Sermon-Sunday-March 18, 2007

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I greet you every week as brothers and sisters and you probably don’t really think that much about it. But with this week’s Gospel lesson it seems particularly appropriate for me to greet you in such a manner, and really for all of us to greet each other in such a manner. This week’s Gospel contains probably the most beloved of all the parables; the parable of the prodigal son.
Jesus uses familiar family dynamics to tell this story of God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness. He uses a context that is just as easy for you to identify with today as it would have been for those who had gathered around Him when He told this parable. Jesus begins the story by identifying the key players in the story. And the first person He identifies is not either one of the sons but the father and He introduces the siblings not as brothers but as sons. They are defined not by their relationship to each other but by their relationship to their father.
Jesus uses a situation and context that you can all relate to and identify with. I am guessing that most of you have siblings and even if you don’t, you all can identify with what it means to have a relationship with a parent. And really when Jesus talks about how the two sons relate to each other, what He is really talking about is how you all relate to each other as baptized children of God. In baptism you are siblings to each other. In baptism you are brothers and sisters to each other and God is your heavenly Father.
It’s not always easy to be in relationship with siblings. The difficulties that exist in sibling relationships are deep-rooted in Israelite traditions. It goes back to Cain’s jealousy of Abel which led to murder. Or the envy and dishonesty that led to Jacob and Esau being separated from each other for many years. And of course, there is the petty jealousy that led Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery.
In the two siblings from this beloved parable, you can see yourselves. In the younger son, you can see how his actions lead to his progressive estrangement by himself from his family. Through the mismanagement of his inheritance and his living fast and loose you can see yourself.
In the actions of the younger son you can see how, like him, you give in to the temptation to love, trust, and fear things other than God, such as money, power, status and prestige. You can see, how like the younger son you have sought good, comfort, and delight from your own efforts rather than simply trusting in God’s faithful promise. In the actions of the younger son you can see how you have measured worth and value by how much something pleases you, as opposed to how much it helps you to fulfill your call to love and serve your neighbor. And you can see that, like the younger son, you have sought out your Father in Heaven, more often as a last resort, rather than as a faithful impulse.
So, it must then be the older son whom you are to draw inspiration from right? Well despite his claims of perfect piety, he’s no prize either. When the younger son returns home after squandering all of his inheritance, the older son does not share his father’s joy at his son’s return. But what upsets the older son is not that the younger son has returned home, but that their father would have the audacity to actually rejoice at his return. He couldn’t fathom why his father would throw a party for his son after he had been so disrespectful and taken advantage of his father the way he did.
There is no indication that the older son would have objected to the younger son simply being allowed to come home. Judaism and Christianity have clear provisions for the restoration of the penitent returnee. But the older son was probably expecting that there would be some sort of punishment for what the younger son had done. The older son was probably also expecting that he would have a little gloating time. And when things didn’t go the way he expected them to, he was jealous.
And who among us can say that we also wouldn’t have been at least a little jealous? You can see yourself in the actions and attitude of the older son also. You see that, like the older son, you have longed for the honor, wealth and happiness of others that seems to come to them easily. You can see in the older son your own tendency to resent the blessings that God has given your neighbor.
In both the older and the younger son you see yourself and you see your sin exposed to you. Even when the younger son decides to return home, it is not with the humble and contrite heart, as is often suggested. It should probably be recognized that his intention is to be welcomed as a hired hand, as opposed to a slave. That is an important distinction that you can’t necessarily see in a modern reading of this. A hired hand would have actually been one of the higher paid employees, whereas a slave would have been paid little more than their food and a place to sleep.
Regardless, when you look at both the younger and the older sons and you see how much they are like you, then you see just how much in bondage you are to sin, death, and the devil. You see that whether we are talking about your selfish pursuits of happiness, or your attempts to justify yourself to God through your best efforts, it’s all futile, and it all leads to death.
But, there is another player in this story and through his actions you can see that there is hope, that there is promise. As the father in this story runs after the younger son when he sees his younger son in the distance, you can see the actions of your Father in Heaven. You can see that He doesn’t wait for you, but He comes running after you, in His Son Christ Jesus who takes your sins to the cross and gives you His perfect righteousness. He comes running after you filled with love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness, and the promise of eternal life and He won’t be stopped or held up, even by selfish motivation.
As the father reaches out to the older son in the midst of his older son’s petty jealousy, you can see that your Lord does not sit idly by and wait for you to make a decision for Him, but that He comes to you offering words of comfort, promise, forgiveness, mercy, and salvation. He comes to you in Word and sacrament, as He is doing right now in the Word proclaimed to you and He will do for you in a few minutes as you come forward and receive His supper, and He comes to you in the wine and the bread.
He came to you in the words of promise that were proclaimed at your baptism; that you in fact are a child of God, and you have been claimed by God, through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. And He continues to come to you daily in His word and the sacraments and in fellowship with other believers.
He comes to you and frees you from bondage to sin, death, and the devil, and frees you from the burden of seeing you brothers and sisters in Christ from a human point of view, as Paul refers to in the lesson from 2nd Corinthians for today. He frees you from the burden of seeing them with pride and jealousy and frees you to see them in love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness.
In baptism you have been reconciled before God, not through your own efforts or understanding, but through Christ Jesus and you have been made brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.
And now you have been entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation and you have been made ambassadors for Christ, to your neighbors, who through Christ, are also your brothers and sisters. It is through Christ Jesus that we are made brothers and sisters for all eternity. And it is Christ Jesus, who has reconciled us to God, that people should see in us, through our words of Gospel proclamation and our deeds of love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday-March 11, 2007

Isaiah 55:1-9 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Luke 13:1-9
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you think that they were worse sinners than you? That is the question that Jesus asks those who had gathered around Him. When He asks this He is referring to an incident where Pilate had slaughtered a group of Galileans, and the result was that their blood mingled with that of their sacrifices. Jesus also asks this in reference to a group of people who had been killed when a tower fell on them. Both of these would have been considered to be very tragic ways to die.
And today, through His Word, Christ Jesus asks this question of you. Do you think that they were worse sinners than you? Do you think that those who were killed during the 9-11 tragedies were worse sinners than you? Do you think that the people killed in Hurricane Katrina were worse sinners than you??
Maybe you scoff at such a notion. Maybe you say, “Well of course I don’t think that, no self-respecting Christian would.” Allow me to read you something that was said by a very well-known televangelist in the days immediately following the 9-11 tragedies. I want to make it clear, these are not my words.
“ I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays
and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative
lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way-all of them who have tried to secularize
America-I point the finger in their faces and say: ‘You helped this happen.’”
Now of course, this televangelist also blamed the terrorists and recognized their role in it. But what was being suggested was that 9-11 was some sort of retribution from God as if the sins of pagans, and, homosexuals, and doctors who perform abortions were worse than everybody else’s.
But the truth is the sinful nature that drove the terrorists to hijack those planes and crash them into the World Trade Center is the same sinful nature that the people that this televangelist made reference to struggle with, and the same sinful nature that drives people to blame tragedies like 9-11 on other people’s sins, and it’s the same sinful nature that makes you susceptible to believing such heresies.
But Jesus has something else to say. Jesus dismisses the whole idea of earthly death of any kind, no matter how it appears, as some sort of retribution from God. Jesus says that you will all perish as they did, unless you repent. Jesus reminds you today that your time is fragile, that judgment is coming and that unless you repent, you will be pronounced guilty.
In light of this, Jesus calls you to be alert. He calls you to be aware. He calls you to be about repentance. So what does repent mean? What can you do to know that you are in proper repentance?
Is there some book that you can read? Is there some plan that you can follow? Well, not really. Because, despite what some people like to turn it into, repentance is not about what you can do, or what you are doing, or even what you can do better. Repentance is not about your success, it’s about your failure, it’s about what you fail to do every day. Repentance is about knowing that you can’t even come close to fulfilling what God demands of you; perfect righteousness.
To repent means to turn, in this case to turn away from your futile attempts to justify yourself, and turn to God’s mercy in Christ Jesus. To repent is to simply remember and believe the words of promise that were spoken over you in the waters of baptism, the promise of God’s faithfulness in Christ Jesus; the promise that through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus you are freed from the oppressive power of sin, death and the devil and you are raised up in new life.
To repent is to heed the advice of the prophet Isaiah from today’s Old Testament lesson; listen so that you may live, seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Forsake your wicked ways and your unrighteous thoughts and let them return to the Lord, for He promises mercy and abundant pardon.
But the time for repentance is limited. There is only so much time. You are the fig-tree that Jesus speaks of in the parable from the Gospel lesson. Jesus calls His people to repent. Jesus is calling you to repent for the time is short.
And God knows that you can be deceived, that you can be misled. He knows that you are like the Israelites in the desert at the foot of Mt. Sinai, whom Paul makes reference to in today’s second lesson. They grew impatient waiting for Moses to return, and they ended up worshipping false gods.
God knows that you are just as susceptible as those Israelites to the slings and arrows of temptation that the devil will throw your way. Deep down you are not looking for a merciful and loving God who brings redemption and forgiveness. You are easily swayed by false gods who promise prosperity when you sow the right seed, or who support your political agenda, or who coddle you and affirm all of your sinful orientations, or who bring about tragic death as retribution for other people’s sins. You are swayed by false gods who, in the end, only bring death.
But there is good news. There is eternally good news. God brings something different, He brings something truly worthy of repentance. He brings the rock of salvation; Christ Jesus the Lord. Our Lord brings the one who laid down His life for you; the one who took all of your sin, and pain, and weakness, and guilt to the cross and gives you His perfect righteousness in return.
He brings the one who defeated sin, death, and the devil and walked out of the tomb and revealed a new reality in doing so. He is Christ Jesus who comes to you daily in baptism and gives you the will to turn from the false hope of the devil and his legion of false gods. Through the Holy Spirit Christ Jesus calls you to repentance and gives you the strength you need to endure any test that comes your way.
He comes to you in the wine and the bread and strengthens you to live in the midst of a world that tempts you to turn away from Him; the very One who gives you new life, and redemption and forgiveness. And through His blood you are saved. He brings you out of bondage and into freedom; the freedom to bear fruit worthy of the repentance that He calls you to.
He frees you from the guilty verdict you deserve in judgment and frees you from being cut down and cast away, and frees you to now put the focus on your neighbor, whom you are called to love as yourself and proclaim the Good News of Christ Jesus to. You are freed to live out the great commission, to go therefore and make disciples of all nations.
We don’t know when the time for repentance will fully come to an end, but we do know that with every passing day we are one day closer to that time. You have the Word of promise. It has been placed on your lips and in your heart, and your neighbor has been placed within earshot of your proclamation, so they too can hear and believe the Word that sustains and nurtures and gives new life in repentance and forgiveness.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday-March 4, 2007

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 Philippians 3:17-4:1 Luke 13:31-35

Brothers and Sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In our second lesson for this morning, Paul warns the people of Philippi about those whom he describes as “enemies of the Cross of Christ;” He says that their end is destruction. So what kind of person do you think Paul is talking about? What kind of people would garner such a negative description by Paul?
Well, if you watch the news, then you probably saw something this week about the discovery of a tomb that some people believe might actually be a tomb where Jesus was buried. Of course the people that are saying this, have no expertise in the scholarly fields relevant to this alleged discovery such as archaeology, or biblical history, or linguistics and certainly not theology. And of course just about all of the people who would qualify as experts are dismissing this discovery, but that’s not stopping these people from trumpeting their discovery, and it’s certainly not stopping the media from talking about it. So, certainly I think Paul would consider the people making this false claim to be enemies of the cross of Christ.
But is this the only kind of people that Paul is talking about? Is Paul just talking about people who try to cast doubt on the Christian witness? Well, in today’s lesson, I don’t know if it could be said that Paul was referring to people who were trying to discredit the Christian witness, as much as they just simply didn’t understand it. Paul was warning the people of Philippi about a group of people who were preaching a false gospel which insisted that circumcision was absolutely necessary for all believers.
These were people that had put their trust, not in God, but in practices they could control and enforce and influence. That is at the heart of what it means to be an enemy of the Cross of Christ; to put your trust in what you do, or see our touch, rather than simply receive the promise of what has been done for you on the cross.
Do you trust the Gospel’s simple promise to satisfy your righteous hunger? Do you spend more time talking with people about your faith, or the economy, or the last sporting event you went to, or politics.
Or when you talk about matters relating to your faith life, do you talk about the word proclaimed to you, or perhaps the fellowship that you enjoy with your fellow believers? Or do you talk more about issues connected to the budget?
The truth is, deep-down we are all enemies of the cross. We spend more time talking about things which we have convinced ourselves that we can control, like the budget. We want to put more faith in what we can do and see, rather than take a leap of faith and trust in what the Holy Spirit can do in and through us, and what Christ Jesus has already done on the Cross.
When it comes right down to it, we are all like Abram in our Old Testament lesson who questioned God even though God had already promised Abram that He would make into him a great nation and He would make the name of Abram great. We think, if only God could send some kind of sign that might show His faithfulness to us, or even just show that He’s there. In times when our faith is put to the test, we are like the father with the sick boy in Mark 9:24 who cries out to Jesus “I believe; help my unbelief.”
But Just as God remained faithful to Abram, in the midst of Abram’s doubt and unfaithfulness, our Lord remains faithful to us. In fact, in the midst of our unfaithful demands for a sign, He sends more than a sign, He sends His Son.
God would speak to His people Israel for centuries through the prophets of old and time and time again, the prophets would be rejected. But God does not let the unfaithfulness of His people hinder His plan for reconciliation and redemption. It was previously through the prophets that God would deliver His word of hope, but in rejecting the prophets, the people of Israel rejected God.
But that did not stop God, God sent His Son and in His Son the boundaries of faith and salvation were no longer limited to the people of Israel. In Christ Jesus, God brought a word of promise for all people. In Christ Jesus God brought redemption, reconciliation and forgiveness for all people.
And we can see in today’s Gospel lesson that Christ Jesus would not allow Herod to hinder His plan. In His encounter with these Pharisees who were supposedly warning Him about Herod, we can see that even after the centuries of rejection of all the prophets of old, our Lord still seeks to gather His children together. We see that Jesus is determined to fulfill the plan of redemption that would be fulfilled on the cross where Christ Jesus would take your sins upon Himself and in return you would receive His righteousness.
So now the only thing left to figure out is whether or not you are an enemy of the cross. Either you are an enemy of the cross or you are a part of the heavenly citizenship that Paul writes of in the second lesson for today. Is your glory actually your shame? Is your mind on earthly things? Or do you await the return of Christ Jesus and the transformation of your humiliation? Do you await the fulfillment of His promise to transform you into His glory?
What does it mean to be among the citizenship of Heaven that Paul writes about? What does it mean to stand firm in the Lord? The answer comes to us in our Gospel lesson when Jesus tells the Pharisees and Jerusalem in general that they will not see Him until the time comes when they say ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’
When you place your thoughts on Christ Jesus and on what He did for you; crucified and raised. When you take God in Christ Jesus at His Word that what He did on the cross He did for you, then you know that you are among the heavenly citizenship that Paul writes of in the second lesson for today.
Your place in the heavenly citizenship was secured 2000 years ago on the cross, and in the waters of baptism you were marked with that very citizenship when you were marked with the cross of Christ. And just as your Savior would not be hindered by the enemies of the cross that He faced on the way to the cross, He is not hindered by the enemies of the cross that we see today. Christ Jesus continues to come to you in His Word, in His supper and in fellowship with other believers.
He comes to you, claims you as His own, calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies you through His Word and protects you against the enemies of the cross. Just as Abram was reckoned as righteous in his faith, you are reckoned as righteous in the faith which you have been called to and baptized into. ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,’ for He has made you one of His own and placed you in the Heavenly citizenship.
Amen

Late entry: Ash Wednesday Sermon

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
Well, here it is once again Ash Wednesday. You’ve all gone through this strange Lenten ritual of having these ashes put on your forehead in the shape of a cross. Have you ever really thought about what that means?? Have you ever really thought about why we put these ashes on our forehead on Ash Wednesday? Or do you just do it every year because that’s how it’s been your whole life and that’s just what you do on Ash Wednesday?
Do you do it so you’ll look pious?? Do you do it because you’re afraid of what others might think if you don’t do it? I mean really, that is kind of one of the results of this ritual. On Ash Wednesday, some Christians are easy to identify because they will have the ashes put on their foreheads. Christians can identify each other on Ash Wednesday, and we can look pious and holy in front of the non-Christians.
So is that why you do it?? If it is then it flies in the face of what Jesus tells us in our Gospel lesson for this evening. Our Gospel lesson begins with Jesus giving a warning against practicing piety in front of others so that you will be seen by them. He says that when you give alms you are not to sound a trumpet as the hypocrites do so that they may be praised by others.
Does that go on today? When someone gives to the church or a charitable organization do they sound a trumpet so that they will be praised? When you see a building that is named after a person, like say the Phil Jackson fieldhouse in Williston, why do you think the building bears that person’s name? More than likely it has a lot to do with the fact that the person whose name the building bears, probably donated most of the funds that were needed to finance the building.
But you say, oh that’s a high school, that’s a public building, that doesn’t go on in faith-based organizations. Well, next time you go to the Bethel Lutheran nursing home, take a look at what you see on the wall in first hallway to your left as you enter the building. You will see a display that acknowledges the different groups and individuals who have given to the nursing home. The more the person or the individual gave, the more space their name is given on the wall.
But you say, oh well that’s a nursing home, sure it’s faith-based but it’s not the church. That type of thing doesn’t go on in the church. Open up a hymnal to the very front. There’s a pretty good chance that it might have one of these which acknowledges who bought the hymnal and in whose memory the funds were given.
Now, I am not suggesting in any of these scenarios that the only reason the money was given was so someone could be praised and recognized. But these scenarios do speak to an inherent need and desire that we all have, to have our good deeds and our acts of piety recognized.
But Jesus’ warnings about proper piety are not about how visible we are when we do our good deeds or acts of piety. He isn’t saying that we need to hide our acts of devotion to Him so that nobody knows about them. He isn’t saying that we need to keep them a secret.
It’s about remembering why we do them and for whom we do them. It’s about remembering the only reason why we have alms or money to give, or food to fast from in the first place is because God has entrusted us with it.
There is a scene from a movie that I really enjoy called Rudy that I think really kind of gets to the heart of proper piety. Rudy is a movie about a young man who dreams of one day being able to play on the football team for the University of Notre Dame. In this one scene Rudy seeks out the counsel of the campus priest after receiving yet another letter of rejection from the admissions department of Notre Dame. Rudy is at his wit’s end and is beginning to think that he may never even attend Notre Dame, let alone play on their football team.
The priest can see that this experience is actually beginning to effect Rudy’s faith. In light of this he says to Rudy “In all my years of ministry, I have come across two hard and incontrovertible facts; there is a God, and I am not Him.”
Recognition of that is at the heart of proper piety and devotion. God is real and you are not Him, but you are His. You are His because He sent His Son to die for your sin, to bear the burden that you couldn’t bear, and to pay the price that you couldn’t pay. God sent His son whom Paul describes in the lesson from 2nd Corinthians as Him “..who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
And that is why we wear the cross on our forehead. It’s not about showing off our personal piety and devotion. It’s not about looking good in front of people. It’s not about showing who we are, it’s about remembering whose we are. We have been claimed by Christ and marked with the cross and we are ambassadors for Christ.
Paul spells out what it means to be an ambassador of Christ in verse 15 and16 of this chapter from 2nd Corinthians where he writes of the love of Christ urging us on because Christ Jesus died for us. He writes those of us who live in Christ, no longer live for ourselves, but for Him who died and was raised for us, and that in that freedom we are to regard nobody from a human point of view, which in the Greek is translated as according to the flesh.
What this basically means is that all of our relationships are to be governed by the fact that Christ has died for all. The value that we place on people is not to be based on what church they go to, or even whether or not they go to church. How we relate to any people should be based on the fact that Christ died for all, and in baptism we have been made His ambassadors; ambassadors of His love of His grace and of His promise of redemption and eternal life through His death and resurrection. And that is why we wear the ashes on our forehead on Ash Wednesday.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday-Feb 25, 2007

Luke 4:1-13
Brothers and Sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today’s Gospel lesson tells us about Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. What are some things that tempt you? What does it mean to be tempted? Webster’s, as usual, gives multiple definitions of the word tempt. One definition that the dictionary provides is “..entice as to something immoral,” another one is “to provoke” and another one is “to incline strongly.” An example of how it would be used by this last definition would be when a person says “I am tempted.”
And there appears to be elements of all of these definitions in today’s Gospel lesson where we find Jesus being tempted by the devil. Indeed in today’s Gospel lesson we find Jesus face to face with the devil, the real devil. We can see that this devil that Jesus is confronting is real. It is a real entity and a real being. It is not some metaphorical idea that is merely symbolic of human brokenness, it is a real live devil.
And it says that when Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil for forty days, that Jesus is full of the Spirit. So the Sprit is with Him as He goes to face His temptations, just as the Holy Spirit is with you in the midst of your temptations.
Jesus ate nothing during those forty days and He was famished. The temptations that we read about this morning come at the end of the forty days. It’s almost as if the devil were trying to lull Jesus into a false sense of security.
But then, when the forty days is done, the devil knowing that Jesus is famished tempts Jesus with a loaf of bread. Now the temptation was actually not the bread. The temptation was to serve His own needs rather than to rely on God’s provision for His needs. But Jesus stays faithful and responds not with insults or violence but with God’s Word, specifically from Deuteronomy 8:3 when He says to the devil that ‘One does not live by bread alone.’
Tempting Him with food doesn’t work so next the devil tries to tempt Jesus with power and wealth. He shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and says that they have all been handed over to him but that if Jesus worships the devil, then all the kingdoms will be handed over to Him. And once again, Jesus responds with scripture by citing Deuteronomy 6:13 where it says ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ Again the temptation is not so much with what the devil is tempting Jesus with, but what he is tempting Jesus to do, which is to stray from His path of faithfulness.
Finally, Jesus is taken to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem where the devil tempts Jesus to show His divinity by jumping off the pinnacle and thus testing God to save Him. The devil even manages to twist, manipulate, and take completely out of context two verses from psalm 91, which we read earlier. But Jesus once again responds with scripture by citing Deuteronomy 6:16 which says ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
There is a sense of irony in these temptations. In all three of these temptations, the devil is basically challenging Jesus to visualize His divinity. If Jesus had jumped off the pinnacle and God had saved Him by sending angels to catch Him that would have been quite spectacular. That would have gone a long way in showing everyone that Jesus is who He says He is.
Why do you think the devil would want that?? Why would the devil want Jesus to do something that was going to draw attention to Jesus and visually confirm what Jesus had been saying? Why would the devil want Jesus to do something that in the eyes of many people would glorify Jesus?
Because the devil knew that wasn’t part of the plan. He knew that Jesus would eventually face death in Jerusalem and that was where He would truly be glorified. That is what the devil was trying to tempt Jesus with, unfaithfulness. He was trying to provoke Jesus to choose His own deliverance from suffering rather than faithfulness to the will of His Father. Jesus would fulfill His divine Sonship, not by putting God to the test but by remaining faithful. He would defeat death not by avoiding it but by facing it.
Why did Jesus need to be tempted?? Why didn’t He just go straight to the cross?? Well for one thing, it wasn’t time yet. There was till work to be done. How Jesus dealt with temptation has implications for our past, present, and future.
The fact that this all took place in the wilderness for forty days identifies Jesus with Israel even more profoundly than He was before the temptations, and so through faith we are identified with Israel. It has implications for our present because the temptations remind us of Jesus’ humanity. They remind us that Jesus was not some distant divinity looking down on us, He is human and He entered into our humanity and He experienced our weakness.
When you experience weakness and temptation, you know that Jesus experienced them also. He knows your needs and your weakness and your brokenness because He has felt them and experienced them.
And the temptations have implications for your future because in the temptations we see the faithfulness that would eventually take Jesus to the cross and His greatest glory. We see the faithfulness that would bear the burden of your sin and pay the price that you couldn’t pay. We see the faithfulness that, in baptism, claims you as a child of God and marks you with the cross of Christ. We see the faithfulness that brings you into the eternal kingdom of God.
Now, you are in the wilderness, and Satan is slinging his arrows of temptation at you. And it’s not always the temptation that we would all recognize as temptation such as alcohol or drugs or adultery. Those temptations are real, but the most subversive temptations are often more subtle than that.
Temptation comes to you in a culture that tries to captivate you with material wealth or tries to convince you that it is more noble to try to be successful rather than faithful. Temptation comes through the anger that you might feel towards your neighbor or a loved one. Temptation makes it harder to recognize when you are compromising where you should stand firm.
At the heart of temptation is the devil; the same devil who tempted Jesus in the wilderness now tries to tempt you to forget your baptismal identity and to avoid your call to faithful discipleship. And if you were left to you own abilities, you would lose, you would give in.
But you have One who is faithful. He was faithful to His Father in the face of temptation in the wilderness and He is faithful to you. The one who defeated temptation in the wilderness with God’s Word , comes to you in God’s Word, and in the sacraments and in fellowship with other believers.
Temptation is not overcome through some ethical code or purpose-driven methodology. Temptation is overcome in the realization of your powerlessness to it in repentance, and faith in the one who defeated sin, death, and the devil on the cross.
This is the faith that the Holy Spirit calls you to. It’s the faith that Paul writes of in the lesson from Romans for today where he writes “the word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” “because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” No matter how much Satan might come at you with temptation, Christ Jesus is there calling you to repentance and faith and saving you.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday-Feb 18, 2007

Luke 9:28-36 (37-43) 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
What a sight and experience this must have been for Peter, James, and John. I mean try to imagine what that must have been like. Jesus takes the three of them up to a mountaintop. Considering everything that they had seen in their time with Jesus, who knows what they might have been expecting Jesus was going to show them or teach them up on that mountain top? And when they get up there, Jesus begins to pray and He is illumined.
It says that His face changes it’s appearance and His clothes become a dazzling white. And then all of a sudden they see Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus. That would have been amazing on a purely visual level, but think about what it would have meant on a spiritual or religious level. Think about what it would have meant to Peter, James, and John; three faithful Jews, to see Moses and Elijah with Jesus.
What that moment shows is that everything that they had been taught as Jews was pointing to Jesus. The appearance of Moses and Elijah connects the experiences that they had with Jesus with the entire history of God’s people. We are told that Jesus, Elijah, and Moses were speaking of Jesus’ departure, of His death on the cross. They were speaking of the moment where Jesus would bear the burden of your sin. They were speaking of the moment where the full and complete glory of God would be revealed.
Jesus isn’t merely connected to the history of God’s people, He is the central figure. He is the Word incarnate. In John 5:39, Jesus says that all of scripture testifies about Him.
And indeed, He is the central figure of all scripture, He is the central figure of God’s word. And as He and Moses and Elijah appear on that mountaintop they are discussing the central moment of Jesus’ time on earth, and thus the central moment of all of God’s people; the moment where you are reconciled to God through the blood of Christ; the moment where Christ Jesus takes your sin, and your guilt, and you shame, and your weakness, and He frees you from your captivity to it. In that moment, you are given all of the defense that you need against all of the attacks that Satan can muster against you.
As Peter, James and John see Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah, Peter is apparently pretty overwhelmed by what he sees and he suggests that they should make three dwelling places for Jesus, Elijah, and Moses. This was apparently a pretty impulsive reaction to everything that was taking place because it says that as Peter said this, he wasn’t even really aware of just what he was saying.
But in what appears to be maybe an attempt by God to re-direct Peter, James and John’s attention or focus, a great cloud appeared and overshadowed them and a voice says “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to Him!” And then when they see Jesus again after the voice of the Lord speaks, He is by Himself.
Peter, James, and John had experienced, what seemed to them to be a moment of great and miraculous glory, when they saw Jesus illumined and Moses and Elijah standing with Him. And when they saw and experienced what indeed must have been a truly magnificent moment, they wanted to stay there. They wanted to stay there because in that moment, it was easy to believe that Jesus was the fulfillment of scripture. In that moment it was easy to believe that Jesus was the central figure in the history of God’s people. It was easy to believe that all of scripture points to this man who had called them from their homes and families to a life of humble servanthood and ministry in His name.
But Jesus doesn’t leave them there. Jesus knew that His greatest moment of glory was yet to come. And He also knew that in spite of His best efforts to make it clear to His disciples that His greatest moment of glory would not come in what the world saw as victory, but in what the world saw as defeat on the cross; He knew that, until death was actually defeated in the resurrection, the disciples would get it wrong.
He knew that Peter would deny Him and that the disciples would end up hiding in the upper room. In the hour of glory they were still captive to their own misunderstanding, and their own limited understanding of glory.
We’re no different. If we could see Jesus in dazzling white then we would have no problem believing. But it’s not so easy to be certain when we see the dying Jesus on the cross.
If you could hear that bold voice from heaven the way Peter, James, and John did, it would be no problem for you to believe. But in those moments where God seems so silent and distant, you might wonder about Jesus. If you could see Jesus standing next to Moses and Elijah, it would be easy to believe, but when He is dying on a cross in-between two criminals, you might wonder about Him.
When your friends and loved ones get sick and die, and when Satan and the world slings it’s arrows of guilt, shame, sorrow, and pain at you, you probably find it hard to believe that Jesus is there. When Jesus appears as He did during the transfiguration, it’s easy to believe. But at the foot of the cross it would have been darn near impossible to believe. Even though the disciples had been foretold of the events of the cross numerous times, they still struggled to believe, because they hadn’t listened to Him.
It wasn’t until after the resurrection that they finally began to listen to Him. And we need only look to the second chapter of Acts to see the difference that listening to Jesus makes where we see the same Peter who showed so much confusion, now proclaiming the full Gospel and telling those who would listen to repent and be baptized in the name of Christ Jesus for the forgiveness of sins.
Paul reminds us in Romans 10:17 that faith comes from hearing the Word of Christ. Faith does not come from seeing great miracles, or from hearing voices, or when God fits himself into the image that you would like Him to.
Faith comes from hearing. And repentance is a key element to truly hearing and listening to the Gospel. Now repentance is not about climbing some pietistic ladder of righteousness as some would have you believe. It’s not about showing the right outward signs. It’s simply about realizing the futility of your own efforts toward justification. It’s about realizing that Christ Jesus refuses to transform Himself to your image because what He has in mind, is actually the exact opposite; to transform you to His image.
To truly listen and hear the word of Christ is to simply allow yourself to be transformed by it as it takes hold of you through the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit creates faith in you. The truth is Jesus does speak to you. He speaks to you through His word, the same word that comes to you in the waters of baptism and claims you as a child of God marked by the cross of Christ. The same word that comes to you in the Lord’s Supper as you hear the words given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of sin, the same word that comes to you in the Gospel and as you fellowship with other believers.
When you hear Christ Jesus speaking to you through His word, He lifts the veil and the burden of the law, and sin from you. Paul writes in the lesson from 2nd Corinthians today “..a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. …And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image…”
Christ Jesus spoke a word of eternal promise to you in the waters of baptism, He continues to speak to you everyday. He is the Son of God, and you have been chosen and claimed by Him. So, listen to Him.
Amen