Sermon-Sunday-June 17, 2007

Third Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is a scandalous occasion that we read about in our Gospel lesson. Jesus accepts an invitation from a Pharisee named Simon to eat at his house, which in itself is scandalous, but then when Jesus gets there, this woman begins bathing Jesus' feet in her tears and drying His feet with her hair and then anointing His feet with ointment. Reading about this today, it's probably difficult to fully appreciate just how scandalous this would have been in the eyes of those who were gathered there.
This woman was obviously expressing great love and devotion in her actions toward Jesus, but these actions also violated social conventions at the time. A woman touching or caressing a man's feet would have had profound sexual overtones, as would letting down her hair. Most of the time, women would not let down their hair in public. But the real scandal of this was in the fact that this woman would have been known as a sinner. She would have been considered throughout the community as unclean, and it would have been believed by many that by touching Jesus she was making Jesus unclean.
You can see from the negative reaction of Simon that this really was scandalous. It appears that unlike other Pharisees, Simon is somewhat taken by Jesus and is certainly not threatened by Him, like so many of the other Pharisees. He invites Jesus to his house and later would refer to Jesus as teacher. However, the fact that Jesus does not condemn this woman's actions seems to sort of disappoint Simon, and lead to Simon questioning Jesus' status as a prophet.
But then Jesus takes Simon aside and explains to him why the woman is behaving the way she is. And Jesus does not deny her status as a sinner. He does not reprimand Simon for not being inclusive with his judgment of the woman as a sinner. Quite to the contrary, Jesus explains to Simon that it is in light of all of her sins, that she shows this great love toward Jesus. Her sins have been exposed to her and that has made her aware that she has been forgiven of a great deal. And then Jesus follows that up by telling Simon that the one to whom little has been forgiven, loves little.
Does this mean that Simon was less of a sinner than this woman? No, because as Paul tells us in Romans 3, "..for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." When sin came into the world it infected all of us. It infects the woman at Jesus' feet, it infects Simon, it infects you, it infects me. The core of the sin that Christ Jesus frees you from is not simply in the bad things that you do. It is in your sinful nature.
It is in the delusion that we constantly feed ourselves that we can be our own gods, that we can redeem ourselves. It is in our attitudes, our desires, and our motivations. It is in that part of us that gives us that little feeling of moral superiority that we get when we see someone like Paris Hilton or Martha Stewart being sent to jail. Reagrdless of how many sinful deeds this woman acted out, and Jesus confirms that they were many, what we see in her is someone who at least has begun to see the depth and magnitude of the forgiveness and grace that God brings in Christ Jesus.
You see, on a human, worldly level it is always scandalous when Jesus eats with people. Because when Jesus eats with people He is communing with sinners, when He communes with sinners He communes with those who crucify Him with their sin. When He ate with Simon and this sinful woman He was communing with those who crucify Him with their sin. When He ate with His disciples at the Last Supper, He was communing with those who crucify Him with their sin. And when He comes to you today as you come forward for the bread and the wine in His Supper, as you will do in a few minutes, Christ Jesus communes with those who crucify Him. He comes to you and physically brings you the forgiveness and redemption that you so desperately need.
But it means nothing to you, if you don't realize your need for it. You all need those moments like what David experienced in today's Old Testament lesson when his sins were made glaringly obvious to him by Nathan. In one moment David is driven to his knees in repentance as his sin is exposed to him.
David had committed sin upon sin upon sin. He committed adultery when he slept with Bathsheba. He committed murder when he sent Bathsheba's husband Uriah to his death in battle. And it took him a long time to finally see how sinful his behavior had become.
As the passage opens we read of Bathsheba hearing about the death of her husband Uriah. But when she is done mourning, David sends for her and makes Bathsheba his wife and she bears him a son. Again you're looking a pretty long period of time. And if David was that blind to the adultery and murder that he had committed, who knows what other kinds of sin he was blind to?
Then along comes Nathan who confronts David with his sin. He confronts him with the truth. He exposes David to the sins that he had committed and the reality that he had allowed himself to be seduced by his sin. David had been seduced by that part of him that told him he could be his own god or redeem himself. Upon hearing this, David can do nothing except confess to the Lord that he has sinned against Him, which he does.
And then just like that David receives the absolution. And you see that just as God's judgment against you under the law is not determined by how many or how few sinful acts you perform, neither is your forgiveness determined by how many or how few sinful acts you perform. God did not hold David's absolution back simply because his sinning didn't end with adultery. David confessed his sin and he was forgiven.
The same is true today. As we say in brief order for confession and forgiveness in a passage from 1st John, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
The law exposes your sin to you and the Holy Spirit calls you to humble repentance and confession and you are drawn to God with your sin laid bare and exposed to you and God accepts you as you are. He accepts you as you are but He does not leave you as you are.
For Paul tells us in our second lesson that through the law you die to the law, so that you might live to God. You have been crucified with Christ and you no longer live but Christ lives in you. Sin and the law no longer have dominion over you. The life you live, you do live in the flesh, but you live by faith in Christ Jesus who loves you enough that He gave Himself for you, so that you might live with Him in His eternal kingdom.
The one who died for you, now lives in you so that you might walk in His Light and in His love and in His glory.
So what is there left for you to do but to share this love and forgiveness that has been extended to you? Go out into the world and tell the world of this grace that overcame everything for you. As you leave this place today, refreshed in word and sacrament do not give in to that part of you that will tell you to remain silent, but instead boldly proclaim the good news that in Christ Jesus, God has entered the world, and overcame the very sin of humanity that crucified Him, and that He has freed you from bondage.
Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you, go in peace.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday-June 10, 2007

Second Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In both the Old Testament lesson and the Gospel lesson for this morning we have two very similar stories of someone being raised from the dead. In both of these stories it is a young man who is raised from the dead, and in both cases, the mother of the young man is a widow.
Place yourself in these scenes. First, the Old Testament. There is this woman clinging to her child and she appears scared to death. The appearance of the prophet Elijah does not comfort her but actually serves to confirm her worst fear. The woman is certain that Elijah has come to bring death to this young child as some sort of vengeful penance for the woman’s sin.
But Elijah looks with mercy upon this woman and takes this child to a room upstairs and lays on the child and cries out to God, and in the process shows that even he Elijah, is not quite certain what God is up to here, by showing his concern that perhaps God has brought calamity upon this widow, and then he cries out to the Lord for mercy and pleads that the life of the child would come into him again. And the Lord answers his prayer, and Elijah returns the child to the widow, and the woman says that now she knows that Elijah is a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in his mouth is truth.
Now, the Gospel lesson. Like I said, there are many parallels in these two stories but there are also some differences. At first we see Jesus and His disciples entering a town, and as they approach the gate of the town, which would have been the entrance, they see a dead man being carried out. From this I think we can safely assume that the dead person in this account is a little bit older than the child in the Old Testament lesson; still young, but probably more of a young adult than a child.
When Jesus sees the young man’s mother, who, like the woman in the Old Testament lesson is also a widow, He has compassion on her. And unlike Elijah, Jesus has no fear. He simply says to the woman ‘Do not weep.’ He then touched the bier, which would have probably been something like a casket where the body of the young man was lying, and He simply tells the young man to rise. The young man sits up and begins to speak, and Jesus gives him back to his mother.
And then all of people first feared God, which probably means more that they revered God, because after this they glorified God and they declared Jesus to be a great prophet who had risen among them, with great certainty they proclaimed that God had looked favorably upon His people.
Now one could look at this and say that the townspeople just didn’t get it. Jesus is more than a prophet. And of course that’s true. But in all fairness, this was before the cross and the empty tomb, which of course is where the glory of God in Christ Jesus would see it’s fullest revelation. So, it’s probably not fair to expect these people to be able to see beyond what Jesus was doing right before them. And the truth is there was a prophetic element to Jesus’ ministry.
Jesus even refers to Himself as a prophet after being rejected by the people from His hometown of Nazareth when He says ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown.’ The role of the prophet is much bigger than that of what we traditionally think of it as being, which is usually limited to someone who can predict the future. Probably the most widely accepted view of the role that prophets played in the Bible would be that which sees the prophets as religious intermediaries between human and divine worlds. Certainly there were moments in Jesus’ life when He would have fit into that view.
But He is also much more than a prophet. Right before He is rejected in Nazareth Jesus appears in the local synagogue and pronounces Himself the fulfillment of the prophecy from Isaiah 61:1-2. In doing so He declares that the Spirit of the Lord is upon Him and that He has come to preach good news to the poor, and to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
He comes to bring these things, but in a much bigger way than they had been brought before. The freedom that Christ Jesus brings and proclaims is different from and much bigger than can be imagined from a worldly perspective. The recovery of sight that Jesus brings is much bigger than recovery of someone’s eyesight. Indeed He comes to bring life and He brings it abundantly.
As amazing and powerful as the two raising of the dead stories from today’s Old Testament and Gospel lessons are, they still don’t really even come close to illustrating the magnitude of the new life that Christ Jesus brings. Ultimately these stories, along with all the healings that Jesus performs and the removal of demons and recovery of people’s eyesight, end up as being signs pointing to the much bigger revelation that Jesus would bring.
The two boys that Jesus raised from the dead, eventually died. They were not resurrections, they were resuscitations. They did not defeat death, they merely delayed death and pointed to when Jesus would defeat death. In all of these miracles, death was delayed and avoided, but not defeated. Jesus did not defeat death by avoiding it but by facing it head on and going through it. He defeated death and then three days later, He ushered in the year of the Lord’s favor, by walking out of the tomb.
He ushered in the new age where death was no longer merely avoided, but it had now been defeated. He took your sin and your punishment and left it on the cross and your death, He left in the tomb. In 1st Corinthians is says that Jesus has indeed been raised from the dead and that He is the firstfruits of those who had fallen asleep, for since death came through a man, the resurrection of dead comes also through a man.
The hope of the resurrection is not grounded in the fact that the widow’s son did not die, because eventually he did. The promise of the resurrection that you have been brought into is secured because the one who had compassion on the widow and her son also has mercy and compassion for you, so much so that He died for you and paid the price that you couldn’t pay for your sin.
And now He comes to you and brings you new life abundantly. In the same way that he brought new life for Paul when Christ Jesus was revealed to Paul. That is how Paul sees it, as a new life. He had been rescued from the bondage of his old life of persecuting the church of Christ, and thus persecuting Christ. This happened when Christ Jesus came to him, and called him through grace.
In the same way, Christ Jesus came to you in the waters of baptism and claimed you. And He daily calls you through grace, like he did Paul, in His Word and in the sacraments and in each other, even as you continue to persecute Christ with your sin. When you speak negatively of your neighbor, you convict Christ. When you intentionally avoid being helpful to your neighbor you convict Christ. When you tell lies, when you work for yourself rather than for Christ and your neighbor, you convict Christ.
But Christ Jesus continues to abundantly bring you new life in His Word, in which He tells you of His promise of forgiveness and redemption. But hearing the promise is just the beginning. He doesn’t leave you in mere head knowledge. The Holy Spirit comes and proclaims the Word to you internally and creates, nurtures and sustains faith in you.. And in faith Christ Jesus continues to come you and keep you and hold you in the new life, that is marked not by the mere avoidance of death, but by the defeat of the death, through Christ Jesus.
Whatever sin, death, and the devil throw at you from day to day, it doesn’t matter because they have been defeated. You can face them head on, because you eternal victory over them is secure. In light of that you are now given the freedom to boldly proclaim to your neighbor the words that you read on our bulletin "Do not weep." "Do not weep, but rejoice in the Lord always."
Amen

Sermon-Sunday-June 3, 2007

Trinity Sunday
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I know that this morning I can stand before you and tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt that today is a good day. And why do I know that today is a good day?? I know that today is a good day, because today, the devil, in spite all of his wiles, in spite all of his deceptions, in spite all of his trickery; the devil has been foiled once again. The devil has been defeated once again. Once again the devil has been left writhing and cursing in the agony of defeat at the hand of the Almighty God. And why do I know that this? Why do I know that today is a day of great agony and despair for the devil? Because today once again, in the waters of baptism, our Lord Jesus claims one of His children as His own. Once again, Christ Jesus snatches one of His children, Reign Noel Ledahl, from the clutches of sin, death, and the devil. Make no mistake about it, today the devil is not happy, because he has lost once again.
But the devil does not go quietly into defeat. The devil does not go quietly into the night and resign himself to his fate, as sealed as that fate might be. And for that reason, our Lord has seen fit to surround those whom He claims in baptism with sponsors and parents and grandparents and siblings, and friends, and spouses and congregations; communities of faith united in a common confession of Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior. Indeed in the baptism ceremony the person being baptized is claimed by Christ when they are marked with the Cross of Christ, and then they are also sealed by the Holy Spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit who has calls this community of faith to the baptized. Whether we are talking about the parents, sponsors, siblings, grand-parents, spouses, friends, or congregations, it is through this community of faith that the Holy Spirit works to expose the baptized to God’s Word, to teach them the creeds, to encourage them in their faith etc. This work of the Holy Spirit through this community of faith continues throughout the entire life of the baptized. It doesn’t end with confirmation. It doesn’t end with high school graduation. Baptism does not begin and end at the font. It is something that we live in every day.
You live in your baptism everyday. As Luther tells us in the small catechism, baptism "signifies that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil lusts, should be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance and be put to death, and that the new man should come forth daily and rise up, cleansed and righteous, to live forever in God’s presence." Now maybe your thinking "Daily drowning and being put to death? What does have to do with new life in Christ?" It has everything to do with it.
Understand. When Luther speaks of the Old Adam, he’s talking about the sinful creature in each of us and the daily drowning and being put to death of the sinful creature and sin in general in each and every one of us. He is talking about the destruction of the sinful creature in each of us so as to make room for the new man or woman that our Lord promises each and every one of us who has been claimed by Him in baptism. It’s what Luther called the new man and it’s what Paul called the new creation in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 where he wrote that anyone who is in Christ is a new creation, and that the old has passed and the new has come.
Again this is something that we experience daily. The "new," that Paul writes of comes to us daily in word and sacrament and in fellowship with other believers. And it is through these, word, sacrament and the community of faith whom your Lord has surrounded you with that the Holy Spirit comes to you and, as it says in our Gospel lesson today, guides you into all the truth.
Baptism is a calling to faith. In baptism you are called to faith. And today as another of God’s children is received into the family of God through the waters of baptism, the call to faith for Reign Ledahl will begin. And as Reign grows up, the Holy Spirit will speak to her through her sponsors and through her parents and through her siblings, and grandparents and through the community of faith whom our Lord has surrounded her with. And the faith that she has been called to will be cultivated, nurtured and sustained as she is exposed to God’s word, taught the creeds, brought to worship and experiences the love of God through those whom God has placed in her life.
Just as Reign will need the community whom God has placed in her life to plant seeds of faith, you also need the community of faith whom God has placed in your life to nurture and sustain you in your own faith. Because you see, baptism is not, as some would have you believe, about you piously professing your faith for all the world to see and be impressed with. God, is the actor in baptism.
The faith that you are called to in baptism, is brought to you by the Holy Spirit in Word and sacrament and in each other. God does not leave it up to you to piously make a faith decision, He sends the Holy Spirit to guide you into all the truth. Not part of the truth, not some of truth, all of the truth. And, as such, sometimes you don’t like the truth you’re exposed to.
You don’t like the truth that exposes your sin to you. You don’t like the truth that exposes the grudges that you refuse to let go of. You don’t like the truth that exposes the lies that you have told. You don’t like the truth that exposes your petty jealousies. In other words, you like hearing about forgiveness, you just don’t like hearing what you need to be forgiven of. But you must. Because as your sin is exposed to you, you are brought face to face with the reality of your own mortality; that hard as you might try, you can’t even come close to fulfilling the righteousness that God demands of you, and you are driven to you knees in repentance where all you can do is confess your sin and ask for the grace and mercy that you know you don’t deserve.
But praise be to God, through the faith that the Holy Spirit brings to you in Word and sacrament, and that you bring to each other, you are justified before God. You are forgiven, you are redeemed. As Paul writes in our lesson from Romans today, you are justified by faith and you have peace with God through your Lord Jesus Christ.
And we have this peace because the Lord Jesus who comes to us in baptism, and claims us as His own, took our sin upon Himself and bore the burden of it on the cross, and three days later walked victoriously of the tomb where He defeated death and left any claim that death had on you in that tomb, and the Holy Spirit comes to us in Word, sacrament and each other, and guides us in truth and gives us faith, and through that faith in Christ we are given the forgiveness that enables us to stand justified in front of God the Father, clothed in the righteousness that comes only from the one who claims us in baptism. And that is good news for us, and more bad news for the devil.
Amen