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, 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 revcwirla Sun, 17 Aug 2008 07:16:00 +0000
Jesus was in town. He’d gone to the coast with His disciples, to the region of Tyre and Sidon on the Mediterranean. This wasn’t Israelite territory, it was Canaanite land. Canaanites were named after the descendants of Caan, the son of Adam who had murdered his brother. Canaanites were those people that were supposed to have been purged from the land under Joshua. Israelites hated Canaanites, and the animosity was mutual in return. The Israelites called the Canaanites “dogs.” Filthy dogs, if you really wanted to drive home the point. We don’t know what the Canaanites called the Israelites.

She heard that Jesus had come to town. She’d heard the reports that were going around about His power to heal and cast out demons. There was a faint ray of hope. . She sees Jesus and goes running after Him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Son of David is an Israelite way of speaking. The Israelites knew that the messiah would come from the house of David to establish his throne. Son of David, she called Jesus. A Canaanite speaking like an Israelite. Maybe if Jesus mistook her for one of His own countrymen He would help her.

It’s kind of clever, actually. Talk like an Israelite and maybe Jesus will do you a favor. Some people think in those terms. Do you? Some people try to transact with God in prayer, trying to negotiate a favor. Do you? People like to get all “religious” when they pray. Pile on those religious phrases higher and deeper thinking God will be impressed and do what you ask. Do you?

Jesus meets her pleas with stony silence. “He did not answer her a word.” Nothing. Silence. And she keeps on calling out to Him, over and over again. “Son of David, have mercy on me. Son of David, h