Sermon -11/0506

John 11:20-45
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I was at seminary there were some professors who liked to challenge students by suggesting that one of the tasks of the pastor, and for that matter the entire Body of Christ, was to figure out "What God is up to." There were some other professors who didn’t really care for that approach to ministry. They saw it as dangerous because they felt it could lead to people, particularly pastors, trying to figure out, what Martin Luther called "the hidden God."
This is referring to God beyond the cross, if you will. In other words, if God reveals Himself to His people through Christ, speaking to them in the Holy Spirit through the word of Christ, in the Gospel, then that is how we should approach ministry. The call of God’s people is not some code that we can decipher in order to figure out what God is up to. The call of God’s people, as forgiven and redeemed sinners, is fairly simple; it is to proclaim the Gospel in word and deed, to share the love of Christ with our neighbor.
As you may have guessed by now, I tended to gravitate toward the latter view; the view that is critical of the whole "What is God up to?" approach to ministry. However this is not to say that there is anything wrong with asking the question "What is God up to?" We live in a world where all you have to do is watch the news for five minutes and you’ll probably find yourself asking that very same question, or one similar to it. The problem arises when we try to answer that question, especially if we answer it in a way that stretches the boundaries of how we define God’s role in Christ, God’s role of bringing forgiveness and redemption to a broken and sinful world.
But like I said, it’s only natural that you are going to find yourself wondering about where God is in the world, or what God is doing. Indeed, today on All Saints Sunday, we remember our brothers and sisters who have been put to rest. Perhaps there is no clearer example of a time when you might find yourselves wondering about God’s place or God’s activity in the world than when you are in grief over the loss of a loved one.
It’s in grief that you are able to identify with Mary and Martha in today’s Gospel lesson, who are in grief over the loss of their brother Lazarus. In their mourning they ask Jesus to come help them, and Jesus comes to their aid as we see, but He waited until two days after He got the message about Lazarus.
As this morning’s Gospel lesson opens up, it’s not long after Jesus has arrived to help Mary and Martha. Mary greets Jesus by kneeling at His feet and she says to Jesus that if He had been there then her brother would not have died.
In verse 4 from this chapter of John’s Gospel it says how Jesus responded to the news of Lazarus’, at the time, illness. Jesus responds by saying that the illness will not lead to death but rather it is for God’s glory so that the Son of man can be glorified through it, and a few verses later He says that He would "wake Lazarus." So, we know that Jesus went to meet Mary and Martha with the intention of raising Lazarus. He knew that Mary and Martha were going to see Lazarus walk out of the tomb.
Yet, when He sees Mary in her grief, Jesus becomes greatly disturbed and begins to cry Himself. He doesn’t simply raise Lazarus and go away, or for that matter He doesn’t simply raise Lazarus from far away. He goes to Mary and meets her in her grief and joins her in her sorrow.
He does the same for you. When you are experiencing sorrow and grief, not just when it comes to mourning the loss of a loved one, but in the daily sorrow and grief that you experience in the daily challenges and frustrations that come with living in a broken and sinful world, our Lord joins you in that. When someone reaches out to you in your grief, that is our Lord joining you in your grief, when the Word is proclaimed and the sacraments administered to you in your grief, that is our Lord.
In this story we see that Jesus does not try to avoid the often ugly reality of death when He asks that the stone be removed from the tomb and Martha points out that Lazarus has been in there four days, and that there would no doubt be an awful stench. But that does not stop Jesus. He faces the ugliness of death head on, as He would eventually do on the cross.
Jesus is not afraid of death because He knows that death does not have the final say. He knows that the events that are unfolding will lead to a plot to kill Him. But He knows that as that plot is fulfilled and Jesus lays down His life for you, that is where He will be glorified. That is the "glory of God" that He is referring to when He reminds Martha that He told her that if she believed she would see the glory of God.
The promise of Christ Jesus is not the promise of the avoidance of death, but rather the defeat of death. In order to defeat death, Jesus had to face death. The raising of Lazarus is not the only example of Jesus and His disciples raising someone from the dead. There are several others.
But in all the instances of Jesus and the disciples raising people from the dead, it always ended up being temporary. Lazarus still ended up facing death. When I was in seminary I once referred to this story as the resurrection of Lazarus, and it was pointed out to me that wasn’t correct. It was pointed out to me that what happens here to Lazarus is not a resurrection but a raising from the dead.
The difference is that resurrection is eternal, while a raising of the dead is temporary. Raising from the dead is simply a postponement of death, resurrection is a defeat of death.
Right before calling Lazarus from the tomb, Jesus prays to God and says that He is making this prayer so that the people who had gathered would know that God had sent Him. And indeed, the raising of Lazarus would lead to people being brought to faith in Jesus, and it would also bring about the events that would lead to Jesus laying down His life for you.
It’s interesting to note that after Lazarus is called forth, the text says "the dead man came out." He is walking out of the tomb, but he is still referred to as the dead man. Then Jesus tells them to unbind him. The raising of Lazarus wasn’t quite complete until he had been unbound from the bandages that he had been wrapped up in.
In baptism you experience a dying and a rising also. In baptism you die to sin and you rise in Christ, and just as Lazarus was unbound from the bandages that bound him, you are unbound from sin. Through the word of Christ, in the Gospel, the Holy Spirit calls you to new life through faith in Christ Jesus, just as Lazarus was called forth to new life from the tomb, by Jesus.
This is done so that you can live in Christian freedom with the same purpose in mind that Jesus had when He prayed to His Father in Heaven right before calling Lazarus from the tomb, so that they may know that Jesus was sent by God. In baptism you have been unbound from sin and called to Christian freedom to proclaim the name of Christ Jesus to your neighbor through your words and deeds.
So, if and when someone asks you that question; "What is God up to?" Tell them that God is up to the same thing that He has been up to for more than 2000 years. He is raising the dead through faith in Christ, through whom He has promised that one day all of God’s people will be resurrected in eternity.
Amen

Sermon-October 29, 2006

John 8:31-36 , Romans 3:19-28 , Jeremiah 31:31-34
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today is Reformation Sunday. Today we remember the reformation, which is a part of the heritage of all Protestants, but for us as Lutherans, there is an undeniable personal connection to the reformation, particularly Martin Luther's role in it. However, as I was reminded by Pastor April from Gloria Dei this past week at text-study, today is not a day that we celebrate Martin Luther himself, but rather the revelation of the freedom that we have through God’s grace, the freedom that we have in faith and knowing that it is only through Christ Jesus, and not through our own efforts that we are forgiven and thus made righteous in God’s eyes.
In thinking about this, it struck me that today is something of an independence day for us, or at least, as I said earlier, a day when we celebrate a new revelation and a greater understanding of the freedom and indeed independence that we have as sinners redeemed by the blood of Christ.
Luther was a man living in captivity. He was living in captivity to his own pride and confusion. He was living in captivity to the law. He was living as a monk, devoting the bulk of his time to trying to be righteous through his own efforts, so he could find peace of mind with God. But the more he relied on the law and his own efforts, the more frustrated he became.
And then one day his mentor, Johann Staupitz visited him and told him that God is not angry with him but rather that Luther was angry with God. He was angry because as hard as he tried, he could not find the assurance of God’s love that he was so desperately looking for. Staupitz told him that he was not going to find the assurance that he so desperately sought by looking to himself but instead he would only find that assurance by looking to the cross.
As time went on, Luther would struggle with the concept of the righteousness of God. He couldn’t let go of the mistaken and limited notion that it was simply an active righteousness that God used to Lord over His people. This just led Luther to rely more on his own efforts as a means of trying to appease what he saw as the condemning righteousness of God.
But over time Luther would realize that there was much more to the righteousness of God than that. He would realize that there was also a passive dimension to the righteousness of God. Passive, as in through faith, we are the passive recipients of the righteousness of God. By the grace of God, we are given what we can’t possibly earn, the very quality of righteousness that makes us acceptable in God’s eyes.
This is what we celebrate today; the revelation of that passive righteousness that God has given all of you through faith. This is the righteousness of God that Paul writes of in today’s second lesson when he speaks of the righteousness of God being disclosed, not because of the law or contingent of the law, but apart from the law, for those who believe.
Your reception of God’s righteousness is not contingent on your ability to follow the law. This is not conditional if/than language, it is unconditional because/therefore language. Your faith itself doesn’t even come from within you, but from outside of you as we read in Ephesians 2:8.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.
Because, our Lord has called you, through the Gospel, to faith, you therefore have been saved, and it is not by your own efforts at all.
You still try to take this project of salvation on yourself. There are countless surveys that have been taken that have shown that the majority of Christians believe that they will go to heaven because they are "good people" or because they lead "good lives." Is that what the freedom that we have in Christ is all about? Wasn’t the cross enough?? Did Jesus go to the cross so that you would be free to take on the task of salvation on your own? No. But you still try to.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says to a group of Jews who had come to believe in Him, but were denying that they had ever been in captivity, that anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Well, needless to say, that’s all of us. And you are all well aware of how sin messes with you through the flesh and causes you to give in to what we tend to think of as the obvious sins; the sins that come from looking at your own selfish desires, sins of the flesh like lying, stealing, lust, adultery etc. Again, you are all aware of how sin will convince you that you can exploit the very freedom that was won for you on the cross, by giving in to your own sinful desires.
But as soon as you do that, sin messes with you in a different way. It exploits the law to convince you that you don’t deserve God’s love. The essence of sin is to put your trust in anything other than God, and as sin messes with you through the exploitation of the law, ironically it is the law that you start to put your faith in. Sin exploits the law and convinces you that every time you go to church you are making one more step toward earning your place in God’s eternal kingdom, or that every week that you tithe of your income you are taking one more step toward buying your place in God’s eternal kingdom.
Don’t get me wrong, faithful worship attendance and faithful tithing are both wonderful and are encouraged. But they are to be done, not in bondage to the law that only leads to anger and frustration, but in the freedom that you have in Christ Jesus, the freedom that comes from the assurance that everything that has already been done for you, and as Luther was reminded by his mentor Johann Staupitz, that assurance comes when we look to the cross.
In the Old Testament lesson for today, the prophet Jeremiah tells us of God’s people making the transition from the Old covenant to the New covenant. The Old covenant was one that was based on the law and the ability of God’s people to abide by the law. Under the old covenant, the law was an external taskmaster that was resisted by God’s people until finally it was broken and the Israelites were sent into captivity.
But God promises a New covenant that will not be resisted. The law will not be an external taskmaster but instead will be written on the hearts of God’s people. He promises that the law will be embraced. And how does God promise to bring this newness about?? He does it through forgiveness. Through Jeremiah, God promises that He will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that in forgiveness the least and the greatest among God’s people Israel are on equal footing.
And now, in Christ Jesus the geographical, religious, and institutional boundaries of the New covenant have been done away with and you have been brought into the New covenant. The cycle of sin and punishment has been broken because of forgiveness, and freedom in Christ has been ushered in.
In his 1520 treatise entitled Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther wrote that
A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all
That is what it means to live in Christian freedom, to live in complete freedom from captivity to sin; whether it be in the form of sin exploiting the law or the flesh.
To live in the freedom that comes only from forgiveness; the forgiveness that frees us to take the focus completely off of ourselves and our flesh-driven sinful desires, or our legalistic dependence on our own abilities, and to then put the focus where our Lord Jesus calls us to put it, on sharing the love of Christ with our neighbor.
Indeed, today on Reformation Sunday we celebrate the revelation of a greater understanding of Christian freedom; the freedom that we experience in forgiveness. We celebrate the revelation that true Christian freedom means having the assurance that our desires and centeredness can be turned away from ourselves; that giving is more important than getting, that serving is more important than being served, and we know this because we know that in Christ crucified we have been forgiven and we have been given the passive righteousness of God that makes us acceptable in God’s eyes, and if we forget this, all we need to do is look, not to ourselves, but to the cross.
Amen