uttered in the name of Jesus will find their “yes” and their “amen.” It is as sure as Jesus risen from the dead is sure. It is as sure as the water of Baptism poured on you. It is as sure as the Word of Christ spoken to you. A past anchored in the death of Jesus, a present lived in baptismal faith, a future filled with joy and peace in the light of Jesus, the One who was and is and is to come, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/319/20100526000724/audio/jn_16.23-33_09may2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 02 May 2010 08:41:15 +0000
What Jesus has from the Father, He gives by the way of the Spirit. From Father to Son to you gathered here this morning.

Jesus prepares them for His soon to come death and resurrection. “In a little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” In a little while, by the close of that day, Jesus would be dead and buried. And then, in a little while, three short days, He would rise, and they would see Him again, and their sorrow would turn to joy.

Would that all our sorrows lasted but three days! Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be great if all the pain and suffering and loss of this life could be packed into a Friday and over by Sunday? Well, in a very real and profound sense, it has! It is all there in the death of Jesus - your death, mine, the death of the world. And it is all there in the resurrection of Jesus - your death, mine, the life of the world. “Behold, I make all things new,” Jesus says. And He does it by His dying and rising. “It is finished.” If only we believed those last words from the cross - “it is finished.”

Jesus compares to a pregnant woman about to give birth. That’s always a hazardous analogy for a man to propose because the usual response from women is “You have no idea what it’s like.” But He’s the Lord, and He knows, so we’ll have to take Him at His Word here and run with it. “When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” Suffering and sorrow give way to joy, a joy so great that it literally blots out the memory of the suffering, which is good, otherwise we first-borns would all be only children.

It tends to be true — we have a poor memory for pain, at least the intensity of it. St. Paul says that our present sufferings, the sufferings we endure in this life in a fallen creation, do not compare with the glory that will be revealed in us on the day of resurrection. The pain of dying and death with all its attendant tears and grief will be wiped away by the joy of the resurrection, the new creation, the abundant life that is ours in Jesus even now. It will be as St. John saw and described it in the Revelation, like a wedding day, a day of joy overflowing like Cana wine, when the Church appears as a bride for her husband, a day when God and Man dwell together in a blood-reconciled peace, when God will wipe away every salty tear of grief from our eyes, when mourning and weeping and sorrow and pain will finally be ended. The day that Death is swallowed up in the victory of Jesus who makes all things new.

And the glorious news of the day is that it is already done. It is finished. The hard work is done and Jesus did it. The old is gone - crucified, dead, buried. The old you with all your sins, your shortcomings, your failings, your weaknesses, your death. This world with its terrors and disasters and doom. The old Adam with his rebellion and selfishness and lust and pride, wanting to be god, killing everyone who gets in the way. It’s all dead and buried in the death of Jesus. It is done. It is finished. The old has gone, the new has come to all who are baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection. The grave is open, empty, impotent, powerless to hold. The new has come and left His resurrection footprints in this old creation, blessing and breathing life into His frightened disciples, proclaiming His victory at Death’s very beachhead, at the cemetery.

Do you think the disciples understood all this from Jesus that night? For that matter, do we here today? Now we see dimly, in part, a shadow, a glimpse of the glory that is. What we see is a world falling apart - wars, earthquakes, volcanos, oil spills. And that’s just this past month! But Jesus would have us see in every earthquake, every tidal wave, every eco-disaster a painful birth pang, a labor contraction of the new creation being born.

Our problem is that we would like to skip over the labor pains and get right to the birthday. We’d like to leave out the world’s last chapters, the painful part about the collapse of this world’s order and go straight for the resurrection. We’d like to skip over Good Friday with all its terror and blood and gore and head straight to Easter Sunday. We look for a detour from this upper room on a Thursday night to the upper room on Sunday evening that somehow goes by the old rugged cross outside of Jerusalem. And sadly today there are many counterfeit forms of Christianity that do just that. Oh, they don’t deny the cross of Jesus; you couldn’t get away with that. They just marginalize it and push it off to the side in favor of something a bit more uplifiting than Jesus being lifted up.

Jesus sees through the sorrow. For Him, it is like a lens through which this world is view. “You will have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you.” Weeping remains for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. Remember Jeremiah in his lamentation as he grieves the death of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.

“Remember my affliction and my bitterness, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when he has laid it on him; let him put his mouth in the dust — there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults. For the Lord will not cast off for ever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men.” (Lamentation 3:19-34)

Life under the cross is real life. There is genuine suffering, heartache, brokenness, death. There are tears and disappointments and grief. Luther called it the “theology of the cross” and rightly so. Look at the book of Acts and our first reading this morning. Right on the glorious heels of Pentecost comes controversy in the church. The Gospel was reaching Gentile ears and gasp! the Gentiles were believing and being baptized. The Holy Spirit was at work delivering the gifts of Jesus to pagans and what happens? Peter is criticized for eating with Gentiles! Can you believe it? Sure you can! It happens all the time when God acts in a way that doesn’t square with our notions of consistency. It took three swift divine kicks to get Peter into Cornelius’ living dining room.

Can you imagine telling someone about childbirth and leaving out the birth pains? Of course not! It would be downright dishonest. With pregnancy, as with life itself, it’s the whole thing or nothing at all. You have to embrace all of it. If you are going to embrace life, you must also embrace death. If you are to know the joy of the resurrection you must endure the cross. The Christian has one foot in Good Friday and the other in Easter Sunday - now and not yet. That’s the clear message of the Revelation. Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. And that glory is already present in a hidden, sublime way in, with, and under our present sufferings.

John had the privilege of seeing it with his own eyes. A glimpse of the glory. And like a tourist to a far away place who sends a postcard saying “wish you were here,” John sends this glorious picture postcard of things as they are from the heavenly perspective. A new heaven and a new earth. Jerusalem as she has never been seen in this life - adorned like a bride on her wedding day. This is what we long for, hope for. This is what faith waits for - resurrection and life. There will be sorrow now, but there is joy to come. There will be times of trial and testing now, but there is joy to come. There will be tears and grief now, but there is joy to come. Wait on the Lord. Wait patiently, hopefully, expectantly, faithfully. You won’t be disappointed.

Jesus says to His disciples and to us, “You will have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/320/20100526001118/audio/jn_16.12-22_02may2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 25 Apr 2010 08:43:10 +0000 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:27-28)

Sheep and Shepherd. It’s Good Shepherd Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Easter. In Latin Miseracordias Domini Sunday. The merciful heart of the Lord. And no image more clearly captures the merciful heart of the Lord than that of the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep.

Jesus was walking about the temple grounds. It was winter, the feat of Dedication, Chanukah. He was in the colonnade of Solomon, the son of David. The Son of David in the colonnade of the son of David. Prophesy and fulfillment meet. Naturally there is religious interest in Jesus. He’s created quite a stir healing the sick, cleansing lepers, driving out demons, raising the dead. He’s drawn a lot of interest and quite a following. The religious gather around Him to quiz Him some more. Are you the Christ? Stop beating around the bush and tell us plainly. We need to know whether we should invest in or not. So tell us, Jesus. And none of those clever parables and funny sayings of yours. Tell us plainly, are you the Messiah or not?

The works speak for themselves, Jesus says. So do His words. There’s no question that Jesus claimed to be the promised Messiah, the Christ. He also claimed God as His Father, that He was sent by the Father to do His Father’s saving will. He claimed that He and the Father were one, that is, one in essence.

Still they did not believe. In fact, they took up stones to kill Him. They sought ways to have Him arrested. They sought ways to get rid of Him. He was inconvenient, an embarrassment. He challenged their religious notions. He laid waste to their concept of righteousness as something earned. He challenged the very foundations of their religion. He almost seemed indifferent to the temple as He walked its colonnades. The temple which was so central to the worship of Israel. The temple with its troubled history - destroyed and rebuilt, captured and desecrated, recaptured and purified (the reason the Feast of the Dedication or Chanukah celebrated). Herod was undertaking a massive renovation of the temple, in order to earn the favor of the people. Yet Jesus seems rather cool and indifferent toward the temple. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.” The temple, of course, was His own body, His flesh which He would give for the life of the world. The lesser gave way to the greater.

With Jesus, all the prophetic images coalesce and combine. Temple, priesthood, sacrifice, Lamb, Shepherd. Jesus is all of these, and all of these prepared for the coming of Jesus. He is the dwelling of God with man, the High Priest of humanity, the sole sacrifice for sin, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, the good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep.

Oddly, He was rejected by those who were looking for Him. They refused to be part of His flock, they refused Him as their shepherd, and in their refusal, they were blind to who Jesus is. And so instead of hearing His voice and following Him, they took up stones and plotted to kill Him.

We’re considerably more polite. Maybe we don’t throw stones at Jesus these days, and crucifixions are long thing of the past and wouldn’t pass muster being both cruel and unusual punishment. We’re more inclined to ignore Him, marginalize and mythologize Him. Leave Jesus safely on a shelf somewhere. Out of sight, out of mind. We’re more inclined to turn our attention on our needs, our sense of purpose, our well-being, looking out for #1 (meaning me). Jesus call to follow Him is drowned out by what seem to be more urgent calls. His call to repentance is replaced by more comfortable religions that promise a better return on our faith investment than to take up our cross and follow HIm. The big proof has been offered to the world in Jesus’ death and resurrection, and still we clamor for proof, scientific proof, some clincher that Jesus is the one, the real deal, the one who will work for us.

Make no mistake about it. There are wolves in sheep’s clothing. The apostle Paul warned the Ephesian pastors that fierce wolves would come after he left, twisting doctrine, distorting grace, not sparing the flock, drawing disciples to themselves. Some would even come from within the ranks of their own. Pastors who strayed from the truth for some novelty, something different, something marketable. The same exists today. The enemies to the Gospel come both from outside and inside the Church. It may surprise us, but it shouldn’t. It was true at the time of the apostles too.

Probably the most destructive books today are not written by atheists. It’s easy to get all wound up by people who mock religion in general and Christianity in particular, people like Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris.

That’s why the Church always remains an article of faith, something confessed and believed but not seen. We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. We believe precisely because we can’t see, and because the church really isn’t much to look at. That, perhaps, is the greatest deception of our day, that where the biggest and richest and loudest is going on, there God must be at work. But the fact of church history is that the novelties were always more popular. We are so much like sheep, everyone going in his own spiritual direction, sipping from polluted puddles, munching on deadly weeds, following wayward paths that lead to death and destruction. Or as Isaiah put it poetically, “All we like sheep have gone astray, everyone has turned to his own way.”

That’s really the point of comparison with Jesus the Good Shepherd and we as sheep of His pasture. It’s not that sheep are stupid or stubborn so much as they are wandering and wayward. They are dependent on their Shepherd who leads them, feeds them, brings them to fresh and living water, tends their wounds, sets them on their feet, literally lays down His life for their life. That’s the image of the church gathered around Jesus, around His Word and Sacraments, and what Jesus is doing for us.

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Holy lambs and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd. That’s how Luther described the church. That would apply to us gathered here this morning. A flock gathered around its good Shepherd. And Jesus here to feed and lead, to bring us to the refreshing waters of Baptism, to restore our souls with His forgiveness, to set a table in the presence of our enemies, to anoint our heads with the oil of gladness.

He knows you, better than you know yourself. He calls you by your name. He goes ahead of you through the dark valley of the shadow of Death and the grave. He conquered them for you, so you need fear no evil. He comforts you with the rod and staff of His Word.

There is a promise. “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Those cross-scarred hands of Jesus hold your life in a way that you cannot. Your hold on your life is a tenuous hold at best. A little pinch grip of the present moment, nothing more. You realize that every time you get a taste of your own mortality. A health scare perhaps, or a near accident. Or one of those “life flashes before your eyes” incidents. Or just the dawning realization that “dust you are and to the dust you return.” All you have is this present moment, and that isn’t much. One day, you will lose your grip on your life. We all eventually will, like it or not. But One does not. Jesus holds your life wholly and entirely, in a way that you cannot. He’s got the whole world in His hands. He has your life in His hands, and nothing can ever snatch you away from Him.

You see, it’s not about your grip on Jesus, but His grip on you. It’s the grip of your Baptism by which you were buried in Jesus and joined with Him in His death and life. It’s the grip of His Word doing its killing and making alive thing with you. Killing the sinner, drowning the sin, literally making a sheep out of a goat, a believer out of an unbeliever. A child of the Father, a member of the family, a sheep of the Good Shepherd’s pasture. You see, sheep don’t make a flock, shepherds do. Sheep constitute a flock, but the shepherd gathers them. And when you’ve been gathered by the Good Shepherd, you’ve been gathered forever.

On the island of Patmos, the apostle John was privileged to see and hear something few people get to see in this life. The heavenly side of worship. The liturgy of heaven. What he saw was a countless multitude waving palm branches, like an eternal Palm Sunday, worshipping a Lamb who was slain but lives, seated at the right hand of the Father, surrounded by four living creatures representing the whole created order, by 24 elders representing the old and new testament church, surrounded by countless angels.

The description of that congregation John saw is a description of the Good Shepherd’s flock, of you too in Jesus. Listen again to what John heard:

“These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (What other blood do you know that makes things white?)

“Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will shelter them with His presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away ever tear from their eyes.”

That’s about you too. That’s your destiny in Jesus. That’s your life as it is held now in Jesus. Jesus is your Good Shepherd; you lack nothing in Him. And in Him, you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/321/20100526001214/audio/jn_10.22-30_25april2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 18 Apr 2010 04:45:26 +0000
John describes a third appearance of Jesus to seven of His disciples on the shores of the Sea of Tiberius. This is where Jesus originally had called the fishermen to make them fishers of men, and now they seem to be returning to the fishing business. Whether on account of discouragement, confusion, despair, or boredom we don’t know. The story has a familiar ring to it. They go out at night, they catch nothing, they return to see Jesus on shore. He instructs them to let the nets out on the right side of the boat. And, of course, the catch is so large, they are barely able to haul it aboard the boat. John even gives the count: 153 fish. A number that means absolutely nothing, except that it rings of fact. Someone took the trouble to count them, and John took the trouble to record it, so you would believe what he was writing, right down to the smallest, irrelevant detail.

That’s how it is with eyewitness testimony. Witnesses tend to remember strange, often unrelated details. Like 153 fish. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect a fisherman to remember. It was his livelihood, his business. Peter immediately recalls the prior catch of fish, the one that took him away from the fishing business and set him on the road to follow Jesus. “It’s the Lord,” he shouts, as he jumps out of the boat into the sea. He wasn’t dressed to greet Jesus properly.

Peter was aware of his own unworthiness. He knew he had betrayed Jesus at his trial. He denied even knowing Jesus, this bold disciples who was always so quick to speak. He was stripped down for work and not expecting to be in church, so to speak. And so he dove into the water for cover, which, baptismally speaking, isn’t a bad idea. Our clothing before God is our baptism which we wear like a garment, covering the shame of our nakedness. You’ll recall the Fall, and how when Adam and Eve sinned against God they became self-aware and realized their own nakedness and tried to cover themselves with fig leaves? But it was God who had to clothe them with animal skins, cover them with the death of another. And so we have this reflex too. We don’t want to be caught undressed. We feel vulnerable, exposed. Some even have a recurring dream of showing up to work and forgetting to get dressed.

Peter dove into the water after throwing on his outer garment. Can’t be having the Lord see him like that! When they go to shore, Jesus has breakfast waiting for them. Bread and fish. Again, another miracle is recalled. The feeding of the 4000 and the 5000. This time it’s just the seven. Bread and fish were likely symbolic of the messianic age having come when the children of God would feed on the flesh of Leviathan, the sea monster. The new creation had come, and there was Jesus feeding His disciple. He’s always feeding. They knew it was the Lord who was feeding them. He the Host, they the invited guests.

John wants you to think of the Lord’s Supper here. You are the invited guests. He takes our bread and wine, what we bring to the table, and makes it so much more. His own body and blood. He takes our gifts and makes them into His gifts, and with His gifts come all that He died and rose to win for us. Not simply breakfast but a feast, not simply bread and fish but His body and blood, not simply nourishment for the body, but food for eternal life. It was the third time they saw Jesus risen. Truly risen. This wasn’t simply a one-time vision. They’d seen Him twice in a locked room in Jerusalem. Now they saw Him seaside and ate breakfast with Him. Is there really any other explanation than He is risen?

The risen Lord appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus. Saul was going from synagogue to synagogue with letters, warrants to round up anyone who confessed the Jesus was the Messiah. He thought He was doing God a favor, purging the synagogue of this heresy. The Lord had other plans for Saul. You and I would not have picked him to be the leading apostle to the Gentile world. Be serious! A fanatically conservative Jew who was persecuting Christians? This is hardly apostolic material. Ananias, who was appointed by God to baptize Saul was incredulous. “Are you kidding me? Look at all the harm he’s done. All the people he’s had arrested. He even supervised the stoning of Stephen. And now he’s going to be baptized and become the leading apostle to the Gentiles?”

God had other plans for Saul. He would take all that religious zeal and turn him into a missionary machine, an apostle for the Gentiles, one “untimely born,” apostle number thirteen who would take the Gospel of Jesus into Greece and beyond. When you look at the life of Saul, you have to stop and wonder what happened on that road that changed this man in an instant. No, he didn’t suddenly become nice and gentle and kind to everyone. He was the same Saul with the same intensity for theology and the same zeal to serve the God of his fathers. What changed was his religion, his view of God, his view of Jesus. In an instant, Saul goes from being a persecutor to an apostle. From rounding up Christians to making new ones. From serving the religious authorities to confounding them. In an instant.

What happened that day? There really is no explanation that what the text gives us. He encountered the risen and glorified Lord Jesus that day. He saw Jesus in His risen and ascended glory and it forever changed him. People don’t generally retool their theology so quickly. And it’s a reminder to us that the Lord is still active today. He’s not “gone,” in the sense that He’s not here. He just can’t be seen He’s very much alive and active at the right hand of God, lording His death and resurrection over the whole creation, even as that creation seems to be wearing out and dying. He’s still calling and sending preachers of His Gospel, now through the means of His church which is His body.

Did you notice what Jesus said to Saul that day? “Why are you persecuting me?” Saul was persecuting Christians not Christ. He didn’t know. But you see, to persecute Christians is the same as persecuting Jesus. He takes it personally. To persecute the Bride is to persecute her Groom. They are one flesh. You cannot claim to love Jesus in one breath and yet hate His body, the church, in the next breath. They are joined together as one. The risen and glorified Jesus and His Bride the Church, which includes you, are one, just as husband and wife are one flesh.

John was worshipping on Sunday on the island of Patmos. He was in exile, and he and his fellow exiles were gathered for services on that first day of the week when he was privileged to see Christ in His glory and see the heavenward side of worship, the side we can’t see but confess when we say “with the angels, the archangels, and all the company of heaven.” We can’t see this with our eyes, but we are given the gift of John’s report in the Revelation. He saw Christ the Lamb, the Sacrifice who was slain but lives. And he heard the worship of heaven that is echoed here on earth, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

He feeds, He forgives, He sends, He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We come to him broken, lost, confused, dead in our sin. Jesus gathers us, He calls us, He baptizes us, He gives us His Spirit, He grants us faith to see Him for who He is. He feeds us with the bread of His body; He refreshes us with the wine of His blood. He sends us into a broken and lost world with the good news of His victory on our lips.

We are reminded today too that being a Christian is no exemption from suffering. Saul would learn what it meant to suffer for Jesus’ name’s sake. We too will learn in the school of experience. John suffered exile on an island because of Jesus. Peter was crucified upside down confessing the Name of Jesus. We have no idea what awaits us in the days and years ahead.

But we do know this. We belong to the Lord. We are baptized into His death and life. We have died with Christ. We’ve been raised with Him. We are glorified with Him. He is with us, with his gathered people, in a most profound way - feeding, sending, forgiving. We do not worship some dead and departed religious figure or some merely inspirational leader. We worship the crucified and risen One, the Lamb who was slain but lives, the Lord of creation whom even the wind and waves and fish obey. The One seen by Mary Magdalene, by the apostles, by Saul on the road to Damascus, by John on the island of Patmos. The One we will see again on His Day when He appears to in glory.

To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!

In the name of Jesus. Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/316/20100420235527/audio/jn_21.1-14_18april2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 11 Apr 2010 08:21:04 +0000 Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. (John 20:29)

Thomas Didymus, the Twin. We traditionally call him “Doubting Thomas” don’t we? oor Thomas. He’s the one who missed church on Easter. He was not there in the upper room that first Easter evening when the Lord Jesus appeared to his fearful band of disciples who were cowering behind locked doors. He simply appeared among them without so much as a knock on the door and said, “Peace with you.” And after they collected their wits, He showed them His hands and His sides, still bearing the wounds of the cross.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you.” And He breathed on them and spoke to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” It was a little Pentecost in preview. Fifty days later, the big one. Here Jesus establishes His apostolic ministry. Sending them with authority. “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” His breath, His words, His Spirit, His forgiveness, His peace. The sins they forgive are forgiven, what they retain is retained. “As certain on earth as though Christ HImself were speaking. He is. That’s the nature of apostolic ministry. “He who hears you, hears me.”

In so doing, Jesus guarantees that His voice is heard in His Church until He reappears in glory. This was not simply the sending of a few, but the creation of an Office. The Office of the Holy Ministry. Judas’ vacancy would be filled by Matthias. Jesus would add Paul as number thirteen. They, in turn, would ordain others. But these first ones are unique. They had seen the risen Lord with their own eyes. They had seen the nail marks in His hands, the spear mark in His side. No question about what they were seeing. They felt His breath. They heard His words. Wouldn’t you have loved to be among them in that upper room? To see what they saw? To hear what they heard? How much easier it would be to believe! Or so we imagine.

Thomas Didymus, the Twin, was not with them that first Easter evening when Jesus appeared to them. Why, we aren’t told. Perhaps out of fear, he had run away and was hiding. The rest were in a locked room, after all. Perhaps he was with his twin. Maybe he was disillusioned. He’d left all to follow Jesus, and now the movement was in shambles, the leader crucified, the cause lost. Whatever the reason, Thomas was not there to see and to hear.

The others caught up with him sometime during the week. “We have seen the Lord,” they said. But like the others on Easter morning, Thomas also knew by his own experience that dead men don’t rise, ordinarily. And like the others, he doesn’t initially believe the news. He is skeptical. He wants proof, hard evidence that Jesus truly is risen from the dead, that it’s the same Jesus and not some impostor. He wants to see the wounds. He wants to touch them. “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe.”

You see, Thomas wasn’t some ignorant, gullible, superstitious 1st century bumpkin who would believe every rumor that came along. He heard the news from his trusted friends, his fellow disciples. He had been there when Jesus predicted His own death and resurrection three times. He’d heard it with His own ears. But still, He did not believe it.

Thanks God for Thomas! He brings veracity to John’s Gospel account. Think about it. If you were making this up to deceive future generations, if you were writing some sort of myth or legend about a resurrected Jesus, would you have His own inner core of disciples doubting His word, questioning the good news, seeking evidence? No, of course not. You would have Thomas hearing the news that they had seen the Lord and cry out, “Alleluia! He is risen indeed!” But that’s not what happened. Thomas did not believe it, even when it was told to him on good authority. And he refused to believe it until he personally saw and touched the risen Lord.

Eight days later, they again were in the upper room. Eight days. Do you notice how Jesus seems to keep popping up on Sundays in John? And it’s always in closed gatherings? There’s a pattern shaping up here. “Wherever two or three are gathered in my Name, there am I in the midst of them.” He’s present with His gathered Church. His Body, His Blood, the wounds of His sacrifice. His peace and forgiveness and Spirit and breath. All here for you. This is the foundation of Christian worship and liturgy. The only difference between that room and this room is that our doors aren’t locked and we can’t see Jesus. But the same wounds and words and Spirit.

Thomas was with them this time. Good for Thomas. He’d missed out on everything the Sunday before. See what happens when you miss church? Thomas is there, doubts and all. That tells us something. Bring your doubts to Jesus. There will always be doubts on our minds. We’re dealing with things unseen, things you can’t measure scientifically. There will always be doubts. Sometimes little nagging ones, sometimes big ones. All the great ones of faith had their doubts. Abraham and Sarah laughed at the promise of God that they would have children in their old age, until God had the last laugh. Zechariah didn’t believe the news from the angel that he and Elizabeth would conceive in their old age and bear a son name John. Mary wondered how it could be that she would conceive and bear a son even as she was a virgin.

You have doubts, I’m sure. I have them too. When I decided to go into the ministry 24 years ago, I thought that intensive study and working with the Word would alleviate some of those doubts, that inner skepticism, the desire for proof and hard evidence. I learned more of the Word and church history and doctrine. But that just raised more questions too. And sometimes doubts. And then there are the doubts caused by things not going as I think they should - the seeming weakness of the Word, the weakness of the Church.

But what we learn from Thomas this morning is to bring all our doubts to church, to the altar and pulpit, to the words and wounds of Jesus. And Jesus will meet us, doubts and all.

So there is Jesus again, standing among them in a locked room. Again His peace. And now He speaks to Thomas as though He had heard him days before because He had. “Put your finger here; see hands; put out your hand, and place it in my side.” This is a genuine body we are talking about here. Not a ghost, not a spirit, not an apparition. Flesh and bone. He’s touchable. And the wounds are the clincher. The wounds of His sacrifice are still visible in resurrection.

What does that mean? “By His wounds, we are healed. Those are the wounds that mark Him as the Lamb who was slain. And curiously, though He is risen from the dead, the wounds remain as battle scars. Even seated at the right hand of the Father in glory, Jesus bears the scars of His sacrifice as an eternal reminder of your forgiveness. When He intercedes for you and mediates for you, He does it on the basis of His sacrifice. As the hymn says it,

Crown Him the Lord of love
Behold His hands and side,
Rich wounds, yet visible above,
In beauty glorified.

You see, the sacrifice of Jesus is never simply a memory of a past event. It is always visibly, tangibly, concretely presented - His eternally wounded hands and feet and side, the Body and the Blood in the Supper. The same thing.

With Jesus wounds come also His words. Faith creating, faith enlivening, faith sustaining words. “Do not disbelieve, but believe.” And Thomas does. He confesses what He believes, “My Lord and my God.”

And now a blessing, not on Thomas, but on you and me, we who have not seen and yet believe are blessed by God. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Blessed are you, this second Sunday of Easter, that you believe that Christ is risen from the dead, and that His death and life are yours. God has not left you without evidence. No, you may not see and touch Jesus’ hands and feet and side. But you hve the sworn deposition of an eyewitness: “These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.

That’s where we go with our doubts - to the Word, the Supper. We would do well this Eastertide to reread the Gospel of John. It was written for believers that they might continue to believe, reminding us anew of what Jesus said and did. We, like Thomas, are prone to doubt. We live in a scientific and skeptical age. We know that dead men don’t rise, ordinarily. And yet over and against our doubts, God sets His Word, the historic record of eyewitnesses to the resurrection, the sworn testimony of those who had seen and heard and touched. We are, of all people, blessed. No, we don’t see, but we hear and we take and eat and drink, and we are as much in the presence of the risen Jesus as Thomas and the rest. And more.

Blessed are you, dear baptized believer, for you have not seen and yet by God’s gift and grace you believe. And believing you have life in name of Jesus.

Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/315/20100417165205/audio/john_20.19-21_11april2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 04 Apr 2010 15:00:41 +0000 But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. (Luke 24:11)

Alleluia! Jesus Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Unbelievable, wouldn’t you say? We know that dead men don’t rise. They knew that dead men don’t rise. This isn’t some recent revelation of modern science. It’s a universal truth. Dead men don’t rise. That’s why the apostles did not believe the women at first. That’s why Peter had to go and see for himself. That’s why the women were going to the tomb in the first place. They were going to finish a burial, not to meet a risen Jesus. They knew that dead men don’t rise from the dead. They were bringing burial spices to finish a hasty burial from Friday afternoon.

They came to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. They saw that the large stone had been rolled away and the tomb was open. They went inside to take a look, and they did not see the body of Jesus. I don’t know what they were thinking, but I assure you their first thoughts that Sunday morning were not “He is risen! Alleluia!” They were perplexed, confused, frightened. Their minds and hearts were racing. I’m sure they thought “foul play” or “grave robbers” or “maybe we have the wrong tomb.” Anything but “He is risen.”

They should have known. They should have believed. Jesus had told them repeatedly He would be crucified and on the third day rise again. Three times at least He told them. But they didn’t believe Him and they didn’t remember His words because these words are so unbelievable. Dead men don’t rise, ordinarily speaking. They should have believed Him. He raised the widow’s son and Jairus’ daughter. He raised Lazarus from the dead. But still, they did not believe Him, in spite of His words, in spite of His works. In spite of all that Jesus had taught and shown them over the three years they were with Him. Yet who can really blame them? We all know that dead men don’t rise.

It takes a couple of bright angels to make the connection with a question: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Why were you going to a tomb with burial spices? Why are you walking around with long, sad faces? Why do you look as though you’re going to a funeral? Don’t you remember what He said to you? Don’t you believe what He said to you while He was with you in Galilee? Why are you looking for the living among the dead?

Why do we? Why do we dwell on death instead of life? Why do we act as though our departed loved ones who have died in faith are gone forever? Why do we look at death as though it were the worst thing that could happen to us? Why do live as though all there is to life is this life? Why do we seek life in dead works, in dead religion, in dead ideas and philosophies? Why do we seek the living among the dead? Simple, like the women who went to the tomb that first Easter morning, we know that dead men don’t rise.

Except that is, for this one. This man named Jesus. He’s the great exception to the rule that dead men don’t rise. And He’s the only exception. No other religious leader has pulled it off much less predicted it three times in advance. “Remember how He told you while He was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” He called the shot three times and He did it. He rose from the dead. The grave is empty, the body is risen.

What does this mean? It means the dead will live in Christ. “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ will all be made alive.” Jesus is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. He is the first to rise with the promise of more to come, a whole humanity to come. Jesus is the new Adam, the new Head of humanity, and as with the Head so with the Body. “Each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at His coming whose who belong to Christ.” As Adam brought all of humanity into sin and death, so Christ brings humanity into justification and life. As in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.

This is the Christian hope. Not that Jesus will fix all our problems or exempt us from the suffering of this life or put a bandaid on every hurt that comes along. The apostle Paul is clear: “if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” And what a pitiful lot we would be if all the Jesus was for us was some kind of heavenly invisible Friend who bails us out of trouble every time we mess up, whom we can talk to and will make us feel better, who will advise us on the best decisions to make in life.

The empty, open tomb gives us much more to hope. Christ is risen, and in HIm the dead will rise! Our last and greatest enemy, Death itself, lies conquered, vanquished under the cross-bruised heel of Jesus. The old icons of the resurrection always show Christ standing on the grave, pulling up Adam and Eve from their tombs. The reign of Death and Grave is ended; the reign of Jesus Christ has begun. When the women and Peter stepped into that open, empty tomb they were eyewitnesses of the new creation breaking into the old. The old has gone, the new has already come. The darkness of Death is ended, the sun has risen and the morning sky is bright with resurrection.

How fitting it is that the Son of God should rise from the dead on the first day of the week! How fitting it is that we worship not on the 7th day as in the old testament, the Sabbath day, but on the 8th day, the first day of a new creation. When the women set foot into that open, empty tomb of Jesus, they set foot in a new creation and caught a glimpse of what was to come - resurrection to life. We all will surely die and be buried, unless of course, Jesus appears in glory first. But the word from the tomb is that death has lost its sting. Christ has conquered. He is risen. And because He is risen, the dead will rise.

Do you fear death? Then fear it no longer. Christ has triumphed over our greatest enemy. Do you dread the grave? Then dread no longer; Christ has made your grave a place of sabbath rest. Do you grieve the death of someone you love? Then grieve in hope and trust in Christ. Christ is risen, and in Him the dead will rise. Are you suffering and despairing in this life? Then hear and believe this, Jesus Christ has died and risen from the dead. His suffering and death are vindicated as will be your suffering and death in Him.

The resurrection clinches it. Jesus speaks the truth; His words are truth; He is the truth. He is the Way to eternal life with God. He is the Life that animates all life. Death cannot hold Him; the grave cannot contain Him. His claim to be the Son of God and the Christ stand firm. His word of forgiveness is sure. His promise of eternal life is certain, “even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.”

Why seek the living among the dead?

Christ is risen! Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Christ is risen! Sin is forgiven and washed away.
Christ is risen! The devil is crushed under the cross.
Christ is risen! A new creation has dawned; the old is gone, the new has come.
Christ is risen! Adam is lifted up from the dust
Christ is risen!  His Word is sure.
Christ is risen! And in Him though you die, yet will you live.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/314/20100421001542/audio/lk_24.1-11_04april2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sat, 03 Apr 2010 20:58:28 +0000 This is the night of the first Day, when Light was spoken into darkness.
This is the night of the Passover, when the children of Israel walk through blood-stained wood into freedom.
This is the night that Israel walks through Sea on dry ground.
This is the night the crucified Lamb declares the victory of His cross.
This is the night when the chains of death are broken and light breaks out in the darkness of the grave.

This is the night of which St. Peter spoke when he wrote:

18 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, 20 who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him. (1 Peter 3:18-22)

You entered the church in darkness, as though entering the dark tomb. But you were not alone in the darkness. The light of Christ goes before you and with you. Death is darkness, but even in death a glorious Light glows, warm and alive, life-giving - Jesus the Christ, the Light of the world, the Light no darkness can overcome. He has conquered Death by His death. “It is finished.” At sunrise, the whole world will know the great good news of the open, empty tomb. The stone will be rolled away and the morning sun will reveal the resurrection to all the world.

On this night the resurrection is but a small, flickering light as we are immersed in the mystery of this crucified and risen Lamb. The readings from the OT you are about to hear all bear witness to Christ’s work in, with, and under the history of Israel. This is His saving history, and it is yours in Holy Baptism. In Baptism you were joined to Him in His death and life. All that He is, and all that He does, is yours. This is your history in Jesus, this is your salvation in Christ.

Hear now the Word of the Lord, spoken to you in the darkness. Give attention to this Word, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

In this most holy night our Savior, Christ the Lord, broke the power of death and by His resurrection brought life and salvation to all creation. Let us praise the Lord, for He truly keeps His Word. The sun of righteousness has dawned upon us who have sat in darkness and in the shadow of death.


O night that is brighter than day,
O night more dazzling than the sun,
O night more sparkling than fresh snow,
O night more brilliant than all our lamps!
O night that is sweeter than Paradise,
O night delivered from darkness,
O night that dispels the sleep of sin,
O night that makes us keep vigil with the angels,
O night terrible for the demons,
O night desired by all the year,
O night that leads the bridal Church to her Spouse,
O night that is mother to those enlightened!
O night in which the Devil, sleeping, was despoiled,
O night in which the Heir brings the co-heirs to their heritage.

(Asterius of Pontus  AD 341-400)]]> http://www.htlcms.org/313/20100404050030/audio/eastervigil_03april2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:07:53 +0000
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Nowhere is this more true than with Jesus hanging dead on the cross. In that one, solitary act in the darkness between Noon and three, the griefs and sorrows of our fallen humanity were borne by the Son of God, our sin was answered for, the just demands of the Law were paid, and we were reconciled to the Father. One time in history for times. One Man for all men.

He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Jesus was the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with our suffering. You, my friend, are His burden. He carries you, all your griefs, your sorrows, all that death has done to you, all that others have done to you, all that you have done to yourself, Jesus bore in His own body on the cross. When we see disaster, tragedy, senseless suffering, large scale loss of life, we are prone to ask “Where is God? Why doesn’t He do something?” The answer comes from the cross. There is God doing something, going to the heart of why there is suffering in the world. Where was God during 9/11 when buildings collapsed? Where was God in hurricane Katrina, in the tsunami, in the Haiti and Chilean earthquakes, in all the places where there is suffering and death? And why didn’t He do something about it?

It’s tempting to desire an interventionist God, a God who will deflect bullets before they hit innocent bystanders, who will eliminate cancer cells before they become tumors, who will heal every sickness, cast out every demon, restore every blind eye and faulty limb. But in a world like that, where God micromanages and intervenes in every little thing, there would be no laws of physics, no ordered universe, nothing but seeming randomness.

God does something entirely different. Instead of micromanaging, He macro-manages. Instead of doing rehab on a terminally broken cosmos, He does a death and resurrection job on it. He embodies everything in the body of His Son born of Mary together with all the brokenness, the tragedy, the disasters great and small, and He reconciles all things in the one perfect death of Jesus on the cross with one word tetelesthai - it is finished. He has borne our griefs, your griefs, the collected griefs of mankind, of every death and loss, it is all accounted for in His death, and it’s made good, knit together into a fabric of beauty as only God can do. He has carried our sorrows, your sorrows, every tear shed by humanity in its suffering, Jesus has taken them to Himself and bundled them into His death. Our griefs and sorrows find their end and meaning in His grief and sorrow.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You wouldn’t know it by looking at Him. Jesus looks like One despised by men and rejected by God. A loser. Someone who ran afoul of Religion and the State and God didn’t intervene to rescue Him. Stricken, smitten, and afflicted. Not us, but Him. There by the grace of God goes He, for us and in our place.

As Luther reminds us, when you look at the beatings and suffering of Jesus on Good Friday, don’t blame the Roman government or the Jewish religious leaders. These are but the instruments. The cause is your sin - your thoughts, your words, your actions. Your sin is why Jesus had to suffer as He did. Even if you were the only human being on this earth, Jesus would still have had to suffer and die to save you. That’s what the Law of God calls for: the wages of sin is death. Don’t ever think of sin as simply a weakness, a “mistake” as so many public confessions like to say “I made a mistake.” Sin is more than a mistake, it is an embrace of death instead of life, of self instead of God, of the devil’s lie instead of God’s Word.

He was wounded for our transgression; He was bruised for our iniquities. Those were your hands beating Jesus as they lash out against your fellow man. Those were your words uttered in scorn. The lashes He endured were yours; the death He died was yours. And what’s so amazingly graceful is that in this God is reconciled to His enemies. God had promised in the form of a threat to the devil that He would make enmity, that through the heel crushed seed of the woman God would crush the head of the serpent. It’s the foundational promise of the Bible, and it finds it’s goal and fulfillment here with Jesus on the cross.

He who by a tree once overcame, is now by a tree overcome.

The violence of the cross is our peace. Again, every act of violence, of inhumanity, every genocide and injustice, is answered once and for all in the death of Jesus. There is peace with God. Peace always comes with blood, and this peace comes with the Blood of the Lamb shed on the wood of the cross and delivered to you in the chalice of the Supper. Water and blood flowed from the wounded side of Jesus, John reports. It’s more than a piece of medical evidence concerning Jesus’ death. It reminds us that the source of the Sacraments, of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, are in the wounded side of dead Jesus.

By His wounds, you are healed. They are a medicine unlike any other, a “medicine of immortality.” Medicine can provide a stopgap. It can put a bandage on death but it cannot cure it. Only Jesus, the Physician of our souls,, can heal eternally. In His earthly ministry, He healed people as a sign of the coming kingdom. But every healing has its source in His wounds here on the cross. Here the penitent thief finds pardon, here the guilty find acquittal, here the sick find health and the weak find strength. Here, in the wounds of Jesus, is the ultimate and final cure to what ails us. His wounded head is the healing of our mind. His wounded back the healing of our strength and all the blows we have endured at the hands of others. His wounded hands the healing of our work. His wounded feet the healing of our walk. His wounded side the healing of our hearts turned away from God and against one another.

In His wounds are our peace. “Peace be with you,” Jesus said on Easter evening, showing them His wounds. ‘Peace be with you, He says to you with His Body and His Blood.

Where is God when bad things happen? He is there in Christ to make all things new. Why doesn’t He do something? He has. “It is finished.” A good Friday. Very good.

In the Name of Jesus.
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/312/20100403044455/audio/goodfriday_02april2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:11:18 +0000
On the 14th day of the first month, all of Israel slaughtered a year old lamb, painted the blood upon the doorposts of their houses and ate the roasted flesh with bitter herbs and unleavened bread to commemorate their walk into freedom and life as the people of God. The lamb stood in place of their first born. Where the blood of the lamb was smeared upon the wood, there death passed over and the first-born of the house was spared.

It was Israel’s independence day, it’s memorial day. In eating the Passover, you were joined together with all of Israel, the present and the past, and you remembered the blood by which you and your forefathers walked into freedom. Freedom comes at a cost, the life of the lamb for your life, His blood shed for your life.

The Passover was also a meal of communion, of fellowship, of unity with the sons of Jacob. To eat of the lamb is to be one with God and with Israel, bodied and bloodied together as a nation, a people, a priesthood, a treasured possession.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John announced it at Jesus’ Baptism. Here was the ultimate Passover Lamb, whose blood did not simply buy national freedom and a reprieve from death, but forgiveness of sin, eternal life and salvation. He lays down His life as a ransom, purchasing humanity from its bondage with His suffering and death. His blood alone can cleanse from sin. His blood alone atones for our life. His blood alone reconciles to the Father. HIs blood alone pays the redemption price. His blood alone, painted on the doorpost of the cross, means freedom, life, salvation.

Jesus gives His Body to eat as Bread. He does something with the Passover never done that way before. He takes the hard, dry bread of affliction, the unleavened bread, and He gives it as His Body, unleavened by the sin of the Adam. He tells HIs disciples to eat this Bread as His Body, given for them, for you. His death is theirs and their death is His. He is one body with them, as they are one body with each other. As the Israelites ate of the passover lamb, so the Church feeds on her Savior’s sacrificial body - this body conceived and born of Mary, this body nailed to a cross, this body raised from the tomb. The Lamb who was slain but lives.

He gives His Blood to drink as wine. The wine of celebration and gladness. The fruit of the vine that brings joy to men’s hearts. In OT Israel, blood was forbidden. It was poured out, sprinkled, painted on doorposts, poured over the ark of the covenant. But it was never eaten. Even the meat had to be cooked to well done to ensure no blood was eaten. The blood was for atonement. Life for life. His life for yours. For your sins. For every commandment you’ve broken. Every hateful thought. Every faithless word.

Now it is permitted to drink this Blood from this Lamb. Jesus says so. He’s the Lord. It’s His passover to do with as He pleases. And it pleases Him to give you His Body and Blood, the fruits of the tree of His cross. The cross is your tree of life, eat of it and you eat the food of immortality, the drink that gives eternal life. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Do we believe this? This Holy Thursday causes us to consider it anew. Do we believe this? Do we believe that this wafer hard bit of bread is the body of Jesus, His very death given to us as a gift of His immeasurable kindness toward sinners. Do we believe that this is true and eternal food unlike any other food? All other bread we eat to our death. This bread which is His body we eat to our life.

Do we believe that this cup of wine is His blood? His life poured out for you. Do we believe that this is true and eternal drink, a vintage unlike any other, a “medicine of immortality” as the ancient fathers called it? Do we hunger and thirst of this Supper as for Christ HImself? Well we should, for this is how Jesus dwells in us, this is how He abides in us, this is how the Vine feeds the branches that we might be fruitful. There is power in this food and drink to forgive sin, to impart life, to raise us from the dead.

The ancients had an interesting symbol, the pelican. It was said that in times of scarcity, the pelican injured itself and fed her young on her own blood. This turns out not to be true, but the picture remains in ancient Christian art and in the hymn “Thee We Adore” by Thomas Aquinas.

Thou, like the pelican to feed her brood,
Didst pierce Thyself to give us living food.
Thy blood, O Lord, one drop has pow'r to win
Forgiveness for our world and all its sin.
(Lutheran Service Book #640)

Whether this in fact is true of pelicans or not, doesn’t matter. It is true of Jesus. He took the nails and the wood and the sword to provide a meal for us by which we could feed off His vicarious death and live forever. This is the theme of the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, from the lamb that provided clothing for Adam and Eve and all the sacrificial lambs and goats and bulls and pigeons, to the Lamb who was slain but lives seen in His victory and glory at the right hand of the Father. We live off the death on another. And nowhere in our temporal lives is this more evident than in the Supper of Jesus’ body and blood. Yes, it sounds grotesque, I know. It did the night Jesus first said it, and I’m sure HIs disciples were just as shocked as anyone hearing it for the first time. “How can this man give us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink” they cried out in Capernaum. This is how - He gives HIs Body and living Bread, His sacred Blood for wine. A new and fulfilled Passover; all of the old and more.

Food and drink bring vitality and energy. So also this food and drink. It is no idle body and blood, but as a Vine nourishes its branches to become fruitful, so Christ our Vine nourishes us with His Body and Blood to be fruitful. That fruit is, in a word, love. Agape. Self-sacrifice, epitomized by Jesus’ bending down at that same table where He instituted His Supper and washing the feet of His disciples. It was the lowliest of work, ordinarily done by the lowest order of slave. Jesus does it. The Lord of all is the Servant of all, who came not to be served but to serve and to lay down His life. And those who are His disciples, those who dine with Him at His table, those who eat the Bread that is His Body and the drink from the cup that is His Blood, are made servants together with Him.

This is not service to please Him. The Reformation made that abundantly clear. Our service, our “foot washing” does not earn us a place at the table, nor does it commend us to God. Only the Body and the Blood of Christ do that. But being bodied and bloodied we are drawn into service, especially to one another. Communion is never my little private time with Jesus. It is never simply me and Jesus to the exclusion of my brother and my sister. But communion has peripheral vision, it is mindful of the neighbor, the one for whom Christ died, my fellow believer. The same Body and Blood of Christ that goes into me also goes into you. We are bound together, we are “in communion” in a unity that transcends our petty divisions and extends beyond death and the grave to eternal life. That’s why we can sing “with the angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven.”

This last aspect seems all but forgotten these days, when the individual experience of God is the main thing. It’s a curious observation that in the new testament, as in the old testament, worship is a corporate event, not an individualized experience. The church is a body of many and diverse members; it is precisely not an individual experience. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Lord’s Supper, which is a common meal of the whole church of which there is no private version. Whereas Baptism may occur in a private place, in a wilderness puddle as with Philip and the Ethiopian, there is no such thing as an ad hoc Lord’s Supper. It happens when the church gathers and marks that gathering as the Church.

“You are all one body for you partake of the one loaf.” Our unity is in Jesus Christ, and that unity is manifested and worked in the Lord’s Supper. This is the gift of this first holy night - the Body and the Blood, for your forgiveness, life, and salvation, and for the church’s unity in Jesus.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

]]> http://www.htlcms.org/311/20100402181620/audio/holythursday_01april2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:03:43 +0000 And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:8)

Palms and Passion Sunday. It’s like Holy Week compressed into one service and more. It’s all summarized in this one Palm Sunday word: Hosanna! It means “save us, Lord.” It’s what you shouted to the King as he rode through the city. Hosanna! Save us! It was a shout of confidence in the King, and when that confidence is in King Jesus, it’s not misplaced. Jesus came to save. His name embodies salvation. He rode into Jerusalem that day to save.

He came in humility, to humble Himself in obedient death, to be the Suffering Servant who came not to be served by others but to serve others in laying down His life as a ransom, to purchase and win humanity from its enslavement to sin and death, to pay the ultimate price in obedience to God’s Law by taking the wages of our sin upon Himself.

The palm strewn road is the road of our Lord’s humbling for our salvation. He came as the Suffering Servant, not to be served but to serve and to lay His life down as a ransom, to buy back humanity from its enslavement to sin and death. This is the road of our Lord’s Passion - His passion to save you, who for the joy set before Him, the joy of saving you personally, the joy of raising you up from the death of your sins, the joy of bestowing life on the world and reconciling all things to the Father, endured the cross and scorned its shame.

The road begins at the city gate of Jerusalem. A borrowed donkey in fulfillment of the prophet Zechariah. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Scattered coats and branches pave the highway ahead of Him. Shouts of Hosanna! greet Him. Messianic expectation is thick in the air. Those shouts of Hosanna! may have meant something other than “save us from sin and death.” They may have been a call to arms, to revolt against Rome.

Hosanna! may very well have been a call to holy war. And there is truth in that. Jesus came to fight a holy war. Not against flesh and blood, but to win flesh and blood. Not against a group of people, but to rescue humanity from itself and the deep corruption of its sin that drives us all to our death, to the grave, to hell. His holy war was against the spiritual forces of darkness that rule this world. And so He enters His holy city as a conquering King to be conquered, a King riding majestically to His death.

His road leads through the city streets of Jerusalem, paved with the blood of the prophets. It was not fitting for a prophet to die outside of Jerusalem, Jesus once quipped. That’s why He came to Jerusalem, knowing that His disciples’ Hosannas would be turned into shouts of “Crucify Him!” on the lips of the religious leaders of Jerusalem.

The road goes up to the temple, the place of sacrifice and atonement and prayer. It was the place where God planted His foot and met with His people. A place of grace and mercy, undeserved kindness toward the sinner. Religion had turned it into a place of transaction, bargaining with God, bribing Him. Jesus reclaims the temple as His own, His Father’s place of prayer and forgiveness. And yet, not one stone would be left on another, He predicts, and declares that in three days, He would raise up the destroyed temple of His body.

The road winds from the temple to a borrowed upper room and the Passover table. His betrayer, Judas, is identified, in fulfillment of the psalm that said one who breaks bread with Him would betray Him. He takes the bread of the Passover, the hard, unleavened bread of affliction, and gives it to His disciples as His own sacrificial Body given into death. “Do this for my remembrance,” He says. He takes the cup after the meal, and gives it as His own blood poured out as the new covenant spoken of by Jeremiah, a covenant of forgiveness. “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

The road goes from the upper room to the garden, the scenic mount of olives, a place of prayer. There Jesus agonizes in His own dark night, wresting in prayer with the Father, searching for another way yet obedient to His Father’s will. As His own disciples sleep, Jesus prays “Thy will be done” on behalf of all of humanity. And in His death on a cross, the Father’s will is done, the eternal plan is accomplished, your salvation is won. This is the Father’s will, that all would be saved and come to the Truth who is Jesus, His Son. This is the Father’s will, that you would be rescued by the death of the Son and live trusting that even though you die you live in Him.

His “thy will be done” prayer ends with His arrest by an armed mob. He is betrayed with a disciples’ kiss, a reminder that Christ is often betrayed even by those who call themselves “disciples,” just as he is denied by Peter, His most fiercely loyal disciple. No man is immune, neither you nor me.

Jesus’ road leads to the council, the Sanhedrin. He is tried by Religion and found guilty of blasphemy for telling the truth. He is the Christ and the Son of God, and yet these become Religion’s indictment against Him. And it would be blasphemy of the highest order, were it not true. There have been many religious leaders who have promised to show the way, but only One who claims to be the Way. There have been many religious teachers who purported to teach the truth, but only One who claimed to be the Truth. There have been many religious prophets who have promised life but only One who claimed to the Life. There have been many who came claiming to represent God and speak for Him but only One who dared claim to be the Son of God.

The road leads to Pontius Pilate and the Roman government. Civil authority, God’s “left hand.” It takes a detour to King Herod, the self-proclaimed “king of the Jews.” The counterfeit king meets the true King, and there is only mockery and scorn. A curious friendship is forged that day - Herod and Pilate. Bitter political enemies become friends over Jesus. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Jesus is tried before the civil authority; the charge is treason, setting himself up to be a king. It is punishable by crucifixion as both a warning and an example to anyone who would provoke an uprising against Caesar. Pilate is reluctant. He knows the principles of Roman justice, yet these principles are forsaken in view of the mob that clamors for Jesus’ crucifixion. How often it happens that expediency trumps political principle and good government gives way to mob rule! A terrorist named Barabbas (“son of the father”) is set free. The counterfeit “son of the father” walks away a free man; the true Son of the Father goes to His death. That is the exchange of our sin for Jesus’ righteousness. We go free; Jesus goes to our death.

The road winds through the streets of Jerusalem. A Passover pilgrim, Simon of Cyrene, is forced to carry Jesus’ cross as the women wail and mourn. Yet Jesus, ever compassionate mourns for them, knowing the fate of Jerusalem. “If they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” We know what they will do. History has recorded it.

The road leads to the place of the Skull, Golgotha. Three crosses. On his left and his right are thieves, terrorists, insurrectionists. They represent the world for whom Jesus died. They are you and me in our sin and unbelief. He prays for those who inflict His wounds. “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” He prays for us this way too. The people on the road mock Him. No more Hosannas! now. No longer “save us” now “save yourself, if you are the Christ.” And He is, but to save Himself would not be the way of the Christ.

He pardons a dying thief. “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” He speaks those words to you in your death too. The sun darkens. The earth shakes. The temple curtain is torn from top to bottom. He shouts His last humble words. They are words of faith. He trusts His Father to HIs death. “Father into your hands, I commit my spirit.” His life is in His Father’s hands, as your life is in the Father’s hands. This is how you may die too, thanks to Jesus.

The road leads to a new rock tomb, a rich man’s tomb, the family tomb of Joseph from Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin no less. He had not consented to Jesus’ condemnation. God has His believers scattered everywhere. Joseph does the courageous thing and requests the body from Pilate, otherwise it would have been disposed of in a common grave. Jesus is buried. “And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death.”

And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Hosanna! In the name of Jesus, Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/310/20100402181044/audio/phil_2.5-11_28march2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:02:56 +0000
The immediate application of this parable is obvious. The “vineyard” is Israel, God’s chosen people, His nation. The prophet Isaiah depicted Israel as a vineyard planted by God. A planting of undeserved kindness. God does it all. He builds the wall, the watchtower, he plants the vines. Religious Israel is the tenant; having a stewardship of God’s promise. The purpose of Israel was not to be an exclusive religious country club basking in the favor of God, but to be ground zero for God’s grace for the world in Jesus. Israel was supposed to be the nation that lived by grace through faith for the sake of Christ promised, and it was the job of the priests and religious teachers to remind the people of that fact. They lived by mercy not by merit, to be an example to the world to trust in the promise of God and to look for the coming Christ.

Instead, religious Israel became, well, “religious”. Following its own man made traditions while neglecting God’s mandates. Turning God’s mercy into merit, grace into wages, faith into works. They despised the prophets sent by God to preach the Word. They beat and even killed the prophets God had sent them. Jesus Himself remarked that it wasn’t fitting for a prophet to die outside the walls of Jerusalem as He lamented over Jerusalem’s unbelief. God came to His Israel looking for faith, for trust in the promise, for good works that flow out of trust in God’s mercy, And instead He found idolatrous religion in every form imaginable.

Jesus told this parable directly to the religious leaders of Israel who were plotting behind His back to kill Him. He knew what was going on. He knew what was in a man’s heart, and He knew the murderous propensity of religious man. When they heard the parable, the religious leaders were shocked; they understood the implications of what Jesus was saying. The stewardship of God’s grace would be taken away from the blood descendants of Abraham and given to other. To the goyim. The uncircumcised Gentiles. That was the shocker. God was going to take away His vineyard and give it to others. Time was ticking fast. Jesus spoke this parable during holy week, on His way to the cross to die for the world.

Here then is the great mystery of Israel: Israel’s Messiah, the promised One born out of Israel is rejected by Israel’s own religious leaders. “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” This is Psalm 118 - the messianic king psalm. The Hosanna psalm the disciples sang to Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Jesus, the rejected Messiah, the “loser” in the game of religious “winners,” rejected by scribe and Pharisee and Sadducee, by priest and synagogue lawyer, has become the cornerstone and capstone of our salvation. In other words, God used the rejection of Israel to work the reconciliation of the world and the justification of the sinner.

Now that’s a “new thing,” wouldn’t you agree? Forget the former things, don’t bother with the old things, God says through Isaiah. “Behold, I am doing a new thing.” Water in the wilderness. Drink for my chosen people. A way in the wilderness. The Father takes the rejection of His Son and turns it into salvation. It all hangs on Jesus. “Everyone who falls on that Stone named Jesus will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” You either fall on Him in broken repentance, or He falls on you with the full weight of your salvation rejected. In the end, it’s all about Jesus, and when you’ve said Jesus, you’ve said a new thing.

The apostle Paul had to wrestle with that. You might say that he lost his religion the day Christ appeared to him. We have his first person account in his letter to the Philippians. Paul was trained as a Pharisee. He sat at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most revered rabbis of his day. When he was on the road to Damascus to round up Christians and have them delivered to Jerusalem, he was convinced he was going God a favor by stamping out this Christian heresy. Then came that fateful day when the crucified and risen Lord Jesus appeared to Paul on the way to Damascus, and his whole religious world was turned upside down.

Listen to how he describes his life as a Pharisee:

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless.

But then Paul goes on to describe his post-Pharisee life: “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith….”

This is what it means to fall on the rejected Rock and be broken to bits. “My richest gain I count but loss.” It means that we count everything we have and everything we are as loss, as rubbish, as nothing, in view of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus and being found in Him. It means, as Paul goes on to say, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, we press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Forgetting what lies behind. The old sin, the old Adam, the old ways of religion. Each and every day drowning it all in Baptism. Every day, something new. A new person in Christ, a new you, rises up to live before God in a righteousness not your own.

Here’s the harsh Lenten reality: the old Adam hates to be saved. Our sinful nature resists it. We too are like those ungrateful tenants who have been given much and yet withhold the harvest from God. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10). We too reject the prophets and their word. Oh we don’t have to beat them up, we can just tuck their books away on a shelf and ignore what they have to say to us. We also invent our own religions, seeking ways to justify ourselves and gain the upper hand over God. We too will find Jesus to be a nuisance to our own religious notions as He poked holes in our perfection, insisting on our need to repent, to be forgiven, to trust. Who really wants to be broken? Who wants to admit helplessness?

But the wonder of wonders is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were yet God’s enemies, He reconciled us to His Father. While we were no better than those murderous tenant in God’s vineyard, God made peace through the death of His beloved Son. While we were dead in our sins, dead in Adam, God made us alive to Himself in Christ - buried us with Him in Jesus’ death, raised us to life in Jesus’ resurrection, seated us in glory in Jesus. In God’s completely upside down way of doing things, the parable turns out to be true - the inheritance is gained through the death of the beloved Son. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone of our salvation. The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes!

Within a few short days, this parable would become reality as the religious authorities would find Jesus the Christ, the beloved Son of God, guilty of blasphemy for telling the truth of how He is, they would hand Him over to be crucified at that hands of the Roman government. The tenants would kill the beloved Son thinking that they would secure the inheritance. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others, which is precisely what happened. Forty years after Jesus’ death outside Jerusalem, Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. The rejected Rock had triumphed, and not one stone of the old religion was left standing on another.

Don’t be deceived by the apparent weakness of Jesus in this world - by His rejection, by His crucifixion. Or by the seeming weakness of the Word, the Sacraments, the church. God’s power lies hidden under weakness, a glorious hidden strength that is perfected in weakness. In the end, His rejection by men means your acceptance before God. His weakness is your strength. His death is your life. And because of Him, and only because of Him, the vineyard of the Lord’s planting is yours as a baptized Child of God. Trust that rejected Rock named Jesus. Fall on that Rock, and He will raise you up and give you life. Of that you can be sure, as surely as He lives and reigns to all eternity.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/309/20100402180957/audio/lk_20.9-20_21march2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:10:37 +0000
Today’s parable of the man with two sons gives us a picture of the Father who rejoices in the return of his sons, who is prodigal with his forgiveness, who is quick to throw a party, and who is outrageously lavish with his grace.

The parable of the man with two sons is the third of a three-part parable. The first two lead into the third. The lost sheep and the lost coin. The pattern is set - a sheep or a coin are lost, the sheep or coin is found, there is rejoicing and there is a party. The message is clear - there is more rejoicing in heaven over a single sinner who repents than over a bunch who think they need no repentance. The wayward return, the lost is found, and there is rejoicing. That brings us to the man with two sons.

The younger son tells the old man to drop dead. That’s the effect of demanding his inheritance money early. Incredibly, the father does just that. He legally drops dead. He divides the property between them. Gives the older son the property and the younger son the money. You know how it goes with young men and inheritance money. It rarely goes well. The money was gone before you knew it, wasted on “reckless living.” Prodigal living, hence the name of the parable as “the prodigal son.” But it’s a mistake to focus entirely on the younger son. The man has two sons, and both play a part in this parable.

Out of money, the younger son takes up work in a Gentile’s pig pen, which is about as bad as it gets for a Jewish boy for whom pigs were considered unclean. About the time that pig food started to look good, the young man came to his senses. That’s the case with most of us, I’m afraid. Until we spend a little time in the pig pen, so to speak, we won’t come to our senses and repent. Your Father in heaven knows this, and He’ll often let you wallow in the mess you’ve made for a while until you too come to your senses.

We often overlook this facet of God’s fatherhood. We expect Him to bail us out of every bad situation we’ve gotten ourselves into, even when we have no one but ourselves to blame. And then we get mad at God for not doing something about it.

Well, the younger son starts to realize that he had it much better under the roof of his father than his current situation slopping hogs for a Gentile, and so he devises a little plan to get back home again. He would confess his sins - “I have sinned against heaven and before you.” And he would cut a little deal, a transaction - “I’m not worthy to be your son; let me be your servant instead.”
That’s the way we expect this story to go. It’s what Jesus’ hearers certainly expected. They expected the young man to return to his father’s house groveling, begging, pleading with the father to let him back as a servant. And they expected the father to be hard and indifferent, turning his back on his wayward son until he was good and sorry for what he had done and for the insult he had sustained. They would have expected the father to go along with the plan and make his son a slave, probably on the lowest rung of slaves just to make the point.

The last thing they would have expected is for the father to go running past the neighbors down to the road to greet his wayward son. The last thing they would have expected is for the same father to embrace his son, still reeking of the pigpen, and place the robe and the ring of sonship on the boy even before he gets his little confession out. The last thing they would have expected is for the father to kill the prize fattened calf and throw a party for this kid, who until recently wished his father were dead so that he could get his grubby hands on the inheritance money.

So it is in the world of religion too. The last thing the religious expect is for God to be merciful and gracious, slow to anger, an abounding in love. The last thing Religion expects is a God who justifies the ungodly while they are still sinners. In the religions of this world, the father of this parable is not a hero but a dupe, a softie being pushed around by a brat son. But in the economy of God’s grace, this is a picture of God’s undeserved kindness toward sinners for Christ’s sake. Notice that the son doesn’t even get to his confession before the father is putting on the robe and the ring and the sandals and ordering servants around. It’s in his father’s embrace, as the father is kissing him, that the son squeaks out his little confession. And amazingly, he never gets to his deal! There is no transaction in the embrace of this father.

That’s one of the several take-home lessons this morning. There is no deal-cutting with God. This is the God who drops dead to save sinners. This is the God who dies for His enemies, who seeks and saves the lost. This is the God who becomes our sin. He doesn’t simply bear our sins or the guilt and punishment of our sins, though He does that too. He becomes our sin. As our older brother, Jesus, the Son of God, left His father’s home to join us in the pig pen of our sin and misery. Jesus did what the older brother in the parable did not do. He went out to seek and find us, to rescue us from the muck, to bring us to the Father. To lay down His life as a ransom to save us, and to buy us back from our servitude to sin, death, and the Law.

So the celebration begins. The steaks are on, the music is playing. The lost son returns to a party.

The man had two sons. The older son is out in the fields, working dutifully. He smells the barbeque, he hears the music. He asks a servant what was going on. He hears the news. “Your brother has come, and your father has thrown a party.” And the older son is enraged and refuses to take one step toward the house. How could he do this? Throw a party for that deadbeat kid who wasted his inheritance money with prostitutes?

Again, it’s the father who comes to his older son. This father stops at nothing to gather his children. He pleads with him to come join the party. But the older son would not. He’s the religious one. The commandment keeper. He has dutifully served his father, never disobeyed a single commandment, and he is keeping book on everything. “You never so much as gave me a goat so that I could have a party with my friends.” Unlike the father, he disowns his brother. “But when this son of yours came….” Son of yours. Not my brother, but son of yours. It’s so much easier to point the accusing finger when we disown each other, isn’t it? When we refuse to admit that we are connected and are really in the same gracious boat?

It’s a burr under the saddle of religion that the obedient older brother and the rebellious younger brother are both under the same umbrella of God’s undeserved kindness. We think we have to earn our way into the kingdom, and we devise religions that attempt to do just that. It seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it, that the younger son gets a party after the way he treated his father, while the older, obedient son, gets left out in the field. But then, whose fault is it if he never joins the party? Who’s to blame if he spends the day out in the field instead of joining the festivities?

What the older, religious son fails to recognize, is that he is really in the same boat as his brother. Everything the father has is his, not by earning it (that’s how it is with the servants in the house) but simply for being a son, without any merit or worthiness in him. And until he recognizes the sheer prodigal outrageousness of his father’s grace and goodness, he will never join the party, he will never taste and see the goodness of his father, he will never do a single chore or task out of .

Jesus told this parable because the religious types - the Pharisees and scribes - were grumbling over Jesus’ keeping company with tax collectors and sinners. And the parable applies as much to us today, whether as rebellious younger sons or religious older sons. Both are in need of repentance, of seeing their father in a new and different way. The younger son saw his father as a vending machine, a source of inheritance money. And the older son saw his father as a transaction, a deal to be cut, a bargain to be made.

In his repentance, the younger son learned something, and he teaches us something too. There is no bargaining in the embrace of God’s mercy in Jesus. There is only confession within the embrace of a forgiveness that is already ours. That forgiveness comes by way of Jesus, our older brother, who kept the commands of His Father perfectly, and who joined us in the pig pen of our sin and death to rescue us, to seek and to save the lost, all the rebellious sons and the religious sons. There is joy in heaven over the repentance of a sinner. When a lost son is turned home again. When you come to the Lord’s Supper this morning, imagine yourself as that rebellious, prodigal son returning home to his father, walking down that road that leads to home. Imagine the Father saying to the Son as you receive His Body and Blood: “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother, was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/306/20100319001438/audio/lk_15.1-3,11-32_14march2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:15:53 +0000
The response, in a word, is repent. Repent? Yes, that’s right REPENT. But you say, “I didn’t do anything to deserve this!” Good. Then repent of the notion that you “deserve” anything good. You say, “But there are worse sinners in the world out there than me. Why should I be the one to suffer?” Then repent of the notion that you are anything less than the “chief of sinners,” as the apostle Paul called himself.

The Galilean incident with Pilate appears to have been the hot topic of Jesus’ day. Up in the far northern hill country, Galilee was a hotbed for messianic types eager to pick a fight with Rome for independence. It was a place of Bin Laden types who were eager to make their mark on history for Israel’s independence. Many would probably be right at home with today’s political terrorists. One of Jesus’ Twelve was one of these. And so it’s not surprising that people wanted to know what Jesus thought of those Galileans who were slaughtered by Pilate and whose blood had been mixed with the sacrifices. They want to get a read on Jesus’ politics, his messianic ambitions, his plans. What did He think of this atrocity? Was God on their side or not? Did their slaughter indicate God’s displeasure?

Jesus tosses back another question in their direction. “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered thus?” What do you think? Can you measure God’s favor by what happens to you? Is there a hard correlation between sin and suffering? It’s a common notion. When Jesus’ disciples encountered a man born blind, they asked Him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents.” When Job lost his family, his wealth, and his health, his three friends automatically assumed that Job had done something wrong. “Get right with God,” they said to their suffering friend, “and God will get right with you.”

So were these slaughtered Galileans worse sinners because of how they died? Jesus’ answer: No. And then a surprise. Unless you repent you will all likewise perish. “Did we hear that correctly? Repent? Is He talking to me? That’s right. You. Repent.”

Jesus then moves the discussion to politically neutral ground. Forget about this incident of Pilate and Galieans. Let’s talk about that tower in Siloam that toppled over and killed 18 innocent bystanders. What about that? The Galileans may have been asking for trouble. But a toppling tower? A freak accident. Dumb luck. Bad engineering. An earthquake, perhaps. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time. What do you think? Do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? And again comes the answer from our Lord, “No. But unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

What is the response of the disciple to disaster, to tragedy, to sudden death? How do we respond to disasters natural and manmade - earthquakes, tsunamis, genocides, persecutions, construction accidents? What are we to do when bad things happen for seemingly no good reason, or when evil seems to get the upper hand on good, when the prince of this world seems to have won over the Prince of Peace. One word: Repent.

Repent means to re-think. The Greek word metanoia means to come to a change of mind, a “re-cognition” if you will. I like that word because it tracks most closely with metanoia - re-cognition. We need to have a good, hard re-cognition about these things, to think of them in a different way. We need to re-cognize Death, that death isn’t the worst that can happen to you. Jesus died and came through it quite alive. And He promises that you will too, trusting in Him. The worst thing that can happen, which is also an unnecessary thing, is that we die unbelieving, unrepentant, looking to ourselves instead of to Christ, justifying ourselves instead of being justified by God, refusing to be saved rather than receiving a salvation that has always been ours.

To repent is to cease to question God. Why does God permit suffering in the world? Why does God permit evil to have its way in the world? Why did God let this happen to me? What is God trying to tell me? To all these questions, Jesus simply answers “repent.” The questions themselves tell us that we are not trusting God. When you demand to see the blueprints, it means you no longer trust the builder. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said something to this effect: If life is a play, then I need to have word with the Director.

God doesn’t promise to make sense of things, but to make good. He works good in, with, and under all things. He doesn’t cause earthquakes, floods, fires, mudslides, tidal waves, wars, genocides, plagues, toppling towers, or political tyrants. They all operate in the freedom they have as God’s creatures in a fallen world. God is not our Micro-manager in heaven, running interference for each and every disaster that comes along. Now that’s not to say He can’t or even that He won’t. The Bible is a written record of God’s interfering with things. But in general, His mode of operation is to leave things be and to reconcile all things in the good, dark death of Jesus.

That’s what it means in Romans 8 where Paul says, “we know that in everything God works for good with those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose. It doesn’t mean that everything is good. Towers that topple on people are not good. Despots that slaughter citizens and desecrate the temple are not good. Earthquakes that kill hundreds of thousands of people and injure millions are not good. Cancers are not good. They are all signs of a creation thrown into chaos. But God works for good in, with and under all these things through the death of Jesus. That’s where faith comes in. Faith doesn’t say, “That’s good.” Rather faith says, “God will work good, and has already worked good, in the death of Jesus, in spite of what I see or feel or experience.”


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/307/20100319001654/audio/lk_13.1-9_07march2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:19:51 +0000
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Luke 13:31-35)

The Pharisees, aka the “religious types” are at it once again. This time they appear as though they were doing Jesus a favor. Jesus was likely in Perea, Herod’s territory, and the Pharisees come to Jesus with an insider tip. “Herod wants to kill you. Better pick up and leave this place. The funny thing was, the Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus too. They’d been plotting it for over a year. They just couldn’t figure out when and where.

Ah yes, Religion and Politics. They make strange bed-fellows, don’t they? The religious Pharisees and the scheming politician Herod Antipas. They hate each other with a passion. But they have something in common. Both want to kill Jesus. Both hate Him. Herod hates Him for being a threat to his throne; the Pharisees hate Him for being a threat to their religion. Both want Him out of the way.

It was the same way with Jeremiah. Politics and Religion conspiring against him. The government officials teamed up with the priests and the prophets to silence the prophet because they didn’t like his message of exile for 70 years. They favored a kinder and gentler program. They wanted to kill Jeremiah. It was always that way with the Word of God. It’s one of the greatest ironies of the Bible. That the Word is rejected by God’s own people, by those nearest to His temple, by those who handled the very Word of God. And the Word suffers this. It’s vulnerable, rejectible.

Jesus seems incredibly unconcerned. What’s the worst that can happen to Him? He dies? That’s what He came to do, to die for the sin of the world, to lay down His life and to take it up again. Death threats are hardly a concern to Jesus. The One who battled the devil, the Evil One, in the wilderness with nothing but the Word has nothing to fear from the likes of Herod. “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.’” The third day. Do you think Jesus had in mind His own death and resurrection here? I can’t help but think so. He knew that Religion and Politics were eventually going to catch up with Him, that He would be handed over to the religious and political authorities, be put to death, and on the third day rise again. He knew that His death would conquer Death once and for all, and it was happen on His timetable and not Herod’s. Jesus knew that the Divine Fox would easily outfox old Herod, not to mention the devil, sin, death, and the Law.

Jesus is unthreatened by death threats. He is undeterred by murderous kings. He is King of kings and Lord of lords who has more power in a single word from His mouth than all the superpowers of the world put together. He is heading toward Jerusalem, the ancient seat of religious and political power in Israel. And he casts a sideways glance to the religious Pharisees and their concern over Jesus’ health and safety. “Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following (Jesus seems to have something about three days, doesn’t he?) for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.

Jesus knew what was on their minds. He knew they were trying to force Him to rush to Jerusalem where they could nab Him. Jerusalem was the seat of power back in Israel’s hey day, the city of the King’s palace and the temple. It was the city of kings and priests. Even before there was an Israel, Jerusalem existed as Salem and was ruled by that strange Christ figure named Melchizedek who served at the time of Abraham as both king and priest, Politics and Religion rolled into one. David built the palace in Jerusalem; Solomon, his son, built the temple.

Jerusalem had a reputation. So much so, that Jesus said it would not be fitting for a prophet to die away from Jerusalem. Tradition has it the Isaiah was martyred there. James, the brother of John, was killed by Herod in Jerusalem. Stephen was stoned to death in Jerusalem by the religious ruling council, the Sanhedrin. It seems the Religion and Politics always want to silence the Word and kill the prophet, and Jesus was no exception.

You might have expected Jesus to be angry, knowing what He does. I would be, if it were me. I get angry when people reject the Word for something else. I get frustrated that people want entertainment over forgiveness, and a temporary fix to their “issues” rather than an eternal solution to their sinfulness. We get angry at those who seek our harm, who want to hurt us, who simply insult us. You know how it is when your love is rejected, when you are snubbed or when you reach out to someone and the turn and slap you for it. We get angry. One of the hardest sayings of Jesus is that saying from the sermon on the mount where He says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” That’s hard. Impossible even, for us. Our self-centered sinfulness gets in the way.

But Jesus does it. He loves His enemies. He loves the Pharisees and Herod and us, because yes, we’re really in the same boat as they are, caught up in our religions and our political power games. He looks at Jerusalem off in the distance, knowing what is in store, and He laments over it. It breaks His heart that people reject the Word, the prophet, even the Messiah. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her sings, and you would not!”

That, my friends, is the merciful, loving, gracious heart of God in the flesh, dwelling among us. Jesus spreads His arms like a mother hen gathering up her wandering, wayward chicks. He wants them all - the religious and the unreligious, the powerful and the powerless. He came to save them all, even though they don’t want His salvation. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and if the world doesn’t want to have its sin taken away, He does it nonetheless. “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, enemies of God, Christ died for us.”

We must face it, and Lent is a good time to square ourselves to the harsh truth that there is a little religious Pharisee and a little tyrannical Herod in each one of us. We are constantly trying to orchestrate things our way, to be little gods in place of God, exerting our wills to control others, and even, were it possible to control God. We use religion as bargaining chip, we use politics as a means to gain control of others by power. We use politics to bolster our religion, we use religion to bolster our politics. Herod and the Pharisee are alive and well in each of us. We call it the “old Adam,” the original sinner, our flesh.

Like Jerusalem, we would not. We would not be saved, were it left to our own devices. We would not be children of God, gathered as chicks under His wing. But Christ has gathered us, against our wills, kicking and screaming at times. Lifted up on the cross, He has drawn all to Himself, drawing even those who would want Him dead and gone. He grieves of Jerusalem today, over the Church, over our rejections and denials too.

You might say that the history of Jerusalem is the history God’s dealing with humanity. It’s the history of sin, rebellion, stubbornness, idolatry, rejection of the Word and the prophets who preach it. It’s also the history of God’s grace, undeserved kindness toward sinful humanity, the Word made Flesh who was rejected for our acceptance, who died for our life, whose blood vindicates the blood of the prophets that is ground into its dust.

Jerusalem has a future, but it is not in the hands of men. The next time the holy city appears in the Scriptures, it comes down from heaven as a bride dressed for her wedding day. This is the city God builds as opposed to the city Man builds - Jerusalem redeemed, restored, raised from the dead. Her murders have been atoned for by the blood of the Lamb. The blood shed in her streets and alleys has been vindicated by the Blood shed once for all on the cross. Her streets once littered with stones cast in hatred are not paved in pure gold. The prophets and apostles who met their death in her city gates are not her firm foundation. And Christ the Lamb is her Light and her Life.

You are citizens of that free city, my friends. Your Baptism serves as your citizenship papers. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” St. Paul reminds the Philippians, who were so proud of their own free city. And the marvel of it all is that you and I get a foretaste of that where the Word is preached and the Supper is administered, and we say “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord,” recognizing Jesus our Lord in the Breaking of the Bread. It all points to a day, a day that will bring all religion and politics as we know it to an end. A day when the Lord Jesus Christ will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, and the heavenly city will be the only city there is - free of religion, free of politics, filled with the glory of the Lamb. “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.”

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/308/20100319002052/audio/lk_13.31-35_28february2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:36:09 +0000
Jesus told His disciples - “I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” And then they had a whole week to think about it and wonder. Who was He talking about? And when? And where? And what will happen, what will they see? So many questions. Luke says it was eight days later. Matthew and Mark say six days. Luke counts inclusively and makes it eight. Eight days is new creation talk. First day of the second week. I believe it’s intentional on Luke’s part. This is a vision that has many layers, among them the resurrection and the new creation that comes with Jesus.

Eight days after saying that some of them would not taste death until they saw the kingdom of God, Jesus went up to a mountain to pray along with three disciples - Peter, James, and John. Two or three witnesses were required to establish a truth. Jesus is making sure that future generations who would hear of this would be able to trust that it happened. Peter, James, and John are given a unique privilege and gift - to see Jesus in His glory prior to His death, resurrection, and ascension.

While Jesus was praying (and in Luke, Jesus always prays at key moments on His ministry), His face was changed in appearance, and His clothing became dazzling white. What was going on there? This was a “epiphany,” a manifestation. Jesus’ divinity was shining through His humanity, causing His face and clothing to glow with an earthly brightness. It was a visual reminder that this Jesus was certainly man but He was no ordinary man. He was also God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. Though deeply hidden beneath His humanity, Jesus’ divine nature and His glory as the Son of God were there. They were simply hidden from the eye.

In the OT, Moses glowed when he came down from Mt. Sinai after meeting face to face with God. It’s as though the glory of God’s presence rubbed off, or at least created a temporary effect. It was kind of like a glow in the dark watch that glows for a while after being placed in the sun. With Moses, that was a temporary and fading glory, indicating that his covenant was temporary and fading. But Jesus’ glow came from within Himself, as every cell of His humanity glowed with the glory of God. This was the glory that filled the tabernacle and the temple. This was the glory of the pillar of cloud and fire. This was the sign that God Himself was present on this mountain. This was the Lord’s mountain of which Isaiah had spoken, the mountain where God would reveal His glory to the nations and the nations would flock to the Lord.

With Jesus appeared Moses and Elijah. Elijah had been whisked off to heaven in chariots of fire. Moses had been buried by God Himself in a secret location. They represented the Torah and the Prophets. The Torah had come through Moses on Sinai. Elijah was the first and foremost of the prophets. And here they appear together with glorified Jesus. Jesus had come to fulfill Moses and the Prophets. Moses and Elijah had pointed to Jesus as “types,” and now the fulfillment was standing there in His glory and they in glory with Him. It’s a little sneak preview of the resurrection, when those long dead will rise in Jesus’ glory.

Luke tells us that they were talking with Jesus about His departure which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. The word Luke uses here is “exodus.” They were talking about His exodus, and who better to talk about that then Moses? Luke anchors this vision in Jesus’ death on a cross and His resurrection from the dead and His ascension forty days later. This is His “exodus” by which He brings all of humanity through death to life and glory. The transfiguration is a preparation for that. The Jesus who shines like the sun, who radiates the glory of God on earth, is the same Jesus who hangs dead in the darkness on Good Friday bearing the sin of the world. You need to make that hard connection between the mountain of transfiguration that proclaims Jesus the Son of God and Mt. Calvary, the mountain of His cross, that proclaims Him the Savior of the world.

Peter, James, and John nearly missed the whole thing. They were “heavy with sleep.” Sleep? That’s right. Sleep. Just as they same three would be heavy with sleep by the Mount of Olives when Jesus asked them to pray while they were with Him in the garden. They’d just hiked up a mountain; Jesus was praying. Ever doze off while praying? Sure you do. Admit it. We doze in prayer, in worship, and yes, even in the midst of the sermon. That’s our spiritual lethargy at work, our sleepiness and deadness to God’s Word and prayer. It seems that every time Jesus asks Peter, James, and John to pray with Him, they wind up falling asleep. We’re certainly not going to enter the kingdom of God by way of our prayers if even Peter, James, and John can’t pull it off in the visible presence of Jesus.

When they awoke, they got an eyefull — Jesus glowing, Moses and Elijah standing with Him. That will wake you up in a hurry! And Peter blurts out, “Master, it’s good we’re here,” meaning it’s good we’re here to see this. He tries to capture the moment, memorialize it, kind of the way we have to take a snapshot of everything. It’s as though Peter pulled out his cellphone and said, “Could you guys pose for a quick picture? Moses, would you move in a little closer? Elijah, slide over a bit to your left. There. Good. Now hold that pose and smile. Peter wants to build three tents, three booths as in the Feast of Booths when all Israel lived in a tent on Jerusalem’s hillside. One for Moses, one for Elijah, one for Jesus.

We do that. We want to preserve the “religious moment.” The ecstatic experience. The feeling. The vision. Whatever. We want to memorialize the mountaintop. Make it the normative thing. We’re like junkies for the religious experience. Luke says Peter didn’t know what he was talking about. Whether it was fear or sleep or whatever, visions like this defy words and our ability to fully comprehend them. Just in time, a cloud came, the cloud that once filled the temple. It surrounded them and even the disciples were take up into it. The cloud concealed the glory and the Voice of the Father preached from the cloud: “This is my Son; my Chosen One. Hear Him.”

The same Voice was heard speaking from heaven at Jesus’ Baptism, identifying HIm as the suffering Servant-Son. Again the Father speaks, making it clear to the disciples and also to us, that Jesus is unique and there is none other like Him. He is greater than Moses, greater than Elijah, greater than any religious man, sage, guru, prophet or leader who has ever walked the face of this earth. He alone does the “exodus” of His death and resurrection to save us. He alone has a Baptism that can wash away the stain of sin. He alone can give us His Body and Blood to eat and drink as our Bread and Wine. He alone has the words of eternal life. Moses cannot save you. His words cannot save you. His commandments cannot save you. Elijah cannot save you. Only Jesus.

Peter recalled that mountain top experience many years later when he wrote these words: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.” He was an eyewitness. He saw and testified to these things. But as great as the vision was - the glory, the cloud, the Voice, Moses and Elijah - Peter would direct our attention to something more sure - the Word, the prophetic Word that shines like a lamp into the darkened recesses of our hearts.

Visions don’t create faith. Visions don’t turn the heart. Visions don’t forgive sin or raise the dead. A bright shining Jesus may be a spectacular sight, but His Word is what brings you forgiveness, life, and salvation. His Word you have in all its glorious forms - Baptism, Supper, preaching. And with His Word, His glory.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/305/20100219133810/audio/lk_9.28-63_14february2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:52:35 +0000 “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” - Luke 5:10

Again Jesus is preaching the Word. It’s been a running theme over the last several Sundays. He preaches in Nazareth; He preaches in Capernaum. Today He preaches at the shore of the Sea of Galilee, here called the Lake of Gennesaret. Same body of water. Here the synagogue is an informal gathering, a crowd that has formed and is pressing in on Jesus, eager to hear the Word. His pulpit is Simon’s fishing boat which Jesus presses into service. The fishermen were mending their nets after a fruitless night of work, and the boat would provide a little distance between Jesus and crowd so everyone could hear.

Fishing was potentially lucrative and always difficult. Fishermen tend to be superstitious in an almost religious sort of way. If you stop and think about it for a second, you can understand it. You can’t see what you’re trying to catch. You’re at the mercy of the wind, the waves, the seasons, the unpredictability of fish. They didn’t have sonar to locate the fish or GPS to guide them reliably to a location. They had to rely on experience, instinct, and a lot of dumb luck.

The luck apparently wasn’t that good that night. They had labored through the whole night and caught nothing. It’s frustrating, tiring, tedious. You likely have the same experience in your vocation. You work like crazy and have nothing to show at the end of the day, or sometimes longer. I’m sure the fishermen were not in a terribly good mood on the seashore that day as they cleaned their nets for the next night. They were probably just eager to get the chores done so they could catch some sleep. And here is Jesus, wanting to borrow Simon’s boat so he could use it as a pulpit. What’s a fisherman to do?

So they push Simon’s boat out a bit, and Jesus sits down and teaches the people. Luke doesn’t record a word of what Jesus said (don’t you wish he had?), but he tells us that when Jesus finished speaking, He turns to Simon and says, “Let’s go fishing. Put the boat out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” There’s a command and a promise, if you will. Put out the boat, let down your nets. And there will be a catch.

I imagine that the fishermen kind of stopped, looked at each other, and muttered to themselves, “What does He know about fishing, anyway?” He grew up in a carpenter’s house in Nazareth. He’s a rabbi, not a fisherman. Fishermen knew that it’s easier to fish in the shallows rather than the deep. And you wait until nightfall, when the fish come up to the shallows to feed. You don’t cast your nets into the deep water at midday. That’s just a waste of time and energy.

“Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!” Interesting word choice there. “Master.” More like chief or commander. “We fished all night, chief, and took nothing.” But Simon trusts the Word of Jesus, and Jesus is teaching Simon to trust His Word. That’s the point of this miracle. Trust the Word of Jesus. “At your word I will let down the nets.” Simon trusts the Word of Jesus over and against his own experience as a fishermen. He has no good reason to let out the nets in the daylight in deep water except for Jesus’ Word. Jesus had healed his mother-in-law of a fever, after all. So why not?

This is the faith point — taking Jesus at His Word. Like the servants at the wedding feast at Cana who filled those clay jugs with water and then dispensed it to the guests. They took Jesus at His Word.

So out go the nets, and what do you suppose happened? The fish swim into the nets like moths drawn to the light! The nets are busting full of fish, and the boats are in danger of sinking under the weight of all of them. And for a moment at least, Simon and the rest of the fishermen must have been thinking, “This is great! The ultimate fish locator. We could be rich.” But Simon Peter looks at all the flopping fish in the boat, and he looks at Jesus, and this big tough fisherman falls to his knees in humility and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

That is faith talk too - recognizing that we stand in the presence of a holy God, recognizing that in Jesus this holy God has become one of us and stands in our midst, that He is the Lord of creation whom the wind and waves and even the fish obey. Simon knew his sinfulness. It wasn’t just a matter of sins, the coarse word here, the fights with his brother, the bickering with his wife, his greed for gain, his discouragement over a fruitless night of labor, or whatever. He doesn’t simply say “I have sinned,” but “I am a sinner.” That’s what he is. That’s what you and I are as well.

Isaiah had that same recognition when he came to the temple in the critical year when King Uzziah died, and he had a vision of the Lord sitting upon His throne surrounded by those mysterious six-winged creatures called seraphim - fire angels. It must have been an amazing vision, not only to see but to hear their eternal worship - Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” The sound of it shook the foundations of the temple under Isaiah’s feet as the smoke of incense filled the place.

Isaiah knew what it meant for him. “Woe is me! For I am lost. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah knew that a sinner may not look on God and live. He knew what he was - a sinner, whose lips and life were anything but pure and holy. And here he is standing in the presence of Yahweh Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts. But the Lord of hosts is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. A fire angel takes a burning coal from the incense altar and touches it to Isaiah’s lips. Did it hurt? Isaiah doesn’t say. This is Gospel fire, like the burning bush that did not burn that Moses saw. This is a fire that purifies the unclean, that declares the sinner righteous, that speaks the absolving word “your guilt is taken away, your sin atoned for.”

This is how a sinner can stand in the presence of the Holy and the Almighty and live to tell about. Your guilt must be taken away, sin must be atoned, paid for. That Jesus standing in the boat on the Sea of Galilee is the atoning sacrifice, He is the guilt-bearer, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Your sin.

We are indeed people of unclean lips and lives. A string of broken commandments is the evidence against us. And all we can do is what Isaiah and Simon Peter did - admit it, own it, confess it. We are sinful and unclean, in our thought, our words, our deeds, in what we do (not matter how noble it might be), in what we don’t know (no matter how justifiable it might seem to us). Sinful and unclean. Simon Peter knew it; Isaiah knew it; you know it too. You know it’s not right with you, whether in your lips or in your lives. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t make it right.

Christ does here for you what He did for Isaiah in the temple that day. He baptizes you with the fire of the Holy Spirit. He burnishes your lips with the hot coal of forgiveness in the form of His body given into death to save you; his blood shed for you as the atoning sacrifice of your sins. He puts the Word of forgiveness, the Word of Absolution, into your ears which are the doorway to the heart. Faith comes by hearing the Word.

By that Word, sinners can not only stand in God’s presence, share a boat with Him and a catch of fish, they can also serve Him in His kingdom. Simon Peter thought he was unworthy. He was right, and he was wrong. In himself, he was unworthy to be in the same boat as Jesus. True. And he was wrong. Jesus made him worthy, declared him worthy to be in the same boat with Him.

This is precisely what Jesus did for us by becoming Man and dying and rising. He got into the same boat with us. Our boat. Though Lord of Creation and the Creator, He became the Creature, Man. Though Lord over the Law, He came under the Law, obedient to death on a cross. To save us. He got into our boat to bring us into His boat, the ark of His salvation, the place where we are kept safe from the Flood of God’s wrath.

It may sound a bit strange, but the image of us in this episode is probably those fish flopping around the boat on the way to their death. They had been caught in an apostolic net, at the command of Jesus Himself, and in some way they couldn’t be safer. They too were in the same boat with Jesus. This is how the church father Tertullian once pictured Christians in their Baptism - little fishes swimming with their great Fish Jesus.

“Don’t be afraid: from now on you will be catching men,” Jesus tells them. Apostles and apostolic church. No longer would they be hunting down fish with nets. Now they would be netting people for the kingdom, fishing for men, casting out the net of Jesus’ death and resurrection far and wide, in likely places and in unlikely places, in the shallows but also in the deep. And trusting the Word and wisdom of Jesus. His way, not our way. His time, not our time. His Word and His ways. Baptism, Supper, forgiveness. Snatching sinners out of the depths to life and freedom.

Don’t be afraid, dear baptized believer. Not of death or life, nor angels, powers, the past, the present, the future, not height or depth or anything in all creation. You are in the same boat with Jesus.




In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/304/20100209135636/audio/lk_5.1-11_07february2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:12:06 +0000 "What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!" (Luke 4:36)

“Don’t preach to me,” the teenage daughter says to her mother. “Pardon me for preaching,” we say when we’ve gotten on our soapbox and overused our word quotient. “My, the president was terribly preachy,” I heard a critic say of Pres. Obama’s 70-minute state of the union speech. You see, preaching has a bad name, doesn’t it? Even the dictionary can’t help. To preach - to give advice or urge a course of action, especially in a meddlesome or tedious manner. Terrific. This is my chosen vocation. I’m a preacher. You don’t hear a carpenter saying, “Please excuse me for building.” Or a mechanic say, “I’m sorry for tuning this engine,” or an accountant say, “Pardon me for balancing these books.” Imagine a lawyer saying, “Sorry for arguing your case.” But preaching? That’s another story. I almost want to say, “Pardon me for preaching this morning, but I am standing in a pulpit and this is the time for a sermon and I am, yes, a preacher.”

The prophet Jeremiah was called to preach. And he didn’t have any choice in the matter. The Lord set him aside and consecrated him before he was even born. Ironically, Jeremiah is the prophet with the biggest career crisis of any prophet. This goes to show you that even if God hands you your vocation on a silver platter before you were even conceived or born, it still won’t be easy. In fact it may even be more difficult, since God already knew you wouldn’t have taken the assignment voluntarily. And Jeremiah’s call was a tough one - preach to a people who don’t want to hear your message or have anything to do with you.

In fact, Jeremiah tries to wiggle out of it. “I’m too young for this, “ he complains. No one will listen to me.” You see, we think it’s all about the preacher, the image, the style, the delivery. But it’s not, at least with the Lord’s preachers. It’s about the Word, the living and active Word that kills and makes alive, that never comes back empty, that creates and upholds and sustains. This is the Word that does what it says, that speaks light into the darkness.

The Word is what Jeremiah brings as a preacher. The Lord touches the prophet’s lips and says, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.” With those words, the prophet will be over kingdoms and nations, he will pluck up and break down, destroy and over throw, build and plant. All with nothing but the Word.

Jesus came to preach. He preached in the synagogue at Nazareth, His hometown, and the people almost threw Him over a cliff on account of his preaching. He went to Capernaum, and again He preached the Word in the synagogue. But unlike the synagogue at Nazareth, the congregation at Capernaum was astonished with the authority of Jesus ‘ words. You see, Jesus isn’t simply another preacher delivering a sermon, Jesus is the sermon, God’s Word in human flesh. He is God’s sermon to the world. He was sent to preach the good news. Not the bad news of religion and politics, but the good news of the reign of God, the end of demonic terror, the end of disease and death, the end of the condemnation of the Law that weighs heavy on humanity.

It’s the good news that you are pardoned, that your death sentence has been lifted forever. It is news that gives sight to the blind, that opens the ears of the deaf, that causes the mute to shout out with praise and thanksgiving. It is good news that finds its fulfillment in your hearing, when you hear that God is a peace with you for Jesus’ sake, that your sins are forgiven by His blood, that you are free. Free from the commandments that condemn you, and make no mistake about it, the commandments do condemn you including the ones you think you are keeping. You are free from the death that dogs you, that even though you die yet do you live in Christ by His power over death. You are free from the darkness and the demons that terrorize this world and may even terrorize you. They must be silent in the presence of Jesus. You are free from the diseases that plague you, all the effects of Adam’s sin, humanity’s sin, your sin. Yes, you get sick; sometimes you get better, sometimes you don’t. One day you’ll die of something. But Jesus has you covered. Nothing can harm you because He has your life in His hands.

All of this is conveyed by the humble, lowly preached Word. Words that sound out of mouths through tongue and teeth. Words that travel across space by rattling air molecules together. Words that bang on eardrums. Never say, “It’s only words.” Words are everything; Jesus is the Word, and His Word packs divine authority and power.

That power was shown in the synagogue at Capernaum. At Nazareth, they clamored for a sign. “Do for us here in Nazareth what you did in Capernaum,” they said to Jesus. There Jesus refused. Yet here in the Capernaum synagogue, Jesus does what He refused to do in Nazareth. There was a man plagued by an unclean spirit, a spirit that wanted to create disorder, a religious spirit that confessed Jesus of Nazareth to be the Christ, the Holy One. The demons know their Lord and Master, and they tremble. Jesus would not let the demon preach in the synagogue. There would be no demonic sermon, even if it was the truth. With a word from Jesus’ lips, the demon is silenced and cast away. Just a rebuke. “Shut up! Come out of him.” And the demon obeys because Jesus is Lord.

The amazement grows. This is a preaching with power. “He commands the unclean spirits and they come out!” Of course, they do. Don’t let Hollywood fool you. The devil isn’t in charge. The demons are no match for the Word of Jesus. They cower in fear of Him; we would we cower in fear of them, unless we don’t believe. Lord, we do believe, help our unbelief!

Jesus goes and pays a house call on Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. She couldn’t be at church because she was sick with a fever. He stands over her and rebukes the fever. Stop there and think. He rebukes the fever as though it were a demon. Disease and the demons are all cut out of the same cloth. They are all the fallen stuff, the result of life severed from God which Jesus came to restore. And just as the demons are forced to obey Jesus’ word, so must disease. He rebukes her fever. He doesn’t rebuke her, telling her she should have taken better care of her self, watch her diet, not go out on those cold mornings or she’ll catch a death of a cold. He rebukes the fever, and it left her.

She is free by the Word of Jesus. Free to get up, to arise from her bed, and to serve them, even on a Sabbath, a legal day of rest. Jesus is the Sabbath fulfilled, the Sabbath in the flesh. Sabbath means rest, He is rest from the demons, from disease, from death itself. “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” He said.

And they came, as the sun was setting on the Sabbath. They came out of all the houses in Capernaum, bringing their sick, their frail, their demonized. And Jesus laid His hands on every one of them and healed them. The demons tried to preach “You are the Son of God!” They wanted it known far and wide before Jesus died and rose. They wanted the mystery unwrapped prematurely, like a Christmas present torn open a week ahead of time. But like the fever, Jesus rebukes the preachy spirits and silences them. They are not given to preach the kingdom. He is.

He stayed up all night tending to the sick and the demonized. He is Light come into the darkness. By early morning, Jesus snuck out of town and went off into the wilderness. The people followed Him. “Please stay,” they said. “Please don’t leave us.” But He had a mission. He had to preach. “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” He was sent to preach. The healing, the demon casting, the displays of divine authority were all there to validate the preaching. It’s all about the preaching and hearing of the Word. That’s how the kingdom comes to us. Thy kingdom come, we pray. And how does God answer our prayers? “When the Word of God is preached in it’s truth and purity, and we as the baptized, believing children of God believe it and live holy lives according to it.”

Jesus preached in the synagogues of Judea. He preaches in this synagogue here today. His Word of forgiveness. His renewing Word of Baptism. His feeding Word of His Supper. He preaches to your reluctant ears, dulled by the noise of this world, deaf by birth to the sound of His voice, distracted by the religious demons who want a show instead of death and resurrection. He preaches to you, for you. Good news. The kingdom of God has come to you. His death and life are yours.

Don’t preach to me? Faith would never say that. Rather, faith says, “Preach to us, Lord! Please preach to us! And don’t stop preaching to us until we rise to see the kingdom. Until then, preach to us good news.”

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/303/20100201013408/audio/lk_4.31-44_31january2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:27:18 +0000 “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:20)

You may as well admit it because we’re all thinking it anyway. Last week’s Gospel was a whole lot of fun. Jesus’ changing of 180 gallons of washing water to the finest wedding wine there ever was. Man what fun that was! And what fun that must have been in Cana of Galilee too. Let’s face it. If we could have this kind of Jesus every Sunday, every day, Christianity would be great fun. A party. Lots of wine and even a divine excuse to drink it. What fun!

Today is not quite so much fun. In fact, it ends with a congregation of unhappy hearers trying to toss Jesus off a cliff. And before that, some hard-eyed glances from the hometown crowd as Jesus makes His first messianic appearance in the place where He grew up. Having just returned from my hometown of Chicago and visiting my parents, I have a bit of a personal sense of this episode in Jesus’ early ministry. Going home is never easy. People are terribly familiar with you. They’ve known you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, as they say. I would imagine that the synagogue in Nazareth was packed that day to hear from the local boy made good. I’m sure expectations were running high as the rumors spread concerning Jesus’ miraculous power. Perhaps the people in hometown Nazareth were expecting a few miracles of their own, seeing as how this was Jesus’ hometown.

I would also imagine that you could have heard a pin drop in the synagogue when Jesus stood up, took the Isaiah scroll from the attendant, and scrolled specifically to a passage from the prophet Isaiah. It had to do with the coming of the Messiah, and how He was anointed with the Spirit of God to preach good news and to work miracles. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set a liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then Jesus handed the scroll back to the attendant and sat down. Teachers sat in the synagogue. Every eye was fixed on Him. Every ear was open and eager to hear what Jesus was going to say. What He said surprised them. Shocked them. Offended them. Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” At first they were amazed and delighted. This was new. They’d never heard anything like this before. The words of the prophet Isaiah were now fulfilled in their own ears. But then the light bulb went off. Hey wait a minute. Isn’t this Joseph’s kid up there? He played with our kids in the streets. Is He saying that He’s the anointed One that Isaiah prophesied? Who does He think He is, anyway? And their curiosity quickly turned to outrage.

It would for us too. Especially if we had watched Him grow up. It’s hard enough to believe that Jesus is God in the flesh; it’s downright scandalous when you’ve watched the Word made Flesh grow up right before your eyes. The kid next door. Joseph’s boy. “Familiarity breeds contempt,” we say. Or at least doubt. That’s why “no prophet is acceptable in his own hometown.” How could Jesus have grown up in that dense community and someone not realize there was something “different” about Joseph’s kid? The surprising answer is this: holiness can be hidden. Jesus’ divinity can be completely buried beneath His humanity so that there was no unearthly glow about Him, no halo with writing on it to identify Him, nothing.

You know what we say when we doubt. “Talk’s cheap, prove it. Show us, Jesus. Do a miracle, like the one you did over in Cana.” Or to quote Herod in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” - “Prove to me that you’re no fool, walk across my swimming pool.”

This speaks to our wrongheaded and wrong hearted notions of miracle. Miracles are not for believers but unbelievers. They are for those who do not have the Word. They are rare, exceedingly rare, otherwise they would not be called miracles or signs or wonders. If you can “expect a miracle,” then it isn’t one. If you can have miracles on demand like satellite TV, then it is neither a sign nor a wonder but just part of the ordinary order of creation. If water turned to wine every day the way it did at Cana, it would not be considered miraculous and Napa valley would be out of business.

The Nazareth synagogue had the Word. They had just heard the prophetic Word spoken to them by the Word Incarnate. What more could they possibly have needed? What more do we need than the Word in all its marvelous forms? Oh, we think we need more. Remember, the old Adam is a religion junkie of the first order. Loves those signs and wonders, which as Jesus Himself reminds us, can even deceive the elect. Jesus knows. Yes, He did miracles for the fringes, for those on the outskirts, for those dwelling in darkness, for those who did not have Moses and the prophets. Yes, Jesus did miracles for His fellow Israelites - healing the sick, cleansing the leprous, raising the dead.

But these were pointers, signposts to something greater. Miracles are not an end in themselves, and when they become that, they become a kind of idolatry, a false religion. The greatest thing that could be said was said in the synagogue at Nazareth. The Scripture had been fulfilled in the ears of the people. The Word of God had hit its target. The Spirit of God was seeking to work faith through ears renewing minds and hearts.

Jesus knew what was on their minds. “Physician, heal thyself.” Prove it. But Jesus offers no proof. They had the prophets; they had Moses; they had the Word. He reminds them that there were many hungry widows in Israel at the time of Elijah, but only the widow at Zarephath had her oil and grain multiplied. There were many lepers in Israel, but only Naaman the commander of the enemy Syrian army was cleansed in the Jordan. You would think that Israel had an inside line on miracles, but you would be wrong. These were outsiders, enemies of Israel even. All those hungry widows, and only an outsider gets a miracle. All those lepers and diseased Israelites, and only the enemy gets healed.

When bad things happen to believers, we say, “Where is God and why doesn’t He do something?” And there’s the mistake of unbelief, my friends. He has done something. Something much more significant and far reaching than an isolated miracle. Jesus has died on a cross, bearing humanity’s sin, the world’s brokenness, the curse of the Law, every disease known to man, Death itself. He bore all of that one time for all time, one Man for all humanity. Miracles pale by comparison to the cross. In fact, miracles all point to the cross and find their source in Jesus’ death. Every miracle costs Jesus His life.

Miracles are for one person only, the recipient of the miracle - the widow at Zaraphath, Naaman the Syrian. And if you don’t get yours, you’re disappointed, right? Mad even. Maybe want to throw Jesus over a cliff or at least find another religion. The cross is for everyone without exception. Miracles are temporary, a bandaid applied to a wound; the cross is eternal, the cure of the disease of Death. Miracles treat the symptoms; the cross deals with the cause. Miracles cannot save you; the cross saves you. Miracles do not forgive sins or give eternal life; the cross is your forgiveness, your life, your salvation. You can survive a drought of miracles; in fact, you can go an entire lifetime and never experience one. But you cannot survive a drought of the Word.

You have the Word, as surely as that synagogue in Nazareth that day Jesus preached to them. You have the Word in your Baptism, God’s signature seal upon you that you are His and He is yours. You have the Word in the word of forgiveness, that absolving Word preached into your own ears, fulfilled in your hearing. You have the Word of Christ in His Supper, speaking to you, “My Body given for you; my Blood shed for you.” You have the Word in greater richness and abundance than any generation before in the history of God’s people. And it is the singular evidence of our sinful condition and the old Adam in us that we value it so little, that we do not flock to hear and receive, that we, like the Nazareth synagogue, would throw Jesus over a cliff rather than deal with His Word.

Faith comes by hearing the Word. Your faith comes by your hearing the Word of Jesus. And that Word is, here today for you, seeking its fulfillment in your hearing. By the Word of Jesus, you are forgiven. By the Word of Jesus, you are fed. By the Word of Jesus, your faith is created and sustained. By the Word of Jesus, you have freedom from sin, from death, from the devil, from the damning sentence of the Law. All in the Word of Jesus, delivered to you, which, today is fulfilled in your hearing and your believing.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/302/20100127052120/audio/lk_4.16-30_24january2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:22:59 +0000
At Cana in Galilee. Not in Jerusalem, not in the temple, not in Rome, the seat of political power. In lowly Cana, in backwoods Galilee in the north, despised, looked down upon, a land of half-breed Israelites and religious heretics. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light,” the prophet Isaiah said. “On those dwelling in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.” In the circle of the Gentiles, Galilee of the nations. That’s where Jesus first shows His glory, at Cana in Galilee.

It’s all set up perfectly. The location, the timing, the event - a wedding. What better event than a wedding? God often referred to his relationship with Israel in terms of bridegroom and bride. “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” And this is a wedding with an impending disaster. The wine had run out prematurely. It was a social gaffe beyond bad. No more wine and the feast was still going on. Maybe it was due to an unexpected number of guests. Perhaps it was Jesus’ disciples.

Mary gets involved. “They have no wine,” she says to Jesus. And Jesus appears to be rather snippy toward her and the whole affair. “What’s that to us, woman. My hour has not yet come.” It’s a strange way of putting it. First, Jesus seems rude to His mother, but He actually isn’t. Hyper-respectful, certainly. But not rude. He does not address her as mother, and does not permit her to pull her apron strings on Him. He is Lord to her, even as she is His mother. Women is a title of respect and dignity, a formality. The next time Jesus addresses Mary this way is at the cross where He entrusts her to the care of John. “Woman, behold thy son.”

“My hour is not yet come.” His hour is the hour of His glory, the hour of His death. This is why Jesus came. Not to fix every little problem, including a wedding party that ran dry before its time, but to die as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And in dying, He takes care of everything else as well. And so even this sign - changing washing water to wedding wine - costs Jesus His life. Miracles do not come cheaply. They are signs of who He is and what He has come to do, and that all point to the cross.

Mary is confident Jesus will do something. We don’t know why, but Jesus must have done something to indicate His willingness to help. “Do whatever He tells you,” she says to the servants. These are the last words of Mary recorded in the Scriptures. “Do whatever He tells you.” If you want to heed Mary’s advise, you would do very well to heed these words, “Do whatever Jesus tells you.” For example: “Trust in me.” “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” “This is my body, my blood….Do this in remembrance of me.”

There were six large stone jars at the feast. Six, which is one shy of seven. Awaiting fulfillment. They were for the Jewish rites of purification, whether for the guests and their hands or for the bride and her wedding night, we don’t know. All we know is that there were 180 gallons or so of washing water prescribed by the Law. “Fill the jars to the brim,” Jesus says. He came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets; to fill them up with His own perfect life and obedience as living water come from heaven.

And then He says, “Draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” Nothing else. No further words, no actions. Jesus doesn’t lift a finger. Just fill the jars with water, then draw some out. “Do whatever He says.” It all rests on Jesus, and the servant’s obedient trust in His word. What happened was that washing water became wedding wine. Instantly. Not by fermentation, as happens with ordinary wine. But in an instant, without the intervention of a middle man or a grape.

And this is no wine flavored water, either. No diluted wine,dealcoholized wine or (God forbid!) grape juice. Wine. Vintage wine. No two buck Chuck but the best. 98 on the Wine Spectator ratings wine. “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely (better translated “have freely drunk and now are a few sheets to the wind”) then the lesser wine is served.” But hear’s the clincher: “You have kept the good wine until now.”

Now there’s a fully loaded sentence if ever I heard one. “You have kept the best for last.” God has reserved the best for last, pouring out the finest vintage at the end. Everything in this event points to the cross - the day, the hour, the use of “woman” to address Mary. God’s vintage wine is Jesus Himself, poured out for the life of the world in His death, in the water and the blood that came from His side that fills the baptismal font with washing water and fills the chalice with wine from heaven.

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17) That’s the theme of this sign. This is what changing washing water to wedding wine reveals. Someone greater than Moses was here. Someone greater than the commandments and the religion of the old covenant. The Law of Moses, signified by the six stone jars of washing water cannot bring joy to the wedding feast. Cleans hands yes, but not pure and joyful hearts. Who wants to drink bath water anyway? The Law cannot save us. Commandment keeping cannot bring us life. Oh, we think it can, and we’re all suckers for the rules and regulations of religion. But it won’t work, any more than 180 gallons of bath water can gladden the hearts of wedding guests at a feast gone dry before its time.

The Law of God leaves us dry in a joyless system of dos and don’ts, thou shalts and thou shalt nots. This doesn’t mean the Law is bad. It’s not. But it can only clean thehands at best; it can’t purify the heart of a sinner. And that’s where the problem lies for us. Perhaps you’ve experienced this for yourself. You read the Law, say the 10 commandments or their catechism meaning or some book or article that dwells on what we must do. And as promising as it seems in the beginning, you find yourself becoming weary and desperate and frustrated. You might even find yourself becoming angry and judgmental of others. You start to measure and compare how you are doing with how every- one else is doing. And there is no joy. The Law with all its measurements and standards and qualifications and condemnations has sucked all the joy right out of life.

It’s like a wedding feast run dry. And some might expect Jesus to say, “Good, they’ve had enough to drink. Let them sober up.” We expect Jesus to say, “You need to shape up and keep the commandments. You need to work hard and improve yourself. Be all that you can be. Do what I do.” But that’s not what He does. He does something completely unexpected. He fills the Law up with Himself. LIke those six stone jars filled to the brim with water. Jesus fills up the Law of Moses with something greater than Moses, His own perfect sinless life. And then He draws out of those stone jars something wonderful, not more rules and regulations to follow, but wine. Joyous, glad wine. The vintage wine of HIs blood given and shed for you in His “hour” upon the cross.

Truly God has saved the very best for last. For now. For you. “The Law came through Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus Christ.” And you, as baptized believers, are privileged to taste and see that the Lord is good, to sample His vintage, and have a foretaste of a marriage feast that never ends but goes on forever. You are part of it; you are in on it. Like those surprised guests at Cana in Galilee who got to drink wine from heaven that day because Jesus was among them.

“His disciples believe in Him.” They trusted Him; they took Him at His word. Notice not everyone believed in Him - not the guests, the wine steward, or even the bride and groom. HIs disciples. They were the ones who heard and saw what happened. The miracle alone doesn’t create faith in Jesus. Only faith in miracles. But the disciples made the connection, that this Jesus whom they followed was the Lord of creation, the One who called forth plants and vegetation (including the grapes) on the third day. He is the One who created and orders all things, who His the Word in the Flesh dwelling among us. He does what only God can do in a way that only God can do it.

At Cana in Galilee, on the cross, here in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, Jesus manifests His glory for faith. He is here to feed you with the Bread of His Body, to gladden you hears with the wine of HIs blood for the forgiveness of your sins, to bring you joy overflowing and unending, so that you might believe on Him and live.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/301/20100127160600/audio/Jn_2.1-11_17january2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 10 Jan 2010 10:19:25 +0000
The emphasis is on the Jesus not on John. People were impressed by John. He cut an impressive prophetic figure - a wilderness man resembling Elijah, calling people to repentance, baptizing, challenging the religious leaders. Some people thought that Johnwas the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One of God whom they had been waiting for, longing for, hoping for.

John’s work was to preach, to baptize, to prepare and point. John preached people to baptism for the forgiveness of their sins. It was a new thing. In the OT, you sacrificed an animal for forgiveness. It’s blood in exchange for your life was your forgiveness. John preached something different and new. Not blood but water. Not a sacrificial death but a bath. Not something done at the temple, but in the Jordan river. John’s baptism formed a kind of bridge between the old and the new. John’s baptism called Israel as a nation back into the wilderness for a fresh start, an extreme makeover.

Sinners of all sorts from every walk of life came to John to be baptized, to get ready to meet the Messiah. And John pointed them to Jesus. John was simply a voice and a finger, pointing to Another, a greater One with a greater Baptism. And then came that fateful day when Jesus stood before John in the water of the Jordan. Luke doesn’t record it, but Matthew tells us that John initially objected, saying that he should be baptized by Jesus. That is the way you and I would conceive of it, wouldn’t we? The greater should baptize the lesser; the Sinless One should baptize the sinner. And that’s the way it would be, but not now and here. Over and against John’s objections, Jesus says, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”

This is the key to understanding John’s baptism and Jesus’ participation in it. It was necessary to fulfill all righteousness. It was necessary that Jesus had to get down in the water of a sinner’s baptism and be treated like a penitent. He became one with us, with all of humanity, in our sin. He joined us in the filth of our rebellion. He took a bath in our bathwater. He became Sin for us, who knew no sin. He didn’t simply bear our sins, became our Sin.

This appears to be at odds with what John had preached. John’s version of Jesus has Him with a winnowing fork in His hand, ready to thresh and separated the wheat from the chaff, ready to burn the chaff in unquenchable fire. You can imagine John’s surprise, his shock, when Jesus submits to being baptized. Hardly the fork-wielding, hell, fire and brimstone judge John had proclaimed. Was he wrong? No, not at all. It’s just that this had to be taken through the cross. Before Jesus could judge the living and the dead, He had to be judged. Before the wheat could be gathered into the barn and the chaff burned, Jesus Himself had to take on the fire of the Law’s condemnation.

Jesus’ baptism and His cross are one thing. He even refers to His death as a “baptism” he must undergo. His work begins in the water; it ends on the cross. HIs work begins with the Spirit descending, the voice of the Father testifying; it ends with the Spirit departing, the voice of the Father silent. His work begins where He stands in solidarity with sinners, elbow to elbow in the same bath water as prostitutes, tax collectors, and all manner of religious rejects; His work ends on the cross where He hangs in solidarity with thieves, promising the faithful one Paradise. His work begins with water; His work ends with water and blood flowing from His side. At HIs baptism, the heavens are opened to Him; at His cross the heavens are opened to sinners.

Though Jesus’ baptism by John is not the same as our Baptism, it sets the stage and lays the foundation for it. What happens to Jesus in His Baptism also happens to you. The heavens were opened to Jesus when He was baptized; heaven was opened to you in your Baptism, as you were declared to be justified for Jesus’ sake, your sins washed away by His blood, your identity as a child of Adam is now a child of God.

The Spirit descended upon Jesus in the visible form of a dove, the dove being a sign of the Spirit’s brooding, creative presence over the creative waters in the beginning, over the waters of the Flood at the time of Noah. The Spirit descended upon you in your Baptism, not visibly as with Jesus, but revealed by the Word and the Name of God, marking you as a child of God, sealing you with the mark of inheritance and ownership that you trace on yourself when you make the sign of the cross.

The voice of the Father spoke from the opened heavens, revealing Jesus to the world and addressing Him as Father to Son: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” In the same way, the Father testifies to you in your Baptism, declaring you to be His beloved child, declaring His pleasure over you for His Son’s sake.

In Jesus’ baptism, He is joined in solidarity with us - in our sin and our death. In our Baptism, we are joined in solidarity with Jesus - in His perfect life, His death, and His resurrection. I’m pleased to see Romans 6 as the companion passage to this morning’s Gospel. It is was one of the clearest passages in the Bible on the working of Baptism. The apostle Paul has just finished the main point of Romans, that a sinner stands justified before God by faith in the promise of forgiveness through the shed blood of Jesus Christ apart from any works he might do. That justification is a “forensic” act of God - God declares it to be so through His Word; we don’t make it so by our believing or our works. And this rests on the objective fact that Christ is the second and new Adam, the new head of humanity, so that as through one man (Adam), sin and death entered the world, so through one man (Jesus), justification and life have come. And that brings us to chapter six and today’s reading.

Paul begins with a question he’s undoubtedly heard many times, and you still hear whenever the good news of free forgiveness is preached. “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” If God is gracious and forgives the sinner for Jesus’ sake, why not then keep on sinning? It’s logical and even expected, but Paul says “Impossible!”

Why? Because you, being baptized, as now dead to Sin but alive to God in Christ. Once you were dead to God and alive to Sin, but no more. “Or don’t you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” Baptism buries us in the death of Jesus. The baptismal font is the tomb in which we are buried with Christ. It’s the only thing you can do with the dead. Give them a decent burial. God buries the sinner in the death of Jesus in the water of Baptism. In His Baptism, Jesus joined Himself to us in our death; in our Baptism we are joined to Jesus in His death.

And this is no ordinary grave. This is the grave of the One who died and rose. And so Baptism is not simply a death and burial, but a resurrection - now by faith, and in the end by sight. We are united with Christ in His death and His life. We are crucified with Christ, His body is our body. And that, my friends, means freedom. The dead in Christ have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

We know the outcome. Christ is risen from the dead. And that is the promise for us as well. And now, as we live in this life, we no longer live but Christ who lives lives in us, so that the life that we now live, awaiting the resurrection, we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself up for us. In other words, we now live by faith in the death and life of Jesus, so that Paul says, we are to consider ourselves dead to Sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. That’s how God see us through our Baptism, and that’s how we, His baptized children, are urged to see ourselves. Dead to Sin, alive to God in Christ. New creations. The old has gone, the new has come.

Israel was revealed to be God’s nation in the baptism of the Red Sea. It was born as a nation through the parted waters. Dead to Egypt; alive to God. Jesus was revealed the Son of God and Savior with the Spirit in Baptism. Let no one say this water has no power! You are made a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s treasured possession in Baptism. And in those waters, sanctified by the blood of Jesus, God says to you, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

In the Name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/300/20100127170427/audio/lk_3.15-22_10january2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:48:28 +0000 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

Can you imagine losing the Son of God? It’s bad enough losing your car keys, your wallet, some important papers. But losing the Son of God? You parents know the anxiety all too well. You turn around at the grocery store, and your child has wandered off. Or your attention is diverted for just a moment at the mall, and you lose your kid in the crowd. Well, Mary and Joseph lost Jesus for an anxious three days in Jerusalem. That is one of several paradoxes in today’s Gospel, and they all revolve around the great grand mystery of the eternal Son of God come in human Flesh to save us.

Today’s Gospel reading from Luke deals with the only other childhood story of Jesus. Again, it happens in the temple in Jerusalem. This time when Jesus was twelve years old. The “custom” Luke is referring to is the custom of twelve year old boys appearing before the teachers of the Torah in the temple before they turn thirteen and are obligated to take their place with the men of Israel at the annual pilgrimages. Up until then, they were considered children and did not have to come to Jerusalem for the annual feasts. Age twelve was the turning point. This is God the junior higher.

The custom was for the teachers of the Torah to examine the young boy to see if he had learned his lessons well in the home and at the synagogue. A kind of “final exam” before he became a man of Israel. What they found utterly amazed them. His understanding, His answers, His grasp of the Torah. Who was this kid? Well, it turns out that this twelve year old is the Word of God in the flesh, the Torah enfleshed. He is the holy Wisdom of God come to dwell with us, here in the humble form of an almost teenager. Again we are confronted with the mystery and the humility. God takes on human flesh and appears before the teachers of the Torah as a student! If only they had known to whom they were speaking!

Mary and Joseph also are perplexed, and who could blame them? How many parents can claim to have the Son of God as their child? They were traveling with a large group of extended relatives, and you know how it goes, everyone assumes the kid is with someone else. Amazingly, they travel about a day’s journey before taking head count and realizing that Jesus is nowhere to be seen. And after asking all the friends and relatives in their party, they rush back to Jerusalem to search for Him.

Now you might reflect for a moment that if they had believed that Jesus was actually the Son of God in the flesh, they wouldn’t have had an anxious second. He’s God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, He can take care of Himself. Can God be lost? Not really.

They found Jesus in the most logical place to look for Him. The temple. Where else would you look for the Son of God but the dwelling place of God with men? This was the second temple appearance of Jesus, the first being when He was forty days old at His redemption. He was in His Father’s house, doing His Father’s business, a fact that at least momentarily escaped His mother Mary. “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” She seems to have forgotten, at least for the panicked moment, who her Son was. And who could really blame her? Who thinks of God in terms of a junior high kid??

I love this aspect of Luke’s Gospel. He paints are very realistic picture for us, a very historical picture. In an ideal mythical world, Mary and Joseph would always be marveling at Jesus’ divinity, and Jesus would always be a perfect chubby cherub with a glowing nimbus floating over His head. But the reality is different. The glory of God is buried, hidden from sight. Jesus appears as any other twelve year old, except that His wisdom amazes His teachers. And Mary and Joseph are prone, as we are, to forget who Jesus really is and trip over the seeming weakness of His humanity.

The same is true of Jesus’ sacramental presence among us. We see the water of Baptism and forget the Word that makes this a washing of rebirth and renewal. We see the humanity of the Scriptures and forget that it is the very Word of God. We see the bread and the wine of the Supper and forget the fact that it is, by the Lord’s own words, His very Body and Blood. In the same way, we too trip over the ordinariness, the humility, the mundaneness of the Word in the Flesh.

The mystery of the Incarnation, the reason for the season of Christmas, truly does boggle the mind. How can the Creator of all things become a creature? How can the God become Man? How can the infinity and holy become the finite and the lowly? And whether we ponder the baby in the manger, the 40 day old child in the arms of Simeon, the 12 year old in the temple among the teachers of Israel, or the man on the cross bearing the sin of the world, we are confronted with this same wondrous mystery - the eternal Son of God has come into our human flesh to save us.

Jesus had to be in His Father’s house. This was His place. The temple and Jesus run together as old and new. The building was the old temple, the dwelling of God with Man. Jesus is the new temple, His own flesh being the ultimate dwelling place that brings God and humanity together as one forever. His place was to be the Head under which heaven and earth come together as one. His work was to reconcile the creation with the Creator, to bring all things together in His all-embracing death on the cross. This was His eternal destiny, a plan established in the Godhead from before the foundations of the world, as the apostle Paul lays out in that grand first chapter of Ephesians.

Jesus is the obedient Child for all of us rebel children. Where Adam rebelled, and where we his children rebel, Jesus was obedient. Think of it. The Lord of all became subject to his parents. Lived under their authority. Obeyed them. When they said, “clean your room,” He did it. When they said, “Take out the trash,” He took out the trash. With love and honor and respect. He honored the authority of the temple rabbis, though He Himself was the Wisdom of God.

When Paul quotes from that Christ hymn in Philippians and said that on human form, Christ humbled Himself and become obedient even to death on a cross, this is what Paul meant. Christ as Lord of all became the servant of all, and humbled himself in obedience to His own Law even to taking the punishments of the Law on Himself and dying on a cross to save rebel humanity.

The focus is on the 4th commandment here. Honoring father and mother, and in so doing, honoring God. Ordinarily, that word “honor” is reserved only for God, but in this commandment He gives it to His deputies, to father, mother, and other authorities. We do not obey, love, honor, and cherish those over us as we ought. We do not see them as gifts from God. We bridle against restrictions to our liberty, we rage against those who would say “no” to us. From our birth, we are natural born rebels. And when we rebel against father and mother, we are rebelling against our Father in heaven who is the Source of all authority in heaven and on earth.

So when Jesus comes as the perfect Child, He doesn’t do so as an example for you to follow. You don’t need an example. You have the 4th commandment. The problem is that you and I can’t do the 4th commandment, and as soon as the commandment comes into view, we become worse than ever. This is our condition as rebellious children. And no matter how many rules you throw in our face, it’s not going to make us any better.

The good news for today, and what we can treasure up in our hearts, is that Jesus’ perfect obedience is ours through faith in Him. He takes up our sin so that we might receive His righteousness. He becomes the Sinner for us, though He is without sin. Even this little episode when Jesus is twelve demonstrates this. He gets chewed out by His mother for being in the temple with the teachers doing the will of His Father in heaven. This is what Jesus came to do. To keep the Law perfectly for us and to receive our punishments under the Law in His own perfect innocence.

He grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. He increased in wisdom and in stature, He grew up, (God grew up!!) in the favor of God and men so that He might embrace the totality of our humanity in all of its rebellious sinfulness. Look on that young man sitting among the teachers in the temple, look at that 12 year old confounding the experts with His wisdom, and see your Savior who comes to you humbly and hiddenly. The eternal Son became a child who grew in wisdom and stature so that you, baptized into Him and believing His promises, might be a child of God living under His favor.


The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/297/20100127022929/audio/lk_2.40-51_03january2010.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:23:44 +0000
The prophetess Anna also speaks of fulfillment in the numbers of her life. Married a brief seven years. Seven. And now she is eighty four, seven times twelve. These may appear to be coincidences, but there is a strong undercurrent of fulfillment that runs with this episode in Jesus’ infancy. The entire OT had come to its focal point in this little Child. This was the One!

The prophet Malachi had written: “Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to His temple, the messenger of the covenant whom you desire will come,” says the Lord Almighty. I don’t think anyone expected the Lord to be carried to the temple by His parents, but then no one expected God to become Man either. And so the mystery of the manger continues here in the temple, as the infant Priest of humanity makes His first appearance. Humbly, hiddenly. God in the Flesh had come to His temple

The temple was the place of sacrifice, the place where lambs were brought as sacrifice for sin or as Passover lambs to be slaughtered. Here God’s tender Lamb appears, promised from eternal years, 40 days old to be redeemed as the first born in accordance with the law of Moses. They came to offer the prescribed sacrifice - a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons - the poor man’s sacrifice of redemption. “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.” Every first born son anticipated God’s Son. And now God’s Son fulfills the sacrifice. The Redeemer is redeemed by the blood of two turtledoves under the Law.

Christ came to fulfill the Law to the last little strong of the pen. At eight days He was circumcized according to the Law of Moses. At forty days He was redeemed by a humble sacrifice. It was also, as Luke tells us, the period of purification for His mother. For what did she need to be purified, you might wonder. And well you should! Mary had just given birth to the sinless Son of God. There was no purer birth than this one. And yet, she comes to the temple for her purification, like every Israelite mother.

Here we see Christ’s work for our redemption. He is the Substitute, the Sin-bearer, the Sacrifice. Though He is sinless, yet for our sakes, He became our sin. He is the Sinner in place of sinful humanity. He joined the human race, not only in sharing our flesh, blood, and bone, but also in taking up our burden under the Law. And so it is fitting and proper, that Jesus be redeemed at the temple and His mother purified. He is the sinless Sinner, the One who takes our place in perfection under the Law. The Redeemer is redeemed.

Waiting to greet Him are two very old - Simeon and Anna. Together they represent the OT prophet and priest waiting to see their fulfillment. Simeon was very old, and had been told that he would not die until he had seen the Christ with his own eyes. That’s the opposite of the way things usually work. Usually we’re told we have only so long to live. But Simeon was told he would not die until He saw the Lord’s Anointed One, the Christ, for Himself.

You can only imagine what it was like for old Simeon to walk about the temple day after day, wondering if this was the day, waiting and watching. He’s like the whole OT embodies in one old man, watching for the fulfillment of Israel. How his heart must have skipped a beat that day Mary and Joseph came to the temple carrying their 40 day old son, and the Holy Spirit whispered to his spirit, “this is the One you are waiting for.” And Simeon gather the little Child into his old, tired arms, and lifts His eyes to heaven, and sings out this song: Master, now you let your servant depart in peace.

His time of service had come to its end. You can almost hear the relief in his voice. His tired old eyes had seen the Lord’s salvation. His arms had embrace Him and lifted Him up. This tiny Child was the redemption of Israel and the salvation of the Gentiles - the world’s redeemer. Only faith could perceive this, faith worked by the Spirit through the Word. Only faith could see through the humility, the weakness, the poverty and gaze upon the face of God.

We sing Simeon’s hymn too. It’s a Lutheran innovation to sing it at the close of the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. The traditional place for this hymn is at the close of each day. It’s the Christian’s “Now I lay be down to sleep” prayer. But if you stop and think for a moment, it’s a very appropriate hymn to sing as we depart from Communion. We have beheld the salvation of our Lord. We have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. We have heard His words addressed to us personally - my Body given for you; my Blood shed for you. The body and blood born of Mary, laid in a manger, nailed to a cross, raised from the dead, glorified at the right hand of God - this He gives to us as our food and drink, and we, like Simeon sing our song of release, of freedom. We can truly depart in peace.

Make no mistake, Simeon is saying he’s now free to die. Not leave the temple, die. When I was a kid, I used to think we were thanking God because we were free to go home from church now. That was my prayer, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant, depart in peace.” But I quickly came to realize that this was Simeon’s death song, and a joyous one. He was released from his life’s sentence and free to die.

And so are we. We’ve worshipped the Child of the manger, the Man of the cross. We have beheld His glory, hidden beneath word and water, bread and wine. We can truly depart in peace, according to God’s Word.

The cross hangs over the scene like a cloud. Simeon tells Mary, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed.” There is no neutral position with respect to this Child. No middle ground when it comes to Jesus. You either trust Him with your life and salvation or you do not. You can’t reshape Him, or reinvent Him, or revision Him. You can only receive Him as He is for you - your Savior, your Lord, your Christ, your Redeemer. You either rise with Him or you fall without Him. There is no neutral place.

Mary too would feel the bitter pangs of the cross. “A sword will pierce through your own soul also.” She would see her Son crucified. And what sorrow and anguish that must have been. No parent wants to attend the death of a child. What a burden it must have been for her, to stand at the foot of His cross and watch. Yet even here in the temple, on her Son’s fortieth day, she is reminded that He does not belong to her. She and Joseph were there to redeem Him, to buy Him back with two tiny turtledoves. “May we please have Him back for just a little while?”

Imagine that. The Redeemer of mankind, whose blood cleanses us from our sins, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, is Himself redeemed by the blood of two pigeons. Such sublime and deep humility! The Lord of all becomes the Servant of all. And His servants - Anna and Simeon - rejoice.

There is a temptation at Christmas time to dwell on the cute and the glorious and the glittery. The manger, the swaddled newborn, the adoring shepherds, the bright angels. But we are reminded very quickly in Luke’s gospel that the work of redemption is always bloody work. On the eighth day (our New Year’s Day), He was circumcised under the Law and given the name Jesus. On the fortieth day He was redeemed by blood in the temple. He takes our place under the Law, and by His blood He frees us from our slavery to sin, to death, to the power of the law to condemn.

Christmas joy inevitably gives way to the reality of the new year. The wrapped presents have now disclosed their mysteries. Perhaps there are a few left for the next nine days. The lights will grow dim. The trees will dry out, at least the real ones. We will go back to the realities of our vocations with all the ambiguities, uncertainties, griefs, sins. We will feel the burden of our sins and the sins of others.

But like old Anna and Simeon in the temple, we have, by the grace of God, been given to embrace this Child of Bethlehem in Word and Sacrament, and having embraced Him in the open, empty, receiving arms of faith, we too are prepared to depart in peace.


The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/296/20091227212545/audio/lk_2.22-40_27december2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 20 Dec 2009 06:15:33 +0000
Luke doesn’t tell us why Mary went to see Elizabeth, but one can only wonder what it would be like to hear from an angel that you are about to conceive the Son of God by the Holy Spirit while you’re in the process of getting married to a man who’s still scratching his head over the whole business. The local gossip mill was grinding, as it always does. Sometimes it’s best to leave town for a while and take up with relatives who at least would understand.

If anyone would understand it was Elizabeth, a senior citizen well past her childbearing age who was three months away from delivering her son John, the forerunner of Jesus. They form quite an amazing picture, these two women - a pregnant Virgin and an expectant mother old enough to be a great grandmother. Truly, nothing is impossible with God! And just as truly, God doesn’t take the easy or the expected, way. His ways are definitely not our ways; his thoughts certainly not our thoughts. And sometimes God’s way is simply bizarre.

As soon as Mary speaks her greeting, John leaps for joy in his mother’s womb. John is already preaching Christ, and he isn’t even born yet! So much for the common notion that life in the womb is somehow less than human or less than aware. Or that the Word of God can’t get there. Or that infants can’t believe. John was preaching! His mother Elizabeth was the Spirit-appointed interpreter.

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth blesses her younger relative. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” Those of you who are familiar with Roman Catholic piety will immediately recognize the first part of the “Hail Mary.” The part we can agree with. Mary is surely blessed, as she herself said, “from this day all generations will bless me.” And the Child in her womb is blessed. He’s the Son of God. It’s the second part of the “Hail Mary we can’t agree with, namely, “pray for us now and in the hour of our death.” The one you want praying for you and interceding for you is Jesus, not His mother, no matter how honored and blessed she might be.

Notice that Elizabeth doesn’t worship Mary or seek her blessing. Elizabeth blesses her and calls her “blessed among women.” Mary is what every Israelite woman aspired to be, the mother of the Messiah. She is the counterpart to Eve. Eve heard the doubting word of the devil and was deceived. Mary heard the Word of God through the angel, and she conceived. Her Child is the devil’s head crusher, the One who would make enmity with evil and conquer death by dying. You might say that Mary is the ultimate fulfillment of motherhood in bearing the promised Savior of humanity. As Eve was the mother of all the living (her name means “life”) so Mary is the mother of the One who is the Life, the Source and Savior of all life. She is the epitome of motherhood and brings a unique dignity to women. One of yours is the mother of God’s Son Jesus.

Elizabeth calls her “the mother of my Lord.” “Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” That sentence ought to give us pause for a moment. It took Christianity nearly 400 years finally to sort out what Elizabeth simply blurts out with Spirit-filled joy. This younger cousin of hers, a young woman probably 17 or at most 18 years old, is the “mother of her Lord.” And if that doesn’t give you a few pre-Christmas goosebumps this morning, you didn’t have enough coffee or you aren’t listening.

This is the very essence of the Christmas mystery - a great and mighty wonder. The Lord of the universe, the Word through whom all things were made, has a mother! The Word became Flesh and dwells among us. The infinite Almighty Son of God takes up residence in the finite confines of a mother’s womb. The fulness of deity dwells among us bodily. The Creator literally becomes the creature. When speaking of Jesus, God is man and man is God. And Mary is, as the Council of Chalcedon correctly called her, Theotokos, the One who bore God in her womb.

Jesus could have appeared suddenly out of nowhere, I suppose, as a fully grown man. God can dwell among us any way He chooses. But then there would be doubts cast over His work. Does He fully embrace our humanity? Is He fully human, or does He just appear to be that way? (The Greeks believed that the gods took on the form of humans, but no one believed that a god would become human. That’s beneath the dignity of deity!)

Had Jesus not had a human mother, we would forever doubt His humanity. Was He really just like us or did He only appear that way? And in doubting His humanity, we would then question whether He is our substitute under the Law, whether His death actually atones for our sin, whether He truly is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We would doubt that His death embraced the newly born and even the unborn. We would even doubt whether His death on the cross was a genuine one, or just a piece of divine special effects.

Had Jesus shown up as a 30 year old man, he would have sidestepped some of the most difficult and painful parts of our human existence - the trauma of childbirth, the helplessness of infancy, the bumps and bruises of toddlerhood, the challenges of childhood, the awkwardness of adolescence. He would not have known what it’s like to wear diapers, to be utterly dependent on father and mother and to live obediently under them.

It had to be this way, for Jesus to literally be the Savior of all. His human nature embraces all our humanity, from the tiniest cluster of cells in a mother’s womb to the dying breath of the man on a cross. Literally from the womb to the tomb, Jesus embraces the fulness of our humanity with the fulness of His divinity. God is Man and Man is God. File that away for the coming week as Christmas comes around because that is the true reason for the season.

Elizabeth blesses Mary for her faith. Mary took the angel at his word, which was a Word from God Himself. She heard the Word and believed that God would do what He said, no matter how unlikely, how unreasonable it seemed. People weren’t ignorant then. They may not have known about molecular biology, but they knew the basic biology of the bird and the bees. They knew virgins do not ordinarily, if ever, conceive. Joseph did not initially believe Mary, and who knows, perhaps he always harbored a nagging doubt. Who wouldn’t?

Mary believed the Word of God. In this way, Mary is also a picture of every believer. She hears the impossible Word, that in her virginity she would conceive and bear a Son, who would be Immanuel, God with us, to save His people from their sins. And she responds as only faith can respond to the impossible Word of God. “Amen,” she says. “Let it be to me according to your Word.” And that’s how it is with us. God says to us, “In this Son, Jesus Christ, you have life, you have forgiveness, you have peace, you have everything in fullest measure.” And faith simply says, “Yes. Amen. Let it be to me according to your Word.”

God says to us, this Baptism is your new life, the washing away of your sins, your rebirth and renewal, and faith says “Yes, Amen. Let it be to me according to your Word.”

Christ says to us, you are forgiven by these very words that you hear, and faith says, “Yes, Amen. Let it be to me according to your Word.”

Jesus says, “This is my body given for you. This is my blood shed for you.” And faith simply says in the way of Mary, “Yes, Amen.”

Mary is not our mother, as some say. She is our sister. An honored, chosen, unique sister who bore the singular dignity of bearing the Word of God. For that we bless her on this fourth Sunday of Advent and indeed every day when we sing her song of praise the “Magnificat.” She is a perpetual reminder that with God nothing is impossible. An old couple has a son in their old age. A young woman conceives in her virginity. The dead are raised. Sinners are justified.

With God nothing is impossible.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/295/20091223164535/audio/lk_2.39-45_20december2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:50:32 +0000 “I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” (Luke 7:18-28)

The world’s measure of greatness and God’s measure of greatness are two completely different things. The world measures greatness in terms of power, prestige, influence, celebrity, fame, fortune. As we come to the end of the calendar year, we will get the inevitable greatest lists: the sexiest men, the sexiest women, the most influential people, the richest people, the most powerful people. The movers, the shakers. That’s who the world labels with the word “greatness.”

Even in the religious world, who are the great ones? The ones with a following, of course! The ones with the multi-million dollar books deals who appear on Oprah. The celebrity preachers who draw thousands to hear them on a Sunday morning, who have built not simply a congregation but an empire. Pastors who are invited to the White House and the state house, who advise politicians and are asked to pray for major state functions. That’s greatness.

Jesus applies to the word to a different sort - John the Baptizer. And not John at the “peak of his game,” but John down in the dumps, the depths of Herod’s prison, on death row facing a certain death, and doubting. Questioning the mission. Doubting his own preaching. Wondering aloud through his disciples, “Do we have the right one in Jesus? Was I wrong when I pointed to Him and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?’ Did I misread the signs from heaven?” “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

Wow! Is this the same John we heard last week? The John who called the religious leaders of Israel a “brood of vipers?” The John who called an entire nation to repentance? The John who demanded that repentance be not only in word but also in deed, bearing the fruits of repentance? The John who stood resolutely in the water of the Jordan and pointed confidently to Jesus saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”?

Yes. This is the same man, now under much different circumstances. John is in prison. He got thrown in prison for publicly criticizing Herod for taking his brother Philip’s estranged wife as his own. And now the forerunner to the Messiah sits in a dungeon awaiting his death. And the doubts begin to settle in. Have you ever harbored doubts in your mind, when circumstances took an ugly turn, when your expectations, hopes, dreams were dashed to pieces? Have you doubted God’s wisdom, His plan, His goodness, His promise? Have you ever grown impatient with God, wanting Him to act now rather than later, wanting Him to do something instead of just talk, wanting to break through the silence and the numinous curtain that hides God from our sight as the world mocks us for praying to our “invisible, silent Friend in heaven.”

Doubt and faith go together. We believe what we cannot see or prove, what we cannot know by our reason and our senses. And so there will always be doubts, from whether God actually exists or not to whether we are actually justified by God’s grace through faith for Christ’s sake alone. It is all taken on faith, on God’s Word, and is therefore always open to doubt as our eye overrules the Word.

“Are you the One who is to come or shall we look for another?” John sends his disciples to Jesus with the doubting question. But notice, John sends to to Jesus. He would have gone himself, if he could have. He brings his doubts to Jesus and lays them at his feet. Luke says at the very hour that doubting question was put on the lips of John’s disciples, Jesus healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and the blind were healed. These were the messianic signs, the signals that the kingdom of God had come, that the Day of the Lord had dawned. The prophet Isaiah spoke most clearly of it:

“Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your god will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.’ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then shall the lame leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” (Isaiah 35)

Those were the visible signs of the coming age of Messiah, and Jesus sends the two back with this report. The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor hear the good news preached to them. “And blessed is the one who is not offended, who does not stumble, over me.”

Those signs are signs for us too. The signs point us to the resurrection that comes with Jesus’ resurrection, to the coming dawning day when we will rise with new creation bodies, free of defect and disease, free of devil and demons, free of sin and all its effects. We can’t really imagine such a world and a life now. But the signs give us a little taste. We call the “miracles,” but that doesn’t do justice. These aren’t suspensions of “natural laws” or little divine parlor tricks to get our attention. They are little pieces of visible evidence that the kingdom of God was breaking through and into this world.

“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty One who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by His love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

Jesus doesn’t chastise John for his doubts, nor you for yours. Instead, He extols John. He calls him “great,” even “the greatest to be born of woman.” Not greatness in the way of the world though. Greatness in the way of the kingdom of God. Not a reed bending in the winds of public opinion, like so many religious figures of John’s day and our own, who are willing to bend and mold the Word of God like putty to suit the fashions of the day. Not a man dressed in expensive suits and silk ties with matching handkerchief who looked more at home in a king’s palace than the wilderness.

John’s greatness was a greatness that comes with a cross. Prophetic greatness. The greatness of anonymity, of being nothing more than a Voice and a Messenger for another. The greatness of laboring without ever seeing the tangible results of your work. The greatness of living by faith and not by sight. John’s greatness is unrecognized by the world. There is no Nobel Peace Prize given out for this sort of greatness, no Medal of Honor. The headlines ignore him, the tabloids have nothing to say about him. John would not be welcome at state dinners and White House receptions.

John’s greatness fits perfectly in Advent, that dark humble season that everyone pretty much ignores. Waiting in the darkness for the kingdom of God to dawn. That’s John in all his greatness. Waiting in a cold, dark prison for the kingdom of God to come. Hoping, believing, and yes, even doubting. Even the great ones doubt. Especially the great ones.

Today is Gaudete Sunday, the “pink candle Sunday” for Advent wreaths with a pink third candle. The Sunday of rejoicing in the midst of gloom and darkness. John in prison is the perfect image. Jesus would say to John and to each of us here today, “Rejoice. Rejoice in the midst of your sorrow and pain. Rejoice for this reason alone: I am near and coming soon.” Perhaps you feel imprisoned. Whether by the circumstances of your life, your doubts, your sins, diseases, the deaths of your own expectations of how God should operate. This Sunday bids you rejoice not in spite of those thing, but in the midst of those things. The cross of Jesus brings a sublime joy to the darkest of dungeons.

The joy of Jesus is the joy of your salvation, for which He endured the darkness and death of the cross. That joy is yours, my friends, a joy that endures among the sorrows of this life, a joy that surpasses every fleeting joy that this world has to offer, a joy that endures forever. That joy is in Jesus. Blessed are you when you are not offended by Jesus’ apparent weakness as He appears crucified to this world, but when you apprehend with John what it means to die and rise in Jesus.

Jesus called John great, yet He calls you, His baptized believer, even greater than John! Imagine that. You probably didn’t think of yourself as great. But even the least little one of faith in the kingdom of God is greater than John in all his prophetic greatness.

You! You are considered great in the kingdom of God. Not for what you have done or accomplished. Not for the awards you have collected, but simply because you are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus and bear His name.
That’s greatness in the kingdom of God. And reason to rejoice.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/294/20091215125933/audio/lk_7.18-28_13december2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:31:31 +0000
John is the great buzz kill of holiday cheer, Kryptonite to the Christmas spirit,your grouchy uncle who spoils the Christmas party. He’s edgy, he’s prophetic, he’s unkempt, he’s probably even a bit smelly. Undomesticated, uncivilized, untamable - John is a figure right out of the Old Testament. He even looks like the prophet Elijah, clothed in camel’s hair and leather. He’s supposed to look that way. He is the forerunner, the way-preparer, the messenger who goes before the Lord to fill in the valleys, level the mountains, straighten out the crooked and smooth over the rough.

Today also happens to be the feast of St. Nicholas of Myra, the generous and kind bishop and defender of Nicene orthodoxy whose legend lies behind the mythical jolly old “Saint Nick” in the red and white suit associated with shopping malls. But John the Baptizer is no mythical character. He may be strange, but he’s real. He came at a particular time and place. Luke records the moment for posterity’s sake: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontus Pilate was the governor of Judea, Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, Herod’s brother Philip the tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanius the tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. This is history, my friends. Not some myth or legend that happened “once upon a time.” Luke, the historian, tells you when and where.

It was the fulness of time, when human history was pregnant “out to here” with God’s promise of salvation. It was the threshold of the new age, the arrival of the kingdom of God, the coming messianic age. John stood on the threshold of history as the last of the OT prophets and the first of the NT evangelists. He came as a prophetic voice calling out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord.

How do you prepare the way of the Lord? We understand the highway image. Fill in the holes, shave down the high spots, straighten out the crooked places, smooth over the rough places. Got it. Make a highway for the Lord. Fine. But what does this mean? In a word: Repent. Turn away from sin and self. Repent. Return to the Lord who has returned to you. Repent. You were going this way, now go that way. Repent. Lose your religion, the notion that you can bribe and butter God up with your pieties and religion. Repent of who you are and of what you’ve done and haven’t done. Repent. Set aside your notions of self-esteem and learn to see yourself as the sinner that you are.

Repent and be baptized. John came to the Jordan wilderness with a new thing: Baptism. Baptism was unheard of in Israel. There were washings, but none that were done on you by another. There was sacrifice for sin, but not a bath for sinners. John was calling Israel back to the Jordan that once parted on their entry into the land. Back to the wilderness, the place where Israel had been formed as God’s people and nation. God was preparing to do a new thing, and His people need to be cleansed, bathed in forgiveness, scrubbed in a baptismal bath of Jordan river water joined to the promise of God. Repentance and baptism go together. You repent by being baptized, and living in Baptism is living a life of repentance.

John minced no words. He was hardly what today we would call “nice” let alone “friendly” or even “engaging.” When people came out to him to be baptized, he called them a bunch of snakes! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? What are you doing here? Hardly the way to start a religious movement, is it? John cut through the religious clutter. Don’t credential yourselves by saying “We have Abraham as our father.” God couldn’t care less. If He wanted, He could turn stones into children of Abraham.

John proclaimed judgment. No holds barred, ham-fisted judgment. The axe was already whacking away at the Israelite rootstock, the fire was already stoked. Any tree that did not bear good fruit would be cut down by the axe of God’s judgment and thrown into the fire.

This was not some call to abstract repentance, either. This was a call to a genuine turning with the anticipation of works that befit repentance. When the people asked John, “What shall we do to do the works of repentance,” John told them. He got down to specifics. He didn’t say, “Oh, you’re a sinner, you can’t do them so don’t bother trying.” He didn’t say, “You’re justified by faith so forget about works.” He told them what the fruit of repentance looked like. You share your clothing with one who has none. You share your food with one who has none. You do your vocations honestly and with integrity. Tax collectors - collect no more than the fair tax. Soldiers - do not use your authority to extort money, be content with your wages. In other words, fulfill your God-given callings with honesty, with integrity, with uprightness.

We imagine that “holiness” is some other-worldly thing done by robed monks chanting ancient texts. Not for us, certainly. Not for everyday people with families to raise and work to do and houses to take care of. We don’t have time to be holy. There are only 19 days until Christmas, for goodness sake!

John would say to us, “You brood of Lutheran lizards. Repent! Repent of your complacency, your excuses, your laziness, your religious hypocrisy. And don’t you dare say, “We have Luther as our father,” because Luther’s come a dime a dozen in God’s economy of doing things, and Luther can’t save you and more than Abraham can save you. Repent. Repent of your shallow prayers, your superficial devotions, you endless complaining and whining, repent of your ingratitude for the Word, the Body and the Blood. Repent and start being the people of God that you are because that who God says you are.

Repentance is not a one-time thing. It’s a way of life. It’s what it means to be a Christian. Daily the old man drowns and dies in baptismal water; daily a new man rises up to live in Christ, clothed with His righteousness, covered with His holiness, living in His perfection.

Repentance is something God works in us by His Word, and we shouldn’t be surprised when He does it, nor avoid it because it makes us “feel bad about ourselves.” You’re supposed to feel bad about yourself, because, as St. Paul says, “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing.” There is nothing in you that would make you feel good about yourself. God sends the bulldozer of His law right down the main streets of our lives. The highway of the Lord runs right through the middle of our being, through our very hearts and minds. And that’s why the encounter with John is so uncomfortable, so discomforting. We see the truth about ourselves, and we don’t like what we see.

This is the harsh side of Advent, what makes it a somber and sober season even as the world parties on. We encounter John in all his prophetic edginess, and we realize that we are sinful and unclean. Our thoughts, our desires, our actions - even the best and most noble of them - are hopelessly in need of a bath. We recognize this. You do. After a day of work, you feel like you need a bath, you need to get clean again. There isn’t a day spent in your vocations as fathers, mothers, citizens, workers - whatever God has given you to do - that you are not in need of a baptismal bath of repentance, a washing of water with the Word.

Fortunately for us, and blessedly, Baptism, like repentance is not a one-time thing. It is a daily gift, a daily working of the Word in our lives, killing us and making us alive. Cleansing us in our vocations to serve God and serve our neighbor not to be saved, but because we are saved by God’s undeserved kindness and mercy in Jesus His Son.

John came to prepare the way of the Lord, of Jesus. John’s baptism of repentance came to its completion and fulfillment when Jesus stepped into the Jordan to be baptized as a sinner, to stand with us and in our place. The axe that was laid to the root of Israel fell upon Jesus. The wrath of God that threatens our damnation fell upon Jesus. The fire of God’s judgment against our sin came upon Jesus. Jesus is the good tree that bears the good fruit on behalf of all of humanity. And grafted to Him in baptismal faith, joined to Jesus as branches to a living Vine, feeding off of His death and life, you are a good tree too.

“Make the tree good,” Jesus said, “and the fruit will be good also.” First the tree, then the fruit. Get the repentance right, and the fruits of repentance will surely be there. And where there is repentance, where men and women recognize their sinfulness and confess it, where hearts are turned by the Spirit working through the Word, there a smooth and level highway is prepared for the Lord.

It is Advent,. Time to prepare. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make His paths straight. Don’t be afraid of John or his harsh preaching or his baptism. He is a good and faithful preacher who seeks your salvation. Turn to Christ who comes to you, now hidden in His Word and bread and wine, and soon He comes to you in glory. Get ready. The Lord is near.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/291/20091215130034/audio/lk_3.1-14_06december2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:35:16 +0000
The One who is coming in glory, might, and power is the One who came by the humility of the Virgin, the manger, the donkey, and the cross. And He is the One who comes to us here and now, hidden and sublimely “with us,” present in water, Word, bread and wine, to prepare, to forgive, to strengthen, and to keep us. That is the very heart and core of the season of Advent. “Behold, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation.

The word “advent” means “coming” as in the coming of a king or even a god. And imagine the excitement, the anticipation, the preparation that would go on if we were expecting a king or some dignitary come and visit us. Well, maybe we’re not so impressed by kings, so how about a president then. And if you don’t particularly like the current president, then imagine a favored past president or perhaps a future presidential hopeful. This is a non-partisan illustration. Just imagine some dignitary, some very important person coming to visit us here at Holy Trinity.

Would we do anything different? Would you do anything different? Come early, be sure to get a seat? Dress differently? Prepare in some way? I’m fairly certain we all would do something a little different if someone with the status of “king” were to show up here on a Sunday morning. Well, the good news of Advent is that your King, the King of all kings, the King that comes bearing salvation, has come, does come, and will come.

Your King has come to you, righteous and having salvation. In one sense, it is past and accomplished. “It is finished.” He left His royal throne at the right hand of the Father and came to us, born of the Virgin daughter of Israel, in the fulness of time, at just the right moment in God’s plan of salvation. The plan that God had ordained from before the beginning of the world was put into effect when the angel spoke the word of promise to Mary, announcing that she would conceive and bear the promised Messiah-King, the Son of God, God come to be with us.

He came in deep humility, ignored, rejected, despised by those He came to save. “He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.” He is the creator of all things, yet the world in its unbelief did not recognize Him. He is the Messiah of Israel, the promised Son of David, yet Israel rejected Him. Yes, He had a few disciples. One hundred and twenty when the final count was taken. Hardly much of a movement. Certainly not enough to register on the world’s scale of greatness. Imagine today, someone claiming to be a great religious leader, having a following of one hundred and twenty disciples. The world would laugh; and the world did laugh and mock and spit.

He came into His own city, Jerusalem, the holy city. The place of the temple, of sacrifice and priesthood and prayer, the dwelling place of God on earth. He came as the royal Son of David, riding on a donkey as the prophet had foretold it; His disciples shouting “Hosanna” and “Blessed is the King!” anticipating that the time had come for Jesus to take His throne. His disciples rolled out the royal carpet of palm branches and coats. But the donkey was borrowed, pressed into service because “the Lord had need of it.” Imagine a king borrowing someone else’s car to make his grand entrance. Hardly the stuff of kings now, is it?

That borrowed donkey is a clue as to what sort of King Jesus is - a beggar King. One who was rich, but for our sakes become poor. One who stepped down from His throne to become the Servant of all. One who left the power and majesty of the right hand of the Father to take up the humility of the manger and the cross. One who wore royal purple only as people mocked Him. One who was openly called a King only in derision and as a reason for His crucifixion. His crown was made of thorns. His scepter was a nail driven through His hand. His throne was a cross on which He died. His victory was His death by which He defeated the last and greatest enemy of our humanity, namely Death and the Grave.

The religious in the crowd were offended by Jesus, as He still is an offense to human Religion today. The Pharisees called on Jesus to silence the celebration, to shut up His disciples. But even the mute rocks and stones knew who Jesus was and would cry out, if called upon. He didn’t come to fix the world; He came to save it. He didn’t come to fix injustice; He came to do justice. He didn’t come to rid the world of suffering, of poverty, of disease; He came to deal with the root cause and source - our sin, the corruption of our humanity, the Law that damns us, the wrath of God that hangs over us. He’s the King that fights and dies for His people, and there is no other King like Him in the world.

Your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation. He came once in humility to fight and die and rise. He comes now to bless, to forgive, to make you His own, to give you a share in His life and royalty. He comes to establish His reign - not on earth, but in the hearts of men, turning hearts in faith toward Him and to the Father. As we wait for Jesus’ coming in glory, He comes to us “sacramentally,” through the means He has ordained for us - through the Word proclaimed, through the water of Baptism, through the bread that is His Body and the wine that is His blood. He has His “advent” with you, with His Church throughout the entire last days until the Last Day, lording His death and life over us to prepare us for His final advent.

The Church is always in a perpetual advent, celebrating her coming Lord even as she awaits her coming Lord. As Jesus once entered Jerusalem atop a donkey, now He enters His Jerusalem in the hidden humility of His Word, HIs Baptism, His Supper - no less here or present, but hidden under the ordinary and the humble so that we might approach and receive Him without fear. He comes to forgive, speaking words of absolution into your ears that you might know with all certainty and without any doubt that His death applies to you, His blood covers your sin, His righteousness is your righteousness.

There is a quirk in translation that is noteworthy in today’s reading from Jeremiah verse 16: “In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which she (not it) will be called: The Lord is our righteousness.” She - as in Israel, the Church, the Bride of Christ. She is called by her husband’s name. She receives His righteousness. You are covered with Christ in your Baptism, and you wear Him like a robe before the Father so that your sins are washed away, your sinfulness is covered.

This is what we call “forensic righteousness.” God declares it to be so, and it is. He calls you righteous and you are, solely because He says so. And it is in Jesus’ righteousness, His holiness, His innocence, His perfection that your hearts are established blameless in holiness before God the Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.

Your King is coming to you, righteous and having salvation. The One who comes now by Word and sign is soon to come unattenutated glory. Now a hint, then the full blast. This is Day the season of Advent anticipates and prepares for. It really isn’t so much a countdown for Christmas, Jesus’ first advent, as it is a look forward to His final advent in great glory and power to judge the world in His righteousness. Luther said, “He will then not be bedded in the manger, nor ride on an ass, as He did in His first advent, but will burst forth from the clouds in great power and glory.” What we now hear will be seen. What we know believe will be manifest to all. What we long and hope for will be ours. What is promised will be delivered.

Then you will know, my dear baptized believers, what it means to be justified for Jesus’ sake, when you rise from the dead (or are instantly changed), and are presented blameless and holy before the judgment throne of Christ to hear of the good He has accomplished in and through you. Then you will see, my dear baptized believers, what you now hear, that your sins are forgiven, put as far from you as the east is from the west. Then you will possess in yourselves and experience for yourselves what you now long for and hope for, and what is already now true of you in Christ - life in abundance, life eternal, life in Jesus, life in union with all who trust in Him, life forever.

The day is coming soon. The King is ready to ride. The time is at hand. Prepare to greet your King. He comes to you righteous and having salvation. He comes to save you. He comes to give you life. Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.

Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/292/20091221181418/audio/lk_19.28-40_29november2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:47:26 +0000 What I say to you, I say to all: Watch! (Mark 13:24-37)

We have come to the end of the church year. The final chapter of history, the last movement of the symphony, the last Sunday that wraps everything up at the close of the age when Christ will appear as the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great and terrifying power and glory and send out his angels to gather his elect from the four compass points of the earth. Or as we summarize it in the creed: “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”

The question for the day is this: How do we live as end-times people? How do we live in the realization that the Day of the Lord is coming, it is nearer now than it was yesterday. How do we live, as God’s baptized believers, knowing that Christ might appear at any moment, that the cosmic order as we know it may give way without warning, that the sun, moon, and stars would fall and the very heavens be shaken?

We who live in earthquake country have a good illustration of this end-times Day of the Lord stuff. We know that an earthquake is possible at any moment including 10 seconds from now. It will come without warning, suddenly, at any time of day or night. Unlike tornados or hurricanes or storms, an earthquake has no warning sign. You don’t see it coming. And so the only thing you can do is be prepared. You know one is coming, and perhaps a big one or even The Big One, but you don’t know when. And so the only thing you can reasonably do is be prepared. Have an emergency plan. Maybe have some water and provisions packed away just in case. And always be aware that an earthquake can happen at any moment.

So it is with the visible appearing of Christ in glory. He comes suddenly, like a flash of lightning that streaks across the sky from the east to the west. He comes without warning, like a thief in the night. He comes at the least likely of hours, like a groom at midnight. He comes when the world sleeps in complacency, drunkenness, distraction, and unbelief. Jesus’ word for the end is an urgent word: Keep awake. Watch.

No one knows the day or the hour. That’s the reality of the end-times. Jesus leaves the last big question unanswered. Imagine parents going out for the evening and telling their kids, “we’ll be right back.”
“So when exactly are you coming back?”
“Who know? Could be anytime at all. But when we do come back it will be suddenly and without warning.”
“Could you at least give us a ballpark estimate?”
“No, that wouldn’t be good for you.”
“Maybe nine o’clock? Midnight? Something like that?”
“No, but we’ll be back. You can count on it. Why do you want to know, anyway?”
Why do we want to know? Why do we insist on foolish figuring when the Lord has told us it’s not for us to know the day or the hour? Why do we fixate on years like 1000 and 2000 and now 2012 and the Mayan calendar? One part of it, I think, is fascination with the unknown and a lurking sense that things seem to be tumbling to some sort of end point. Another part, though, is our desire to domesticate God, to put Him into a convenient box the way we do our holiday seasons, to schedule Him in on our busy calendars to make sure we’re ready when He shows up so we can have our houses swept clean and our lives in order.

Jesus has set His church, you and me, on high end-times alert with the single word “Watch. Keep awake.” While the rest of the world is spiritually asleep to the point of being comatose, Jesus would have His believers alert and ready, like the doorkeeper of the house who watches for the master of the house to return. He doesn’t know when, so he’s always alert, always ready, always watching. Jesus made it quite clear to His disciples. The end-times is not a time for couch potato Christianity, of comatose complacency, of sitting idly being entertained. He said, “Be careful, take heed, lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation, with drunkenness, and the anxieties of life, and that Day will spring on you unexpectedly like a trap.”

The problem is that the call to end-times alertness after 2000 years begins to sound like the government’s perpetual “orange alert” for terrorist activity. It just doesn’t mean anything anymore. The press of our work and social calendars crowd out the significance of any end of the church year, end of the age, end of all things considerations. And while we may have a lurking notion that the world will end one day, it also have this false confidence that it is not likely to end today, tomorrow, or the next day. And that would be as foolish as those bridesmaids who thought that a little oil was enough and never expected the groom to show up at the unlikely hour of midnight.

The first Christians believed that they would live to see the visible return of Jesus. They lived in that hope and expectation. They went about their lives and business as usual, but always with one eye toward the heavens, watching, waiting, hoping for the dawn of their salvation. Jesus had said, “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” He was referring to the destruction of Jerusalem; many thought He was referring to the end of all things. In a sense they were correct: the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans was a sign of the end, a little foretaste. But it was only a sign. The main event is yet to come. “He will come to judge the living and the dead.” It’s the one piece of unfinished business.

Now to those who take such things seriously, there is a sense of dread and panic. Those apocalyptic movies about the end of the world are not “they lived happily ever after” movies. The natural reaction is one of dread and terror anticipating great destruction. And that’s certainly true, but it’s not the whole truth. When Jesus speaks of the end, he uses the sign of the fig tree - not as it’s shedding it’s leave and going dormant into the dead of winter, but as the sap is rising and the leaves are budding to anticipate the coming of summer. In other words, Jesus turns all the destruction of the end into signs of life. St. Paul calls them the “birth pangs,” the labor contractions of the new creation that has come with the coming of Christ. Yes, labor and childbirth is painful (or some I’m told). Yet the outcome is so happy and joyous and wonderful that the pain is forgotten, or the memory of it is at least diminished or we would all be only children.

The Day of Jesus’ coming is a day of judgment, yes. But judgment cuts two ways. One can be judged guilty and sentenced to punishment; one can also be judged innocent and set free. In a very real sense, you were already judged on Jesus’ judgment Day, the day He came not to judge but to be judged, when He took your place on a cross, took your sin into His sinless life, embraced your death in His death, was condemned with the condemnation you deserve. That Good Friday when the Son of God died for the sins of the world was a Day of the Lord. And we know where that Day led - to resurrection, to life, to glory at the right hand of God.

That judgment was pronounced over your own head in your Baptism, where you were united with Jesus in His death, His life, His glory. You were clothed with Christ. You were put “into Christ,” made a new creation. “The old has gone, the new has come.” Many Christians, especially those who don’t understand the power and work of Baptism, miss this point. In Christ you are already glorified. We are, in Christ, already in the new creation. What we are waiting for is to take possession of this ourselves, in our own bodies raised or changed to fit life in a new creation. And so the end of all things old means the beginning all things new. “I am making all things new,” Jesus says. A new heavens, a new earth, a new you.

So how then shall we live, in view of the end? Luther supposedly said that if he knew the world were going to end tomorrow, he would plant an apple tree today. Or something like that. Luther probably didn’t say that, but the idea is sound. We would say wash the car, mow the lawn, do what we are given to do. But always, always, always with one eye toward the heavens from whence comes our salvation.

In today’s epistle, Jude would exhort us to build ourselves up in our most holy faith. That doesn’t mean dwelling on our insides and our believing, but being immersed in what we believe. Not like some procrastinating students cramming for an exam (there were be no exams on the last Day), but more like lovers dwelling over their words to each other or learning about something that fascinates us and captivates our hearts and minds. Christ is coming soon! And in the end it’s all about Christ, who is the beginning and the end. What greater topic is there than Christ and His Word as we prepare to meet Him face to face?

With the Word comes prayer. “Pray in the Holy Spirit.” The end-times are a time for prayer, for holy conversation with the One who is coming. To pray “in the Spirit” does not mean to pray incoherently or pray without understanding, but to pray recognizing that we do not know how to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs and groans beyond words. He delivers God’s Word to our ears, and our words to the Father’s ears.

“Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” Notice it is “mercy” for which we are waiting and life. To keep in the love of God is to be on the receiving end of His love toward us - hearing His Word, receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, taking in the words of forgiveness and life. And as we receive the tokens of His love for us now, we are being prepared to be the objects of His love when He appears in glory.

Lastly, Jude says, “Have mercy on those who doubt.” He turns us to one another. Doubt and faith always run together because we believe what we do not now see. The church is a body; there is safety in numbers. The isolated believer is the vulnerable one. We need each other, sometimes to stick out a rescuing hand to pull another from the fire of unbelief. That hand may leave a temporary bruise, but if someone were about to be run over by a truck, you wouldn’t worry about a black and blue mark, would you? We are called to watch out for each other, care for each other, support and even rescue one another, because we don’t want anyone to miss the glory that is coming.

There is a final comfort here, on this Last Sunday of the year. Jesus is the One who keeps us from stumbling and presents us blameless at the end. Not us. Not our religious efforts, our works, our piety, or anything. Jesus keeps us blameless in the robe of His righteousness; Jesus keeps us from stumbling by His sure feet that have trampled sin, death, and devil. He is your beginning, your end, your Alpha, your Omega, your life and your salvation. Trust Him to the end, and you will see with resurrection eyes what you now believe.

“Not to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/293/20091213004927 clean revcwirla Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:21:28 +0000 Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God., waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. (Hebrews 10:11-25)

With a single stroke of his pen, the writer to the Hebrews puts an end to the old covenant and its sacrifices. What the priests of the temple offered daily can never take away sins. All the blood of bulls, goats, and lambs, apart from the Blood of God’s Lamb, Jesus Christ, cannot bring forgiveness, life or salvation.

Sins are not something we can bargain over with God; they are not something we can make up for. They are an affront to God’s holiness, an insult to His justice. Our sin crosses the line of God’s commandment. We are revealed by God’s law to be idolators, blasphemers, those who despise God’s Word, who dishonor parents and other authorities, who kill, commit adultery, steal, lie, covet. We do these things by our thoughts, our words, and our actions. We do what we are forbidden and we don’t do what we are commanded.

If God were to act according to His justice, we would be justly barred from His presence. We have no inherent right to it. He would be justified in damning us, in excluding us, in sentencing us to the “everlasting shame and contempt” of which Daniel speaks in the OT reading. But He has promised not to do that, and the sole basis of His promise not to do this is the single, unique, one-time sacrifice of Jesus who offered His life on the cross as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world.

You and I are modern people. Some would even say “post-modern people.” Our religions are not thick and primitive. We don’t have priests slinging buckets of blood from the slit throats of bulls and goats. Wouldn’t that be something, if you came out of church covered in blood? That much draw some attention to our congregation and make people wonder what was going on here. We don’t offer whole burnt offerings, although the air quality management board might have a thing or two to say about that. We don’t think in terms of blood and sacrifice and atonement. The closest we come, perhaps, is to parade around a crucifix, or raise a chalice and believe we are drinking the blood of Christ which the world sees as nothing more than a cup of sweet wine.

We are modern, sophisticated, scientific people. What the writer to the Hebrews is speaking of hardly crosses our religious radar screens. Priests offering sacrificial blood for sins. It went on every day in the temple of Jerusalem. It would still be going on today if the temple had not been destroyed as Jesus Himself predicted it.

And yet modern though we are, we have a sense, an internal notion that something is deeply wrong. It is not well with our souls. There is a restlessness, an unease, a panic even. You can see it in those apocalyptic movies and all the things that push in end times anxieties. NIne years ago we experienced the Y2K business, that uncomfortable notion that maybe the world actually was going to end that year. We actually held a New Year’s eve service, which we don’t usually do, just to provide a place to park some of that anxiety.

Now, at least some in our day are looking toward 2012. There’s a movie coming out about that. It turns out that the Mayan calendar runs out of steam in the year 2012, and since there aren’t any Mayans to consult as to why, people are thinking that perhaps the world will end in 2012 and the Mayans were somehow in on the big secret that no man can know. Of course, that’s like suggesting that since LSB lists the dates of Easter out to 2050, that the world will end sometime before Easter 2051, when in truth, the editors of the hymnal figured the book would fall apart long before then.

Perhaps you yourself experience a bit of the eschatological anxiety when you say those words at the end of the creed, “and He will come to judge the living and the dead.” And you should feel a bit of that eschatological anxiety, if not a twinge of fear and dread, because to stand before the judgment seat of God is a terrifying thing, and were it not for Christ, it would be a damning and destructive thing. I think many Christians seem to forget that, and think only in terms of how nice it will be when Jesus appears. “Nice” isn’t a word I’d use to describe it. Glorious, yes. Awesome, rightly understood, yes. Yes, there will be acquittal, forgiveness, salvation for all who believe, but those are always in the face of our sins, and it is always frightful to fall into the hands of God. If it’s that way for the justified, how much worse for those who refuse to be justified.

But we approach that Day with confidence, hope, and expectation, mixed with fear, as the baptized believing people of God. Our hearts have been sprinkled by the Word of God, applying the blood of the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Our bodies have been washed with pure, living water, the recreative waters of Baptism. You have been washed, like a priest before his service, like a bride before her wedding. You are a priest in Christ’s royal priesthood. Your life as a Christian is a “priesthood,” offering spiritual sacrifices to God in thanksgiving for saving you and the world through the sacrificial blood of Jesus. You are priests offering your bodies as living sacrifices, not for sin but for gratitude and praise.

The writer to the Hebrews has given us three “let us” exhortations, three results of the fact that Christ has died one time for all time to atone for sin, that He died our death and was raised to life triumphant and now, even now as we speak, He is seated on His throne in the full array of our humanity, to exercise His lordship over death and life and all things. Three results, three end-times exhortations for you and me as we live out our lives anticipating the end:

First, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.” We have confidence. You know how you generally don’t boldly go where no man has gone before? You step cautiously, carefully. We generally tiptoe where no man has gone before. Christ has gone before us. He has entered the holy place of heaven itself through the curtain of His own flesh. His death on the cross opens the kingdom of heaven as surely as the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom the very moment that Jesus cried “It is finished.” Hear that. Understand that. Believe that. We are approaching the throne of the King of kings as a throne of grace, a place of promised mercy. We are coming to a Judge who was judged for us. And that means confidence. We are not boldly going where no man has gone before when we approach death, the grave, and the final judgement. We are going where Christ has gone before us, and we are going joined to Him.

Second, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” We are banking on a promise, you and I. We are trusting, by the sheer mercy and grace of God, that when this life is over, when this age is over, when the last Day finally comes, we will be numbered among those who rise to everlasting life, who as Daniel depicted it, would shine like the brightness of the heavens. We believe that not because we are good, religious, holy, pious, or Lutheran. But solely on account of the Blood of Jesus shed on the cross, sprinkled by the Word on your heart, poured on you with the water of Baptism. That’s our confession.

This age in which we live views it as unfashionable, restrictive, even “unspiritual” to have a confession, to believe something all together, and to say it all together. It’s all personal, private, individual. The Creed forces us to be corporate. Our hymns force us to sing together, not as many following one lead singer, but all together as one voice, singing what the Spirit has taught us by the Word. The devil, the unbelieving world, your own flesh would have you wobble, try to knock you off your center, dare you not to believe that you are justified for Jesus’ sake. But Christ didn’t hang on a cross for you to be uncertain, wobbly, weak-kneed Christians. You are baptized into Christ. Cling to Him and to the confession of His name. He’s all you’ve got, and He’s all you need to get you through. He is faithful.

Third, “Let us stir one another up to love and to good works.” Interestingly, this is one of the few places in the NT that speaks to church attendance - “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some.” Even then, for whatever reason, there were those who stopped going to church. And Hebrews reminds each of us that there are corporate reasons for going to church. It’s not just about you. Yes, we speak of receiving the gifts of Christ, of hearing the Word, of receiving the Body and the Blood, of prayer, praise and thanksgiving, and that is all good, right and salutary. But Hebrews would turn our eyes not to ourselves but to the person next to you and behind you and in front of you, and remind you that our presence here together encourages one another to love and to good works. When we are absent from church, we are not only saying to God, “your gifts mean nothing to us today,” but we are saying to each other, “you mean nothing to me today.” When one member is missing, the whole body suffers, just as a hand missing one finger suffers, but it is the finger, not the hand that dies.
The Day is surely drawing near. Let us approach the throne of grace with confidence, clothed in our Baptism. The Day is surely drawing near. Let us hold fast to the confession of Christ who is our hope. The Day is surely drawing near. Let us get together around the gifts of Christ to stir each other up to love and good works.

O Jesus Christ, do not delay,
But hasten our salvation;
We often tremble on our way
In fear and tribulation
O hear and grant our fervent plea;
Come, mighty judge, and set us free
From death and every evil. (LSB #508)

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/290/20091121142429/audio/pentecost24B2009%28proper278%29.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:55:13 +0000
You can be certain that she knew the story of the prophet Elijah and the widow at Zarephath quite well. It was one she could relate to, an instant connection and application. The only difference was that the widow in the Old Testament was from Zaraphath, a coastal town between Tyre and Sidon She wasn’t an Israelite but from a pagan people that was the enemy of God’s people. All the more scandalous then, that Elijah should be sent to her by God. But then we know that God’s mercy extends beyond the boundaries of His Israel to the ends of the earth, and it included this poor widow and her son who were preparing their last meal with the bit of flour and oil she had.

What an imposition it must have seemed at the time for Elijah to ask her for a piece of bread when she was scraping the bottom of her flour jar. And what an act of faith it was to trust the Word of God through the prophet with her last morsel of food! She believed the Word that her flour and oil would not run out, that day after day she would reach into those jars and there would be something there by the sheer grace of God until the Lord sent rain on the land again. She acted on what she believed. She did as Elijah told her. And the flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, because the Lord had said so.

You have to believe that the widow who came to the temple that day knew that story. And while she had no such promise from God as the widow at Zaraphath, she knew that the widow was close to the Lord’s heart, that “He sustains the fatherless and the widow.” And this widow at Zaraphath served as a reminder to her that God is faithful and true to His Word, that He would not abandon her in her time of need, that she could trust in the Lord’s fatherly care to supply what she needed. Somehow.

She would not come to the temple empty-handed, although certainly people would have understood. What could she possibly give anyway? The temple budget was enormous, the renovation work was ongoing. It all takes money, as they say, and I would imagine that the temple accountants really didn’t pay much regard to this poor widow. Earlier, Jesus had criticized the scribes for their flowing robes and honorific titles and best seats in the synagogue and how they latched on to widows and devoured their houses. This widow had little to eat much less devour.

But still she came to the temple with her two little copper coins, worth about a penny. She stood in line at the entrance to the temple’s “court of women” where the money boxes were. There were thirteen metal boxes shaped like long horns standing on their ends with the bell sticking high up in the air. As the coins clanged their way into the coffers, they made a sound that could be heard throughout the courtyard. So you can imagine the attention that was drawn when the rich came forward and dumped their quantities of coin into treasury box. Clang, clang, clang, clang. You can only imagine the noise. And everyone stopped and looked to see who it was that made such a glorious contribution to the bottom line.

And then comes our dear widow lady with her two copper coins. Plink, plink. Barely a sound as they went down to join the coins of the rich. Barely a blink on the bottom line of the temple budget. Plink, plink. It hardly registered. They were the smallest coins in circulation. They would have purchased one eighth of a daily ration of bread. Barely enough for a lunch for one. You and I would likely have missed it, as we often do when we are trying to raise money. Sure the gesture is nice, but it really doesn’t pay the bills, does it?

Sitting across the way, opposite the treasury box, is Jesus, watching as people put their money into the treasury, listening to the clang, clang, clanging of the coins. And then He hears the plink, plink of the widows two copper coins, and HIs ears perk up. He hears something different in that plink, plink that he didn’t hear in all the other coins that clanged into the coffer. He hears faith. Trust in God. He calls HIs disciples to share the moment. “Did you hear that?” You know they didn’t. “Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.”

What kind of accounting is this? How are we going to pay the bills, Jesus, when you praise a couple of copper coins over all the gold and silver that was contributed? Aren’t we supposed to honor the big givers? But the Lord is seeking something else. The gold and silver belong to Him anyway, and He can recall them any time He wishes in your death. The plink, plink of faith is music to the Lord’s ears, more melodious than all the excess coins of the rich clanging away and echoing in the temple courts. They gave our of their abundance; it takes no faith at all to give out of surplus. But to give out of poverty...that tiny little plink, plink of two copper coins was her entire livelihood; everything she had to live on.

Can you imagine the offering if the rich gave in the same proportion? Everything they had down to their last two copper coins? The treasury boxes could not have contained it. They would have been busting full of money. The clanging would have been deafening. They’d be calling in the Brinks trucks on an hourly basis to cart it all away, if those who had much gave in the same way as this faithful widow lady who gave her last two pennies.

Her giving flowed out of a living trust that seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and trusts that all the things that are need in this life will be added as well. It is the childlike trust in a heavenly Father who knows what we need even before we ask Him, and who gives good gifts to His children. It is a faith that holds the coins of this world with a loose, dead hand. Like the widow at Zaraphath, this faithful woman trusted that God would take care of her, and that those two coins that were the last of her saving, that could hardly buy the equivalent of a dinner roll, served far better as an expression of her trust in God than as a guarantee for her next meal.

It’s hard when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from. This is why the widowed, the orphaned, the poor have a special place in Scripture. They live without a safety net. They live trusting that God will provide. Their petition “Give us this day our daily bread” takes on a slightly different important than for those of us who know precisely how our daily bread will come. I get the impression that the flour and oil jars for that widow at Zaraphath were always near empty for the entire time Elijah stayed with her. But every time she went to get flour or oil there was some. Just enough. Or when Jesus fed the multitudes with a few loaves and fish, it wasn’t that he made many loaves out of a few, but He extended the few loaves to feed the many.

When that widow came home from the temple with two pennies less, she did not come home to a cupboard full of food or a bank account full of money. But the Lord had heard the humble plink plink of her faith, and you know the Lord did not let her down. The apostle Paul wrote these lines from a prison somewhere, to a congregation that had just sent him a gift. God always works through means, instruments. Sometimes you are the instrument, sometimes you are the recipient. In this case Paul was the recipient of a gift from the Philippines. And he writes this back:

I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
I can do all things through him who strengthens me….I have received full payment, and more. I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

We trust the Lord with the big things - forgiveness, life, salvation. We trust that His death covers the multitude of our sins, that in Baptism we are clothed with Jesus, buried with HIm, raised with Him, glorified with Him. We trust that for His sake we stand before God justified, sinners though we are. We trust though we die, yet on account of Christ we will live, and in HIm we live even now.

If God is faithful in the big things, is He not also faithful in the little things. If we trust Him with our eternal life, will we trust Him with our two copper coins? And there, we must at times pray, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” He cares for you and for your life. Sometimes the flour and oil may run mighty low, and the bank account may have no more than a couple of copper coins in it, but you are never outside the Lord’s notice, never outside His care. He has staked a claim on you, and He is faithful and true to His Word. “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. Let not your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.”

Don’t think that your two pennies offered in faith are not noticed. The world may not notice, but the Lord does. And that plink, plink of faith’s little copper coins is a sweet melody to His ears.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/287/20091111134014/audio/pentecost23B2009%28proper27%29.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:53:44 +0000
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” (Rev 14:13)

“Blessed.” That’s our word for the day. And a fitting word it is for All Saints’ Day, the day we remember the martyrs of the faith together with our own blessed dead who have gone through the great tribulation of this life and death and have joined ranks with that great multitude no one can number from every nation, tribe, people, and language. “Blessed.”

The Greek word is makarious. I raise that here to widen your hearing a bit beyond what we may think of “blessed.” When we say blessed, we usually think happy, healthy, wealthy, fortunate as we “count our blessings” and consider how “blessed we are.” And that certainly is a part of that word makarios. But there’s more, of course. To be makarios, blessed, is to be on the privileged receiving end of God’s good stuff.

That way of blessing doesn’t quite look the same as the way the world generally speaks of blessedness.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, the spiritual beggars, those who have nothing to offer God. Theirs is the kingdom of God.”

“Blessed are those who mourn, who feel the pangs of death, who mourn the wages of sin, whose tears water the earth, for they will be comforted.”

“Blessed are the meek, who present the other cheek to their enemies, who do good to those who hate them, whose strength is perfected in weakness, who trust the hidden power of the cross, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for a righteousness, who have no righteousness of their own, who long for something better than they can cook up on their own; they will be satisfied with a righteousness not their own, one that comes through trust in Christ and His righteousness.

Blessed are the merciful, who forgive those who sin against them, whose hearts are turned in compassion toward others regardless of reward; they shall receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure hearted, who have washed their hearts in the blood of the Lamb who was slain for them, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peace makers, who stand in the breach between warring parties, who reconcile instead of retaliate, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness’ sake, who suffer of the sake of the kingdom, who confess Christ not to their gain but to their loss, whose lives reflect the Suffering Servant who laid down His life to save the world, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you, baptized believing one. Blessed are you when others revile you, make fun of you, kick you, exclude you, insult you, slander you because you bear the name of Christ. Don’t get mad, be glad. You take your company with the prophets who came before you. It’s not you they are insulting, it’s Christ. And that’s cause of rejoicing, because you and Christ are one. Your trust will be vindicated. Your reward is great in heaven.

Blessed. It certainly doesn’t seem like the world’s idea of “blessed,” does it? Poor, mourning, meek, hungry, thirsty, merciful, pure hearted peacemaking, persecuted.
Where’s the Bentley, the vacation home, the Jacuzzi, the party life, the glamour, the celebrity? This is God’s way of blessing - back handed, upside down, inside out, opposite, hidden.

To get the way of “blessed” right you have to get Jesus right. He alone embodies these things in HImself. You don’t, nor do I. We are anything but meek, merciful, pure hearted peacemakers. Not by nature. Not in ourselves. Christ alone is all of this. He embodies these beatitudes perfectly. He is poor in spirit. Though rich, He became poor so that by His poverty you are rich. He mourns, weeping over our sin, our rejection, our death, as He wept over Jerusalem and over the tomb of Lazarus, and in His mourning is your comfort and joy. He hungers and thirsts for our righteousness, and out of His hunger, you are fed. He is merciful, pure-hearted, peacemaking, showing mercy by laying down His life for the world, making peace by His blood, offering His pure life as the sacrifice for your sin. He is the persecuted One, falsely accused, falsely convicted, yet in His conviction you are acquitted, justified, declared righteous before God.

Jesus does the beatitudes to His own death, and baptized and believing in HIm they become yours as well. You are “blessed” to the fullest extent of that word in Jesus, and only as you understand that and cling to that, do you understand what it means to be “blessed.” Only in Jesus can hunger and thirst and persecution and mourning be called “blessing” and those who experience these things be called “blessed.”

Those beatitudes bring us to the one from the Revelation. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.” Yes, you heard it correctly. Blessed are the dead. And not simply any dead, because all indeed do die. But blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. The Lord Jesus has gone the way ahead of them. He has gone to death and the grave, and those who follow Him, trusting Him, are called blessed in their death.

The wages of sin is death; make no mistake about it. Death is the intrinsic consequence of sin. We die because of sin. There is nothing “blessed” about death itself. But Jesus has done something remarkable with Death. He has taken the wages of our sin, our biggest enemy, the thing we fear and dread the most, and He has made it a source of blessing. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.

“From now on” refers to the time following Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. The last days, the end times in which you and I live. Christ has conquered. Christ has gone into death and became Death’s undoing. Like a fish swallowing a baited hook, Death swallowed up Jesus on the cross, but Jesus turned out to have the upper hand over Death and swallowed it up in victory. Like the great fish that swallowed up Jonah and held him for three days, the Death could not hold Jesus but had to spit Him out alive.

The Spirit says those who die in the Lord rest from their labors. Their work is done, but their works are not forgotten. Their deeds do follow them. Take note. The deeds of blessed dead “follow them.” They don’t precede them, as though they needed their works to get into heaven. That would not be the way of the “poor in spirit.” Instead, their deeds follow them like the long train of a bride in her gown. All the works that God had done through them, all the fruit the Spirit bore in them, all the good that Jesus worked as fruitful branches joined to Him, follow them in all their shining glory.

In the reading from the Revelation, John is privileged to see the heaven side of things. Not the suffering that we see, but the glory, the triumph, the life that is ours in Jesus. He sees a great multitude, a crowd no one can number, what we refer to as “all the company of heaven.” They are wearing robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb. They are baptized in blood and wear their baptismal robes as their righteousness before God. As we read the names of our faithful departed, and remember also those we love who have died in the Lord, bring this image of the Revelation to mind. They are there in that multitude.

And listen to how it is with them:

They are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple, and He who sits on the throne will shelter them with His presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

They are, in today’s word, “blessed.” And you are, in the same word, by the same Baptism, in the same faith, “blessed” in Jesus.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/288/20091111135646/audio/allsaints2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:59:49 +0000
In the history of Christianity, in the history of the entire world of religious beliefs, there is no more profound, no more radical statement than this verse from the apostle Paul in his monumental letter to the Romans. A person, a sinner from birth steeped in the sin of Adam, a natural born enemy of God is justified (declared to be righteous) by faith (that is, trust in the promise of God) apart from works of the Law. There is no more profound, radical statement than that.

Paul knew that he was turning the tables on the whole religious world with this sentence. He was, after all, a trained Pharisee, educated under the finest rabbi of his day in the subtle religious art of legalistic righteousness. How to do the righteousness of God in order to be the righteousness of God. The Torah, the foundational first five books of Moses, was a Torah of works. Do the Torah, and you will live and be rewarded by God. That was the premise. The Pharisees, of whom Paul was a card-carrying member, tried to make the Torah doable. The cataloged and codified and categorized 613 positive and negative laws. 613 dos and don’ts that would do the righteousness of God.

It seemed reasonable at the time. It still does today. God sets the standard. God is righteous, and God judges according to His righteousness. So, if you want to be in right with God, you rise to meet Him. You climb the ladder. You pursue your path to enlightenment. You work your way up to God with your prayers, your pieties, your creeds, your conduct, you religious dancing through hoops. You do it as God sits there on the rainbow and weighs out your merits and demerits to see how you stack up. That was the image of Jesus that Luther grew up with - Christ on the rainbow as the Judge of the living and the dead, holding the scales of God’s justice in His hand, weighing your sins against the merits of your good works to see how you stacked up to God’s Law.

Understandably, it terrified Luther, who took his religion seriously. It drove him to bouts of depression when he realized that even isolated in a monastery he could not escape his sin. He tried to keep the law of God, and yet it bar seemed to move higher and higher each time he tried. He tried fasting and other disciplines of the body. He tried prayer. He tried constant confession. And each time, the Law came back like a mirror revealing the ugly truth that Martin Luther was a sinner, falling far short of the glory of God, and nothing in his religious life could bring any comfort and confidence before God.

Fortunately, Luther was also a professor of the Bible. He had lectured on the book of Romans. And he encountered the very same thing that surprised the apostle Paul and caused him to write the book in the first place — that it is a fundamental religious misunderstanding to think that you can justify yourself before God by works of the Law. You might say that Luther, in despair of comfort from the religion of his time, went down into the church basement and stumbled across a case of 1500 year old good news that the church had nearly forgotten. And he uncorked a bottle of it and got so giddy over it, he invited all his friends to have a drink too. We call that the “Reformation.”

The Reformation hinges on our epistle reading this morning. This is Lutheran, dare I say “Christian” doctrine in a nutshell. First the Law and its purpose. The Law speaks to those under the law — you, me, and everyone in the world — not to provide rules and regulation to justify yourself and make your case before God, but literally to shut your mouth, to silence all religious claims on God, the put an end to all bargaining, all transactions, all the ways we try to bride and butter up God. The Law says, “Enough of it all! You are guilty and accountable before God, and you are caught in spiritual quicksand. The harder you struggle, the deeper you’re going to go under.”

It’s counterintuitive. We think God gives rules so that we can engage on a kind of self-help project. And so we take up the rules and try to do them, and we discover that there is no end. Even if you get the action right, your attitude is judged and found lacking. Not only your deeds, but your thoughts and words come into the crosshairs.

And the verdict of this: “By works of the law no human being will be justified in the sight of God.” No one. Not the most religious and pious person you know. No one will be justified in God’s sight by the Law, but through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. That’s the first surprise. The Law isn’t there to make you good. In fact, the Law won’t make you good. It will make you worse. It will amplify sin to an earsplitting volume so you can’t miss it. It will magnify your sin so much you can’t bear the sight of it. It’s like looking at your face in a magnifying mirror. The sight never improves on magnification. The Law magnifies sin. So don’t be surprised when you look into the magnifying mirror of the Law and catch a glimpse at the truth of who you are as a child of Adam. It’s not a pretty site.

The good news does not come from the Law. The Law is strictly bad news for a sinner. Good news for a sinner comes in a completely different way. God who is righteous justifies the ungodly. That’s the second surprise, and the one that catches the religious world entirely off guard. God justifies the ungodly. He reckons for righteousness the faith of those who trust in Jesus Christ, that His blood atones for their sins, that His death is their death, and His life is their life. God accounts this trust in the promise as righteousness.

Here’s the deal. There is no distinction as far as God is concerned between any human being. All have sinned - some politely, some impolitely, some coarsely, some in a more refined way. But all have sinned. All fall short of the glory of God. All are damned and doomed by the Law of God, and if the Law is all we had we’d be done for. And all are justified as a free gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Here then is the chewy nougat center of the Christian faith, what distinguishes Christianity from every other religion in the world. It’s not prayer, commandments, disciplines, hymn singing, sacrifice. It’s this: That God is both just and the Justifier. His justice and His mercy meet in the death of His Son where He did justice to our sin and justified sinners for Jesus’ sake.

This is the truth that sets men free - that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus, the Son of God, has set you free from the Law of sin and death. He has done in His flesh what you wouldn’t and couldn’t do in yours, namely, keep the perfect requirements of God’s law down to the last and least stroke of the pen. His thoughts, His words, His actions were all in accord with the will of His Father. Perfectly. And He offers and applies this perfect life to you as your own. This is how you are justified before God - God sees you clothed in His Son. And He took that perfect life and offered it up as a pure and unblemished sacrifice, an innocent Lamb who by His blood takes away the sin of the world.

The entire Old Testament speaks of it, especially in terms of its sacrifices and institutions. God is merciful and gracious, abounding in forgiveness and steadfast love. The righteous live by faith in the promise. It’s all over the pages of the Torah and the Prophets. But religion that is bent on finding works and self-generated righteousness will miss it every time. It happened with Israel, it happened with the Church. The Church that is supposed to be the steward of God’s priceless treasure - the eternal gospel - instead becomes, as it so often has in its history, a purveyor of programs rather than the “mouth house of forgiveness” that God intends for His church to be.

The church is ever in need of reformation, ever in need of being called back to that saving, eternal good news of sins forgiven for Jesus’ sake. We cannot simply rest and say, “Yeah, we know all that.” Yes, we do. Or we should. But the question is whether we actually believe it. Do you believe that you stand before God at this very moment justified for no other reason than God’s undeserved kindness, on no other basis than the finished work of Christ? Do you believe that were you to die in the next moment and appeared before the judgment seat of God that though your works would be judged you would not be judged by your works?

As the church is ever in need of reformation, so each of us baptized believers in Jesus are in need of reformation. Repentance, really. The first of Luther’s 95 theses stated that the entire life of the Christian was to be one of repentance, a constant turning away from sin to righteousness, from the law to the Gospel, from God’s wrath to His mercy, from death to life. Each day is a personal reformation day in which the saint continues to be formed into the image of Christ as the sinner is again buried in the tomb of Baptism.

Jesus has made you a member of His Father’s household. Not as a slave, but as a free son. You are baptized. You have His Word. You have His Body and Blood. These all testify that you are not a slave but a son. For if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/289/20091111140150/audio/reformation2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:12:05 +0000
The disciples were amazed at His words. Outraged even. They were in danger of losing their religion. They lived in a culture where wealth was admired. It was considered a sign of God’s blessing. When you “counted your blessings,” the more you could count, the more blessed by God you were. Wealth is a gift from God, right? The book of Ecclesiastes says as much. Wealth comes from the generous hand of God, and therefore there is nothing inherently “evil” or “bad” about wealth. The OT is chock full of the notion that if you play by God’s rules, you will indeed prosper.

But when wealth falls from the good hand of a generously giving God into the hands of sinful men, the trouble begins. Ambrose Bierce called money, “The god of the world’s leading religion.” Voltaire commented, “When it comes to the question of money, everyone has the same religion.” The problem with wealth, with money, is that we get religious about it, and we are dealing in the realm of idolatry and why it is difficult, if not impossible, for those with wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

Think about wealth for a moment. What is it exactly? You can try to quantify it, much the way you quantify calories in food, but what you find is that the numbers keep changing on you. Your house, if you have one, was probably worth more five years ago than it is today. Your retirement fund or investments, if you have them, are most likely worth a lot less today than they were a couple of years ago. A slice of bread still has the same number of calories it did ten years ago, assuming the same recipe. But a dollar is worth a dollar simply because the government says so and we believe it. And that, is about as close to the idea of a “sacrament” as you’re going get.

The preacher of Ecclesiastes calls it a chasing after nothing, vanity, emptiness, meaningless. “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.” He ought to know. The preacher of Ecclesiastes is Solomon, the richest man in the world at his time. He was the envy of all the rulers around him. The Queen of Sheba paid a personal visit to see all of Solomon’s stuff. That’s how legendary he was He could buy anything, do anything, go anywhere. He had gardens, houses, Egyptian horses, a harem of over 900 wives and concubines. And writes this kind of report from the field in the book of Ecclesiastes with this message: there is nothing out there. The world of wealth is empty, meaningless, consumptive.
They say that idols always wind up consuming their communicants, and Mammon, the money-god, is no exception. All that hard-earned wealth, all the accumulated wealth stacking up for the future, winds up bringing you misery and ruin. Hard earned riches are lost in one bad investment, one bum business deal, one drop in the economy. We have heard our share of riches to rags stories over the last year or so, of corruption driven by greed, of savings and investments lost. The great irony of wealth is that it promises peace, stability, and security, and in the end it delivers none of the above. Ecclesiastes says at least the laborer sleeps well at night, exhausted from his labors. Not so the rich man. Though his belly is full, his stomach is churning with anxiety as he watches his wealth erode.

We bring nothing into this world from our mother’s womb; we take nothing out of this world. The wealth that promised us happiness and security instead causes us anxiety, sickness, and anger. Truly false gods consume their communicants. And the greatest danger of all is that in attempting to cling to everything we have and accumulate more, we do not fit through the narrow door of the kingdom. It’s easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to squeeze a rich man into the kingdom. That leaves the disciples utterly astonished. And it should leave us just as astonished if not somewhat shaken when we realize that most of us here today would qualify under Jesus’ definition of “rich.” It may not seem that way to us, but we are rich compared to most people living in the world today and certainly at the time of Jesus.

Now does this mean that we need to divest ourselves of every asset, give all our possessions away, live in monastic poverty in order to be saved? Some in the past have thought that. Peter seemed to think that. He started to say to Jesus, “Hey, look. We’ve got it right. We’ve left everything and followed you.” Jesus’ reply is as about as off the point as it is anything else. “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”

What He says is, “Peter, you think you’ve left everything and now have nothing, and you couldn’t be more wrong. Already now, in fellowship with Me, you have a hundred-fold more than what you left behind, even now in this life. You are a member of a vast body, my Body, and joined to me you are joined to all who have ever believed in Me, and you have more brothers and sisters and mothers and aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces than you can possibly number.

But hear this, and don’t miss it: In this life it all comes with persecutions. The cross hangs over everything. It’s the narrow door through which you enter into eternal life. Your riches won’t save you, nor will your poverty, because the problem is not with wealth but with sin which corrupts everything including your enjoyment of the good things God gives you. He wants to bless you and give you a little joy, and you turn around and make it into some all-consuming idol that robs you of every last ounce of joy in your life.

And, oh by the way, when it comes to book keeping and the kingdom of God, “the first will be last, and the last will be first.” So everything you learned from the world of money you can forget when it comes to dealing with God. There are no transactions in the kingdom, only pure grace, gift. The losers wind up the winners, the winners come in last and the currency of the kingdom is not earned by our hard work, merits, and achievements but by Christ’s perfect life, death, and resurrection. He was rich, the eternal Son of the Father, yet for our sakes, He became poor, a beggar on a cross with no place even to lay His head. It isn’t our poverty that saves us but Christ’s poverty, for in His poverty we become rich. He takes on the poverty of our sin, our covetousness, our idolatry; and we receive the richness of His righteousness, His holiness, His peace. He did the impossible thing, the thing only God can do - He saved us.

That’s where Jesus wants our attention. Not on our wallets, our bank accounts, our assets, our stuff but on Him, on His kingdom and His righteousness. “Seek first the kingdom and its righteousness, and all these things you worry about - clothing, shoes, food, drink, house, home, whatever - all these things will be added to you.

What about our wealth? What do we do with it? Well, the preacher of Ecclesiastes would say, “Enjoy it while you have it. Enjoy your work, enjoy your wealth. This is a gift from God.” The apostle Paul put it this way: “I’ve learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I what it is to be abased and to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things throughHim who strengthens me.” With Christ in the center, wealth takes it’s proper place and perspective. Do you have plenty? Then rejoice, enjoy, share the joy with others. Are you in need? Then rejoice that your life is free from the clutter of wealth.

Faith holds things with an open, dead hand. Not grasping tightly with a death grip, but loosely. Some things you must let go of at some point, other things you will never be able to hold on to. To be content is to have your heart at rest in Jesus, and through Him to receive all things as gift from the hand of God. That’s the “secret” of contentment that Paul learned. Hold everything with the dead hand of faith, enjoy it while you have it, for you certainly can’t take it with you. Live and work and play as free men and women in Christ.. Enjoy the food on your table, the wine in your glass, the work God has given you to do each day. These are His gifts to you. Hold them loosely and they won’t hold you. And each day sing a hymn of praise to the God who gives gifts to His children and who secured our salvation that we may have joy unending.

Remember: the joy comes not from the gifts but from giver-God who gave them.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/278/20091019171807/audio/pentecost20B2009%28proper24%29.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:50:13 +0000
There are two red flags on this question from the outset. First, what’s this business about “good.” “No one is good except God alone,” Jesus says. So, unless you believe me to be God, you wouldn’t address me as good, though it tells you where the religious thinking of the young man is. He thinks in terms of good and bad. Jesus is clearly in the category of “good” and the young man fancies himself to be in the same category. He doesn’t murder, steal, commit adultery, lie, bear false witness, and dishonor father and mother. He is a model citizen, who has kept the law (or so he believes) since his youth. He clearly has a sense of who is good and who is not good.

And he wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. That’s the second red flag in his question. How exactly does one inherit anything? You really don’t do anything at all. Someone else has to die, and when he dies, you have to be in his good graces. That’s how you inherit. It’s not by doing but by grace, being in the favor of the one who died and left you the inheritance.

Now Jesus could have just said that and be done with it, but the master Teacher knows that the lessons learned most deeply are the ones learned by experience. And so Jesus lets the pious young man experience a bit of his religion first hand. The same religion he’s likely been pawning off on his own friends and family, now comes home to roost.

“You know the commandments,” Jesus said. And just in case he’d forgotten his catechism, Jesus gives him a little review. “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.” Basic second table of the law stuff. But this young man has been raised religiously to think he can keep this commandments. Just as the apostle Paul could claim to be “blameless” under the Law as a Pharisee. “Teacher, all these I have kept since my youth.” And he meant it. He was sincere. He believed he kept the commandments.

esus doesn’t debate him. He could have. He could have delivered a mini version of the sermon on the mount and said, “Ah, you may have kept them in deed, but have you kept them also in thought and word? Have you lusted in your heart? Have you had angry words with your brother?” But Jesus doesn’t do that.

He looks on this young man, pickled in his own commandment-keeping, and He loves him. That’s a little detail that only Mark gives us. It makes me wonder whether the young man might not be Mark himself. Who knows? Jesus goes right to the heart of the matter. “One thing you lack: Go, sell your stuff, give to the poor, and follow me.” That hit home. The text says that his face fell. He was disheartened (and who wouldn’t be), and he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Remember, Jesus spoke these words in love. If he discouraged him, it was to necessarily pain to make a loving point. Something was missing in this young man’s life that caused him to ask the question of Jesus in the first place. He was rich at a very young age. He had everything he could ever want; he could do whatever he wanted. And he was religious; he kept the commandments to the letter. And yet, rich and religious weren’t enough to address that nagging doubt in the back of his mind that something was lacking in his life.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus‘ answer: Follow me.

You almost miss it, don’t you? The young man did. All he heard was that stuff about selling everything and giving the money to the poor - another commandment, and one he couldn’t keep. But he missed the answer to his question. What must I do to inherit eternal life? “Follow me.” Follow Jesus. Those were the words spoken to the fishermen and the tax collector Matthew. “Follow me.” More than an invitation, these are enabling and enlivening words, enabling the hearer to do what they say. Here was the answer the young man was searching for. He lacked one thing. In all his riches and all his religion and all his commandment-keeping, he lacked one thing. And that one thing was not poverty; it was Jesus.

Jesus. He lacked Jesus and faith in Jesus. And Jesus was offering Himself with the words “follow me.” And whatever got in the way of following Jesus had to go. This young man needed not only to lose his attachment to his riches, but also his religion of good people and bad people and commandment-keeping. It’s as St. Paul said in Philippians after reviewing his religious past as a Pharisee:

7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

It’s not simply a matter of riches, though riches can be an impediment. Jesus goes on to say that it’s easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, which is effectively impossible. He says that to His disciples who have literally given up everything to follow Jesus. Peter even reminds Jesus of that fact, just in case He’s forgotten it. “See, we’ve left everything and followed you.” The disciples may not have been rich, but they had the same religion as that young man. “Look at what we’ve given up to follow you, Jesus.” Look at what we’ve done.

Jesus is in the business of clearing out whatever gets in the way of your following Him through death to eternal life. I wonder. What would Jesus say to me? What’s getting in the way of my following Him? My ego? My pride? My stuff? My sin! What would He say to you? Looking on you in love, wanting you to be His own, embracing you in His death and life, what do you suppose He would say to you? What is it that gets in the way of your hearing the Word, of your receiving forgiveness, of your following Jesus as He leads you through this life, through your death, and on to your resurrection to eternal life? What is the junk that is getting between you and Jesus? It could be anything, really. Our hearts are capable of turning any good gift into an idol. Whatever it is, it sure isn’t worth hanging on to, is it?

I like to think that the rich young man went home to all his possessions, all his stuff, and somehow it just didn’t look so good anymore. Perhaps he looked around at all his possessions and thought to himself, “This stuff isn’t worth it. You can’t take it with you; it brings no lasting satisfaction; it gets in the way.” Perhaps he went on a spree and packed all his stuff into a cart and dumped it at the local Goodwill and went running back down the road after Jesus. Or maybe it happened years later, when this young man heard the news of Jesus’ dying and rising and recalled this conversation and heard the call “Follow me” in the waters of Baptism and this time lost it all for the sake of gaining Christ.

We don’t know the full story of that young man. He’s a walk-through example on Jesus’ road to the cross where He dies for the sin of that young man whom He looked on with love. There Jesus gives what this young man lacked - a death and a resurrection that brings the inheritance of eternal life.

You’ve been called as Jesus’ disciples. The words “follow me” were spoken to you in Baptism with the water and the Word by the Spirit of God. And every day, Jesus repeats those words to you through your Baptism. “Follow me.” To follow Jesus does not mean to keep His rules, to follow His example, to do what Jesus would do. To follow Jesus means to die and rise with Jesus, to lose your life in order to gain it, to become last in order to be first.

You have the inheritance of eternal life. It is yours by grace (a gift) through faith (not your doing) for Jesus’ sake. You don’t do anything to inherit eternal life; you receive it as the free gift that it is. And anything that gets in the way of your receiving it - whether riches or religion - simply has to go. God will see to it that it does, because what He wants to give you is life.

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/277/20091019013514/audio/pentecost19B2009(proper23).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:44:00 +0000
Jesus answers the question with a question of His own. “What did Moses command you?” The Pharisees were experts in Moses, and if anyone knew what Moses commanded, they did. They cite Deuteronomy 24 and a piece of legislation from Moses forbidding a man to take back a wife he has divorced after she has married another man. Divorce is presumed here, including the written certificate of divorce which made the whole thing legal.

But Jesus has a different passage from Moses in mind. Not a concession to the hardness of heart that makes divorce a genuine possibility, but the good and gracious will of the Creator in the beginning who made them male and female and declared that in their physical union with each other the “two become one flesh.” “One flesh” means something whole and inviolate, an intimate, organic union worked by the creative Word of God that cannot be undone by a piece of paperwork. This is what elevates human sexuality above the animal. The birds do it, the bees do it, all our fellow creatures do it, but when we, who are made in the image of God, do it, something greater and more significant takes place. “They are no longer two but one flesh.”

Notice that this “one flesh” doesn’t happen when the happy couple walks down the aisle, makes their promises, and signs the wedding license in black ink. The marriage certificate is the opposite of the certificate of divorce. It puts an electrified legal fence around the “one flesh” union of husband and wife. And while you can negate the marriage with a certificate of divorce, so that Moses even forbad the two from getting back together again, no piece of paper can undo what God has done in declaring man and woman “one flesh” in their union. That’s the part that the divorce courts and decrees can’t undo. You can divide the property, the kids, the cars, the house, and the bank account. But you cannot divide the “two become one flesh.”

This all goes back to God’s creation of male and female in the beginning. Adam was made a complete, self-contained individual. He embodied all of humanity in his flesh, just as Jesus embodies all of humanity as the “second Adam.” Adam was made from the earth (Adam means earth or earth man). His vocation, his priesthood, was to care for the creation and have dominion or lordship over it as God’s deputy. Part of his dominion was to name the creatures. God made them and Adam named them. We have no idea how long this naming process took place. It might have been years or even hundreds of years. The text doesn’t say. I like to imagine is was a goodly long time, long enough to realize that there was no complementary counterpart to Adam, and that was not good.

Adam was made to be in relationship. He was the image of God, and even God exists in a trinity of Persons in relationship with each other. God is never alone even in Himself. And so it was not good that Adam was alone, unique, isolated, individual without an external counterpart to himself. And so God put Adam to sleep and took something away from him. His “female side” you might say. Guys, there’s no point getting in touch with your “female side.” You don’t have one. Your female side is your wife. God took that something, the Bible names it a “rib,” and from that He built a derivative creature, a woman. She isn’t made from the earth like Adam, but from his side. Men are not “from Mars” and women are not “from Venus,” though at times it may seem that way. He is from the mud, and she is from his side.

Adam awoke and instantly recognized his own reflection in her. “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” She was like him but not interchangeable with him. She was taken from him, and in union with her, he receives what he lost in that deep sleep. This is the mystery of our being male and female, and why we are so fascinated by each other. And it is for this reason that a man leaves that union which produced him - his father and mother (everyone is born out of the union of male and female) and he is joined to his Eve, his wife, and they become one flesh. And the Bible quickly adds that verse that is often skipped at weddings, I know not why: “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Sin had not yet entered the world. Their nakedness was pure and innocent and holy.

Sin changed all that. It brought shame, self-awareness, self-centeredness. They tried to cover themselves with their own fig leaves. They hid from God. They blamed each other. The complementarity between man and woman became a competition to see who would rule. Their “one flesh” union became a struggle leading to divorce and adultery. We bear witness in the brokenness of our own lives - our multiple “one flesh” unions, our divorces, our adulteries, and all the ways we attempt to justify ourselves.

Now you see how Jesus can make the blanket statement that to divorce and marry again inevitably results in adultery, because the “one flesh” union has been adulterated, and no amount of legal fiction will make it right. There are things done in this life you cannot undo, no matter how much you wish you could. If you kill someone, whether intentionally or unintentionally, you cannot bring them back to life, no matter how sorry you are and no matter how much you wish you could. So it is with the “one flesh” that results when male and female come together. You may wish it weren’t so, but a piece of paper won’t make it go away. The Law cannot help us here, something that ought not surprise us Lutherans who know not to look to the Law for our justification. And that’s really the crux of this. The Pharisees were using the Law to justify their divorces instead of seeing the gift for what she is.
There is a good reason we call marriage “holy” and bless it. We have all kinds of warm, bonded, close, committed relationship in our lives - family, friends, and the like. But there is one unique relationship that is blessed and set apart, that is the union of a man and a woman. It is holy and sacred. It is the means by which the human race is propagated. It is also, as the apostle Paul reminds us, an image of Christ and the Church - Christ the second Adam, the Church His Eve, taken from His wounded side in the water and the blood.

He could have divorced her, legally speaking. God could have put us all away for our countless spiritual adulteries and infidelities, file an eternal certificate of divorce, and be done with the whole thing. He had just cause, it would have been “lawful” for Him to do it. But He didn’t. LIke the prophet Hosea with his unfaithful wife, God woos His Church, He sets out to win her heart, to make us His own. Like a bride prepared for her wedding day, Christ washes His Church in a baptismal bath of water and the Word so that she would march down the aisle on her wedding day covered in the pure white of a righteousness not her own, but a gift from Christ, her Bridegroom. She is pure and lovely and radiant and holy in spite of her sins, in spite of what the Law says. She is covered with Jesus’ righteousness, and that is why she wears white on her wedding day.

There is no amount of legal loopholing that can undo our sin and its damages. A certificate of divorce cannot undo the “one flesh” that has been created. All the legal justifications in the world can’t justify us in our sins. Even if we have every blank filled in correctly, every box checked, every line properly filled in, all procedures followed to the letter, these will only be further evidence of the hardness of our hearts on the Last Day.

What matters finally and ultimately is Jesus. Not our legal bookkeeping, not our proper paperwork, but Jesus. Jesus, who became bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh by His incarnation. Jesus, humanity’s new Adam who brings life instead of death, justification instead of sin. Jesus, the One who does the will of His Father, and does it for all of us, and dies with our sin, our death, our rebellion, our corruption. Jesus, in whose His death we are born anew. And joined to Him in baptismal faith, we become “one flesh” with God in a union that transcends every union in this life including that of husband and wife, which is why we are neither married nor given in marriage in the resurrection. The lesser gives way to the greater, and the greatest union of all is our union with Christ in God.

Of this we now get a foretaste in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, a preview of the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end. And in Christ we are at last free from all these legalisms - is it lawful, isn’t lawful - wrong questions, all of them. It is a gift from our good and gracious giver-God received in faith like a little child receiving the kingdom - trusting, receiving, wondering, praising, delighting in the manifold mercies of God.


In the name of Jesus,
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First the appetizer. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” You ever notice how we are always trying to organize God? How God is comfortable with chaos and we aren’t? We have to have everything all nice, neat, and tidy, packed away in boxes with labels on them, and God just seems to go and dump things out on the floor and messes around with everything. Yes, God is a God of order, and He brings creative order out of the chaos. But God also seems to have a penchant of improv theater when we would prefer a tight script with stage directions.

The disciples seems to have Jesus quite figured out and away into a safe little box. And they seem to have their own job security worked out as well. They are the chosen few, the elect ones, the inner circle of the Twelve who have been given the authority to preach the kingdom and cast out demons. Sure, they had a minor setback with a stubborn demon that wouldn’t yield to them, but still, they were the Twelve, Jesus’ hand-picked cabinet in a very exclusive club.

So it came as a bit of a surprise, if not a downright shock, when John and the boys ran across some sort of rogue exorcist. A freelancer, not of the Twelve, who, of all things, was casting out demons in the name of Jesus. And this, at a time when the Twelve had failed to drive out a stubborn demon. This looks bad. “How dare he do that? He wasn’t one of us. He wasn’t following us. Who does this guy think he is, anyway? Well, we put a stop to that. Told him right there, ‘You’re not part of our gang, you don’t cast out demons in the name of our man.” I’m sure that thought Jesus would approve, but He didn’t.

Instead, He says something very strange. “Whoever is not against us is for us.” That’s right. Whoever is not against us is for us. We usually say it the opposite way, the exclusive way: Whoever is not for us is against us. That’s how we define an ally and a friend. But Jesus turns it around and stands it on its head. Whoever is not against us is for us. You see, the only way out of Jesus’ kingdom is to oppose it, resist it, reject it. But the claims of the kingdom and its power over the darkness go far beyond the scope and range of the Twelve. Jesus is much bigger a Savior than even they can imagine.

And He’s much bigger a Savior than we often credit Him as well. One of the great geniuses of the Lutheran reformation was that it didn’t create a new church. There was no such thing as a Lutheran Church, simply Lutheran churches. Churches that taught the same thing about how a sinner stands justified before God, declared righteous, innocent and blameless of the sake of Jesus Christ alone. But they didn’t form a new church. They simply reformed the churches. And they were able to see the church in any gathering in which the Gospel was preached and Baptism and the Lords’ Supper for going on. In other words, we allowed for the “unknown exorcist,” the one who proclaim the kingdom even though he isn’t “one of us.”

But it isn’t always that way. We sometimes think if they aren’t Lutheran they aren’t Christian. And Jesus would remind us of the same: If they aren’t against us they are for us. And there’s the key to understanding the kingdom of heaven that Jesus is bringing by His dying and rising. It is both exclusive and inclusive. It embraces the world inclusively, yet it is exclusively Jesus who does. The world has no other Savior, nor does it need one.

It also reminds us that we have no exclusive claims on Jesus, even though He has an exclusive claim on us. That means we don’t assume that God hasn’t arrived on the scene until we have. It means we’re more inclined to listen to what God has done before we got there. He has His agents scattered all over the place, the Eldad’s and Medad’s who prophesy in the camp of Israel, the unknown exorcist who is casting out demons in the name of Jesus, the nurse who prays with her patients, the trucker who tells others on the road the good news of salvation in Jesus. When you listen you the stories of the kingdom, you begin to marvel at how resourceful and “out of the box” God can really be.

That brings us to the main course, namely, Jesus dire threat against anyone who would cause a little one of faith to stumble. And here we need a quick vocabulary lesson. I don’t think “cause to sin” is the best way of translating “scandalizo.” I think “cause to stumble” is better. A scandalon is a stumbling point, a rock you trip over, something in your path that causes you to fall. Jesus isn’t thinking about sin here but obstacles to faith. The little ones of faith “who believe in Me.” Don’t you dare get between one of those and Jesus. Don’t be the cause a little one of faith to stumble in his childlike trust. Don’t create doubt where there is none or you’ll wish you had a millstone hung around your neck and you were tossed into the sea. That’s how seriously Jesus takes His little ones who believe in Him.

You see, if you hear it in terms of faith and not in terms of sin, then what Jesus says next makes perfectly good sense. If your eye causes you to stumble in your faith, pluck it out and toss it away. It better to be blind and to trust your ears rather than your eyes. Faith comes by hearing. Faith is blind. If you think you see Jesus for who He is and trust your eyes, you’re as good as blind. You need to close your eyes and look with your ears. Hear the Word that reveals much more than the eye can see. That’s what faith is about - trusting the Word over and against what you see.

If Jesus were talking about sin, then the whole thing would be ridiculous. If you’re eye causes you to sin, then pluck it out. Fine and dandy. What about the other eye? What about your imagination? What about the corrupt and sinful heart from which all sin proceeds? Plucking your eye out won’t do a thing for your sin except to make you a one-eyed sinner.

Again, if your hand causes you to stumble in your faith, if what you do, your works, cause you to doubt God’s undeserved mercy in Jesus, then you may as well cut your hand off and be without works. But again, cutting off the offending hand to remedy sin will not make a one-handed sinner. And cutting the other hand off won’t help either.

This isn’t Jesus preaching morality and ethics.. This is Jesus preaching the kingdom, a radical kingdom that justifies the ungodly and declares sinners to be righteous in a righteousness not their own. And the religious world would throw a big speed bump in front of you and say, “Wait a minute, you’ve gotta do something to be saved.” And that, my friends, is what Jesus is talking about. You see salvation by grace alone through faith alone for Jesus’ sake alone is a scandal, a stumbling block, to the religious world, because all religions, save one, are in the business of doing things to get right with God. And it’s all that religious doing and religious seeing that’ll land it you straight in an unquenchable fire and undying worm of a hell that is entirely unnecessary because Jesus has died for it all on a cross.

This is a dire warning on the one hand, yes. But it is also a great comfort. This is how seriously Jesus takes your faith in Him. He threatens anyone who would get between you and Him, who would cause you to doubt your salvation or stumble in your faith. In the same way James speaks this morning of the noble work of restoring someone who has stumbled and wandered from the truth. You are literally saving his soul and covering a multitude of his sins

That brings us to the seasoning sprinkled over this whole dish. Salt. Sacrifices were sprinkled with salt before they were offered. Salty disciples are disciples who have been liberally sprinkled with the salt of Jesus’ resurrection, baptized into it, preached it, fed it. No matter where you turn, whether to Baptism, to the Word, to the Supper, it’s about Jesus’ sacrifice and you being salted with it. And when a disciple or a church loses it’s saltiness, when it gets off the bead of Jesus’ death and resurrection, it is not worth much of anything except to be scattered on the road and be trampled under foot.

This bland world is in dire need of seasoning, and you are it, dear baptized believers. Sprinkled as salt upon the earth, seasoning the world with Jesus’ death and resurrection. “Have salt in yourselves.” Be salted with the sacrifice of Christ. Have His death and life have their way with you, and you will have peace with God and with one another. For it is by that one Death on a Good Friday and that one Resurrection on a Sunday that we are at peace with God and are able to be at peace with one another.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/275/20091019013615/audio/pentecost17B2009(proper21).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:39:33 +0000
And then Jesus began to teach them about the way of the cross: The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will arise. It doesn’t get much plainer and blunter than that, does it? No cryptic sayings, no puzzling parables. Simply a death and on the third day, a resurrection.

Mark tells us that the disciples did not understand what Jesus had said, and they were afraid even to ask Him about it. Who can blame them, really? What would you have thought at this point? You gave up your livelihood and your life to follow Jesus. You put all your chips on Him. He looks like a winner, like the real deal of a Messiah, someone who will get the religious job done. He has the teaching and the miracles to back Him up. The crowds are on His side. His popularity is on the rise. The movement appears to be growing, gaining momentum. The deaf hear. The mute speak. The lame walk. Lepers are cleansed. Demons are cast out. The dead are raised. All the signs were pointing to Jesus.

But then Jesus begins to talk like this about His being “handed over,” of being killed, and of rising from the dead on the third day. Crazy talk. Irrational talk. Not the kind of talk one would expect from a respectable messiah who should be assembling an army and heading to fight holy war in Jerusalem. The disciples are afraid to ask, and they keep it to themselves.

Who would understand such things? Who would have orchestrated things this way? Crucifixion, resurrection. Not our way. No way. We go with winners, not with losers. We go with successes, not failures. We go with number 1, not with also-rans. That’s how the world works. That’s how we work. Winners like to hang with winners. It’s why Christianity doesn’t play well with winners until they discover they’re really losers. Who wants to wake up on Sunday morning to come to church to confess you’re a poor, miserable wretch of a sinner in need of forgiveness? The world would have you believe you’re a winner entitled to your success, entitled to even more. Who wants to line up and declare with St. Paul that he is the “chief of sinners”? No wonder the most popular versions of religions are based on winning not losing, of being a winner not a loser.

That is the old Adam in us, my friends. The sinful self. The loser who won’t admit it, who pretends to be a winner, who tries to go it on his own, being a god, shaking his fist at God, doing it his way, resisting the way of death and resurrection which is ultimately the only way to eternal life.

It must have been a long walk back to Galilee. Like one of those tense car trips where no one is talking but everyone has something to say. I imagine Jesus walking pretty much by Himself, with the others trailing or leading the way. And what do you suppose they were discussing? They were arguing with each other about which one of them was the greatest? Who was the top dog? Was it Peter or John? Maybe James the underdog. It almost boggles our minds to think about it. Jesus had just uncorked the greatest prophesy of His ministry, the incredible prediction that He would die and rise again, and instead of pondering this or asking Jesus about it, the disciples argue over which one among them is the greatest.

And we should be surprised with how things are in the church today? I appreciate the honesty of Mark, who delivers the whole eyewitness truth of Peter to us. Through the words of Mark, Peter admits that at this crucial moment in Jesus’ work, the disciples, including Peter, completely missed the point and were thinking of their own greatness. Again, the old Adam wants to be the winner, not the chief of sinners but just the chief. It’s in all of us, the drive to power, to control, to be the lead dog, to get everyone else to do it our way. It goes beyond ambition. Ambition is simply setting goals and striving to attain them. This is something different. This is climbing to the top on the backs of your brothers. This is being so preoccupied with winning it all that you lose it all in the vortex of death.

James talks about this in his epistle this morning. James’ hearers are apparently quite well off, successful business men, the movers and shaker of his day. He reminds them that friendship with the world puts you at odds with God and that the stance before God is one of repentant humility, “for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” And so the posture of faith before God is not one of pride, arrogance, and boastfulness over all that you’ve accomplished and why God should be so tickled that you deign to come into His presence. Rather, the stance of faith is humble, repentant, grateful for God’s mercy. “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” Humble yourselves; it’s a lot easier than being humbled by God. Far better to humble yourself, with the expectation that God will lift you up. He will exalt you in due time, in His own way, by your dying and rising.

Jesus gathers the Twelve together in a huddle and says, “If you want to be great in my kingdom, you have to be a loser. If you want to come in first, you have to come in last and be the servant of all, because that’s where I am. I, the Lord of all, have become the Servant of all, and am about to become the biggest loser in the religious world by getting myself crucified at the hands of Religion and Politics. But don’t worry about it. Losing is winning in my kingdom, and I will rise on the third day more victorious in death than any of you guys can be in life. You want to live the victorious life? Then drop dead with me.”


Ever the good teacher, he brings in an object lesson. A little child. Now understand this: In Jesus’ day and age children were not the little winners as they are today. They didn’t glamorize and idolize childhood back then as some pure and noble and innocent state of being. Children were considered little losers, a drain on the family assets that couldn’t be raised quickly enough and married off if you were a girl or put to work if you were a boy. There was no luxury of prolonged childhood, adolescence, no time to find yourself, or chase your dreams. It was an expressway to adulthood as quickly as possible.

That’s what Jesus uses as a pattern for kingdom faith - a little child, a child small enough to be picked up and held in Jesus’ arms. He says, “Boys, if you want to understand greatness in the way of the cross, then you must become like this kid I’m holding here. I must carry you, and you must trust me to carry you. “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but Him who sent me.”

We say, “Don’t send a boy to do a man’s work.” Jesus says, “That’s precisely what I’m doing. I’m sending little children in my name, and to receive them is to receive Me and the Father who sent Me.”

Now we’re talking childlike not childish. We have plenty of childish Christians around who need to come to the full measure of their maturity in Christ. Jesus is talking childlike - trusting as a child trusts his mother and father. Receiving, as a child receives all things without any merit or worthiness on her part. Graced by God’s undeserved kindness in His beloved Child, Jesus, our Savior.

You understand this passage only as you understand Jesus as the Child of God the Father. He is that Child held in the arms of His Father, and you baptized into Him are that child too. He is the One who came not to be first but last, the Lord of all who came not to be served by the world but to serve and to lay down His life to save the world. And you, baptized into Him and believing in Him have become last with Him, joining the ranks of those who have lost their lives in order to gain them, living this life or yours not to be served by others, but to serve others as Christ Jesus has served you.

Of course, it can only be understood at the cross of Jesus. And I don’t mean a symbolically empty cross, but a cross with dead Jesus on it. There is greatness in the kingdom of God, my friends. There is power perfected in weakness. There is glory such as the world has never seen. There is victory right there in the midst of death. That is you, baptized and believing. That’s you. That’s your life as it appears in this world. Dead, crucified, lost. You’re a loser in this world if you believe this stuff. Ted Turner once said as much. “Christianity is a religion for losers.” At least he gets it, conceptually speaking.

But to lose your life in Jesus, the grand Loser, is to win your life forever. Trust it in the way of a little child, and you will see it.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/274/20091019013635/audio/pentecost16B2009(proper20).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:01:51 +0000
And we are suddenly fascinated by it. What is this business of “prayer and fasting,” and yes, I believe fasting belongs in the text and shouldn’t have been suppressed. Why couldn’t the disciples deal with this demon? You may recall last week in which Jesus healed a deaf mute by sticking his fingers in the man’s ears, spitting, and grabbing hold of the man’s tongue, and saying “Ephphatha!” No mention of any demon there, but it should sounded like an exorcism.

This one explicitly involves a demon only Jesus can exorcise. And our modern ears have one of two reactions. We either dismiss this who thing as unsophisticated, prescientific nonsense, that the boy had epilepsy, plain and simple, or we get all fascinated and even preoccupied over the demonic and begin to look for a demon under every rock.

There is almost a pattern. In places and among people where the devil is not taken seriously at all, he makes himself even less serious. Frivolous even. Halloween stuff. The result is that we don’t take the devil seriously enough, and even pass him off as a piece of religious mythology that we have outgrown today. Big mistake! Evil has its source in the father of lies who roams around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour, looking for the easy pickings, the isolated believer.

In places and among people where the devil are taken seriously, he makes himself even more serious, creating fear and terror in the hearts of people. He would have you become superstitious, turn to magic, to voodoo, to spiritists and mediums and all sorts of wizardry and whatever. He would turn your faith into a superstition and your God into a good luck charm. The temptation is to take the devil as seriously as God, even to the point of making him like a competing god. The devil always seeks to drive us into the ditches and wants you in one of them, either taking him too lightly or too seriously.

This episode happened on the backside of the transfiguration. Jesus was coming down from this moment of glory on the mountain with Peter, James, and John where they met up with the other nine. What they encountered was a crowd and all sorts of arguing including the scribes. Unlike the crowds that typically followed Jesus, this one was skeptical and even a bit hostile.

Someone shouts out from the crowd about bringing his son to the disciples to be healed of a demon who caused him to become mute and have seizures and foam at the mouth. The disciples weren’t able to heal him. Surprisingly, Jesus seems really irritated by this whole episode. “O faithless generation,” He says to the crowd, “how long am I to be with you? How long must I put up with you?” The whole thing seems to put Jesus in a really foul mood, snapping questions, ordering people around.

What has Jesus angry is the unbelief that He encounters. Just because the disciples couldn’t heal a boy of his epileptic demon, now all of a sudden the crowd turns on Jesus. Even the father of the boy isn’t sure that Jesus is up to the task. “But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” If you can. There it is. The doubt, the unbelief, the wavering, the half-heartedness. And Jesus flags it. “If you can! What do you mean ‘if you can’” All things are possible for one who believes.” All things are possible for with God nothing is impossible. With God a virgin conceives, the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the demons are cast out, the dead are raised. How much proof do you want? How much proof does it take, and still they are not convinced of it when one little demon proves to be a bit “resistant.”

Now we come to the heart of this story. This isn’t so much about a stubborn demon as it is about what happens to our faith when our religion doesn’t seem to work. You can substitute whatever you like for the stubborn demon and come to the same place: the incurable cancer, the sudden accident, the failed economy, the child who abandons the faith, your unanswered prayers, your dashed hopes and dreams. You brought your problems to the church, and the church couldn’t fix them. You prayed for healing and you only got worse. You prayed for a better job and you lost the job you had. You know how it is; I know you do.

The temptation at that point is to trade in your God for another model, and swap your religion for one that “works.” I think our culture particularly is prone to the “whatever works must be true” way of looking at things. We’re pragmatic people. We admire whatever gets the job done. So if you go to some witchdoctor and he makes your lumbago go away, then it’s all good, right? Or you go to some fortune teller and she manages to pull a tidbit of your future and get it right, then it must be good, right?

You can see where this is heading, and how the devil has a brilliant deception under his sleeve if he can get us to bite on the notion that something is true and right and just and holy if it “works.” So then when it stops working, when the disciples can’t heal the demon and the church can’t fix your problem you have a ready made excuse to move on. And you will chase what works straight into oblivion because “what works” is too short term a criterion. It’s too narrow. For the sake of things temporal, we are sorely tempted to lose sight of things eternal.

“All things are possible to the one who believes.” Does this mean that if you believe hard enough, you’ll get your wish? Is that what faith really is? Believing hard enough that you can obligate God? Is that what trust is? Does a child only trust the parent when the parent gives him what he wants rather than what he needs? And what sort of trust it that anyway?

To his credit, the father of this child eventually does get it right. “I believe; help my unbelief.” That’s a very Lutheran way of saying it. We might consider him the first Lutheran in the New Testament. Simul justus et peccator. Simultaneously a sinner and a saint. A believer and an unbeliever. That’s you; that’s me. I believe, Lord, help Thou my unbelief. In face of things where I cannot find a way out, where You, O Lord, appear not to be doing anything, help my unbelief. Teach me to trust You when You appear weak. Teach me to trust Your Word when it doesn’t appear to work. Teach me to trust your promises over and against my own reason and senses.”

That’s how the faithful pray in this life. Mixed with faith there is always, always, a tinge of doubt. We are dealing with unseen things. We are dealing in matters of trust. And the devil, the unbelieving world, and our own sinful selves would cause us to doubt God’s goodness and mercy in face of suffering and injustice and evil. The question here is this: Do we trust Jesus when He doesn’t cast out the demon? When He doesn’t cure the disease? When He doesn’t fix the problem, but says to us as He did to St. Paul, “my grace is sufficient for you; my power is perfected in weakness?”

When Jesus finally gets around to exorcising the demon, things initially seem to go from bad to even worse. The demon departs, but the boy looks like he had died. And what would have been your reaction then? The cure turns out to be worse than the disease and it kills you. Is that a failure on God’s part? The demon is gone, but the boy is dead, or at least, apparently so. But in the hands of Jesus, death, disease, and demons are all cut from the same cloth. He takes the boys hand, lifts him up, and he arose. It’s a little resurrection. (Same word!) That’s where it all comes together, finally and for good. In the resurrection.

Privately, the disciples are still troubled by why it didn’t work. “What did we do wrong?” Jesus gives one of HIs patented sideways answers: “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.” Nothing “magical” here. Simply prayer in the intensified focus of fasting. The most stubborn of demons, which only the Lord could cast out, which left the little boy nearly dead upon leaving, is cast out by the simple prayer in faith in the emptyness of fasting. It’s about trust. It’s about faith. It’s about prayer that is in tune with the will of God because it has heard and is shaped by the Word of God. The devil and His demons are defeated not by our might, our power, but by the cross of Jesus Christ, by His death and resurrection, and by the simple prayer that rises up through Him to the Father.

So whether things are working out well or not. Whether God is doing things your way or not. Whether it “works” or not. Trust in the Lord. Trust His promises. Trust your Baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection. Pray, praise, give thanks always. He will raise you; He already has.

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/273/20091019014153/audio/pentecost15B2009(proper19).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:40:11 +0000 “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” (Isaiah 35:5-6)

“He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” (Mark 7:37)

Jesus is doing a bit of a tour of sort, going from the coastal regions of Tyre and Sidon to the region of the ten cities, the Decapolis. He seems to be avoiding Galilee for the moment. It might have been the crowds and his spreading celebrity. Or it might have been Herod Antipas whom Jesus was trying to avoid. Whatever the reason, Jesus was moving through non-Israelite territory, Gentile country. The Messiah of Israel is also the world’s messiah, and here Jesus shows it.

They bring a man to Jesus who could neither hear nor talk. A deaf mute. The people beg Jesus to lay His hand on him, the usual gesture of the healer. In other words, the people have a plan, a preconceived notion as to how Jesus is supposed to work. He’s supposed to do what every other healer did, lay hands on the sick person and pray. But this is no ordinary healer. This is the Lord of all healing.

We sometimes approach Jesus the same way as those people of the Decapolis. We not only present the problem, we also present the solution. Here’s what we want Lord, and here’s how we think you should do it. A little bit like the kid who specifies his Christmas present by printing off pictures from catalogs on the internet. The more you specify a gift, the less of a gift it becomes. It turns into more of a transaction, really, a bargain, which is how the old Adam in us would love to deal with God. Transactionally. Lord, give us what we want exactly in the way that we want and thank you in advance for your cooperation. Give me patience, but don’t let me suffer. Give me wisdom, but spare me the pain of experience. Give me healing, but spare me the doctors. You know how it goes.

Jesus doesn’t go that route with this man. He takes him aside privately, away from the crowds. This poor man’s plight is no circus side show for the curious masses. He has lived his entire life on the fringes of his society. Unable to speak, unable to hear. Imagine a world like his where you never heard the sound of laughter or music or your children’s voice or any human voice. Imagine that you couldn’t speak clearly. Your thoughts are there, clear enough, you have feelings you want to express, ideas you want to exchange, but you can’t get the words out. They refuse form on your tongue.

People who have had a stroke know what this is like, the futility and frustration of not being able to communicate. I remember visiting a man in the hospital (his famlly asked me in the lobby if I would talk with him). He was a little older than I am and had suffered a rather serious stroke. It was obvious he could understand every word I was saying to him. And it was equally obvious that he couldn’t say a single syllable of what he wanted to say to me. The frustration on that man’s face was overwhelming, almost too difficult to bear. It was like words were imprisoned inside of him and couldn’t escape.

To be deaf and mute is to live in a world without words. You can read, but you’ve heard what those words sound like. And you’ve heard your own voice say them. It’s a picture of our spiritual condition before God. We are born deaf to God’s Word, unable to hear it, unable to discern the will of God in it. We are born mute to God’s praises, unable to open our lips and loosen our tongues so that our mouths may declare the praise of God. It’s a spiritual deafness. We can hear the world just fine; it’s the Word that our ears are not naturally attuned to. It’s the Word that our lips do not naturally conform to.

God must act if we are to hear and believe and speak. Jesus takes the man aside private and He does a strange thing. He puts his fingers into the man’s ears. He spits, yes spits!, and touches the man’s tongue. He looks to heaven, to the Father who sent Him. He sighs a deep sigh and said a single word “Ephphatha.” Be opened

The incident has a lot in common with an exorcism - the spitting, sticking the finger into the ears, touching the tongue, the sighing, and the word of command. And while the text doesn’t say that the man was demon possessed, it’s all part and parcel of the same thing, the fall of man and the fall of creation, the subjection to decay and disease and death. Christ came to set things back in order. And he takes this man’s deafness and muteness and absorbed it with a sigh into Himself and speaks a word into the man “Ephphtha.”

Notice the earthiness of it all. Fingers in ears. Spit. Tongues touched. Not hovering hands and incantations. God comes down to us, reaches down to where we are, sticks the fingers of His Word in our ears, grabs hold of our tongues and says, “Ephphatha” to our deafness, “Ephphatha” to our stammering muteness.

And the Word of Jesus does what it says. It has that power to do what it says. Just as in the beginning when God said “Be light” and light there is. Immediately, the man’s ears were opened to hear, and his tongue was loosed to speak. Words were his again by the power of that Word sighed by Jesus.

The prophet Isaiah had seen and foretold this day: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.” Those are the messianic signs, the signals of the age when God would come with a vengeance to save.

I’m sure there were plenty of deaf mutes in the Ten Cities. But Jesus didn’t simply come to provide health care to the Decapolis. He came to be bring ultimate healing, to reverse the ravages of sin and death, the flex the mighty arm of God to save and redeem. This man became a messianic sign, a visible, historic sign that Jesus was indeed the Messiah of Israel, the Christ, and that He is the creative Word in the flesh come to bring the new creation by His own dying and rising.

He opens the man’s ears and looses the man’s tongue and then tells everyone, “Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone!” What!? Did we hear that right? What’s the point in opening the man’s lips if his mouth isn’t supposed to tell everyone about Jesus? Why the secret? Simply, because Jesus knew all the ways the people would get this wrong. They would see Him as nothing more than a wonder worker, a source of free health care, a vending machine for blessings. They would think “messiah” and conclude that Jesus was going to use His power to overthrow the Romans, to put Israel on the map, to lead a revolution, to wipe out hunger and disease and poverty in this world and become a great king ruling by the power of God. They would get all the wrong ideas about Jesus, and so He keeps it all quiet.

But the truth is, you can’t keep quiet. The more He charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They said, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” And they hadn’t seen anything yet. Wait until they see Him lifted up on the cross, bearing the world’s sin in His own flesh. Wait until they hear the cry from His own lips, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” as His prayers seem to fall on deaf ears. Wait until He becomes deaf and mute with our sin and death. But then there were no crowds, only a handful of disciples. But there the price for this healing was paid. “By His wounds we are healed.” There on the cross, was the ultimate show of God’s might. There on the cross, was the recompense of God Isaiah spoke of. God did justice that day in His Son who became deaf and blind and mute and lame in died to save you.

Jesus wants to do for you what He did for that man in the Decapolis that day. He wants to stick His Word into your ears, to cut through deafness, to open your ears, your minds, your hearts. He speaks His Ephphatha to you. “Be opened.” He wants to grab those tongues of yours, tongues that don’t naturally know how to pray, to praise, to give thanks, to confess, and He wants to loosen them for His praise. He wants to turn our tongues into instruments of worship and witness, declaring the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His light, who raised you from the grave of your sin, who shed His blood for you that you might live under Him in His kingdom, who glorified you at the right hand of God in HIs own glorious flesh.

And it’s OK to talk about it. No commands of silence now. The work is done. It is finished. Jesus has accomplished His mission. He has died and risen and reigns. Tell everyone. If He healed your deafness and cured your muteness, you’d be talking about it. You couldn’t stop yourself. Jesus has healed your sin and death. He has given you eternal life. He has baptized you and placed His Body and Blood on your tongues and opened your ears with His forgiving words. There is much to tell, and much to praise, and much to sing. He has done all things well.

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/272/20090911132014/audio/pentecost14B2009(proper18).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:30:13 +0000
That’s why Jesus’ saying this morning causes us to stop and go “hmmm.” It’s opposite what we expect. We expect spiritual things to work just like everything else. In other words, we expect spiritual purity to come with our efforts to “keep ourselves clean and pure.” Read the right books, watch the right movies, associate with the right people, stay away from the “worldly things.” That was the whole basis of monasticism — withdraw from the world, set yourself apart from the “unclean things.” isolate yourself from the unclean world and you can be pure, untainted by the unspiritual, unclean world.

That was also the wrong impression that religious Israel got when applying the purity laws of Leviticus. It’s an easy mistake to make. All those “clean” and “unclean” regulations touching almost every aspect of life - what you ate, what you touched. There were certain animals considered “unclean” for food, things like pork and shrimp and lobster. If you so much as touched them, you would be ritually unclean. And all sorts of other ways too. And so it was an easy logical leap to think that it was what went into you that made you unclean. Eat unclean food, become unclean. Touch unclean things, become unclean.

The mistake is to confuse ritual purity with spiritual purity. Ritual purity was set Israel apart from the other nations. They had a unique diet, unique regulations and rules governing every aspect of their lives, reminding of who they were - a peculiar, chosen people set apart for a purpose, that is, to bring forth in the fulness of time the Messiah-Savior. But none of these rules and regulations could purify the heart or the person spiritually speaking. In fact, all the OT rules served to show how difficult to impossible purity is. If you could barely keep ritually pure, how on earth could you be spiritually pure?

Jesus turns it all upside down and inside out with this sentence: “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” That’s right. You heard it. You become spiritually unclean from the inside out, NOT the outside in. It’s what comes out of you that defiles you, not what goes into you.

I hope you have an appreciation for how radical this concept is. The disciples didn’t get it. When they were apart from the crowds in the house, they asked Jesus about it, and Jesus seems to be a bit impatient with them. “Don’t you get it? Are you also without understanding? Foods don’t make you unclean. It goes in, it’s digested, it goes out, never touching the heart, except perhaps for a case of heartburn. With that, Jesus declares all foods to be clean. In effect, Jesus lifts the distinction of clean and unclean from the book of Leviticus. He can do that. He’s the Lord. And He needs to do that, since the distinction of clean and unclean, of Israelite and non-Israelite was only intended to pave the way for His coming as the Christ of Israel, the Savior of the world. And with Jesus having come, the OT laws with all their distinction of clean and unclean come to their fulfillment and end.
Jesus makes the unclean clean. He cleanses the leper with a touch, a touch that would have rendered you “unclean” according to the OT law. But with Jesus, the unclean become clean, holy, and pure.

Now with those words, Jesus also indicts our hearts and points the finger of the Law toward them as the culprits. It’s not the world that soils us, unclean as the world may be. The finger that points at the world and blames it for everything unclean is pointing in 180 degrees the wrong direction. It is out of the heart, your heart and my heart, that sin proceeds. Listen to the effluent: evil thoughts, sexual immorality (take you pick as to which variety), theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All of this stuff comes out of the heart unbuckled from God, the heart steeped in Sin, the heart turned inward on itself.

It’s good to know. We need to know this. We’re prone to looking outside and blaming others for our condition. Like Adam and Eve in the garden. “The woman you gave me…” “The serpent lied to us, it’s his fault….” And secretly in the recesses of ours hearts, “It’s your fault, Lord….” But the finger of blame and responsibility needs to be turned toward ourselves and our rebel wills that want it our way instead of God’s way. Out of these hearts of ours, come all of the things we hate in the world - all the murders, adulteries, deceits, you name it, they all begin in the heart.

This then is not only the end of the OT’s kosher laws, it is also the end of all “heart religion,” the business of giving one’s heart to God. As Bo Giertz writes in the Hammer of God, “What sort of gift is that for a King, that rustly old tin can of a heart of yours?” That heart is a septic tank by the words of Jesus. it’s the end of “following one’s heart,” “praying from the heart,” anything “from the heart.” We need new hearts. A heart transplant, if you will. The prophet Ezekiel says, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ez 36:26).

It’s not as though we can rehab these old hardened sinful hearts of ours. We can’t. They are hopelessly mired in sin and are the source of all the stuff that comes out of us - the corrupt thought, the loveless word, the ruthless deed. This is the whole nature of “original sin.” We’re conceived and born this way, with unclean hearts that give rise to unclean thought, unclean words, unclean deed. This is a fundamental thing and something we need to keep straight. We are NOT sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. It comes from our hearts. Even a tiny, innocent, newborn baby, has this heart capable of all the evil things Jesus lists and then some. It’s only a matter of time before that little heart begins to spill out it bilge - from a defiant resistance of a parent’s will to the willful assertion of its own will to do as he pleases. And so it goes with each of us too. Out of our hearts flow our own idolatries, adulteries, murders, lies, deceits, confess what you will, it begins in the heart.

The answer lies not in our hearts, but in the heart of God, in the undeserved kindness and mercy of God in Jesus. Only God can touch the heart, only God can shape the will of rebel man, only God can take the unwilling and make him willing. A heart transplant. New hearts. Hearts of flesh instead of stone. Hearts that beat to the rhythms of God’s Word and Spirit. Hearts that are alive and burning with faith toward God and love toward neighbor. That’s what God wants for each of you; that’s what God gives to each of you.

And it’s not so much like a heart transplant where one heart is removed and another is put in its place. If that were the case, we would already be without sin because of the source of sin would be gone. But then, He would have to kills us and raise us to life, which He will do, in good time. Instead, God does a kind of “piggyback” operation, and puts a new heart next to the old. Luther called that being at once a sinner and a saint. They beat together for a while, the old heart of Adam, the new heart of Christ. We call it “this life of faith,” a life that held in tension waiting for the resurrection.

Having two hearts is not an easy way to live. Much easier it would be to reject that new heart and just deal with the old, dying one. But you know what comes out of that one. God leaves us hanging in a bit of tension between the old and the new, between death and life, between sinner and saint. And He says to you, “Trust me. I am your God, you are my people. I have rescued you from your sins in the death of my Son Jesus. I have washed you clean, baptized you with My Word, claimed you as my own. Trust me, that I know what is best for you. Don’t give me your heart; instead I will give you my heart, the heart of my Son Jesus, whose heart always beats to my will.”

It’s not what goes into us that makes us unclean. But it is what goes into us that makes us clean. Spiritual purity comes not from within, but from without, outside ourselves. Baptismal water poured on us; forgiving Words spoken into us; Christ’s Body and Blood fed to us. Those are what make the unclean clean. God alone can do it. God alone has done it. And He does it for you, here today.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/271/20090910053214/audio/pentecost13B2009(proper17).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:27:16 +0000 “This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.” Isaiah 29:13.

“”You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” Mark 7:1-13

Tradition. You can almost hear Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof belting that word out at the top of his lungs, clinging to it with all his might as his little world is coming unraveled. Tradition. The things handed down from the generations before, like a baton in a relay race. Tradition. Singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at the 7th inning stretch. Singing the “Star Spangled Banner” before a sporting event. Tradition — the Thanksgiving turkey or the Christmas tree or you fill in the blanks and don’t you dare try and change any of them!

Traditions are important. They serve as a vehicle, a way to carry something from one generation to the next. In one sense, the Bible is a tradition, the apostolic tradition preserved in the church and handed down to us over the centuries. The Lord’s Supper is a tradition, as St. Paul himself says, received from the Lord by Paul and handed on to the Corinthians and recorded in holy Scripture. The Gospels are a tradition, the written record of the words and deeds of Jesus preserved from the recollections of the apostles. Similarly Baptism and Absolution are traditions handed down from Christ to His Church. These are the Lord’s traditions, and so we need to be careful when we read this saying of Jesus that we don’t throw out the traditional baby with the religious bathwater. There is a difference. These are the mandates, the commands of God, NOT the traditions of men.

There are manmade traditions too, and they aren’t necessarily bad either. The creeds and confessions of the church are that kind of tradition, tested by time, proven by adversity, forged in the fire of controversy. We’d be foolish to discard the creeds and confessions simply because they were man’s work rather than God’s work. This is what God’s Word stirs up in men; it prompts us to confess what we have heard and believed.

Our hymns and liturgy are a tradition too, handed on from our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers and mothers, some things going all the way back to the first century of the church We’re not the first ones to believe the Gospel of Jesus. We are not the first baptized believers to walk the face of this earth. We stand in solidarity with two thousand years of believers, many of whom risked the necks and gave their lives confessing Jesus Christ as Lord. We dishonor them when we cast aside what they fought so hard to hand on to us, like that treasured piece of jewelry or antique chest that has come down in the family. It may not even go with your decor and taste, but you keep it because you’re family and it’s something entrusted to you. It’s a stewardship, caring for something bigger than you are, which is why you take care of that clunky broach or that beat up piece of furniture.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.” Those are very wise words that far too often go unheeded in our society that is decidedly “non-traditional” when it comes to what we believe. We vote, but our vote excludes those who have come before us. Tradition ensures that they have a voice too.

That’s the good side of tradition, and needs to be born in mind. Christianity from the beginning was very traditional in the sense that it kept the rhythms and customs of the synagogue, the Sabbath table, the Passover. The Reformation likewise did not start with a blank piece of paper, but reformed what had been received, which is the duty of every generation, that is, to take up the tradition handed them and make it their own.

There are dangers to every tradition. One is that we make tradition into a museum or even a mausoleum, a collection of dead and dusty things that people come to look at and maybe admire but never pick up and use. Tradition for tradition’s sake, a monument to the phrase: “We’ve always done it that way before.”

Tradition can be a hiding place when we are afraid. When “change and decay” are all around us and the whole world seems to falling apart in front of our eyes, it seems like a safe place to duck behind the old and familiar. It’s nostalgic, like going home and sleeping in your childhood bed when you can’t handle the adult world.

Tradition can also lead us away from God and His will to save when it comes unbuckled from His mercy and we try to run the tradition instead of God. That’s what happened with the Pharisaic tradition that Jesus encountered in this morning’s Gospel. It began with an observation: Jesus’ disciples were careless about washing their hands and utensils. The tradition was that you did not eat until you ritually washed (the word used in Mark is baptized) your hands, and not only your hands, but also your cups and pots and cooking vessels and even the cushions you sat on. This wasn’t simply good hygiene, the way your mother reminded you to wash you hands before supper. This was “religious hygiene,” the attempt to be pure by our own doing, by inventing our own washing.

It’s curious that ritual washing is a part of nearly every religion. Whenever people get religious, some sort of religious bath is involved. I think there is a strong, deep down notion that we need to be cleansed, not simply on the outside but especially on the inside. There is this deep notion that we are unclean and that is unacceptable to God. The question is, what bath will do it? A bath instituted by men or one instituted by God? And you already know the answer to that.

Tradition run bad becomes “religion” in all the worst senses of that word — the ways we use to bargain with and manipulate God to do our bidding, the ways we try to bring God down to our level on our terms rather than on His terms. Everything from creeds to cultus to codes of conduct can become “religious” in all the wrong ways in the hands of our self-centered old Adam. Even our most cherished traditions, can, like Aaron’s budded staff, turn into an idol and a stumbling block.

“You leave the commandment of God and hold to the traditions of men.” That’s a harsh indictment of religious Israel. They honored God with their lips, but their heart was far from me.” And we do the same thing. We honor God with moving lips, but our hearts are somewhere else — at work, at play, at brunch, on the golf course, at the beach. We treat the divine service much like fans at Dodger stadium — arrive late, leave early. Put in our time, do our religious duties. But our hearts are far from the Lord, even on Sunday morning. We sing our hymns, we say our lines in the liturgy, we say all the right and good words, but those wandering, hardened, unbelieving, ungrateful hearts of ours are always roaming somewhere else. That’s the reality of our sinful hearts, and we use our traditions to build a stone wall around those hearts so that no one, including God can get to them.

The Pharisees had an interesting religious tradition. If you devoted your entire investment portfolio and savings account to God, declared it to be “Corban,” then you were off the hook for supporting your aging parents. How do you like that tradition? Putting a coat of religious shellac on dishonoring father and mother. We roll our eyes and sign, and yet we do the same thing. We look for some way to apply a little religious varnish to dress up our sin, whether it’s our sins of sexuality or justifying some petty theft at work or making excuses for our gossip, lies, slanders, outbursts of anger, divisiveness, rudeness, pettiness.

And whenever we use “religion” and “tradition” to justify our actions before God, we have slipped into a subtle form of idolatry where the lips are close to God, dripping with religious words, but our hearts are all wound up in ourselves.

The commandment of God is “repent.” Come to a new mind, a new way of thinking, a new you. Be baptized. Be washed with the washing God Himself established for your cleansing, the washing that joins you to the death of Jesus and delivers you from sin and death to forgiveness and life. Eat His Body, drink His Blood, as He bids you in HIs own testament. Hear His words of forgiveness and life and salvation. Trust Him. Trust the promises in His blood. Trust the promise of life and salvation He gives to you.

Sometimes we need to lose our “religion” in order to gain Christ. St. Paul said as much in his letter to the Philippians: If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

That is the sound of a man who lost his religion - everything that he had grown up with and held so fondly he counted as nothing more the dung - and in the end he gained Christ, and wasn’t about to go back again. The surpassing worth of knowing Christ. That’s what our faith is about. It’s not about dancing some religious purity dance. It’s about being found in Christ, being rescued from ourselves and our self-made religions, having a righteousness that is not our own but Christ’s perfect, seamless righteousness, HIs perfection, His holiness. It’s about living lives in freedom from fear, from condemnation, from judgment, knowing and believing that in Christ you are declared righteous before God.

In Christ, you actually do keep the commandment of God, and in Christ you are free to hold the traditions of men loosely, joyfully, with the dead, open hand of faith in Jesus. You see, it’s not a matter of washed hands and cups and saucers, but of cleansed baptized hearts, what only God can do for you.

Thanks be to Jesus!

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/270/20090910052917/audio/pentecost12B2009(proper16).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:48:54 +0000 “Truly, truly (amen, amen!) I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” (John 6:53-56).

Imagine that you are John, the evangelist, the man who recorded the words I just read and you just heard. You have the record of Jesus’ preaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. You heard with your ears. You remember every word distinctly. The question before you is this: Do you write it down and make it part of your Gospel? Matthew, Mark, and Luke didn’t. Will you write this “hard saying” down? This saying the even scandalized the inner group of disciples, maybe even you?

Do you write this down knowing that future generations will read these words aloud about eating the flesh of Christ and drinking His blood and puzzle over them and perhaps be scandalized by them? Perhaps they’ll close your Gospel right then and there at chapter 6 and throw it away, thinking it’s sheer insanity. Face it. If you wanted to write a marketable Gospel, a sellable Gospel, a Gospel that appeared sensible and rational and sane, you wouldn’t include this sermon at the synagogue in Capernaum.

The trouble, though, is this. Jesus said it. They are His own words, words that are Spirit and life. Words from the Word Incarnate, the Word made Flesh dwelling among us, the only-begotten Son of God. Words intended for your ears; words intended to enliven your faith.

They are troubling words. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” And just in case you thought you could “spiritualize” things and make them a bit more palatable, Jesus shifts the verb to a much coarser one which the translation picks up. “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” Not just eating but feeding. The word is located in the mouth and has to do with the teeth. There is no doubt about what where Jesus is talking. He’s not talking about some spiritual eating in heaven or in you but an eating that goes on in your mouth.

Troubling, scandalous words. These appear to be the words of a madman! And if Jesus didn’t say them, then John, or whoever wrote them, is just as mad, and expects us to be just as crazy as he is for believing them. Let’s face it. I start talking like this, and you pack me away, right?

Many people apparently thought along the same lines. Many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. They no longer wanted to be seen in public with Jesus. There was no problem with teaching Jesus, with demon casting Jesus, with walking on water Jesus, with miracle working Jesus, with multiplying loaves and fishes Jesus. But a Jesus that talks about eating His flesh and drinking His blood to have eternal life and be raised up on the Last Day? No, thank you. I think we’re going to be moving on, now.

There is no more scandalous teaching in the church than the real presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. The world mocks it openly today. I’ve seen web sites and have read books that openly mock “Jesus in a cracker” and anyone who would be so gullible as to believe that their Savior comes to them in a piece of bread. Even within the church there are those who would spiritualize and marginalize and even deny this true food and true drink. We do the same when we don’t eat and drink and act as if we don’t need it. But that troubling verb Jesus uses for “feeding” takes place in the mouth, which is where the Lord wants His Body and His Blood, the fruits of His sacrifice, to be.

This pushes the Incarnation all the way home. God doesn’t simply dwell with us in the sense of hang around with us, walk with us, talk with us, tell us we are His own, and all that. No. He wants to lay out bread and pour drinks. True food and true drink. The only food and drink that brings the forgiveness of our sins, life, and salvation. He wants to abide in us and we in Him. And He provides the way: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in Him.” We abide in Jesus by faith, and He abides in us by our eating and drinking His Body and Blood.

Think about it: In paganism, you feed your gods; in Christianity you feed on your God.

Many of Jesus’ disciples checked out after He preached this sermon in Capernaum. It’s understandable. They’d heard enough. They packed their disciples bags and went home. Jesus didn’t go running after them. He didn’t say, “No, no, you misunderstood me. I was only speaking metaphorically, spiritually, I didn’t mean literally eat my flesh and drink my blood. Of course not.” No, Jesus didn’t issue a retraction or try to recast His words in a different light to make them more palatable. He let His words stand.

But He turned to His Twelve, His inner circle, His chosen ones, one of whom would eventually betray Him. Even that is already known. Jesus asks them, “What about you? Do you want to leave too?” Do you want to leave when the teachings of Jesus get difficult, uncomfortable, make you uneasy or embarrassed or even squeamish? Our sinful, self-oriented nature wants so badly to check out, to get away from these troubling words and back to safer ground. Could we maybe roll it back a little Jesus and pick up with the feeding of the 5000? We really liked that miracle. But what about this crazy talking Jesus who speaks about eating His flesh and drinking His blood?

Peter answers on behalf of the group. He makes the good and faith-filled confession: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” That’s what faith in Christ sounds like. It clings to the words of Jesus. He alone has the words of eternal life. No one else does. No other name. No other Lord, Savior, Redeemer. They had left everything they had to follow Jesus. By the grace of God they trusted His words which had their faith-creating, faith-enlivening way with them. Words of Spirit and life. They heard and believed, and trusting Jesus, they also trusted Him when He pushed their reason and senses to the breaking point. When others we scandalized and fell away, they stuck with Jesus because they hung to His words as the most precious thing they had.

Did they fully comprehend what Jesus was saying? Do we? How could the disciples have known what Jesus would do on the night He was betrayed into death when He took the bread, broke it, gave thanks, and gave it to those same disciples and said, “Take this and eat it. This is my body given for you.”? How could they have known, that Jesus would take the cup after supper, give thanks, and give it to them with the words, “Take and drink of this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant which is being poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins”? They could not have possibly known exactly how Jesus would give them His flesh to eat and His blood to drink that they may have His life in them. But they trusted His words.

The Lord’s Supper is an exercise in that sort of faith in Jesus’ words. We hear Jesus Spirited, living Word spoken to each one of us. My body given for you. My blood shed for you. Words of eternal life filled with His Spirited-breath, revealing, giving, bestowing, delivering into your mouth the gifts of the cross, Jesus’ own death and life as your true food and drink.

I’m sure you have your doubts. I know do. Doubt goes believing things unseen, things that cannot be measured, examined, tasted, touched, smelled, only believed. When your eyes and your ears don’t agree and you’re called to believe what you hear. Bring your doubts, your misgivings, your uncertainties, as well as your sin, your brokenness, your lostness, your death - bring all of that to the Lord’s table. Bring all of you. Your whole life, your death, your fears, your anxieties. Bring them and let the Lord feed you with His words, with His Body and Blood, with the bread of life and the wine of heaven. True food, true drink, true words from the One who is the Truth.

These hard words spoken in Capernaum cost Jesus His life. Not that people killed Him on account of these words, but to fulfill them He had to die. His body had to be given into death. His flesh offered as the perfect Lamb. His blood had to be poured out like wine; His life for our life, for the life of the whole world. This meal of which Jesus hinted that day in Capernaum, and instituted that night of His betrayal, and gives us all here today, is the meal of the cross and the open tomb. His death wins it and resurrection clinches it - He alone has the words of eternal life. And we trust these words for no other reason than He alone is risen from the dead.

Take Jesus at His word. Trust Him even with these outrageous words. “This is my body; this is my blood.” With this food and drink He abides in you and you in Him, He will raise you up on the Last Day.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/269/20090819184955/audio/pentecost11B2009(proper15).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 09 Aug 2009 05:57:22 +0000
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (John 6:50-51)

Fight or flight. Those are the two alternatives programmed into us. When we are in a tough situation, when we are tested, when we are cornered we either fight or we flee. But what happens when you can neither fight nor flee? Our OT text this morning gives a third option, the overlooked option, the one we don’t naturally seek or take: faith.

Elijah fought. He fought 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah gathered at Mt. Carmel. The challenge: one bull for Baal, one for Yahweh, each on an altar with wood but no fire. 450 prophets would call down fire in the name of Baal; Elijah would do the same in the name of Yahweh. Elijah versus the prophets of Baal in a prophetic smackdown of pay-per-view proportions. The prophets of Baal prayed and danced and cut themselves while Elijah taunted from the sidelines. Nothing. No response, no one answered.

Then Elijah built an altar for the Lord, put the bull on the altar with the wood, soaked everything down with water three times over, and prayed a decidedly unreligious prayer that basically went, “Now, Lord” and fire from heaven consumed the bull, the wood, the altar, and everything around it. And the 450 prophets of Baal were rounded up and killed. What a victory it was for Elijah! What a vindication for the Name of Yahweh! No doubt as to who was in charge.

No doubt, that is, until Elijah went back to Jezreel where Queen Jezebel was waiting for him, and she wasn’t happy. “I swear to the gods I’m going to do to you what you did to my prophets.” And all of a sudden Elijah the prophet is afraid and flees for his life into the wilderness. Fight or flight. You can fight the false prophets but you can’t fight the queen. So you flee.

Victory turns into defeat, or so it would seem. The Lord who was so strong, so in charge, so powerful at Mt. Carmel is nowhere to be seen in Jezreel. Elijah who singlehandedly defeated 450 false prophets is forced to flee a queen with revenge on her mind. What do you do? Elijah fled. He headed straight for Horeb, Mt. Sinai, to get a clearer word from God. It was kind of an Exodus in reverse, from promised land back to Horeb for — yes, you guessed it — forty days and forty nights.

Elijah ditches his servant and goes it alone, a kind of one-man Israel heading in reverse, fleeing from the promised land, no longer trusting the power of God to save. Dejected, he curls up under a broom tree and prays to die. “It’s enough. I’ve had it. Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” There’s a lot of truth in that. Elijah was no better than his fathers, nor are we. “Chief of sinners” is what St. Paul called himself, and we dare not confess any less. We are no better than anyone, whether those who came before or those who will come after. No matter how great the things we’ve done, no matter how many battles we’ve won or kingdoms conquered. We are no better than our fathers and we deserve to die. This is true. “The wages of sin is death.” We deserve to die. So did Elijah.

Ever feel like Elijah under the broom tree? One of those days, or weeks, or years where you just want to curl up under the nearest broom tree and die? You work, you slave, you pray, you expect visible success, some tangible results, a return on your investment. Or you see defeat snatched out of the jaws of victory, and everything you’ve worked for seems to have fallen apart and come to nothing? That’s Elijah. He’s run out of fight and he doesn’t have much flight left in him either. He just wants to die, and if we’re honest, so do we at times. Sometimes we even say it, more or less dramatically, “I just want to die.”

In a sense he’s absolutely right, you know. We do need to die. each of us. We need to die to ourselves, to our expectations, to our agendas, to all the ways we try to obligate God and hold Him accountable to our expectations. We need to die to our own inner idolatries, all those things we fear, love, and trust in above God. All those things that interfere with our worship, our receiving God’s gift, our service of prayer, praise, thanksgiving. We need to die to our sin, to our selves, to the Law. And we need to rise too. It’s not just death but death and resurrection. That’s God’s way of doing things.

God is gracious, merciful, forgiving, patient. The angel of the Lord, who is in all likelihood Christ pre-incarnate, comes to the discouraged prophet with a word: “Arise and eat.” Gracious words, inviting words, Gospel words. Get up. Arise from the death of your slumbers, Elijah. Eat. Be strengthened and nourished. At his head some freshly baked bread and a jar of water. Bread and water in the wilderness! Just like the manna from heaven and the water from the rock that sustained Israel in the Exodus.

Elijah nibbled and sipped and laid back down again. We do that. We nibble and sip at the gifts of Christ and then go back to sleep. We snack on salvation as though it were popcorn in the theater of life and then go back to our depressed slumbers wondering why nothing is changed. Would we make a greater effort to be in church if Jesus were to make a grand and glowing appearance? Would that change our priorities? What if some grand miracle happened in the Lord’s Supper, say, the bread and chalice started glowing with some unearthly glow? Or what if the bread and wine actually appeared as Jesus’ body and blood? I’m sure we wouldn’t want to eat and drink it, but we’d sure make it a point to be here. Why don’t we now? What if Jesus were actually standing here and blessing you with His benediction? Would you come a bit earlier? Stay to the end of the service?

Why don’t we now? Good question. Because we don’t believe the word of Christ. Help Thou our unbelief.

It seems at the times we are most in need of the bread of life, of that stream of living water that flows from the cross to us, that’s the time we check out and stay away and nibble when we should sit down to a hearty meal. Elijah just had food and drink from heaven plunked down next to his head, and what does he do? He takes a bite and a sip and goes back to sleep.

A second time Christ comes to Elijah and touches him. “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” Those are good words for your ears too. Arise, discouraged, downtrodden, depressed child of God, get up and eat this bread from heaven given for you. Drink this heavenly wine poured out for you. The journey is your life, your death, your resurrection is too great for you, and without this food, you cannot run the race that is set before you. Without this food and drink you will die in the wilderness of your sin and death. Without this food and drink your faith will shrivel up and die, and you will have only yourself to blame for it.

The Lord isn’t for nibbling and sipping, but for eating and drinking, for feasting at a lavish table that never ends. “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die…..If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Elijah lasted forty days and nights on the strength of that bread and water in the wilderness. Forty days and nights. And that was only a foretaste. Jesus says, “Whoever feeds on my flesh (this flesh which He gives for the life of the world) and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”

Here is true food, a bread that is beyond any bread this world has to offer. Here is true drink, a heavenly vintage poured on the cross. For you to eat and to drink with this promise: “I will raise you up on the last day.” Here the fruits of Jesus’ death on the cross come flowing to you, are placed on your tongue as surely as the bread and water next to Elijah’s head. There is more than bread and water in this wilderness for you. There is living Bread, the flesh of Christ given for the life of the world. There is heavenly wine, the Blood of Christ poured out for your sins and your forgiveness. Food and drink in the wilderness that will bring you to your destination and your home with God in Jesus.

The journey is too great for you. Don’t try to go without proper nourishment. You won’t make it. You can’t. Your strength to endure, to conquer, to live is not your own but Christ whose death and life are now your own. Sin and death will have you trapped like a Jezebel breathing out hot threats against you. Remember the Word that conquered the prophets of Baal. Remember the Word that fed the prophet in the wilderness. Remember the Word made flesh who gave His flesh for the life of the world and for you. It’s not about fighting or fleeing when it comes to sin, death, devil, the Law, hell, your life. It’s not fight or flight. It’s faith, trust in the promise, of the Bread of Life who is Jesus.

Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you. Take, eat. This is my Body given for you. Take, drink. This is my Blood shed for you. For your forgiveness. For your life. For now and forever.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/268/20090819184523/audio/pentecost10B2009(proper14).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:28:47 +0000
He rains down bread from heaven, not their way but His way. Six days there is bread every morning. On the seventh day there is none. Sunday through Thursday you collected just enough - give us this day our daily bread. On Friday enough also for the Sabbath. If you tried to store it overnight on any other day but the sixth day, it rotted and had worms in it. Daily bread. In the evening, meat. Quail fell from the sky.

God is gracious. It all comes as gift, by grace. The Israelites didn’t work for it. They only collected it. Bread from heaven, and meat too. They called the bread “What is it?” Manna? It’s a question - what is it? The answer was intended to fill them with faith: It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.” What is it? Grace Bread. Gift Bread. Bread from heaven.

In the Bible, bread makes it’s appearance in Genesis chapter 3, after the Fall. “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread until you return to the dust.” Bread is work - the farmer works, the miller works, the baker works, the grocer works, you work for your bread. Before the Fall, our food was fruits and nuts - embryonic life, no work. You simply plucked it and ate it. But we know the tragedy. A forbidden food eaten, the Word of God broken, and a diet changed. From life to death, from fruit to bread.

There was the unleavened bread of the Passover. Seven days of scrubbing every inch of the house, purging the wild yeast that symbolized the leaven of sin. Even at your best, you couldn’t get rid of all of it. That’s how it is with wild yeast; that’s how it is with sin. Try as you will, you can’t be holy in the way the Lord your God is holy. Pure mostly, perhaps, but mostly isn’t pure enough.

That was bread you worked for; manna was bread “from above,” bread that God gave you, teaching the Israelites to live not by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Jesus multiplied bread in the wilderness, feeding 5000 men together with the women and children with five little loaves. What a deal! World hunger solved! Put Jesus in charge of the bread. That’s why they followed Him; they wanted to make Him king on the spot. Luther said that a ruler’s coat of arms ought to have a loaf of bread on it. These folks weren’t kidding. Jesus - Bread King.

Jesus knows this. “You are seeking me because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for food that perishes but for the food that endures to eternal life.” Your food is dying and dead. That’s why you have refrigerators and freezers. There’s an appetizing thought. But there is another food, a food that Jesus, the Son of Man, gives. He has the Father’s seal of approval, spoken in His Baptism. He is the well-pleasing Son.

The religious crowds are not thinking in terms of gift but works. “What must be we do to be doing the works of God?” Surely if we do the works of God, then God will be pleased with us and give us our bread. That’s how bread is supposed to work, isn’t it? You work for it, and it comes to you as wages earned. But Jesus flips their question upside down with His answer. Listen carefully: “The work of God is this: that you believe in Him who He has sent.” Faith is not our work but God’s work, and it is the one work that is well-pleasing to God, to believe in His Son.

They demand a sign, as religious types always demand signs. The multiplied loaves weren’t enough. Our appetite for miracles is never sated. Faith based on miracles needs miracles to keep it going; and when the miracles cease then faith ceases too. Remember that. We’re infected too. Don’t think you aren’t. If you had been on the hillside and on the receiving end of Jesus’ multiplying the bread, you would have wanted a repeat performance. Or maybe something more. Something bigger. Perhaps bread isn’t enough. Or maybe a miracle just for you, your own little personal miracle.

You would be hooked. You’d look for more and greater and more glorious. Your list would become endless. Our vending machine who art in heaven. But that’s not the way of Jesus’ giving. He is not only the bread giver, He is the Bread. He is the “bread of God” that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” He is true manna. And the world says the same thing about Jesus as the Israelites said about the bread flakes that fell from the sky - what is it?

Manna?

What is this - the Son of God become Man. What is this - God in the flesh come to save us. What is this - God dying on a cross to deal with our sin and death. What is this - the life of the Son of God for the life of the world.

With Jesus, bread receives its ultimate honor and meaning. Not only does He give bread for free, He is Bread, the daily sustenance of our lives without which we cannot live. He is God’s manna come down to us, the daily bread for our wilderness journey through this life on our way to a promised land of eternal life. Jesus takes the food of our affliction, the food of Adam’s fall into sin and death, the food that we eat by the sweat of our brow, and He turns it into the “staff of life,” true and living Bread that rains down from heaven like manna feeding us, sustaining us, nourishing us not simply for this life but for eternal life.

There is a hunger we have that cannot be filled by this world’s bread. We recognize that because no sooner do we eat, then we are hungry again. Skip a meal and the stomach growls, skip two and the head gets a little light. I like how the kids always say it when they’re hungry - “I’m starving.” Well, not really. Starving is another matter entirely.

We are born into a deep hunger that a diet of this world’s bread that cannot satisfy. No matter how much we acquire, no matter how much we own, no matter how much power or prestige or wealth we manage to scrap together, it does not reach down to that gnawing, inner hunger. We may try to numb the cravings with false breads of drunkenness, of drugs, of sex, of pleasure, of all the things that promise “fulfillment” in our lives but ultimately leave us more and more empty. That emptiness is an hunger of the soul, a spiritual hunger that calls for spiritual bread. This world’s bread cannot satisfy that hunger no matter how much we gorge ourselves at the world’s buffet.

Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Only Jesus can satisfy the deep hunger of the soul; only Jesus can quench the thirst we have for God. It shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus took the bread at the Passover table on the night of His betrayal into death and broke it and gave it to His disciples, His Israel, as His own body. He gives His flesh as bread for the life of the world and bids His believers to eat, to live off of His sacrificial death, to draw their sustenance not from their own works but from His perfect work.

You are given to eat this manna from heaven, this living Bread that one may eat and never be hungry. You are given to live off the Bread of life, Jesus the Living Bread come down from the Father’s generous hand. You are given to believe HIm, to come to His table, to receive with your own mouth the very Bread that brings life forever. Yes, the world considers it foolishness as it pursues it’s own bread. Yes, your own doubting hearts may well waver at this morsel that seems so little compared to what the world has to offer. Yes, the old Adam will tempt you to look to what it considers more substantial fare.

But this bread that Jesus gives, His own sacrificial body given up for your sin and the sin of the whole world, is true food, a food that can be had no other way, a food that will take you to resurrection and life.

What other bread can make that claim?

Manna? What is it? It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat!

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/267/20090808223148/audio/pentecost9B2009(proper13).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:24:57 +0000
Recently, a young man from Thousand Oaks, CA named Zac Sunderland completed a solo sailing trip around the world in a 36-foot sail boat. He endured storms, pirates, nearly getting crushed by freighters. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be on the high seas alone in a 36-foot sail boat. I’ve been out on boats, but rarely out of sight of land. It’s an entirely different thing when it’s just your little boat bobbing on the water with no land in sight. That little boat seems awfully small and fragile.

Imagine Noah bobbing on the waves with his seven family members and an ark full of animals with no dry land in sight for nearly a year. I would imagine there some anxious moments on board with the wind blowing, the sea swelling, the boat creaking. There’s nothing quite like being on the open water to remind us that we are creatures of the dust, of the earth. The sea is an alien place to us. It’s a nice place to visit, perhaps, but we couldn’t live there. We belong to the dry land.

I get this sense when diving at times. In places where divers alway go, the fish have come to associate divers with food. But in more remote places like the channel islands, the fish and sea life kind of look at you with this surprised look that says, “What you are doing here? You don’t belong here.” On the water, we are only tourists, pilgrims, visitors.

Yet strangely, there is something about water that is not foreign or alien to us. We are all born out of water, suspended in our mothers’ wombs for nine months until her water breaks and we are born. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the whole earth was covered with water, the chaotic Deep, and the Spirit of God blew over the face of the waters, and the creative Word echoed over those chaotic waters and the dance of life began.

It’s all there in this miracle - the water, the darkness, the wind. Jesus walks on the water as though it were solid ground. He is the Lord of creation. “The sea is His for He made it.” He is Master of the wind and the darkness. They do His bidding.

And there is a bit more going on here. The ancient people believe that Leviathan, the great sea monster, the dragon, lurked under the Deep, the personification of evil and death. When Jesus walks upon the water as though He is taking a stroll in the park, He is walking on the back of Leviathan, treading the devil himself underfoot. He is the devil’s Lord too, and the old evil foe knows he’s no match. “He’d judged, the deed is done, one little word can fell him.”

Jesus intended to pass them by. Mark takes note of the detail. Jesus did not intend to stop and get in the boat, but pass them by. “How’s it going, boys? See ‘ya on the other side!” What on earth is that about? I’m not sure, but I suspect that Jesus was teaching them, as He is always teaching them, that He goes first. He leads, they follow. Even when they are rowing and rowing and getting nowhere against the wind, Jesus leads them as only Jesus can lead them. He goes before us through death to resurrection, bringing us along with Him. We are powerless against the chaotic forces that threaten us, but not Jesus. He is the Lord of life, the Lord of all creation, the Word. With Him the darkness is no threat, the winds obeys His command, the chaotic waters stand firm under His feet.

They thought they were seeing a phantom, a ghost. Superstitions abound, even today. Some people thought that water spirits came out at night signaling disaster. The mind can play tricks on you at night on the water. They were terrified, scared literally out of their wits. Jesus abandons ship on His object lesson and comforts them. “Didn’t mean to scare you, boys. Have some courage. It’s me. Don’t be afraid.” Or to translate it literally - Have courage. I AM. Fear not.

He got into the boat with them, and the wind died. The One who is the I AM gets into their boat, and they are safe. They would have been safe anyway, but they didn’t trust that. Not yet. They didn’t fully understand about the multiplied loaves and what it meant. Their hearts were stubborn, slow to believe, as our hearts are as well. Quick to panic, slow to trust, stubborn to believe.

What happens when you find yourself in choppy waters with the wind in your face at three in the morning? Will a Jesus walking on the water bring you comfort? Do you really think so? Or will you scream in panic the way those disciples did imagining you are seeing a ghost? Probably.

Here’s the point. For all the wonderful things the miracle reveals about Jesus, how He is the Lord of creation, the conquerer of the chaos, the One who tramples Leviathan under His feet, the One who has lordship over the sea and the wind, for all that awesome display of sheer divine power, there’s no comfort, no confidence, no hope, no faith. Now you see why faith can’t be based on miracles alone. Even the disciples, who were eyewitnesses to more miracles than you or I could ever expect to see in a hundred lifetimes, were slow to believe! This is one of the most amazing things you can read in the Gospels. You’d think, “If I were there with the disciples, I would have believed! I wouldn’t have been so dense, so slow to believe, so hardened.

Oh yeah? Think of how easily we fall into doubt, disbelief, panic. I do. It takes a lot less than a little boat on the water at the fourth watch of the night. The slightest perturbation in our peace and it’s as though we have no God, no salvation, so hope of eternal life, nothing. That’s the old nature at work, my friends. The inner sinner of ours that doesn’t take God at His Word or trust that He knows what He’s doing. And we think, somehow, that a little divine muscle exerted in our general direction once and a while.

Jesus gets in the boat with them. The wind ceases without a word. They are astonished and confused. They don’t understand. They can’t connect the dots. The loaves and fishes, the wind and waves and darkness. Jesus walking on the water. They can’t see it. This Jesus whom they are following is the eternal Word, God in the Flesh come to save them. Who can blame them? Who could see it? “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him.” No matter how many miracles I may see or experience in my own life, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit working through the Word and Sacraments I couldn’t believe, I wouldn’t trust Jesus, and neither would you.

It’s nice to hear and know about Jesus walking on the water in the wind at three in the morning. It’s saving to know Jesus walking on the water of your Baptism with the Spirit of God blowing over those baptismal waters. Walking on the sea, Jesus reveals Himself to be Lord of Creation; in the water of Baptism, He reveals Himself to be your Lord and Savior. That’s where the chaos of sin and death comes to an end; that’s where our fears are calmed, our life is restored. That’s where the new creation by water and Spirit happens, where we are born anew from above in a birth that leads to life instead of death. Baptism is our little lifeboat, our ark on the water with Jesus right there with us, holding us in His death, raising us in His life, holding our lives in a way we cannot.

Our lives as Christians, as baptized believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, is a life of continual unfolding and growth in what Jesus has done for us and who are already are in Jesus. Just as the disciples were “works in progress,” so we too are always growing into who we are in Jesus and who Jesus is for us. And there are going to be those times when the Lord sends you off in your little boat and lets you row with all your might against the wind and seems to leave you alone in the dark. And it’s for no other reason than to exercise that faith that His Spirit has created in you, to work that trust in His promises so that you might grow in faith, in knowledge, in love, in hope, in patient endurance, in character.

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian Christians shows this nicely. These are believers for whom Paul is praying, believers just like you and me. His words can easily be heard as praying for you. Hear them that way as I read his prayer again:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen. ]]> http://www.htlcms.org/266/20090808222659/audio/pentecost8B2009(proper12).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:19:34 +0000
Today is part two of what it means to be “in Christ.” Last week we heard the lengthy litany in glorious run-on fashion: In Christ we are blessed, in Christ we are chosen, in Christ destined for adoption, in Christ we are chosen, in Christ we are loved, in Christ we are redeemed, in Christ we have an inheritance for which our Baptism is a dow payment guaranteeing our possession. All in Christ.

Today, the apostle Paul expands on that theme of our being in Christ and focuses on our unity in Christ. In Christ we are now citizens of the commonwealth of God, members of God’s household, living stones built into a temple, the dwelling place of God by His Spirit. One people, one family, one temple in Christ.

In Christ, the walls come tumbling down. Walls that separate and divide. Walls the exclude and keep us away. In the OT, there was a great wall, the wall of separation between Israel and the nations, between God’s chosen people and all the other people, between the “circumcised” and the “uncircumcised.” The Law of God set the Israelite apart, consecrated him, made him “holy.” The Law said, “Do not touch, do not handle, don’t go near, be separate.” It set Israel apart from her Gentile neighbors with a wall of commandments the Gentiles did not have to keep. Dietary laws, Sabbath laws, feast days.

If you were an Israelite, you were different, set aside from birth from a holy purpose: to be the bearer of the Promised Seed to the nations of the world. To be the womb that bore the Messiah in the fulness of time. To bear the promise to Adam and to Abraham, that through the promised Seed of Woman, the offspring of Abraham, God would bless the nations. And so you were set apart.

From your mother’s knee, you learned not to associate with those “unclean ones,” the goyim, the uncircumcised. You didn’t eat at their tables, you didn’t play in their houses. Recall that the apostle Peter had to receive a three-fold visionary kick from the Lord before he would go to the house of the Gentile Cornelius, and even then he was uneasy about it and almost apologetic as he stepped through the door. Recall that the inclusion of the Gentiles, the uncircumcised, as full-fledged members of the church caused such a ruckus in the early church that they had to have a meeting in Jerusalem to sort out the logistics. When some visitors from Jerusalem came to Antioch to see what was going on, Peter visibly withdrew from the table of the Gentile believers and had to be publicly rebuked by Paul. The old walls come down slowly, and they come down hard.
We’re very familiar with walls. We have walls separating us from our neighbors. In the Midwest they used to say that strong fences make for good neighbors; here we have brick walls. We have “gated communities” with high walls and security gates. An outsider might mistake them for prisons locked from the inside.

Sin causes the walls to go up. Our sin separates us from God and sets us against one another. Sin divides, wedging between us and God. That’s the whole nature of sin at its heart, a wedge driven deep between us and God, leaving us alone, isolated, self-absorbed. It was for the sake of sin, you sin, that God put up His own wall, formed His own gated community called “Israel,” a nothing nation of nomads from Egypt, a chosen people set apart for one holy purpose - to bring forth the Christ at the right time.

Jesus was a Jew by birth, circumcised into Israel on the 8th day of HIs life. He walked on Israel’s soil. He also walked on Samaritan soil and Gentile dirt across the Jordan. He didn’t shake that dust from His feet, but He left His footprints there. He proclaimed the peace of God to those who were near - His fellow countrymen, who often rejected Him. And He preached peace to those who were far off - to the Gentiles who often welcomed Him. He reached out to the Samaritan woman at the well. He let the bread from Israel’s table fall to a Canaanite “dog.” He touched the lives of the Roman soldier, the synagogue ruler, the tax collector. He ate at the table of of the priest and Bible scholar along with the tax agent and the prostitute. He embraced the excluded and welcomed them to the kingdom of God; he warned the included that their religious self-justification put them on the threshold of exclusion.

The appearance of Jesus brought the division of the Israelite and the Gentile, of circumcised and uncircumcised to an end. The wall which had stood for some 1400 years cracked at the sound of His preaching, and tumbled to the ground as the earth shook in His death when the curtain of the temple, the dividing wall between holy and unholy was torn in two from top to bottom.

“When I am lifted up from the earth,” Jesus said, “I will draw all to myself.” In the death of Jesus, the wall that divides comes tumbling down and the world is one in Him. He has brought the far and the near together by His blood. He has made peace, reconciling the world to His Father, reconciling us to each other in His crucified body. His blood brings peace; His wounds bring healing; His separation bring our union. In Christ we are one in the most profound sense of the word “unity” - we are one with Christ and in Christ one with another.

But you say, “So why are we still divided? Why are Jew and Christian divided? Why are Christians divided among themselves? What’s all this ‘unity’ talk when the world is more divided than ever?”

And the answer is the same as it was last week. It’s all “in Christ.” This profound reality of our union with Christ and our unity with one another is all “in Christ.” It is not in ourselves. Were it left up to us, we’d be back in the business of wall building. We love our walls. Where they’ve been knocked down, we’ll try to build them back up again. Where God in Christ had torn down the wall between circumcised and uncircumcised, there were those in the church who tried to put the wall back up again. We do the same. We throw up walls of opinion, division, politics. Walls of jealousy, envy, anger. Walls of prejudice and pride. We take the body of Christ and tear it into a million pieces, each claiming to be the true one.

Yet there is but one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all. One Savior - the Lord Jesus Christ. One Spirit to whom we have access through Christ. We may come from different nationalities, speak different languages, have different cultures, but we all have a baptismal passport stamped “citizen of heaven.” You and I a citizens with the saints, members of the family of God. You are built on the firm foundation that God laid down - the prophets of the OT, the apostles of the NT, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone who sets everything straight and in order, the key that joins together the old and the new into one undivided people - a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a people who belong to God all in Christ. In Christ means you didn’t do it; you must believe it, trust it, take God at His Word on it.

The Church is never spoken of in individual terms in the Scriptures. Ever notice that? No “I am the church” and “you are the church” but only an inclusive “we” - together with the saints who have gone before us. We together are one people, one family, one temple of the Holy Spirit. You might say that Christ is the end of our idolatrous individualism, where each of us has made our selves into our own gods. Instead, we get ourselves back in a new way, a way free from the barriers and dividing walls of sin, a way that unites and embraces and gather and includes.

That’s what the Church is called to show forth into the world - our unity in Christ Jesus. One Baptism, one Bread, one Cup, one Savior with one Death and Resurrection for the life of the whole world.

Once you were far off, isolated, walled off, excluded. Now you have been drawn near, gathered, included. You belong. Your Baptism testifies. Christ’s Body and the Blood testify. You belong to the people of God. You belong to the family of God. You belong to the priesthood of Christ. You belong to the Body of Christ, the Church, the dwelling place of God by the Spirit of God.

You are privileged people. Gifted, holy, one in Christ.
Thanks be to Jesus!



In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/265/20090808222035/audio/pentecost7B2009(proper11).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:52:38 +0000
Seven times, at least, Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” or “in Him” to locate where the action is. Not in you nor in me. We’re dead in trespasses and sin. Paul will get to that in chapter 2. But here, it’s all in Christ, and that’s where our faith-attention needs to be focused. In Christ, not in ourselves. Take away the “in Christs” and “in Hims” and the whole sentence crashes in on itself and makes no sense. Let’s go through them, and you’ll see what I mean. Seven blessing of our being in Christ.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” That’s where your blessings are. Not in your selves, but in Christ. Not in the earthly places, but in the heavenly places. The earthly places are temporal, where things rust, rot, and decay, including you. The heavenly places are eternal. Your blessings are there for you, in Christ. You can have blessings apart from Christ, as unbelievers do. They get the rain and sunshine just as you do. But they can’t keep them forever. “You can’t take it with you,” as they say when they put you in a box. No you can’t. But your spiritual treasures are eternal, kept safely in heavenly places, in Christ. The way to enjoy them now is to be in Christ, baptized into Him, trusting in Him. More on that in a moment.

In Christ you were chosen before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him. In Him, not in your selves. You are not simply chosen, but chosen in Christ. There is a difference. Here’s the difference. You were chosen in love. It’s the only kind of choosing God does. He chooses in love, and in that love He destined you for adoptions through His Son to be adopted sons and daughters of God. You are loved in the Beloved Son. Not in your selves. There’s nothing lovable in there. In Christ Jesus, the beloved Son. Only Jesus is beloved in Himself as the Beloved Son. You are beloved in Him. And being loved in Him, you have a destiny established before you even came into existence. You are predestined in Christ to be adopted as one of God’s children.

Notice something. This “predestination” is in love and in Christ. There is no predestination in wrath. If anyone goes to hell, it is entirely against the will and purpose of God. You can tell that to your Calvinist friends. Predestination is a one-way deal - in love, in Christ, to become God’s child. This is God’s plan from eternity in Christ. From before the foundation of the world, you were elect in the Elect Son, chosen in the Chosen One, loved in the Beloved Son. That means you had nothing to do with it, which is why it is by faith alone apart from works. It’s all already a done deal in Jesus. Or as Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished.” What can you possibly add to that?

In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the blood He shed on the cross to save the world, the blood He puts in your mouths as wine for the forgiveness of your sins. This is His rich and lavish grace, undeserved kindness. You think you deserve any of this? Think again. You’re dead and trespasses and sin. His blood buys you back, covers yours sin, cleans up the mess you’ve made of your already messed up life. This is not simply a kind attitude in the heart of God. Grace is covered with blood, sacrificial, redemptive blood.

And it’s not just about forgiveness. The plan is even bigger, the implications are cosmic. God’s purpose is to unite all things, in heaven and earth, all things, in Christ. Literally, God wants to bring everything in heaven and on earth, the whole creation under one Head, that is, the lordship of Jesus Christ. Adam as head failed, and plunged the whole cosmic order into sin, death, decay, and chaos. We add our part as children of Adam. Each of us is a little chaos factory, wreaking our own divisive disorder where we go. It’s manifested with our families, our friends, our neighbors, and coworkers; in our dealings with strangers, with the world. The master plan is to recreate and bring all things under Christ whether in heaven or on earth. As Jesus said, “I am making all things new.”

We sometimes forget the cosmic effects of our sin. We think sin is some little private thing between us and God. We think sin is isolated and doesn’t have any far-reaching effects. And if you think that, you are dead wrong. One act of disobedience on the part of Adam, one little, solitary, isolated act against the Word of God brought devastation to what was a “very good” creation. Every sin adds to the disaster. It doesn’t matter how small - the petty theft, the white lie, that juicy bit of gossip. Oh, the big ones have big consequences but the little ones add up to one rebellious humanity and cosmos load of death.

But Jesus absorbed it all. Like a magnet, He drew all to Himself in His death. “It is finished.” For you, for me, for the world. Finished. Done to death. The plan is executed. The Son of God becomes the Son of Man and as Man takes the law’s sting in our place. In Christ you are forgiven, you are justified, you are sanctified and glorified. It’s all done, even as we sit you. You are glorified in Christ at the right hand of God. Your life, that is, your true life as you truly are in the eyes of God is now hidden with Christ in God. You can’t see it, touch it, taste it, or smell it. You must believe it, trust it, take Christ at His Word that He holds your life even now.

There’s more. We’re not done yet. In Christ we have obtained an inheritance. That’s a great Gospel, gift word - inheritance. How do you get an inheritance? You don’t earn it like wages. Someone has to die and he leaves it to you because you were in his good graces. That’s how you get an inheritance. But what would happen if no one told you that you were an heir? Imagine someone dying and leaving you ten million dollars but no one bothered to inform you. You would still be an heir, and there would be ten million bucks with your name on it, but if you don’t know it, you won’t claim it, and you’ll go on living as though you had nothing.

Listen to how Luther puts it in the Large Catechism. He’s right in line with this. He says, “The work is finished and completed, Christ has acquired and won the treasure for us by his sufferings, death, and resurrection, etc. But if the work remained hidden and no one knew of it, it would have been all in vain, all lost. In order that this treasure might not be buried but put to use and enjoyed, God has caused the Word to be published and proclaimed, in which he has given the Holy Spirit to offer and apply to us this treasure of salvation.” (Large Catechism III,38).

How are you going to enjoy an inheritance unless you know about it and claim it as your own? How are you going to enjoy salvation, life, forgiveness, peace with God unless you know about it? Now you see the purpose of the church: to broadcast salvation, to herald the good news of Jesus, to tell people they have an inheritance in heaven waiting for them in Christ Jesus who died and rose for them.

Paul, speaking on behalf of that first band of believers that God worked all things according to His good and gracious will that those who believed first would be to the praise of His glory. In Christ, they had an inheritance and were destined to serve the purpose of broadcasting the good news of Jesus to the world.

And now it gets to you, my friends. This run on sentence which runs on like a river having its source in the heavenlies now comes to you. “In Christ, you also, when you heard the Word of truth, the gospel of salvation, and believed in Him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.”

You heard it for yourselves. Christ died for you. His death is your death; His life is your life. The inheritance is yours. You heard it, and by the grace of God, you believed it. You are baptized, “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,” the promise that is to you and to your children, as St. Peter said on Pentecost. That baptismal Spirit is God’s down payment on your inheritance. The first installment. The first check with much more to come.

You can’t have it all just yet. It would be nice, I know, but you can’t handle it. It’s like a sixteen year old inheriting a million dollars. He doesn’t get it all it once because he’s not ready for a million bucks. He thinks he is, but everyone else knows he isn’t. It’s put in a trust fund and he gets a little bit but the rest is held in trust until he comes of age. Our flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. It is hopelessly soiled with sin; it is subject to decay. It can only die. But the inheritance that Jesus won for us is still ours. “The kingdom ours remaineth.” And we will “come of age” one day, in the resurrection, when the trumpet will sound, the dead will rise, and what you have heard and believed you will see for yourselves and acquire possession of what you now have by faith, all to the praise of His glory.

It is all in Christ and in no one else. Christ alone, as the youth group heard all last week at the youth conference Christ alone. In Him we are blessed eternally in the heavenly realms. In Him we are loved and destined to become the children of God. In Him we have redemption through His blood. In Him all things are united and come together as a new creation under His headship. In Him we have an inheritance that will never fade away. In Him we are marked as God’s dear children, baptized into His death - crucified with Jesus, buried with Jesus, raised with Jesus, glorified with Jesus.

All to the praise of His glory.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/262/20090802013140/audio/pentecost6B2009(proper10).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:46:50 +0000
All three readings this morning testify to the rejectability of the Word, its vulnerability, the fact that God forces Himself on no one. The prophet Ezekiel is sent to a stubborn people, a nation of rebels, a people with a track record of disobedience. Yet God sends His prophet anyway, Ezekiel, the “Son of Man.” God insists on being heard, He insists that His Word go out and that people hear it. But He forces no one. “Whether they hear or refuse to hear, they will know that a prophet has been among them.”

The apostle Paul was under attack in a congregation he had planted. The Corinthians’ ears were being tickled by false teachers who had ingratiated their way into the congregation and were speaking against Paul in his absence. Paul might have boasted of his strengths, of all the visions he had, of the wisdom God had given him, of all his mission successes, but instead, Paul boasts in his weakness. He boasts about how God didn’t answer his prayer for relief. When was the last time you heard a Christian boast about unanswered prayer?

He says he’s been plagued by a “thorn in the flesh.” I think it’s a person, an antagonist, someone who dogs Paul around and undoes his work after he leaves with rumors and innuendos and all those little ways we have to undercut someone else. I imagine this person following in Paul’s shadow, pretending to be a supporter, a “friend of Paul,” but then undermining his ministry when he is away so that people begin to doubt that Paul was the “real deal,” a true apostle speaking the God-honest Gospel.

Now you would figure that if Paul, a chosen apostle of the Lord, is having troubles with some pesky antagonist or whatever his “thorn in the flesh” was, that a simple prayer should have taken care of it. After all, Paul is an important person. He’s the “apostle Paul,” doing the Lord’s work, extending the church to uncharted regions, boldly taking the Gospel where no man has gone before. You would figure that God would clear a path for Paul and not have such an important person have to put up with thorns in the flesh.

But here’s the shocker. Three times Paul prays for relief, and three times he gets the same answer. “My grace is sufficient for you.” Remember that the next time your prayers aren’t answered. And this is not a simple “no” from the Lord, this “no” is full of meaning. “My power is made perfect in weakness.” This is the hidden strength of the cross of Jesus. The power of God is perfected in weakness, and this throws our religious machinery abruptly into reverse. Paul is content (yes, content!) with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. This is not the kind of stuff that impresses the winners of this world, I can assure you! And what sort of principle is this? “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

This isn’t the kind of success-oriented Christianity you are accustomed to hearing, whether you tune in to the TV preachers or you get a load from church bureaucrats. No one likes to admit to being a loser, and here is the apostle Paul bragging about it - When I am weak, then I am strong. This is a Jesus way of speaking.

Jesus went to His hometown of Nazareth, the place where He grew up. They knew Him there. They remembered when He was just “knee high to a grasshopper.” He’d played with their kids in the streets. He attended their synogogue. They knew Mary and Joseph. They’d contracted for his carpenter’s work. And now here He is, an itinerant teacher come home. And do they throw a parade and celebrate? No! They’re offended. Where did He get His wisdom from? We went to the same synagogue school as He did. Where did He get this power to work miracles? He’s a carpenter. We know His family. They were offended.

What offended them was how ordinary Jesus was. Just plain old Jesus, the guy next door with the calloused hands who built our tables and chairs or whatever it was He built. They knew His folks, they knew His family, they knew all about Him. He lived in their neck of the woods for thirty years and no one thought anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t like Tiger Woods. When Tiger was five years old swinging a golf club on the Johnny Carson show, you knew he was going places in the world of golf. But it’s not as though there was a glowing golden halo hovering over Jesus head when He was a kid. He was simply holy in a hidden sort of way. Imagine that - the sinless Son of God in human flesh goes completely unnoticed.

“A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” The Word is so deeply hidden in humility that even those who should know better overlook it. Mary forgot who Jesus was. His family forgot who He was and thought He had lost His mind. You see, we think holiness is something unnatural, something surreal, above and beyond us. That’s a testimony to how messed up we are with sin. We accept sin as “normal,” as just a part of being human. “We’re born that way,” we rationalize. And along comes God in human flesh, not simply a sinless man but God in the flesh, and He is unrecognizable.

This puzzles people, and well it should Our notions of holiness are completely trashed. Our notions about how God works are turned upside down and inside out. No displays of power, no coercion. Jesus couldn’t even do much in the way of miracles in Nazareth. He doesn’t use miracles to coerce people. The miracles are for the broken few, not the skeptical many. Jesus doesn’t put on a show. He’s not into celebrity. He even gives His sent apostles an exit strategy if they aren’t welcome - shake the dust off your feet and move on.

The Word is vulnerable and rejectable. It is like seed in soil that can be choked out or scorched or eaten up by birds. The Scriptures don’t impress the skeptic looking for the spectacular. No golden plates delivered by angels, no obviously supernatural origins other than the general editorship of the Holy Spirit. Not even a radioactive glow or something to make you go “Oooooo”, but that’s good or we’d read the Bible even less than we do. Like Jesus in the hometown synagogue, the Scriptures are easily dismissed by those seeking “something more.” It is simply a cobbled collection of sixty-six books assembled over 1500 or so years all revolving around one theme - God’s grace in His Son. Their glory is hidden under weakness.

Look at how the Word comes to us to weakness - Scriptures words, baptismal water, Eucharistic bread and wine. The strength is hidden. The glory muted. The gift is rejectable. Talk to anyone who rejects the Lord’s Supper, they all say the same thing: It’s only bread and wine. Or anyone who rejects Baptism: It’s only water. Or someone who rejects the Scriptures: It’s only the writings and opinions of men. Or anyone who rejects Jesus: He’s only a man, a carpenter from Nazareth who got crucified.

This is how God has chosen to deal with us - hiddenly, quietly, gently, humbly, rejectably. You may not have done it this way, but then you’re not God. You may want it some other way, but this is the way God has provided so that your faith, hope, and trust is not in displays of power but in the hidden strength of the cross. God has hidden His power and perfected it in weakness precisely to contrast His way with the world’s way, His power with the world’s power, His wisdom with the world’s wisdom.

But to those who receive Him, there is an infinite well of power, power to become the children of God. It is the power of sins forgiven, washed away by the blood of Christ crucified. The power of the open, empty tomb that conquers death forever. The power of the One who is seated at the right hand of God and reigning now over all things. That power perfected in weakness is the power that allows you to be content in any and all circumstances, to understand that God’s grace in Jesus truly is sufficient for you, that even in weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities, and whatever else gets thrown you way, you “more than conquer through Him who loved you.”

This is how the Scriptures depict the “victorious life” of the Christian. Not that our prayers get answered the way a can of Coke comes out of vending machine. Not that we have no ills or troubles in the world. Not that we don’t fail many times over. Not that we don’t suffer and even die. But that in all these things we are content in the fact that God’s grace, His undeserved kindness toward us in Christ, is sufficient for anything and everything.

In these days when success is measured by celebrity, by making a name for oneself (look at all the fuss over Michael Jackson’s funeral), our Baptism calls us to a different way of looking a things. To see strength in weakness, to see glory in the ordinary, to see our salvation in this humble carpenter from Nazareth and not to be ashamed of Him, for this seemingly weak Word is the power of God to save.



In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/261/20090716004951/audio/pentecost5B2009(proper9).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:08:47 +0000
Today’s Gospel is about some people who had to wait on the Lord. Jairus, a panic-stricken father whose twelve-year old daughter lay dying. Jairus was a “man of God” a ruler in the synagogue. He believed that Jesus could help his little girl. Jesus was his last hope. He fell at Jesus’ feet and begged Him, “Please, my little girl is sick and dying. Please, come to my house and lay your hands on her so that she would be well again and live. Please, Jesus.” It has to break the heart of every father to hear that anguished prayer. Mothers too. I picture Jairus taking Jesus hand and leading Him through the crowd, probably wishing he had the 1st century equivalent of a mars lamp to help him get through.

But as many ambulance drivers will tell you, the crowd doesn’t pull aside easily. Everyone’s agenda is important. People are pressing in on Jesus from every side. They all want something from Jesus. And here is Jairus trying to pull Jesus through the mob and get to his house before it’s too late. At this point, I’m wondering why Jesus doesn’t make life easy for Himself and just heal Jairus’ little girl with a word of promise. He’s done it that way before. Why not now? For that matter, why doesn’t Jesus just do away with disease in one swoop? Why go through all this trouble? Why not just do away with illness rather than healing the individual sick, which is a terribly inefficient way of doing things. Had Jesus done that, we wouldn’t have all the problems we now have with the health care system. For that matter, we wouldn’t need a health care system!

In the crowd was a woman who had been suffering from a bleeding for 12 long years, for as long as Jairus’ daughter had lived. Notice how the two are connected. She probably had something we might politely call “a female problem.” Twelve long years, leaving her weak and anemic and in despair. Twelve long years of dealing with doctors who took all her money but left her worse instead of better. Twelve long years of waiting, and now comes her chance. Jesus is going down the road, packed in by people. It’s a perfect opportunity to sneak up behind him, and to reach out among the mob of feet and ankles and touch his robe. It was considered “unclean” to touch a woman with such a condition. That’s why she wants to sneak up on Jesus. She knows He wouldn’t want to touch her.

It works. Her little scheme works! She reaches out and touches Jesus’ robe and immediately she senses she is healed. (I wonder what that felt like.) Jesus immediately spins around and says, “Who touched me?” He sensed that “power had gone out from Him. These healings, these miracles, cost Jesus something. Restoring order from chaos always costs energy. He sensed that divine, healing, creative energy had left Him the moment she touched His robe, and He has to know who did it.

But doesn’t Jesus already know? Isn’t He the all-knowing Lord? Yes, but He isn’t about anonymous miracles. This isn’t about tapping a bit of energy from some anonymous “higher power.” And she isn’t just or a medical statistic who’s suffered at the hands of her physicians for twelve years. Jesus takes this all very personally, as He takes you and your condition personally. Trembling with fear, she tells Him who she is and what she did. He calls her “Daughter.” “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Your trust in me is vindicated. You were right to come to me and touch my robe. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

She’s already healed, but He has to say it. Just as you’re already forgiven, but He has to say it. “Faith comes by hearing.” Faith delights to hear it. Faith always wants to hear more. In that very moment on that crowded street, Jesus is entirely there for her and for no one else. It’s as though she were the only person in the world and He must speak to her to tell her what she already knows but needs to hear.

But there’s Jairus and his daughter, and time is ticking away. Even as Jesus is speaking to the woman, word comes from Jairus’ house, the dreaded news no father wants to hear. “Your daughter is dead. That precious jewel of your life is gone. Don’t bother Jesus any more. There’s nothing He can do now.” Imagine the heartache. If only he had gotten to Jesus sooner. If only there wouldn’t have been this crowd. If only this woman hadn’t delayed him. If only….

“Do not fear, only believe.” Jairus trusted Jesus when daughter was sick and dying. Does he trust Jesus with her death? Do you trust Jesus when He doesn’t come through for you? When He delays? When He seems preoccupied with other things and other people? When He doesn’t seem to have time for you? When He makes you wait? When He permits someone you love to die? Do you trust Him then?

Death is the ultimate test of faith, the final frontier of our doctrine, our hymns, our liturgy, our beliefs. We can sit around here in church and sing hymns and pray and hope for the best, but everything we believe about Jesus comes to bear in death, especially the death of someone near. Jairus trusted Jesus, but how far? Jairus believe Jesus had power to heal. But raise the dead?

They go to the house, already filled with mourners weeping and wailing and making a commotion. He takes only Peter, James, and John with Him. Three eyewitnesses are sufficient to establish this truth. “Why the weeping? She’s not dead but asleep.” Jesus treats death as though it were nothing more than a sleep for Him, for that is what it is. But they laughed at Him. The world still laughs at Him. Perhaps we do as well in our doubting.

He takes her limp, dead hand in His. “Talitha cumi.” Aramaic, their mother tongue. As with the woman, so with this girl. Jesus is there for her completely, as though there were no one else in the world. “Little girl, arise.” And she does! She sits up, gets out of her bed, and walks. He tells them to give her something to eat. I like that little detail. It’s delightfully irrelevant but understandable. After all, how do you care for people who have just risen from the dead? Her anxious father’s wait was not in vain. His faith in Jesus was vindicated; his daughter was healed.

Are you willing to wait? Are you willing to wait like that woman who waited twelve long years for the day Jesus came to town? Are you willing to wait like Jairus on the road to his house? “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” Faith waits patiently, quietly, confidently trusting that in the end, Jesus will come through. Even if death intervenes first, that still hasn’t settled it. Jesus will come through.

We may wonder to ourselves: Jesus healed the blind man, why didn’t He just cure blindness? He healed the woman of her bleeding, why didn’t He just do away with disease altogether? He raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead, but I’m sure there were plenty of fathers in Israel, and in the rest of the world, who were grieving the death of a child and didn’t get them back.

The answer is found in this text and in these miracles. This is personal. Faith in Jesus is personal. Not private, as in “me and my Jesus off doing our own spiritual thing.” Person to person. A woman who had suffered for twelve years. A twelve year-old girl. You. Me. Jesus deals with each of us as though there were no one else in the world. And what He does with each of us is what is perfectly right and good for each of us. He baptizes us into His death. Each of us, by name. He forgives us our sins, saying into our ears what is always and already true. He puts the gifts of His sacrifice for the world, the bread of His body, the wine of His blood, into each of our mouths. “For you.” Take it personally.

These two healing, as all the healings recorded in the Scriptures, are little glimpses of the new creation that comes in Jesus’ death and resurrection. He died and rose to restore order, peace, health, wholeness, “shalom” as they say it in Hebrew. He died and rose to say to each one of us, “Your faith has healed you, go in peace.” He died and rose to extend His hand to each one of us and to say, “Child of God, arise. Walk about in freedom and life. Be fed.” He died and rose to bring us together where death has torn us apart. What Jesus did for that woman on the road and for that little girl and her father, He wants to do for all of us. And He has, by His dying and rising, by His baptizing and feeding, by His Word spoken to us.

For now there is waiting. Waiting in faith, in hope, in trust that the Lord is true to His Word. “For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though He cause grief, He will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast love; for He does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.”


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/256/20090704221048/audio/pentecost4B2009(proper8).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:59:25 +0000
Miracles come in various shapes and sizes. Some are small and isolated: Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever. Some are fun and almost frivolous: Jesus making 180 gallons of wine at a wedding run dry. This one is didactic and large, of “titanic” proportions, you might say. Jesus calms a storm on the sea of Galilee with two little imperatives. The wind and waves obey Him.

After a day of parable-speaking, the disciples load Jesus into one of their boats (at least four of them are fishermen, after all) to go across the Sea of Galilee, presumably to get a break from the crowds. They put Jesus in the boat “just as he was,” which is a rather odd way of putting it. “Just as He was,” perhaps suggesting that He was tired, near exhaustion, with heavy eyes and dragging feet, which would explain why He fell asleep so easily on the trip. Other boats went with them too, indicating that this miracle had plenty of eyewitnesses who could later corroborate this story with their “yes, I was there too.”

A great storm arose. That wasn’t surprising given the mountains that ring the Sea of Galilee and its penchant for sudden, evening storms. The boat was little and full of people; the waves were tall with wind chop, beating against the side of the boat and filling it with water. If you’ve ever been on a small boat in a storm, you know the feeling of smallness and insignificance as you bob up and down on the water with no frame of reference, no land in sight. Darkness makes it even worse.

It’s “all hands on deck” time, and everyone starts bailing water from the boat as the wind and waves continue to toss it around. And where’s Jesus in all this commotion? He’s sleeping in the back of the boat with His head propped up on a pillow. That’s right, sleeping. You would think that the Lord of creation would have a bit more “situational awareness” than this, wouldn’t you?

Let’s savor a few details. Jesus is in the back of the boat, where the rudder that controls the boat is. He’s sleeping on the proskephalion, which might very well be the captain’s cushion, the place where the captain of the boat sat to guide the rudder. So not only is Jesus asleep, he’s getting in the way, sleeping on the place where the captain is supposed to sit. If you stretch your imagination just a bit, you might see Jesus with one arm draped over the rudder as the boat bounces around the waves. Jesus, Savior, pilot me.

If I’m writing stories to concoct a “Jesus myth” I wouldn’t write a story like this. I wouldn’t include other boats and other people who could verify this story and potentially contradict it. I would make the disciples more manly, more heroic, standing strong against the wind and the waves. And I’d put Jesus in the front of the boat, large and shining in the darkness, maybe with a staff in His hand extended out over the waves like Moses before the Red Sea, maybe a few lightning bolts coming out of His staff for a little special effect. I would not have a bunch of cowardly disciples in a boat with a sleeping Jesus who is apparently oblivious to the situation. But then, I’m not writing the story.

Well, of course, a sleeping Jesus is about as useful as a missing or dead Jesus. He’s dead weight on a sinking ship. So the disciples do the natural thing and wake Him up. Wouldn’t you? Of course you would! We need all hands on deck, and I know it’s been a long, hard day of teaching in parables and all that, but if you don’t wake up, Jesus, this boat’s going down faster than the Titanic. “Teacher, don’t you care if we perish?”

There’s the big question lurking in the middle of this miracle like a dark, ominous cloud of doubt. “Don’t you care if we perish?” Or are you just going to sleep through the whole thing? The whole thing turns out to be a big object lesson in trust, which is what makes it a didactic miracle, a teaching miracle. If you’ve ever taught anyone, you know there are a variety of ways to do it. You can lecture. You can offer up little puzzlers like the parables. And you can create “teachable moments,” experiences that drive home a point. This is definitely a teachable moment - darkness, wind, waves, sinking boat, sleeping Jesus. What do they believe about Him? Do they trust Him?

Do we? Do we trust Him when our little boat is being buffeted and our lives appear to be in peril and we’re bailing with all our might but the water is coming in faster than our buckets can toss it. Our arms are aching, our hearts are pounding with panic, and Jesus is nowhere to be seen. He may as well be asleep at the right hand of God for all we know. Do you trust the Jesus who sleeps through the storm and who seems comfortable amidst the chaos? Do you trust the Jesus who leaves you with nothing but a Baptism, a Word, a bit of bread and wine, and a promise? Or do you want more? Do you want to “wake Him up” and put Him to work? Do you trust that this sleeping Jesus on the cross is sufficient to cover you on the Day of Judgment, that in the silence of HIs death the chaos is ordered, the storm is calmed, judgment is averted?

I did a little bit of flying this week, first up to Palo Alto to speak at a campus ministry conference then to Chicago for the funeral of a high school friend who died suddenly in her sleep on Sunday morning. The approach into Chicago was one of those bumpy rides where the air over Chicago resembled the potholes of the streets below. If you’ve flown into Chicago’s Midway airport, you’ve experienced the kind of landings that are more like setting down on the USS Midway. Our landing was one of those side to side rhumbas that leave you wondering whether you will deplane at the assigned gate or in the rental car lot.

I happened to be reading a book by outspoken atheist Sam Harris in which he pleads for Christians to give up their dangerous and irrational beliefs in the interest of global peace and love, and I began to wonder as the plane flopped around the sky whether this was really a wise choice of reading material. Perhaps the inflight magazine or a sudoku puzzle might have been more spiritually edifying than the marginally coherent ramblings of a man who hates religion. I wondered how someone who doesn’t believe there is a God much less a Savior approaches a bumpy flight. Does he have a moment of inner panic and wonder, “What if I’m wrong about this God thing after all?” Does he say a quick prayer the way a non-gambler might play a stray quarter in a slot machine? I found myself wondering whether Jesus would guide us safely pilot us to our destination or maybe shake things up a bit to teach whatever sort of lesson each of us might get put of it or just let us drop from the sky like that flight from Brazil that crashed into the Atlantic killing everyone aboard. I’m sure there were a few praying believers aboard that flight too.

Job and his friends wondered about these things as Job sat in sackcloth and ashes, scraping the sores on his body and contemplating the loss of his family, his property, and literally everything he had except his wife who encouraged him to “curse God and die.” His three friends weren’t much more help, tormenting him with a theology of glory that went something like “get right with God and God will get right with you.” Finally, God intrudes into the noise in a whirlwind and asks a bunch of rhetorical questions like, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of earth?” and “Were you around when I shut in the sea and set its boundaries?” and offers no concrete explanation for anything except to say, “I’m God and you’re not God, and that’s good.”

Whether it’s a sinking ship or a bouncing airplane or a life thrown into chaos by cancer cells or a bad economy, there are those moments where all you can do is trust the One who died on a cross and rose from the dead, which is all the disciples had at the moment they woke Jesus up from His sleep with their “Lord, don’t you care” question. And the answer to that question is spoken from the cross, “Yes, I do care. It is finished.” And so that they would learn to trust Him in the sleep of His death and their death, Jesus awakes and rebukes the wind and sea the way someone says “Be quiet” to a barking dog. Two little words, and the wind and waves obey Him.

I would add in passing that no “laws of nature” were violated in the performance of this miracle. Gravity still held things down, and buoyancy still kept the boat afloat. Storms quiet down all the time, sometimes rather suddenly and for no good reason, and we don’t cry out “it’s a miracle.” What is miraculous about this event is that storms don’t ordinarily cease by someone talking at them like some storm whisperer. But when the voice is the One who is the creative Word, the one who was there in the beginning when the foundations of the world were laid, when the chaotic waters were tamed, when sea and dry land were separated, all it takes is a couple of words to straighten everything out again. He is the Lord of creation, and the wind and waves have no choice but to obey their Maker.

Jesus has a question for His much relieved, soggy disciples? “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” That rings in our ears too, in our moments of doubt and disbelief. Why are you so afraid? Don’t you yet believe? And the honest answer is “Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.”

The storm is quieted; their fears redirected. “Who is this, that even the wind and sea obey Him?” Good question. They don’t fear the storm anymore. Or the waves. Or their own death. Now they fear Jesus the Lord, which is the beginning of anything that can remotely be called wisdom. And trust. Calming storms is child’s play for the Creator. Jesus can do it in His sleep. Conquering death takes the sleep of death on a cross. And having awakened from that sleep, He says to His disciples and to each of you: “Do not fear. Peace be with you. Your sins are forgiven. Your death is conquered. When wind blows, and the waves crash, and your boat goes down, remember, I’ve already gone down into death for you and you’ve already gone down to death with me in the water of your Baptism. You are safe in my death. Do not fear.”


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/255/20090704220126/audio/pentecost3B2009(proper7).mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:29:55 +0000 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit


Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory. (Isaiah 6)

And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. (Athanasian Creed)

Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity.

In case you can’t already tell, it is Holy Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost devoted to the sublime mystery of God’s tri-unity as three distinct Persons in one, undivided Being. If you think you’re going to go home today understanding the doctrine of the trinity better than when you arrived, think again. If you’re looking for some tidbit of relevance, a little nugget of inspirational uplift, a sweet hour of prayer, you may be disappointed. Today’s menu is doctrine. Theology. God-talk.

Christian apologist Dorothy Sayers summarizes the popular thinking on the doctrine of the trinity this way:

Q: What is the doctrine of the Trinity?
A: “The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the whole thing incomprehensible.” It’s something put in by theologians to make it more difficult - it’s got nothing to do with daily life or ethics. (Creed or Chaos, 33).

That’s probably representative of the thinking of many people. Thomas Jefferson hated the doctrine. Pop atheist Richard Dawkins cites it as evidence for the obscure pettiness of Christianity. Even devout religious types might bridle a bit at those frightfully exclusive sentences in the Athanasian Creed: “This is the catholic faith, except everyone keeps whole and undefiled, without doubt, he will perish eternally.” How dare we speak in riddles and then threaten everyone who doesn’t believe with the eternal fires of hell?

Our minds do not especially like paradox, two mutually contradictory things held together, side by side. If my wife asks me if I will be home for dinner in the evening or going out, “yes” is not an acceptable answer. Are you Democrat or are you Republican? Both. See, you don’t like it either. Is the Bible man’s word or God’s Word? Yes. Is Jesus God or man? Yes. Is the baptized believer a sinner or a saint? Yes. Is God three or is He one? You get the idea.

I like to call the doctrine of the trinity the paradox of plurality - having one God and three Persons without having three gods or one person. There are two ditches on the road of the trinitarian paradox. The one is tri-theism, what the Muslims charge us with, that we worship three gods not one God. That’s also the claim of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who love to leave tracts at our church’s door because of our name - Holy Trinity. The other ditch is to have one God wearing three masks or costumes - a Father mask, a Son mask, and a Holy Spirit mask.

Some say that the idea of the “trinity” wasn’t invented until the 4th century, a claim for which there is some measure truth. The words “triune” and “trinity” are not found in the Scriptures, and the language of “person” and “essence” don’t get formalized until the Nicene creed.

But the paradox of God’s plurality is already there from the beginning, the opening verses of the Bible where the “Spirit of God” hovered over the waters of creation and the Word called everything into being. The word for “God” (Elohim) is a plural, and would have been translated “gods” instead of “God” except for the Bible’s insistence that there is one God and no other.

When God speaks within Himself, He speaks in the plural: Let us make man in our image, in our likeness. There is YHWH, and the Spirit of YHWH, and the angel of YHWH, to whom Moses spoke in the burning bush. There are all those three-fold blessings and praises: The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord makes HIs face shine on you and be gracious to you, The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. There is the song of the seraphim that Isaiah heard and we sing in the liturgy: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” Not just one holy, but three, yet one Lord of hosts.

Now all of that could be more or less explained away by some figures of speech and a God who wears three masks with matching hats, until the Son of God, the second Person of the undivided Holy Trinity, took on flesh and showed his face to the world. Now you have a problem. You see Jesus in His Baptism, but who is that Voice declaring “This is my beloved Son” and what about the descending dove?

And then there’s this problem: Jesus prays to His Father in heaven and teaches His disciples to do the same thing. He tells them “I and the Father are one thing” and that to see Him is to see the Father, yet He also says He is going to the Father and that He will pray to the Father on their behalf.

And this: Jesus promises to send another One, a Paraklete, a Comforter who comes at His bidding from the Father. Not just a force or a breath but a Person who can be grieved and sinned against. Finally, to cap the whole paradoxical thing off, Jesus tells His disciples just before disappearing to make disciples of the nations by baptizing “in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of Holy Spirit.” One divine Name, three Persons (including Himself), it’s enough to make you want to scream or seriously consider taking up another religion.

But don’t worry, you don’t have to understand it, be able illustrate it, or even fully grasp it. You just have to trust it, that is, take Jesus’ word for it. Since He’s the one who died and rose, His is a good word to take. He’s the One who sends the Spirit into our hearts as a down payment on our resurrection, and He’s the One who brings us to the Father by way of His death and resurrection. Jesus is at the center of the Trinity, and He’s the One who will bring you into the triune life of God. Now that may not be completely satisfying to either your curiosity or your skepticism, but that’s all you’re going to get and it’s all you need. This doesn’t mean we either check our brains at the door or let them roll out of our heads, but we recognize that our vocabulary for God-talk is limited to analogy and some cooked up words like “triune” and “trinity.”

Think about it for a second. How is an infinite, n-dimensional, eternal God going to make Himself known to us finite, three-dimensional creatures who are naturally near-sighted when it comes to spiritual matters, except to enter our space and time and hang out with us? And how are we to talk about God except in three dimensional, finite terms? That’s why you can’t come up with a decent illustration for the trinity that doesn’t manage to drive straight into one or the other ditch. That’s why you can’t prove the existence of God in scientific terms. But God has accommodated Himself to us, revealed Himself to us. He has reached out and down to us on our level, in our space and time. “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” That’s how we know God concretely - not as a doctrine or a formula or a creed but as a person, the person Jesus Christ.

This is how the Father loved the world, by sending the eternal Son to suffer and die for the sin of the world, so that everyone who trusts Him and His death will live forever. In the Son, the Father was reconciling the world to Himself. By the Spirit, the Son is revealed and His gifts are given that bring us to the Father as the children of God.

This is why the doctrine of the Trinity is important - to lose the Trinity is to lose Jesus as Lord, as the one and only mediator between the Father and humanity, as the Savior who dies the death of God in our human flesh to save humanity and the cosmos, as the One who reconciles the world to Father, as the creative Word who died to save His own creation.

To be baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is to be baptized into the triune life and love of God. It is to be in Christ, held in His death and life - crucified with HIm, raised with Him, glorified and seated with Him. It is to have the Holy Spirit as guarantee and pledge of the resurrection, to be a living temple of the Spirit of Life who stirs up in our hearts the cry of God’s children, Abba, Father. It is to be called a child of God.

You are baptized, you are forgiven, you are held in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The triune life and love of God are yours. You have been born again “from above” with the water-Spirit birth that makes you a new creation in Christ. You are given to pray “our Father,” to call God “Father” with the delight of a beloved child held in the beloved Son.

And if we struggle with words and even have to invent a couple to summarize this paradox of plurarity, that God is three and one at the same time, depending on how you are speaking, well, so be it. By what rule do we say that God is supposed to be simple and explainable? And if we don’t fully understand the paradox of God at least we are given to know Him and His love for us? Can you claim to understand all the people in your life and be able to explain them? Why should God be any less or different?

The operative word for today is worship. It’s all you can do. We don’t claim to understand much less comprehend God. We claim only to confess and worship one God in three Persons and three Persons in one God. And thanks to Jesus, it’s all there is to do.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/254/20090621130556/audio/trinityB09.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 31 May 2009 08:38:03 +0000
Timing is everything when it comes to grand openings. You need to kick things off when there are people around. And so God chooses the festival of Pentecost, one of the big feasts on the Old Testament calendar. It was part harvest festival, part religious festival. The harvest festival was for the harvesting of the winter wheat 50 days after Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. (“Pentecost” is the Greek word for fifty.) Fifty days after the unleavened bread comes the harvest of new winter wheat. At the time of Jesus, Pentecost was also a celebration of the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

Pilgrims packed Jerusalem from all over the Mediterranean, from northern Africa as well as Asia. Estimates have as many as 150,000 coming together. As I said, timing is everything and God’s timing is perfect. Fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus comes the first harvest of believers, men and women who heard the preaching of Jesus and were baptized. 3000 were baptized by the end of that day. Now that’s quite a grand opening.

It happened around nine o’clock on a Sunday, coincidentally, the same time we happen to gather here at Holy Trinity. The believers, all 120 of them, were gathered together in a single room. There was the sound of great wind and tongues of fire rested on each of them. Jesus was blowing His Spirited-breath over His little Church. He had already done this with His apostles on that first Easter evening when He breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Now, seated at the right hand of God, the ascended and glorified Lord Jesus breathes out on His Church, and with His breath comes the fire of the Holy Spirit.

This is what Jesus promised when He said He would send another Paraclete, a Helper, a Counselor, Guide, Comforter who would bring glory to Jesus by declaring HIs gifts, by convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, by bringing to mind all that Jesus had said and done. The Spirit is the breath of Jesus and the breath of the Church, breathing life into dry, dusty bones, raising up from sin and death, enlivening, enlightening, gathering. As God breathed into Adam and he became a living being, so Christ breathes life into His Church, and His Church comes alive.

The Spirit gives breath to the Church’s preaching. In order to speak, there has to be breath. Jesus breathes into His Church, not for the Church’s sake, but for the world. As He died for the world and lives for the world, so His Spirit is a gift to the world through the Church. Filled with the Spirit, the Church cannot be silent - she becomes a speaking, preaching, proclaiming Church.

The preaching of the Church is custom fit to the ears of the hearers. They had come from all over the known world, each with their own language, dialect, and culture. Walk through a major airport like LAX and you will get some idea of what that crowed might have looked and sounded like: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judean, Cappadocians, Asians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, Libyans, Cyrenians, Romans, Cretans, and Arabs. Talk about diversity! And they all hear the same good news of Jesus in their own tongue. It’s as though someone had strapped on a set of headphones, as they do in the United Nations, and everyone heard Peter and the other apostles speaking in their own native tongues. These were Galileans. Fishermen. Marginally educated men who normally spoke Aramaic and maybe a smattering of Greek along with some synagogue Hebrew.

Naturally, some were skeptical. Some thought they were drunk, which, when you stop and think about it is a pretty goofy explanation considering a) it was nine o’clock in the morning and b) language skills generally don’t improve with drinking. No, this wasn’t the result of alcoholic spirits but the Holy Spirit, the creative breath of God blowing through His Church and out into the world making all things new in the death and life of Jesus.

What a day that must have been! Imagine being in that crowd, hearing the death and resurrection of Jesus preached in your very own language, your nouns and verbs, your dialect and accent. For a brief moment, the curse of Babel was not lifted but accommodated; the separated world was brought together as one around Jesus; the wall of division that keep humanity apart were lifted just enough. And at the close of the day, 3000 people from all over the known world were baptized into the name of Jesus. Many of them returned to their homes, scattered like salt sprinkled on the whole world or seed scattered on a field. You can imagine a whole bunch of little congregations springing up all at the same time, like spring flowers blooming in the desert.

Let’s be honest. There are times when the Church today would appear about as lifeless as the valley of dry, dead bones the prophet Ezekiel saw. Or maybe that describes your own spiritual life. And the question on our lips may be the same question posed to Ezekiel: Can these bones live? Can these dry, dead bones take on flesh and breath again? Can the Church continue to live and move and breath and proclaim in this current generation?

To ask “Can these bones live?” is to ask “Can God raise the dead?” Can He breath life into the lifeless? Can He revive and renew and recreate His Church? And, of course, the answer was and still remains as resounding “yes.” Of course He can, and He does, and He will by His Spirit, His breath and His words.
The danger is that we try to recreate Pentecost for ourselves, to duplicate the grand opening event in our time complete with wind and fire and speaking in tongues. But you know what would happen in the matter of a month or two of all that. It would become ordinary, mundane, boring even. Same old wind, same old fire, same old speaking in tongues. And we’d be looking for something new all over again. You can’t recreate that first Pentecost Sunday. It has to sit there, where it belongs in history.

But Christ is living and breathing over all creation from the right hand of God. His Spirit blows like a fresh breeze across the face of the earth all the time, igniting Pentecost fire all over the place. Today as we speak, Christianity is booming in Africa and Asia, much to the amazement of those who would declare it dead in America and Europe. Luther wisely noted that the work of the Spirit is like a local rain that blows here for a while and then moves on only to return another day.

The danger is that we take our eyes off of Jesus, which is where the Spirit wants them, and put them instead on all the Pentecost pyrotechnics or on the Spirit HImself, who vastly prefers to bring glory to Jesus and stay out of the limelight. Our confidence in the Spirit’s presence and working is not in wind or fire or tongues, but in the preaching of Jesus, in the hearing of His forgiveness, of Holy Baptism, of the Body and the Blood, of the Word. That’s where the Spirit is active, that’s where Pentecost is happening today, here and now, for you.

Your Baptism is your Pentecost Day. Every time you hear the Word of Christ addressing you in your own language is your Pentecost. Whenever you eat of the bread that is Christ’s Body and drink of the cup that is His Blood and proclaim the Lord’s death, that is Pentecost for you. The ongoing work and life of Pentecost is not in the wind and the fire and the tongues, but in the Word that brings repentance and faith in Jesus. And there hasn’t been a day in the history of the world where that hasn’t been going on since that first Pentecost 2000 years ago.

The real miracle, far greater than anything that happened that day, is that the Church has survived all these years since. She has survived divisions, heresies, persecutions, threats, hardships, doubts, fears, corrupt clergy, false believers, and what could best be described as gross mismanagement. If the church were any other organization or human institution, it would have died its own death long ago.

But the Spirit of Christ breathes life into His Body the Church. The Spirit of Christ puts breath into our lungs and words into our mouths and ears. The Spirit of Christ opens our lips that our mouths may declare the praise of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. The Spirit of Christ continues to call, gather, enlighten, sanctify, and keep the Church, the body of Christ, in the one, true faith. And you are part of that great breathing Pentecost church bearing witness to the world that these dead, dry bones of ours will live just as surely as Jesus is risen and lives. His death is yours, His life is yours, HIs Spirit is yours.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/253/20090602164004/audio/pentecostB09.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 24 May 2009 09:02:53 +0000
He first prays to the Father for HImself. “Father, the time has come. Glorify your son, that your Son may glorify you.” He knows the His glory is in His death, His being lifted up on the cross, drawing all men to Himself, and in so doing, bringing glory to the Father. He knows that the way of glory is to come from God, go through death and the grave, rise from the dead, and return to that glory by way of His ascension. He glorifies our humanity in His humanity, taking our human flesh, bone, and blood through death and the grave to the right hand of the Father. This is His glory, and this is how He brings glory to the Father.

He then prays for those men gathered around Him in the upper room; His inner circle of apostles, those He would send. They were given Him by the Father, and He has taught them everything that comes from the Father. He has given them the Father’s words and they received them. They believe that He came from the Father as the only-begotten Son. They are His apostles, His sent ones, His authorized representatives who would speak “in His stead and by His command.” He was “leaving,” withdrawing His visible presence from the world, but they would remain. Jesus would go to the Father, but they would remain in this world to proclaim Him.

Finally, in the third and last part of His high priestly prayer, Jesus prays for all believers, “for those who will believe in me through their word.” He prays for their unity in union with Him, that the world would know that the Father sent the Son and loves His believers as His own Son.

Today’s text is the second portion of that prayer, the part about the apostles, those the Father gave Him to send into the world. We believe that the apostles, though unique, are not confined to those men who were with Jesus that night in the upper room. We know that from Matthias, who, as we heard in our reading from the book of Acts, was added later to fill the vacancy of Judas. Matthias was not there in the upper room, but by the call of God was added to make a Twelve. And then there was Paul, number thirteen, the “untimely born” apostle no one really asked for or wanted. We believe that the ministry of the apostles continues today in what we have come to call the pastoral office or the office of the holy ministry. The apostolic Church has an apostolic office, not by succession of persons, but by the action of the Word of the crucified, risen, and reigning Lord Jesus Christ who continually establishes His office that His voice would be heard in His Church until the end of time.

And so one might rightfully say here, that in praying for His apostles, Jesus is also praying for His pastors, for His office and its officeholders.

Jesus prays first that His joy might be fulfilled in them. Apostolic ministry is to be joyful ministry, filled with the joy of Jesus who in His joy endured the cross and scorned its shame. This is no “smile and be happy” kind of joy that the world proffers; it is nothing less than the joy of salvation, the joy of sinners justified for Jesus’ sake, the joy of sins forgiven.

I’ll be the first to admit that the holy ministry can become a joyless task and even a burden. Sometimes it’s our own fault. We clergy can be a burdensome lot - complaining, whining, carrying on as if Jesus were not reigning from the right hand of God. Sometimes though, it’s because the church has come to expect anything and everything from her pastors except the one needful thing, the Word of life and salvation. We want coaches, counselors, executives, motivators, equippers, you name it, everything but shepherds, pastors who will lead the flock to good pasture and clean, clear water.

The joy of ministry is not being liked or appreciated but the joy of people coming to a deeper sense of their sinfulness and to a yet deeper faith in Jesus. The most joyful work of a pastor happens at the font, at the altar, in the pulpit, in the confessional, and wherever the Word of Christ is having it’s faith-making way. That’s the joy of Jesus, who prays that His apostles would be filled with His joy.

He reminds them, as they overhear this prayer, that the world will hate them on account of the Word. This is true. Put on a clergy collar and you will either be loved or hated, but there will be very little middle ground, unless someone doesn’t make the connection. Sometimes I try to hide it when I slip into the Home Depot or the grocery store on an errand and pop off my collar, but I’m still a dead giveaway, a sitting duck either for scowls or serious conversation. There is no avoiding it; it’s wrong to avoid it. It comes with the turf. The prophets experienced the same thing. They bore the Word in the world, and the world was none too pleased with it.

Like Jesus Himself, His ministry is “in the world yet no of the world.” And here we find the two great denials that occur. The first is to remove oneself from the world. To live in isolation, to wall yourself off from the world, to avoid contact. But Jesus prays that His ministers not be removed from this world but immersed in it. Jesus embraced the world in His death, and His apostolic ministry embraces the world in the name of Jesus. That will bring you into contact with some parts of the world we might rather avoid - the misfits of the world, the untouchables, the lepers of our day.

Like Jonah, we board our ships to Tarshish in hopes of escape, only to find ourselves swallowed up by a big fish and barfed out once again on the dry land of our vocations. The church too needs to fight this tendency to circle the wagons and preach only to the choir. We are in the world, and there is no hiding from it. There’s no need to hide from it or cower from it. Jesus has already overcome the world.

The other great denial is that we become “of the world.” We lose our saltiness, we hide our lamp, we become indistinguishable with the world. Not of the world means that we are different. Pastors are held to a higher standard of conduct, as well they should be. You don’t expect your pastor to get drunk on Saturday night, or any other night. You wouldn’t be pleased if your pastor was shacked up with his girlfriend or cheating on his wife. You wouldn’t be happy to find out that your pastor cheated on his income tax or didn’t show up for church on Sunday. And rightly so. Not just because he’s the pastor and paid to be the pastor, but because he is to be an example for everyone.

As baptized believers in Christ, we are called to be in this world and yet not of this world, to engage this world and be an active part of it, and yet not to draw our identity from it nor to conform ourselves to its ways. You are different, set apart, consecrated, “holy.” A chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. The world will consider you weird, a resident alien within its borders. Like OT Israel among its neighbors, called to be holy, consecrated, set apart to point to Yahweh, the Creator and Redeemer, the merciful One.

We are called to bear witness to the truth - pastor and people together. Sanctify them by the truth; your Word is truth. Truth is a slippery term these days. Plastic and malleable. We seem to be unclear as to what is truth. God’s Word is truth; Jesus is Truth. He doesn’t just speak the truth, He embodies all truth. That doesn’t mean that Christians are infallible, that we are right all time. We’re not. You can have the truth and still be wrong when you do not speak the truth in love or love in the truth.

Jesus taught us to pray “hallowed by Thy Name.” May your Name be hallowed, holy. May it be holy on our lips as we pray, praise, give thanks, confess, bless, witness. “O Lord, open Thou my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” God’s Name is holy when we speak the truth about God and about ourselves, the truth of our sinfulness, our brokenness, our lost condition and the truth of Jesus and His forgiveness, His righteousness, His redemption.

And we pray also that God’s Name would be hallowed in our lives, as the Word of Truth has its way with us - killing us to sin, raising us to life, guiding us in the path of righteousness. It’s the Word - Christ - on our lips and in our lives that makes you and me a holy people, a holy ministry, a holy church.

The Word and the prayer of Jesus are what keeps the church and her ministry going even after all these years. It’s been nearly 2000 years since Jesus disappeared in His ascension, and yet His Word is as living and active today as ever. Yes, it has opposition, it is hated, despised, ignored, ridiculed by the world. And yet the Word remains stubbornly embodied in the Church - her pastors and her people - in the world yet not of the world for the life of the world. And that is the Truth.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/252/20090526174654/audio/7easterB09.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 17 May 2009 14:36:35 +0000
The scene is the upper room, Jesus with His disciples. It is evening, the evening of His betrayal leading to His arrest, trial and crucifixion. He washed their feet. He gave them His Body as bread, His Blood as wine. He taught them. He prayed for them. It’s in this context, the context of His impending death, His laying down His life for the life of the world, that Jesus says, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

Love. The word comes up several times in the Gospel and Epistle reading. “Abide in my love. Greater love has no one than this, that he lays down his life for his friends. Love one another.” Love is a slippery word. Frightening sometimes. The Greeks had four words, we only have one unfortunately.

The Greeks could speak of storge, nurtured, needy love. A child nestling the breast of his mother. A mother dog with her litter. What CS Lewis described as “all in a squaking, nuzzling heap together, purrings, lickings, baby-talk, milk, warmth, the smell of young life.” There is no need to command this sort of love. It’s instinctual.

There is eros. Erotic love, passionate love. The is the love we “fall into” when we “fall in love.” It is sexual, romantic, moving. The Song of Solomon speaks in these terms. Again, it requires no commandment except to keep it properly confined.

There is philos, the love of friendship. Philadelphia. Brotherly love. It’s the love of friends, the people you like and who like you. It’s two people walking side by side in trust. You can trust your friend with your backside and a loaded gun. Like the others, it requires no commandment. This is about the people we like. Who needs a commandment to love those we like?

Then there is agape, the word from today’s text. Sacrificial love. Laying down one’s life for another love. Unconditional love. Love to the loveless and unloveable. Divine love. God is agape, God is love. This love goes to the very essence of God. This love has its source in God Himself. The Father loves the Son. The Father loves the world by sending the Son. The Son loves by laying down His life, offering Himself, giving Himself up. This love is an act of will, an act of promise, a divine will to love that which is not loveable. It is the only kind of love that must be commanded. There is no need to command storge, eros, and philos. They all happen. But not agape, it must created and called forth.

Paul wrote a description of agape in his first letter to the Corinthians. This is sometimes read at weddings, and that’s fine, but the actual context is the Christian congregation. He says agape is patient and kind. It is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Agape bears all things, trusts all things, hopes all things, patiently endures all things.

You say, “I can’t love that way,” and you’re right. You can’t. This is God’s love - His love to you, and His love through you to others. You can’t love this way. God loves in this way, and you get to be in that love. That’s why Jesus begins not with a commandment to love but with His own love. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” The first thing is to be on the receiving end of Jesus’ love. To abide in His love.

How do you do that? By keeping His commandments. Don’t get distracted by the word commandments. If I say mandates, will that help? Mandates. “If you keep, cling to, hold fast to, my mandates, you will abide in my love. What does this mean? We could paraphrase it this way: As you live your Baptism, hear my Word, eat and drink my Body and Blood, you will abide in my love for you. Those are His mandates. That’s why they are so important. Not as commands to make God love us, but as means by which we abide in His love which is always there.

Love is not an abstract verb. It is always concrete, an action verb. In love, Jesus lays down His life to save. In love, He joins us to Himself in His death and life in Baptism. In love, He gives us His Body and Blood. In love, He forgives us, feeds us, clothes us, blesses us. And we abide in His love as we place ourselves into the beam of His love. His love forces no one. But be forewarned. You can’t claim to love Jesus yet hate His mandates. You can’t claim to love Jesus yet despise His Baptism. You can’t claim to love Jesus yet reject his forgiveness.

You can’t claim to love Jesus and stay away from His Supper. I can claim to love my wife, but if I’m never at home and we’re never together, you will rightly begin to question my love, and so will she.

Agape is not an option. It goes with the flow. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have love you.” Jesus’ love comes first. He loves you death in His death on the cross. He lays down His life for you and calls you His “friend.” What a friend we have in Jesus! You didn’t choose Him, even if it seemed as though you did. You may have decided to follow Him, committed your life to Him, pray to Him, to obey Him, and you well you should, but you didn’t choose Him. He chose you.

He chose you and appointed you to bear fruit, lasting, abiding fruit. Fruit that doesn’t rot, fruit with no expiration date. That fruit is, in one word, love. Most of what we do every day is temporal and temporary. We build buildings that one day crumble. We bandage wounds on bodies that will one day die. Sermons are forgotten. Paint peels. Wood rots. Metal rusts. Weeds take over what once were lovely gardens. Most of what we have done in our lives will be forgotten, undone, lost completely. But not agape, love. Love never ceases because God never ceases to be. Prophesies pass away, tongues go quiet, knowledge evaporates. But love endures. Love abides. Love goes from death to life. Love survives the grave. Love never dies. Love never goes away for God is love.

These things I command you so that you love one another. Hear that sentence carefully. Jesus does not command His disciple to love one another. That was Moses who said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Instead, Jesus commands His disciples to abide in His love, to cling to His mandates, in order that, with the result that they love one another. This is the uniqueness of Jesus and of faith in Him. He doesn’t command us to do something, but to remain somewhere, to stick to His love for us, to be on the receiving end of His self-giving love. And the result of that, the fruit of that will be the same Jesus-reflecting love for one another.

Love is the fruit of faith. They inextricably bound together, yet they are different. Faith is the relationship, love is the product of that relationship. Faith is trust, passive abiding trust that clings to the promises of God in Christ, that clings to Jesus’ mandates in Baptism, Word, and Supper, that clings to Jesus’ death and resurrection, that holds fast to the forgiveness, life, and salvation that come from Jesus. Love happens when faith happens.

Fruit is a great image because fruit happens when the conditions are right. My old, craggy apricot tree is full of apricots this year. I think it knows somehow that it’s about to be cut down. The branches are sagging with fruit this year. I don’t do much for that tree except the occasional pruning to keep it out of the power lines. Last year we had a few apricots; some years none at all. But every year it was an apricot tree and never ceased to be one. When the conditions were right, the right combination of cold, warm, wet, dry, and all the other things that were needed, it bears much fruit.

To look at it now, busting full of fruit, you don’t have to ask, “What kind of tree is that?” You know. You can see it’s fruit. It always was an apricot tree, but you couldn’t always tell. When the fruit is visible, you know what it is.

That’s agape love and the Christian. You are always a child of God. But when the fruit of agape love appears hanging on your branches, you are seen for who you really are. A disciple of Jesus. One who abides in His love. One who is chosen to love. A friend of Jesus. And the sight of it is glorious.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/251/20090523224036/audio/6easterB09.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 10 May 2009 14:32:49 +0000
We don’t like it messy. We prefer it tidy and organized. Perhaps it’s our being Lutheran or our German past. “Alles in Ordnung.” Everything in order. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and order is positively divine. God is, after all, a God of order. But order doesn’t necessarily mean organized. My desk may be utterly disorganized with piles here and there, but if I know where everything is, it is still in order.

Organized means that we’re in control, which is really at the heart of things. We want to be in control because we want to be God. After all, we think we’d do a much finer job at it than God does. So we have to organize things and make them fit our scheme of how things should work. Yet one of the very disturbing things about the book of Acts, at least from an organizational perspective, is how utterly disorganized everything seems to be. Apostles going here, there, and everywhere. No one seems to have a plan. Philip, who was just appointed to wait on table in the Jerusalem congregation to make sure the Greek widows were getting their fair share is off wandering around the Gaza wilderness at the direction of an angel of the Lord. Why bother with the whole business of waiting on tables in the first place? Is this any way to run a ship much less a church?

We certainly wouldn’t do things this way. We’d have boards and committees. We’d appoint mission boards who would interview the appropriate candidates and decide on a mission strategy. But here, an angel of the Lord says to Philip, “Get up and go,” and he gets up and goes south from Jerusalem to Gaza. As he’s walking on the road, a chariot goes by carrying a man from Ethiopia. He’s a court official of the queen, in charge of her treasury. He’s a eunuch, which makes him a double outsider in Jerusalem - a mutilated Gentile with absolutely no chance whatsoever of his entering into the court of the temple to offer his sacrifices. He’s forever on the outside, barred from worship, relegated to sitting on the steps and listening in. Everything in the OT screamed at him, “This is not for you.” A Gentile, an African, a eunuch.

But God is at work here, in His usual messy, disorganized way. This man is a “God-fearer” a worshipper from a distance. Imagine a person being told church after church, “You’re not welcome here, you don’t belong,” and yet he keeps coming. Perhaps sits out on the porch listening in to the hymns and readings. He’s a man of means. He owns an Isaiah scroll. Those things weren’t cheap.

As his chariot is going down the road heading back to Ethiopia, he’s reading from the Isaiah scroll out loud, the way the rabbis said you were supposed to read. Silent didn’t count. “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” He wonders to himself, “Who is this the prophet is speaking of? This one who is silent before his accusers? This one to whom justice is denied? This one whose life is taken up from the earth? This one who has no descendants?” That sort of reminded him of him - a eunuch, no descendants. “Is this the prophet or someone else?” he wondered.

Just then Philip happened to be walking by, and the Spirit nudged him to run over to this chariot and hop on board. Two strangers in the desert. Two men who would never, ever in this world have been together for anything, are brought together by the Spirit around the text of Isaiah in a chariot in the Gaza wilderness. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asks. “How can I, unless someone guides me,” comes the response.

In that little chariot, a congregation has gathered. Two or three gathered around the Word, and there the Spirit is, there the Lord is, there the Church is. We are not meant to be alone; we are not called to believe alone. The Scriptures are a community book, not a private book. The eunuch owned an Isaiah scroll, but that scroll was meant to be read in community, interpreted together. What a great mistake we make today when we think that having a Bible is all there is! The Bible creates community - a preacher and a hearer. And in the middle of it all is Jesus, the heart and center of the Scriptures.

The eunuch knew what the words meant. He could read Greek. There was no secret about what the words meant. The sentences were clear enough. What he didn’t know, and couldn’t know on his own, was who this was about. Was it speaking of Isaiah or someone else. “Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.” Jesus is the center of the Scripture, no matter where you open it, whether Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Malachi. Philip could have started anywhere, but he started where the Ethiopian was reading. In Isaiah and the passage of the Servant of the Lord who suffers for the sins of the people. “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” He opened his mouth, it says, and he proclaimed Jesus from the Scriptures.

That’s how it works. It’s that simple. Philip opened his mouth. You have to open your mouth if anything is going to come out. He opened his mouth and proclaimed the good new of Jesus from that passage on the suffering Servant. Good news. The news of forgiveness, redemption, life, salvation. “For he bore the sin of the many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Good news for the Ethiopian. He was in. This suffering Servant named Jesus who was so much like the Ethiopian that he could almost see himself, died and rose to bring that Ethiopian eunuch into a kingdom that once excluded him. The outsider was in.

That’s the good news. The outsiders are in in Jesus. You, who were not a people, are in. You’re the people of God. You, who were not Israel, are in. You are God’s Israel - a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a chosen people, God’s treasured possession. You who were on the outside are now on the inside in Jesus. Good news.

And more good news. There was water in the wilderness. It might have been that stream in the valley of Elah that David crossed when he went to meet Goliath and pulled from it five smooth stones. It might have been a spring or a pool that sprang up like living water in the wilderness. There was water there in that wilderness. Somewhere along the way Philip must have told the eunuch what Peter preached at Pentecost - Repent and be baptized, because the eunuch saw that water in the wilderness and said, “Look, here’s water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?”

Now if Philip is thinking in an organized sort of way, he’s thinking, “I better get my paperwork together, and there’s going to be an investigation in Jerusalem when word gets out about this, and what am I supposed to do because this sort of thing wasn’t covered in deacon training.” Philip baptizes him. That water in the wilderness was for the Ethiopian his Red Sea, his Jordan river, his burial with Christ, his resurrection with Christ, his washing of regeneration and renewal, his rebirth of water and Spirit, his clothing with Christ. He returned to Ethiopia, to the court of Candace, to his vocation as treasurer, a new man. A baptized believer in Jesus. He returned home a Christian; perhaps he was responsible for Christianity coming to Ethiopia. That would have been a good reason for Luke to tell this story. One man is all it takes to bring the good news.

As for Philip, no sooner was the Ethiopian baptized then Philip disappeared, only to reappear at Azotus which used to be called Ashdod, one of the five Philistine cities. He ends up in verse 40 in Caesaria. The next time we hear about Philip, some 20 years later, he’s still there in Caesaria with this four daughters. A quick trip on the Gaza road and then 20 years in the same place. There’s nothing predictable when it comes to the way God works.

There is water in your wilderness too. Baptismal water and the Word. The raw material of the Spirit’s working. You’ve heard that Word too, the same good news that Philip preached and the Ethiopian heard. You’ve been baptized with the same baptism, that joins you as a living branch to the Vine name Jesus. That Gaza road of yours is a messy road too, with unexpected turns and Greeks running up to our chariots and water in the wilderness. God is anything but organized. Ordered, yes. He knows where it all us. But to our eyes, quite unorganized. And yet this is the way the Gospel works. One person at a time. The Scripture Word, baptismal water, the Spirit of God calling, enlightening, gathering, keeping.

There will be your chariots to chase after too. You never really know when and where the Spirit will blow, and it will be yours to speak the good news to one who asks you, “What does this mean?” As you have heard, speak. Open your mouth and speak good news to the outsider, to the eunuch, to the one seeking the Truth, to the one asking what makes you tick, what is it about Jesus that is so important that everyone should know.

You will find water in the wilderness, and a gloriously messy Gospel. Don’t try and organize it; just believe it.



In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/250/20090602164050/audio/5easterB09.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 03 May 2009 08:18:15 +0000
“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16)

Of all the images of Jesus the Scriptures give us, the most gentle and comforting one is that of the Good Shepherd. The old Latin name for Good Shepherd Sunday is Misercordias domini - the merciful heart of the Lord. David, the shepherd-king, wrote that wonderful 23rd psalm by the Spirit of God. A sheep boasting of his shepherd: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing.”

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a shepherd’s town, the birthplace of His ancestor David, the shepherd-king of Israel. The first to worship Him were shepherds from Bethlehem’s field. Though Jesus grew up in a carpenter’s house, shepherding was His true vocation.

The Good Shepherd literally lays down his life for the sheep. His sheep are his life. He brings them out to green pasture. He leads them to fresh pools of water. He sets them upright when they’ve fallen down and can’t pick themselves up. He leads them along well-worn paths, through places sheep don’t naturally want to go, the dark valleys where predators abound. Where the good shepherd leads, the sheep will follow in trust. He feeds them, anoints their wounds and sores, cares for them, pampers them. At night, after the flock is safely tucked in their pen, the good shepherd lays down at the entrance to become like a door. If anyone wants to get to the sheep, they’ll have to get through the good shepherd first, literally over his dead body.

The good shepherd stands in sharp contrast to the hired hand who runs off at the first sign of danger. For him, it’s just a job and a paycheck. He cares nothing for the sheep. But for the shepherd, the sheep are not only his livelihood, they are his life. They are his own, like family. He calls each of his sheep by their name, as we do our pets, and they hear his voice and follow only that voice and no one else’s. That’s what Jesus is and does for us. He lays down His life for the world, for you in particular.

To say Jesus is our good shepherd is also to say that “we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.” That will prove troublesome to our egos. While it’s nice of think of Jesus as the good shepherd, we might desire something a bit more flattering to ourselves than the image of sheep. Sheep are stubborn, often mean, prone to wandering. Isaiah says, “All we like sheep have gone astray, everyone has turned to his own way.” We don’t naturally like to stay close to the flock.

Sheep are prone to straying, and so are we. We’ll drink from any putrid, polluted puddle that promises refreshment - religions, philosophies, self-help fads. We’ll sample any weed in the pasture that looks tasty, no matter how poisonous it might turn out to be. We’ll wander off on our own, thinking we can go it alone. Just me and God, thank you. Who needs all the complications of congregation and community when you can go it alone? Remember, the lone sheep is easy pickings for the wolves.

Our wandering waywardness comes from the original itch of wanting to be gods in place of God, sticking our hand into the middle of the garden to pluck fruit that brought death instead of life. Doing it our way instead of God’s way. You and I have that same inborn tendency, and it manifests itself in our spiritual restlessness, our boredom, our continual flock hopping from one church to another, our itch for the novel and exciting over those well-worn ruts of righteousness that lead to eternal life. Left on our own we’d be dead sheep, devoured by the wolves.

My in-laws are Kansas cattle folks. They don’t think much of sheep. They put the sheep over at the other end of the exhibition hall at the county fair. Sheep are high maintenance - prone to wandering, requiring constant attention. A rancher doesn’t hang out much with his cattle, not in the way a shepherd does. A shepherd gets right down there and joins the flock. He becomes one of the sheep. They think of him as one of their own.

Had the Son of God not joined the flock by becoming man, we would be doomed by our own sin and death. But this is the merciful heart of the Lord. He became one of us. The Word became flesh and pitched the tabernacle of His flesh among us, the way a shepherd dwells among his flock. He didn’t sit there on a throne in heaven somewhere saying, “They sure look lost; I hope they find me.” The Good Shepherd, joined the flock. He laid down His life. Lifted up on the cross, He gathered all to Himself, a sinful, damned humanity, in the embrace of a loving shepherd God who is willing to lay down His life, to suffer and die to save us.

The Lord is your Good Shepherd. He pastures you in the green pastures of His Word; He leads you to the quiet waters of Baptism; He restores your soul, lifting you from death to life in Him. He guides you in the well-worn ruts of righteousness, the way of repentance, daily dying and rising, for His name’s sake. Though daily you walk through the dark valley called the “Shadow of Death,” where threats to your life are all around you, where death and the grave loom large, you need fear no evil. Fear not, little Flock. Good Shepherd Jesus has gone ahead of you through suffering and death to resurrection and glory. Your Shepherd lives and in Him you live too. The grave couldn’t hold Him, and it can’t hold you either.

He is with you, comforting you with His Word and presence; the rod of His Law, the staff of His Gospel always assuring you of His presence. He prepares a banquet table for you, the gifts of His sacrifice, His own Body and Blood which He offered up once for all right there in the presence of your enemies - sin, death, hell, the devil, the Law. Nothing can harm you. “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

That love that lays down its life has an effect on the sheep too. They take on the character of their shepherd. He is so much a part of them and their lives that the sheep reflect that same lay down their life love toward each other. Without their shepherd, they’d be butting heads, competing, struggling for their own survival. Without Jesus, all we are is isolated sheep turned inward. But something marvelous happens when that lay-down-its-life love of Jesus has its way with us. We become like Him.

John writes about it. “By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” The love that flows from the merciful heart of the Lord overflows to the brother, to the sister, to your fellow Christian who shares the same baptismal birth, the same Body and Blood, the same forgiveness, the same Jesus. “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was naked and you clothed me. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” The sheep see the Shepherd in each other, and they reflect the Good Shepherd to each other.

Luther said we are as little Christs to one another in all the little ways we lay down our lives for each other. It might be helping a young mother with her squirmy children so she can hear a sermon all the way through, helping a young family who can’t make ends meet, teaching a Sunday school class so that the children can learn the Bible and the catechism, mentoring a young person, visiting someone who is homebound or sick. There are countless little ways to lay down our lives because we know that love of Jesus who laid down his life for us. We are as little reflections of Jesus to each other. And we see Jesus in each other. “As often as you have done it to the least of these, my brothers, you have done it to me.” We serve Christ in the other, and we are as Christ for the other.

This is what impressed the surrounding culture of the early church. Not Christianity’s impressive doctrines; not it’s glorious worship; not its magnificent buildings and programs. But a very simple observation that set the Christians apart from the rest of the dog eat dog world. “See how they love one another.” It was their love, an alien, strange sort of love - unselfish, self-sacrificing, laying down its life like a shepherd with his sheep. The world saw something different in the way Christians dealt with each other, and they actively wondered and sought out what made them tick. Why would people love one another in this way?

I have to wonder today amidst all the reports of declining church attendance, lack of interest in Christianity, apathy from our own baptized youth who readily abandon the faith as soon as they turn 18, whether it’s because that self-sacrificing love is no longer apparent. James reminds us that the world can’t see faith; it can only see faith’s love. John says the same thing. One of his churches, the main congregation in Ephesus, was known for its pure doctrine, its patient endurance, and its rejection of all heresies. But at the close of the first century, the Lord had this to say about the Ephesian church: “You have abandoned your former love. Repent.” “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?

This is God’s mandate, not simply that we believe in the name of the Son of God Jesus Christ, but that we love one another. Jesus said so when He bent down to wash the feet of His disciples and told them the world will know that you are my disciples if you love on another. And if that causes you a bit of unrest this morning good. If your hearts are condemned then turn to God; He is greater than your heart, and He knows everything. Let His love turn you inside out again and take that step of love in confidence. You cannot fail; He won’t let you. Try it. Dare to love as you have been loved. While faith in Christ is always whole and entire, love is always one little step at a time, what Eugene Peterson calls “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.” The world will note a difference; so will you.

You are sheep of the Good Shepherd’s flock. Your Baptism marks you as one of His own. You were bought with a price, the blood of Jesus. You are precious to Him. Literally to die for. There is not a day that goodness and mercy do not flow from the merciful heart of the Lord to you. Oh, you may not always feel as though it were so, but it is for the Lord has promised. He will not leave you like a hired hand. He is your good shepherd, who laid down His life for you. And at the end of it all, there is a promise held in trust that is as sure as Jesus crucified and risen from the dead is sure: You will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/249/20090508162116/audio/4easterB09.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 19 Apr 2009 08:41:38 +0000
In the gospels, Thomas is always buried in the middle of the pack when the disciples names are listed, usually lumped in with Philip, Bartholomew, and Matthew the tax collector. In John’s gospel, Thomas is the disciple who always seems to say the wrong thing for all the right reasons. When Jesus set out to Bethany to attend to his friend Lazarus who had died, it was Thomas who said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” When, in the upper room, Jesus told his disciples that He was going to prepare a place for them in His Father’s house, Thomas piped in with, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Thomas was the C-student of the disciples, always trying but never quite getting and whenever he chimed in, he seemed to be a sentence or two behind the action.

Thomas had missed the big event. Jesus’ appeared before His disciples, even though the doors were bolted tight. He was there, in the upper room. He showed the His hands and side. It was the real Jesus, the one who had been crucified. He had the marks to prove it. He blessed them with His peace. “Peace be with you,” He said. He words give what they say. He breathed on them, and with His breath bestowed the Spirit in a little preview of Pentecost. The big one would come 50 days later. He authorized them to forgive and retain sin. And Thomas had missed all of it. See what happens when you miss church? You miss out on all the Jesus gifts.

The others brought the news to Thomas. “We have seen the Lord.” And Thomas’ reply: “I won’t believe it until I see it. Until I see the nail marks and spear marks and touch them with my own hands, I will not believe it.” We call him “doubting Thomas,” but he’s really unbelieving Thomas. He doesn’t believe the message of the eye witnesses. He must see it for himself.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Haven’t you said it yourself? It’s such a common phrase, it literally rolls off our lips. Your kid says, “I’m going to clean my room,” and you say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Remember that famous line from Cuba Gooding in the movie Jerry McGuire? “Show me the money.” Don’t just talk about it, don’t just make a bunch of empty promises. Show me. That’s the unofficial state slogan for Missouri, the “show me state.” Some people attribute it to Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver who in 1899 said in a speech, “I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces me nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You’ve got to show me.”

Seeing is believing. Talk is cheap. Show me. Thomas wants to see and touch the great good news of Easter. It’s one thing to hear the good news “We have seen the Lord,” it’s quite another to see and touch Him risen from the dead.

Who can blame Thomas? Perhaps the disciples were hallucinating. Maybe they encountered a Jesus lookalike. Perhaps this was a case of mass hysteria brought on by the news of the open, empty tomb. Thomas wanted to see and touch a real flesh and blood Jesus. He wanted to see, and even touch, those nail marks and the spear mark in Jesus’ side. Then there would be no doubt about it.

A week later, the next Sunday, Jesus again appears to the disciples gathered together in their locked up room. A pattern seems to be developing. Jesus had promised where two or three were gathered in His name, there He would be in their midst. He’s establishing His Church, His post-resurrection people. This time Thomas comes to church, doubts, unbelief and all. Jesus appears again in the flesh. No knocking on the locked door, no sneaking in the window. He just appears as though He’d been there all along because He had. He shows them His wounds; He gives them His peace.

And then a wonderful thing happens. He turns to Thomas and says, “Here. This is what you wanted to see. My hands and my side. Go ahead. Touch my wounds. Don’t be unbelieving but believe.” Jesus had heard what Thomas had said that week. Jesus answered Thomas’ unbelief with the proof he had asked for. The funny thing is that Thomas never seems to get to the point of actually touching Jesus. He simply cries out his confession: “My Lord and my God.”

By the way, keep this verse in your hip pocket the next time someone says to you that Jesus never said He was God. Here Thomas calls Jesus his Lord and God. If that weren’t true, Jesus would have rebuked Thomas for taking the Lord’s name in vain. Instead, He praises Thomas, and goes on to bless those who believe the same thing without seeing.

“My Lord and my God.” Crucified and risen. Bearing the marks of His cross. “Rich wounds yet visible above, in beauty glorified” says the hymn. There’s no mistaking this Jesus for any other Jesus. He has wounds, and by those wounds you are healed. They say that scars lend character to a person. I’m not talking about those self-inflicted scars that the kids are doing. I’m talking about the wounds you sustain in this life that leave a trace for history to note. I have this funny Y-shaped scar over my left eye from twenty stitches in the emergency room thanks to a concrete light pole I ran into while playing touch football in senior year high school. Those who remember the incident still point to the scar and talk about it. It was quite the scene on the playground. It got me out of a whole year of swim classes. I milked it for all it was worth, I assure you.

The scars of Jesus’ crucifixion remain in the resurrection. They convinced the skeptical disciple that the Easter news was true. Jesus had risen. They are entered as evidence in the court of history today. No, you and I cannot see them. But the disciples, including Thomas, did see them, and were convinced. Over 500 at one time saw them and testified to the world. Peter who had been too cowardly to even admit knowing Jesus to a little servant girl saw them and preached the resurrection to thousands in Jerusalem. James, the brother of the Lord, saw them and believed. Tradition tells us that Thomas went on to establish the church in India. One of the oldest churches in Christianity, St. Thomas’ church, is there today. People gave their lives rather than deny they had seen Jesus risen from the dead.

“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.” That’s you. You get a beatitude from Jesus. Blessed are you. You are not given to see or touch. But you are given to hear the testimony of these witnesses, including Thomas. John, who was there, recorded these things for you, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing, would have life in His name.

It’s not simply believing the bare fact that Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead. Even the devils knows this, and they shudder at the thought of their undoing. It’s believing, trusting, that this death on the cross atoned for your sin. That this life laid down was a sacrifice of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, your sin. That Jesus was not simply a good man who died an awful death, but the Son of God in the flesh who died in your place, who became your sin and conquered your death so that you would have life forever in Him. It’s believing that because Jesus lives, you too will live. Because His grave is empty, your grave will be empty on the Last Day, and people will say the same thing about you that they said about Jesus: He is not here, he is risen! It’s believing that or greatest enemy, Death, the wages of our sin, has been dealt with once and for all by Jesus. It’s believing that His words are true, they are Spirit and life, the words of the crucified and risen One, and with those words He forgives us, He gives us His Body and Blood as surely as Thomas saw those wounds on that Sunday morning.

A.N. Wilson, a writer and biographer, grew up as a Christian. In his forties, he lost his faith and became an ardent atheist, keeping company with some of the famous atheists of our day. Recently he wrote of his reconversion to Christianity in a wonderfully written essay entitled “Why I Believe Again.” He recalls an incident of a young minister who feared that he had lost his faith. He had gone to the late archbishop Michael Ramsey for advice as to what to do. All the archbishop said to the distressed young minister was “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.” He told him to continue worshipping Jesus in the Sacraments and faith would return.

Wilson then writes, “For a few years, I resisted the admission that my atheist-conversion experience had been a bit of middle-aged madness. I do not find it easy to articulate thoughts about religion. I remain the sort of person who turns off Thought for the Day when it comes on the radio. I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief “don’t matter”, that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.”

Bring your doubts to church, as Thomas did. We all have doubts. I certainly relate to that young minister. That could have been me at many times over the last sixteen years. If we are going to be people of faith living in the world, there will be doubt. Perhaps it’s over such things as evolution, perhaps it’s over things they struggle with in their own lives, perhaps it’s over the chaos of this world that seems to have very little of God in it.

The only thing you don’t want to do is let your doubt become unbelief, rejection of Jesus and what He has won for you. Bring your doubts, your questions, your “unresolved issues,” to the Word, to the Lord’s Table. You may not get the answer you’re looking for, as Thomas did, but you will get an answer. And you will discover, that the long road of faith is a slow, ofttimes grinding road that doesn’t afford easy answers and simplistic solutions. Just a Jesus with healing wounds and saving, Spirit-filled words. I again quote from A.N. Wilson: “My departure from the Faith [to atheism] was like a conversion on the road to Damascus. My return was slow, hesitant, doubting. So it will always be; but I know I shall never make the same mistake again.”

Blessed are those who have not seen, and who yet have believed.

In the name of Jesus.
Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/248/20090428164239/audio/easter2B2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:09:11 +0000 He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

So goes the cry throughout the world on this most holy of Sundays. The angel proclaims the good news. “He is not here; He is risen.” Eyewitnesses see Him. Not just one but many, over 500, to the women including Mary Magdalene, to Cephas, to James, to the apostles. Not just for a moment bur for forty days. Not simply in a vision, but visibly and touchably. He was seen, heard, touched. He ate fish with them. It is simply a matter of fact. Historical fact. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

Don’t succumb to the arrogance of our age that says, “Those poor first-century sods would believe anything. They believed the earth was flat and the sun rotated around the earth. Who can blame them? They’d have believed in the Easter bunny if Jesus had told them to? Of course they believed Jesus rose from the dead.” But the women didn’t believe it initially. They were wondering who would roll the stone away. They were alarmed at the empty tomb and the angel. They ran away in fear and told no one the good news. And even when they finally did, no one believed them. They knew better.

Don’t succumb to the myth-makers, those who say the apostles or the church made this up as an inspiring story. These are eye-witness accounts of men whose yes was to be yes and whose no was to be no. Men who told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them God. Men who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, including their own lives. They saw Jesus risen from the dead. More people than saw George Washington cross the Delaware River to attack the Hessians yet who doubts that fact of history?

Don’t succumb to the scientific materialism of our age, that says, “Virgins do not conceive and dead men don’t rise.” Yes, ordinarily this is true. But this is no ordinary man and this is no ordinary death. This is God in the flesh come to bear your sin and conquer your death. This is the One who predicted He would do this at least three times. This is the One whom the Scriptures foretold would rise on the third day. His Word is vindicated. His mission accomplished, His sacrifice accepted.

What if Christ is not raised? What if, as modern scholars speculate, Christ is raised “spiritually,” as a figment of our religious imaginations? What if this is simply an inspiring myth to make us courageous in the face of death? What if the bones of Jesus lie in some unmarked middle eastern grave or in a box on a shelf in some cave outside of Jerusalem? What then?

If Christ is not raised, then our preaching is pointless, the work I do is waste of time, and your faith is empty. Faith in Jesus saves only if Jesus saves, and Jesus saves only as He is risen from the dead. If Christ is not raised from the dead, then all the believing in the world doesn’t amount to anything. It’s useless, empty, a waste of time. You may as well sleep in on Sunday morning, if Christ is not raised.

If Christ is not raised, the Scriptures are a collection of lies, misrepresentations, the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on mankind. If Christ is not raised, the God (if there is such a thing) is a liar, the apostles are liars, the women who claim to have seen Jesus are liars, the martyrs who gave their lives rather than deny Christ were deluded. If Christ is not raised, then He is a false prophet, deserving the death He received. He is not a great teacher, a moral example, or anything else but a charlatan and a liar and the greatest deceiver the world has ever seen. If Christ is not raised, do yourself a favor and find another religion, or better yet, just be an atheist. It’s a lot simpler.

If Christ is not raised, then you remain in your sins, and you better get busy trying to atone for them. If Jesus is not risen, we have no basis for saying that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He might be, but how can we be sure God accepted His work? Maybe He did, maybe He didn’t. And He said He would rise on the third day. What then? Can we trust anything Jesus said if He didn’t rise from the dead?

If Christ is not raised, then the dead are lost. Those who have fallen asleep in Jesus have perished. They’re gone. There’s no hope of ever seeing them again. Just hold them in your photographs and memories, because that’s all you have. If all we have is a book about a dead Jesus who inspired some people to write inspiring lies so we can feel good about ourselves in this life, we are the most pitiful bunch of religious sops every to walk the face of the planet, and shame on us for succumbing to such God delusions. We should have known better. Let’s just eat, drink, and live it up for tomorrow, we’re dead and gone.

But in fact Christ is risen from the dead, a fact attested by eye witnesses who would not change their testimony no matter what you threatened them with. Every detail fits. It defies our experience but it makes sense. The stone is rolled away. The sealed, guarded tomb is empty. The burial cloths are folded neatly like a freshly made bed. Eye witnesses saw Him, heard Him, touched Him, ate with Him, and they testified against hostile cross-examination. Their testimony speaks to us even today.

So let us be done with this religious prattle about “I know He lives because He lives in my heart.” He lives in fact not in faith. The body of Jesus is risen. He actually conquered Death with His dying. He did it for the world, for you. He lives whether you believe it or not. And because He lives, because He is risen, we need to take seriously every word that comes from His mouth, such as:

“He who believes and is baptized will be saved.”

“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me lives even though He dies, and whoever lives and believes in me never dies forever.”

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

These are not the words of a liar or lunatic but of the One who died on a cross and rose from the dead. Christ is risen from the dead. That’s what gives this Sunday, and every Sunday, a unique joy. The Russians even call the first day of the week on their calendars “Voskresenie” that is, “Resurrection Day.” (That’s a lot better than the Day of the Sun, don’t you think?) I wonder what our atheists would think if they had to refer to Sunday as Resurrection Day. I’m sure they’d be in court trying to change the calendar.

Christ is risen! The Word of God is vindicated.
Christ is risen! Your faith is not in vain.
Christ is risen! His sacrifice for sin is accepted.
Christ is risen! Your sins are atoned for and you are forgiven.
Christ is risen! Death lies defeated, the grave has lost its sting.
Christ is risen! And in Him all the dead will rise.
Christ is risen! Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we live!

In the Name of Jesus,
Amen ]]> http://www.htlcms.org/247/20090509211612/audio/easterB2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:57:18 +0000
The day begins in triumph. Hosannas and palm branches. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Kind of fun, isn’t it? Who doesn’t love a parade? The King is coming! Hosanna to the Son of David!

The air was crackling with energy. The crowds the greeted Jesus when He entered Jerusalem were ready for a scrap. In addition to palms there were probably swords and weapons. They wanted holy war, and Jesus was their man. “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!” right off the pages of Psalm 118. Go get ‘em Jesus!

Did they have any idea how this week was going to play out? Would you had you been there? Would you have imagined that within a few short days the King would be betrayed by one of His own, tried and convicted before the courts of Religion and Government, be mocked, beaten, and crucified between two criminals?

Is this any way to wage “holy war”? Yes it is, when the war is against your sin, against death - the great enemy of our humanity, against the Law that convicts, kills, and condemns us. This is what Jesus is all about. He is more than a miracle workers; more that a religious teacher, more than a moral example to follow. He is the King who fights on behalf of His subjects. The Savior who rescues us from death by dying. The Redeemer who buys humanity back with His own blood. The Lamb, the Substitute, the whole burnt offering, the atoning sacrifice, the world’s reconciliation and peace.

The passion history is the story of our Lord’s passion to save you. It begins with an anointing. A woman pours her costly perfume on His head. The Anointed One is anointed, preparing Him for His burial. Magi presented Him myrrh at His birth. Now this woman, in a reckless act of devotion, makes an offering never to be forgotten. Her worship is contrasted with Judas’ treachery. A disciple, one of Jesus inner circle, agrees to betray his master for money. Faith and unbelief; worship and betrayal. These lie ever so close together.

Thursday evening. Jesus gathers with His disciples (not His family as was the custom) to celebrate the Passover. He gives them something never given at a Passover before - His own Body as Passover bread; His own covenant blood as a cup of blessing. His death and His life is our food and our drink with the promise that He will again drink again with them, and with us, in His kingdom.

Jesus goes to Gethsemane to pray. Humanity fell in a garden, and now humanity’s new head, the Second Adam, returns to the garden to pray. “Not my will but thy will be done.” He prays as His disciples sleep. Even the sweet hour of prayer alludes them. The spirit is willing; the flesh is weak. Only God in our flesh can save us from ourselves.

A young man flees naked. Most think this is John Mark, the author of the Gospel and that this is his personal signature. An admission of weakness. A confession of his own denial, like Peter’s three-fold denial. When Adam realized he was naked in his sin, he was ashamed and tried to cover himself. Mark does no such thing. He does not cover up his sin but confesses it. The next time we hear of him, he is clothed and faithful. Mark is a reminder that there is no safe distance when following Jesus. You’re going to get caught.

Jesus betrayed with a kiss from one of His own. He is ever the rejected King. “He came to His own, but His own did not receive Him.” The Prince of Peace is arrested as though He were a terrorist and led away in chains. He is tried and convicted of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin, the religious court. Religion considers Jesus a “blasphemer,” and will either redefine Him or push Him out of the way. He is an obstacle to everyone who would try to earn God’s favor by their religious works. He is falsely convicted and sentenced to death by the Roman government. Not for justice’s sake but for expedience. Anything to quell a riot. But God, in His mercy and eternal plan, takes man’s injustice, and works our justification.

Jesus is clothed in robes of royal purple, crowned with thorns, spit at, mocked, beaten. These are the blows of humanity inflicted on one another in the name of God. He is the Victim, absorbing every act of genocide and religious or political terrorism. Yet this Lamb goes willingly, purposefully, intentionally to His suffering.

An out-of-town pilgrim, Simon from Cyrene, is sucked into the vortex and forced to carry the cross of Jesus. He was known to the later church, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Perhaps this day, joined with Jesus by a cross, he himself became a believer.

Jesus is crucified. The details are quick, more of a rough sketch and than a detailed photograph. Mark spares us the gory details. He notes the time and the place. Nine in the morning at Golgotha, the hill called “the skull.” This is a matter of history, and the world’s history hinges on this event. He is crucified between two thieves, the Innocent One among the guilty, bearing our sin, becoming our sin. The people passing by mock Him even as they unwittingly proclaim the truth about Him.

He cries out in abandonment, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He cries out for all of us in our time of abandonment and need, when God appears distant, removed, absent. Where is God in all this? Why does God allow such suffering in the world? Here, in the darkness, on the cross, God answers in silence.

Jesus drinks the sour wine, the bitter cup of our grief and woe. He shouts a last cry, a cry of victory in death, and He dies in the darkness. This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. We call it “Good Friday” for a reason. In the liturgy of Good Friday, you will hear this sentence: “We adore You, O Lord, and we praise and glorify Your holy resurrection. For behold, by the wood of Your cross, joy has come into all the world.”

This is the passion of our Lord to save the world, to save you. This is the passion of our Lord who “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Hosanna to the Son of David! Hosanna to the King! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/246/20090415020919/audio/palmsundayB2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:18:10 +0000
What do you suppose James and John are concerned with? Death and resurrection? Betrayal and suffering? Getting caught in the crossfire? No. They’re elbowing each other for positions of power in the new government. When Jesus takes the messianic throne and has all of Israel under His command, they want the two top cabinet appointments, one at His right, the other at His left. Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. The heck with those other guys, especially Peter, that big-mouthed teacher’s pet. Let them fend for themselves. The Zebedee brothers were going for the top rungs on the ladder.

The request shocks us, surprised us. It seems to come out of nowhere. Even the way James and John did it startles us. They’re walking along the road to Jerusalem, with Jesus speaking openly about His impending death, and they step forward to make their pitch. “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”

Some might admire their boldness. They made a play for it. No guts, no glory. They named it and claimed it, and believed in their hearts Jesus would deliver on demand. And if the others weren’t so bold and imaginative, well too bad for them. “My will be done, Lord. Do whatever I ask.” Perhaps you’ve prayed that too. Or maybe we just think it to ourselves quietly. “God owes me one.” Deep down, we think to ourselves, “I’m not begging for mercy, I’m cashing in some markers.”

Jesus plays along. He knows where He’s going, and He knows where He’s leading them. “What do you want me to do for you?” Go ahead and ask.

“Grant us to sit, one at your right and one at your left, in your glory.” It doesn’t matter who gets which spot, you can decide that, Jesus. We just want to put in our resumes right here and now for the top spots when you come into your glory. After all, we left the family fishing business, everything, our whole lives to follow You. That should count for something, right?

Wrong. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” Jesus says. They haven’t got a clue. The trip word is “glory.” James and John don’t see the cross, and because they don’t see the cross, they don’t get Jesus’ vision of glory. They’re thinking, it’s going to be a short and sweet battle and then the glory comes, and they want box seats. But glory for Jesus means betrayal, suffering, and death on a cross. In John, He calls His being lifted up on a cross His hour of glory. It’s His crowning glory to die for the sins of the world. It’s His glory to defeat sin, death, and devil by an overwhelming display of weakness. It’s His ambition to fulfill His mission as the servant-Son of God, to voluntarily lay down His life as a sacrifice for the sin of the world.

Jesus has a cup to drink. Not a cup of the fine wine He made at the wedding at Cana. Not the sweet wine of the Passover and the Sabbath celebration. The bitter cup, the sour wine of our sin, our rebellion against God, our misdeeds and murders, our terrorism, our attempts to be God in place of God. It’s the poisoned cup of our human woe, misery, wormwood and gall. The cup of our warfare and bloodshed and greedy ambitions to control others and kill anyone who gets in our way.

Jesus alone must take this cup and be baptized into Death. He alone was qualified, there is none other on earth who can lift the miserable cup to His lips and drink it to the dregs. There is none other on earth who can be baptized into our death and rise up out it to life. Only Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, the Creator become the creature, and stand in our place and do for all what we can’t do for ourselves.

He drinks our cup and offers us His cup - the new wine of His blood, covenant blood. The covenant of which Jeremiah spoke, “I will forgive their iniquities and forget their sin.” He fulfills the old and brings in the new.

Jesus has a baptism awaiting Him. Not a cleansing bubble bath, but a sinking in the stinking sewage of humanity’s sin. Not a refreshing bath, but an immersion into our death and the grave. That’s what Jesus was talking about. He is baptized into our death, so that we might be baptized into His death and His life.

Are James and John able to drink of Jesus’ cup, or able to be baptized with Jesus’ baptism? They seem to think they are, so sure of themselves, so confident. “You will drink,” Jesus says. And they would. They would drink from Jesus’ cup, on the night when Jesus was betrayed, when He took the cup and gave it to His disciples and said, “Take this and drink it. This is my blood of the covenant, which is being poured out for many.” They would be baptized with Jesus’ baptism, united with Him in His death. He would give each of them, and all of us, a share in His death.

The other ten disciples are understandably indignant when they find out about all this. The nerve of those Zebedee boys! What gall! Truth is, they probably wished they’d gotten to Jesus’ first. But Jesus chides His ambitious disciples. This is how the big shots among the Gentiles behave. This is how the world exercises authority, in terms of power and control, eat or be eaten, climbing up to the top while standing on the backs of others. This is the world of business and politics. “But it shall not be so among you.”

We need to let those words of Jesus rattle around in our ears and marinate our minds. It shall not be so among you. No power games in Jesus’ kingdom. No lording authority over others. No scrambling to the top on the backs of others. No attempts to control. If you want to be great in this kingdom of the crucified King, then become a servant of everyone. If you want to be first, you must be a slave of all.

Think of Jesus, in the upper room, on that Thursday evening when He was going to celebrate Passover with His disciples. It’s the evening of His betrayal and arrest. In just a little over twelve hours, He was going to be crucified. And yet, there He is, the Lord of all, the Son of God, with a towel tied around His waste, washing the feet of His own disciples, doing the work of the lowest slave in the household. The Lord of all becomes the servant of all; the Master of all becomes the slave of all.

Jesus doesn’t need our service; we need His. That’s why we call worship “divine service.” We don’t rise up to God; He stoops down to us. He baptizes us. He absolves us. He feeds us. He forgives us.

He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him,
And by His wounds we are healed.
We all like sheep, have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. (Is 53:5-6)

Early in the course of the Reformation, Martin Luther penned this famous saying on Christian liberty: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” Before God you are free by virtue of what Jesus did for you and the world on the cross. You are free from the lordship of sin, from the chains of death, from the condemnation of the law. And in that freedom, you are free to be a servant, to reach out to the needy neighbor, as Jesus reached down to you.

That’s what greatness looks like in Jesus’ upside-down kingdom where the last are first, the humbled are exalted, sinners are justified before God, and the dead are raised to life. If you want to find greatness in Jesus’ kingdom don’t look high, look low.

“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

In the name of Jesus, Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/245/20090415022711/audio/lent5B2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 22 Mar 2009 08:16:52 +0000
Stricken, smitten, and afflicted, the people came crawling to Moses with their confession. “We have sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you.” That’s a good start. Confession. Tell the truth. Admit it and stop trying to cover it up or justify yourself. We have sinned against the Lord; against one another. In thought, in word, in deed, by things done, by things left undone. You may as well admit and stop trying to deny it. The sting of death is all around you. Don’t pretend it isn’t there and you don’t know why. Don’t blame everyone around you. Own it. The Lord sent the deadly snakes to drive His people to repentance. Don’t think He doesn’t do the same with us.

They prayed to Moses to interceded. “Pray the Lord to take the snakes away from us.” The Lord sent them; He alone can take them away. Moses stands between, a mediator between God and Israel. Notice they don’t speak straight to YHWH. They go through the designated go-between - Moses, who stands in the breach between the God of Sinai and the people of Israel. Moses prays for the people about the deadly snakes.

Notice that the Lord doesn’t take away the snakes, as they had asked. Instead, He provides a cure, an anti-venom. Karen and I took a tour of the Long Beach aquarium on Monday night. It was a special behind the scenes tour for members. It was after public hours, so the place was quite empty and we could study all the exhibits in detail. They have a display of tropical water snakes that are at once beautiful and deadly. They are so deadly that only two members of the aquarium staff have a key to the exhibit. And they keep a supply of the anti-venom at St. Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach “just in case.”

The anti-venom for the fire snakes was a sacrament, a sign instituted by God with a promise. “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” A material object with the promise of God attached. Look on this bronze snake on a stick, and you will live. And that’s how it worked. Everyone who looked at the bronze serpent would live.

How can bronze do such great things, you may wonder. It is not the bronze indeed that does them, nor is it the shape of the bronze, though had Moses made a bronze mouse or chipmunk it wouldn’t have worked because that’s not what the Lord instituted. This is the Lord’s doing, not Moses’. It was a bronze serpent - the cure resembled the disease. It had the promise of God’s Word attached to it - whoever looked on it would live.

Suppose you were an Israelite and your best friend or relative is lying on the ground, writhing in agony, bitten by one of those fire snakes sent by God. What would you do knowing what you know? Would you say, “Pray this snakebitten prayer and everything will work out fine?” No. You would lift his eyes to the bronze serpent and the pole and say, “Behold the serpent of the Lord. Look on it and live.” Suppose you yourself had been snakebitten and survived because you did the same thing. You looked on that hideous bronze serpent and you lived. Do you suppose you might be eager to tell your fellow Israelites and urge them to do the same? Would you worry about offending their sensitivities or not respecting their beliefs or pushing on their fear of snakes? No, of course not. You wouldn’t take no for an answer, would you?

Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller, the quirky Las Vegas magic act, recorded a video on his home computer that was all the rage on the internet a few months ago. Someone from our congregation alerted me to it. Penn is a avowed atheist and fairly outspoken about it. He incorporates his atheism into his act and is pretty merciless in his criticism of religion in general and Christianity in particular. But an incident after one of his shows really rattled him, and he made a little video about it the next morning.

Apparently, a man came up to Penn Jillette after a show and handed him one of those little pocket Bibles the Gideon’s distribute - Psalms and the New Testament. All the man said was something like, “This is very important me and something I believe very deeply, and I think you should take another look at it for yourself.” He wasn’t aggressive or hostile, just very honest and plain, and it really impressed Penn Jillette, the atheist. Penn said this in his video:

I don't respect people who don't proselytize. If you believe that there's a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, and you think, 'Well, it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward'... How much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize?
This is coming for a die-hard atheist, mind you. Does it make you think? It sure made me think, long and hard. And wonder whether I do, in an apathetic sort of way, hate my neighbor. It made me repent too. Imagine knowing about the serpent on the pole, imagine being cured by that thing, and not telling anyone else in the camp. “How much do you have to hate someone not to proselytize?” I bet you never expected to hear that out of the mouth of an atheist, did you?
“God so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.”
Humanity is snakebitten. You and I included. It has been since Adam and Eve listened to the snake instead of God back in Genesis 3. We are born snakebitten. Dead with the venom of the Law coursing through us. “The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the Law.” That’s our condition from the greatest to the least of us. But God has provided the cure, a cure that looks curiously like the disease. His Son on the cross, dying a cursed death. He looks damned by God, stricken, smitten, and afflicted, and He is, in our place, for us all and for our salvation.
This is how God loves this snakebitten world. He doesn’t simply love it abstractly and in general. “Oh, nice world, I love you.” He loves in the world in a very specific way, and only in this way. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, true God of the Father, true Man of His mother, born of woman, born under the Law, to take on the sting of death and become for the world the anti-venom for snakebitten humanity.
The Father didn’t send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to be condemned for the world. His condemnation is our acquittal; His death is our life. He came to be judged - one Man for all men, for all of humanity. He came to be lifted up and to draw all to Himself into His death. As in the one man Adam, all sinned, all die, all are condemned, so in the one Man, the second Adam, Jesus the Christ, all are forgiven, all are justified, and all live. As Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness, so the Father has lifted up the Son on the cross that whoever looks on Him with the eyes of faith, trusting in that bleeding, broken, dying Son of Man, has eternal life.
Can you imagine how precious that anti-venom at St. Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach is, especially if you were bitten by one of those poisonous snakes? Imagine how grateful you would be if you were bitten? How much more precious that good news, that Gospel of free forgiveness, life, and salvation to the sinner! You have received it; you know what I’m speaking about.
You know how they make anti-venom, don’t you? They inject the poison from a snake into a horse or goat (why don’t we substitute a lamb for dramatic effect), and then as the animal builds up immunity, its antibodies are collected. In other words, anti-venom comes from one who has survived the poison. Christ became sin for us who knew no sin. He was cursed for us on the accursed tree of the cross. He took the sting of sin with the full power of the Law’s venom. He took it to the grave in His death. And He rose triumphant over sin, death, and the Law. He survived the sting of death.

The anti-venom is here for you in the water of Baptism. Here for you in the Word of forgiveness. Here for you in the Body and the Blood, the very death and life of Jesus, whose Body and Blood were given into death and raised from the dead to become the anti-venom of sin and the Law, the very “medicine of immortality” and eternal life.

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” Look on HIm and live. Point other to Him that they may live. The sting of death is sin, and the venom of sin is the Law. But thanks be to God; He gives us the victory, the anti-venom, the cure, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/244/20090415125553/audio/lent4B2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 08 Mar 2009 10:56:27 +0000
The answer to that question reveals what we believe about this Jesus. You can’t be neutral when it comes to Jesus. That’s why His Name creates the fuss that it does. This is no benign, take it or leave it sort of name. You have to come to some kind of answer, one way or another.

People had their opinions about Jesus. Some thought he was John the Baptizer come back to life again. John had been killed, beheaded in Herod’s prison. John cut a pretty impressive figure as a man of God. And so one of the rumors in the streets was that he had come back, that Jesus was John the Baptizer. That, of course, was wrong. Jesus and John were cousins; John was the forerunner, the preparer, whose baptism pointed to Jesus and revealed Him to Israel.

Some said that Jesus was the prophet Elijah. Elijah had disappeared with fiery chariots and horsemen. The prophet Malachi said that Elijah would come before the Lord appears. So maybe Jesus was Elijah. Or another one of the prophets, perhaps. A holy man of God sent to preach God’s Word.

They are all nice and respectful, but they all fall short of the truth. We have the same sort of thing today when people are confronted with the Jesus question, “Who do you say that I am?” The tendency is to try to say something nice. He’s a great teacher, an inspiration, a moral example, a wise philosopher, a miracle worker, a holy man. And again, all fall short of the truth.

Peter, always the first to speak up, speaks the truth. “You are the Christ.” Mark delivers the short version here. When you’ve said, “Christ,” you’ve said it all. “Christ” means anointed one; the Hebrew word is Mashiach, Messiah. Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed One prophesied in the OT and anticipated by the people. Everyone was waiting for the arrival of the Messiah.

Did Peter understand the implications of what he was saying? Apparently not. The average man on the street believed that Messiah would be a kind of military, political, religious figure all wrapped up into one. He would be someone who would restore nation status to Israel, drive out Roman rule, reestablish the throne of King David. He would purify the temple and drive out the foreign occupation and establish the kingdom of God. In many ways and senses, the popular expectation of the Messiah was more or less like a bin-Laden type.

It’s not surprising then, that Peter objects violently when Jesus begins to talk of HIs death and resurrection, that “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes - the religious authorities and leaders, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” This was the last thing anyone of Jesus’ day expected of the Messiah, that he be killed and raised to life again. That’s not how it was supposed to work. Respectable Messiahs don’t get themselves crucified.

We’re confronted here with our own expectations. What is it, exactly, that we expect from Jesus? Oh, we’re certainly beyond the messianic expectations of Peter and the others who were waiting for the revolution to begin. Or are we? I’m always sure. Do we expect Jesus to fix everything that’s wrong, whether in the world or in our own personal lives? Do we expect Him to exert power and muscle on our behalf? Do we expect Him to punish the bad guys and reward the good guys and give us key positions in the cabinet?

Perhaps you’ve experience this in same fashion - someone did not live up to your expectations. You finally get to meet that author you admire, or that celebrity or musician or sports figure, and they’re not what you expected them to be. You had a picture in your own mind of what that person was supposed to be like, and when you finally meet them face to face, you’re disappointed. They weren’t what you expected.

We have expectations about God too. We expect Him to be responsive to our needs, to hear our prayers, to act for our blessing. And then God does something or He doesn’t do something, and our expectations are shattered and we’re disappointed. Some give up on God; some just trade Him in for a newer model.

Peter pulled Jesus aside and rebuked Him. Imagine that, the disciple rebuking the Master! I’m sure Peter thought he was doing good, waking Jesus up to smell the messianic coffee. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go, Jesus. I didn’t leave the fishing business for you to get crucified. You’re a winner, Jesus. Don’t talk like a loser. You’re a winner, and we want to be winners with you in your kingdom. So let’s forget about this dying and rising business and get about the business of kingdom building. You’ve got a throne to establish and we’re here to help you. So no more of this grim dying and rising talk - it’s a downer, it’s not inspiring, it’ll freak people out.”

I embellish, but I imagine that’s likely what was going through Peter’s mind. To be the Messiah, the Christ, is to be a winner, God’s chosen, anointed One. There’s no place for crosses and crucifixions in that scheme. But Jesus identifies it as the devil’s scheme, not God’s plan. “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.”

Peter - so bold, so sincere, so wrong. It’s the devil who wants a cross-less Christ, a bloodless, body-less, spiritualized Christ. That’s what the devil wants. A feel good, don’t worry, be happy Christ. An all’s well with the world, smile, God loves you Christ. That’s the devil’s christ. Jesus has to exorcize this notion from Peter, and also from us too. There’s no getting between Jesus and His Good Friday appointment. If you try, as Peter did, you will find yourself on the side of Satan and not of God.

Peter deserved that rebuke, and so does the Church today when it tries to push a bloodless Gospel and calls it “good news.” I was talking with the elders yesterday morning about how all the Lenten hymns tend to be bloody, almost gory, at times. I don’t know why, but I seem hypersensitive to it this year, more than in the past. Perhaps I hear too much of the world’s commentary and criticism of what we as Christians believe. Two familiar examples:

Glory be to Jesus,
Who in bitter pains,
Poured for me the lifeblood,
From His sacred veins.”

Then, for all that wrought my pardon,
For they sorrows deep and sore,
For Thine anguish in the Garden,
I will thank Thee evermore,
Thank Thee for they groaning, sighing,
For They bleeding and They dying,
For that last triumphant cry,
And shall praise thee, Lord on high.

The world listens on and thinks, “That’s sick, gross, macabre. What kind of religion is this that extols a bloody cross, that worships a guy who was crucified, that sings hymns to His blood? What kind of “spirituality” is that, that makes me feel bad about myself and that glories in the suffering of another? That’s what they’re asking on the streets, you know. And maybe some of you are asking the same thing.

I wonder to myself at times during Lent at preschool chapel. Do we want to teach our kids this stuff? Do we want to expose them to this bloody reality, to this R-rated passion of the Christ? Shouldn’t we shield them from this reality of who Jesus is? Or is it our discomfort coming through? Is this Peter speaking in us? Is this the devil talking? Are we in fact projecting the discomfort of our own rationalisms on our children and hiding from them from the sublime glory of the cross that saves sinners.

Jesus called the crowd in close with His disciples to let them in on the little secret. The cross is theirs too. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” If you try to save your life, you’ll lose it; if you lose it for Jesus’ sake, you save it for eternity. What profit is there if you gain the whole world and forfeit your life? The cross marks the disciple too. If we’re ashamed of Jesus and His cross now in our own sinful and adulterous generation, we will be nothing but an embarrassment to Him on the day of His glory.

The real shame needs to be our sin, what drove Jesus to Calvary to save us. Not the cross of Jesus. That is Jesus’ glory as it appears in this world, and it is the glory of all who are baptized into the death of Jesus. Ashamed of Jesus? No! That’s your Savior. Embarrassed of His cross? No! That’s your salvation.

I’m reminded of a hymn of my childhood by Joseph Grigg:

Jesus, and shall it ever be,

A mortal man, ashamed of Thee?

Ashamed of Thee, whom angels praise,

Whose glories shine through endless days?

Ashamed of Jesus! sooner far

Let evening blush to own a star!

He sheds the beams of light divine
O’er this benighted soul of mine.

Ashamed of Jesus? Just as soon

Let midnight be ashamed of noon.

“Tis midnight with my soul till He,

Bright Morning Star, bids darkness flee.

Ashamed of Jesus! that dear Friend

On Whom my hopes of Heav’n depend?

No; when I blush, be this my shame,

That I no more revere His Name.

Ashamed of Jesus! yes, I may

When I’ve no guilt to wash away;

No tear to wipe, no good to crave,

No fears to quell, no soul to save.

Till then - nor is my boasting vain!

Till then I boast a Savior slain;

And O may this my glory be,

That Christ is not ashamed of me!

(The Lutheran Hymnal #346)

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/242/20090309191928/audio/2lentB2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:01:49 +0000
Temptation begins with desire, the heart unbuckled from God. The heart that does not “fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” Inward idolatry. The self curved in on itself. Desire births sin, and sin matured gives birth to death. But don’t blame God for that. It’s in you.

When God told Abraham to offer up his only son on Mt. Moriah as a sacrifice, He wasn’t tempting Abraham to sin, He was testing him. Taking that Spirit-wrought faith which is reckoned as righteousness and putting it through the refining fire to show Abraham and Israel and all of us what it means to trust God’s promise. “Go and sacrifice your son, your only son, the son of the promise, the son you’ve waited for all these long, childless years.” Now that’s a test!

With testing always comes a way out. God isn’t into breaking faith but building it. For Isaac, there was a ram caught in the thicket. A substitute sacrifice caught in the wood. The Jesus-point. That’s where all of God’s testing of faith, in all the trials and pains and sufferings of this life are intended to bring us, to the Jesus-point. To that sacrificial Lamb of God pinned to the wood of the cross in our place. “God will provide,” faithful Abraham said. God did provide. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Immediately after His baptism in the Jordan river, Jesus was “cast out” into the wilderness by the Spirit. It’s a curious way of putting it. “Cast out” is the same thing that happens to the unclean spirits around Jesus. They are cast out into their dry places, like the cursed goat of Yom Kippur (the day of atonement) that was cast out into the wilderness. But here the sinless Son of God, still dripping wet from His baptism, is cast out by the Holy Spirit to the arid wilderness, the place of Satan and the wild beasts.

There He is both tested and tempted. The Spirit casts Him out into the wilderness; the Father tests the Son, proves Him. Is He the faithful Son the Father declares Him to be? Forty days in the wilderness without food or drink will prove it. Israel in the wilderness proved faithless. Now Jesus takes Israel’s place in the wilderness, a one-man Israel, and the Father proves Him faithful.

He is tempted. Weakened, hungry, thirsty, alone, He confronts the accuser. Mark doesn’t tell us the details of that temptaion and so we’ll skip that too this year. Luke will fill us in next year. Today it is sufficient to hear that Jesus was tempted by Satan. Tempted in every way that we are tempted. Jesus takes our humanity in its most weakened state - hungry, thirsty, alone, vulnerable - into the wilderness and faces the full blast of our temptation and in His weakness, He emerges victorious. He conquers in weakness, not strength. The secret power of the cross is revealed here. This Jesus conquers the devil’s might with strength hidden in weakness, in total reliance on the Word.

The pattern is always water to wilderness. From sea to dry land. From the Red Sea to 40 years in the Sinai wilderness for Israel. From the Jordan to the wilderness for Jesus. From the font to the wilderness of your life. Yes, you have a wilderness too. Jesus didn’t go the way of the wilderness so that you could glide along the express lane to the promised land. Jesus is the Way not the Detour.

The wilderness, of course, is this life lived in-between the water of Baptism and the promised land of the resurrection. There are plenty of snakes and scorpions and wild beasts: disease, violence, the forces of nature, the will to power and control. Corrupt governments, crooked boardrooms, adulterous bedrooms. False religions, false beliefs, distorted views of the world, of ourselves, of God. There is greed and arrogance, pride and prejudice, sexual promiscuity and immorality, drunkenness, gluttony, anarchy. There is the sorrow and grief of death and loss.

Into this wilderness we are cast as baptized believers joined to Jesus, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. And right there waiting to pounce, is the old evil foe, Satan, defeated but not yet silenced, chained but still mobile, stalking around like a roaring lion in one of Caesar’s Roman amphitheaters looking for a some isolated, weak, little believer to snatch up and devour. Resist him, by standing firm in the faith of Jesus.

It is a time of testing. God is putting that faith of yours which He worked through the fire, not to destroy it but to refine it, to reveal the 24 karat purity of His work free from the adulterating dross of our works, to prove that He is faithful to His promises and that He will see us through no matter what the circumstances of this life.

This is life under the cross of Jesus, my friends. It is trudging the wilderness way with Abraham up the mountain of Moriah with his son; it is walking with Jesus in the lonely hour of temptation when your only friends are the wild beasts and the angels. But there is good news in this wilderness. We do not walk alone, but together as a body, the body of Christ. We are bound together in Baptism, Body and Blood to walk this wilderness way together. It’s a rule: in the wilderness, there is safety in numbers.

Even more, Jesus Himself walks the wilderness way with us. He’s paved the path ahead of us, and He walks in our midst. He’s conquered the devil. He’s tamed the wild beasts. He’s defeated Death by dying and rising. “He’s by our side upon the plain with His good gifts and Spirit.” The present wilderness is now full of Jesus, waiting for the spring of resurrection and life that Jesus brings.


This time of wilderness testing and temptation may seem like a long time when you’re in the middle of it. Even a few days of suffering seems forever. But viewed from the eternal side of things, it’s not that long at all. Forty days. Like Lent. And Easter draws ever near.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/243/20090309192050 clean revcwirla Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:55:31 +0000
No one may look on God and live, except when God in His mercy permits it. Three of the Twelve saw Jesus in His divine glory - Peter, James, and John. Three witnesses to the remarkable truth that Jesus is God in the flesh. True God and true man. God of God, light of light, true God of true God, and at the same time, true Man, humanity of our humanity.

Jesus was changed in appearance before the three. Metamorphosized, transfigured, “morphed.” He glowed with an unearthly glow, shining with the radiance of heaven. His clothes were whiter than any white on earth. His face was like the sun, shining with the glory of His divinity as the eternal Son of God. No human being in the history of the world ever appeared like this. Yes, Moses glowed when he came down from Mt. Sinai, but his glow was like that of a glow in the dark watch charged by the sun. The glow faded, the glory didn’t last. Jesus shines like the sun, the light of God emanates out of His humanity. God and Man are One in Jesus, and every cell of Jesus’ humanity glows with divinity.

That’s the importance of Jesus’ transfiguration. It sets Him apart from all the others - from Moses and the prophets, from every religious teacher to come along. No one ever appeared this way. We need to remember this mountain and the transfiguration when we think of Jesus. There is so much more to Jesus than meets the eye. The shepherds in Bethlehem saw a tiny baby wrapped in cloths. The disciples saw a rabbi, an itinerant carpenter from Nazareth. The healings and exorcisms He did were signs of something greater, but there were healers and exorcists besides Jesus. His preaching and teaching were powerful and persuasive with an authority unheard of by any contemporary.

But what sets Jesus apart is His shining face and bright clothing, this unearthly brilliance that would blind you to look at Him. Here is no ordinary man, not even an extraordinary man, or a super holy man. He is more than Moses, more the Elijah, more than any holy man who ever left a footprint in history. Greater than John and all who came before and all who would come after. No one ever appeared in this world shining with divinity but this Jesus in whom the fulness of God dwells bodily.

It left a profound, indelible impression on Peter who bore witness to it. He saw this with his own eyes. He wasn’t making it up, and there were two others who saw the same thing, just to be sure. Peter writes, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.”

He heard it, he saw it, he testifies to it. This isn’t some cleverly concocted story, some myth made up to make Jesus more than He actually is. This is eyewitness attested fact, just as Jesus’ resurrection is an eyewitness attested fact. Remember that. The disciples knew they were reporting things never seen or heard before. They knew people would be skeptical. Who would believe them? And yet Peter insists that he and James and John were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ majesty. They heard the voice from the cloud proclaim Jesus as the beloved Son, just as at His Baptism. They were there.

This wasn’t some sort of “spiritual experience.” This was a hard fact of history. I got into one of those “conversations” this week with someone who claimed to be “spiritual but not religions.” I said that I was “religious but not spiritual,” meaning that what I believed was based on fact not subjective feelings or experiences, no matter how “spiritual” they might seem at the time. Our faith is lived on the plain, not the mountaintop.

What we believe and confess is not some clever myth, some abstract timeless truth, but an eyewitness fact attested by three sane, rational men who had nothing to gain by making this up. They saw Jesus glorified. They heard the Father speak. They saw Moses and Elijah standing with Jesus, talking with Him. Moses and Elijah - dead for long centuries, but alive and well in the presence of Jesus.

They were terrified, they didn’t know what to do. Peter wanted to preserve the moment and build three structures. What else could they have done? What would you have done? Of course, you want to preserve the moment. Enshrine it. Make it a holy site so pilgrims could come to the spot years later and recall the event. Why not? Yet the voice of the Father from the cloud intervened. This moment was to be witnessed, not preserved. It was a preparation and pointing toward a greater glory - Jesus death on a cross and His resurrection.

That’s what Jesus was conversing about with Moses and Elijah. His departure. His “exodus.” His death and resurrection that would bring to fulfillment all the Moses and the prophets had written. You see sin isn’t dealt with in visions of glory. Death isn’t defeated by an inspiring view of God’s glory on a mountain. Luther called it a “theology of glory,” this hankering we have for the bright and shiny and glorious. But that show of glory won’t save anyone - not Peter, James, and John, not you and me. Oh, it’s nice to think about, and must have been awesome to see, and wouldn’t you have wanted to be in on that party as well? But if all Jesus did was come to earth to do a “shine Jesus shine” number, there would be no forgiveness, no life, no salvation, and all of us, including Moses and Elijah, would be lost forever.

That’s why the cloud has to cover things and hide the glory. That’s why Jesus told the disciples not to say a thing about what they saw until “the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Before glory comes the cross and resurrection. Before Jesus can be understood rightly in His glory, He needs to be seen hanging dead on a cross bearing your sin and my sin and the sin of the world. Before Jesus can be seen in His glory, we need to see Him broken, bleeding, dying, buried because that’s where He saves us. Not on a mountain, but on a cross, in the hidden glory of His sacrificial death and His resurrection from the dead.

The Father’s voice from heaven declared, “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him.” The same voice that was heard at Jesus’ baptism as He was getting out of the water. “This is my beloved Son, my chosen One, my Servant who will suffer for the world to save it.” He is the One you are to hear, He alone has the words of eternal life. Not Moses. Not Elijah. They pointed to Jesus; they prepared the way for Him. But only Jesus has the words that save from sin and death. Only Jesus has the words that deliver us from the death sentence of the Law and bring us to life. Whether He is shining on a mountain or on a cross or speaking through His office, hear Him. Take His words to heart.

Again, the utter uniqueness of Jesus. No one else has this testimony from the Father. No one else is called the beloved Son of God. No one else has this endorsement of His words. They saw no one but Jesus only. Only Jesus was all they needed to see and hear; only Jesus is all we need too.

Jesus was preparing His disciples for the road ahead, when His glory would be obscured by a cloud of rejection, betrayal, and crucifixion, when His ministry would be anything but glorious. They would remember this day and connect it to Good Friday and realize that this was the same Jesus - glorious Jesus, crucified Jesus. And they would understand the theology of the cross - that the glory of God is hidden in this life, hidden behind weakness and persecution and hardship and suffering and death. This is the way of Jesus, and the way of all who follow Jesus as His disciples.

It’s your way too. Being a Christian is anything but glorious. The mountaintop experiences are rare to non-existent. Our lives of faith are lived not on the mountain, but on the plain. There are doubts, times of testing, difficulties that defy our explanation and test our faith, prayers that seem to go unanswered. You have nothing but a Word of promise, a splash of water, a bit of bread and a sip of wine to go against devil, world, and flesh, and you wonder “is it enough to save me?”

The glory may be hidden, but it is there as sure as Jesus, risen from the dead, is there. One day you will see that shining face with newly resurrected eyes. The transfiguration of Jesus, shining in His glory, is a sneak preview of your glory in the resurrection, where with Moses and Elijah and the whole company of heaven you will see with your eyes that glorious, shining face of the One who is your Savior. But not yet. Patience. Now by faith, then by sight. Now hidden, then revealed. Now in weakness, then in glory. But always the same Jesus, there to save you, here to save you.

It’s good Lord, to be here.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/241/20090223180032/audio/transfigurationB2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 15 Feb 2009 08:27:02 +0000
Socially, leprosy isolated the person from the community.  Lepers were considered the “untouchables.”  They were ceremonially unclean and not allowed in the congregation, which is why Jesus sent the man in today’s Gospel reading to his priest, to show that he had been cleansed.  In Jesus’ day, lepers lived apart from everyone else and were required by law to warn approaching people on the road by crying out “Unclean, unclean.”

It is all the more remarkable then, that a leper approached Jesus in faith, begging that Jesus would make him clean.  Not simply “heal me” but “make me clean.”  He wanted to be part of the community and the congregation again.  And only Jesus could do it.  

But was Jesus willing?  Was it the will of Jesus to cleanse this man and restore him?  Was Jesus there for him as He had been there for Peter’s mother-in-law?  The answer, of course, is yes.  Jesus came “for all,” the uncountable “many” not simply a chosen few.  He reaches out His hand and touches the man.  If there were onlookers, they would have gasped in horror!  Stop!  Wait!  Don’t touch him!  He’s unclean!  He’s contagious!  You’ll be unclean too, Jesus!  What on earth are you doing?

But when Jesus touches the unclean, something utterly remarkable happens.   The unclean become clean.  That’s the point for us to take home today.  When Jesus touches the unclean, they become clean.  Lepers are cleansed. Sinners are cleansed. Leprosy was a picture of sin.  Sin is systemic, it affects our entire body and soul.  We see only its effects, the “bad things” we do, think, and say.  But Sin is a disease of our humanity.

Like leprosy, sin isolates us, it renders us unclean before God.  The sinner must be cleansed or he cannot stand before God.  Jesus must reach out and touch us in our sin, and without His touch we cannot be cleansed.  Without Jesus’ touch, we will remain in isolation, quarantined from all that is holy, left on our own in the hell of our isolation.

We inherited this disease called Sin.  It came from our father Adam.  We’re aware today of hereditary diseases that are passed down from parent to child.  In fact, scientists are beginning to find that many forms of cancer and other ailments are passed down in our genes from our father and mothers.

Sin is like that, though in a much deeper way.  Everyone is conceived and born in it.  “In sin was I born, and in iniquity did my mother conceived me,” David sang in Psalm 51.  That’s our condition, and there is no cure on earth for the leprosy of Sin.  It calls for the sinless touch of Jesus.  The Sinless One must touch the sinner and make him clean and whole.  Only Jesus can do that.

And He does.  That’s the good news for today.  We even have an example right here in front of us so we don’t have to use our imaginations.  Justus Onesimus Li was baptized this morning.  Jesus reached out, reached down, and touched this little child who has the leprosy of Adam’s sin.  He now gets to live up to his name Justus.  He is justified, declared righteous with a righteousness not his own, covered with Jesus.

I know, we don’t like to think of cute little babies as lepers, but we need to.  And let’s be honest.  Cute as they are when they are all wrapped up and snugly, they will grow up to be little monsters, bringing no end of grief and heartache to their parents, pastors, and teachers.  They are, as we are, as you are, spiritual lepers, sinners infected with Sin.

To bring a child to Baptism is to bring an unclean sinner to be touched by Jesus, the Sinless One.  Through water and the Word, Jesus does for us in Baptism what He did for the leper who met Him on the road.  It is, as St. Paul calls it, “a washing of regeneration and renewal,” a birthing water and a cleansing water, washing away the leprosy of sin.

We are impatient.  We expect cures to be instant and immediate.  Pop a pill and you’re supposed to instantly feel better.  And it’s true, as far as God is concerned.  As God looks on little Justus Onesimus Li through his Baptism, and you in your Baptism, he is cleansed and pure and holy.  A new little person in Christ.  No longer a child of Adam, but now a child of God.

And yet, as we see him, and as he will come to see himself, he is still a sinner.  The cure takes time in our way of experiencing time.  For God, it is finished, once and for all.  It’s all a done deal.  But for us, the old Adam remains, his leprosy still affects us, we must daily drown it in Baptism.  Our leprosy remains, but it is covered with the purity of Jesus.  He covers us in our shame, our isolation, our sin, so that we are not cut off from God.  Instead we are covered.

We come as Naaman the Syrian commander came to the Jordan.  How can water do such things, he wondered.  How can the Jordan, of all rivers, cleanse a man from leprosy?  You know.  It is not the water alone, but the Word of God in and with the water that does these things, and faith that trusts and clings to the Word of God in the water.

The Word in the water declares you to be cleansed from sin, pure, holy.  You are part of God’s community, you are welcomed as His child, all because in the water Jesus touched you and made you clean.  Now show yourselves to the world and offer your sacrifices of thanksgiving as a testimony to the mercy and compassion of God.  He is willing to save you.  Your Baptism is the evidence.  He wants to save all.  The cross of Jesus declares it.

In the name of Jesus,  
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/240/20090223181904 clean revcwirla Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:26:47 +0000
Yet there is Jesus, in the little house, completely there for this woman with the flu. He comes to her bedside, bends down, takes her by the hand and lifts her up. At that very moment,it’s as though there was no one else in the world but this woman. And there is no doubt as to why Jesus is there. He is there for her.

He gently lifts her up by the hand, and the fever leaves her, without so much as a Word. He sure makes it look easy, doesn’t He? Simply a touch and the fever is gone. And to make things even more unremarkable, she gets up from her sickbed and begins to serve them. Puts the water on and makes some coffee and sets out some cookies. Nice, but hardly the stuff of headlines.

As miracles go, this is an unremarkable one. Almost not even worth reporting, really. Actually, I’m more surprised to find out that Peter is married and has a mother-in-law than that she recovered from her fever after a visit from Jesus People recover from fevers all the time. A few months ago, I woke up at 1 in the morning knowing I wasn’t feeling well. By 6 AM, I was running a 102 degree temperature, shivering with fever chills under a pile of blankets. I spent the whole day in bed. By 6 PM, I was feeling fine again and having dinner. A miracle? That’s not what we would usually call it. I can assure you that I prayed, as best I could, with the blankets piled high on top of me, but you probably wouldn’t classify it as a miracle. Nor did I, to tell you the truth.

But the text would have us rethink and repent. We’re caught in our own little version of what is called materialistic naturalism - the notion that natural events always have a natural cause. It’s a basic assumption in the natural sciences today. It’s one way to keep the idea of a Creator out of the creation and the curriculum. Nature is natural, and therefore nature must have a natural cause. Of course, it doesn’t really explain how everything can start out from nothing, but hey, that’s about as far as you can go if you want to leave God out of the picture.

Now that may be a bit over your head or off your radar screen or out in left field, which are all ways of saying, “So what?” Unless you’re arguing with a Darwinist or the local school board over science texts, it may not mean all that much and you may not care all that much. But when it comes to the sneezes and sniffles, the colds and flus, and possibly for some even the cancers and clogged arteries, we’re pretty much materialists. We’ve been trained by science and medicine to see natural causes as the ultimate cause, the final word on health and healing. If the fever breaks and the flu goes away and we regain our strength to serve, then it was the pills we took or our immune system or the vitamin B shot or whatever. No, I’m not saying don’t go to the doctor, don’t take your prescriptions, don’t watch your diet and exercise. These are all gifts of God - the doctors, the medicines, the tests, and treatment. But these are instruments, tools in the toolbox of the Great Physician in whom there is life and health. The healing may come through medicines, or even the natural healing processes of our wonderfully designed bodies, but all healing, regardless of means and methods, comes from Jesus, the Incarnate Word through whom we are made and in whom there is life.

Notice that it’s all the same to Jesus - whether a case of the flu or a case of the demonic. He treats it all the same way - with His touch and His Word.

Every disease, whether the demons or the diseases, the life threatening or the simply annoying, is a sign of the Fall, the disorder of God’s ordered creation, the groanings of a world subject to futility, decay and death. Every illness, including those little colds and flus, are signs of our own death, mirrors of our mortality reflecting that harsh reality that we are natural born children of Adam subject to Adam’s death. Every healing, including the little ones when the fever breaks at the end of the day, are little resurrections, small reminders that the One who suffered for our sins on the cross is our health and strength. “By His wounds we are healed.”

What Jesus did for the gathered many outside the house of Peter’s mother-in-law, He does for this poor, fever-stricken woman with His own personal touch. Jesus could have wiped out disease in the world in one blast of His Word, one divine flu shot to cover the whole world. But that isn’t His way. Instead, He bends down to touch this woman in her own home. And then He spends the greater part of the afternoon and evening doing the same for others.

He draws all to Himself in His being lifted up on the cross, embracing and embodying the world. He is God’s love to the world. And yet He applies this gift personally, individually, to each one - in Baptism, as the water is poured on you. In the Absolution, as hands are touched to your head and words of life and forgiveness are put into your ears. In the Supper, where you receive with your mouths the gifts of His sacrifice, His own Body and Blood, touching you, taking you by the hand, lifting you up from the fever of your sin and death, raising you to a life of grateful service. All of it “for you,” as personally “for you” as Jesus was for Peter’s mother-in-law.

Early in the morning, before sunrise, Jesus arose and went off by Himself to pray. You would think that He would ride this wave of celebrity. The crowds were great, the word was out, the opportunity was great. But Jesus goes off by Himself to pray. The disciples go looking for Jesus and tell Him what He already knows: Everyone is looking for you. And His response? “Let’s go to another town, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came.”

He didn’t come to put a temporary bandage on our wounds. You know what happens to bandages; they wash off in the next shower. Jesus came to heal our wounds ultimately and finally, once and for all. He came to preach, to proclaim the kingdom, to suffer, die, and rise and so to deal decisively with the cause of disease and death.

The fact is Peter’s mother-in-law would get sick again. There would be other colds and flus and fevers. One day, she should die from one of them. The medical report and her obituary would read that she “died of natural causes.” Again, that naturalism of ours. Death by natural causes, as if death were nothing more than the natural order of things.

The ultimae cause of death is anything but natural. It is the unnatural wages of our sin, the chaos of our rebellion, the disorder of our humanity living in denial of God and making gods out of ourselves. All those diseased and demonized people whom Jesus healed would one day die of something. But they would know, as Peter’s mother-in-law would know, whom to trust in the day - the One who touched them with His healing touch, who silenced their demons with a Word, who hung on a cross in the darkness, who rose from the dead in the early morning. They would know that though they die, yet in Jesus they would live, and living and trusting Jesus, they would never die forever.

There was an interesting change in the post-communion blessing with the new hymnal. Have you noticed it? “The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen and preserve you in body and soul to life everlasting. We used to say “in the true faith,” but now we say “in body and soul.” While I greatly appreciate the old and its emphasis on right believing, the new is a reminder that Jesus came to deal with our death and conquer it, that would is good for our souls is also good for our bodies, that He is the ultimate Source and Cause of our own health and strength, and that there is a coming Day when we will finally realize and receive this in our own bodies, when Jesus bends down to our grave, takes us by the hand, and awakens us from death to life just as He once raised Peter’s mother-in-law from her sickbed.

You too, dear baptized believer. You’ve been touched by God in the water of your Baptism. You hear the Word of His preaching. You receive His Supper, what the ancient church called the “medicine of immortality.” You have His Word of promise to you.

“Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but you who wait for the Lord shall renew your strength; you shall mount up with wings like eagles; you shall run and not be weary; you shall walk and not faint.”

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/239/20090216194248/audio/5epiphanyB2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 01 Feb 2009 10:20:47 +0000
The sabbath was a holy day. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. You shall sanctify the holy day.” That meant no work - a nice meal, some rest, lots of Word of God, but no work. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God.” Sabbath, shabbat, means “rest.” Slaves work seven days a week without rest; God’s free people worked six and rested on the seventh.

Rest didn’t mean sleeping in until the pregame show. Nor did it mean getting out the golf clubs for a quick morning round. Rest meant worship, gladly hearing and learning the Word of God. For the Israelites, rest began on Friday evening with a nice meal with undiluted wine, then sleep, then a day full of the Word in the synagogue. Now of course, the sabbath law was fulfilled in Christ and doesn’t apply to us in the form of a day. The Christian congregation is not a synagogue and Sunday is not a sabbath. What was a law in the OT, punishable by the death penalty for sabbath breakers), is now a free thing in the new. But it does say something about the depth of our sinful nature when God has to make a law about rest.

Jesus is our sabbath, our rest. When we deal with Jesus, it’s not work but gift, pure rest. And if we’re rest-less, then perhaps it’s because we don’t rest enough in the Word, and we don’t seek our rest where “two or three are congregated” and Jesus promises to be there for them, to give them rest.

Jesus taught the folks there in the synagogue at Capernaum. That’s what went on in the synagogue - teaching from the Torah and prayers. And Jesus, newly baptized and ordained, would be seen as the new rabbi on the block. What would He say? The people were all ears.

What Jesus said amazed the people. He taught as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. Their teachers would credential themselves by their teachers, in an apostolic succession to Moses. They would say, “I was taught by rabbi so-and-so who was taught by rabbi so-and-so” on down the line all the way back to Moses, and you know it didn’t get bigger than Moses. Our equivalent today is lots of degree paper on the wall, which may prove you’re smart but doesn’t prove you’re right.

Jesus taught on His own authority: “You have heard it said, but I say to you...” That was different. That kind of teaching the people hadn’t heard before, not since Moses and the prophets. Jesus’ teaching came with the full blast authority of the Lord Himself. He spoke as the Lord Himself, because that’s who He is - the Lord. He was the Prophet of whom Moses spoke in Deuteronomy, the One who would have the words of God in His mouth. To hear Jesus was to hear it straight from the mouth of God Himself. His words were God’s words; His teaching God’s teaching, and He didn’t need a bunch of degrees hanging on the wall.

The people were amazed. The people had never heard anything like it before. Mark doesn’t tell us what Jesus was teaching, but we can assume that it had to do with sin, forgiveness, and the kingdom that had come with His coming. In other words, pretty much the same stuff you hear every Sunday, or at least are supposed to hear if the preaching is running on all cylinders. Now maybe that’s not what you came to hear, or even want to hear, but that’s what God wants to be heard - repentance and forgiveness in the name of Jesus. Certainly the devil doesn’t want that kind of preaching going on.

There was a man in the Capernaum congregation with an unclean spirit, a demon. I don’t know how common demon possession was, but it seems that the devils were putting in overtime during Jesus’ ministry. You can be sure that wherever the doctrine of Christ is being taught, the devil and his demons will be hard at work. There’s nothing the devil despises more than the preaching of Christ crucified for sinners. You can preach social justice and morality until you’re blue in the face and the devil couldn’t care less. But preach Christ, and all sorts of trouble will start.

A man jumps up in the middle of Jesus’ sermon and shouts, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are - the Holy One of God.” Disorder is always the way of the devils. God is a God of order. He creates and keeps everything in order. The devil prefers disorder, disruption, chaos. Lots of hollering and jumping around.

Notice how the demons know who Jesus is, and they even speak the truth about Jesus. He’s the Holy One of God come to destroy the works of the devil. Right on every front. But this truth is a crooked truth, meant to distract, to short-circuit Calvary, to get Jesus off His baptismal road to the cross, to leak the little secret with some advance publicity.

That’s why the demons were always trumpeting that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus was trying to bring His hearers along slowly, shaping their hearing and reshaping their expectations. But the devil wanted to get the image of “messiah” in the people’s minds. Get them to think of Jesus in terms of power and politics. Push on their messianic buttons and get them riled up. Forget about this cross and death and resurrection. Let’s talk about glory and power and revolt. The more people thought of Jesus as a Messiah in their own terms, the less they would hear the Gospel.

The demons would have loved to stop Mark’s gospel at chapter 1, so we could close up the book and never get to chapter 16 and Jesus’ death and resurrection. He would love to have you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God without all this stuff about cross, and body and blood, and death and resurrection. The devil loves “spiritualities” and cross-less, bloodless gospels that are really no Gospel at all. You remember Peter, who confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. And then Jesus began to teach them what it meant for Him to be the Christ, how He must suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. And Peter, meaning well, said, “Lord, that must never happen to you.” But Jesus rebuked Peter. Those weren’t God’s words, those were the devil’s words. It must happen. The Christ must suffer, die, and rise or there is no salvation for the world.

I seriously doubt that the devil much cares about the Christianity you see on TV which talks about God doing you favors, and God giving you an easy and prosperous life if you only believe. What the devil hates and what he tries to mess up is faith that trusts Jesus for forgiveness, faith that looks to Jesus crucified and sees life, faith that suffers all things for Jesus’ sake knowing that Christ has conquered and in Him we conquer too.

In Mark, Jesus’ being the Christ, the Messiah, is a secret, hidden until the end, when He hangs dead in the darkness on the cross and a Gentile soldier blurts out, “Truly, this was the son of God.” And then no one silences him. Why? Because hanging there on the cross, Jesus is the most Son of God, most Holy One of God. This is why He came, this is why He was baptized, this is why He set His face to Jerusalem. This is how the kingdom of God comes to us - by His dying and rising. And until that happens, until the world sees Him dead on a cross, they will not understand what it means for Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God. And neither will we. We will always try to reshape Jesus into something else.

With a word, Jesus silences the disruptive demon and restores order to the liturgy of the syndagogue.. “Be silent. Come out of him,” Jesus says. And the demon obeys. He must. He has no choice. He must obey the Word. It’s the same word, by the way, that Jesus uses to still the chaotic storm, the wind and the waves. “Be silent.” Literally, “shut up.” This is the creative Word speaking, and the creature must obey.

I’m always amazed with how easily Jesus deals with the demons. Just a word, nothing more. And though the demon makes a circus side-show of convulsing the man and shrieking, in the end it must submit to the Word of Jesus because Jesus is Lord even of the devil and His demons. That’s why the Luther, in the Large Catechism, calls the devil “God’s devil.”

Now that’s authority! This was not simply persuasive preaching with PowerPoint. Nope. This is a word that cuts through the darkness, that casts out the demons, the changes water into wine, that calms the wind and stills the saves, that cleanses the leper, and lifts the paralyzed man from his bed. It’s a Word that declares with the authority of God that Baptism is your personal rebirth in Christ, that the bread of the Supper is His Body given for you, the wine of His Supper is His blood shed for you. By His Word your sins are forgiven, you are saints in Christ. By His Word He will raise you from the dead.

This is Capernaum for you. Your congregation. A synagogue of the baptized, gathered to hear the Word spoken on Christ’s authority. “I forgive you all of your sins.” Spoken into the darkness of your sins, silencing the demons, bringing salvation, healing, and life. We need to hear this authoritative Word from the One to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given. We need to hear it spoken against our sin, against the devil, the world, and our own flesh - justifying us, declaring us to be righteous, forgiven, holy in Christ.

Don’t let the demons drag you down. The devil will try his best - creating unrest in the world, destroying homes and marriages, making mischief in our churches, distracting us, throwing us off the good news to another gospel. He drives us to doubt and despair. Luther threw ink bottles and passed gas at him. Today we either take him too seriously and too lightly. Don’t kid yourself in our modern sophistication. The devil stalks around like a roaring lion, Peter says, looking for someone to devour. He wants you. He wants to get between you and Jesus. He wants to keep you way from the Word and your congregation. Resist him by standing firm in the faith, in the doctrine of Christ. He can harm us none. He’s already judged, the deed is done. One little word can fell him, when that little word comes with the authority of Jesus, who died and rose to save you.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/238/20090209222848/audio/4epiphanyB2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:04:47 +0000
You can also understand the Flood from this perspective too. In the Flood, God returned everything to Genesis 1:2. Everything covered with water. The Flood was a washing with water of a creation gone bad. And when Noah stepped out of the ark with his family and the animals, it was a new creation of sorts. In fact, it was Noah’s birthday - the first day of the first month of the 601st year of Noah’s life. Happy birthday, Noah, as he stepped out on dry land.

You can also understand the Exodus trip through the Red Sea in those terms. Israel emerges from the water as a nation. Egypt is the womb of Israel and the Sea is its birthing water. As the Israelites walked through the Sea, they went from being slaves to free men, from nothing to a nation.

Now you’re prepared to hear from Mark. The beginning of Mark’s version of the Gospel is John the Baptizer and the baptism of Jesus. This is where the Gospel begins for Mark. He has no need to tell us about Jesus’ conception, His birth in Bethlehem, His presentation in the temple, HIs childhood. Matthew and Luke will fill in that blank. For Mark, the Gospel, the good news of Jesus, begins with His baptism, and so we are here today to consider the Baptism of Our Lord. And if that water wasn’t enough, we have a Baptism, as Emilyn receives the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit and becomes a new creation in Christ. Wow! What a day!

John’s baptism was transitional, a bridge between the old covenant and the new. It was different, unprecedented, new. In the old covenant, you dealt with sin by blood sacrifice, the blood of an animal for your blood, life for life. But with John came something new - a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. You came to John standing there in the Jordan river, confessing your sins, and you were washed by him and forgiven. Your sins were washed away. And the whole while John would be preaching and pointing ahead to another One, a greater One for whom John was not worthy to be the lowest slave untying His sandal. He would bring an even greater Baptism - the Holy Spirit.

Jesus came up from Nazareth to the Jordan and stood before his cousin John. It’s unlikely they had ever met before that. John grew up in the wilderness; Jesus in the northwest hill country of Galilee. John had been waiting and watching, preparing the people for the coming of Messiah. He had an image of Jesus with an axe swung to the root and a winnowing fork to throw the chaff into the fire, One who would baptize not simply with water but with fire and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus stood there before John in the Jordan, and an amazing thing happened. Jesus wished to be baptized. The Sinless One wishes to be baptized as a sinner. The only One who has no need for repentance wants to receive John’s baptism of repentance. Matthew records that John objected, saying, “I should be baptized by you,” and that’s right. The sinner needs to be baptized by the Sinless One. But Jesus says to John, “Let it be. For it is proper for us to do this in order to fulfill all righteousness.”

Here in the water of the Jordan, in John’s baptism of repentance, the Plan goes into effect. The sinless Son stands in solidarity with sinners, immersed in their putrid bath water. All their adulteries, thefts, murders, lies, deceits, idolatries, blasphemies are washed into that water, and Jesus steps in to make the bitter water sweet. Like a sponge, He absorbs the sin of the world and becomes the Sinner for us all, “in order to fulfill all righteousness.”

The Sacrifice is washed, Jesus is baptized into His death. This episode leads directly to His cross. Mark makes the connection with a verb. In Jesus’ baptism the heavens were ripped open violently; at Jesus’ death on the cross, the temple curtain that isolates the most Holy place was ripped open in the same way with the same word. Jesus’ baptism and His death go together.

There in the water of the Jordan is the Word made Flesh. When water and the Word get together, watch out. Big things happen. Remember Genesis 1:2? Mark tells us that as Jesus got up from the water, the heavens were torn open, the Spirit descended on Him in the form of a dove, and the Father’s voice was heard giving testimony straight out of Isaiah 42: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen One in whom I delight.” “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

The Father is delighted and well pleased because the Plan was being put into effect; the Plan hatched from before the foundations of the world that the world would be redeemed in the death of the Word, the Son of God. Jesus’ baptism sets the ball in motion. The pin is pulled; there is no stopping it now until it ends on a cross outside Jerusalem, where again He is declared the Son of God, this time by a soldier witnessing His death.

Jesus, though sinless, was baptized as a Sinner, so that you, though sinless, might be baptized into His righteousness and holiness. In His baptism in the Jordan, Jesus takes up your sin; in your Baptism, He washes away your sin and covers you with His own robes of righteousness. A sweet swap; a happy exchange. The Sinless One for the sinner, for you.

What does it all mean? The apostle Paul tells us very clearly: Do you no know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by Baptism (Baptism did it, it’s not just some symbolic thing) in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory off the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

This is the greater baptism of which John spoke. The Baptism that makes us new creatures in Christ, that births us as children of God, that washes away the stain of sin, that joins us to the death of Jesus and to life of Jesus, that puts us into the Body of Christ, incorporating us in Christ, that clothes us with Christ. This is that fiery Baptism of the Holy Spirit who works through water and the Word. This is the death and life of Jesus applied to you personally; this is salvation made personal. The Christ that was baptized for all in the Jordan and died for all on the cross is here for you in the water. For a little daughter of Eve born in Adam’s sin and death. But now a child of heaven, born of water and Spirit through the Word. Joined to Jesus in His death and life with all the promises and certainty these bring.

It isn’t just one day but every day for the baptized. Baptism isn’t something that happens once and is then forgotten except for the pictures and the certificate. It is daily. Daily dying to sin. Each day Baptism drowns the sinner, and boy does he need drowning. The sinner dies, the saint in Christ raises. Each day is a resurrection day, Baptism raising us to life, renewing us, lifting us up out of the death of sin to life in Christ. It’s an identity we wear. We don’t simply say, “I was baptized,” but “I am baptized.” That’s who you are. You are identified with Christ in His death.

Baptized into Christ, you are new creatures, a new creation. Genesis 1:3 has come to you in a new way. The Spirit hovering over the baptismal water has ordered the chaos of your sin and death into something new - a justified sinner, forensically, legally declared righteous in God’s eyes for Jesus’ sake. Now you are permitted by God in heaven to consider yourself already dead to Sin. Sin no longer has mastery over you. Sin’s lordship is ended. You are dead to Sin but you are alive to God in Christ Jesus. In Christ Jesus is where all the action is, where your life is, where your salvation is, where your holiness is. It’s all in Christ, and baptized into Christ and believing Him, you get to play with it, work with it, live it.

Does Emilyn understand all of that? Who knows what she understands? She has a lifetime to grow into it, and so do you. As many days as the Lord gives you, and then the eternal Day in which the darkness of sin and death is no more.

You are baptized. Welcome to Light and Life, a new creative Day.

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/237/20090118042348/audio/baptismB2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 04 Jan 2009 05:29:48 +0000
The normal things was for every Israelite family to go up to Jerusalem four times a year for the major feasts. One of them was the Passover. Kids could stay at home until they were twelve. Then the boys were obligated to appear before the teachers of the Torah in the temple for instruction. Now don’t get any bright ideas about keeping the kids at home on Sunday until they’re twelve. This had to do with pilgrimages to Jerusalem. For Mary and Joseph coming from Nazareth, that would have been about a three or four day trip, not something you do with little kids. But when a boy was twelve, it was time for him to join the men of Israel. That’s why Luke gives us this episode. It records the end of Jesus’ childhood and the beginning of his manhood.

As I said, when the Word become Flesh, things are never again quite the same. Think about it. The One who is the Torah in the Flesh appears before the teachers of the Torah for the first time and they are amazed at the wisdom that is coming out of this twelve year old kid from Nazareth. Where did He learn this stuff so well? The Wisdom of God in the flesh, of which Solomon had only a small sampling, was now sitting among the teachers. And the teacher becomes the student, and the student the teacher.

It’s understandable that Mary and Joseph lost track of Jesus. After all, Jerusalem was packed with pilgrims, the temple was crowded. They had likely traveled in a large group of family and neighbors from Nazareth, and twelve year old boys aren’t necessarily going to be clinging to their mother’s skirts, especially when they have to be in their Father’s house.

It took a couple of days, actually, for them to realize that Jesus wasn’t with them. And then they searched the streets of Jerusalem anxiously looking for Him. After three anxious days (why does it always take three days?) they found Him in the temple, sitting among the Torah teachers, engaged in conversation with them, listening to them and asking them questions. And they were amazed at His insights into the Word. This was no ordinary twelve year old.

There are prodigies in many things - art, music, math, science. But not in theology. Mozart could dazzle people at the piano at the age of four. Tiger Woods could swing a mean golf club at the age of five. But you don’t find precocious theologians. Yes, you do see “spiritual kids,” kids who have a deep interest in the Word of God and ask insightful questions. But I have yet to run across or hear of a true prodigy in theology. In fact, very often those “spiritual kids” manage to think their way right out of the faith when they hit the age of eighteen or so. That’s because the things of God are not natural to fallen humanity, in fact, natural man born in sin cannot even discern them. There may be naturally given gifts of music and artistic ability. But the knowledge of God is not a natural thing; it is something revealed by God through His Spirit working through the Word.

You can understand the rabbis’ amazement at this kid named Jesus. He asked questions they hadn’t thought of asking. He connected dots they didn’t know existed. He is the Word in the Flesh, the Torah as a living, breathing human being. But the rabbis couldn’t have known this. Nor could they have known why He was there - to fulfill all righteousness. To do the Law in our place as our substitute. To become obedient to His parents and teachers under the 4th commandment, to honor, serve, obey, love and cherish Mary and Joseph and all the other authorities placed over Him even though He was King of kings and Lord of lords.

This was His great servant humility, that being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the Law, even to death on a cross. Mary would lose her Son again for three days, not in the temple but on the cross and in the tomb. For Mary, this was a bit of a warm up, a practice run, a reminder as to who this Child of hers was.

She’s seems to have forgotten, if only for a brief panic-stricken moment. “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching high and low for you in great distress!” She sounds like any mother who has lost her child in a crowd. But notice something here. Jesus refuses to address her as mother. Oh, He is polite, deferential, even obedient. But He never calls her “mother” even when she calls Him “son.” At the wedding at Cana and at the cross, He calls her “Woman,” a title of honor and dignity, like our “ma’am” or “madam.” But not “mother.”

When Mary and Jesus’ brothers came to take Him into protective custody, and people said to Him, “Your mother and brothers are here for you, “ Jesus looked at the people gathered around Him hearing His words and said, “These are my mother and brothers.” Mary is certainly His mother, the honored instrument of the Incarnation, most highly favored and blessed among women, but her Son is her Lord, her Christ, and her Savior.

“Your father and I have been searching for you.” Perhaps it’s just a way of speaking. Joseph was, after all, the surrogate father, given to raise the Son of God in the Flesh. And when the Word becomes Flesh, nothing is really “normal” at all. Jesus issues the firm yet gentle correction. “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” He calls the temple his Father’s house. Solomon, the Son of David, had built the temple (at least the first rendition of it). Now the greater Son of David comes to the temple to claim it as HIs own. He is at home here; in HIs Father’s house.

More for blessed Mary to ponder in her heart. This boy become a man was no ordinary Child, but destined for the rising and falling of many in Israel. A sword would pierce her own soul too, as she helplessly stood at the foot of the cross to watch Him die. She would remember this incident and then understand that her Son did not belong to her. Her Son is the only-begotten of the Father, given in love to the world to be the world’s Savior. She could not hold Him to herself, as mothers are want to do with their sons. This One belonged to the world. He who is the Wisdom of God incarnate, the Word of God in the Flesh, takes His first steps as a man among the men of Israel, and His mother must learn to let Him go to do what He came to do.

The most amazing verse of this whole incident is this one: “And He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.” He goes from HIs Father’s house back to HIs father’s house to be ordered under, subordinate to His parents. Born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law. Becoming obedient even unto death on a cross. In order to fulfill all righteousness.

He was submissive. Better translated subordinate. Ordered under another. It’s the same word for wives to husbands, servants to masters, children to parents. We live under holy order, ordered under parents and other authorities. Our sinful natures bridle against this from our birth from the defiant temper tantrum to the willful breaking of the law to all of our crimes and misdemeanors. We are by conception and birth rebel children, turned against our mothers and fathers on earth, turned against our Father who is in heaven. This is our sorry lot as children of Father Adam.

This Child of Mary who is the Son of God, came to be our righteousness, to fulfill the Law where we could not and would not. Though He was owed the obedience of Mary and Joseph as their Lord, He become obedient to them as their Son. Though over them, He was ordered under them. Though the Lord of all, He became the servant of all. Though He was the Wisdom of God, He sat at the feet of teachers and learned in ordered obedience. For us. For you. For your salvation. His obedience is your righteousness before God, your holiness, the clothing by which you, a sinner, stand before a righteous God justified.

God sees you as His Son, clothed with Christ in your Baptism. Your disobedience is washed away; Jesus’ obedience covers you, a perfect robe of righteousness. What that means, practically speaking, is that Jesus’ Father is your Father, His Father’s house is your house, His wisdom is your wisdom, His death and life are your death and life. You live in, with, and under the life of God’s perfect Child. His obedient life is His gift to you; and your obedient life is your gift of thanks to Him who came as a Child to save you.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/236/20090110174549/audio/2christmasB2009.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 28 Dec 2008 07:58:28 +0000
Over the next two Sundays, we get two events from the childhood of Jesus - His presentation in the temple at 40 days and His sitting with the teachers of the temple at 12 years. Both events are temple events, as the Lord comes to His temple yet in a hidden way, as a 40 day old infant, and as a precocious 12 year old boy questioning the rabbis.

Everything here cries out “fulfillment.” Jesus is the fulfillment of OT Israel. He is the Son of Israel, the Son of Abraham, Son of David, the true Davidic King. He is prophet and priest. He is everything promised of Israel in one man. When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple on the 40th day, that was precisely 490 days since the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah in the temple. 70 times 7 days. Perfect prophetic fulfillment, as Gabriel had told Daniel. This is no coincidence, but fulfillment.

As long as we’re talking numbers her, the prophet Anna also speaks fulfillment. She had been married a brief seven years, and now she was 84, which happens to be 12 times 7. The number of her life’s years bears witness that she is living in the time of fulfillment. Together with Simeon, she waited and watched in the temple for the coming Messiah. She remembered the passage from Malachi: “Then suddeny the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.

And so these two senior citizens of Israel watched and waited; the prophet and the prophetess, embodying OT Israel. Simeon had been told by the Holy Spirit that he wouldn’t die before he had seen the Messiah. Usually the case is you find out you don’t have long to live. But Simeon learned he wasn’t going to die until he had laid his eyes on the promised One of Israel. That wasn’t so much a death sentence as it was a life’s sentence. Every day Simeon would awaken and wonder, “Is this the day?” Everyone who came to the temple would make him wonder, “Is this the one?”

Then one day Mary and Joseph came to the temple with Jesus, 40 days old. It was their purification day. Stop right there. Purification day? For what? Mary was a virgin, and her Child was the sinless Son of God. What need was there for any purification. This was a pure a birth as there could possibly be. Ah, but here’s the Gospel. Whatever Jesus does, and whatever is done to Him, is to fulfill all righteousness, to fulfill the Law. At eight days He was circumcised under the Law. At forty days, He was brought to the temple, in accordance with the Law of Moses. He has joined the human race, not only sharing in our flesh and bone, but sharing in our burden, the burden of being sinners under the Law.

It is also His redemption day. Think about it. The Redeemer is brought to the temple to be redeemed. Every first-born male was holy to the Lord. Even the animals. They had to be redeemed, bought back with blood. The Redeemer is redeemed by the blood of two doves, the poor man’s sacrifice. “He was poor for ours sake, so that by His poverty we might become rich.” It’s all there already in place - Jesus the Substitute, Jesus the Redeemer, holy to the Lord, dedicated to die in our place. And all of it, before Jesus can utter a word or even walk. Like a baby brought to Baptism, the Lord of all must be carried to His temple for His first appearance.

When Simeon saw the holy family and looked at this child, his old heart must have skipped a beat as the Spirit testified to his spirit that this was the promised One, the One he had been waiting for all these years. He gathers the little One in his tired arms and lifts his cataract-blurred eyes to heaven, seeing clearly through the eyes of faith. And he prays:

Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace
According to Thy Word,
For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation,
Which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people,
A Light to lighten the Gentiles
And the glory of Thy people Israel.

You know that hymn. You sing it almost every Sunday after the Lord’s Supper. You sing it with Simeon as you receive the Body and Blood of the promised One, His gift to you. As genuine a presence as when Simeon held that sacred Baby in his arms. You pray with Simeon. “Let your servant depart in peace, according to Thy word.” I can die now, in peace. That’s what it means. Simeon was waiting to die.

When I was a child, and we sang this at the end of the Holy Communion, I used to think it meant we could go home, the service was finally ended. And I prayed it sincerely, ‘Lord, let your servant depart in peace” so I can go outside and play. But that’s not what it means. It means we can now die in peace, having seen and heard the Lord’s salvation. I don’t think we realize it often enough, that what we hear and see and do here is more about our death than it is about our life. On many Sundays, I’m sure you go home and say, “That was nice but what does this have to do with my life.” We might prefer, perhaps, something more relevant and timely - something about our economy or how to have a better marriage or how to raise our children. We want to hear how to live while God wants to teach us how to die, because in the economy of the cross, dying is the only way to live.

The cross looms large of this passage. Did you catch it? “Behold this Child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” This Child, embraced by Simeon and Anna, of whom the prophets of Israel spoke, would be rejected by Israel. “He came to His own, but His own people did not receive Him.” His coming precipitates a crisis of faith and unbelief, of rising to faith in Him or falling in unbelief against Him. There is no middle ground, no neutral position when it comes to Jesus. You either trust Him or you don’t. You can’t refashion Him or reinvent Him. You receive Him as He is - your Christ and Lord and Savior, or you reject Him in unbelief.

This Child comes with a sword and a cross. Mary would live to see her Son crucified. She would stand at the foot of the cross and watch her first-born die. The sword would pierce her gentle soul too. What a burden that must have been for her to bear! She knew that this Child did not belong to her; she was there in the temple to redeem Him back from the Lord with a sacrifice. But she knew that she could only have Him for a little while. He had come to save His people from their sins.

The Child of the manger is born with blood on His hands. No escaping. It’s the blood of our sin, our rebellion against God, our atheism, our rejection. Today, December 28th, the fourth of the twelve days of Christmas, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorating the baby boys of Bethlehem who died at King Herod’s sword for no other reason than they resembled Jesus. That’s a harsh way to celebrate the joy of Christmas, but it faces squarely the reality that this cute little Baby all swaddled and mangered on Christmas morning is a warrior destined to do battle with the darkness, the devil and his demons, with Death itself.

The work of redemption is bloody work. It isn’t with unbloody gold or silver that we are redeemed from sin, death, and the Law. That would be a tidy transaction - the way we like it. But we are redeemed by Christ’s holy precious blood, and His innocent suffering and death, of which the baby boys of Bethlehem were only a picture and Rachel’s tears were a preview of blessed Mary’s tears as she beheld her Son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Christmas joy inevitably gives way to reality. Presents are unwrapped, the tree eventually gets put out on the curb or packed away, the lights grow dim, we return to our business as usual whatever that may be. We will be facing a challenging year financially, personally, spiritually. Some of you may not have jobs or an income next year. Some of you are facing health crises or family issues. None of us knows what the coming days, weeks, and months will bring.

But like old Simeon and Anna in the temple, we are given to embrace the Christ-Child in Word and Sacrament, and having embraced Him in the arms of faith, we are prepared for the future, because this Child of Mary, this Baby of Bethlehem is our future. Israel’s glory, our Light and our Life.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/235/20090110163229/audio/1christmasB2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 21 Dec 2008 04:31:53 +0000 For with God nothing will be impossible. - Luke 1:37

The fourth and last Sunday of Advent brings a much kinder and gentler text. John the Baptizer has had his say and is done for another year. The scene shifts to a town in northern Galillee named Nazareth. There was no such town by that name in the old testament. It was up in the northern hill country, a strategic lookout, and a place of recent development, which explains what Joseph, who was a contractor, was doing there.

Instead of John, our preacher is an angel, the only one of two named angels in the Bible - Gabriel. Gabriel appeared to Daniel in exile in Babylon, and now centuries later, he appears to a young woman, perhaps 17 or 18 years old, getting ready for her marriage to Joseph, who was a descendant of David. File that one away, you’re going to need it in a bit.

“Greetings, O highly favored one, the Lord is with you.” How’s that for a greeting? It’s startling enough to hear from an angel, and when the angel greets you that way you really stop and take notice. Mary was troubled, wondering what these words meant? What did it mean to be “favored by God” and that the Lord was with her?

Here is what it meant. “Do not fear.” Don’t you love how angels always say that? “Do not fear.” Why? Because they scare the daylights out of people, that’s why. For all we know, Mary let out a scream at the sight of Gabriel, and don’t think you wouldn’t have. But to stand in God’s favor, to be justified by grace, means to stand without fear in the presence of the holy, even in the presence of holy angels.

The angel had some news. “You have found favor with God.” The word is “grace,” God’s undeserved kindness toward sinners. Yes, Mary is a sinner. Don’t let pious speculations about her being conceived without original sin distract you. She is a daughter of Eve and Adam like the rest of us. She was born with the same inherited disease as all of us. That she has God’s favor is an act of God’s undeserved kindness.

We might imagine that being favored by God means that life would be easy from that point on. After all, people think that when you’re favored by God, God will do you favors. The traffic parts in front of you, the germs detour around you, and general misfortune never heads toward your house. Not so. To be favored by God is to be part of God’s plan, to have His will done with you, which inevitably results in your inconvenience. “You will conceive a child in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Y’shua, Jesus, YHWH is salvation. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most HIgh; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David.”

That’s quite a bit for a teenager to take in, wouldn’t you say? Here is Mary, engaged, yet to be married, a virgin, being told by an angel that she was about to conceive a child without the participation of a man. His name was already picked out, and there was no question as to who the father is. God Himself. There was also no question as to what HIs purpose was - he was to sit on the throne of his father David forever. He was to be the Son of David spoken of by the prophet Nathan, the one who would establish David’s reign and kingdom forever.

Impossible, you say. Virgins don’t conceive. We all know that. And don’t think for a moment that Mary didn’t know the facts of life either. Sometimes we think that those people two thousand years ago were a bunch of superstitious rubes who would believe anything. You don’t need the internet to know that virgins don’t conceive. I’m sure Mary’s parents knew this too, and wondered what they were hearing when Mary came to them and said, “Mom, Dad, guess what? I just got a visit from an angel who said I was going to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit and bear the Son of God.” Yeah. We know Joseph didn’t but the story initially, but had to be persuaded in a dream. I’m sure the neighbors raised their eyebrows at the news, you know how small towns are. No wonder Mary went away to the hill country to see cousin Elizabeth, who also was six months out to here at an age when she should have been a great-grandmother.

Impossible, you say. Yes it is. Old ladies and virgins do not ordinarily conceive children, but with God, nothing is impossible.

Marvel heaven, wonder earth, that our Lord chose such a birth. To be conceived of a Virgin without the aid of a man. It hearkens back to the first Gospel in the Scriptures from Genesis. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between her Seed and yours.” God promised to act, to do it all. He promised that the Seed of woman (not of man) would strike the head of the serpent. It takes One born of woman yet without man, One born without Adam’s inherited fault. One who doesn’t have Adam’s sin yet who fully shares in our humanity.

That’s why Mary’s virginity is so important. This isn’t about Mary’s goodness or her purity. It’s about the fact that our Lord has no earthly father and therefore has no inherited sin from Adam, like us in every way, sharing fully our flesh, bone, and blood and yet without sin. Scoffers may scoff and wonder where did our Lord get His Y chromosome since we all know that comes from the father? It’s impossible to have a male conceived without an earthly father? Yes, but with God, nothing is impossible.

We are born in sin, sinful from the moment of our conception, as David reminds us in Psalm 51. That was true even of Mary. But her Child is different, utterly unique. He is man of His mother, but God of His Father. He is both true God and true Man in one unique Person. He is the Word made flesh, conceived in the womb of Mary to save humanity from the death and damnation our sins deserve.

Think about Eve in light of Mary. Mary is the counterpart of Eve. Eve listened to the word of the devil, that diabolical lie that God is not true to His Word, that we can be like God, that we can be gods ourselves, that we will not die as a result of our disobedience. Eve hearkened to the lie, and she was deceived. She didn’t bring wisdom into the world, as she thought. She brought deception, darkness, and death. Mary heard the Word of the Lord through the angel, the impossible Word that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of God would shadow over her, and that she in her virginity would conceive a Son who would be the promised messiah and Savior. Mary hearkened to that Word and she believed and conceived. For with God, nothing is impossible.

Mary is mother Israel reduced to one young woman from Nazareth. All those mothers of Israel, some like Sarah or Hannah or Ruth who conceived sons against all the odds by the Word and promise of God. Mary stands at the end of a long line of Israelite mothers who waited with hope and faith the coming promise of God and who trusted that with God nothing was impossible. Mary is mother Israel, conceiving in the fullness of time the Son of God, born of woman, born under the Law, to redeem humanity from under the Law.

Mary is a picture of mother Church, our mother, who by the Word preached and heard conceived children of God, who are born in the water of Baptism. You and I are virgin-born, born not of natural descent or the will of the flesh or the will of man, but born of God by water and the Holy Spirit.

Mary is the prototype of each and every believer in Christ, hearing the impossible Word that declares a sinner justified before God, and saying “yes, let it me to me according to your Word.” Don’t overlook Mary’s “fiat,” her “yes.” That is the “yes” of faith, the “amen” of a heart the trusts the Word of God even when that Word has said an impossible thing. What must have been going through her mind and heart as she contemplated what the angel told her? How would she tell her parents, her fiance, her friends and neighbors? She bears the scandal of her Son’s incarnation too. The Pharisees would later say to Jesus, “We know who our fathers are,” implying the worst about Jesus and His mother. Yet this faith-filled young woman, this most highly favored lady, simply says “yes.” Amen. Let it be, according to your Word.

When the Word become Flesh and enters the world, things get messed up. Plans are overturned. People are inconvenienced. Presuppositions are utterly destroyed. God’s ways are not our ways. We wouldn’t have done it this way, but we are not God and that’s good. God’s way is to save by the Virgin’s womb, the manger crib, the cross and the tomb. He wants us to be sure that we are covered, literally from the womb to the tomb. Our humanity is embraced every step of the way from conception to grave. In the womb of Mary the most amazing thing happens by the grace of God - the Infinite reside in the finite, the Creator becomes the Creature, God becomes Man. A virgin daughter of Eve bears the sinless Son of God.

God is with us. Emmanuel. Such a Savior - neither crib nor cross refusing. Neither the virgin’s womb nor our tomb despising. A Virgin conceives. A dead man rises. Sinners stand justified before God. God and Man are reconciled.

Impossible? With God nothing is impossible.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/234/20090110163154/audio/4adventB2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 14 Dec 2008 22:15:07 +0000
So what do you think of John the Baptizer? You’ve had a week to think about him, to live with this Advent image in your head of this wilderness prophet wearing camel’s hair and leather, eating locusts and wild honey, calling people to repentance and baptism. What do you think of him? Do you like him? Would you want to meet him? Does he disturb you?

He disturbed the religious leaders of Jerusalem, that’s for certain. They sent priests and Levites out to conduct an investigation. And isn’t that how it always is when there is a man sent from God. There is certain to be an investigation from synodical headquarters. These things have to be controlled, managed, supervised, watched closely. We can’t be having guys impersonating Elijah and baptizing people in the Jordan without our approval, can we? We need to appoint a blue-ribbon panel to investigate this guy.

So they asked John, “Who are you?” Great question. The question of identity and purpose. Who are you? Or perhaps it might be better expressed, “Who do you think you are?” Implied is another question, “Who sent you?” John confessed. He spoke the truth. He didn’t flinch or deny, he didn’t engage in the weasel talk one hears from public officials these days, skirting the issue, avoiding the question. John was clear. “I am not the Christ.” Some apparently thought he was. People were waiting for the messiah. There were already messianic pretenders. John had all the right stuff - wilderness, camel’s hair, weird, ascetic, holy, intense. Their kind of messiah. He could rally men, gather an army, mobilize forces, establish the kingdom with violence.

John confessed clearly. “I am not the Christ.” He would come later, after John. Cousin Jesus. So who are you? Are you Elijah? You sure look like Elijah with that camel hair shirt and leather belt. You came in the same place Elijah left this earth in a fiery chariot drawn by the horsemen of Israel. Are you Elijah?

Again, John confessed clearly. “I am not.” Actually he was Elijah in anti-type as Jesus Himself says. But he wasn’t Elijah himself. So who are you? Are you the great Prophet of whom Moses spoke? The One who would arise from the people and lead the people as Moses did? Again the answer, even shorter - “No.”

So who are you, John? Inquiring minds want to know. The boys in Jerusalem need to know. We have papers to fill out, reports to make. Give us something. Here’s something: A voice calling in the wilderness. A voice. Nothing more. A prophet mouth to produce words. That’s all John wanted to be known as. A voice in the wilderness with a single message: Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight paths for Him.”

Then what’s with the baptizing thing, John? We don’t baptize around here. It’s unheard of. Why do you baptize if you are neither the messiah or Elijah or the Prophet? You don’t just go around baptizing. Why?

Here’s why: “I come baptizing with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” That’s why. Are you satisfied with that explanation? You have to be; it’s all you’re going to get from John.

What a strange figure John is! Stranger this week than he was last week. He seems to have no identity of his own. He’s just a Voice calling in the wilderness and a finger pointing to Jesus, the One coming after him whose sandals he is not worthy to stoop down and untie. “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” That’s where John is pointing. To Jesus, God’s Lamb whose sacrificial blood takes away the sin of the world. That’s where John wants your attention focused. Not on him but on Jesus. When John’s disciples were leaving him in droves to follow Jesus, John said, “Good! That’s how it should be. He must increase, and I must decrease. He must become everything, and I must become nothing. You can throw me away, you can lock me in Herod’s prison and loose the key for all I care. You can forget I even exist. I’m just a Voice calling in the wilderness, pointing to Jesus. Don’t follow me, follow Him.”

What a model for the ministry John is! In our day, when pastors are expected to be salesmen, politicians, outgoing winners who project a winning attitude and attract winners to themselves. Isn’t that what we really expect? Be honest. We want ministers to be kind, caring, gentle, nurturing. “Motherly,” dare I say it. Would you want John as your pastor? He was weird. This isn’t a contextual problem. He was as weird then as he would be today. And maybe weird will draw a crowd for a while, but sooner or later people are going to get tired for the repentance message and look for something more “relevant and meaningful.”

He came as a witness. That’s the word the evangelist uses to describe John. A “witness.” What does a witness do? He doesn’t talk about himself or his feelings or what he had for breakfast today. He talks about what he has seen and heard. His personal stuff is irrelevant to his testimony. When the religious types from Jerusalem came to John to interrogate him, he could have gone on and on about his life. And we would have had some fascinating details into this mysterious man from the wilderness. Who raised him when his parents died? Was it the Essene community in the wilderness? What was that like, growing up with wilderness monks? Or that famous question that sports figures get asked after the big game: What are your emotions right now? How do you feel about things, John?

But John would simply say, “Who cares? It’s none of your business. You don’t need to know, and I don’t need to tell you. I’m nothing but a Voice. What matters is the coming Christ and your repentance. That’s all that matters. John came to testify to the Light. He was not the Light. He simply reflected the Light and pointed to it, so that through him, through his preaching and his baptism, people might believe in the Light who is Jesus Christ.

One of the great insights in church history is the recognition that the sacraments retain their power even when the men who administer them are wicked scoundrels and even unbelievers. Luther once said that even if the devil or his mother were to pose as a pastor and preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments, these would be as valid and certain as if Christ Himself were preaching and administering, because it is Christ’s office and Christ’s Word. Now that doesn’t mean that we should tolerate scoundrels and unbelievers in the office of the ministry, but it does mean that should not put our trust in them either. They are instruments, witnesses, a voice and a finger, pointing to Jesus.

John is also a model for each of us in our priesthood of the baptized. The church is John the Baptizer of these end times, calling sinners to repentance and baptism, preparing the way of the Lord in advance of His second advent in glory. You are witnesses to the Light who shines upon you. Your witness is not about yourself - your life, your decisions, your feelings. Those are really quite irrelevant. You are a voice in this present dark wilderness, calling to a world that needs so desperately to hear. “The Lord is near. Prepare His way.” You are that finger pointing to the Lamb in Word and Sacrament - Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who takes away your sin.

People will investigate you too. They’ll ask questions. They’ll look for reasons not to believe you. Oh, look at your life. How can you call yourself a Christian, you hypocrite! That’s what they’ll say. Or they might say, “I just don’t have that God-gene. You do. You’re a good person, pious and faithful. But I could never be like that.”

You are a witness. The spotlight is not on you, but on Christ. You must decrease, become nothing at all. Christ must increase. He must be all in all. Your old Adam won’t like it. Face it - we like to be the center of attention. The world won’t like it. The devil will positively hate it. Which means you’re on the right track.

Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding
“Christ is near” we hear it say
Cast away the works of darkness
All you children of the Day.

The peace of God which surpasses our understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until He appears again in glory, and you in glory with Him.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/233/20090110163108/audio/3adventB2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:41:52 +0000
You know you’re in the season of Advent when John the Baptizer shows up. There he is in all his wilderness glory - clothed with camel’s hair, a leather sash around his waist, a strange macrobiotic diet of locusts and wild honey, which means honey that you grab with your bare hands while angry bees were buzzing around your head. Imagine John walking into service this morning - munching on a grasshopper, a few bees stuck in his sticky beard. What would you think? Would we even let him in the door?

John is one of those characters in the Bible that make you more than a little nervous. He is intense, driven, focused, “holy” is the word. John was holy. Holy as in set apart for a sacred purpose. When you think of John, think of “prophet.” Old Testament, in the line that extends from Elijah to Malachi. John even makes his appearance at the same place where Elijah disappeared into heave in a chariot of fire. In the Jordan wilderness.

John was the last of the OT prophets, the forerunner of the Christ. His task was to prepare the way. He came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. There was no such thing as baptism in the OT, at least not the kind that someone did to you. It was something new. In the OT, your sins were forgiven by the blood of the sacrifices. But now John brings a baptism, a water of washing for repentance and forgiveness. The people could have said, “We don’t need that, we’re already forgiven,” the way some people say, “We don’t need church or Baptism or the Lord’s Supper because we’re already forgiven.” That’s not the way of faith.

Baptism was God’s idea. However John came to that understanding (some people think it was in the Essene wilderness community where John was likely raised as an orphan after his aged parents Zechariah and Elizabeth had died), John’s baptism came from God. John was sent by God. It had been almost 500 years since Israel had heard from the prophet Malachi who said that the Lord would send his messenger, Elijah, to prepare his way. And now here’s John 500 years later, living proof that the Word of God is never broken.

John’s message was hard edged law. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent. Turn around. You’re going the wrong way. Repent. Come to a new mind, a new way of thinking. John was calling Israel out of its comfort zone, away from its religious institutions, away from Jerusalem and the temple into the wilderness. That was the point. It was a reverse Exodus through the Jordan into the wilderness. A rebirth and renewal through the water. That’s how people were prepared for the coming of the Messiah - repent and be baptized. That’s how people are prepared for the second coming of the Messiah - repent and be baptized.

You say, “But I’m not in a repentant mood. I don’t feel repentant. I don’t feel I have anything to repent of.” John would say, “Then repent of your slavery to your feelings which will one day lead to hell. Repent of your deafness to God’s Law. Repent of your religious security, your comfortable idolatries, your sentimental sanctuaries where you try to hide from God, your faith, hope, and trust in religious institutions. Repent of your anxieties and adulteries, your disregard for human life, whether in the womb or the nursing home, your trust to technology, your faith in science over the Word of God, your casual approach to the holy things of God. Repent of the comfortable suburban sanctuary that you defend at all costs. Come out into the wilderness where God shapes an Israel, a people who wrestle with God on God’s terms and not their own. Be baptized as a filthy sinner in need of cleansing. It’s not surprising that the religious avoided John like a plague from Egypt.

The prophet Isaiah hears voice that says, “Cry!” and the question comes “What? What shall I cry?” This is what: all flesh is grass. People may not want to hear that; you may not want to hear it, but you need to hear it. Your flesh is like the grass of the field, like the flowers that bloom in spring. Do you get the point? Grass withers; flowers fade; your flesh dies as it is destined to do. Hear it and embrace it; there’s no getting around it. The wages of sin is death. Some of us know, or at least have an inkling as to what will likely kill us. That’s kind of a privilege. Most of us don’t. It may be a popped blood vessel in your head, a stray cell run amuck, a tiny blockage in a key artery, an errant bullet intended for someone else, a drunk driver who jumps the median strip into your lane. The grass withers, the flowers fade, you die.

And if that’s all there was, and for those who have no faith in Christ, that’s all there is, it is hopeless and desperate. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of our God endures forever. The Word endures, and that’s your life. The Word became Flesh, born of the Virgin. The Word endured the cross in your place. The Word conquered the grave. The Word rose from the dead. The Word endures forever, and in HIm you do too.

John spoke of the Coming One, his cousin Jesus, younger in age yet greater in status. John said he wasn’t worthy to bend down and loosen Jesus’ sandal straps. “I baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” With John’s baptism came the whole lot, and with Jesus comes a whole lot more. With the water, the Spirit. That’s your Baptism. You have been baptized with the greater Baptism of the greater One, the One who died and rose in the flesh to save you from eternal death. Oh yes, something will kill you, that is for certain. But Christ will raise you. You have been baptized into Him by water and the Spirit.

“Get up on a high mountain,” God says through Isaiah. He’s speaking to the Church, to Zion, the herald of good news. Lift up your voices with strength. You can’t keep this a secret. It must be broadcast far and wide. John prepared Israel for the first advent of Christ. Do you know who prepares the world for His second advent? Who is John the Baptizer today? The Church is. God’s Zion, His redeemed people. You. The Church is John the Baptizer of the end times - calling sinners to repentance, to Baptism, to faith in Christ. This is the mission side of Advent.

Think of yourself as a John the Baptizer. Oh, you don’t have to eat grasshoppers and dig your own honey from beehives in rotted logs. You don’t have to wear scratchy camel’s hair and a leather sash. If you let your light shine into this dark world and let your Baptism show, you’ll appear strange enough in this strange world of ours that values all kinds of strangeness except one - holiness.

And let’s face it - what can be a weirder diet than the Lord’s Supper? The world will consider you a first-rate religious weirdo. Richard Dawkins, the biologist turned atheist apologist says that Christians are deluded people who worship sky fairies. So don’t worry, you’ll have your share of trouble from the left and the right, from church and state. The Pharisees rejected him and thought he was demon possessed. King Herod had him arrested for publicly criticizing Herod’s shacking up with his sister-in-law. Yeah, speak of grace alone through faith alone for Christ’s sake alone and the world of Religion will come after you as a heretic. Speak against the systematic murder of unborn children or the gross distortion of marriage, and you’ll be charged with taking away people’s rights.

But the message you bring is a message the world needs to hear clearly. “Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and His arm rules for Him; Behold His reward is with Him and His recompense is with Him.” Jesus quotes this verse in the Revelation as His last word on His coming: “Behold, I come quickly. My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.” And if that last word of Jesus is to be heard as good news and something to look forward to, then it must be heard through faith in what He has done, for only in what He has done can what we have done be rewarded.

“Prepare the way of the Lord.” It doesn’t get more simple, more focused, more expectant, more “Advent” than that. The Day of the Lord is coming, sooner that you expect, quicker than you or I can anticipate. What sort of people ought we to be, asks St. Peter? A holy people - living lives of holiness and godliness, living in our Baptisms that cover every spot and blemish of sin, living in peace with each other. A peculiar people, set apart for a purpose. A chosen people, graced by God to know His undeserved kindness to sinners for Jesus’ sake. A royal people, who live under Christ the King in His kingdom. A priestly people - teaching, blessing, interceding, offering up living sacrifice of thanksgiving.

In short, a John the Baptizer kind of people, wilderness wanderers awaiting a promised land, a new creation and resurrection to life. An always-Advent people - watching, waiting, hoping, prepared.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/232/20081209154354/audio/2adventB2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:20:19 +0000
It would sure solve a lot of problems all at once, wouldn’t it? The economic crisis, the mortgage crisis, the energy crisis, the environmental crisis, the terrorism crisis - all of these things could be dealt with in a cosmic second with the coming of Jesus in glory. What’s a new administration in Washington going to do that the King of kings couldn’t fix in a heartbeat? Talk about a change leadership! How about a quick change of the old, worn out and dying creation for the brand spanking new one?

One problem. Sin. Your and mine. The world’s too, but yours and mine. The coming of the Lord is a coming to judge the living and the dead, to sort the sheep and the goats, to separate the sinner from the saint, and that line runs right down the middle of each one of us too. Be careful what you wish for. To look for the coming of the Lord is to look for the final death of our sinful humanity.

Isaiah says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” The prophets is thinking of leprosy here, a contagious skin disease that caused everything you touched to be unclean. That’s an OT picture of sin and its effects. It’s a leprosy. It isolates us. It get between us. It renders us unclean. We’ve all become lepers, Isaiah says, and our righteous deeds, all our good works, are like a polluted garment. Whatever a leper touches, no matter how pure or precious that thing is, becomes unclean simply because a leper has touched it. Our works, the best of our good works, the highest and noblest works of charity and sacrifice for the neighbor, all have the greasy, leprous fingerprints of Father Adam on them. It’s inevitable and unavoidable.

That’s why works can’t save us. There is no such thing as a pure good work. Those good works of ours, worked by the Spirit of God, need to be put through a refining fire, the purifying fire of judgment (not purgatory - judgement!).

Isaiah says, “We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” “All we are is dust in the wind,” went the song by the rock band Kansas. (I date myself badly here.) Like the fading leaves of autumn as the winter wind blows. We’re just blown away. That’s the wages of our sin. The aging process, the onset of illness, the breakdown of the body, the cancers and clogged arteries that plague us, the onset of Alzheimers and dementia, our bones turning brittle, our memories fading, our eyesight and hearing going down the tubes - it’s all the result of the entropy of sin. You can’t fight this, you can’t cure it, you can’t do anything about it, except this one thing. Trust in Jesus.

“But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our Potter; we are all the work of your hand.” It’s one of the rare times that the OT calls God “Father.” Here, it’s in the context of the clay and its potter, and the image is trust. The clay is entirely in the hands of the potter who shapes and molds it. It has nothing to say or do with how things come out and what will happen when the clay is put to the fire. The beauty of the creation is in the hand of the skilled craftsman, the potter, who knows how to bring out the beauty of the clay, to take a pile of mud and make something beautiful from from it.

Only God can make something beautiful and worthwhile out of our messes - the mess of this world, the mess of our lives. Like a master potter with a lump of lifeless mud, God makes good out of the mess, and we are on the trusting, receiving, believing side of things. God saves us. He does it in the most remarkable and unpredictable of ways. The Potter becomes the clay. God becomes man. He takes on our humanity, born of woman, born under the Law.

In Jesus, God did rend the heavens and come down. In fact, when Jesus was baptized, the heavens were torn open, as Mark describes it, ripped like the curtain in the temple the moment Jesus died on the cross. Oh God rent the heavens and came down all right. He landed right smack in the middle us as the Child of Bethlehem, the Carpenter of Nazareth, the Prophet from Galilee, the beggar King of Jerusalem riding atop a donkey, the Man of Sorrows on the cross. He is you and me and all of leprous, sinful humanity - standing in our place, being the clay in His Father’s hand. He is new humanity, humanity without the leprosy of sin, humanity restored to the image of God. He shares that with us, baptizing us, teaching us, granting us faith to follow Him.

We are entering the season of Advent. The word “advent” (adventus) means “coming” as when a king came to town. When we speak of Christ’s advent we are really speaking of three things: His coming in humility; His coming in the hiddenness of Word and Sacrament; His coming in visible glory on the Last Day.

Advent looks back on His coming in humility. He rode into Jerusalem once on a borrowed donkey to shouts of “Hosanna” and “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” People welcomed Jesus as a king and hoped that he would be the one who would restore Israel. They wave palm branches and threw down their coats and were ready to take up stones and swords for the kingdom. But they learned something about this King and His kingdom. This King doesn’t conquer with a sword but with a cross. And this kingdom is not about power in strength, but power in weakness. And this kingdom is not of this world but transcends this world and its kingdoms so that when all is past and gone and there is nothing left, the kingdom of God remains forever.

This kingdom comes by way of death and resurrection. First the King dies and rises, then His subjects, and the whole creation too. It all must die and rise as the King has died and risen. There is no kingdom quite like this one. Nor is there such a King the likes of Jesus.

He comes to us now in a hidden way. Advent looks to the present and Jesus’ sacramental presence. Not seen though very real. He comes to us through the Word, through the water of Baptism, through the bread and wine of His Supper. He comes to us in this hidden way to save us here and now, where we are. He joins you to Himself in His death and life, making His death and life your death and life. He feeds you His Body and Blood, His death and life becomes your food. He forgives you our sins by His Word. And trusting that Word, the kingdom comes to you and you are part of the kingdom.

He comes at the end in unconcealed, unattenuated glory. The heavens are once again opened, now to reveal the King in all His majesty. Advent looks forward. Christians have been forward looking since the very beginning with Jesus’ promise - I am coming soon. Suddenly soon - like a thief in the night, like a groom arriving for the wedding at midnight, like a flash of lightning. Two thousand years no longer seems like “soon.” The world laughs at the notion. We Christians must seem like Linus in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. St. Peter wrote that scoffer would come and say, “Where is this coming He promised?” It’s been business as usual since the beginning. Peter says, “Don’t forget the way God reckons time. A day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are as a day. The Lord isn’t slow but merciful, patient, long-suffering, not wanting anyone to perish but for all to come to repentance.”

The Day of the Lord will come soon. And suddenly. Be watchful. Be alert. Be ready for it, standing firm in the faith. Your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation. As He once entered Jerusalem on His way to the cross, so He will come to usher His Church to His city to share in His glory. Then you, robed in His righteousness, waving your palm branches of victory over sin and death which He gives you, will sing that eternal hymn of triumph:

Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!

Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/231/20081206065920/audio/1adventB2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 23 Nov 2008 05:54:52 +0000
First notice that the shepherd is also a king in the parable, like the shepherd-king David and his ante-type ancestor Jesus, the Good Shepherd and King of kings, who is also the Son of Man. Jesus is speaking directly of His reappearing in glory on the Last Day. Keep this in mind throughout the parable - the Son of Man who comes in glory with His angels to judge the nations is the same Son of Man who came in humility to lay down His life to save the nations. The Judge is also the Savior. Don’t lose track of that.

“Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

OK, first a little lesson in sheep and goats. Sheep and goats are quite different, according to a web site someone sent me on sheep and goats. Sheep go “baaa,” goats go “maaa.” Sheep tails go down; goat tails go up. Sheep are grazers, goats are browsers. Sheep gather in flocks; goats are more independent. But the point in the parable is during the day, sheep and goats hang together and are treated the same. In fact, in the sacrificial system of the OT, sheep and goats were pretty much interchangeable too. The distinction comes only at the end, and not a moment sooner. Just as in the parable of the weeds and wheat, there is no sorting prior to the end. It’s all one big field, one big flock, under one crucified and risen Shepherd.

Don’t expect any preferential treatment in this world for being a Christian. God causes His rain and sunshine to fall on the good and wicked, the believing and unbelieving alike, and the line between good and wicked runs through the middle of each of us. This puts to rest any notion that Christians are playing with a loaded set of cosmic dice or that God will bend the rules for them. No. He’s got the whole world in His hands. He’s the good Shepherd of both the sheep and the goats, every nation, tribe, people, language, whether they like it or not, believe it or not, want it or not. That’s what it means to say “Jesus is Lord.”

Only at the end of the day, at sundown, when the sheep and goats are brought in from the fields and put in their pens is a distinction made, and not one moment sooner. Think of two enclosures with a common entrance and the shepherd standing in the middle. The sheep go to the right, the goats to the left. Take note of the terms of separation. They are sorted on the basis of what they are not what they do. This is precisely what the apostle Paul means when he says that we are justified by God’s grace through faith in Christ apart from works of the law. Judgment is made not on the basis of what you did but on the basis of what you are.

Are you a sheep or a goat? A believer or an unbeliever? The Shepherd must tell you what you are. The sheep and goats don’t know that for themselves. Notice that. The shepherd places the sheep at his right and the goats at his left. They don’t simply go there on their own. Sheep and goats would likely go very which way, if you left it up to them, and most likely the wrong way.

The the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” They are blessed with a kingdom that was theirs from the foundation of the world, which was before they could do anything, one way or the other. We call that the “doctrine of election” which causes all sorts of trouble when you take Jesus out of the middle of it. Just as Jesus is the Lamb who was slain from the foundations of the world, so there is a kingdom prepared for those who are in the King. A kingdom received not as wages earned for a job well done, but as an inheritance. You don’t earn an inheritance, it is given to you by someone who dies.

So now you’re onto it. There’s been a sorting and a bestowal of a kingdom and still not a breath about works. What about works? Here it is: “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me.” There you have it. They were busy, those sheep. Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned. Lots of good works going on for the least, the lowly, the lost.

But the sheep are puzzled. They don’t ask “when did we do these things.” They knew they did those things. They ask, “When did we see you hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, imprisoned?” That’s the big question on their minds. They didn’t do these things for recognition or reward from the King. They did them because they saw people in need - hungry, thirsting, naked, sick, imprisoned, strangers who had no place to turn and no one to help and they did what the Samaritan did for the man who fell among the thieves and was laying nearly dead in the ditch. They helped them. They were neighbor to them.

Now they learn the secret, the hidden thing, what they did not know. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to the of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me.” Jesus is hidden in the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, the strangers in this world. He’s hidden not to save but for you to serve. “When did we see you hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, a stranger, imprisoned?” Think. When was Christ ever like this? On the cross where He became the least of all to save us all. There He was literally hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned, a stranger to this world - all to save the world.

The cross is the lens through which we must view this world, especially the hungry, thirsting, naked, sick, imprisoned, strange parts of this world. The parts that make us uncomfortable and cause us to look away, or like to priest and Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan, to walk far on the other side lest we get too close. But the cross reveals a profound mystery - Jesus is there, in the least and lost of this world. The cross will give us the proper focus in the challenging times ahead. There will be plenty of hungry to feed, thirsty to quench, naked to clothe, sick to visit, imprisoned to call on, strangers to welcome. The coming recession will add to their numbers. And we have this wonderful promise: “As you did it to one of the least, you did it to me.” Who would have known?

As for the goats on the left, there lot is less than happy. “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Take careful note here. They are cursed, but not “cursed by my Father.” Simply cursed. Instead of an eternal kingdo, they receive an eternal fire, but that fire wasn’t prepared for them from the foundations of the world. It was prepared for the devil and his angels. That’s the hell of it. No human being belongs in hell, and God intends for no one to go there. God has arranged that no one should go there. In fact, if anyone winds up there among the cursed, it is against God’s will that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. If you wind up there, it’s your own fault.

And their works? “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat; thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; a stranger, and you didn’t welcome me; naked and you did not clothe me; sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.” The unbelievers have a question too. When? When did we see you and not minister to you? Of course we would have given you something to eat, if only we’d known it was you! Of course we would have welcomed you, if only we’d known it was you. Of course, we would have visited you, if only we’d known it was you. And there’s the rub. That’s how you live when you live by the Law. You do only when you know it counts - like the bridesmaids who didn’t bother to bring extra oil; like the servant who buried his talent in fear. Who would have known that the King and Lord of all would come as a naked and thirsty beggar?

So which then are you? Sheep or goat? You won’t find that answer in the mirror of the Law. The law will only reflect the face of a goat back to you, because that’s what you are by nature. You must look to the cross, to that naked, hungry, thirsting, imprisoned Stranger who is your Shepherd, King and Savior. Look into the water of your Baptism and the Word contained that speaks there. In the reflection from those still, deep waters, you will see who you are - a sheep of the Good Shepherd’s flock. There you will see the Name of God and the Lamb etched on your forehead and heart. Go to the table He prepares for you in the presence of your enemies - the table of His Body and His Bread, food and drink for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

You are sheep of the good Shepherd-King Jesus- baptized, forgiven, fed, and free. The Word declares it to be so; believe it. And when you scatter from here and go out into the world to your callings, your priesthood, the liturgy of your life, see it all through the cross of Jesus, and you will see something marvelous - Jesus in the least and the lowly with a promise: “As you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did to me.”

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/230/20081127135553/audio/pentecost28A2008.mp3/ clean revcwirla Sun, 16 Nov 2008 06:40:00 +0000
A talent was a unit of money. A fair piece of change worth at least a thousand days’ wages for a common laborer and probably even more. Our word “talent” meaning ability or aptitude as in “musical or artistic talent” apparently goes back to this parable. When Rush Limbaugh says that he has “talent on loan from God,” he’s speaking the truth along the lines of this parable. I hope he’s read it. The servants each have talents on loan from their master for which there is a coming day of reckoning and reward with the master’s return. We’ll talk about that in a second, but first we need to get a firm grip on the parable itself.

The first thing we notice is that he doesn’t give the same amount to each servant - one gets five talents, another two, and a third one. God doesn’t dole out talent equally. We tend to be fixated on “equality” as something good and desirable, ever since we started comparing what we got with that of our siblings and starting protesting, “Hey, he got more than me.” Whether it’s the amount of the Christmas take or the size of the piece of cake for dessert, every kid has this sense of equality. Equality means fair, and fair means just, and just is how God is supposed to work. So in our ideal world, every servant gets the same. Or if by some chance they don’t, we’ll take away from the one who has more and give to the one who has less.

But that’s not the way God works, not with this master, who, like it or not, is the God figure in the parable. He doles out his talents unequally. And the old Adam, who tends to behave like a spoiled brat, cries out, “Hey that’s not fair! He got more than me.” Each servant gets what is appropriate, “according to his ability.” He doesn’t give them more than they can handle, nor less than they are able to manage. He knows each of his servants and what they’re capable of, and He puts into their hands what is right for them. Do we trust that also with what we have? Do we trust that God knows what we can handle, and what we can’t, and He places into our hands what is appropriate. It isn’t equal, but equality wouldn’t do justice to who we are, just as a father doesn’t love every child the same but each child according to who he or she is.

Then he goes away. He leaves no set of instructions, no rules on what to do with his talents, no quotas or goals for the servants to reach. He simply hands them a wad of money and says, “Go and do business until I get back” and he leaves.

You might ask, “Is that any way to run a business much less care for your investment?”
At least a few instructions, or some goals to shoot for. But the master refuses to micro-manage. He doesn’t bother to manage at all. He just turns his servants loose with his money and leaves. Can you handle a God who doesn’t micromanage your life, who doesn’t tell you what to do and when to do it? Can you even fathom a God who entrusts His treasures into the fumbling hands of men and then disappears with a promise “Lo, I am with you always until the end of the age”? Can you bear that kind of freedom that says, “Here’s ten thousand bucks, go do business and have a ball. I’ll see you when I get back.” Can you imagine a God like that?

So what would you do if you were one of those servants? Go to the racetrack or the casino and gamble with it hoping to strike it big? Invest it in the market? That would be a gamble too these days. Tuck it safely in the bank maybe. Stuff it in a mattress? A lot would depend on what kind of master you had, wouldn’t it? If you were confident that he was merciful, kind and forgiving, you might invest in some high risk ventures. If you knew he was a tight bookkeeper, you might be a bit more conservative. If you thought he was like Donald Trump on that TV show “The Apprentice” a few years ago, you might be more cautious, lest you hear those fateful words “You’re fired.” While the other two servants were out doing business with their master’s money, the third servant was hard a work digging a hole to hide his talent until the master’s return. Both faith and unbelief are busy - one happily doing business, the other fearfully hiding to justify oneself.

Then comes the day of reckoning. Judgment Day, the day the books are open and the truth is told. The first servant who received five talents made five more, a 100% profit, for which he hears a hearty “Well done!” and receives his reward and a share in his master’s joy. The second servant, who received two talents made two more. A 100 % profit, for he hears a hearty “Well done!” and receives his reward and a share in his master’s joy. And comes the third servant with the “talent on loan from God” which he just dug out of the ground, shiny, untarnished, unused. “I was afraid, for I knew you to be a hard and ruthless man. You reap where you don’t sow, you gather where you don’t scatter. You make Donald Trump look like Mr. Rogers. And so I buried your talent in the ground. Here is what is yours.”

Luther once said, “You have the God you believe.” If you believe that God is a harsh judge, who gives everyone what they deserve, that’s the God you will have. If you believe that God is merciful and gracious, that He is slow to anger and abounds in love, that He forgives sin and justifies the sinner all for His Son Jesus’ sake, well, that’s the God you have. The servant gets the master he believes he has. He loses his talent, that he buried out fear, and he himself is cast out of his master’s house into the no-place of outer darkness and weeping and grinding of teeth. “You’re fired!”

The servant was in, a member of his master’s household, but now he is out. Just as the five foolish bridesmaids were in, a part of the wedding party, until in their foolishness they found themselves on the outside of a locked door. It isn’t that some are forever in and others are for. In Jesus’ parables, the ones who are out are first in. They have a place in with wedding, they have a place in the house. Each of these last parable teaches us something about faith and unbelief. In the parable of the bridesmaids, faith is prepared, watchful, ready with enough oil to make it through the night. Unbelief foolishly figures it knows the time and timing of the Lord. In this parable, faith works freely and confidently, without so much as a rule or goal, while unbelief sits frozen in the paralysis of fear, stuffing its talent into mattresses and holes in the ground for safe-keeping.

Jesus came into this world, born of the Virgin, as the true Servant of God, the Son who does His Father’s bidding. His talent was not simply “on loan from God” but was His as the Son of God. He came to bring nothing less than the world, the whole cosmic order, back to His Father. Though He was the good and faithful Servant, He became for us, the Suffering Servant, bearing the sins of our faithlessness. He became that faithless servant, cast into outer darkness, taking on Himself the weeping and gnashing of teeth, dealing with the harsh task master of the Law that condemns each of us. When He told this parable, and the two others that go with it, He was going to the world’s Judgment Day to be judged on the world’s behalf.

Jesus freed us to serve His Father, and our Father, without fear. You have been liberated from the demands and quotas and goals of the Law. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” You appear before the Father as the good and faithful servant that Jesus is, covered with Him, clothed with Him, baptized into Him. He is your freedom to serve God without fear all the days of your life, to take that talent on loan from God and use it in service, in praise, in joy, whether winning or losing, whether in success or failure, whether for profit or loss.

That goes not only for your various aptitudes and abilities. Your greatest “talent on loan from God” is the very Gospel itself, the good news that God has reconciled the world to Himself in Jesus, that He does not count men’s sins against them, that He closed the books on the Law two thousand years ago on a cross. The talent of the Gospel is given to be shared not hoarded, to be broadcast not buried, to be told not held as a secret. You know something that in all likelihood the world does not know - that God is not like Donald Trump firing apprentices, but He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in love. He justifies the ungodly and declares the guilty to be innocent. He forgives, freely, for Jesus’ sake. The world doesn’t know this. Most people, even religious people, do not know this or believe it. You do. That’s your talent on loan from God.

The question in today’s parable is whether we will use our talent freely or fearfully, in faith or unfaith, trusting that God is good and gracious and forgiving or fearing that He is harsh and demanding and judgmental. Look to the cross of Jesus, and you will see the God you have, the One who comes to judge the living and the dead, the One who came to be the Servant of all. Look to the cross of Jesus, and there find the confidence, the boldness, the freedom to put that talent to work and enter into the joy of Jesus.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/229/20081120230820/audio/pentecost27A2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 09 Nov 2008 06:37:00 +0000
We are in the final Sundays of the church year. Today is the third-last. The focus of these three last Sundays is on the end, the last day, the Day of the Lord. Just as there was a beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, there is also an end of this creation and the rising up of a new creation out of the death of the old. Just as there is a death, so there is an end to all things.

Talk of the end tends to make people a bit nervous. Edgy. Weird even. End times stuff may be great for apocalyptic action movies and pulp fiction such as the popular “Left Behind” books of a few years ago, but the reality of the end is considerably more than most care to consider. It is, and should be, a frightful prospect that rolls too easily off our tongues when we say, “He will come again to judge both the living and the dead.” Our faith tells us that we will be saved, judged innocent by the forensic verdict pronounced over us in our Baptism into the death of Jesus. More than “not guilty” but “innocent,” a verdict never heard in an earthly courtroom. Earthly courts pronounce you “not guilty,” at God’s bar of justice you are declared innocent in the righteousness of Jesus.

But just because we are and will be declared innocent by God’s grace through faith in Christ, nonetheless that Day of the Lord will be a day of wrath and mercy. Of wrath against sin and unbelief and all the ways we have of getting in the way of God’s good and gracious will to save, and of mercy, undeserved kindness toward the sinner all for Christ’s sake.

Amos makes it quite clear to those who live in a complacent smug security. Amos sees the Day of the Lord from the perspective of the Law, a day of darkness and gloom, like fleeing a lion and having a bear grab onto you, or leaning against a wall and having a serpent pop out an sink its fangs into you. It’s not a pretty picture that Amos is painting here for complacent Israel, and for us too.

And don’t think for a one second that religion is going to bail you out of this. Feasts and assemblies? God doesn’t want them. Sacrifices? He won’t look at them. Praise songs and instruments? He’s not listening. What He wants is justice gushing like a waterfall, righteousness rushing like a river. And who among us here would dare to say, “I do justice, I do righteousness?” Not on our own we don’t. We need Christ. He does justice and righteousness. He literally exudes justice and righteousness. And in HIm, we do too. But only in Him for apart from Him you can do nothing. And appart from Jesus, the Day of the Lord is only darkness and death.

The apostle Paul flips the coin over to the Gospel side, the Jesus side, in the epistle reading. The Day of the Lord is the Day of the Lord’s re-appearing. He disappeared at His ascension (He didn’t go away, just disappeared), and at the end, He reappears in a glory your eyes can’t yet bear. The dead are raised, the living are changed, and we will be with the Lord forever. That is our hope, our encouragement, the vindication of our faith. We awaken from the sleep of death to be with the Lord and with one another forever.

There was some confusion over the timing of that Day among the early believers. They had heard Jesus say, “Behold, I come quickly,” and they heard it as “I am coming soon.” Soon and quickly are the same word (taxu). Soon tells you when; quickly tells you how. Jesus appears suddenly and without warning, like lightning, like a thief in the night, like a groom kicking off the wedding party at the ridiculous hour of midnight. Some who heard it as “soon” figured “what the heck,” and quit their jobs and just hung around church all day wasting their time and mooching off of others. What’s the point in working and investing in a future that doesn’t exist, right?

You even get a hint of it with Paul. Did you catch it? He said “we.” “We who are left,” “we who are alive” when the Lord appears. Paul appears to think that he would be part of the “we,” those who are left, those who are alive. Later, in his second letter to Timothy, Paul realizes otherwise. He going to die, he’s going to finish his race and wait for the crown of victory that Christ has for Him at the medal ceremony on the Last Day.

For Paul, the Day of the Lord is not the dark and gloomy day that Amos saw, but a bright and glorious day. Loud too. A shout of command, the voice of the archangel, the trumpet call of God. It’s a day of resurrection and renewal and reunion. The dead in Christ rise from their graves. The living are renewed in the same way. And we are gathered together, reunited with Christ and with one another. The Day of the Lord is the day that Death is finally trampled under the foot of Jesus who conquered death for all of us.

So what’s our perspective, living in the end times, nearly 2000 years since Jesus said, “I come quickly.” How do we live as end-times people? The parable of the wedding gives us some insight. “The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.” OK, you’re going to have to identify with bridesmaids here, but just bear with it. Don’t think about frilly dresses and uncomfortable shoes. Just focus on oil lamps. Little clay pots with a wick and a few ounces of oil that you carried like a candle. That was their job. To show up a the wedding with oil lamps. Five brought extra oil; five didn’t. Five would not let anything get in the way from being in the wedding; the other five, well quite honestly, they had better things to do. And who wants to look so silly carrying around some clunky bottle of oil anyway?

The foolish figured they knew the time. They figured a few ounces was enough. They figured they knew the groom and his ways. The figured wrong, and so they missed the party. The wise, on the other hand, were over-prepared, like a bunch of boy scouts. Their whole focus, the center of their lives, were those oil lamps and having enough oil to be ready at any moment, any time.

What no one figured was that the groom would be late. What no one figured was that everyone would fall asleep. What no one figured was the the groom was a little on the crazy side and decided to start his wedding at midnight. (By the way, ladies, these were the days when the guys called the shots at their wedding. You’ve got to wonder what would be different about weddings today if that were case, don’t you?)

Wise and foolish in the Bible are ways of saying “believing” and ‘unbelieving.” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” It is foolish to think you have the time to procrastinate the things of salvation. I know. I’m a huge procrastinator. I always figure I have the time, until something unexpected comes up, and then my foolishness is obvious. Yes, it looks silly to the world, and maybe even seems silly to us, going to church, singing to a God-man we can’t see. I understand why the atheists laugh at these things. It’s easy to think that our little bit of religion that we picked up in Sunday School will carry us through that great and terrible Day of the Lord. It’s also foolish.

It isn’t until the end that the folly of the foolish is revealed for what it is. Not a day sooner. Until then, the foolish appear wise, cool, stylish. They appear so in control, so reasonable, so rational. Until the noise begins at midnight, until they wake up in the darkness and realize they have no oil, and there are no merchants, and there is no sharing, and the door is slammed and locked, and no amount of pounding and pleading is going to open it. They had a place at the wedding party. Christ died for all without exception. They had a seat at the table with their name on it. And in their foolish figuring, they lost out, they are unrecognized. They hear through an eternally shut door, “I don’t know you.” He invited them, but now He does not know them.

Only at the end, on that Day that ends all days, will the wisdom of your faith be vindicated, and the foolishness of unbelief be revealed.

How do we live as end-times people? Watchful, sober, alert. Tending to the work of our vocations, but always watchful. Hearing the Word, receiving the Body and the Blood, praying, praising, giving thanks. Focused, with Jesus in the cross-hairs of our vision. He appears suddenly, quickly, without warning. Not like the first time when He had John the Baptizer prepare the way. There’s no need for that. The Church has been preparing the way for 2000 years, baptizing and teaching. He appears like a groom at midnight, and you baptized into Him, trusting in Him, will rise to greet Him, with lamps full of oil and wicks trimmed and ready to go. Be watchful, be sober, be ready. You never know when the party begins.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/228/20081120162027/audio/pentecost26A2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 02 Nov 2008 09:44:00 +0000
There are nine beatitudes (blesseds) in the Sermon on the Mount that you heard in this morning’s Gospel reading. And there are similarly nine beatitudes in the Revelation, of which the ones I just read are numbers 3 and 4. I’m not sure what that means, but I find it interesting and noteworthy nonetheless. Nine - a triple three of divine blessing. There are no numerical accidents in the Scriptures.

What is surprising though, is who are called “blessed” - the dead. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.” They correspond to the spiritually poor, mourning, meek, hungering and thirsting of righteousness, merciful, pure hearted peacemaking, persecuted disciples. These are dead to the world and dead to themselves. In the Revelation, the blessed are the literally dead as a doornail dead. And that might take us by surprise.

We know from the Scriptures (Romans 8) that death is the just wages for sin. Death is what our sins deserve. Death is the outcome of sin. “On the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” From that perspective, death is anything but blessed. There is a similar passage in the psalms. Psalm 116:15 - “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” Precious and blessed is how the death of God’s holy ones, his justified ones, looks in the eyes of God. Precious and blessed.

I think it’s safe to say that none of us, at least at the gut reaction level, would think of death as anything precious and blessed. We live in the midst of a death-denying culture that spends billions of dollars creating the illusion of youth and defying the process of aging which is really the slow, steady drumbeat of dying. I’ve noticed that Halloween is about as close to death as we’d like to get. I walk around the neighborhood and some people have actually turned their front lawns into macabre cemetery scenes with coffins and skeletons and tombstones. It’s really kind of bizarre, but understandable. Pretend death is so much easier to deal with than the real thing. We all know that those skeletons are really made of plastic, the coffins are empty, and the headstones are made of styrofoam. It’s pretend, play-death. But the real thing - no, no. We don’t want anything to do with that sort of thing.

When I was building one of those coffins in my garage, the neighbors thought it was novel, interesting, funny (in an Adam’s Family sort of way), until they realized that this coffin was being built for somebody. Then it wasn’t so interesting or funny any more. Our funerals don’t really square up to the reality either. We cover the hole in the ground and the mound of dirt with a sheet of astroturf. We leave the business of putting our loved ones to rest in the ground to a couple of hired workers who take care of things long after everyone’s gone. We get commercials and billboards from the local big box burial grounds telling us to “celebrate a life” but not to rejoice in and embrace a death. We exchange a lot of sentimental sweetness about our loved ones “going to a better place” or how they’re in heaven playing golf or trout fishing or whatever they loved to do. Or we hear about how they live on in our memories (that’s “heaven” for an atheist, by the way. Living on in the memory of others.)

You don’t hear much about what we confess in the Creed: we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. In that order. And we believe that for the simple fact that Jesus died and rose bodily from the dead, demonstrating decisively that death has no hold on Him and that His death on a cross conquered death once and for all.

You might say we Christians have a blessed monopoly on the whole business of death and resurrection because Jesus Christ is the only One to have died and risen from the dead. Moses and Abraham died; they didn’t rise. Gautama Buddha died at the age of 80; he didn’t rise. Mohammed died in 632; he didn’t rise. Jesus died on a cross and three days later appeared risen from the dead. That’s why we believe in the “resurrection of the body,” because Jesus rose bodily from HIs grave and promised to raise us up from ours on the Last Day when it all comes to its completion.

It’s because of the death and resurrection of Jesus that we can use words like “precious” and “blessed” in reference to our own death and the death of all baptized believers. Blessed are those who die in the Lord. Not just any death, but “in the Lord.” Those who are united in baptismal faith with Jesus’ death; who have been buried with Him. Blessed are you, dear baptized believer, trusting the promise of life in Jesus’ name. Your death is precious and blessed to God. Not because of you, but because of Jesus. And not because of your works. The works of the saints follow them in death; they don’t precede them. That’s what it means to be justified by grace through faith. Your works follow behind you, but you don’t lead with them. Nothing you do can make your death precious and blessed.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. In these last days, in the wake of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Christ has made the wages of sin a place of blessing for all who trust Him. The Lord’s beatitudes are fulfilled in them. Their poverty of spirit has been answered by the riches of the kingdom of heaven. Their mourning has turned to rejoicing in the comfort of Christ. Their meekness has been vindicated. The world walked all over them, but now the earth is their inheritance. Their hunger and thirst for righteousness has been satisfied; they are justified, declared righteous in Jesus’ righteousness. Their mercy has returned to them with dividends - they too receive mercy. With hearts purified by the blood of the Lamb, they now see God face to face. As makers of peace they now share a name with the Prince of Peace - sons of God. The wounds of their persecution, inflicted for righteousness’ sake, have been healed. the kingdom of God belongs to them.

So what’s it going to be like in heaven? And what’s it like for those who are already there? The most faithful answer is “blessed.” Beyond that we simply don’t know much for God hasn’t revealed much. Oh, we have pictures, and they aren’t pictures of angels sitting on clouds strumming harps. (I’m not a big fan of harp music; I’m not sure I’d look forward to eternity of harps. Trumpets yes; harps only in moderation.)

The Bible calls the dead in Christ “asleep in the Lord.” That’s a nice peaceful picture. They are asleep, they rest from their labors. Now “asleep” does not necessarily mean inactive or unaware. Just unaware of the passage of time, because the evenings and mornings of this creation have no relevance in the eternal. We do have this much: a new heaven and a new earth thanks to Jesus who makes all things new. That sounds much better than sitting on clouds strumming harps. A whole creation brought through death into resurrection where death and decay is no more, where the entropy of our sin is vanished. Isaiah pictures a lavish feast on God’s holy mountain, a feast of fatted meats and fine wines. (If there’s no death in the new creation, I don’t know where the marbled meats will come from, but I’m sure the Lord will provide.)

The one thing that’s certain about eternal life is that worship is the main activity. Actually, it appears to be the only activity, as all of life has now become worship. High liturgy to the Father through the Son in the Spirit. John caught a fleeting glimpse of the heavenly congregation. This is the side of worship we don’t see, but we confess by faith that we are joined by the angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven. This is the heavenward side of worship that John saw and reports to us.

It’s a white-robed congregation. They are all covered with Christ, wearing their baptisms like a spotless robe. The blood of Jesus, the Lamb, has washed away all their sins. Not a spot of sin remains. Their time of tribulation is over. Listen (for hearing is all we get right now), listen to how it is with them and how it will be for us:

Therefore (because they are washed in the blood of the Lamb), they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple (they are eternal priests to God in Christ’s royal priesthood. That’s your eternal vocation - priest to God).

And He who sits on the throne will shelter them with His presence. (They live under the umbrella of His grace).

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore. (They hunger and thirst for righteousness has been satisfied.)

The sun shall not strike them nor any scorching heat (the days of the wilderness are over; they have come into the promised land of life).

For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd (the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep).

And He will guide them to springs of living water (He will refresh them with His Spirit as He refreshed them in their Baptism).

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (Those tears you shed are not in vain and not unnoticed; the hand of God will carry them away forever)

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Blessed indeed, thanks to Jesus.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/227/20081105175522/audio/allsaints2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:41:00 +0000
The Word of God, the truth of Christ, the freedom of the Gospel are the cause of our rejoicing on this Reformation Sunday. Reformation Day is actually on Friday, October 31st, the Eve of All Hallows, the day an Augustinian friar and professor posted his 95 theses for debate on the door of St. Mary’s church in Wittenberg 491 years ago. Who would have guessed that an academic piece of paper, in Latin no less, would have sparked one of the most significant movements in the history of Christianity? But that is the way of the Gospel - from tiny, insignificant beginnings to something that embraces the world.

What do you think of when you think about the Reformation? Pretty red paraments. Maybe a little Lutheran pride - old Luther sure showed them didn’t he? Or did he? The Roman Church is still around today, reformed to an extent, but still at its heart, the Roman Church. The papacy is still around, though the current pope is German, which might have surprised Luther. The doctrine of justification, the hub around which the Christian doctrinal wheel spins, is still under dispute, that a man is justified by grace through faith in Christ apart from works of the Law. The old “solas” you see on the banner and bulletin cover are still under attack - Scripture alone and not tradition; grace alone and not something in us; faith in Christ alone and not our works. In a sense, the church is ever in need of reformation, always in need of being recalled to the Scriptures, to the undeserved kindness of God, to faith in Christ.

“If you abide in my Word, you are truly my disciples.” You want to be one of Jesus’ disciples, don’t you? Of course, you do. That’s why you’re here. Well, you are truly a disciple of Jesus as you abide in His Word. Now what does that mean? To understand the word “Word” you need to start with Jesus. He is the Word Incarnate, the Word in human flesh. He is the Word through whom everything in the world was made in whom everything in the world holds together. He is the living and active Word of God who called light out of darkness, who separated sea and dry land, who brought forth life. His words are Spirit and they are life; His words are the “words of eternal life.”

To abide in Jesus’ Word is first to hear it. “Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.” The Word is preached and intended to be heard. And when the Word is heard, watch out, things happen. Mary heard the Word and she conceived the Word in her virginity. The Word heals the leper, opens the ears of the deaf man, unlooses the tongue of the mute, casts out demons, gives sight to the blind, raises the dead. This is no idle Word you hear. Expect it to do things - cut to the heart, convict, reprove, comfort, forgive, restore. This is the Word that said to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” and “take up your mat and go home.” This is the Word that raises four days dead Lazarus from the grave. This is the Word that goes to death to save the world.
To abide in the Word is to hear it and cling to it in faith. Jesus intends for you to take His Word personally. He’s speaking to you. He was nailed to a cross to save you; He atoned for your sins with His blood; He rescued you from your death by His death and resurrection. He wants you to hear it and trust it.

To abide in the Word is to be baptized, to be washed with water and the Word in the Spirit’s bath of rebirth and renewal, to be sacramentally joined to Jesus in His death and life, to be clothed with Christ, wearing His righteousness like a robe, to be incorporated into His Body, the Church where sins are daily and richly forgiven. We’re prone to forgetting that. Baptism happens once, often at an age when we don’t remember it. Yet, as the Catechism reminds us, Baptism is a daily thing, daily dying to sin, daily rising to new life in Jesus. The power of Baptism is the Word that kills and makes alive. To abide in the Word is to live in Baptism.

To abide in the Word is to eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ. I fear for the Sacrament in our day. The unbelieving world mocks it, as the unbelieving world always has. Even Christians try to rationalize it, tame it, turn it into an impotent symbol, a sentimental ceremony, anything but the Body and Blood of the Savior. Jesus feeds us. He gives us the sustenance we need to carry us through death to resurrection and life. His Body which has gone the way of death before us. His Blood, His very life, poured out for us and for all in atonement of sin. To abide in the Word is to have the death and life of Jesus as our food, our “daily bread.”

To abide in the Word is to hear the absolving, forgiving Word spoken to the sinner in view of his or her sins. Luther and the Reformers understood our need to hear forgiveness over and over again. That’s why they didn’t abolish the confessional but reformed it. They made it a Gospel place, a place where forgiveness could be heard, a place where a thirsty sinner can still find a good, stiff drink of 200-proof undiluted good news

“You will know the truth.” God’s Word is truth, though people would prefer to turn it into an opinion and a point of view. It is an awesome and awful truth. There is the truth of the Law, delivering the harsh reality of our sin and death, that we are “by nature” sinful and unclean. That apart from Christ we are dead - dead to God, dead to the neighbor, dead even to ourselves. The truth is, we are enslaved to sin and death and cannot begin to free ourselves.

There is the greater truth of Jesus. Jesus is the Truth and He speaks the truth. Grace and truth come through Jesus. He sends the Spirit of truth to lead and guide us into all truth. He prays that His disciples would be sanctified in the truth, “Thy Word is truth.”

To know the truth is to know how great a sinner you actually are, and how great a Savior Christ actually is for you. To know the truth is to know your death and the life that Jesus works through it. To know the truth is to know the wrath of God and the forgiveness that comes in Jesus’ name. In a word, to know the truth is to know Jesus.

“The truth will set you free.” This isn’t an election year political slogan. Jesus doesn’t want or need your vote. This isn’t about political freedom or economic freedom or even religious freedom. Those are temporal freedoms. Jesus is speaking of eternal freedom. First of all, freedom from sin. “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” That’s our natural born lot in life. We are born under the lordship of Sin, a condition that leads to all sorts of sins. The end of it all is death, the ultimate wages for sin. What Jesus sets us free from is slavery to sin. “Lord Sin no longer has dominion over you.” Now you are under Lord Jesus, which means freedom. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

Strangely though, we don’t recognize our slavery and so we don’t really know what freedom looks like. The Jews who disputed with Jesus boasted, “We’re descendants of Abraham, we’ve never been in bondage to anyone.” Oh no? What about 400 years in Egypt making bricks for Pharoah’s public works projects? We become so accustomed to slavery to sin we can’t imagine for moment what freedom from sin looks and feels like. “Sin no longer has dominion over you,” the apostle Paul says. You no longer live under the law; now, thanks to Jesus, you live under grace, under mercy, under God’s undeserved, unconditional kindness that justifies the ungodly and calls the sinner “friend” and “disciple.” That’s freedom.

The truth will set you free. It is a freedom from condemnation. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The debt has been paid once and for all. The slate has been washed clean. The verdict has been read. The jury dismissed. No condemnation. God refuses to deal with you as your sins deserve. The entire burden of your sin was nailed to the cross in Jesus. He bore the verdict “guilty” so that you might hear the verdict “not guilty.” You are free.

An Augustinian friar named Martin Luther heard that verdict of “not guilty for Jesus’ sake” and dared to believe it. He believed it over and against the official teachings of his church, the opinions of his teachers, the popular religious notions of his day. He dared to believe that the apostle Paul was right when he wrote: We hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Luther dared to believe that Jesus his Savior had done it all for him, and nothing he did could add to that one perfect life and the one all-sufficient death.

We dare to believe the same. We dare to believe that we stand before God right now, this very instant, justified for Jesus’ sake. It’s the most audacious statement in all the religious world, that a sinner is justified by faith in Jesus apart from anything he or she does. Justified in Jesus, for Jesus’ sake.

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Hear that Word and believe it. It is the truth that will set you free.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/226/20081120230919/audio/reformation2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:18:00 +0000
Just to spice things up, they send a few Herodians with them. Now the likelihood of a Pharisee being seen in the same GPS coordinates as a Herodian was somewhere between slim to none. The Pharisees hated the Herodians and the feeling was entirely mutual. Herodians were political supporters of King Herod. Some of them even thought Herod was the messiah. The Herodians were allied with the Sadducees who controlled the priesthood and the temple, and the Sadducees and Pharisees got along about as well as liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. But when it comes to Jesus, they could agree on this: He’s got to go.

“Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.” Yeah, righ. When someone approaches you like that, you just wait for the next shoe to drop. A little diplomatic weasel talk to throw Jesus off His guard and then comes the question: Tell us what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or isn’t it?

It’s a perfect lose/lose. If Jesus says, “No, it isn’t lawful to pay taxes to the Roman government,” the Herodians and Roman loyalists will have their “gotcha” and label Jesus as a radical, an insurrectionist, and a scoundral, and turn Him in to the government. If He says, “Yes, it is lawful to pay taxes to Ceasar,” He will be in dutch with the religious right wing who held Caesar, tax collectors, and taxes in the highest form of contempt and the crowds will thin noticably. So on the one hand, He offends the political types, on the other hand, He offends the religious types. A perfect snare.

The world still plays this game with Jesus today, you know. If it can’t co-opt Jesus to whatever cause is fashionable, it will try to paint Jesus into a political corner. How would Jesus vote? Is He a Democrat or a Republican? Oh, the fun never ends when you mix religion and politics and shake it around a bit. The whole point is to polarize and marginalize Jesus, to move Him conveniently out of the way so you won’t have to deal with Him on His terms with His call to the kingdom and His bloody cross and forgiveness. It’s so much easier to argue over taxes than it is to deal with repentance, isn’t it?

Now the thing about Jesus is when you try to corner Him, you’ll wind up being the one who’s cornered. “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?” (Now name calling isn’t nice, but Jesus isn’t always “nice,” especially when people come flattering Him to trap Him in a “gotcha.”) Why the big act? You’re not interested in taxes, and you know it. Show me the coin for the tax. You do have a coin, don’t you?” I imagine they’re all looking at each other to see who has a coin. Since the Pharisees considered Roman coin to be unclean, it was probably one of the Herodian who pulled a denarius from his pocket. “Who’s picture and inscription are on it?” “Caesar’s,” they said.

Ah, so now you have your answer. The coin belongs to Caesar. His image and likeness is stamped on it. So is His name. And if he wants his denarius, then give it to him. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars.” That’s Jesus’ answer. Not quite what they were looking for, but that’s His answer. Is it lawful? Sure it is. Caesar is God’s minister, as the apostle Paul would point out. He’s the servant of God’s left hand to punish wickedness and reward good. So pay taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due. Give honor to whom honor is due, and respect to whom respect is due. Simple enough.

You say, “But Caesar wasn’t godly. He isn’t even a believer.” Well neither was Cyrus, the Persian king about whom Isaiah was speaking. Yet God calls Cyrus “my anointed one,” my messiah. Go figure. Cyrus the pagan Persian king is God’s “anointed one.” God is even holding his right hand and opening doors for him. Why? It’s all for the sake of God’s Anointed One, Jesus the Messiah, the Christ. So God uses a pagan Persian to return His people to the land so that in fulness of time His anointed Son could be born in Bethlehem of Judea to save the world. God literally has the whole world in His hands, and He really doesn’t care who Caesar is. He can use any Caesar we throw at Him. Remember that on November 4th.

Just as the Pharisees and Herodians are pulling away and scratching their heads over Jesus’ cryptic answer, Jesus adds a little more. There’s always a little more with Jesus, which is why it’s dangerous to ask Him trick questions. He’ll turn the tables on you every time. They come to Him with a trick question about taxes, and He adds something they weren’t asking for. God. “Oh, and by the way, before you boys run off to fill out your 1040’s, don’t forget to ender to God the things that are God’s.” They’re worried about taxes, Jesus is concerned about God. Taxes are easy, the God part is hard. We know what Caesar wants, but what about God. What does it mean: Render to God the things that are Gods?

He wants you. Not your denarius, you. You bear His image and likeness, or at least we once did, when Adam was first formed from the mud and Eve made from his side. They bore God’s image and likeness perfectly. They belonged to Him, and He laid His claim on them. God wants your undivided heart and soul and mind and strength. He wants your uncompromised fear, love, and trust in Him above all things. He wants your fear and your faith, the very things the Pharisees and Herodians were withholding. They were so occupied with the religion of commandment keeping and the politics of power they had no thought for the things that are God’s, namely, His mercy, His forgiveness, His promises, His life. Now it was Jesus’ turn to say, “Gotcha!”

He nails them, and us too. We think we can get in good with God by doing good, keeping commandments, doing the “lawful” thing. But the real issue behind all the questions is what does God want from us? What He wants is that we love Him with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves. And He requires that we do it perfectly and flawlessly, down to the least little stroke of the pen and the last beat of the heart, down to our attitude and motive and intentions.

When you take it down to that level, you begin to realize that while we may be able to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, we are neither able nor even willing to render to God what is God’s. Not, that is, apart from Jesus. He is the image of God in human flesh, the second Adam, new humanity. He came into our flesh to render to God what was God’s, namely our humanity, and to restore the image of God to our flesh. He rendered to God the things that are God’s. He did it “not with gold or silver,” not with the coin of Caesar, but with His holy and precious blood, and with His innocent suffering and death at the hands of the Pharisees and the Herodians and the Roman government all of whom served as God’s instrument to reclaim a fallen cosmos from sin, entropy, and death.

The cross appeared to be the ultimate “gotcha,” Jesus caught between Religion that declared Him to be a blasphemer and heretic, and Politics that called Him a traitor to the state. The devil and world looked at Jesus on the cross and said, “Gotcha!’ They had Him nailed. But not even death and the grave could hold Him, this perfect image of God in Man. Nothing can hold HIm, for He holds all things.

God’s put His image and inscription on you in your Baptism. He’s restored His image and likeness. You belong to God. In this world, you render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. But you don’t belong to Caesar. You belong to God, thanks to Christ - joined to Him in HIs death, covered with His righteousness, living under the umbrella of His grace, walking in the freedom of His forgiveness. What the Pharisees and Herodians said to Jesus in mock sincerity turns out to be true in ways they never imagined: He is true and He teaches the way of God truthfully. He is the Truth and the Way. And through His death and resurrection, God says to you: Gotcha!p

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/223/20081024170023/audio/pentecost23A2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:23:00 +0000
With regard to the law, a Pharisee. We tend to hear the word “pharisee” and think “bad guy,” but these were bragging right for Paul. The Pharisees were the do-gooders, the practical, purpose-driven guys who broke the Torah down into 613 positive and negative principles. They were helping people keep the commandments. They took their Bibles seriously; they ran the synagogues, the place were the Torah was taught. Paul had studied under a rabbi named Gamaliel, who also makes a cameo appearance in the book of Acts. Gamaliel was considered one of the leading rabbis of his day who only took the best for his students. Paul was top of the class in Hebrew school.

As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. Clearly a case of “zeal without knowledge,” but zeal nonetheless. He thought he was doing God a favor by going through the synagogues and rounding up followers of Jesus and having them interrogated and beaten and even killed. He thought he was doing God’s work, until that fateful day on the road to Damascus where he was struck blind by the risen Lord Jesus. God said, “I can use that zeal, but he’s going to need a bit of retooling.” And so this Hebrew of Hebrews, this trained Pharisee was led around blind for three days, baptized by Ananias with a new set of marching orders. Instead of going to the synagogue to persecute Christians, Paul shows up in the Damascus synagogue preaching Jesus as Christ and Savior. Talk about losing one’s religion!

As to righteousness under the law, blameless. He means it. Viewed through the lens of the Pharisees 613 dos and donts, Paul could say he was blameless. He kept the Torah, or so he thought. Until the scales fell from his eyes and he began to see what a wretched man he was, how nothing good dwelt in his flesh, how even an actionless commandment like “Do no covet” produced all sorts of covetous thoughts and desires in him. And then he realized what we all must realize. It’s all a pile of garbage these religions we invent for ourselves. It’s all a heap of rubbish these ways we invent to do the righteousness of God.

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as skubala, (literally a “pile of crap”), in order that I may gain Christ and be found in HIm, not having a righteousness of my own that come from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” That’s right. Without Christ, all the religion in the world amounts to nothing more than a pile of crap.

We make so much about faith, but without Christ faith is nothing. We make so much about religious knowledge, but without Christ that knowledge is worthless. We make so much about doing good and behaving right, but apart from Christ and His righteousness there is no doing good for the sinner. For Paul, and for us, to be found in Christ. To be joined to Him in HIs death and look forward in faith to our resurrection. To be found clothed with Christ in our Baptism, wearing His righteousness like the robe. To be found sharing, yes, even in the suffering of Christ, so that whatever it takes, he might attain to the resurrection of the dead.

I want you to notice what Paul says here and take that to heart. The goal, the finish line, is the resurrection of the body. That’s why we say it that way in the Creed - we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. We do not believe in an eternal life without some sort of body. Anything in-between is just that, in-between, and there is very little to say about it. Asleep in the Lord is probably the best we have. But Paul isn’t into speculations about disembodied souls. He understands, as we need to understand, that Christ has led the way for humanity to come through death and make it out alive. He suffered, He died, He rose, and then He disappeared and ascended. Jesus didn’t “die and go heaven.” He died and rose, and then He sat down at the right hand of God.

The goal is resurrection and eternal life in a new creation. That’s what Paul is saying he has not yet attained. He has the full forgiveness of his sins. He has the promise of eternal life in Christ. He stands, as we stand, justified before God through faith in Christ. What he doesn’t have, and what he strains forward to like a runner straining across the finish line, is the resurrection of his body. Paul knew the aches and pains, not only of aging, but of the beatings and imprisonments he endured. Some say he suffered from bad eyesight or perhaps debilitating headaches. Life on the road was hard in the first century. Those three missionary journeys plus a near death shipwreck on the way to Rome would have had to take their toll on Paul.

Yet he says to us here, “Never mind all that. That’s all past and gone. Everything. Runners don’t look behind themselves, or they’ll trip over the own two feet. I look forward, straining with ever fiber of my being toward the prize, that crown of life Jesus holds in His hands that He won for me and will give me as my own on the day of resurrection.

We are a resurrection people. We are oriented toward eternal life. We are drawn to it, strain for it, long for it, expect it. You are baptized into the death and life of Jesus. You have an eternal destiny set before you, and though the race is hard, and you may grow tired along the way, you keep your eyes on the prize, past the finish line. Not your death. We too quickly think of death here. But your resurrection. Who knows? Jesus may appear before you die, so don’t rush things along unnecessarily. You have a race to run.

Paul goes on to say, with sadness and tears, that some have dropped out of the race, some have stumbled and fallen. “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” I draw a certain sense of comfort in reading that when I consider the many sons and daughter of this congregation who live the same way. These are the apostle Paul’s people, people who came to believe on account of Paul’s preaching. And now they’ve turned away. They no longer worship. They no longer hunger and thirst for the gifts of salvation. They now live as enemies of the cross to which they too were nailed. They set their minds on things temporal and lost the things eternal. They traded God for their belly, their endless appetites, their pursuits of pleasure. The end isn’t good.: Destruction.

How can you expect to run a race without food or drink?

You are people of the resurrection, citizens of God’s city. Yes, we live in the earthly city, we have our homes, we pay taxes, we fret over the city’s faltering economy. We live in the earthly city but that’s not the place of our citizenship. The Philippians were proud of the Roman citizenship. Philippi was a Roman free city. They were proud to be Philippians. Yet Paul says, “Our commonwealth is in heaven.” That’s home for us. Where Christ is. Remember always the name of the earthly city - Babylon. Babylon, the drunken whore of the Revelation. That’s man’s city. God’s city is Zion, the Bride of Christ, the Church. That’s your citizenship, and when we lose sight of that, when we take the eyes of faith off of Jesus, our feet will wander the streets of Babylon to our ruin.

There is nothing in man’s city that can raise you from the dead. Only from God’s city. Only Christ. “Our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.” We are a heavenly minded, resurrection oriented people. That’s how Luther can say, “Take they our life, goods, fame, child, and wife, let these all be gone, they yet have nothing won. The kingdom ours remaineth.” That’s what being heavenly-minded, resurrection-oriented sounds like. “I count it all as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/224/20081024170243/audio/pentecost21A2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 28 Sep 2008 06:50:00 +0000
By what authority are you doing these things? “Authority” has in its background permission. Permission granted by another who is greater to act. When someone is “authorized,” that person is permitted to do or say certain things. When I absolve sins, I say it is in the stead of Christ and by HIs authority. He permits this speaking to take place. He stands behind it. He wants it to be heard.

By what authority does Jesus do and say what He does and says? You already know the answer. By divine authority. De jure divino. God’s authority. Jesus is acting as the authorized representative of the Father, His Apostle, the One uniquely sent to be the world’s Savior. The Father has permitted it; He approves of it; He delights in it. “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased,” the Father said at Jesus’ baptism.

One doesn’t go around claiming authority without some sign, some tangible evidence. How do you know that officer who pulls you over for speeding has the authority to do that? His badge and identification tell you. If you want, you can take down his number and check to see if he really has the authority he claims. If not, you can safely ignore him and the ticket he’s written is worthless.

How do you know that Jesus has the authority He claims? His works and His words. The signs and wonders He performed - healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out he demons, stilling the storm, multiplying the bread and the fish. These are the works of God. His works are the badges of Jesus’ authority. And His words too. In the Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew, the people marveled at the teaching of Jesus because He taught as One who had authority and not as their own teachers. Jesus stood up and dared to say, “You heard it said by the teachers of old, but I say to you.” He dared, as no other teacher of His day would ever dare, to teach without referring to His teachers, simply on His own authority, claiming that He was teaching the very words of His Father.

His works and His words were know. This is chapter 21 in Matthew. There has been a lot of Gospel water under the bridge. These are not the early days. This is holy week, the week Jesus enters Jerusalem to die. This is the 9th inning of His earthly ministry. The cards have all been laid out on the table since John came baptizing. That’s why Jesus refuses even to address the question, but instead poses a question of His own. There’s no point debating a question like this. The debate would have run this way: By whose authority are you doing this? God’s authority. How do we know you have God’s authority? By the miracles I do. We don’t believe them. Give us another sign. What sign would convince you? We don’t know. Show us one, and we’ll see if we believe you. Why would you believe another sign if you don’t believe when I even raised the dead? We don’t believe you; show us a sign.

You can’t debate unbelief. Unbelief begins with the assumption that there is no God, that Jesus is at best a great teacher and at worst a kook. Throw whatever evidence you want in the face of unbelief, and it will reject it every time. As Jesus said in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, “Neither will they believe even if one should rise from the dead.” Even a resurrection, which is about as big a sign as you can get, doesn’t impress unbelief.

Jesus goes around their unbelief by way of the backdoor. He wants to rescue them from their assumptions and free them from their notions about God. Feeding them more miracles won’t help. As Kierkegaard put it, “Faith that is born of miracles needs miracles to sustain it.” “Jew demand signs,” the apostle Paul noted in Corinth. What he gave them was the preaching of Christ crucified. Jesus poses a different sort of question. The baptism of John. Where did it come from? Did it come from heaven, from God? Or did it come from man? Was it something that John cooked up himself?

They huddled together, the chief priests and the elders of the people, to see how they would answer this sticky question. And it was a sticky question. If they said that John’s baptism was from heaven, that it came from God, they knew what the next question was going to be: Why didn’t you believe John and repent and be baptized? If they said it was from men, they knew the people would turn on them because everyone believed that John was a prophet sent with the authority of God.

Checkmate! Jesus has them cornered. It’s one way or the other. Either John’s baptism is from God or it is from men. There is no neutral ground here. The same can be said of Jesus Himself. Either He is from God, the Son of God in the flesh as He claimed to be and His works showed HIm to be, or He is “from men,” nothing more than a very clever teacher with a very big ego who was deceiving a lot of people with His tricks and His teaching. There is no neutral ground with Jesus. No sitting on the fence. (I like that image. Fence sitting is uniquely uncomfortable. It’s not a tenable place to rest.)

“We do not know,” they say. A politically correct answer. This is why politics and religion don’t mix. You wind up at the “don’t know” position. In Greek, the word for not knowing is agnostos, agnostic. It begs the question. “We don’t know if John’s baptism was from God or from men.” Yet they ignored John. They rejected his call to repentance. They refused his baptism. And they say they didn’t know? They weren’t sure? If someone says, “There’s a bomb planted in this building and it’s set to go off in ten minutes,” are you going to sit around and debate the probability of the message is true? Are you going to say, “Well, we can’t be absolutely certain that this report is authentic or accurate, so we’re going to sit here and do nothing and wait for further developments?” No, in all reasonable likelihood, you will evacuate the building as fast as you can and then summon the bomb squad to sniff out the alleged bomb. If it’s wrong, no big deal. If it’s right, you just saved your skin.

That’s what makes an agnostic position so untenable. “We don’t know. We can’t be sure there is a God, that Jesus is who He says He is, that Christianity’s claims are true. Therefore, we’ll just wait for further developments. See what happens. Wait for more data.” What if there is a bomb? What if Jesus is who He says He is? What if His death actually atones for the world’s sins? What if His life means life from the dead and eternal life with God? It would seem to me that a reasonable agnostic would exhaust every possibility, including entertaining the possibility that there is a God who created all things and there is a Son of God named Jesus who redeemed all things by His death in our flesh.

You see, that’s how stubborn unbelief is. It’s unreasonably stubborn. That’s why we confess that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe (trust) in Jesus Christ or come to Him. He must come to us. He must engage us. He must deal with us by His Spirit working through the water of Baptism and the Word. He must break down the walls that guard our unbelief. He must crack through the darkness of our agnosticism, our darkened lack of knowledge of God. We are so consumed by knowing good and evil, by our self-absorption, by our hearts and minds and beings turned inward, that we no longer naturally know God.

The fool says in his heart there is no God. Atheism is foolishness in the face of the evidence to the contrary. If you say there is no God, you will make yourself a god. You will seek the “divine” in yourself, in the natural world, in something. You will invent a religion in your own image and likeness that will confirm you in yourself. The one thing you won’t naturally do is “repent.” That is the most unnatural of activities - to come to a new mind. That must happen from outside of us, extra nos.

The question of authority from the religious authorities came out of unrepentance, a refusal to be turned in one’s tracks, to be turned inside out. The question came in holy week, at the temple, the place of sacrifice. In a few short days, Jesus would answer the authority question once and for all by His death and resurrection. That’s the sign He offers to the world - His death and resurrection. And by this unique event in our history, He shows that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. The authority to save the world from death and decay. The authority to forgive the sins of humanity. The authority to bestow life. The authority to be your Savior.

Repent. Turn from your sins, your self, your self-conceived notions about who God is and how God should act. Trust Jesus, the crucified and risen One, and all your questions will find their answer.

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/222/20080929130057/audio/pentecost20A2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 21 Sep 2008 06:54:00 +0000
But God’s ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts, as Isaiah reminds us this morning, and nothing says it clearer than the parable of the vineyard workers. It comes on the heels of one of those upside-down kingdom statements from Jesus. The first will be last, and the last will be first. Not our way of thinking is it? Not the way the race is ordinarily run, is it? It doesn’t seem fair, but then God isn’t fair. He’s just. He’s gracious. He’s good. Anything but fair.

A vineyard owner went out to hire workers for his vineyard. He has a vineyard busting full of grapes. And like all those fine grapes at the end of September from Napa to Santa Ynex, their sugar is perfect, their flavor at its peak, the yeast ready for action. It’s picking time.

So the owner gets in his pickup at the crack of dawn and goes down to the local union hall and hires every available worker at union scale. A denarius a day, about $120 in today’s dollars. And off they go to work in the vineyards.

He looks out over his fields and notices that the workers are barely making a dent in the Cabernet, much less the Merlot and the Pinot. So about nine in morning he heads over to the Home Depot where day laborers are, and hires them for “whatever is just,” (he doesn’t say how much that is) and off they go to work in the vineyard.

Dark clouds looming overhead. It looks like rain is on the way. And the Chardonay really needs to be picked before the rain hits. So the vineayard owner goes out again at noon and three, picking up whatever workers he can find.

Still, not enough. It’s almost five o’clock, the sun is sinking, and there are still grapes on the vine. He’s hired just about every worker in town, so he goes over to the local bar where he finds…. tattoos, leather, pierced body parts, mousse holding up spiked blue hair, six-packs, music with the bass loud enough to reprogram a pacemaker at 200 yards. He turns the volume down on the offending boombox, and says, “Why aren’t you working?” And one of them says, “Duh. It’s ‘cause so no hired us, dude.” LIttle wonder!

He looks at his watch, looks up at the setting sun and the gathering clouds, lets out a long sigh, and says, “Look, I’m rich. I’m famous. I pay. I need workers; you need work. It’ll only be for an hour. So what the heck. Deal?” And they figure, hey it’s only an hour, and a few bucks will buy some beer, so why not?” And off they go to work in the vineyard.

At six o’clock, the bell tolls, and the fun begins. The grapes are in the hopper, and our vineyard owner is one happy winemaker. He’s feeling good, and says to his foreman, “Let’s have a little fun. I’m going to fill the pay envelopes myself. And when you hand them out to the workers, let’s do it LIFO, as the bean counters say - last in, first out.

The first in line is one of those eleventh hour workers, hired at the last minute, who barely broke a sweat much less raised a blister. He opens his pay envelope and finds six crisp twenties and hustles off as quickly as possible, but not before word trickles down the line. So what do you suppose the rest of the workers in line are thinking? They’re thinking, $120 an hour, that’s what they’re thinking. And so one by one they step up, rubbing their hands together, expecting the biggest payday of their grape-picking lives.

But in all their figuring, they hadn’t figured on one thing. In this vineyard pay is based on the owner’s goodness, not on the workers merit. And in his goodness, he hands out a denarious to everyone, regardless of how much or how little they worked. Whether twelve hours or a single hour. Whether they picked a hundred bushels or a single cluster.

You can imagine that as the line of workers gets shorter, the faces get longer. “Not fair,” say the sweatiest and most exhausted. We’ve knocked ourselves out in the heat for the whole day, and these deadbeats worked less than an hour. That isn’t fair!

But our vineyard owner won’t hear any of it. “Look pal,” he says. “A denarius a day is what we agreed on, and a denarius a day is what you got. So what’s the gripe? If I want to give a full day’s wage to some eleventh-hour slackers, that’s my business, not yours. And who said anything about fair? Fair has to do with bookkeeping and spread sheets. I’m a winemaker not a bean counter, and I prefer to be good rather than fair. Crazy good. Be glad you’re working. Or are you so busy keeping book on everyone else that you resent my crazy goodness? Now, we’re tasting a very nice Cabernet over in my tasting room, so why don’t you just go and have a drink on the house. And remember, the last are first and the first last.”

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem to die for the world. Not just for the redeemable, respectable, religiously hard-working parts of the world. But for the whole miserable, sinful, dying world - lock, stock, and wine barrel. For first-hour, hard-working winners and the eleventh-hour losers. Jesus was going to Jerusalem to close the books of the Law once and for all, to cover humanity’s debt with a bailout plan that makes this week’s action in Washington look like petty cash.

This parable reminds us that God’s goodness is outrageous grace. It rankles the religious. It grates on our sense of fairness and how things should be if we were God. It’s grace that puts the first last and the last first. It makes winners out of losers and losers out of winners. John the Baptist, who worshipped Christ from the womb, gets the same salvation as a repentant thief who turns to Jesus at the eleventh hour of his life and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” The lifer-Lutheran gets the same denarius as the drunk driver who says, “Jesus have mercy on me” as he crashes through the windshield on the way to his death at the eleventh hour, fifty-ninth minute, and fifty-ninth second of his miserable life. The charter member the same as the catechumen.

Nothing irritates the religious of this world more than undeserved kindness. The Commandment-Keepers Union Local 101 files protests and threatens to strike. Unfair! If that’s how it is, then why bother to keep the commandments at all, they cry. But then grace wouldn’t be grace, would it? It would be back to the drudgery of booking - have you done enough? Have you earned your way in?. And if the world could have been saved by bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses with his ledger book of ten commandments and we wouldn’t need Jesus with his bloody ross.

With this parable, Jesus was likely referring to the Israelites and the Gentiles. You recall how hard it was for the Israelites to accept Gentiles into the church.. Who did those pagans think they were? They can’t just waltz in here; they have to earn their way in! They have to be circumcised. They have to keep the rules of the Torah. Old resentments loom large.

Many of us here today are among the first hour workers. Or maybe more accurately, the third, sixth, or ninth hour ones. Baptized as babies. A dozen or so Christmas pageants under our Lutheran belts. We’ve grown up in the church. There has never been a moment of our conscious life when we did not know Jesus as Savior. We’ve worked in His vineyard our whole lives, literally grown up among the grape vines. And we can easily resent those eleventh hour late-hires, who benefit from everyone else’s hard work.

Jesus would remind us that we rob ourselves of the joy of working in our Lord’s vineyard, and we spoil the happy hour of salvation by our grumbling, when we live by the Law and insist on keeping books on ourselves and each other. There’s no joy in work if we’re worried about what the next guy is making. And there’s no joy in rising to eternal life if we expect grace for ourselves and deny it to others. Grace is undeserved kindness. Unconditional kindness. The justification of the ungodly. The forgiveness of the sinner. It’s not simply good, it’s crazy good.

Come to think of it, we really aren’t even 9th hour workers, are we? Others have believed before us. Others have suffered before us, and much more than we have. St. Paul reminded the Christians at Rome that the Jews came first. We aren’t the first to believe in Christ. There have been workers in the vineyard for nearly two thousand years.. There were countless, nameless believers who bore the heat of persecution, who defended the faith, who suffered for the name of Jesus.

And now at the eleventh hour of the old creation, with the sun setting and the fields ripe and harvest near, the Lord of the vineyard has been so kind as to call us live under Him in His kingdom, to labor in the vineyard of the saints. What a privilege! When you look at it that way, we are the last. We came on the scene when the bulk of the work was already done. We’ve had these things handed to us. (Tradition!) And we get the same denarius, the same salvation, the same forgiveness, the same resurrection to life in Jesus. In fact, if we push the parable just a bit harder, we’ll recognize that we haven’t done a blessed thing to earn our denarius. It was there in an envelope with your name on it long before you ever showed up for work. And even the work you showed up for is God’s doing.

And so whether first or last, whether called at the first, the third, sixth, ninth, or even the eleventh hour, whether we have worked hard, or little, or barely at all, there is a denarius of salvation awaiting us. It was won for all by the death of Jesus. Not fair, you say? Take it up with Jesus. But you don’t want Him to be fair. You want HIm to be like that vineyard owner - crazy good.

In the Name of Jesus,
Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/221/20080923142208/audio/pentecost19A2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 14 Sep 2008 04:45:00 +0000
Peter goes to the next higher divine number. Seven. Seven times. God’s sabbath number. That should do it. And it seems generous. Once a day for a week. Seven times you are sinned against, seven times forgive. It sound goods, generous, perfect, divine. It outdoes the rabbis by more than double. Jesus has to be pleased with how forgiving Peter is willing to be. Seven times.

No, says Jesus. Not seven times. Kick up another notch. Several notches. Seventy times seven. That’s seven driven to the point of utter completeness seven times over. 490 if you are counting, but who can count that much? You’ll lose count well before that, and that’s the point my friends.

Forgiveness keeps no count. Bookkeeping is the way of the Law, and oh how we love to keep book on the sins against us! We keep our sharp-penciled spreadsheets of all the dastardly deeds done against us. He cheated me, she slandered me, he made a bad face at me. Grudges are nursed, cultivated, walked about on a leash like a pet. “I’m never speaking to him for what he did to me.” “What did he do?” “I don’t remember, but I’m never speaking to him again. That much I do remember.”

Forgiveness keeps no records of wrongs. Freely we are forgiven; freely we forgive. Jesus told a parable, one of those troubling parallel stories designed to shake up the status quo. A king forgave his servant a million dollar debt. It was an absurd amount of money, more than could be repaid in a lifetime. He deserved debtors prison, but instead, by sheer grace, he’s let off scott free.

What does this guy do with his freedom? He goes out and tracks down his fellow servant and grabs him by the throat and demands the 500 bucks he owes him. He’s just been excused a million dollars debt, but here, with his brother, his fellow servant, he demands every penny of a tiny, almost insignificant debt. And he does it all in full view of the other servants, who aren’t too happy with all this and report it to the king. And when the king hears about it, all bets (and debts) are off, and he throws the wicked servant into prison until his debt is paid off. “And that’s how your heavenly Father will deal with you if you don’t forgive your brother from the heart.” “This is the Gospel of the Lord.”

God hates unforgiveness. He really hates it. He’s like the king in the parable when he discovers that His grace is being used to extract the last dime out of a fellow servant. God hates that. Jesus made it a point to expand on that troubling fifth petition of the Lord’s prayer. “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Father in heaven will forgive you; but if you do not forgive, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Don’t turn this into a transaction. It won’t work. Remember the parable. Who forgives first? The king. Who is forgiven first? The servant who owes a million bucks. We won’t get it right until we get this right. God forgives us first, and we are the ones who owe HIm big time. What others do to us, that’s all pocket change, compared to what we do to God. That’s one of the problems of unforgiveness - we deny how much God has forgiven us.

The other problem is that unforgiveness sets us against God. We are running crossed purposes with Him. He’s in the forgiveness business. He sent His Son to die and rise in order to forgive the sin of the world. And when we turn around and hold the world hostage to our unforgiveness, we are denying God’s forgiveness. Worse, we are taking the place of God.

Think about Joseph. Sold by his brothers into slavery. They wanted to kill him at first, but Reuben, the oldest, thought better of it. Instead they tossed him into a dry well and sold him to the first bunch of slave traders that came along. He was hauled off to Egypt where he wound up a servant in the house of Potiphar, one of Pharoah’s officials. After a close brush with Potiphar’s wife, he ended up in an Egyptian prison. But the Lord was with Joseph, and ended up in charge of all the prisoners. And thanks to God’s gift of interpreting Pharoah’s dreams, Joseph was released from prison and put in charge of the whole grain supply of Egypt, so that when a famine hit Israel Joseph “just so happened” to be at the right place and time to help his father, brothers and their families.

He played them along for a while because they didn’t recognize him. And finally there is that tearful reunion where Joseph reveals who he is to his brothers. Then father Jacob dies, and the brothers are afraid, figuring that Joseph is going to finally take revenge on them. They send word to Joseph begging for forgiveness for all they evil they had done to him. And when Joseph heard this, he wept openly, and his brother came and knelt down before him and said, “We’re your servants,” trying to bargain, transact, cut a deal with their brother Joseph.

But Joseph would have none of it. “Am I in the place of God?” he asks. How can I not forgive in the face of the God who forgives? And then comes that memorable line that is engraved in the Scriptures for our learning, and oh how we need to hear this over and over again. “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” You meant it for evil; God used it for good.

Dare we believe this, dear brothers and sisters in Christ? Dare we believe this, that the evil the world throws at us, the evil our friends and family throw at us, the evil our very brothers do against us, that God will take it up in His own hands and redirect it for good? Dare we believe such things?

Look to the cross of Jesus. Men meant it for evil. They wanted to kill the Son of God, get rid of Him for good, silence Him, destroy Him. They lied and connived and miscarried justice to get Him nailed to a Roman cross. It was evil compounded on evil. And God used it for good - your salvation, my salvation, the salvation of the world.

Helmut Thielicke was a German Lutheran pastor who served in Stuttgart during WW II. His congregation met amidst the sound of air raid sirens and bombs. They went from a church to a parish hall auditorium as their church was bombed to ruins. He writes:

“We therefore must not simply say: “God” sends death, “God” sends cancer, “God” sends multiple sclerosis. The existence of these powers is radically contrary to God’s plan of salvation. He allow it, and He undoubtedly is thinking His own higher thoughts when He does so. And even we men, small and sinful as we are , are sometimes able to grasp in our thought why God must perform this “alien” work, why he goes along with the world’s judgment upon itself, and why He delivers us to it.

But then there is this other fact which is just as true - the totally new fact, which no man could ever discover by himself. Everything God permits the dark powers to do must first pass in review before Him. Everything is examined and censored by His fatherly eye to see whether it will really work “for good with those who love Him.” Everything must first pass by him, every bomb that my strike me, every shell-splinter that ay take my dearest away from me, every intrigue or chicanery that men may inflict upon me.

And since it must first pass by Him before it can strike me, there happens what always happens when a thing or a person is looked upon by the eye of God: a great transformation takes place: Sufferings become trials which are meant to be endured in order that I may be purged and refined like the precious metal of gold. The great time of terror, in which the furies o man’s brutality, blindness, and hubris are unleashed, become times of visitation. Death, the “last enemy” becomes the “desire to depart and be with Christ” (Phil 1:23). The dreadful valleys of the shadow which I must traverse become the places where I learn to know the Good Shepherd and test his rod and staff. The anxieties that torment me as I face the insecurity of my existence and the dark curtain of the future become the raw material which I let God build my trust and my faith. “Crosses lift their arms above every pain.”

It is as if God intercepts these originally evil and disastrous missiles of fate, catches them in his fatherly arms, and sends them in the direction he wants them to go for the benefit of His children.

So everything is transformed for those who are His children, for those who have seen the Father in Jesus’ life and death, and never again will let Him go. then it comes from HIs hands; in any case it must go through HIs hands. And we all know what a tremendous comfort it is to be able to accept something from the hand of God.” (Our Heavenly Father, pp. 27-28)

You meant it for evil; God has used it for good. That’s faith talk. God intercepts the missiles intended for our destruction and redirects them for our good. That’s faith in Jesus talk. It all goes through the cross of Jesus, through His crucified Body, through His shed Blood. God has made peace with the world, and with you, His baptized child. How can we not forgive? How can we not let go and leave it be? How can we not die to all the evil done against us, knowing, believing that God in Jesus has worked it for your good. Forgive the brother, the sister, the neighbor, the enemy. Not just three times or seven times but seventy times seven, and you will know the freedom that comes with being the children of God.


In the name of Jesus,
Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/220/20080921145405/audio/pentecost18A2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:49:00 +0000 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God. (Romans 13:1)

We are talking about “life as liturgy”, today from Romans chapter 13. Your life is a priestly liturgy as you, a baptized priest to God offer your own body as a living sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God, a holy and acceptable sacrifice to God by His mercies in Christ Jesus. This “life as liturgy” begins in the congregation, where your Baptism is located, where the Lord’s table of His Body and Blood are, where the Word is preached into your ears. It extends out from the congregation in love - sincere love that hates what is evil, that honors the other over one’s self, that never lacks in zeal, that is joyful in hope, patient in suffering, faithful in prayer, generous in hospitality.

This is a love that extends in blessing not only to the friend and fellow congregation member, but also to the enemy. Especially to the enemy! Blessing those who persecute you, living in harmony, refusing to take revenge. Giving the hungry enemy something to eat, the thirsty some to drink. This isn’t natural behavior; this is what sets us apart from the rest of the world. Love for the enemy isn’t our natural reflex. This is most “unnatural” for the old, self-centered Adam. But this is you as you are in Jesus. This is the mind of Christ shaping your thinking. This is the love of Christ pouring down on you and through you to others. this is the Spirit of Christ making you “Christ for your neighbor,” as Luther liked to put it.

In today’s reading from Romans, we hear how “life as liturgy” extends to the halls of Caesar, to the civil government and those placed in authority. Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome, remember, the seat of government, their “Washington DC,” a place where power and politics are in the water and the air. This is an apt passage for us too, as we enter the campaign season and weigh the candidates.

There is no doubt that this is a difficult passage, perhaps one of those we wish wasn’t in the Bible. Many Lutherans, I’m sure, would love to stop at Romans 11 and shut the book after Paul’s grand doxology and say a hale and hearty Amen to all that Christ did for us. But there’s more. Chapter 12 on the life of love and service that flows the justified. And there is chapter 13 dealing with the government.

Recognize this: Our old Adam in each of us is a natural born anarchist who wants to the rule the roost for himself. He will not submit to God’s rule, and he certainly won’t submit to the rule of law. He has no king but himself. He hates order, government, submission, all the words associated with authority. We want to write our own rules, determine what is best for us,. (How dare they make be come to a full and complete stop when we have places to go! Who do they think they are, anyway?)

We see the old Adam at work in our children in their defiant “no” to a parent’s command, or that coy little way they have of not doing what they’ve been told to do, trying to make the rebel look cute. That “inner brat” is in us too, don’t think you grow out of being a sinner. Even as baptized believers, we remain to our dying breath sinners in the flesh of Adam. Hence the gift of government.

Gift? Yes, gift. Gift as in 1st article gift - along with clothing, shoes, food, drink, house, home, and all that we need to support this body and life. Gift as in “daily bread,” under which the catechism lists “good government” as one of those things for which we pray. Luther says, when we pray “give us this day our daily bread,” we are praying that God “endow the emperor, kings, and all estates of men, and especially our princes, counselors, magistrates, and officials with wisdom, strength, and prosperity to govern well and to be victorious over the Turks and all our enemies; to grant their subject and the people at large to live together in obedience, peace, and concord” (LC III.77).

Some folks call government a “necessary evil,” but government isn’t evil. It is a “necessary good,” a gift from God to curb our sin, to keep temporal order, to provide protection, to judge disputes, to curb the sinner in all of us and keep us from infringing on our neighbor’s peace and liberty. Even if the whole world were Christian, we would still need a police force and courts and laws and a military, because we remain throughout our lives 100% sinner, justified for Jesus’ sake - yes, but sinner nonetheless. Four times in the text, the apostle Paul calls the governing authority “God’s servant or minister.”

This isn’t a Gospel minister, make no mistake about that. Don’t expect the government to forgive sins and preach Jesus. That’s not what this gift is about. Paul says the government is a minister of God’s wrath. Yup, His wrath against the disorder our sin brings into the world. The government is God’s left hand of power to punish the wicked with temporal punishments like fines and jail time and, in certain cases, taking your life. The government is God’s servant for good, rewarding what is good and just. That presumes, of course, that the government knows the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, which should serve as some measure of a guide when we choose the people who will exercise this authority for us.

We have an unusual form of government, in case you haven’t noticed. One that Paul probably would not have recognized - “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Paul was referring to the Roman Caesar, who was Nero at the time. His early years, when Paul wrote this, were decent years, some of the best in Roman history. HIs later years were bad, resulting in great persecution of the Christians to improve sagging poll numbers. Paul was beheaded by Nero; Peter was crucified upside down by Nero.

We elect our own government official to exercise this authority of God’s left hand. When they abuse or misuse this divine authority, we can peacefully get rid of them and put others in their place. Our founding fathers understood the corruption of our humanity, and rightly didn’t trust anyone to exercise full authority. Instead they spread executive, legislative, and judicial authority across three branches and let them fight with each other, sometimes even to the point of gridlock. The last thing we need is for government to be “efficient.”

Notice what the purpose of government is, as divine authority: to punish evil and reward the good. Essentially to keep order and temporal peace. Not redistribute wealth, not to create a “great society” or an equitable society or any other sort of society, not to engineer social change, not to provide a safety net against our recklessness. Simply to punish evil, reward good, adjudicate disputes, keep the peace, protect the people. We have to keep our expectations of government simple. God didn’t give government to save us. And don’t trust government for one second, especially when it says, “Trust us.” “Trust not in princes, in mortal men who cannot save.” Even our money says it, at least for the moment: In God we trust. And if we do not trust the God who hung on a cross to save us from sin and death, no government in the world will be able to save us.

What does “life as liturgy” look like with respect to God’s gift of government? Taxes to whom taxes are due. Revenue to whom revenue is due. Who would have thought that paying taxes was a spiritual act of worship, a living sacrifice to God? Respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. When we dishonor and disrespect the governing authority, we dishonor and disrespect God, whose authority it is. We have the gift of determining who exercises that authority on our behalf. I believe this too is a 1st article gift from God. We honor and respect governing authority when we elect honorable and respectable men and women to fill our public offices as stewards of this divine authority.

In addition to taxes, revenues, honor, and respect, I would add one more: prayer. Paul says, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way” (1 Tim 2:1-2). We do that here, each and every Sunday, with monotonous repetition. Those who govern need our prayers. It is not an easy thing to be the instrument of God’s left hand. Pray for our president, our senators and representatives, our judges, our governor, the candidates running for office (the ones you support and the ones you don’t). Pray for them, whether they are of your “party” or the “other party.” That is your priestly duty. Priests pray, they intercede on behalf of others. If we don’t, who will?

Jesus was subject to the government of His day; He obeyed the laws of His land. He perfectly honored father and mother and every temporal authority that in His humility was placed over Him. He did that for you. He became a citizen of this world, under a less than perfect government, for you. He stood before Pontius Pilate, Caesar’s local representative, the governor of Judea, falsely charged with treason, making himself a king. He reminded Pilate that his authority to judge Jesus, either to free Him or crucify Him, came “from above,” from God. He was the victim of gross injustice, an abuse of the Roman system of justice. God employed it all for the salvation of the world, for your salvation.

Christianity, following Jesus, does not try to “change the world” through government. It doesn’t really even try to change government. It doesn’t seek to establish a “Christian nation” or a world government the way Islam does. It does not attempt to establish the kingdom of God on earth. The reason for that is that we as Christians are in the world but no longer of the world. Our citizenship is in the City that God builds, and we live as resident aliens in this world, holding “dual citizenship” in whatever country we live, praying for and supporting the governing authority, yet always recognizing that the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords is Jesus, who died and rose to rescue the world from its own destruction, and who now reigns as Lord of heaven and earth.

One time at a funeral, the military honor guard was bringing the coffin of a veteran into the church (I honestly do not remember who this was.) They were about to wheel the flag-draped coffin into the church when I stopped them. I told them that the flag must be removed and replaced by the church’s pall. There was a bit of tension in the air. Though their guns were ceremonial and unloaded, there is something about facing down men with guns that causes the heart to race a bit. I explained that they were entering a foreign embassy of the King of all kings and Lord of all lords before whom every knee will bow. In this embassy, the only flag that flies is the cross by which He conquered. They understood.

Like the Israelites in Babylon, we live as pilgrims, going home but not yet at home. This country is our temporary home, and we pray for it, we participate in it, we honor and respect its government, we pay our taxes. We are good citizens. This is our home away from home. And we know that there is coming a Day when the kingdoms of this world, including this one, will cease. Governments will end, kings will bow before the crucified King, and bring the glory of the nations into His eternal City. That’s your home. Don’t lose sight of that.

Peter says much the same thing as Paul does. This passage describes beautifully what Christian citizenship looks like: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authroity instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong, and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.”

O Lord, grant us good government and wise leaders to exercise the authority of your left-hand, that we may live our days in peace and godliness, for the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, the King of king, the Lord of lords, and our Savior. Amen.]]> http://www.htlcms.org/219/20080908165232/audio/pentecost17A2008.mp3 clean revcwirla Sun, 24 Aug 2008 07:37:00 +0000
Paul sums it up it all up in this one, mighty sentence, worthy of all remembering: God has consigned all (everyone without exception) to disobedience (under the Law) in order that He might have mercy upon all (everyone without exception) in Christ. Everyone condemned under the Law; everyone the object of mercy in Christ. Wow! That’s when Paul busts out in a hymn of praise and says the opening verses in today’s reading from Romans: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are His ways! For who has know the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.”

This is most certainly true, that’s the way it is, you can’t get more sure than this, all because of dead and risen Jesus. Paul has come to the end of a journey that began in chapter 1, where he said ”For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew (ethnic Israelite) first and also to the Greek (the Gentile). For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.”

Paul then shows how both Gentile and Jew, the uncircumcised and the circumcised alike a guilty and condemned under God’s Law. The Gentile, by his conscience and the Law written as firmware in his heart; and the Jew by the Law of the Torah, which he doesn’t keep. Paul then reveals the purpose of the Torah as not being a Torah of works by which people do works to be saved, but a Torah of faith, by which people trust the promise of a righteousness that is not their own, that comes through faith in the blood of Jesus. In other words, we stand before God forensically righteous, under a verdict of “innocent for Jesus’ sake.” This is the very faith that Father Abraham demonstrated before his circumcision. This is faith that trusts that what Adam did, Christ, the second Adam has undone. This is a faith born in Baptism, in which the forensic sentence of “innocent for Jesus’ sake” is pronounced over your guilty head. This faith sets us in a life lived in tension between a renewed mind in Christ and a flesh steeped in Adam, so that we now live a double-existence - in Christ and in ourselves, as Luther said, “simultaneously a sinner and a saint” until the day we die.

And this marvelous way of working, wherein God justifies the ungodly by the force of His promise and not by their works, is demonstrated in the very life and history of God’s chosen people, OT Israel, that God grace is an unearned gift in Jesus, that He declines to use firstborn Esau in favor of second born Jacob, that He even uses the hardened rejection of Israel to work the salvation of the world. And in the end, when you sum it all up and total it out, God condemns all under the Law, and He has mercy on all in Jesus Christ.

Now, at last, you’re ready for Romans 12. And not a minute too soon. So then, what are we supposed to do? Sit back and let sin abound that God’s grace may much more abound? Nonsense! Do whatever we please because we already pleasing to God? Absolute silliness!

Listen. “I appeal to you, therefore, (on the basis of everything that has come before), by the mercies of God (get that - by the mercies of God, which are found in Jesus), to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Stop right there. By the mercies of God. Not by the merits of men. Not to earn grace but under the umbrella of grace. Covered with the righteousness of Christ, redeemed by His blood, rescued from sin, death, and the sentence of the Law. By the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Yes, those bodies are steeped in sin. Yes, those bodies have all the bad reflexes of the old Adam. Yes, there is, as Paul said a few chapters ago, nothing good that dwells in your flesh. But offer those bodies anyway. Not as an atoning sacrifice. That would be dead. Atonement requires blood. Atoning sacrifices are bled to death. Like the sin offering or the goat on the day of atonement. Christ on the cross.

You can’t atone for your sins. There is no sacrifice you can offer, though we try don’t we? We offer our works, our religions, our prayers, our pieties. We offer others - our marriage, our children, our coworkers. Our altars are piled high with sacrifices that can’t save. This isn’t what God is asking for. He wants you, justified sinner. He wants your body that has been baptized, that has been fed the Body and Blood of Christ. He wants to do something good and constructive with that sinful flesh of yours.

That’s what it means to be baptized. That’s what it means to be declared righteous for Jesus’ sake. That’s what forensic righteousness is all about. God declares you to be holy and acceptable through Jesus Christ so that now your whole life lived in the flesh - your work, your play, your vocation - is all a living sacrifice, a thankoffering to God. Life is liturgy for the baptized believer. Life is liturgy, a spiritual act of worship.

Get this. Worship isn’t just about what happens on Sunday morning. Spiritual worship goes on in the body, in your day to day life, when you arise in the morning, and when you lie down in your beds at night. That’s why the catechism would have you make the sign of the cross and invoke the Name of God. Every day, not just Sunday. LIfe is liturgy for the baptized. This is more than “doing good works,” which sounds like drudgery. This is liturgy - playful, joyful, exuberant, living large before God, embracing His gifts, putting them to use, serving others, giving yourself away because you have nothing to lose.

That means a new way of thinking, which is what repentance is all about. A change of thinking. No longer conformed to this world’s way of thinking but transformed by a renewed mind. LIfe as liturgy means we don’t think the same as the world because we have the mind of Christ, which changes your perspective on things. The world couldn’t care less about God or what pleases Him, but we are constantly testing what is and isn’t good and acceptable and perfect. That makes us baptized believers a bit of an oddity in this world. “In the world but not of the world.” Sometimes even a little “out of this world.” But we’re in Christ now, He’s our life, and that changes things considerably.

As liturgists in the liturgy of life, we need to see ourselves in a sober light, not think more highly of ourselves than the old Adam in us would have us think. Liturgists need to be servants of the liturgy, not masters. We serve the One who served us to His death and who serves us His own Body and Blood. Jesus came not to be served but to serve. That’s what a liturgist does, he serves. In the liturgy of life, we serve others, and in others, especially the least, the lost, and the lowly, we serve Christ.

A liturgy has a variety of servants - preachers, cantors, readers, assistants, acolytes. A team working together as one. A body has many diverse members - fingers, toes, eyes, ears, nose, organs, bones. Not everything is the same thing. Not everyone is the same as the next. We have different gifts, but we all are gifted in some way.

The liturgy of life begins in the divine service, in the congregation. It moves out into the home and society and work, but it begins where the body of Christ is gathered to hear and eat and drink together as a body. And within that body, there are a diversity of ways in which we offer our bodies as living sacrifices. Some preach, others serve, teach, encourage, give, govern, do works of mercy. Some teach the kids in Sunday School, some balance the books, some encourage others with phone calls, cards, letters, prayers. I preach and preside. We may not be a well-oiled machine or some slick corporation, but we are the body of Christ and the baptized family of God.

Living sacrifices. Priests offer sacrifices. And that’s what you are. Priests. Not everyone is a pastor or a deacon or an elder. But every baptized believer in Christ is a priest to God in priestly service to his or her neighbor. That’s the main reason why the word “priest” is used only of the Christian in the NT. You are baptized to be a priest to God in the priesthood of Christ. And the offering you lift up is your bodies, a living sacrifice, not for sin but rescued from sin, made holy and acceptable through Jesus’ sacrifice of His body on the cross.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God, in all times and in all places. It is good and right so to do.

In the name of Jesus, Amen]]> http://www.htlcms.org/218/20080825153902/audio/pentecost15A2008.mp3 clean