Sermon Sunday March 23, 2008

Easter Sunday
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ Jesus is risen from the tomb. The tomb is empty and the stone has been rolled away. Sin, death, and the devil have been defeated. Today we celebrate the single most important event in history, even for those who don’t realize or acknowledge the resurrection of Christ as such. Indeed whether you realize that about the resurrection of our Lord or not; it is the single most important event in history.
And when we read Matthew’s description of it we can see things happening around it that just underscore and emphasize that what was taking place was a truly monumental and reality-changing event. Matthew writes that there was a powerful earthquake and an angel of the Lord came down from Heaven and rolled the stone away. He describes the angel as being bright as lightning and his clothes as white as snow. And then it says that the guards who were guarding the tomb became so deathly afraid of the angel that they shook. Some translations describe what happened to the guards as actually becoming like dead men.
So clearly we can see that these guards were quite shaken up at what was taking place. But it’s interesting that they were afraid of the angel of all things. It wasn’t the earthquake, it was the angel. The, what had to have been, a nearly blinding presence and the rolling away of the stone was so devastating to these guards that it caused them to become, as some translations say, ‘like dead men.’ That these guards had almost a metamorphosis type of experience, tells us that their fear was much more significant than simply fear that there might have been some sort of repercussion when their superiors found out that the body was no longer in the tomb. Their fear was profound.
I believe that their reaction was so profound because in an instant they were struck with the reality that what was taking place in front of them was in fact the most significant event in the history of God’s people. In an instant they realized that they had been wrong and indeed deceived about all of the events leading up to this; the miracles of Jesus, the healings of Jesus, the trial of Jesus, His suffering and His crucifixion.
But that is what the resurrection does to us and for us. It causes an uproar. It doesn’t come in peace. Today is indeed a day of great joy, but the resurrection did not usher in an era of great peace, at least not worldly peace. What the empty tomb revealed to those guards nearly 2000 years ago and reveals to us today is that in spite of the presumed absence of God in the events leading up to the resurrection, God was there the whole time.
With the appearance of the angel and the rolling away of the stone from the tomb, the guards realized that everything that they had been witness to was not about the plotting of the chief-priests or the struggle and conflict that Pilate experienced or Judas’ betrayal or Peter’s denial. The empty tomb exposes all of that to be about what God was doing. It reveals all of it to be about God foiling all of the convoluted attempts of sin, death, and the devil to claim God’s people.
And so when you look into the empty tomb, the same thing that was revealed to those guards that day is revealed to you and indeed it might just scare you. It might scare you because in order to fully appreciate the glory of the empty tomb you have to recognize the darkness of the occupied tomb.
And when you look into the tomb with the body of Christ lying in it, what you see is that it is your sins that put Christ Jesus there. And while the sight of Christ in the tomb may make you sorrowful and remorseful, it has the opposite effects on the forces that oppose you. The occupied tomb with Jesus still lying in it actually fills sin, death and the devil with great joy as they delude themselves into thinking that the victory is theirs. But here is where our Heavenly Father comes in and fulfills His plans to foil the efforts of sin, death and the devil.
For just as the devil and his allies are at their most confident, Christ comes forth and reveals Himself as not being able to be restrained by all the vain efforts of sin, death, and the devil. And so, having looked at the occupied tomb and seeing your death, you now look at the empty tomb and see your resurrection.
The sin of the guards and the disciples and the chief priests, the sin of me of you of all God’s people that put Christ Jesus in the tomb is powerless against Him. And so as this menacing angel appears to the women we can see that in fact this is not anything to be afraid of. In fact the angel tells the women not to be afraid. Christ Jesus is not dead and gone, He is alive and risen.
The resurrection of Christ brings you, through faith into the fulfilled vision of a restored Israel that Jeremiah foresaw in the Old Testament lesson. That sin, death, and the devil could not restrain the Son of God means that through the risen Christ you are connected with one another and the world around you. Through faith in the risen Christ you are equally as connected to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Mary, Joseph, Peter, James, John, Paul and Christ Jesus Himself as you are to your own mother, father, brother, sister cousin or best-friend.
The empty tomb means that where Christ Jesus goes soon after the resurrection; to be with His Father in Heaven you will go to. So believe Him when He says that this is nothing to be afraid of. In fact not only is this nothing to be afraid of but this is news of great joy.
This is news of great joy for all of us; whether you are a long-time believer, a recent convert or if you are among the un-baptised. And if you are among the un-baptised, then know that Christ Jesus is still alive and through the Word proclaimed to you today He is calling you to simply believe upon Him and to cling to Him. For in Him you find forgiveness of sin, new-life and salvation. And we know this because the stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty.
And yet even after the angel appeared to this group of women it says that they were filled with fear and great joy. After all that they had seen they were still struggling with fear. But then, the very One who walked out of the tomb appeared to them and told them that there was in fact nothing to be afraid of and told them to go tell His followers to go to Galilee and that they will see Him.
And so He does the same thing for you right now in the Word proclaimed to you and in a few minutes when you come forward to receive His supper in the bread and the wine. He will appear to you through His presence in the bread and the wine reminding you once again that the blood He shed was for you and that His body was given for you and that the death He died was yours and that His resurrection is also yours. He comes to you reminding you that you are His and that where He goes there is a place for you for all eternity.
And so for now you live as a new creation in Christ waiting for the day when our Lord will return and all things will be made new. In the meantime you have been placed among those apostles whom Paul wrote about in our second lesson for today where he refers to those men who ate and drank with Jesus after He came back to back to life. Through His presence in the bread and the wine we are among those who eat and drink with Jesus after He came back to life.
And so like those whom Paul refers to, we are also sent out to our neighbor to testify that those who believe in the One named Jesus receive forgiveness of their sins through Him. And we need not be afraid of this because the One who walked out of the tomb daily reminds us through Word, sacrament, and fellowship with each other of the claim that He has made on us through His blood that was shed on the cross and the empty tomb that frightened the guards so much. And so having been freed from sin, death, the devil and all of your fears and anxieties, you are freed to follow the lead of restored Israel whom Jeremiah writes of and go dancing with happy people all the while proclaiming the good news of the empty tomb.
Amen

Sermon Thursday March 20, 2008

Mandy Thursday
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Tonight, on Maundy Thursday we remember the night that our Lord was betrayed. Why would we take time to remember a night of betrayal? Why, in a time and culture today where real loyalty and faithfulness seem to be so rare, would we take time to remember a night of betrayal? One reason is because on this night, our Lord gave us a gift. On this night when He was betrayed our Lord gave us the blessed gift of the sacrament of Holy Communion.
On this night when He knew full well what was taking place, when the devil was so present in the minds of our Lord’s betrayers, our Lord Christ Jesus was thinking not of Himself but of His disciples; those who were gathered there that night and those who would come in the next generations. As He sat and broke bread with the very one who would betray Him into the hands of the Roman authorities and with the other disciples who, in all honesty, also betrayed Him in many other ways, as He sat and broke bread with them He gave them a gift; the gift of the promise of His continued presence in the blessed sacrament of Holy Communion.
But this sense of grace in the midst of wrath, or life in the midst of death is nothing out of the ordinary for our Lord. The setting that our Lord chose to institute the gift that He gives us in this sacrament is the Passover meal. And that cannot be ignored. This meal that Jesus and the disciples were partaking in immediately before Jesus instituted Holy Communion was a Passover meal.
Passover itself is a season where another great moment of grace in the midst of wrath, or life in the midst of death is remembered. Passover is the remembrance of when our Lord told Moses to have all the Israelite households in Egypt sacrifice a perfect lamb and then take blood from that lamb and mark the doorpost and the lintel of the houses in which they live.
And then that night the Lord was going to pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human and animals. But when God saw the households that had been marked with the blood of the lambs that God had told Moses to tell the people to sacrifice, He would pass them over and they would be saved from God’s wrath. That was God’s promise to Moses and the Israelites.
This is a very disturbing image of God, for in order to recognize the grace and mercy that was extended to those whose households had been marked with the blood of the Passover lamb, we must also recognize and acknowledge the wrath and vengeance that was shown to the other homes. And we don’t like to do that. We don’t want to do that. We run from these dark and disturbing images of our Lord.
Earlier this week I saw a video of a brief interview of a very famous person, who on one hand professes to be a Christian, but on the other hand holds to some ambiguous spiritual beliefs that seem to contradict with some essential tenets of Christianity. This person was asked how they reconcile those spiritual beliefs with their Christian beliefs.
The person responded by telling a story of one day being in church and hearing the preacher speak of God being a jealous God. This person realized that they were not comfortable with that image of God as a jealous God. And so in spite of the fact that God’s Word in scripture clearly states and shows that there is this vengeful and jealous side to God, this person just decided that they didn’t believe it.
And so then this person started talking about all these different books that they had read and philosophies that they had studied that helped them make sense of all this. The person tossed around the phrase “take God out of the box” several times. So essentially when this person was confronted with something in God’s Word that they weren’t comfortable with, they just tossed it aside and filled in the gaps with philosophy. But I think this is a reflection of what we all tend to do in one way or another.
When there is an image of God that makes us uncomfortable we run from it. Or we rationalize it, or we allegorize it. And maybe it’s not just the vengeful side of God that makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes the gracious image can be just as disconcerting. If Christ Jesus can, in His final moments, extend grace, forgiveness and the promise of eternal life to the thief who was mocking Him right along with anyone else just moments before his dying confession, then who else does Christ Jesus extend that grace to? That’s the irony. When we run from the image of God that is presented to us in His Word in scripture, we are the ones putting God in a box. We are putting God in our box of reason, logic and what feels comfortable to us.
On the other hand when we don’t run from these images and we confront them head on, then we open ourselves up to see the grace that our Lord extends in the midst of these dark and vengeful moments. We can see that through it all, whether it’s the vengeful God who makes us squirm or the disproportionately gracious God who makes us cry ‘no fair’ God’s primary motive through it all is the salvation of His people. That disturbing image of God taking the lives of the firstborn of all those Egyptian households would lead to the Pharaoh finally releasing God’s people from captivity, as the Lord had demanded of Pharaoh several times through Moses.
And it is that blessed event that the Passover meal remembers and thus immediately before instituting Holy Communion Jesus and the disciples were remembering the passing over of God’s people with a Passover feast.
And all of this was taking place within the context of a betrayal; a betrayal of the Son of Man into the hands of the authorities who were persecuting Him. This was all taking place in the midst of betrayal and death. But it is a betrayal and death that would usher in for us freedom, forgiveness and new life.
Once again we would see wrath and forgiveness, and death and new life. But the wrath this time would all be received by the One perfect and spotless Passover lamb of God, Christ Jesus who would soon lay down His life so that you would have new life in Him. And the new life that would come about in the midst of this wrath would not be limited to Israel but would be extended to all who would believe in this perfect and sinless Passover lamb, Christ Jesus. It is extended to you and it is, as it says in the very words of institution ‘for you.’
And our Lord Jesus continues to extend this forgiveness to you through the blessed sacrament of Holy Communion which was instituted that night. For the meal of the Lord’s Supper is bound to the words of promise contained within it; that within this meal you receive Christ’s body and blood given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sin.
Later in the interview that I mentioned earlier. The famous person was asked what they thought of Jesus. The person basically said that they believed Jesus came to show us how to live and treat each other. But there was no mention of the cross or the empty tomb. When we find an excuse to dismiss one uncomfortable image of God soon we’re dismissing all of the images that make us uncomfortable, and ultimately we end up taking Jesus off the cross.
But without the cross there can be no empty tomb. Without the cross there can be no promise of a day when the old will be done away and all things will be made new. And without the cross there can be no celebration of the Lord’s Supper in Holy Communion through which you are able to see, taste, touch, and feel your forgiveness in Christ, and are empowered through the nurturing and sustaining of your faith to live out the commandment that you receive in our Gospel lesson; to love one another as Christ has loved you so that your neighbor will know that you are one of Christ Jesus’ disciples.
Amen

Sermon Sunday March 16, 2008

Palm Sunday
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The passion narrative that we read in our Gospel lesson for this morning has a bit of an ironic element to it. It is Matthew’s account of the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus so obviously we are talking about a narrative that is strongly Christ-focused. And yet through this whole long passage of 43 verses, Jesus only speaks twice.
Here is Jesus coming head on with His accusers and condemners, and He is silent. He is silent in the face of all the mocking, the taunts and even the torture. Here He is being verbally assaulted with insults by the same people who not long before this had welcomed Him with great pomp and circumstance. His disciples have scattered. He’s been betrayed by Judas and denied by Peter and yet He remains silent; passively taking whatever abuse they all might throw at Him.
What do we make of this? In the face of so much aggression and anger Jesus is silent? How successful are we at following this pattern of passive resistance? This silent submission that Jesus displays here is far from being reflective of the American way of standing up for your rights and asserting yourselves and making your voice heard. Millions of dollars and countless resources and court time have been utilized preserving the rights of people to make public and even vocal displays of their faith. That's not very passive.
Indeed, passive resistance is not our way of doing things. How many of us would have been real open to any suggestion of passive resistance to hostility on Sep. 11, 2001? And honestly we don’t need to go to the extreme of 9-11. The truth is that every day, in how we react to hostility of any sort be it that which reveals itself through international tragedy or that which reveals itself through someone cutting us off in traffic or someone looking at us the wrong way, in how we react to all of that we show that when it comes right down to it, in the face of real hostility, we’re much more comfortable with the idea of a violent liberator like Barabbas than we are with a passive and peaceful Messiah.
Indeed when one really looks at this passion story and meditates on the complete and utter passivity of Jesus it makes us uncomfortable. In the passion story we find Jesus, who is the living incarnation of God. In Jesus we find the God who created the universe and everything in it, coming to us in complete and passive vulnerability.
Think about what this must have seemed like to the Jewish people of this time. Jesus shows up proclaiming Himself to be the Savior. The Jewish people of this time would have been firmly under the oppressive thumb of the Roman authorities. But they had hope. They were waiting for a Savior and a Messiah. But they were expecting that Messiah to save them from civil oppression, and they were expecting and hoping for a Messiah and Savior who would do this through the use of great power and even violence.
They were not looking for a pacifist. And you wouldn’t have been either. If you were a part of this ancient Jewish culture, this vision of the Messiah as a powerful military leader would have been the vision that you had been taught to expect your whole life. This was the expectation of the same people who had previously welcomed Jesus with great pomp and circumstance as they waved palm branches shouting "Hosanna to the Son of David." When that vision of the Messiah as a great military leader was not the one that Jesus fulfilled, the people turned on Him, and you would have turned right with them.
You might remember a few years ago when the film "The Passion of the Christ" came out, there was great controversy over what many people saw as an anti-Semitic portrayal of the Jewish chief priests. It was alleged that the portrayal cast them in a much too negative and vicious light. Some countered that argument by pointing out that the portrayal of the Roman soldiers was equally as vicious, if not more-so. But the whole controversy surrounding that centered on one of the central questions relating to the Passion narrative and that is the question of ‘Who killed Jesus?’ or more accurately ‘Who is responsible for Jesus’ death?’
But to ask this question in a way that limits the accountability of Jesus’ death to those who were physically there that day misses the point entirely and reduces the suffering and death of the Savior to a miscarriage of justice. Certainly all those who were physically present that day had a hand in it, but the truth of the cross of Christ that lies deeper than the semantic question of whether the Jewish or the Roman authorities played a bigger part in coordinating of the crucifixion is that we all have a hand in it, we are all equally accountable for Jesus’ death.
With every sinful thought, deed, and desire we place ourselves among the vicious and angry crowd who called for the freedom of the murdering insurrectionist Barabbas and demanded the suffering and death of the Savior. Martin Luther wrote in regards to our accountability for the suffering and death of Christ; "You must get this thought through your head and not doubt that you are the one who is torturing Christ thus, for your sins have surely wrought this. ,… Therefore, when you see the nails piercing Christ’s hands, you can be certain that it is your work. When you behold his crown of thorns, you may rest assured that these are your evil thoughts, etc."
And yet as clear and obvious as this should be for us, most of us daily do what Pilate did. In one way or another we wash our hands and declare our innocence. We say that we’re good people. We say that we’re not responsible for the injustices of the world and we rationalize reasons to not get involved or simply ignore them. And in so doing we yet again place ourselves among those calling for Jesus’ death.
And yet Jesus kept going and He remained silent. Indeed Jesus could have called for 10,000 angels to come and show His persecutors a thing or two. But He kept going because as Paul reminds us in today’s 2nd lesson, Christ Jesus did not regard His equality with God as something to be exploited. He remained silently submissive to the will of His Father, giving His back to those who struck Him, giving His cheeks to those would pull out His beard and not hiding His face from insult and spitting. He continued on this path of emptying Himself, humbling Himself and remaining obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
And praise be to God that He did, because it is on the cross that God reveals just how much He loves you and how much He wants to be with you. In the cross you see God giving Himself to you in the person of His Son your Savior, Christ Jesus. In the cross you see your Lord Christ Jesus bearing the wrath and punishment that rightfully belongs to the sinners who condemn Him, and you're one of them. On the cross Christ Jesus exposes Himself to the fury of human pride and sin carried out to the fullest extent of its most gruesome imaginations. On the cross you see your sin being put to death.
And because Christ was obedient to the point of death on a cross, through faith in Him, you are made impervious to the slings and arrows that sin, death, and the devil will throw at you. You’ll still struggle with sin on a day-to-day basis, but you have the assurance of knowing that one day all things will be made new and the old will be done away.
Because of the silently submissive obedience of Christ, you have been marked with His cross and you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. And so we can see that as Christ breathed His last, new life was already forming in the tombs as it says that many of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And after the resurrection they came out of the tombs and appeared to many.
Through the perfect obedience of Christ in His life, death, and resurrection you have been given new and eternal life in Christ. You have been delivered from death by Christ’s obedience unto death and you are stirred to life by the Holy Spirit. And you have been delivered by the resurrection to your neighbor, where you now stand with the Roman centurion proclaiming about Christ Jesus; truly, this man is God’s Son.
Amen

Sermon Sunday March 9, 2008

Fifth Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Earlier this week I learned from a friend of mine out in Iowa that a movie is currently being shot in Wisconsin. And apparently people are being invited to come to an open casting call to possibly be an extra in the movie. Apparently they need quite a few people. My friend was going to go but he soon found out that they are asking that any men that audition be no taller 6’1, well he is 6’3, so he couldn’t go.
And the reason they don’t want anyone taller than 6’1 is because they don’t want anyone to be taller than the two main stars. It’s about perspective. They want to convey the idea that these two characters are the centerpieces of the film and making sure that they are as tall, or taller than everyone else in the film will help to underscore that point. Someone can appear to invoke a very large and dominant presence until somebody larger and taller and more dominant comes along.
And so in the Word that our Lord brings us this morning we are presented with two great miracles that, on their own, seem very impressive. In our Old Testament lesson we read of something that seems almost like a scene from a good sci-fi movie.
Ezekiel writes of being brought by the hand of the Lord into a valley where he was surrounded by dry bones, where he is asked by God if these bones can live. Ezekiel, seeming kind of like he doesn’t really know what to say then says "O Lord God, you know." And then Ezekiel is told by the Lord to prophesy to the bones and tell them that the Lord will put breath in them and will give them flesh and cover their bodies with skin. And Ezekiel does as He is told and is stunned as he sees this very thing happening. He witnesses these bones coming together and being covered with skin and then he is told to prophesy to breath so that breath will come from the four winds and come into these skin-covered bodies that not that long ago were a bunch of dry bones. And breath comes into them, and what used to a bunch of dry bones now stands before Ezekiel as a vast multitude.
And in the Gospel lesson we have of course the very well known story of the raising of Lazarus. Lazarus had been dead for three days and Jesus brings him back to life simply by standing in front of Lazarus’ tomb with the stone rolled away and literally commanding Lazarus to rise by saying "Lazarus, come out!!" And Lazarus comes out of tomb alive.
These are two remarkable miracles to be certain. But they are not the whole story. They are really just reflections of the far more impressive and glorious act that was to come. Unfortunately we sometimes forget that in Christ Jesus God brings us so much more than what we see in either of these miracle stories.
As impressive as the raising of Lazarus is, Jesus was not sent to be a faith-healer or a miracle worker. Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is impressive and certainly gets our attention, but Lazarus still died. Jesus calling Lazarus out of the tomb was not the defeat of Lazarus’ death but simply the postponement of it. But eventually, his death came. Jesus is surrounded by people in this story who couldn’t see Jesus as anything more than the One who could bring Lazarus back to life. They were under the impression that the best that Jesus could offer was simply the delaying of our death but ultimately they believed that death would have the final victory.
But we’re just the same, in fact we’re probably worse. We’re probably more like the dead bones from the Old Testament lesson. We are like the dead bones in that we daily put our hope in the temporary even when the eternal is staring us right in our face. We work ourselves to the bone. We pour ourselves into pursuits of entertainment and excessive consumption. We set our mind on the flesh rather than the Spirit. Meanwhile in the midst of our obsessions with the temporary, the things of flesh, we allow the essential to slip by us.
So yes, we are not only like Mary and Martha and even Lazarus, who even having been raised from the dead, was still sick with the same faithlessness which was the real source of his death, but we are also like the dry bones in the lesson from Ezekiel. It's true we are among the people of God whom the Lord tells Ezekiel the bones are. But that’s actually pretty scary when you read verse 9 where they are referred to as the ‘slain’ or maybe even scarier in verse 11 where it says that ‘we are cut off completely.’
But that is the truth. Having been cast-off from God, we are as good as dead, and we cannot resuscitate ourselves. But the Lord poses a question to Ezekiel and asks him, "Can these bones live?" He asks Ezekiel this question and, as I pointed out before, Ezekiel doesn’t really appear to know how to answer that question. But that doesn’t matter because God has already decided for Himself. He already knows the answer and the answer is an emphatic ‘yes.’ And He doesn’t just promise that these bones can live again but promises that they will live again.
At the time that Ezekiel would have said these words they would have been alluding to Israel’s return from exile, but these events also point to something deeper that applies just as much to us as it did to ancient Israel. These words point to the same thing that the raising of Lazarus pointed to. Both of these events point to God’s people being rescued from sin, death, the devil. They point to the moment when the One who called Lazarus out of the tomb would go into death Himself, and He would take with Him the sin that leaves us dead in the valley. The gulf between us and God that is created by sin has been bridged by the forgiveness won for us on the cross of Christ.
And in the waters of baptism you were marked with that cross and sealed by the Holy Spirit and through the Words of promise that were spoken over you at the font, the power that death has over you was taken away. You may still face death but death will not have the final say.
These are two impressive events; the raising of Lazarus, and the dry bones taking on skin and flesh and coming to life. They are amazing and they would have been impressive to see. But again, they must be kept in perspective. God did not send His Son Christ Jesus to delay death. Christ Jesus came to defeat death. He didn’t come just to bring us back to life, He came to give us new life. And that is exactly what He did for us by dying our death for us.
Indeed your place in our Lord’s eternal kingdom is secure and He wants to make sure that you are aware of it and that you believe it. And so He sends the Holy Spirit who claimed you in baptism. And He pours the Holy Spirit within you. The Holy Spirit dwelling within you calls you away from setting your mind on the flesh, and calls you to the Spirit which is life and peace. He calls you to faith in the One who suffered and died for you, was raised for you, and now comes to you in His Word and sacrament.
And so whatever hope or promise you may see in these two great miracle stories, it is merely a reflection of the hope and promise we have in Christ Jesus. And this hope has not been given to us to hoard and keep to ourselves. It is ours to give freely by simply proclaiming the Gospel of Christ Jesus as the crucified and risen Son of God as Savior of the world. These may seem like mere words, but while Ezekiel and Lazarus show us that words spoken under the authority of the Lord can raise the dead, the event of the death and resurrection of Christ that these miracles point to remind us that words spoken under the authority of the Lord can give new life.
Amen

Sermon Sunday March 2 2008

Fourth Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
“If you we’re blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” This is what our Lord Jesus says to the Pharisees at the end of today’s Gospel lesson. This whole passage is filled with symbolic images of blindness as being something that actually binds us from the truth, keeps us from the truth, but here Jesus says to the Pharisees that if they were blind they would have no sin. So what does that mean? If spiritual blindness keeps us from the truth of the Gospel why would Jesus say to these Pharisees that if they were blind they would not have sin?
Well, Jesus must be talking about another type of blindness. If spiritual blindness hides the truth from us, then maybe worldly blindness opens the truth up to us. Through the sinful world that we live in, we are constantly bombarded with lies and delusions that we are more than willing to believe. Not only do we believe them but we embrace them and we create our own delusions of grandeur around them. This is what Christ Jesus wants us to be blind from.
Right from the opening verses of the Gospel lesson we see people who are in need of this sort of blindness; people who need to be blinded from the illusions that they have created for themselves. And so we see Jesus and the disciples encounter a blind man and the disciples ask Jesus whether it was the man’s sin or the sin of his parents that caused him to be born blind.
Now, it would be easy to just give this part a cursory glance and simply say well “The disciples were just wrong, the guy was just born blind.” But think further about what the question of the disciples says of themselves. If their presumption is that this man’s blindness was the result of his sin, then what do they assume of themselves? If they assume that sin must be the cause of the man’s blindness then it can only be assumed that they must think that at that the very least, they are not quite the sinner that this man is, otherwise they also would have been born blind.
But Jesus then shatters the illusions that the disciples were clinging to of their own personal righteousness and piety by telling them that this man had been born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. This man whom the disciples saw as nothing but a sinner, which of course he was, was going to be used by Christ Jesus as a means to reveal the work of God. The delusion of their own personal piety had made it so the disciples couldn’t see that they were every bit the sinner that this blind man was.
And the delusions of the disciples are our delusions also. Anytime we look down upon someone struggling with something that we are not struggling with, be it an addiction or a bad relationship or whatever, and we say “Well they brought that on upon themselves” then we show ourselves to be bound by the same delusions that haunted the disciples.
And Jesus then declares that as long as He is in the world He is the light of the world and He then rubbed some mud on the eyes of the blind man and told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. The man did as Jesus told him and he came back and his sight had been restored.
And then his neighbors saw him and they couldn’t look beyond their pre-conceived notions of him as a beggar. And when they finally came to the realization that it was him, all that they saw was social upheaval. They were threatened by the very idea that Jesus would heal this man’s sight, and so they went to the authorities.
And so we come to the Pharisees. And the formerly blind man is brought before them and he tells the Pharisees what Jesus had done for him. The immediate reaction of the Pharisees was not shock, it wasn’t even disbelief as you might expect. The immediate response of the Pharisees was to say that Jesus could not have been from God because He did not observe the Sabbath. Apparently the fact that He was able to perform a miracle had no impact on them.
All of these people; the disciples, the Pharisees, the man’s neighbors were all bound by their own self-imposed delusions. They couldn’t look beyond their own pre-conceived notions of the formerly blind man, whether they saw him as a sinner, a beggar or a law-breaker, they were all bound by their own delusions. And the Pharisees had the added burden of seeing their own authority being threatened.
They couldn’t look beyond the outward appearance of what was going on. This is the case with us. Often we would rather use outward appearances as a basis for acceptance or rejection. Even Samuel gave in to this weakness, as we see in the Old Testament lesson where Samuel has been sent by God to anoint the next king of Israel. Samuel assumes that David’s brother Eliab is the one he is to anoint as king, But he is mistaken and the Lord tells him that He has rejected Eliab and He tells him to not look on appearance or height or stature, because the Lord does not look upon physical stature but upon the heart. And so one by one Samuel rejects all of David’s brothers and when Samuel finally sees David, he is told by the Lord to anoint him.
So maybe you hear that God looks upon the heart and not upon physical stature and think that you are ok. You think well as long as you got a good heart then you’re alright. Oh, but that it were that simple. I mean really if God did look merely upon our physical appearance and stature, the possibility might actually exist to fool Him. But that God looks upon our heart means that there is no running from the light that exposes our sin. When God looks upon our heart; that is when He sees us for the sinners that we really are. When He looked on David’s heart what did He see? History would reveal that He saw at the very least a deceptive, adulterous murderer. And yet He still chose David to be king of Israel.
He chose David and from the line of David would come a Savior; a Savior who would bring release for the captives, recovery of sight for the blind and He would come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. From the line of David would come a Savior who would bear the burden of all our sins on the cross and thus free us from sin, death, and the devil. But unlike David this King would not receive an earthly anointing but rather an anointing from His Father in Heaven. But on earth He would be persecuted, despised and rejected, and we would have went right along with those who were there. Our sin kills the Savior just as much as the sin of the ones who drove the nails into His hands.
And when God looks upon our heart, that’s what He sees; the darkness of our sinful delusions. He sees how we would rather trust our preconceived notions than trust Him. But just as He chose David even as the darkness of David’s sin was exposed, He also chooses us. He chooses us in the waters of baptism when we are marked with His cross and sealed by the Holy Spirit and He calls, gathers, and enlightens us in our faith through His Word and the sacraments.
And so when He looks upon our heart, He doesn’t see just our darkness, but more importantly He sees the light of the anointed Savior Christ Jesus. And so as He comes to you daily in His word and the sacraments and each other, He daily blinds you to the darkness of your delusions. So hear the words of Paul from our second lesson for today through which our Lord tells you that once you were darkness but now in the Lord you are light. The darkness of your sin has been exposed and nailed to the cross where your Savior took your sin upon Himself. All that’s left is the light of forgiveness, so live in it.
Amen

Sermon Sunday February 24 2008

Third Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I say the word ‘scandal’ what exactly comes to your mind? Perhaps I should ask who comes to your mind? This week there were scandalous allegations made against presidential candidate John McCain. Of course that’s nothing new around election time and it really doesn’t seem that anybody is taking these particular allegations against Senator McCain to seriously. But we are obsessed with scandal. And I am not simply talking about the superficial Paris Hilton or Britney Spears stuff. I think I can honestly assume that most of us here don’t really waste too much time with that sort of thing.
But we still love scandal. We gossip. We talk behind people’s backs. We blame people for things without getting the whole story. And I think that; blaming people, gets to the heart of our love for scandal. Scandal isn’t just about trying to besmirch the reputations of celebrities. I think at the heart of scandal lies our tendency to not want to address our own accountability for the problems and challenges that exist in our lives and so we point an accusing finger at others.
But we have always done this. We have always had a tendency to blame others for the problems of our lives. And so we come to our Old Testament lesson where we see the Israelites grumbling and complaining to Moses. These are the same Israelites who just before this were singing in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord for rescuing them from being held captive in Egypt. Now they are griping to Moses; the very person whom the Lord used to rescue the Israelites from Egypt.
Not that they didn’t have any reason to be unhappy or at least a little bit uncomfortable. After all they were in the desert and they needed water and as they went from place to place they could not find any. It’s the nature of their complaint that is so scandalous, not the fact that they were unhappy or complaining. They have already lost sight of how much God has done for them by rescuing them from Egypt.
They wanted to run from the freedom that had been given to them back into the bondage that they had been rescued from. And their grumbling and complaining became so bitter that Moses felt like his life was even in danger. Finally they question the presence of the Lord who had rescued them from Egypt when, as you read in the last verse of the Old Testament lesson for this morning they cry out ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’ Instead of working together and supporting each other, they quarrel with each other. And so they point their accusing finger not only at Moses but at God Himself.
And so you see the real danger in giving in to the temptation of scandalous behavior. The more we avoid our own accountability then the more likely we are to point the accusing finger at our neighbor, and the more we point the accusing finger at our neighbor, it’s only a matter of time before we point the accusing finger at our Lord.
It’s only a matter of time before we become like the Israelites in the desert, becoming bitter and ungrateful for all that our Lord provides for us. The devil will throw his slings and arrows at us trying to distract us from all that God does for us. We buy into the all too American notion of “If you want something done right you have to do it yourself” or “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.” Not that there is anything wrong with being self-reliant or even independent but we should never allow ourselves to become a god of our own making and we should never allow ourselves to forget that everything we have; our food, shelter, clothing and our ability to provide for ourselves; it all comes from God.
And Satan will work through the world that we live in to convince us otherwise. The world will try to convince us that we are entitled to everything that we have, that we deserve it, that we are worthy of all that God has entrusted us with. But it’s all a lie.
It’s a lie fed to us by the world that hates us. Think it’s a little too strong for me to say that the world hates us? Well our Lord Jesus tells us this Himself in John 15. In John 15 Jesus tells us that the world hates us because we are not of the world, and that if we were, the world would love us. Now understand that when Jesus says the world, He is not talking about people per se’. Rather, He is talking about the devil’s influence over the world, He is talking about sin’s influence on the world, He is talking about the old that will all be done away with.
And He promises us that we are not of the world but that He calls us out of the world. He calls us out of our world of bondage to sin and death, just as He called the Israelites out of their world of bondage in Egypt. He called the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt and into the promised land, even in the midst of their quarrelling and griping. Even as they began to question God’s presence among them.
God would have had every right to inflict nothing but wrath and punishment on the Israelites as they griped and quarreled and sought to go back to captivity. But just as He calls us out of our captivity He called the Israelites. And so rather than responding with the wrath that they deserved God responds to the insolence of the Israelites with grace by giving the Israelites the life-sustaining water that they need and manna as He continued to call them out of their captivity.
And so He does the same for us in spite of our own lack of faith and quarreling and finger-pointing and questioning of God’s presence in our lives. Our Lord gives us not what we deserve but the living water of forgiveness through faith in Christ.
And so in our Gospel lesson we see Jesus speaking of this living water to a Samaritan woman, as He calls her out of her own captivity. But like the Israelites and us she is focused on her own lot in life and so when Jesus tells her of the living water of which those who drink will never be thirsty again all she hears is a way to rid herself of a taxing daily chore as she asks Jesus to give her this water so that she may never be thirsty or have to keep coming back to draw water.
The woman continues to not quite really get it. She thinks Jesus is a prophet. Finally she tells Jesus that when the Messiah comes He will proclaim all things to them. And then Jesus simply tells her that He is the Messiah. And then she goes back to the city and tells everyone. And John writes that she leaves the bucket there, as if John is trying to say that she no longer has to go searching for water. And while she certainly still would have needed the physical nourishment that the water from the well could provide, the good news that she would bring to the city was that she had found the living water.
And she would simply invite the people to come and see the One who would take on the sin of the world; the One from who’s side the living waters would flow as He died on the cross for you and bore the sins of the world for you. And now just as He did with the Samaritan woman, He calls you to worship in Spirit and truth. And the best way to worship in Spirit and truth is to take the freedom that comes with forgiveness in Christ and run with it to your neighbor.
In the desert our Lord heard the pleas of Moses and so He provided His people with water and manna. And as miraculous as that was, it was simply pointing to the true Bread from Heaven that our Lord would provide not just for the Israelites but for all God’s people through forgiveness in Christ Jesus. And through the living waters of baptism this gift has been brought to you and it is brought to you daily in the gift of God’s Word, the sacraments and fellowship with each other.
You don’t have to run from the accountability for your sins and mistakes because Christ Jesus has bore the burden of them on the cross for you. Hear the words of Paul who in the lesson from Romans today tells you that the living water of God’s love has been poured into your hearts through the Holy Spirit. You can now follow the lead of the Samaritan woman and run to your neighbor, not with an accusing finger, but with the Good News of the living water of forgiveness, freedom, and new life for all who believe in Christ Jesus as their Savior and Lord.
Amen