Sermon Sunday, Mar 22 2009

Fourth Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus comes to us today with a harsh Word. He comes to us with a judgment. In fact in verse 19 of the Gospel lesson, John writes “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” John says that all who do evil, hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.
Well there is no doubting that the exposing of evil deeds can have devastating effects on the way we live our lives. Just look at the economy. In the midst of the current economic crisis we have seen the light creeping into the crevices and hidden areas of some of our largest financial institutions and it has revealed predatory lending, negligent oversight and outright embezzlement.
But this light that creeps into the darkness and exposes evil, sin, and wrong-doing does not shine only on wall-street billionaires. It shines on all of us. The judgment is that we all love the darkness, and that we hate the light and do not come to the light. But perhaps you think “Wait a minute. I don’t walk in the darkness. I am here in church.”
And granted you are here in church. You are receiving God’s Word. Your Lord is coming to you once again in the proclamation of His Good news. Your faith is being enriched, nurtured and sustained in you. But what of when you leave here? Will you keep your faith to yourself? Will church be just that thing that you do on Sunday for an hour or so? Will you bring this faith home; to your family-to your kids, to your spouse, to your neighbor?
The Light has come into the world but people loved darkness. So do we love this light that exposes us for the sinners that we are? Do we love this light that confronts us with the reality that by ourselves we are simply wandering around in the dark. Or do we love this dark world that says to us “You keep that light to yourself?” Do we fear rejection and possible embarrassment from this world of darkness more than we love the Light of God?
But those things that we fear-those things that we cling to that keep us in the darkness really just scrape the surface. The things that we fear in this world; whether it be the loss of our financial stability through an economic crisis or simply the fear of rejection and embarrassment from our friends and neighbors or whatever worldly matters we allow to have rule over our lives; it all just amounts to nothing in light of the real crisis that is at hand in our wandering around in the dark.
For the real crisis is in the fact that what is ultimately at stake is God’s judgment. Our love of the darkness leads us away from God and into unbelief and idolatry. And it’s even worse because it’s not just us doing this to ourselves. Paul writes of this state of walking in darkness in the lesson from Ephesians, and he gets right down to the real terror of what it means to walk in darkness.
Paul refers to this state of walking in darkness as a state of following the course of this world and following the ruler of the power of the air-the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. So it is not just our own inherent disobedience that leads to us wandering around in the dark, but it is the temptation that the devil and this sinful world throw our way. Our hearts are ruled by the passions of our flesh and the empty promises and threats of Satan.
And we are powerless to this. We know that we are powerless to this because in this passage from Ephesians our Lord tells us that left on our own, walking in darkness, bound to the passions of our flesh, we are dead through our trespasses and sins. The wages of sin is death, Paul tells us in Romans, and that is the state that this darkness that we love leaves us in.
And so as we cling to this darkness that we love too much we are already dead, we are destined for wrath and condemnation. Dead through our trespasses and sins, we are as good as declared guilty at the judgment to come. It seems there is no hope for us, for we are dead. Dead people cannot save themselves. It’s going to take someone to intervene on our behalf. It’s going to take someone pulling us out of our darkness of sin and despair. Radical intervention is what it takes to bring dead sinners back to life.
But we have a God who is willing to intervene on our behalf. He has shown this throughout history. He intervened on behalf of the Israelites when they were in their own darkness. But just as today, the light had to enter into the darkness of their sin and despair. The Israelites were wandering around in the darkness of their own grumbling and despair, wanting to actually return back to their bondage and slavery in Egypt. And then God sent to the Israelites a light of judgment in the form of poisonous serpents and their sin and bondage was exposed to them, as many of them were bitten by the serpents and died.
And in repentance they appeal to Moses to pray to God to take away the serpents. And God tells Moses to take a poisonous serpent and put it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at the serpent and live. And so Moses does as he is told and sure enough when someone looked upon the serpent upon the pole they were healed. The very thing that was killing them was now healing them.
And so the very Light of Christ that comes to us, revealing our sins to us and exposing us as the dead sinners that we are, now comes to you making you alive together with Christ. For when you look up at the cross and see Christ Jesus, laying down His life for you, you are seeing the wages of your sin; the very thing that was killing you, being paid for.
When you see His holy and precious blood dripping from His hands and feet you are seeing God’s great and glorious mercy being extended out to you, out of the love with which your Lord loves you. When you look to Christ Jesus on the cross you see your Lord coming to you when you were dead in your trespasses and making you alive together with Christ Jesus.
And so today He continues to come to you in Word and sacrament; through the proclamation of the Good news, through the confession and absolution, through the eating and the drinking of the body and blood of your Lord Christ Jesus in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion and in the waters of baptism-in all of this the Light of Christ continues to come in the darkness of the passions of our flesh, as we follow the desires of our flesh and senses- the Light comes exposing our sins to us-exposing that we fear the wrath of embarrassment and rejection from our neighbor and the world, more than we fear the wrath of our Creator.
And He calls you to look upon Christ Jesus in repentance and believe upon Him and what He has done for you and is doing for you. Through the Word being proclaimed to you in the words of my mouth Christ is assuring you of your forgiveness, that the blood He shed on the cross was for you and your justification and that His resurrection was for your salvation. He is daily raising you up with Him in the heavenly places.
And so, having been freed from the darkness of sin, death and the devil-the darkness of the passions of the flesh-through faith in Christ Jesus you no longer need to fear the wrath of God. You don’t even need to fear the wrath of embarrassment or rejection from your neighbor. You are no longer dead through your trespasses and sin, you are alive with Christ. You have been rescued from the darkness and placed in the light. So go forth from here walking in the Light, spilling forth with that Light to your neighbor and doing in faith and freedom the good works prepared beforehand for you-hearing in faith the call of your Lord as He keeps you in the Light of eternal life in the heavenly places with Him.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday March 15 2009

Third Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
What are we to make of this angry Jesus who confronts us in this morning’s Gospel lesson? Or perhaps more to the point; “What is Jesus making of us, with the anger that He displays in this morning’s Gospel lesson?” And this is not simply one of those “That’s a lot of anger for Jesus” moments. This is a lot of anger for anyone to display.
He comes into the temple and He sees that the temple is filled with people selling all sorts of livestock. There are money-changers which would indicate that the temple had been turned into a marketplace as Jesus would say later. In response Jesus pours out all the change, overturns the tables, makes a whip of chords, He doesn’t use it to actually whip anybody but to get their attention and to drive them out of the temple.
This flies in the face of the contemplative, sorrowful, merciful and compassionate image of Jesus that we seem to so often limit our understanding of Jesus to. Jesus is angry here. Jesus, a circumcised and faithful Jew, comes to Jerusalem on the dawn of Passover; the holiest day of the year for Jews; and He sees nothing but contempt and disregard for all holy things.
The reason people were selling livestock around Passover was because, the male members of the Jewish nation were required to come to Jerusalem three times a year; Passover being one of those times. But because of their distant travel they would not have been able to bring their own animals to sacrifice, which would have been a big part of the celebration, so local merchants began selling livestock. It was a profitable business and it had been going on for a long time. Captialism was not the sin here, as some might like to suggest.
You see the problem was the location. The market was in the lower part of the city. Then it had worked it’s way to the gates of the temple. And now it had finally come into the very courts of the sanctuary. Today, it would have been as if, parading around in this very sanctuary there were people selling cows and camels and donkeys and doves. And today, instead of money-changers, we’d probably have credit card machines and ATM’s.
And this would not have been just in the narthex or outside the church. I am talking right here in the sanctuary. And it’s not like any of the money would have been going to the church. Because the people the in temple were all raising money only for themselves. And so, you can see why Jesus would be so angry. And for Jesus this wasn’t simply a sacred place of worship, it was His Father’s house. These people had turned the place where Jesus could go and commune with His Father probably in a way that He couldn’t do anywhere else, into a marketplace and filled it with the stench of these animals. And so Jesus gets mad and makes a scene and turns over some tables, pours out some coins and drives people away with a whip.
And when He is confronted about this by the Jews who ask Him to show a sign that would validate His authority because He had made such a mess, Jesus tells them to destroy the temple and in three days He will raise it up. This is of course a reference to His death and resurrection, but the Jews of course did not understand that. And in fairness, neither really did the disciples until the resurrection.
And with this declaration of His coming death and resurrection, Christ Jesus is saying much more about His death and resurrection than that it would be a validation of His authority as the Son of God although that is part of it. But with this declaration of His death and resurrection, Jesus is declaring that He Himself is the temple.
Christ Jesus is here pronouncing Himself as the great sanctuary for all mankind over all the ages. You see, before Christ Jesus, the temple was considered the holy place because it was the temple. It was where God’s law was heard. It was sacred because it was confessed to be the very house of God, and not just in the folksy way that we say it today about church. They literally believed and confessed that the temple was the house where God lived and God was present there because that was where God’s Word was heard. And so an offense against the temple was considered an offense against the Father. And so in Jesus’ case an offense against the temple was an offense against His Father.
But now Christ Jesus comes, proclaiming Himself to be the temple. And Christ Jesus, being the Word incarnate means that an offense against God’s Word is an offense against Christ Jesus. And so an offense against the Gospel is an offense against Christ Jesus, it is an offense against God. And in this truth, that an offense against the Gospel is an offense against God, in this reality, we see that we are every bit as guilty as those merchants in the temple. We have made just as much a mockery of the holy temple of the Lord as those merchants that our Lord Jesus drove out of the temple.
For our natural inclination is not to embrace the Gospel, but to reject it as foolishness. Don’t believe me? Look all around at the state of American Christianity. All across America the largest and fastest growing churches are churches where the preachers have replaced the biblical Gospel of redemption with a revisionist gospel of pop-psychology and good advice. The Gospel has been reduced in many churches to a message of advice to save us from temporary unpleasantness, as opposed to the biblical Gospel of eternal redemption from God’s eternal damnation. The biblical Gospel of eternal salvation has been reduced to something that needs to be made relevant with trickery and deception, as opposed to the biblical Gospel which is relevant and authoritative unto itself.
But our rejection of the Gospel does not need to be so overt as these examples. For every time we sin we show our natural inclination to reject the Gospel as foolishness. The law was given to expose our sin to us. So every time you hear “You shall have no other Gods before me.” You are reminded of those things that you daily make into other gods. When you hear the 8th commandment you are reminded of your predilection to gossiping. We are commanded also not to covet. Try walking through a new car lot without coveting. Jesus Himself says that by even holding an angry thought against someone you are guilty of murder. Does this sound harsh to you? Well if it does, then once again you are showing your natural inclination to reject the Gospel as foolishness.
For as Paul says in the second lesson “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” And Paul says in Ephesians that we are born dead in our trespasses. And so, on our own, even in our most wise and imaginative moments, we are merely among the perishing for whom the message of the cross in mere foolishness.
But our Lord Jesus, being the temple who redeems us, is true to His Word. And so when it looked like we had destroyed Him with our sin and deceit and prideful refusal to hear the Gospel as anything but foolishness, Christ Jesus showed Himself true to His Word and the temple that He is was raised for our salvation.
And the price for all the sin that we thrust upon Him in our attempts to destroy the temple that is Christ Jesus with our sinful refusal to hear the Gospel as anything but foolishness has been paid. And in the waters of baptism, He claimed you as His and then brought you, kicking and screaming into your death, and with His word raised you as a new creation. And now the Word that claimed you in baptism and called you to new life in Christ Jesus dwells richly in you, and so you are also a temple. For it is the Word of God that makes something sacred. This pulpit is just a wood structure by itself, but when the Word is preached from it, it is a sacred instrument of God’s grace. The water in that font is merely water, but with God’s Word a means of grace by which sinners are cleansed and claimed for the Body of Christ and made temples. The wine and bread are merely food by themselves, but with God’s Word they are the precious gifts of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus bringing to you His good gifts of faith, forgiveness, redemption and sanctification.
I am merely a sinner, but when the Holy Spirit comes to me in God’s Word and the Word flows through me out to you, I am a preacher and a newly-raised temple. And you, having receivied God’s good gifts in Word and sacrament, have the Word of God flowing through you and you are newly raised temples, and every time you recveive these gifts you are raised anew. And so you have been freed to go forth to your neighbor and bring the temple that you are to them, spilling forth to them, the love, faithfulness, mercy and Word of Christ that creates faith and frees you from your blind rejection of the Gospel as foolishness and opens up to you the truth that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
Amen

Sermon, Sun Mar 8, 2009

Second Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus speaks to the disciples and to you this morning of how completely and utterly unnatural it is to be a disciple of Christ. Being a disciple of Christ does not come natural to us. It goes against every natural inclination that we are born with.
We see this in how our Lord Jesus reacts to Peter when Peter dares to rebuke Jesus for saying that He (Jesus) must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. Jesus responds by rebuking back, to the point of even referring to Peter as Satan. And then condemning Peter for setting His mind on human things and not divine things.
He completely separates human things from divine things. He doesn’t say “Peter, you just haven’t found the divinity within you yet.” In this encounter, it is clear that our sinful will and the divine will of our Creator are completely at odds and antithetical to each other. And this is further articulated in an even more powerful way when Jesus explains to the disciples that if they want to become His followers, they must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Him, and that those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for His sake and the sake of the Gospel will save it.
So how are you doing with that? How are you doing with that denying yourself part? Are your losing your life for Christ’s sake and the sake of the Gospel? Now this is not saying that we should all go out and become martyrs. But rather, it is saying that being a disciple of Christ means that every decision we make, every thought we have, every action of ours is to flow from the claim that has been made upon us by Christ Jesus. So how are you doing with that?
The truth is we fail at this daily. Daily we fail keep our minds on divine things and not on human things. This is why we have laws. This is why we have courts and judges. And this is why we have prisons. We all struggle and fail to keep our minds on divine things, and we all fail to deny ourselves. And in prisons you have people who have come face to face with the futility of this reality to a degree that most of us can’t imagine.
When I was on internship in South Dakota I went to a prison worship service in Springfield, South Dakota, and they allowed me to distribute the wine in Communion. It was done by intinction where the worshippers, most of them being prisoners, would dip the wafer into the chalice of wine that as I was holding, and as I said to them “This is the body of Christ shed for you.” And as I looked into their eyes and they heard these wonderful words of promise from our Lord, it was almost as if I could see these prisoners being transformed. But it was not a transformation that came from inside of them or any desires that they had, but rather from outside of them in the Words of promise from our Lord as they partook of His holy and precious blood.
They had seen the futility of clinging to their own ways. They had been completely humbled by God’s alien work of the law, as their sins were exposed to them and they saw that there was no hope there. And so, having seen the futility of human things, all that is left is Christ. And there was Christ coming to them through His word in a promise proclaimed by a bumbling intern and the holy and precious blood of Christ shed upon the cross for them and for you.
And so it is for you, brothers and sisters in Christ. For the struggle of Peter in the Gospel lesson and the struggle of these prisoners and all prisoners is our struggle; the struggle to deny ourselves, as we daily fail to stay focused on divine things and give in to the temptation to focus on human things and away from divine things. Daily we put our trust more in our own human desires and wills, or human organizations and institutions, some of which might even be part of the church, than we do in the One who created us. We daily show that we trust the creation more than the Creator.
But that is why our Lord Jesus said that He must undergo great suffering and die and be raised. Left to our own will we are merely, as Paul writes “dead in our trespasses,” but being rich in mercy God doesn’t leave it in our hands, He sends Christ Jesus to take upon Himself all of our sin and death upon the cross, giving us His righteousness for our sin, His justification for our condemnation, and His life for our death. And because of Christ having been raised three days later, we are made alive with Christ. And this is not the result of any works or effort on your part, but it is purely a radical gift of God’s free grace which continuously come to us in Word and sacrament and gives us faith, nurtures our faith and sustains our faith.
And through that very faith, we are made righteous just as Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. Human will focuses on this tired world that leads only to death. But faith, which comes to us when we are claimed by Christ in the waters of baptism, and continues to come to us in Holy Communion and the Word, looks beyond the present reality, whatever it may be, and by God’s glorious grace through this faith, we are able to see that we are no longer sons and daughters of death, but inheritors of an eternal and glorious kingdom.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday Mar 1, 2009

First Sunday in Lent
Brothers and Sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lent is a time for remembering. Lent is the season when historically we remember the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. But it’s not just the time in the wilderness that we remember, but all of the shame and suffering that Jesus endured on His way to the cross. For many people, this season of Lent is marked by periods of fasting, penance, charity, and other forms of spiritual discipline. And this is all reflective of this notion of dying to ourselves that is prevalent all throughout this Lenten season. We walk through the darkness of Lent right on into that darkest of dark hours, Good Friday so as to underscore the great and glorious light of resurrection Sunday, or Easter.
And so, in this season of remembering, the Genesis passage for this morning seems appropriate and consistent. For in this passage our Lord tells Noah and his sons, whom He had just delivered from the flood, that He is establishing a covenant with them that never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.
But He does not make this covenant only with Noah and his sons, but our Lord makes this covenant with them and all future generations. God extends this covenant not only to Noah and his sons but to all those who would come after them; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Daniel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, into Christ’s apostles and even you. You are among those future generations that are included in this covenant.
But it doesn’t end there. Our Lord knows us. He knows that we are a forgetful people. He knows that we are a “What have you done for me lately” type of people. And so He promises that He will send a sign of this covenant that He has established with us. He says that He has set His bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between He and the earth. Our Lord of course is talking about a rainbow here. And even though He doesn’t say it is so we will remember Him, it’s still pretty clear that the rainbow is given to us to remind us of the covenant that God established with us after the flood.
But what is really remarkable about this is that our Lord says that the rainbow will serve as a reminder for Him also. He says that when the rainbow is seen in the clouds that He will remember the everlasting covenant that He made with every living creature spanning all generations. What this basically means is that when you see a rainbow, it is not just a sign of something that God did for you in the past but something that He is doing for you right now. When you see a rainbow, our Lord promises that He is remembering the covenant He made with you after the flood. So when you see a rainbow, you know that God is remembering you. He is thinking about you. The rainbow reminds you that you are on God’s mind, that God remembers you.
But still even with this bold and remarkable sign of our Lord’s faithfulness, we forget that we are remembered by our Lord. It was not long after this covenant before God’s people were once again forgetting the One who remembers them. Even Abraham would show that he simply could not take God at His word when He promised Abraham that his wife Sara would bear him a son, so Abraham had a child with his servant Hagar.
Jacob was a swindler who cheated his brother out of his birthright. David was an adulterer and a murderer. Solomon formed alliances with pagan and corrupt nations. The history of God’s people is one of us continually and repeatedly showing our tendency to forget or at least ignore the fact that we are always remembered by our Lord. It is a history of rebelling against our Lord that began with Adam and Eve and has never ceased.
But our Lord is faithful. He promises that He will never again send a flood to destroy all flesh, and so He doesn’t. But still He cannot sit idly by and do nothing in the face our continuous and impetuous attempts to escape Him. Try as we might to forget our Lord He refuses to be forgotten.
And so even though we had given Him every reason to change His mind and go ahead and send another flood, He does not. And so not only does He stay faithful to the promise He made to us after the flood, but He comes to us in fragile, human flesh. Even though we had given Him every reason to cut us off from His eternal kingdom, He brings His kingdom to us in the form of His perfect and sinless Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.
And in the Gospel lesson from Mark it is made immediately clear that the arrival of Christ Jesus bursting upon the scene means that something radically different is happening. Jesus shows up in the Jordan and He is baptized by John the Baptist. And it says that as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove.
It says that the heavens were torn apart. The use of the word “torn” is very strong there. It doesn’t just say that the heavens are opened but that they are torn. When we say that something has been opened then all one has to do to restore it back to it’s original state is close it. A door opens, then you close it. A window opens, then you close it. A suitcase opens, then you close it.
But when something is torn, there is some irreparable damage done. Even if you can put something that is torn back together, it is never quite the same. No longer would God’s revelation be limited to a rainbow appearing in the sky, for those skies had been torn by the Spirit descending like a dove upon Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh. Barriers between God and man were being broken. And we hear the voice of God saying to Christ Jesus “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And then the Spirit drives Christ Jesus into the wilderness where for 40 days He is tempted by Satan. But then after His 40 days in the wilderness, after enduring the temptations of Satan He goes back to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near: repent and believe in the good news.”
And indeed some of us did. Some of us did heed our Lord’s gracious calling by repenting and believing upon Him. But most of us continued to run from Him. Most of us continued to reject Him. Most of us continued to reject Him until eventually it ended up leading to this One whose arrival upon the scene brought forth the tearing of the heavens, laying down His life for us, taking upon Himself all of our sin, and bearing all of our punishment. And make no mistake even among those who repented and believed upon Him, they all also, in one way or another rejected Him.
Paul writes in Romans that “…while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” And in that moment, that darkest of moments, that we thought that we had finally gotten rid of Him, when we thought we would no longer be bothered by God, He shows that His coming into this world means that, try as we might, we can no longer keep ourselves away from our God or keep Him from us.
For Peter writes that Christ suffered for sins, once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous. And He did this to bring you to God. Death, the final barrier between you and your Lord, has been knocked down. And so finally we see that the covenant that our Lord made with us after the flood was actually pointing to something even bigger and more radical. It was pointing to the baptism that saves you. When Christ went into death it meant the death of your death, and the defeat of sin and the devil for you. And Christ Jesus, coming through death having been made alive in the Spirit and resurrected for your salvation, now through His resurrection is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to Him, appealing to His Father on your behalf, remembering you.
And it is through this very means, that baptism saves you. For, in baptism, having been united with Christ in a death like His you will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. So you may as well stop running from Him, for He has claimed you as His own. And He’s going to keep coming after you in His Word and sacraments. So you may as well simply receive the good gifts that He is bringing you, such as the forgiveness of your sins in His body and blood when we partake once again in His Supper in a few minutes, and the nurturing and sustaining of your faith in the Word proclaimed. And then go forth from here brimming with His good gifts of faith, forgiveness and salvation so that they might burst forth from you to your neighbor.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday Feb 15, 2009

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So what is the problem with this Namman guy from the Old Testament lesson?? Here he is this, great military leader and warrior who has been stricken by the plague of leprosy. The Lord had shown Himself to be faithful to Naaman by giving him great victories on the field of battle, and yet Naaman was struck by this crippling and deadly disease.
But then, through this young Israelite girl whom the Arameans had taken captive and had become the servant of Naaman’s wife, Naaman hears about this prophet in Israel who could heal him of his leprosy. And so with the king’s permission and a letter from the king of Aram to the King of Israel, Naaman heads off to Israel so that he might be healed. The King of Israel initially relents, in fact he tears his clothes, because he really doesn’t understand what is going on.
But then Elisha, the man of God asks the king to send Naaman his way. Now understand, Elisha was no little known prophet. This was not some obscure unknown and unaccomplished prophet. He was the heir apparent to Elijah and he inherited a double portion of Elijah’s wonder-working ability. This would have been very well known, as well as the fulfillment of the prophecy that Elisha delivered at Mt Carmel which meant Israel’s relief from great drought and consequently victory over the Moabites.
But Naaman does not appear to be too impressed with this. Elisha sends a messenger to Naaman and tells Naaman to go and wash in the Jordan seven times and his flesh shall be restored. But rather than humbly submitting himself to this word from God’s prophet, he gets angry. He gets angry because Elisha does not come out to greet Naaman personally and simply cure his leprosy right there. And then he doesn’t understand why it would be the Jordan that Naaman would tell him to cleanse himself in. He names two rivers in Damascus and says that they would be better suited for this than all the waters in Israel.
Naaman was so singularly focused on himself that he couldn’t see what was going on right before him. He could not see the almighty God and creator of the universe extending out to him a hand of healing and mercy through the word of the prophet Elisha. And so in his short-sightedness Naaman walks away in a rage.
But to this day we struggle with the same short-sightedness and singular self-centered focus that leads to a gross misunderstanding of God and His redemptive and merciful activity. I watched a Youtube video earlier this week where someone was surveying people on what they believed about both Jesus and Christians.
I had some serious disagreement with answers that were given to both questions, but I was troubled by answers to one question more than the other. The first responses that the video shows are the responses to the questions about what people think of Jesus. Now, as you might imagine they were pretty much universally positive. But most of them fell pretty far short of being reflective of a biblical understanding of who Jesus is. I think there were about 10 people questioned and there were only 2 or 3 who referred to Jesus as Savior but I would be willing to wager that they would struggle to be able to articulate just what He saves us from. The rest of them reduced Jesus to being a rebel or a great teacher or one guy even referred to Jesus as a “pretty cool dude.”
Then came the questions about Christians. And this was pretty much universally negative. People answering this question of what they thought of Christians referred to Christians as being “crazy” and “uneducated” and “Bible-thumpers” and many other less than flattering descriptions.
Now, if you have ever been to Youtube and seen the videos there then you may know that below each video they have where people can comment on the videos. Well I read some of the comments on this video and it was a lot of Christians lamenting over what all the people said about Christians. People were commenting, saying that we as Christians need to be nicer and more welcoming and less judgmental.
And while there is certainly some truth to that, the real tragedy in this video is not what people thought of Christians, but rather what they thought of Christ Jesus. I think both sets of responses reflect a shortcoming of the church, but I think the greater shortcoming is that the church has inadequately confessed who Christ Jesus is and what that means for us. And today we have another example of this for today is “Evolution Sunday..”
The church has failed to clearly and boldly confess Christ as the redeemer of all humanity. We have failed to clearly and boldly confess Christ Jesus as the One who bore the penalty of our sin. We have failed to clearly and boldly confess Christ as the One who’s perfect life, death and resurrection saves us from sin, death and the devil. We have failed to clearly and boldly confess Christ Jesus as the only means through which we are able to receive the forgiveness of our sin.
Instead we reduce Jesus to a moral example or a great teacher or someone who helps us to find purpose or some other excuse or rationale that in the end just turns us inward back to ourselves rather than outside ourselves to Christ Jesus and the redemption and forgiveness that He accomplishes on our behalf through His perfect life, death and resurrection. And so it’s no wonder people have these distorted views of who Christ Jesus is. When we insist on seeing and confessing the name of Jesus through our self-focused, inward-turned lens then we very likely end up leaving ourselves and certainly our neighbors in the confusion that Naaman struggled with.
But as Naaman’s story continues we see that God does not desire that we should be left in our confusion and in our misperceptions of who He is and what He has done and is doing for us. For God placed around Naaman, servants who were faithful enough to their Lord to tell their earthly master Naaman that he was in fact mistaken in his perceptions about the word that the Lord had brought to him through the prophet Elisha. The servants simply made it clear that through the word delivered to them by the prophet Elisha the Lord God was reaching out to Naaman with a merciful word of healing, even though on his own Naaman could not see it.
And our gracious God has seen fit to surround you with and surround you around servants also; servants in the form of parents, friends, fellow members of the Body of Christ, pastors, spouses, neighbors all of whom you all called to boldly and clearly confess who Christ is and whose clear and bold confession of Christ you are called to hear and listen to. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus and what He has done for us; dying on the cross for our justification, rising from the dead for our salvation, making of us new creations in Christ. And we receive this through faith, and Paul tells us in Romans that faith comes through hearing and that hearing comes through the Word of Christ.
It is not our Lord’s will that we should walk around in self-focused confusion like Naaman, but rather that we would have the same bold faith that we see in the leper in the Gospel lesson. This leper had true faith. He was not afraid to recognize and acknowledge his impurity. This leper saw Christ Jesus for who He truly is, pure and merciful goodness of God. The leper looked not to his own good works and his own idea of what seemed logical like Naaman did, he looked purely upon Christ and saw Him for what He is. He didn’t even have to ask Jesus if He could make him clean, he boldly said to Jesus “If you choose you could make me clean.”
The fact that he seems to ignore or perhaps didn’t even hear Jesus’ admonition not to tell others about this, is not reason for us to condemn the now former leper. He simply could not hold himself back. He had been freed from anything holding him back in his proclamation of the mercy extended to him in Christ. We see this in Naaman also, for after he finally relents and receives the cleansing Elisha had told him about in the Jordan he can not hold himself back from returning to Elisha and boldly confessing his faith in the one true God.
This is what faith does for you; the faith that you receive in the preaching of the Word and receiving of the sacraments. It enables you to see your Lord Christ Jesus for who He really is; the One who has freed you from the burden of the law, and has saved you from sin, death and the devil. And you have been freed to cast aside whatever holds you back, you don’t have to worry about what people think of you, you have been freed to focus on Christ, and freed to follow the example of the former leper proclaiming freely what Christ has done for you, spilling forth to your neighbor the same faith you have received and continue to receive, freeing them from confusion and misperceptions of who Christ is.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday Feb 8 2009

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
OK, you are really going to want to listen to me this morning. I mean, I always want you to listen to me, especially when I am preaching the Good news, but today I have something to tell you that very likely you have been wondering about for a long time. Maybe you have been taking different classes, reading different books, or just hoping that one day soon, maybe just maybe you would be able to figure this out. Well, worry no more, for today, through the words of my mouth, you are going to hear your purpose. You are going to hear the very reason why you are here in this old world.
Now, to do this of course we will go to God's Word. We will look to our Lord Jesus and see how things unfold in this morning's Gospel lesson, and in this, Christ Jesus will come to you once again and He will reveal to you, your purpose. And so we go to this morning’s lesson, and we see Jesus and the disciples, right on the heels of Jesus rescuing a man from an unclean spirit, which we read about in last week's Gospel lesson.
And now they enter into the home of Simon's mother-in-law who is in bed with a fever. Jesus takes her by the hand and the fever leaves her and upon receiving this good and miraculous gift of healing from Christ Jesus, she could do no other than to serve Jesus and the disciples.
And what we read next is very interesting, for it says that evening they brought to Jesus all who were sick or possessed with demons. The whole city was gathered around the door. He cured many diseases, cast our many demons, would not allow the demons to speak, because the demons knew His name, and Jesus knew that they would try to misuse His name just as the unclean spirit in the synagogue from last week's lesson tried to do.
And then it says in the morning Jesus leaves. Now what's interesting about that is that Jesus appears to have been doing these healings and casting out of demons all night. These people are brought to Him at sundown and we don't read about Him doing anything other than healing and casting out demons until morning, when He goes to a deserted place and prays. And then Jesus leaves even though He is told by Simon and the other disciples that everyone was searching for Him. These people are looking for Jesus, but He leaves.
He leaves so that He can go to the neighboring towns so that He can proclaim His message there also, for that is what He came to do. He had not come merely to heal the sick. He had not come merely to cast out demons. He came to proclaim His message. And how radical this message must have been for it to have taken precedence over healing the sick and casting away demons.
The disciples would have been just fine with sticking around town and continuing to blow people’s minds with the healings and the casting out of demons. For these were things that they could see. These were moments that they could touch. They could see and touch Simon’s mother-in-law after she had been healed. They could see and touch all those who had demons that had been cast out of them.
And the short-sightedness of the disciples is reflected and even continues today in your own short-sightedness. You are much more comfortable holding on to a temporary solution to a temporary problem that only has meaning in this temporary, broken and sin-filled world, than you are trusting an eternal promise that comes to you through a Word proclaimed to you that you hear through the proclamation of the Holy Spirit coming to you through the words of a sinful preacher.
Jesus’ promised return in glory sounds good, but you want something now, that you can see, taste touch and feel. And so you look to Jesus to give you your best life right now. But this is not what it means to be in Christ.
For this One who came healing and casting out demons, left because He has much bigger things in mind for His people. Christ Jesus does not come merely to renew your life or even merely to transform your life. He comes to give you new life. And it is new life that comes not through a new law or through better and improved moral precepts. It does not come through good advice. It comes through death.
For as surely as, in baptism you have been buried with Christ in a death like His, when He laid down His life for you, bearing all of your sin and death and weakness, you will be raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so that you too will walk in the newness of life. And it’s a newness of life that comes to you today, not by sight but by faith; by faith delivered to you through the preaching of God’s Word and the receiving of the sacraments.
And so your purpose, is simply this, to be free. For freedom, Christ has set you free. He has set you free from finding hope in things of this world. He has set you free from the bondage of having to live by sight, and freed you to live by faith. He has freed you to know that it is not in earthly power, wealth and splendor that His strength is revealed. No, quite to the contrary, His strength is made perfect in weakness. Paul tells us in 2nd Corinthians, no matter what the world throws at you, His grace is sufficient for you.
Your best efforts at adhering to the law do nothing to add to what Christ Jesus has already done for you. Christ Jesus has borne the burden of the law for you and any attempt to take that burden upon yourself is nothing other than attempting to reject the freedom which Christ Jesus has already won for you.
And so, in spite of your short-sightedness and your attempts to run from the purpose of freedom that you have been given, Christ Jesus continues to come to you bringing to you the same radical message, the same hope that He brought to those neighboring towns that He had set out for. And it is nothing other than the announcement of the arrival of His kingdom; the Kingdom that comes to you today not in anything of this world that you can see, for Christ Himself says that His kingdom is not of this broken, sinful world.
No, He brings you His Kingdom through a word and a promise that you hear and through which the Holy Spirit brings you faith. He brings you this faith, and nurtures and sustains this faith in you. And this is the kind of faith that frees you to look forward with real hope to a real future with real promise in a real Messiah and real Savior.
Hear the words of Isaiah from the first lesson, this One who frees you gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. For it is not those who live in the burden of sight trying to find a Savior on their own terms that they can see and touch, but rather you who live in the freedom of faith, listening and hearing a word of promise and waiting for the Lord who renews your strength and who shall mount up with wings like eagles and run and not be weary and shall walk and not faint.
And so now, that you know that your purpose is to be free from the burden of sin, death, the devil and the law, what are you to do with your freedom? Well if we take Paul at his word in this weeks 2nd lesson then, in our freedom we are to make ourselves slaves to all, so that we might win more of them. But we also must remember what Paul says at the beginning of this week’s lesson “That if we proclaim the Gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!”
In other words we have been freed to be slaves to the Gospel. We have been freed to go forth and continue to proclaim the radical message that Jesus set out to bring to those neighboring towns; the announcement of the coming near of His Kingdom, the announcement of the forgiveness of sin through Christ Jesus laying down His life for us, and the announcement of our salvation through His resurrection. And in this also, we live by faith and not by sight. Having been grasped by the Gospel and given saving faith in the Gospel through the Holy Spirit, you have been freed to go forth proclaiming the radical message of the Gospel, looking forward to the hope that lies in the future, not looking for visible signs but trusting the Word, trusting the Holy Spirit to create, nurture and sustain faith, and continue to free people for the very purpose of their freedom in the Gospel, the freedom for which Christ has set them free.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday Feb 1, 2009

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Gospel lesson for this morning speaks of Jesus entering into this synagogue and teaching. And it says that the people in the synagogue were astounded at His teaching because He taught them as One having authority, and not as the scribes.
The scribes were generally understood as being those who were called upon to teach from the scriptures. But the teaching of the scribes had basically just become a discourse in borrowing from one fallible source after another, one scribe quoting another scribe, maybe asking a few questions with little to no deference to scripture. One resource that I use in studying the texts described the teaching of the scribes as “…trying to draw water from a broken cistern.” They were trying to deliver the Word of God from human authorities.
But Jesus drew from Himself, the fountain of living waters, as it says in Jeremiah 2:13. Not only did His teaching have the authority that the scribes lacked but He was the authority. Jesus didn’t come merely speculating and philosophizing, He came teaching with authority, bringing a Word that cut right to the heart.
It’s no wonder that they were astounded at His teaching. For many of them, it was probably the first time they had ever heard the Word of God as it is revealed in scripture, and for those who had heard it before, certainly they had never heard it presented to them with anywhere near the same authority and clarity. Jesus came with the authoritative Word of God that convicts us of our sin, and comforts us with the Gospel.
And then, we see this man with an unclean spirit, crying out to Jesus “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Something very interesting about this is that Mark writes “Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.” It doesn’t say, “Just then a man with an unclean spirit came into the synagogue.” It says that he was already there. This unclean spirit had already been there and been exposed to the teaching of the scribes, for who knows how long, and it didn’t phase him.
But then along comes One who not only teaches with authority from God, but is the manifestation of that authority, He is God incarnate and the Word of God made flesh. He comes bringing the Kingdom and new life.
And now, the unclean spirit knows that this One who has burst upon the scene, teaching with authority poses a threat to what he is trying to do. As long as the scribes continued to drone on and on with their man-made precepts and rules and pointless speculation, then the unclean spirit was fine and wasn’t going to make waves. But when he was confronted with teaching that was validated by authority from God and not merely human knowledge, then the unclean spirit had to attack.
And so the unclean spirit tries to cast doubt on the authority with which Jesus teaches by saying “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” He tries to present Jesus as a threat who has come to destroy them. But, Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit by telling him first to be silent, and then He tells the unclean spirit to leave the man.
This shows just how completely powerless we are to the deception of sin and the devil, without Christ Jesus. Even the unclean spirit knew who Jesus was, while the people in the synagogue did not appear to know who He was. They were astonished by the Word that Jesus brought them, but it was only the unclean spirit who was able to identify Jesus for who He is; the Holy One of God. But it proved to be his undoing because Jesus recognized the unclean spirit also and so He silenced him and then ordered him out of the person whom he had possessed.
But the attacks of sin and the devil continue today. The fact that the unclean spirit sat idly by for who knows how long shows us that the devil is not looking to try to get people to worship him, but rather he is simply looking to get people to not repent and believe upon Jesus, and specifically what He has done for you in His perfect life, death, and resurrection. The devil only wants to attack your faith, if your faith is in Christ Jesus.
And so the attacks continue. To this day, the name of Jesus is portrayed as being one that destroys and divides. And His promise of salvation is cast aside for matters of social justice. The attacks of sin and the devil continue as the gospel of salvation by faith in Christ alone is replaced by a more “relevant” gospel of being purpose-driven, or having your best-life now.
And it’s delusion and deception that we are all willing to buy into; because it’s more convenient. It’s more convenient because it takes our focus off of the very thing that Christ Jesus came to free us from; the bondage to sin that we are all born into. It’s delusion and deception that seem to free us, not only from having to confront our own sin, but the sin of our neighbor.
There is a scene in the biographical movie about Martin Luther that came out a few years ago called Luther that really reflects what’s going in today’s gospel lesson. It’s pretty early on in the film. Luther is still a monk at this point and is convinced that if he works hard enough he can actually be perfectly obedient to God’s law. But what happens is actually quite the opposite. The harder he works at it, the more he realizes just what a sinner he is. In other words, the more he relies on God’s law, the more he is just driven further and further into despair until finally all he can do is cry out to his mentor Johann Staupitz “Where can I find a gracious God?”
And does Staupitz reply with a bunch of questions for Luther to reflect on? Does he give him seven steps to figuring this out? Does he tell him first he has to find his purpose? No, he takes off a cross that he was wearing around his neck, gives it to Luther and tells him “Look to Christ.” That is how you find a gracious God, look to Christ.
You see, the problem with making the gospel about purpose or, social justice, or advice for daily living or anything other than our salvation coming through the perfect life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, is that ultimately that just turns us back to ourselves. And that is just law. It may not be hell-fire and brimstone but it has the same effect in that it gets us looking not to Christ but to our best efforts, and our good works which scripture tells us are as filthy rags. For no amount of purpose or social justice from your best efforts can overcome the power of sin and death in your life.
And so we look outside of ourselves to the Triune God of scripture, as the apostle Paul tells the people of Corinth to do in the second lesson; God the Father from whom all things are made and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. And now as we remember the Sabbath, once again Christ Jesus comes to you through the Holy Spirit bringing to you an authoritative Word of promise, bringing not a bunch of questions but real hope, real forgiveness of real sin, real redemption from real guilt, real salvation from real death. And in a few moments you will come forward and receive the real and bodily presence of Christ Jesus in the bread and the wine; His real body given for you, His real blood shed for you, saving you from the very real sin, death and the devil.
For you see, the same Christ Jesus who appeared in that synagogue and commanded the unclean spirit to be silent and come out of the one whom he had possessed, comes to you with His Word spoken over you at your baptism, silencing the devil and relinquishing any claim that the devil ever had on you. And it’s nothing short of that going on as Christ Jesus comes to you daily in Word and sacrament.
And so you have been freed from the burden of having to fumble around looking for purpose or your best-life now. You are free to focus not on yourself but on Christ and your neighbor, loving and serving them in Word and deed, taking care that this liberty of your’s does not become a stumbling block to the weak, but a means to share with them the good news that this Christ Jesus commands even the unclean spirits and they obey Him.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday January 25, 2009

Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news. This is what Jesus comes proclaiming to the people of Galilee in this morning’s Gospel lesson. And indeed this week, there has been much suggestion that now, with the inauguration of President Barack Obama we are entering a new day, filled with a new hope and change we can believe in.
Over the past several months we have heard much about the troubled state of our nation’s economy. We have heard how our national debt has grown to a degree, the likes of which we have never seen. We have seen the inauguration, we have seen the celebrations. We have seen all of the celebrities supporting our new president. We have seen and even perhaps heard iconic music artists performing at the inauguration and some of the parties connected to it. Yeah, we seem to be entering some sort of new day filled with hope.
Jesus announces the coming of the kingdom of God. And it seems this week we sort of welcomed a new “king.” Could this ‘new day’ that we are entering be a sign of the kingdom of God?? Judging by some of the coverage and reaction to this event, some may think so. But, when we look at the lesson from 1st Corinthians this morning we see that through the words of Paul, our Lord gives us reason to not be so quick to think so.
Now I am not trying to rain on anybody’s parade or downplay the historical significance of the first African-American president. And I am not trying to display any sort of partisanship. I hope and pray, and am cautiously optimistic that President Obama will do well and bring positive and fruitful change to our nation.
But again, in our second lesson, our Lord comes to us with a Word that tells us that the final fulfillment of the coming of the kingdom of God, the day when Christ returns and the old will be done away with and all things will be made new will be marked by events that actually look quite a bit different from all the pomp and splendor that we have seen this past week.
For Paul says that the day of the Lord, when Christ returns will be a day when those who deal with the world should live as though they had no dealings with it. Paul says that the present form of this world is passing away.
This is how the kingdom of God comes among us; not with great pomp and splendor, not with earthly power and earthly glory, not with great celebration. No, the coming of the kingdom of God is marked by the present form of this world passing away. The kingdom of God does not come merely to improve the world we live in, it does not come to boost our economy, or to fix our health care crisis, or to end what some politicians might describe as ‘torture.’
The kingdom of God does not come merely to fix this world. The kingdom of God comes, quite literally to replace this world. The kingdom of God comes, to make all things new. The complete fulfillment of the kingdom of God is the all things new that we wait for. The kingdom of God is among us today when we are gathered together in faith around God’s Word and sacrament, but we also await it’s complete fulfillment when the old will be done away with and all things will be made new.
This is what some refer to as living in the now and the not yet. The kingdom is here when God’s people are gathered in faith around God’s Word and sacraments, but we also still live in the old world, in the midst of sin and the devil. Yes, we still live in the midst of sin and the devil. When you wake up in the morning, it’s right there with you; sin and the devil. When you go to work, it’s right there with you; sin and the devil. When you have lunch, it’s right there with you; sin and the devil. When you go to sleep at night, it’s right there with you; sin and the devil. And even in the midst of all the hope and splendor of a new president, who has rightly called on us to do our part, but still has promised to improve the lives of so many people, even in the midst of all the hope a new president; it’s right there with us, sin and the devil.
And so our Lord continually calls us to Himself, so as to constantly keep us focused on Him as we still live in the midst of the attacks of sin and the devil, and as we daily give in to the temptations that sin and the devil throw our way. Still our Lord constantly call us back to Himself.
This is what our Lord was doing for the Ninevites through the Word that he brought to them through the prophetic message delivered to them through Jonah. He was calling them to repent by warning them that in forty days more Nineveh would be overthrown. And, much to the surprise of the stubborn Jonah, they repented.
They repented. It says that they proclaimed a fast and everyone put on sackcloth. By the way, anytime you hear about someone, in the Old Testament, putting on sackcloth, more than likely that refers to someone repenting. In verse 8, it says that they turned from their evil ways and the violence that was in their hands. But, most importantly, the first thing it says that they did, is that they believed.
They believed the word delivered to them by God through the prophet Jonah. They believed that God was angry at them. They believed that God would overthrow Nineveh. They didn’t worry about how politically incorrect what Jonah was saying to them sounded. They didn’t argue with Jonah that he was presenting to them an image of God that didn’t jive with their pre-conceived notions of God. They simply believed the word of condemnation, as harsh is it may have seemed to them, that Jonah was delivering to them. The Ninevites recognized and acknowledged that they had sinned against God, and so they repented.
They repented and God changed His mind about the calamity that He was going to bring upon them. There is no embarrassment to the Old Testament that it says that God changed His mind. God was simply being faithful to His nature and His promise. He was simply staying true to who He is; the Almighty Creator of the universe who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He is simply showing the mercy and grace that He promises to show to those who would repent and believe upon Him.
And we see the ultimate revelation of this grace and mercy, not in the great political leaders that God would put into power over the years, not through economic prosperity, but through the forgiveness of our sin in Christ Jesus our Lord, when He laid down His life for us on the cross and took upon Himself all of our sin, paying the price that we could not pay.
And so, like He called the Ninevites to repentance through a very stubborn and sinful Jonah, our Lord calls you to repentance, today through the words of my mouth and daily also through the Holy Spirit in God’s Word.
But where the Ninevites repented in hopes of God’s mercy, we are called to repent in the promise of God’s mercy and forgiveness fulfilled for us in Christ Jesus. We repent, not to our good works, but to our knees at the foot of cross where we see God’s mercy and the forgiveness of our sin. Right there on the cross, we see the present form of earthly power and earthly glory passing away, so as to make way for God’s glory in mercy and forgiveness.
And so we know that God is faithful and keeps His promises as He did in the arrival of Christ Jesus and the forgiveness of our sin and our justification that comes through His perfect life, death and resurrection. Christ Jesus’ arrival marked the coming near of the kingdom of God. And so through His faithfulness already fulfilled we know that we can trust that He will faithfully fulfill His promised return when the present form of this world will pass away, and all things will be made new and the Kingdom of God will be completely fulfilled and we will have a place in it for all eternity.
And so, having been redeemed and forgiven He comes to us daily calling us to repentance and forgiveness. And so all we can do is live our lives focused first on the cross of Christ, where in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross for us, we find our life and forgiveness, and then having been freed to take the focus away from our needs we are freed to focus on the needs of our neighbor, bringing to them the hope and forgiveness in word and deed that we have in the real One, Christ Jesus who has made us new by bringing us faith in Him and what He has done for us and who will make all things new in the midst of the passing away of the present form of this old world.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday January 18, 2009

Second Sunday after Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today I would like to dispel for you a myth that has been perpetuated at least since the earliest days of the Church and probably long before that also. And this is the myth that the God of the Bible, the God who created the universe, the God who sent His Son to lay down His life for us and take upon Himself the burden of all of our sins is not inclusive. Now it is somewhat timely that I bring this up with the presidential inauguration coming up this week.
I am sure that some, if not all of you have heard about the controversy surrounding soon to be President Barrack Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. If any of you are not familiar with Rick Warren, he is the pastor of a very large megachurch in southern California and the author of a very successful book called The Purpose-Driven Life. Initially it was member’s of the homosexual community who were primarily upset at the selection of Warren because of Warren’s support of proposition 8 in California which upheld the traditional, and biblical understanding of marriage.
But now, atheists are getting in on the act. And they are not upset so much that Warren was selected but that there should be an invocation, which is basically an opening prayer. But, conceding that there is going to be an invocation, the atheists are now saying “Well he better not mention Jesus’ name.” Because they believe that if he did, then anyone who did not consider themselves a Christian would be left out in the cold or would be excluded.
And there you have it. There is one of the lies and myths that sin and the devil have been trying to fool people into believing for centuries; and that is the myth that the name of Jesus, the name above all names invokes exclusivism or is not inclusive. And actually nothing could be further from the truth. For you see the problem is not that the love of Christ excludes itself from anyone, but rather that we exclude ourselves from the love of Christ.
The truth is that this God whom we run from every day in sin, has been coming after us, seeking to include us in his great and glorious Kingdom since before even the foundation of the world. For the words that the psalmist spoke are true of all of God’s creation; He is acquainted with all our ways, even before a word is on our tongue, He knows it completely, He made each and every one of us, forming our inward parts and knitting us together in our mother’s womb.
We were made in His glorious image and He wanted nothing less for us than His perfect righteousness, and for us to be a part of His glorious kingdom. But we wouldn’t have it. Right from the beginning we showed ourselves to want nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. For being a part of a Kingdom involves submitting oneself to the will of the King, and that is just not something that we are inclined to do.
This One who has searched us and knows us better than we even know ourselves and whose knowledge is far too wonderful for us is the One who we run from every day with even the most seemingly obscure or harmless sinful thought or action. This One whose knowledge is far too vast for us to even begin to try to wrap our minds around is the One whom we show that we think we know better than as we continually and repeatedly try to re-mold and re-fashion His perfect image and His perfect will so as to better accommodate our self-serving desires. And it began when the devil, in the form of a serpent appeared to us and asked “Did God say ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” This is the question which, since the dawn of creation, we have sought to come up with reasons to answer with an emphatic ‘no.’
Even Eli, the teacher and mentor of Samuel who would be one of the great prophets in the history of God’s people, fell short and ignored the iniquity of his sons and so God brought punishment upon the house of Eli. And yet even in the face of the declaration of this judgment as it was pronounced to Eli through the words of Samuel, we see Eli submitting himself to God’s will when he says “It is the Lord; let Him do what seems good to Him.”
And although, as we see in the lesson from Samuel there were times when the Word of the Lord would seem rare, God would not abandon His people. Our Lord would continue to come after us, calling us to Himself, looking to include us in His great and glorious Kingdom.
He would continue to come after us with a Word all the while pointing to the fullness of time when the Word would come to us not merely through the proclamation of a sinful prophet, but incarnate in the flesh, born of a virgin in a manger.
He would come among us, be among us, live among us, live the perfect and sinless life among us and then, though sinless this incarnate One, the Son of God, Christ Jesus would take upon Himself all of our sin born of our desire to be our own gods and reject the One who created us, and He would pay the price for our rejection and rebellion when He laid down His life on the cross for us; not just the rebellion and rejection that we had inflicted upon Him up to that point, but also including the rejection that we inflict upon Him every day, even the rejection of the very ones who persecuted Him.
That is how truly inclusive He is, that as He hung on the cross bleeding and dying He looked down upon those persecutors who rejected Him so violently and offered not a word of condemnation but a word of mercy as He prayed “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
And we get a foreshadowing of this incredible inclusive mercy in today’s Gospel lesson. Nathanael says of Jesus “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael could not believe what Phillip was telling him, that the One whom Moses also wrote about in the law and the prophets, the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, whom Israel was waiting for could possibly come from a backwater town like Nazareth.
But then Jesus sees Nathanael and says of him that he is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. Nathanael had just questioned whether Jesus was in fact who He said He was, and Jesus says of Nathanael that he is a man in whom there is no deceit. And indeed Nathaneal was simply being honest in his assessment that nothing good can come from Nazareth. And so Jesus doesn’t condemn Nathanael or argue with him or try to wow him to prove that Phillip was in fact right, instead he compliments Nathanel. And in this brief little discourse with Jesus, Nathanael sees that in fact something good has come from Nazareth. Jesus breaks through Nathanael’s exterior and makes him reconsider his assumptions and makes him see Jesus for who Jesus is; the Son of God, the King of Israel.
Christ Jesus is radically inclusive. He meets us where we are at, as we are, but He doesn’t leave us there. Nathanael was not the same after his encounter with Christ Jesus. And, the former persecutor of Christ, Paul was not the same after his encounter with Christ Jesus either. Having had his sin exposed to him, like Nathanael Paul realized that Christ Jesus is in fact the Savior and redeemer His disciples said He was and so the persecutor of Christ became the proclaimer of Christ’s promises.
And so you are changed when you encounter Christ in the waters of baptism and you are claimed by Him and cleansed by Him. And He daily comes to you as He is now, bringing you faith through the proclaiming of the Gospel; as the One who bore the burden of your sin calls you, gathers you, enlightens you, sanctifies you and includes you in the promise of His eternal Kingdom.
And so all that is left for us to do is to respond as Eli did in the Old Testament lesson in faith, believing and trusting that what the Lord has done and is doing for you and to you in Christ is good, and so hear the words of Paul the persecutor turned proclaimer “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.” Through faith in Christ, we are included in Christ’s eternal resurrection and have a place in His eternal Kingdom. And it doesn’t get anymore inclusive than that.
Amen

Sunday January 11, 2009

Baptism of the Lord
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anybody who has ever served in the military as an enlisted person has been to boot-camp, and so knows what it’s like to be woken up in the morning by a screaming and yelling drill instructor, at an hour of the morning when most people are still hours away from waking up. And if you haven’t served in the military then you have perhaps seen it in movies like Full-Metal Jacket or some other military-themed movie. Indeed the image of the hard-as-nails drill instructor bursting upon the scene, and bursting into the lives of his young charges is a fairly iconic figure in our culture.
Well that sort of reality is really probably not that different from what it would have felt like to have been an inhabitant of Jersualem at the time of John that Baptist’s arrival upon the scene. This is not to say that the Jews were not expecting or waiting for something. It had been years since the last prophet. Israel had been living under the oppression of corrupt and pagan Rome for many years. They were waiting and waiting for some kind of sign. They were ready for the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to send someone their way. They just were not expecting him to show up like this.
And so, into the chaotic wilderness of an oppressed Israel John the Baptist was sent. The Jews knew of God’s saving power and they remembered it every year at Passover. But now John comes, not simply recalling for them once again the great Passover story, but he comes splashing around in the water inviting them to now be the players in a new and even more radical Passover. John was not simply proclaiming freedom from earthly bondage, he was proclaiming freedom from bondage to sin, death, and the devil. And the path that would get them there would include, and in the case of those whom John was preaching to, begin with repentance.
Repentance is nothing less than the recognition that the sin that we are in bondage to, the sin that we are born in, is far too deeply rooted to be mastered by any outward changes, or any of our best efforts. Contrary to what some may believe, the Kingdom of God does not come about through human will-power or worship or election of a particular political candidate or any other human-driven effort or institution.
The coming of the Kingdom of God comes about only through the forgiveness of sins. Repentance is indeed a part of it, but repentance in and of itself is not the Gospel. The Gospel is the forgiveness of sin through the perfect life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. Repentance is simply the recognition that short of that, there is no hope for us in this world. Repentance is simply the recognition that even on our best day, all of our best efforts amount to nothing more than, as Paul says, filthy rags. Repentance is simply the recognition that we are sinners in need of a Savior.
And this is the difference between the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins that John speaks of and the baptism of the One whom He speaks of who is more powerful than He, Christ Jesus. John’s baptism of repentance was in preparation for the much greater baptism of Christ Jesus who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. John was preparing the way for the coming of the Kingdom. He was announcing the arrival of a radical new royalty.
It has been said that everywhere the queen of England goes she smells fresh paint. In other words whenever the queen decides that she would like to visit a certain community there will always be someone sent to the community ahead of her to announce her intention of visiting and to make sure that all the proper steps are taken to prepare for her arrival. And this will involve cleaning everything up, and making sure everything looks spic and span, which could theoretically and probably involve painting some areas that need to be re-painted, and so everywhere the queen goes she smells fresh paint.
And that is kind of like what John the Baptist is doing. He is announcing the arrival of the new King of Israel. Except in this case, through our best efforts we couldn’t possibly make ourselves clean enough for His arrival. And so all we can do is repent and recognize our need for Him and He comes to us and baptizes us with the Holy Spirit, and He, Christ Jesus makes us clean. He serves us. He makes us new. He gives us new life, by laying down His life for us and taking upon Himself the burden of all of our sin.
And we get a vision of this radical new baptism at the baptism of our Lord Jesus that we read about in this morning’s Gospel lesson. Now it was not necessary for Jesus’ sake that He be baptized, because as the sinless Son of God He was and is righteous. But, as Jesus Himself tells us in Matthew’s recounting of the baptism of our Lord, it was necessary for Jesus to be baptized to fulfill all righteousness, which of course includes the righteousness of the Kingdom of God that comes about through the forgiveness of sins. And because of the precious and holy blood shed upon the Cross and the death that He died for us, we receive in Holy Baptism the same declaration that our Lord Jesus received when the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon the Lord Jesus and the voice of the Lord declared “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
The baptism for repentance that John brings comes as an invitation, while the baptism with the Holy Spirit that was ushered in with the baptism of Christ Jesus comes as an invasion of the entire Godhead; the Son Christ Jesus entering into our humanity and submitting Himself to baptism, the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ Jesus and through the Holy Spirit; God the Father declaring His good pleasure in His Son. This is why those disciples in the lesson from Acts had to have Paul lay his hands on them; because they had not yet received the baptism in Christ Jesus. The fact that they spoke in tongues is certainly a sign of the righteousness that they had just received, but it was not the righteousness itself, as some like to suggest.
And today we see God invading us once again as He comes to us through the words proclaimed by me, an imperfect sinner and the water sprinkled over Parker’s head as yet another child of God is claimed for the Kingdom of Christ. But we still await the day when all righteousness will be fulfilled, when all things will be made new and so for that reason our Lord sees fit to surround those whom He claims in the waters of Holy Baptism with parents and sponsors and a congregation.
For the Christian life or baptismal journey or whatever you want to call it is nothing other than one of daily repentance and forgiveness. And so the invasion of God to us that we read about in this morning’s Gospel lesson continues as our Lord comes to us daily through Word and sacrament and this happens in and through those people whom our Lord blesses us with in our lives; parents, sponsors, congregation, the entire Body of Christ.
Everybody loves a good baptism. I do. I’ll admit it. And what’s not to like? You got a baby, you got new parents. You got grandparents and sponsors and family coming in from out of town. It’s a joyous and festive occasion. But I tell you this, there is much more going in baptism than a ceremony. In baptism we see nothing short of the continuation of what we have seen the Almighty God doing since the beginning of time; separating the light from the darkness as we see Him doing in the Old Testament lesson.
For when our Lord Jesus was baptized He was essentially revealed as the light of the world in opposition to the darkness of sin, death and the devil. And so when He comes to us in the waters of baptism He takes us through the darkness of sin and death and brings us into the light of new and eternal life. And so if the call to daily repentance seems jarring ad disturbing, rest easy knowing that it is simply the Lord Christ Jesus rescuing you from the darkness and preserving, nurturing and sustaining you in the eternal light of His glorious Kingdom.
Amen