Semon-Sunday April 27 2008

Sixth Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The words of Jesus from the Gospel lesson seem almost a little manipulative. In our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus says that if you love Him you will keep His commandments. It does sound kind of like the way some of us might talk to a loved one if we were trying to maybe guilt them into doing something for us. If you love me you’d let me get a new car. If you loved me you’d take me out to dinner more often. Now if your guessing that there is a little more to this than that, you would of course be right.
First of all perhaps we should ask ‘What does Jesus mean by keeping His commandments?’ Well we know that Jesus sums up all of the commandments in His commands to us to love God with all our heart and soul and strength and to love our neighbor as our self. We also know that Jesus is soon to be handed over to the authorities, so He knows that soon He will subjected to powers and principalities that do not love but actively oppose the love that Christ Jesus brings.
Jesus was thinking of the disciples here, knowing that soon He would be gone and they would be the ones being pursued by the principalities and powers and that their lives would be at stake. Now today, publicly professing the Gospel and proclaiming the name of Christ may not mean risking our lives, as it did for the disciples, at least not in the comfort and security of North America, but we face the same sin and the same devil. Sin and the devil are just as present a reality today as they were 2000 years ago.
Sin and the devil are just as active today trying to keep us from seeing and hearing our Lord in the midst of a broken and sinful world. Jesus warns the disciples that the time is coming when the world will no longer see Him. Sin and the devil are constantly attacking us and trying to distract us from the revealing of our Lord.
And so, losing sight of our Lord, like the loveless world we live in, we find ourselves following or obeying some false idol that eventually just enslaves us. The devil knows that without Christ, God is unknowable to us and so at the same time that sin and the devil obscure us from Christ Jesus, they also offer up false hope in the form of idols, and these idol can come in many forms. Today the world offers up idols of patriotism, money, false-teaching that is embraced because it seems more loving than the truth. Our fear can also become an idol; fear of embarrassment, fear of rejection, fear how people would react if you were to truly confess your faith to them.
In all of that we don’t just show that we sometimes can’t see Jesus, we show that when it comes right down to it we don’t trust Jesus. We don’t trust Him because He doesn’t reveal Himself to us in the manner that we would prefer and to the degree that we would have Him reveal Himself to us. And so we replace Him.
We become like the Athenians whom Paul was addressing in the lesson from Acts today, who had many objects of worship but they were not worshipping the one and only almighty triune God, creator of the universe. They were not worshipping the God who loved the world enough to send His Son to die for the world. They were not worshipping Him because He had not revealed Himself to them yet. In fact they had come to worship what they referred to as an unknown God, among all of their other objects of worship. I would suggest that the presence of this image that the Athenians referred to as an unknown God shows that even in the midst of all the other objects of worship ultimately all their idols ended up leaving the Athenians feeling isolated, alone and abandoned.
And so it is for us, no matter how many false idols we may create for ourselves, as long as we fail to see Jesus as the only truth and the only way to God then ultimately the only image that we are left with is one of ourselves alone, isolated, and even dying. No matter how many false idols we create for ourselves, sooner or later sin and the devil will win out and death will come knocking. And there is only One who can save us from that. And He comes not through any political candidate offering a new and brighter vision for America, not through the latest self-help book offered up by the book of the month club, not even through ecumenical agreements.
For as Peter reminds us in our second lesson, we are saved in baptism through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus who appeals to God on our behalf for a good conscience. And so we can hear with faithful confidence, the words of our Lord who promises that He does not leave us orphaned. In fact it was the departure that He was preparing for in this lesson that ultimately served to bring Jesus closer to you than you could imagine. Jesus refuses to leave you isolated so He isolated Himself on the cross.
Jesus would indeed soon be departing but He was going to a place where He would bear the weight of your desolation and the burden and price of your sin. He was going to the cross where the devil and the onslaught of death are defeated.
That’s right, the onslaught of death has been defeated. You’ll still face it and you still face it one way or another everyday, but because your Lord Jesus loves you so much that He refuses to leave you orphaned, you have the comfort of knowing that your death has already been defeated. You have the peace of knowing that through the waters of baptism you have been brought into the resurrected presence of your Lord.
And indeed we do still live in a world held captive to sin and the devil and they will continue to attack us. They attack us with lies and deceptions, all in the name of taking our eyes off the One who gave all for us.
But here again, our Lord comes to us with a promise. He comes to us with a promise to send the Spirit of truth. Our Lord sends to us the Holy Spirit who comes to us in His word proclaimed, indeed the Spirit of truth comes to you right now through the words of my mouth and through the sacraments where we are claimed by our Lord as children of God in baptism and where we tangibly receive the forgiveness of sin through the body and blood of our Savior given and shed for us, in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
In the midst of all that, the Spirit of truth comes to us and creates, nurtures and sustains in us the very faith that unites us with each other and with our Lord. Indeed as Martin Luther writes in the small catechism, we cannot by our own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit calls us through the Gospel, enlightens us with His gifts and sanctifies and keeps us in true faith.
Writing further on this in the large catechism, Luther writes, "Until the last day the Holy Spirit remains with the holy community (tr-693) or Christian people. Through it he gathers us, using it to teach and preach the Word. By it he creates and increases sanctification, causing it daily to grow and become strong in the faith and in the fruits of the Spirit."
Through Word and Sacrament we are daily reminded that the promise our Lord makes to us that because He lives we also live, has been fulfilled. And so now the Spirit brings us forth in full confidence and assurance speaking His Word through us to our neighbor. Just as Jesus has been raised from the dead, we are alive in His Spirit and this Holy Spirit which daily reminds you of the good news that you have not been orphaned and that you are a child of God, now speaks His word of promise through you to your neighbor, sharing the love of Christ with your neighbor, bringing the good news of Christ Jesus to the same indifferent world, caught up in its own desolation, that daily tries to distract you from the truth. This Spirit of truth who brings you the faith to love God and believe in the good news of salvation through His Son, by bringing this same Word of hope to your neighbor through you, enables you to see that when Jesus said If you loved Him you would keep His commandments, He was not being manipulative, He was making a promise, a promise that the Spirit of truth fulfills in us.
Amen

Semon-Sunday April 6 2008

Third Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
It says in our Gospel lesson ‘but their eyes were kept from recognizing Him.’ This is of course referring to two of the disciples who had yet to see Jesus risen from the grave and so they are incredibly disappointed and sad because they think "that’s it" "it’s over.’ They had hoped that He would be the One to redeem Israel but they had come to think otherwise because they had not seen Christ Jesus risen from the grave. But then Jesus comes right up next to them and they still cannot recognize Him.
And so we see that even in the midst of inevitable defeat sin, death and the devil are at work trying to hide God’s people from the truth of who Christ Jesus is and what He did for them and what He continues to do for you daily. And so indeed today, sin, death, and the devil continue their assaults on God’s people as they try to keep you from recognizing Jesus.
The devil had convinced these two disciples that Jesus was not coming back and that Jesus had not defeated sin, death, and the devil and so out of extreme disappointment and sadness these two disciples leave Jerusalem and they walk away from their Savior. And we can see that this is not just a matter of these two disciples simply thinking that Jesus was dead. This was not just a matter of not seeing Jesus. They didn’t even recognize Jesus when they saw Him. Jesus comes right up next to them and these two disciples still don’t recognize Him. In fact as I said it says that their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. In fact they even refer to Jesus as a stranger.
And these deceptive efforts of the devil, tempting to lead God’s people away from their Savior continue today. Indeed there is a whole world filled with all kinds of means that the devil will use to try to lure you away from Christ Jesus and to get you to fail to recognize Jesus when He does come to you, when He is literally right next to you. And so the devil will come at you with doubt and denial in the midst of all that the world throws at us, be it addiction or depression or materialism or greed or lust or simply in the every day struggles that we all experience.
But the trickery of the devil does not end there because the devil knows that even if he can lure you away from Christ Jesus there is still going to be a void. That void is going to need to be filled with someone or something. And so the devil will attack you with sin and temptation but still the void remains, still something must go where faith in Christ Jesus should reside or maybe even once did reside. And so the devil comes with a false gospel. The devil comes with a gospel that speaks of making you a better person or even making you wealthier if only your faith is strong enough. Or the devil comes with a false gospel that maybe doesn’t even mention Jesus or if it does it reduces Him to being one of many ways to salvation.
Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a better person and there is not necessarily anything wrong with a desire for more wealth. But Jesus did not come to give you tips on daily living or to show you how you can get a raise or a promotion. And He certainly did not come to be One of many ways to salvation.
To even suggest such a notion, that there might be more than one way to salvation shows the devil at work in us. After all it assumes that we even deserve the One way to salvation that we have in Christ Jesus. And to suggest that there might be more than that one way to salvation shows the devil at work in us again. We all want salvation and often we want it on our own terms. And sin, the devil and the world are constantly trying to convince us that we can have salvation on our own terms.
And so not only are we willing to buy into a false-Gospel and really a false Jesus, but we also fail to recognize the real Gospel and the real Christ Jesus when we are confronted by Him. At the heart of all this; being deceived by a false-Gospel, allowing struggles in our lives to create fear and doubt, materialism, addiction, greed, lust, all of this sin that each and every one of us struggles with on a daily basis, at the heart of all of them is the condition that we have all been stricken with; the condition of original sin; the condition that causes us to think that we can be righteous on our own, the condition that deludes us into thinking that salvation is an inalienable right and not that which was attained for us through the death and resurrection of Christ.
And so we see these two disciples who are walking away from Jerusalem, because the recent events surrounding the death of Jesus didn’t happen quite the way they were expecting. Jesus told them that He would be raised from the tomb but it didn’t happen the way these two disciples had envisioned and that was all it took for them, in spite of all that they had seen; that they had to wait a little longer than they had anticipated was enough to completely shatter their faith and leave them in a pit of denial and depression.
But then there is something truly unique that Jesus does, He goes after them. Now keep in mind, they were about seven miles away. That is a long walk but Jesus goes after them. Jesus goes after them because He refused to leave them in their doubt and denial. He went after them because, in spite of everything that He had taught them and everything that they had seen Him do, they still didn’t understand that everything that they witnessed; Jesus’ persecution, His suffering, and His death on the cross, it all happened for a reason. It was not an accident and He was bound and determined to see to it that they understood that. He went after them because He had claimed them as His own.
And He went after them and told them that His suffering and death was necessary and then He interpreted for them all the passages about Himself in scripture, going all the way back to Moses, showing them that it all pointed to Him.
He was doing for them, what He does for you right now; revealing Himself to you through His Word, revealing to you that the promise that is extended to all God’s people all throughout scripture is for you. He is revealing Himself to you as He does for you right now reminding you through His Word that the Word that Peter had in the first lesson, for that crowd of believers outside the upper room is for you also; that in baptism you have received the forgiveness of sin and the Holy Spirit, that you are among those whom the Lord calls to Him. And it took Jesus bearing the burden of your sin; suffering and dying for you.
And so hear the promise of Peter, this time from the second lesson for today, when he promises that you have been ransomed from the futile ways of your ancestors, which by the way are every bit your futile ways also, and this ransom was paid with the precious blood of Christ. And in the bread and the wine of His Supper He comes to you bringing you once again this same precious body and blood which redeems you and He brings to you forgiveness that you can see, taste, touch and feel. And in the same way Christ Jesus was fully and finally revealed to the two disciples from the Gospel lesson when? It was when they broke bread together, finally they realized, when they broke bread together that it was Christ Jesus breaking bread with them and then Jesus disappeared.
But that’s ok because that was all done so that they would believe upon Him. And so through Christ’s faithfulness they were finally drawn to faith, and Peter gives us a word in the second lesson that reminds us that through Christ Jesus we have come to trust in God; who raised Christ Jesus from the dead after He had done what He was destined to do, bearing the penalty for your sin in His suffering and death on the cross. Through the faithfulness of Christ and the faith that the Holy Spirit brings to you through God’s Word your faith and hope have been set on God and you have now been freed to go forth, like the two disciples from the Gospel lesson and proclaim to your neighbor that Christ has risen indeed.
Amen

Semon-Sunday March 30 2008

Second Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In our gospel lesson for this morning we read about what had to have been one of the scariest times in the history of the church. Granted the events from our Gospel lesson are drawn from a period of time after the resurrection, and the days immediately before this would have been the three days in between the cross and the empty tomb. And so a strong argument could be made that those three days were scarier, nevertheless this still had to have been one of the scarier times in the history of the church.
And truthfully as the passage begins, the disciples aren’t really sure if they have made it out of that scary period in between the cross and the empty tomb. They have heard the testimony of Mary Magdalene who told them that she had seen the Lord. But apparently that didn’t do much to convince the disciples since they were still hiding.
And who could blame them really? Their lives were at risk. To make an appearance in public at such a tenuous time when all kinds of authorities were looking to persecute anyone who had any sort of connection to Jesus would have meant risking their lives and probably certain death. Why would they take such a risk when they weren’t even sure if Jesus had been resurrected?
But then lo and behold, Jesus appears before them and in an instant they realize that Mary had been right. More importantly, in an instant they realize that Jesus Himself had been right. In an instant they realize that Jesus was in fact who He said He was. In an instant they realize that death could not contain this Savior who now stood before them bringing them peace and the Holy Spirit. In an instant they realized that the devil with all of his tricks had been defeated in what actually appeared to be the moment of the devil’s greatest victory. And in an instant they realized that their sin that Christ Jesus had taken upon Himself was left in the death that had just been defeated. And so of course the disciples rejoiced when they saw Jesus.
And as if all of that weren’t enough He now brings them the Holy Spirit and sends them out into the world with the authority to forgive and retain sins. But then we read that just a week later they are still hiding out. A week after seeing that sin, death, and the devil were no match for Christ Jesus, after the same Christ Jesus, risen from the grave for all eternity, had given the disciples the authority to forgive and retain sins, where are the disciples? After the risen Savior had appeared before them and showed them His wounds, where are the disciples? They are still hiding out, behind closed doors.
It’s no wonder Thomas didn’t believe them. Maybe Thomas was just thinking "If Jesus really has been raised from the dead then why are you hiding in here? If He has given you the authority to proclaim forgiveness in His name then why aren’t you out using that authority? If the Holy Spirit whom our Lord promised would guide us and protect us and lead us into all truth has been breathed into you then why aren’t you following the Holy Spirit into all truth?"
But any one of us would have been right up there with them in that room, hiding behind closed doors. We would have been up there wondering if the authorities were going to come after us. The echo of the cries of ‘crucify Him’ coming from that Jerusalem crowd that day would have been ringing in our ears but we would know that when we hear those cries now, they would be directed toward us. Of course we would be hiding.
Truth be told it takes a lot less than that to get us to shrink from our Christ ordained call to answer Jesus’ sending us out in the world, as He has been sent by the Father. You might feel comfortable sharing your faith within the walls of this church, and maybe your not even comfortable doing that. But truthfully how bold are you in bringing that faith to your co-worker or family members or your neighbors? Our culture tells you that your faith is a private thing; just between you and God. And like most everyone else you are probably more than willing to buy into that.
But Jesus has a different word for us. He sends us out into the world as His Father sent Him. And so we are sent out to the world; to our neighbor, our friends our family, our co-workers, as servants of the Lord. We are sent to our neighbor and we are commanded to keep our faith anything but private. And we are called and authorized to bring the most significant gift that our Lord Jesus brings to the world; the gift of forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ Jesus, to the world.
And yet we continue to run and hide from this call, which in reality is a privilege more sacred than we could ever imagine. We run from it, out of our desire to not make waves or not upset anyone. Or perhaps, for some of you, maybe it’s from doubt. Maybe you are not quite sure if you even do believe. Whatever the reason or excuse for running from your being sent out to the world, when you give in to it, then you may as well be with the disciples in that room hidden behind locked doors, hiding from the very world that you were called to.
And in the midst of their hiding and doubting, they were failing and denying their Savior. But what we see today through the Word that our Lord brings us is that He will not leave us in our failing Him and our denying Him and our doubting Him. Just as He did for Mary Magdalene outside of the tomb and for the disciples who weren’t convinced by the testimony of Mary, and for Thomas who would not believe the testimony of his fellow disciples, He does for us also.
Christ Jesus came to them in the midst of their fears and denials and doubts and He brought them peace. And so He does for you; coming to you in the Word proclaimed to you and the sacraments and in fellowship with each other. He is doing so right now through the Word being proclaimed to you; He is coming to you in the midst of your doubts, filling you with the Holy Spirit, bringing you the undeniable truth of the Gospel. He comes to you, bringing you the good news that your sin and death have been taken care of.
He comes to you in your fears, filling you with the Holy Spirit reminding you of the claim that He made on you in your baptism. Our Lord came to Mary Magdalene, and the disciples and gave them exactly what they needed. This text is not about doubting Thomas, as some like to make it about, it is about Christ Jesus giving Himself to those whom He has claimed as His own, and coming back to us, and never letting us forget the claim that He has on us.
And so He does for you, never letting you forget the claim that He made on you when His word was spoken over you at the font; giving Himself to you, reminding you of the new birth into a living hope that He has given you through the resurrection. He brings you the Holy Spirit, who through the Word of our Lord and the sacraments, comes to you assuring you that no matter what struggles and challenges this sin-filled world may throw your way, there is an imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance for you in heaven. And inheritance lifted up for you because your Lord Jesus laid down His life for you.
In the meantime you are among those who are being protected by the power of God through faith; the same faith that our Lord brings to you daily in the midst of your doubts, denials and fears; the faith that frees you to go to your neighbor, having been sent to them as God the Father has sent His Son Christ Jesus to you; bringing to your neighbor the peace that surpasses all understanding; the peace of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen