Sermon Sunday July 27 2008

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Is there a better feeling in the world than those moments that most of us have probably experienced where you are going through your clothes, specifically pockets in your pants or maybe a sport-coat, or maybe for some of you women, your purse, and you find a ten or a twenty dollar bill that you had forgotten about? Or what about finding out that you are going to get a much bigger return on your income-tax than you were anticipating? Or what about the unexpected bonus at work?? It could be a Christmas bonus or something like that?
We love those unexpected surprises or bonuses. But there is a common thread among the three examples that I spoke of that make them maybe a little different, and from our human and somewhat prideful perspective, a little more satisfying than probably most other examples of unexpected benefits.
For you see we all have that desire for unexpected and unearned prosperity. We all have that desire to get something for nothing. We all desire to be included among those luck few for whom good fortune just seems to smile on them; whether it’s winning the lottery, or having you number drawn for the grand-prize in a raffle, we all yearn for that.
But we also have this dream and this desire of earning our way; of attaining the American dream through our own blood, sweat, and tears. It’s the dream of making your own way; the dream of becoming well known and well liked and well respected because of you own hard work and toil.
And so what makes finding that 20 dollar bill that you lost in your sportcoat, or the income tax return that is larger than you were expecting or the bonus at work so enjoyable is that they have elements of both. There is the joy that comes from the receiving of the unexpected benefit and prosperity, but in these cases there is also the personal satisfaction that comes with knowing that, to a certain extent you earned these benefits. Of course you should find your 20 dollar bill, after all you earned it. Of course you should get a Christmas bonus for all the hard work you do. And it’s about time those crooks in the government stop ripping you off and give you what you deserve.
But this morning you are confronted with a Word from your Lord that seems to completely flip upside down this romanticizing of the whole idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, that we just love to embrace. For you see in this morning’s lesson the kingdom of heaven is not presented as some ideal to strive toward, or some impossible dream that we can go after and attain because we really set our minds to it.
No, this morning straight from the mouth of our Lord Jesus, the kingdom of heaven is compared to treasure hidden in a field, which someone found. Again He says that it is like treasure that someone found, not that someone earned, nor a goal that someone attained but a treasure that someone found hidden in a field.
And so on one hand we pay lip-service to understanding this, but do we really understand it? Do we really understand that the Gospel really is like stumbling upon a treasure? Or are we more likely to try to convince ourselves that we can earn our place in the kingdom of heaven?
We want our place in the kingdom of heaven to be like the Christmas bonus. We want to experience the joy that comes from benefiting from something unexpectedly and spontaneously, and indeed our Lord promises that one day we will all be raised again and living in the place that has been prepared for us. And we also know that the date and the time of this glorious event is a mystery. So we are promised that there will be this wonderful, unexpected joy and pleasure, the likes of which we couldn’t even come close to imagining. But we also want that personal satisfaction that comes with the Christmas bonus which says, as nice a surprise as the Christmas bonus is, I must deserve it otherwise why would they be giving it to me?
And so you say? "Well what’s wrong that, we just want to do our part?" The problem with that is it’s not your part to do. The problem with wanting to do your part is that really it is ultimately a return to the sin that got us here; the sin of wanting to be God. The problem with wanting to do your part when it comes to the kingdom of Heaven is that ultimately what it reveals is a desire to control the promise of God, a desire to strategically map out the words of promise that were proclaimed over you in the waters of baptism.
But when we can’t even effectively map out what happens in the temporal world, how arrogant is it of us to even for a second think that we can do our part in regards to our place in the eternal kingdom of heaven. It is so important to our Lord that we understand that our place in His kingdom comes purely as a free gift that He repeatedly drives this point home in various parables throughout this lesson.
After this parable comes the parable comes the merchant in search of fine pearls who finds a pearl of great value. And you think, well there, surely the merchant in his searching, was doing his part. But no because the merchant was searching for many pearls, but the treasure he found consisted of one great pearl. This one single pearl of great value was revealed to the merchant in spite of his endless quest to find value in many pearls.
And finally by comparing the kingdom of heaven to a net full of different kinds of fish which was pulled ashore, where the good fish were kept in baskets and the bad ones thrown out, our Lord Jesus shows that as wonderful and glorious a surprise the kingdom of heaven is going to be, there will be some who will not enter and they will be thrown into, according to the very words of our Lord, the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And that is how important it is that you understand and believe that you have no part in attaining your place in the kingdom of heaven; that your place in the kingdom of Heaven is a completely free gift that was attained when your Lord Jesus paid the price for you sin and pride and you self-centered desire to do your part.
St Paul said that if anyone could attain righteousness through good works it would have been him but even all his good works were as dirty rags. And so the question surges up in you "If there is nothing that I can do, then what do I do?" But that is nothing but the devil and the old Adam trying to tempt you to do your part. But you tell them to go away for your part has been done by Another. Simply hear the word proclaimed in the Gospel that through faith in Christ Jesus; the One who laid down His life for you and gave all for you taking on your sin and defeating sin and the devil for you, you are among the righteous who will be separated from the evil.
But for now the evil and pride is still within you tempting you and deluding you into thinking that you can do your part. But you are not left alone, for the Lord promises to send His Spirit who helps you in weakness, and interecedes with sighs to deep for words, praying for you and teaching you how to pray and reminding you that your are His and your place in the Kingdom is secure. This is happening as we speak through the words of my mouth as the Gospel is proclaimed to you. It happens every time you come forward to receive the Lord’s Supper. For that is nothing short of the kingdom of heaven breaking forth in your midst.
So hear the words of St Paul who reminds you today that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, for He has called you according to His purpose. And so your place in the kingdom has been secured, and so you are now sent forth with this great treasure of God’s promise to your neighbor, to bring this promise to the so that the kingdom of heaven will break forth in their midst and claim them as it has claimed you.
Amen

Sermon Sunday July 20 2008

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am sure most of you have heard the expression ‘the devil is in the details.’ The meaning of the expression is pretty self-explanatory. When used in everyday language it basically refers to the idea that when something is planned, often many of the details that may not seem necessary are ignored and overlooked and then end up causing problems later.
For instance, a family plans a camping trip, and so they find a campground, reserve a spot, get a tent, make sure they have enough food and clothes and they think they are all set. They get to the campsite, they unpack the tent, and there are no tent-stakes. They made sure to bring the tent, but they did not think to double-check and make -sure that they brought the stakes. The devil is in the details.
But when this expression is used in everyday talk, the use of the word devil seems symbolic or metaphorical. But in our Gospel lesson this morning our Lord presents to us an image of the Kingdom of God where, until the day of judgment, the devil, the real devil, is in fact in the details. Like last week’s Gospel lesson, Jesus is once again using farming imagery. In this week’s lesson Jesus is using farming imagery to describe the Kingdom of God.
Right from the beginning we can see that it is part of the devil’s design to be in the details. For in using this farming imagery Jesus parallels the devil with someone sneaking into someone’s field at night, while everyone is sleeping and then sowing weeds among the wheat. And when the weeds appeared, all the servants can say is "Where then did the weeds come from?"
There is a line from a favorite movie of mine that came out about thirteen years ago that speaks to the reality of the devil’s intent to be hidden in the details. The movie is called "The Usual Suspects" and the line in that movie that I am referring to is spoken by the person who ends up being the killer who everyone throughout the movie is looking for. But he is about the last person that one would have expected to end up being the killer. He has a moment in the film where he says "The greatest trick that the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist." And I think that there is a lot of truth in that.
The devil is in the details, and part of the reason why is because he doesn’t want us to think he’s there at all. And we see this in our Gospel lesson this morning when the servants ask where the weeds came from. But the owner of the field who of course represents our Lord Jesus tells them an enemy did it. And much to the servant’s surprise they are told to let the wheat and the weeds grow together. They are told that if you uproot the weeds you may uproot the wheat with them.
And so it is for us, we live as wheat among weeds. But I believe that if we simplify this into saying that, with the weeds and the wheat, Jesus is simply referring to two different kinds of people then we don’t necessarily get to the essence of this passage because we are skipping the details. It would be real easy to simply say well, we as Christians are clearly the wheat and non-believers are the weeds. But again, as I said the devil is in the details.
When Jesus is asked to explain this parable, He explains to His disciples that the field where the weeds and the wheat are growing together side-by-side represents the world. He says that at the end of the age He will send His angels, who in the parable are represented by the servants, and they will collect out of His kingdom all evildoers and all causes of sin. So in other words, the devil, who causes sin with his temptation and deception and despair will remain a reality in our world until the end of the age.
But the devil is not just a reality in the lives of non-believers. Quite to the contrary, with non-believers, the devil’s work is pretty much done. From the first appearance of the devil, what does he mess with? Right from the get-go we see him messing with God’s Word tempting Adam and Eve to question whether God really did say that they were not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And today we can hear the echo of the devil’s temptation. I read a survey earlier this week that estimated that roughly thirty percent of all American mainline protestant clergy don’t believe in the devil nor do they believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. Know that I definitely do not include myself in that thirty percent.
But it seems that among some our clergy we hear the echo of the devil’s tempting question to Eve "Did God really mean it when He said that His Son would rise on the third day?" or "When God speaks of the devil, does He mean an actual being?" Or we hear this echo through the words of the recently elected presiding bishop of the American Episcopal church; Katherine Jefferts Schori who when asked whether she believed that Jesus was the only way to salvation she flat out rejected that idea as narrow-minded saying that such a suggestion is to "Put God in a box." And so the echo of the devil continues "Did Jesus really mean that nobody gets to the Father but through Him?"
But I am not singling our clergy out here, nor is my point that even in the church there are weeds among the wheat. There are, so that is definitely true, but the essence of what our Lord says to us in the Gospel lesson goes deeper than that. For, when it comes right down to it we are all weeds. We are not just weeds and wheat living together, we are all simultaneously weed and wheat.
Martin Luther writes of this reality saying "Since baptism is a sign, a visible Word, its significance endures throughout the believer’s life on earth. Yet, as Luther explains, its significance competes with the continuing natural life and impulses of the baptized person. That person, paradoxically, is at one and the same time righteous in Christ and sinful in his own flesh: simul justus et peccator.9" We are not just weeds among the wheat, we are simultaneously both weed and wheat. The devil is in the details; every detail and nuance of our life.
But Luther also reminds us of the blessed gift our baptism, by which we are united with our Lord Jesus, having been brought into His death and resurrection. Through this blessed means of grace we receive what St Paul wrote of in our second lesson for today a Spirit of adoption when we cry "Abba! Father!" By this Spirit bearing witness with ours we are made children of God.
The devil is in the details, and that is revealed in our lives through our anger and sorrow and despair. The echo of the devil’s temptation reveals itself in our lives. In our every word of anger we show that we are continually tempted by the devil’s whispering in our ear "Did God really say love your enemies?" But the devil can tempt you all he wants because Christ Jesus entered into the details of your life also when He took all of your sin and anger and sorrow and despair upon Himself when He laid down His life for you, and sin and the devil who is in the details were defeated for you.
There is no reason to fear believing in the devil; he is real and he is in the details. So while you still struggle with the details of the devil, through faith in Christ Jesus you have the assurance of knowing that Christ Jesus took the devil’s details of death upon Himself and in exchange you have received Christ Jesus’ details of new and abundant life. The devil’s days in the details are limited. For our Lord promises that one day the devil will be destroyed and you will one day experience the full redemption of your bodies. Until then we are witnesses of His promise. So take heed of our Lord’s Word from Isaiah through whom we are told "Do not fear, or be afraid;" the Lord is with you in all the details of your life.
Amen

Sermon Sunday July 13 2008

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel lesson for this morning, our Lord presents us with images that most of you can relate to, being that so many of you are either farmers or you come from farming backgrounds. In our Gospel lesson Jesus tells the disciples the parable of the sower. This is a parable that is rich with farming images, with seeds being sown and falling on three different types of soils and producing three different results. And so, like I said, this is a passage with a lot of images that a farming community can relate to.
Now granted, I am no farmer but this is actually not the first time I lived in a farming community. The town where I did my internship, Kimball, South Dakota was a farming community. If I remember correctly they were primarily wheat farmers. And I remember that in some cases, and I don’t remember if it was the combining or what, but I remember sometimes they would have to wait until as late as midnight to start their work out in the field.
It was explained to me that it was because that the soil was in the best condition for what they had to do in the hours between midnight and roughly 5 am. Any other time and it might have been either too moist or too dry.
And there was something really impressive about that to me. And I have been around here long enough to come to the conclusion that this same sense of care and devotion and commitment is common among most farmers. I have come to realize that farmers will do whatever they can to achieve a maximum yield. And don’t get me wrong, I am not naïve. I know that the bottom line, the desire to make as much money as you can is a big motivating factor here, and there is nothing wrong with that. But I have also sensed among farmers an inherent respect of the land, and a reverence for this section of God’s creation that you have been entrusted with.
Because you see ultimately farming is an act of faith. Even with all the preparation and hard work and studying of the soil, it is still an act of faith. All the hard work and preparation in the world does nothing to bring you all the rain you need, or protect your crops from an unexpected hail storm.
There are all these potential pitfalls that could make the efforts of the farmer null and void and yet the farmer continues to trudge along year after year. And this is to the farmer’s credit. Because ultimately what farmers do is place their livelihood in God’s hands. And that is an incredibly rare thing in a culture that would sooner place their faith in the stock-market and politicians and the lottery than they would in their Creator.
But the question that our Lord challenges you with in the lessons for this morning is ‘Do you show the same love, care, devotion, and commitment to God’s Word that you show to farming, or whatever livelihood your Lord has provided you with?’ Are you willing to put the same time, energy and sacrifice into the Word of your Lord that you do for your job or even for your recreation?
If not then what you are ultimately showing is that the commitment, devotion, work, sacrifice and faith that you display in farming or again whatever vocation your Lord has provided for you is not rooted in God’s Word. And a faith that is not rooted in God’s Word is a faith based more upon the creation than the Creator.
Indeed daily we show that we fit into all three categories of the bad and unproductive soil that Jesus refers to in this morning’s Gospel lesson. When we take something from God’s Word that confuses or offends us and we try to adapt what it says to fit our little box of reason, logic and inclusiveness then we show ourselves to be in the first category of seeds that fell on the path, which represent those who hear the Word of the kingdom and don’t understand it and were snatched up by the devil. And I would say in many cases it is not a situation of us simply not understanding, but actually refusing to understand.
Or maybe there are days when you hear and receive the Word of your Lord with great enthusiasm. Maybe there is a scripture passage that you stumble upon that really speaks to you and sustains you for a day or two, but you don’t continue to go back to God’s Word and so eventually the enthusiasm and that Word that once sustained you becomes a mere memory and footnote. When something like this happens you reveal yourself to belong in the second category as well which Jesus refers to as seeds that fell upon rocky ground. This image represents those who hear the Word and immediately receive it with joy but endure only for a little while or fall away immediately in the face of persecution because they have no root.
Or there is the seed sown among thorns. When you allow the demands of vocation, recreation and all the other daily demands that are thrust at us to divert you away from God’s Word and sacrament then you reveal yourself to belong in this category, for this image of seeds sown among thorns represents one who hears the Word but the cares of the world choke the Word and cause it to yield nothing.
Now contrary to popular belief, Jesus is not talking about three different types of people here but rather he is talking about three different ways in which we are all guilty of rejecting God’s Word; three different ways in which we all place our own limited understanding, desires and needs before faithfulness to God’s Word.
These are three ways that we show ourselves to be among those whom Paul refers to in the lesson from Romans today as those who set their mind on the flesh. And through the Word of Paul our Lord warns us that to do that is death. For you see all this is reflective of the delusion that we try to convince ourselves of ; that we can live by the law. On our own we can’t even come close to fulfilling one iota of the law, because on our own we live by the flesh and so we set our minds on things of the flesh which as Paul says is death. And so on our own, even on our best days through our best efforts, all we can accomplish is to trudge closer to death.
But our Lord is bound and determined to bring forth a good harvest in each of us. As impressive as all the planning, devotion, and sacrifice that farmers make is, it still produces a harvest that ends up being temporary, and while it may help sustain physical life, it gets us no closer to eternal life. But our Lord has sent His Son; the Word incarnate to deal with all the bad soil within each and every one of us.
And so hear the words of Isaiah through whom our Lord tells us this morning that the Word of the Lord does not return to Him empty but it shall accomplish that which the Lord purposes. And so the Word incarnate, the Word made flesh, or as Paul puts it, the Word in sinful flesh, our Savior Christ Jesus was sent to dwell among us and to live the perfect life for us.
And in order to accomplish His purpose and deal with the bad soil of our sin that plagues all of us, He took that condemned sin upon Himself in the flesh so that as Paul writes, the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. He took that condemned sin upon Himself when He laid down His life for you as He bore the punishment for that sin for you. And that condemned sin was taken with Him as He was planted in the ground in the tomb, having defeated sin and the devil for you. And that is where your condemned sin remained when He was resurrected three days later gushing forth in glory having ushered in eternal life for you.
And so in baptism the seed of faith which transforms the rocky and thorn-filled soil of your heart into the good soil which bears fruit, was planted in you through the Word of our Lord spoken over you by a sinful pastor. And indeed the Word of our Lord does not return empty, for this Word continues to come to you through Word and Sacrament, cultivating, nurturing and sustaining the seed of faith that was planted in you as you were cleansed in the waters of baptism.
And this frees you to build your faith on the Word of our Lord. You are free to continue to have faith in the livelihood your Lord has provided for you, but to now base it on the Creator who has provided it for you rather than on the creation that has been provided for you. And this Word which calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies us to faith has been placed in your heart and on your lips and has freed you to bring to your neighbor the Word of Christ that bears fruit and does not return empty.
Amen

Sermon Sunday July 6 2008

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and Sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
On Friday, we as a nation, celebrated our independence. We celebrated the work of our fore-fathers who came before us and who sacrificed so much to free us from tyranny and oppression. We celebrate the independence that we are so fortunate to enjoy everyday. And I will admit, I like the 4th of July. I like the fireworks, I like the picnics and the barbecues and everything else. Some of my fondest memories from my childhood involve 4th of July celebrations with my family. And even the simple freedom we have to set aside a day to do just that, is reflective of the extraordinary freedom that we as Americans experience.
But as extraordinary and inspiring as this freedom and independence might be, it is still just temporary and the idea of celebrating independence and self-reliance and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps seems very antithetical to many of the words of our Lord from this morning’s Gospel lesson. In this lesson, Jesus is singing the virtues of being yoked and compares His disciples to infants, while He is critical of being ‘wise’ and ‘intelligent.’
This, among many other ways, is how we know that those who would suggest that the United States of America is somehow the most favored nation on the planet are wrong. We know they are wrong first of all because our Lord says that His kingdom is not of this world. We also know that the myth of America as God’s most favored nation is not true because as disciples of Christ, we are not called to be self-reliant and independent.
And, as I said, any independence we experience as Americans in this life is all purely temporary. For indeed our Lord Jesus is speaking of His disciples as being like infants, who are totally dependent upon others for their own needs, and so He calls us to be under His yoke so that we might be free from the myth of our own independence, so that we might be totally dependent upon Him.
You see any independence that we think we experience when it comes to matters of the faith is myth, because even outside of the yoke that our Lord places on us we are still not free or independent. For we read in the lesson from Romans this morning where St Paul describes himself as being sold as a slave to sin. He recognizes that the law is good and spiritual, but because of the sin that dwells within him he is totally incapable of fulfilling even one fraction of it.
And so it is with us. Sin holds us captive. Martin Luther says of this idea of being a slave to sin That is to say, all nature resists the Law of God. This is surely a frightful utterance, whether I like it or not, I am forced to serve sin contrary to the Law of God. Thus we see in young people the movement of passion, which carries them away to sin, willing or unwilling. And there is not enough strength in either reason or will for them to repress this raging drive. Thus greed devours the old folks.
Moreover, just as these vices harass and plague a certain age, so either sorrow in bad days or smugness in good days harass and plague, even completely devour, all Christians. We are all such people by nature.
All our best efforts do nothing in the face of the grip that sin holds over us. This is not to say that we are constantly committing visible acts of sin, although the struggle with sin certainly leads to visible acts of sin probably more often than we would like to admit, but what St Paul and Luther are referring to is the reality of our sinful nature, of constantly being in a state of being assaulted, attacked and deceived by sin and the devil. And every attempt to free ourselves from this bondage, through our best efforts of reason and will just leads to the shackles being clamped on that much tighter as we become more and more seduced by the myth of our own independence.
But nevertheless, independence and self-reliance are highly valued and coveted in the world and so we continue, as we live in the midst of the physical and earthly realm, to chase after our independence. And so this leads to a state where maybe you don’t pray as much as you once did or read the Bible as much or go to church as much. The means of grace that our Lord graciously provides for you and calls you through to complete and utter dependence upon Him are cast aside in order to make room for your quest for independence.
But still, as St Paul makes mention of in the lesson from Romans, it is still within us to recognize the inherent spiritual goodness of God’s law. Like Paul, we agree that the law is good. Like Paul we have the desire to do what is good. But also like Paul, because of the sin that lives within us, we cannot carry them out.
And so we want the best of both worlds. We want the freedom of the earthly realm and the holiness and promise of eternal life of the spiritual. And so we delude ourselves into thinking that we can integrate the two. We actually start to think that there is room in God’s kingdom for our earthly and temporary independence.
And so we become like those mentioned in the Gospel lesson who rejected both John the Baptist and Jesus. We reject the law that John brought because maybe it doesn’t seem reasonable and so we delude ourselves into thinking that, 2000 years later, somehow we have greater insight into God’s Word than the disciples who walked with Jesus and those who had firsthand encounters with them. And so we find ourselves saying things like "Well Jesus didn’t really mean this.. did He?"
But we also reject the grace that Jesus brings by refusing to acknowledge our complete dependence upon Him and so the Gospel is seen as just another pursuit of excellence.
But the astonishing good news in light of this is that we are not independent. We are not left on our own. The Gospel is not something for us to pursue or a goal for us to strive after, it is an accomplished feat. On the cross Christ Jesus took on the burden of your sin, doubt, pride, envy and despair and when He breathed His last He said "It is finished" and He meant it. It is an accomplished feat that sin, death, and the devil have been defeated for you. It is an accomplished feat that in the resurrection of Christ Jesus you have been given eternal life in God’s eternal kingdom.
And that you believe this is a miracle in itself. That you believe this means that you are among the "infants" or "little children," as some translations have it, for whom the Gospel has been revealed to you by your Father.
And so hear the Words of your Lord this morning as He comes to you again, revealing Himself to you through the words of my mouth and in the bread and the wine, in a few minutes as you come forward once again for the Lords Supper to receive the forgiveness of your sins in the body and blood of Christ Jesus. Hear the Word of your Savior as He tells you to come to Him so He can give you rest.
As He calls you in His Gospel and in the Lord’s Supper just know that is nothing short of the Holy Spirit calling you and nurturing you, preserving you and sustaining you in your faith. It is nothing short of your Lord Jesus coming to you in His body and blood and reminding you of the claim that was made upon you in your baptism, and the faith that you receive in baptism as the yoke that removes all the burdens of your sin, self-reliance and mythical independence was placed upon you in baptism. Hear His Word that He gives you grace and forgiveness and all good things.
And so you have heard the plea of your Savior who tells you to come to Him. And the One who came on the foal of a donkey comes to you today bringing not a step-by-step plan to discern God’s special purpose for you, or a new insight into His Word for us to figure out thus implying that "God is doing a new thing." No He comes bringing grace, mercy, the removal of your burdens and the forgiveness of sin. He has revealed Himself to you and He brings you salvation and rest and relieves you of the burden of your mythical independence.
Amen

Sermon Sunday June 29 2008

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
I remember when I left Oregon to go to Minnesota for seminary, I was told by the pastor of the church that I was a member of in Oregon, who was originally from Minnesota that before I went I needed to learn about mid-west hospitality. He told me that when I am dealing with mid-western Scandinavians it’s important to understand that there is a certain protocol to communicating with them.
He told me that when you offer help or assistance of any kind, be it to pay for a meal, or to lend someone some money, or to help someone with a project they are working on, or anything else, it is necessary to understand that if I am sincerely offering to help them and I sincerely want to know if they want my help then I have to ask at least three times. And he said this is because, in most cases they will instinctively say "No thank you" the first two times you offer and then it’s not until the third time you offer that you find out whether or not they really do want or need the assistance you were offering.
Now obviously this advice was given more than a little tongue-in-cheek, and honestly I don’t know if I’ve noticed this to be true or not. However it does reflect something that Jesus is addressing in our Gospel lesson this morning. From the opening words of this lesson we can see that Jesus is speaking of hospitality and speaking of how when someone welcomes a disciple of Jesus they welcome Jesus and when someone welcomes Jesus they welcome the One who sent Jesus; God the Father. So, because of the mystical union of faith between God the Father and Jesus and Jesus’ disciples, when someone welcomes a disciple of Christ it is the same as welcoming God.
Now while it is true that Jesus is addressing hospitality here we must understand that He is speaking to the disciples here and so He is not so much addressing how they will give hospitality but rather their own willingness to receive hospitality. Because you see Jesus knew that His disciples were human and prideful and so, like many of us, would often have difficulty accepting the gracious hospitality that would be extended to them. And so what the advice that I received from that pastor in Oregon shows is an inherent prideful resistance in all of us to receive hospitality.
And so when Jesus says to you this morning that those who welcome you welcome also Him and His Father you must understand that He is addressing something much more significant than polite behavior and good and proper etiquette. He is addressing our refusal to admit our dependence on Him. He is showing you that there is much more at stake here than just your pride. If you refuse to accept the gracious gift of another how willing are you to believe the promise of your Lord in Christ Jesus? And Jesus tells you that when you refuse the gracious gift of another, it is the same are rejecting our Lord Jesus. Refusing to accept the gracious gift of another is the same as being a stumbling block to someone else.
And indeed it does work both ways. We reveal our inherent refusal to acknowledge our dependence through our prideful inhospitality also; by pridefully blaming our problems on someone else and thus refusing to be hospitable to them. Earlier this week I watched an episode of the show Battlestar Galactica where the main character of the show, the commander of the Battlestar Galactica was clinging to guilt and remorse over something and essentially blaming all of the struggles he and his crew were dealing with on himself. One of the other characters who is a political leader on the show said to him, and this is a paraphrase "We like to over-simplify the most complicated problems that we are challenged with all so we can cling to the illusion that we can control them."
I thought there was a lot of truth in that. And I found it to be reflective of what Jesus is addressing. You see whether we are too proud to offer hospitality or too proud to receive it, it is all indicative of the inherent self-idolatry within all of us. It is all clinging to the illusion of control. And so we give in to the deceptive attacks of the devil as he attempts to play on our pride and self-pity and lure us into the myth of our own autonomy, or the lie that we need only ourselves.
And so we become like Hannaniah from our Old Testament lesson. As we pridefully cling to our illusions of control we attempt to deceive ourselves and others into believing a false image of peace. But this is a path that can only lead to sin, delusion and ultimately to the grave as it did for Hannaniah, for as we read further in this chapter in Jeremiah the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah and told him that Hannaniah was a false prophet, and so Jeremiah confronted Hannaniah and told him that because he had uttered rebellion against the Lord with his false prophecy that the Lord would remove him from the earth and that Hannaniah would die that year, and he did.
And what Hannaniah’s story shows us is that there is much more at stake here than proper courtesy. Jesus is concerned about our willingness to extend and receive grace and hospitality because it is through us, those who have been claimed by our Lord in the waters of baptism and the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, that the Lord continues His work of proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of the Lord and proclaiming the good news of forgiveness of sin through Christ Jesus. Through us His disciples, our Lord works to make more disciples. And so with our prideful refusal to acknowledge our dependence on our Lord we are guilty of nothing less than trying to hinder the very work of our Lord.
But the good news is that even when we refuse to see our dependence, our Lord does see it. And so He sends His Son Christ Jesus our Lord in whom was performed the most extraordinary act of love, grace, mercy, faith and forgiveness; in Him was accomplished the most amazing act of radical hospitality to of all things; sinful human beings when He took the burden of their sin upon Himself and gave up His life on the cross and gave you a home with your Lord.
In radical love and hospitality that revealed itself through your Savior Christ Jesus dying on a cross and three days later walking out of an empty tomb after being resurrected, a place in the kingdom of the Lord has been graciously prepared for you. And try as you might to simplify the challenges that come about as a result of the attacks of sin and the devil, the reality is you don’t have control and so all you can do is humbly accept the gracious hospitality our Lord brings your way. Indeed it is in those moments when we are in our most severe and often self-inflicted guilt and desperation that the cool-water of grace and forgiveness from our Lord tastes the sweetest.
And we can also set our pride aside to live a life reflective of that grace and hospitality that was extended to us on the cross by extending hospitality and forgiveness to our neighbor. To do otherwise could likely be an inadvertent attempt to hinder the gracious will of our Lord.
And so hear the Word of our Lord from St Paul this morning through whom we are urged to present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and present our members as instruments of righteousness. We have been brought from death to new and eternal life with our Lord in His kingdom by the One who does have control, and this happened when you received the forgiveness of sin in the cleansing waters of baptism and sin no longer has dominion over you. But you still don’t have control, but now it’s good news because now it means that through faith in Christ Jesus you are made a slave of righteousness for sanctification, but that is to our advantage for it is through the sanctification that we receive from our Lord that His gracious hospitality is extended to our neighbor even when they say ‘No thank you.’
Amen