Sermon for the Feast of St. Luke, October 18, 2015

Text: Isaiah 35:5-8 and Luke 10:1-9

            Beloved in Christ: Doctors! Who needs them? You go and sit in the waiting room until they get back from their golf game. Then you are invited back to a room where you are told to put on this gown you can’t quite tie in the back. Meanwhile, the staff turns down the thermostat to 55 degrees. Then in walks the doctor with a stethoscope that has been in the freezer for the last 24 hours. They place it on your chest and tell you to breathe—as if you needed any incentive after feeling the cold metal on your chest. They draw blood and tap your knees. Then at the end of the visit they hand you a list of prescriptions that you can ill afford. So who needs doctors?

            We might feel the same about the spiritual medicine practiced by Luke as he doubles as a physicians of the soul as well as of the body. At least Luke wasn’t out on the golf course while his patients were waiting. But in his writings (Luke and Acts) he uses the law to poke and prod our souls, which makes us uncomfortable. We are diagnosed with a horrible spiritual condition, for we are selfish people who rebel against God and think little about our neighbors and their needs. The only salve that can cure our condition is beyond our ability to afford. So what good is it to have someone give this diagnosis?

            But a good diagnosis is important. Yes, there must also be a cure, and we’ll get to it soon enough, but we need to welcome the diagnosis for what it is: a valuable insight in how we are really functioning so that we can deal with reality rather than fantasy. And there’s a lot of denial out there. People talk about the world getting better all the time. Well, in many ways our lives are more comfortable than they were a half century ago. But in other ways we haven’t improved at all and in fact have gotten worse. Therefore, we have to learn to confess that we are broken and ill—and live in a broken and ill world.

            How bad is it? Look at how Isaiah describes it in today’s Old Testament reading. We live in a world where people suffer from debilitating conditions such as blindness, deafness, and paralysis—and even far worse medical conditions. In the physical world around us we see uninhabitable wildernesses and otherwise beautiful places scarred by drought. We try to build beautiful cities and make something of ourselves, only to see that eventually they become “the haunt of jackals” and wild beasts. Even worse, wickedness flourishes. Wickedness even wants to travel on the Highway of Holiness, and in this world often seems to do so successfully, as hypocrisy reigns.

            But what’s worse is the fact that the problem isn’t just “out there.” It is “in here,” too. We bear in our bodies all sorts of frailties. Even those of us who are in relatively good health now have to acknowledge the injuries and diseases we’ve had over the years. And once you get out of your twenties you start seeing that the body doesn’t bounce back quite the way it once did. You start developing chronic conditions, even if you learn how to live with them. You see that it isn’t just the people out there who are wicked, but that you too have a heart that goes astray. You are a cesspool of envy, anger, greed, lust, pride, and any other selfish attitude that you can muster. If one of those vices doesn’t appeal to you, another one most certainly will. And so in body and soul we are sick, and so is the whole creation.

            Furthermore, this was not the way it was meant to be. We just assume that getting older means suffering more pain or at least wearing out. But that is not the case. God created a beautiful world and designed people to live forever. We are the ones who have messed it up beyond repair.

            Well, that is the diagnosis. What about the cure? Well, there is one, but you cannot afford it, and you wouldn’t be able to endure the treatment. You see, if we suffered in hell, we could make up the damage we have done to ourselves, others, and all creation. But, unfortunately, people who suffer in hell just get more and more obstinate, more and more defiant against God, and so they don’t get better in the long run. If anything, they get worse. (That explains why hell lasts for eternity.) So we are not able to afford the cure on our own or endure the treatment.

            Fortunately, we have a Great Physician, who has come to heal us in body and soul and at His own expense rather than ours. He started the healing process by taking on our human flesh Himself. He wasn’t tainted by our sin, but in every other respect He was like us. He grew tired, became hungry, and experienced every other frailty of humanity that we are likely to encounter. Then, when He began His earthly ministry, He made a point of healing many people and bringing order to a disorderly creation. He made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the paralyzed to walk. He even raised the dead. He calmed the winds and the waves and was undeterred by the wild beasts when He was in the wilderness. Granted, those victories over death, disease, and disorder were temporary. Eventually, the people whom He healed or raised would succumb to some other disease or to plain old age and die. But already in His earthly ministry He wanted people to get a taste of what He was about.

            Then He submitted Himself to the greatest injuries and frailties a human being could know: He was beaten and then crucified, all while bearing the guilt of mankind. He experienced Himself being ripped apart, as He was torn from fellowship with His Father and His body and soul were sundered. But because He bore our sins and paid their penalty and because He went into death and the grave, He was able to deal with these worst enemies of mankind. Then He rose from the dead so that He could impart life where death reigned, healing where disease held sway, and forgiveness where sin and guilt had dominated.

            We have to wait until the Day of Resurrection to experience that healing in full. Only then will Isaiah’s vision be completely true. But already the basis for that resurrection life has been established. Our sins even now have been completely forgiven. We know the troubles we have gotten into because of our bitter and broken heart, but God has forgiven those sins that flow from it. More than that, He puts a real heart in us that knows God and His love. Even if the rest of the world around us remains the same, we have been given a new heart—a heart where the forgiveness of sins is what we see life as being all about. We begin to delight in fellowship with God, even if we are not yet quite as holy as we will be when we go to be with the Lord. And that new heart makes a difference in the way we handle other people and the world that God created.

            All this comes free of charge. It is a cure that we cannot obtain on our own, but one that is offered freely to us. But what good is a cure if nobody knows about it or is offered it? Think of how in the Third World there are dozens of diseases—from rickets to malaria, from cleft palates to tetanus—that can be easily treated or prevented by modern medicine. But there are still millions of people around the world who suffer from these conditions because they don’t have access to these treatments. That is why there are all sorts of charitable organizations that try to bring the healing power of modern medicine to those who need it. In the same way, the gospel is a very simple yet powerful cure for what ails us most. But how is it going to reach those who need it most?

            Christ commissioned first His twelve apostles and then seventy-two other disciples to bring the healing message of the gospel to every place in Galilee and Judea that they could get to. He still commissions pastors to preach this word and He sends out every Christian to their neighbors to bring the good news of Christ to those who need to hear it. These people are all spiritual physicians under the Great Physician, our Lord Jesus Christ.

            And so we come back to considering Luke. He was a physician by training, but was used by God to write a little over a quarter of the New Testament. The blurb about Luke in today’s bulletin suggests that he was one of the seventy-two. That is the first time I encountered that idea. Usually people suggest that he came from Antioch in Syria or was the Macedonian man that Paul saw in his vision before heading to Europe. And so I am a bit dubious that he was one of the seventy-two. Nonetheless, he was like the seventy-two in this respect: he was not an apostle and yet was called to carry out a similar evangelistic task. I am sure that he still used his medical craft to heal people in their bodies, but he saw that he had an additional calling, namely, to care for people’s souls and heal them with the gospel.

            Consequently, we shouldn’t dismiss Luke as one more quack, but honor him as a wise doctor—of the soul as well as of the body. We should hear his message of hope and healing. We should enjoy the new creation that God brings about in us through the gospel preached by Luke and others. And we should be quick to point others to our Great Physician, by whom alone we have perfect healing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost 20 (Proper 23B), October 11, 2015

Text: Amos 5:6-7, 10-15; Mark 10:17-22

            Beloved in Christ, the Israelites in the Old Testament reading and the rich man in the Gospel had this in common: they were called to walk in paths of great righteousness, but in the end they walked away. They couldn’t bear the particular burden that God was setting before them. And so they simply walked away.

            Both the Israelites in the Old Testament reading and the rich man in the Gospel thought of themselves as pious people of God. If you read Amos carefully, you see that he was writing to the church-going people of northern Israel. Yes, there were Baal worshippers around in that society, but Amos didn’t address them. Nowhere did he excoriate the Israelites for worshipping Baal. Instead, he looked specifically at the people who were worshipping the LORD God at Bethel. They thought of themselves as good people. After all, their king’s ancestor had gotten rid of much of the Baal worship in the land and reinstituted many good laws that had fallen into disuse. They faithfully brought their sacrifices to the LORD and thought that they would inherit eternal life.

The Prophet Amos
Gustav Doré

            But God was deeply displeased with them. It boiled down to the way that they perverted justice. They saw that the poor often had no one to stand up for them and were not articulate. The poor didn’t know the ins and the outs of the law. It was easy to hoodwink them. And those who did justified it all as socially acceptable. If their customers were too stupid to realize that they were putting their thumbs on the scale or mixing a little of the chaff with the wheat, that was too bad for them. Buyer, beware! And if their customers were going through some misfortune, that just gave the merchants all the more power to drive a hard bargain and get what they wanted cheaply. They didn’t think it was a matter of right or wrong. It was just plain business.

            But God called them to be more righteous. He asked them to do one simple thing: stop bullying the weak and the poor. God didn’t command Amos to preach that the Israelites should give alms to the poor. That is found elsewhere in Scripture, but not in Amos. Instead, he makes an even simpler request: don’t oppress the poor; that is, don’t be unfair in your dealings just because you are more powerful than they. It was a simple request, but the Israelites couldn’t do it. They were disheartened by what Amos said and “went away sorrowful, for [they] had great possessions”—and that was all that mattered to them. A generation later they went away in exile, never to return to the land of Israel again.

            Nearly eight centuries later a rich man came on the scene. He had devoted himself to great acts of piety. He had tried never to break any of the commandments. In fact, when Jesus rattled them off, he couldn’t think of any that he had ever broken. He had always been a well-behaved child. He had never committed a felony or even a misdemeanor. Sure, he longed to do something even greater for God, but it certainly wouldn’t be something too difficult, given how well schooled in piety he was.

            And at first it looked as if Jesus agreed. Jesus told him, “You lack one thing.” It was just one thing, one simple little thing. “That’s great,” the man must have thought. “I’ve done 99% of the work; now all I have to do is this 1% remaining. Easy-peasy. Go ahead, Jesus tell me what it is.” And Jesus replied: “Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” If he were a man of great piety, as he professed, it would not have been a problem, for he would have known that our Lord is the greatest treasure of all. But instead we are told that “disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” Two simple requests to live righteously—and neither the Israelites in Amos’s day nor the rich man in the Gospel can fulfill those requests.

            Would we? Do we find it easy to treat those weaker than ourselves with the respect that they deserve? Isn’t it easier to take advantage of them? Sometimes we can do this rather crassly, as when bullies beat up or pick on their marks, or when con artists run a scam. Other times we do it more subtly, such as when we push and shove our way to the top at work. And if we have a hard time saying no to that type of unjust behavior, how would we ever heed our Lord’s call to put Him above all things? We are tempted to be disheartened by what our Lord has said and to go away sorrowful.

            But our Lord hints in today’s Gospel that He wants us to look at this question in a deeper way. The man approached Jesus as one good man coming to consult another. To be sure, Jesus would have been a tad wiser, since He is the “Good Teacher,” but the man assumed that it was a meeting of like minds. But Jesus asked him to consider the matter more deeply. If Jesus is the Good Teacher—and He is—then He must be true God, for “no one is good except God alone.” And so we are invited to consider how this is so.

            Amos had said that a hallmark of piety was not being unjust to the poor. Our Lord took that a step further and allowed Himself to be treated unjustly. Not only did He not harm others, He also allowed Himself to be condemned unfairly. His enemies took advantage of His silence. When He refused to stand up for Himself, they beat Him. When He stood humbly before Pilate, they clamored for His death. And Pilate figured a little injustice was an acceptable price to pay for peace and quiet in his realm.

            But we shouldn’t think of our Lord as just a victim who got swept away by circumstances beyond His control. He actively chose this route of obedience. For the very things He commanded of the rich man He embraced Himself. The rich man was not being completely truthful when he said that he had kept the commandments from his youth. He may have refrained from gross violations of them, but he had not kept his heart pure from anger, lust, greed, envy, and rebellion. But Christ had kept all those commandments perfectly. He did so because He delighted in righteousness and because He wanted to live the completely holy life that we and the rich man and every other human being have been unable to live.

            But Christ knew that couldn’t be the end of it. It wasn’t enough just to live a pious life Himself. And so He took everything that He had and gave it away to us poor human beings, who had no spiritual riches of our own. He emptied Himself of every right and privilege that He had as the Son of God. Instead, He humbled Himself to the point of being grabbed by a mob and then led to the cross after a couple of show trials. But He did this, not so that He would “have treasure in heaven,” but rather so that we would. And so Jesus walked away. But He didn’t walk away from God, as the Israelites and the rich man did. Instead, He walked away from all His prerogatives and went on the lonely path to the cross. And because He did so we have all the treasure of heaven.

            What does this mean? It means that we are completely forgiven. All the times we have behaved like jerks to the people who were weaker than us; all the times we have thrown our weight around rather than serve humbly; all the times we have clung to our wealth and power rather than yield to God and His kingdom—all these things have been forgiven. You have been set free. You are God’s beloved children because Christ has paid the price for you to become so.

            So what do we do now? We stop asking silly questions such as “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Have you considered how stupid that question is? What do you have to do to inherit anything? Nothing. The person leaving you the inheritance has to do all the hard work of setting up the will and the even harder work of dying. What must we do to inherit eternal life? Nothing. Christ has died for us and has left us in His will.

            Instead we simply treasure the gift that God has given us. We “seek the Lord and live.” We enjoy the forgiveness of sins that He has already given us. And we enjoy the new life and fellowship we have with Him. As part of that new life, we will take seriously the call to put Him first—above all our material possessions and everything else we treasure. Because we delight in Him, we learn to “seek good and not evil.” In fact, we learn to “hate evil and love good” so that we can “establish justice” wherever people need our help. All of these things simply flow from the gifts that God has given us.

            Because Christ has not walked away from us, we are not disheartened and therefore we should not walk away from Him. In Jesus’s name. Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost 19 (Proper 22B), October 4, 2015

Text: Mark 10:2-16

            Beloved in Christ, oh, my! We have to talk about marriage, divorce, sex, and all that. Couldn’t we have a root canal instead? Anyone with half a brain knows that these are topics where the old-fashioned views of the church run completely counter to the way that our society thinks. Maybe we do believe in the old-fashioned ways, but we may find it uncomfortable to talk about our beliefs because we know how out of whack we are with the majority of people in this country and even with our loved ones. Or maybe we’re tired of hearing “No” all the time and we are glad that the Sexual Revolution occurred so that we can go and do our own thing. Or maybe we’re somewhere in between. We realize that our world has become quite scuzzy and we don’t entirely approve, but we don’t want to be complete prudes either. We want to give in just a little bit and compromise with the world. So, no, we won’t pick up strangers at a bar—that would be skanky—but maybe we could still do some things that an older generation would have disapproved of, such as living together without being married, as long as we are committed to each for a time.

            Even in traditional circles, marriage and sex are a mess. No one can feel quite comfortable that their lives and our Lord’s words will line up. And so we wish that the topic would just be swept underneath the rug. But the truth of the matter is that Jesus was asked about it and He talked about it—and so we have to, as well, at least if we are covering all the topics important to our Lord. Now I acknowledge that the Christian message is about something more than sex and marriage. That is why most of my sermons are about other topics. Nonetheless, the Christian message does have something to say about sex and marriage, and we do well to listen to it. Furthermore, we do so as God’s beloved children whom He has redeemed through Christ Jesus. Even when we are reminded of our sins in this area, we still hear our Lord’s words, for He is our Savior. And so, come like the little children who were brought to Jesus to be held in His arms. Let Him embrace you even as He tells you about this difficult topic.

            I would like to do three things in this sermon. First, I would like to look at what Jesus has to say about marriage and where He gets His ideas on that topic. Next I would like to look at the practical reasons for this law. And finally I would like to show how this commandment relates to the gospel, the good news of the forgiveness of our sins.

            So what does Jesus have to say about marriage and where does He get His ideas? You have to acknowledge that our Lord is quite traditional on this matter. Some people like to portray Jesus as being very loosey-goosy with the law and that it was only later Christians who formulated rigid rules. But that view doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, at least not on matters of sex and marriage. In His day Jews were divided over to what extent divorce was permitted. Some argued for a no-fault divorce; they believed that any reason was a good enough reason for the divorce to occur. Others took the same line as Jesus: divorce was permitted only when something like adultery had negated the marriage vows. They acknowledged that Moses permitted divorce if a man found a fault with a woman, but they understood the “fault” to refer to something like adultery.

            But where does Jesus get His ideas? He goes back to the Scriptures. He starts with the Books of Moses, as did His opponents. But His opponents looked only at the civil law given to Israel. And that was the wrong place to start. You see, the civil law always deals with people as they are, while trying to bring a degree of order into the midst of chaos. God knew that if there were no divorce, wives would either be murdered by their husbands or would be unceremoniously dumped and forced to fend for themselves. It was better that civil society allow for a woman to be divorced legally so that she could get remarried. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than the alternatives. But Christians don’t get their morality from the civil law, but from the eternal, unchanging moral law. We don’t ask, “Is it legal?” but rather, “Is it moral?” The state can pass all sorts of laws it wants, permitting all sorts of bad behaviors, but that doesn’t mean Christians will do those evil deeds.

            Instead, we go back to the very moral foundations that God laid. Before God commands anything, He first gives us a good gift. The commandments are simply an explanation about how to use that gift. God first created a physical world with stunning beauty and immense natural resources. And then He said such things as “Have dominion over it, that is, be a steward of it” and “Don’t steal, that is, don’t take for yourselves a portion of creation that you have no right to manage.” The same thing happens with marriage. God first of all created human beings to be male and female. He did this so that human beings would not be alone and also so that they could partake in His blessing of being fruitful and multiplying. Eve was taken out of Adam. The two of them were meant to be that close to each other. Therefore, it would have been entirely inappropriate for Adam to dump Eve or vice versa, for they were one flesh. And even though men do not marry a woman taken out of their ribs anymore, the same principle still holds true: in marriage we are given someone as dear to us as our own flesh and blood.

            So that is what Jesus teaches and where He got that idea. But God’s law is always practical. There are always good reasons for anything that God commands, even when it seems not to be the case at first glance. We expect there to be good reasons why God wants sexual intercourse to be confined to marriage, and married couples to be faithful to each other and not to divorce except for the gravest of reasons. You could state the matter quite simply by saying God wants families to be stable households. This is especially for the sake of children. After all, whenever there is sex, there is always the possibility of children being born as a result. Children need a mom and a dad, living in the household and interacting daily with them. Yes, there may be other men and women in the children’s lives, but there is nothing like having a mom and a dad doing the intense parenting work. You need a mom who can kiss the boo-boo when you fall down and scrape your knee. And you need a dad who will tell you, “Walk it off!” You need that mixture of compassion and motivation.

            Children need to know that mom and dad are going to be there throughout their lives. We see how children are traumatized when they see one of their parents walking out of the family and ignoring them. Even grownups can be disheartened to see their parents split up. But it is not just the children who benefit from this marriage arrangement. So too do the adults. They have to learn from each other how to get along with someone who is completely different from them. Yes, they may have their differences of opinion, but they need to learn how to argue through them. And, yes, part of the blessing is that marriage forces a man and a woman to come to some means of living together, despite the fact that men and women by their very natures have very different outlooks on life. Two guys may disagree, but still they tend to look at the world in the same way, overall; the same is the case with two women. But in marriage a man and a woman have to take those two very different approaches to life and bring them together to form one family.

            Stable marriages help not only the adults and children, but society as a whole. As we have encouraged divorce and discouraged marriage, as we have promoted pornography and hookups instead of real and lasting relationships, our society has become lonelier and coarser. But where families flourish, so too does society.

            Now you may point out to me that a large part of our congregation is unmarried, including a goodly number who have never married. How does this commandment apply to us? First, we should understand that we are no less loved by God or others, simply because we are unmarried. God has simply not called us to the sort of responsibilities that family life entails. Instead we are given another sort of vocation to follow. But as we pursue our calling as singles, we should not do anything that will undermine the family. That means we cannot have sex outside of marriage, or else we will diminish its importance in marriage. Instead, just as married people have a lot of hard work to do as spouse and parent, so single people have a lot of hard work to do in living a chaste and godly life.

            Now so far I have explained the rules and the practical reasons for them. But there is more. The Christian life is all about the forgiveness of sins that Christ has given us by his holy life, death, and resurrection. And He forgives our sexual sins as well. They are not unpardonable sins, but rather sins for which He died. As He forgives us, He invites us to see marriage and sexuality in general as a way of experiencing and proclaiming the gospel. This is a point commonly overlooked in our discussions. God didn’t just gives rules to make us feel bad. Rather by living chaste and holy lives, whether in marriage or in being single, we participate in the gospel.

            In marriage the man portrays Christ and the woman portrays the church. The love between Christ and the church is eternal. That is why marriage is meant to last a lifetime. God expects His people to be faithful to Him, just as He is toward them. Thus, both husband and wife are to be faithful to each other in order to proclaim the faithfulness of the love between Christ and the church. You can see then why divorce and promiscuity are so anathema. They distort the gospel and proclaim that God loves us and leaves us. And so the best thing husband and wife can do is to receive their spouse’s love as part of the divine love between God and His people—and then to love their spouse as a proclamation of the gospel. Similarly, those who are unmarried can show a chaste love for others. After all, Christ was all about serving us rather than be gratified by us. In the same way, unmarried Christians show by their love for others that they are not in it for the pleasure that could be given to them.

            This is indeed a holy and difficult calling. But our Lord points out that this is part of being a Christian, and so we cannot neglect it. May we take to heart our Lord’s instructions on marriage and sexuality and find in them not just sage advice, but also the gospel lived out here on earth. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost 18 (Proper 21B), September 27, 2015

Text: Mark 9:38-50

            Beloved in Christ, there are a couple billion people currently alive who claim to be followers of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are some additional people who can’t quite bring themselves to call themselves “Christians,” but nonetheless admire Jesus and think of themselves as friendly to Him. But if you look at everything people say about Jesus, it is clear that at least some people have gotten His message garbled. Or, put another way, everyone cannot be right in what they are saying about Him, since some people state things about Him that contradict what others say.

            People tend to solve this dilemma by saying one of two things. They may say that only those people who belong to their corner of the Christian world are Christians, and that all people outside of their fellowship will perish. Or they may say that it doesn’t really matter what you teach or believe about Jesus. As long as you say the name magic word “Jesus” in a positive manner, everything is okay.

            Our Lord doesn’t approve of either of those solutions in today’s Gospel. When the disciples saw someone casting out a demon in His name, they got upset because that person was not part of their organization and didn’t even want to be part of it. That individual had recognized that Jesus had some kind of supernatural power, and he decided to invoke it when he was doing an exorcism. He probably threw in the name of Jesus after invoking the names of Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and every other prophet he could think of. He didn’t necessarily think of Jesus as the Messiah, let alone as the Son of God, but he thought that the demons would tremble when the name of Jesus was mentioned. This irritated the disciples, who rightly wanted our Lord to be given more honor than that. And so they told him, “Either honor Jesus properly or stop using His name!”

            But Jesus took a different tack. “Do not stop him,” our Lord said, “for no one who does a mighty work in My name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. For the one who is not against us is for us.” In other words, the man may not have entirely understood the truth, but there was the possibility that he would come to know Jesus more deeply as time passed and that he would become a disciple. At the very least he wouldn’t go around blaspheming Jesus. And our Lord further noted that those who honored His disciples without being disciples themselves would be honored appropriately, for He added, “Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.”

            Therefore, it is not necessary that every person know everything about the Scriptures and its teachings in order to be a Christian. Granted, it does not help to be ignorant, as we will talk about shortly. And you certainly do not want to go against the clear teachings of the Scriptures, for you do so at great peril. Nonetheless, we have brothers and sisters in Christ who do not fully understand or profess everything that they ought. We pray that they will come to know more about God and will be corrected over time. In fact, we want to discuss God’s Word with them and help them to come to a clearer understanding of it. But we will not quickly dismiss them as being outside God’s kingdom, for we know that God is at work far beyond our congregation and beyond the churches that share our confession of faith.

            But that does not mean that every Christian gets to believe whatever they want and that every notion anyone has must be accepted as completely good. Our Lord warns us that there is also a danger in living and teaching in such a way that the weak and the unlearned are led away from the Christian faith. A false teacher who would lead others astray would find swimming with a millstone as a life preserver preferable to the fate that awaits them. Even in our own lives, we should look to see if there is anything that we hold dear that is separating us from God. Be it ever as precious to us as our own eye or hand or foot, we should not cling to it, but yield instead to God’s Word.

            Thus, our Lord shows an appropriate balance. He gives people grace to grow in their knowledge so that they may come to a clearer understanding of the truth and embrace it. And He warns people not to assume rather lazily that His grace means they can say, do, and teach anything they want. Instead, we should use God’s grace as an opportunity to delve deeper into His Word, not as an excuse to sin all the more.

            This is exactly what we teach as Lutherans. Our statements of faith have been gathered up in a book called the Book of Concord. We recite part of it every Sunday—the Nicene Creed—and everyone who has been confirmed knows another part of it, the Small Catechism. The preface to the Book of Concord gets the balance exactly right, as it condemns false teaching that would lead people astray, but also emphasize that there are many Christians outside of our fellowship. The authors state, “It is not at all our plan and purpose to condemn people who err because of a certain simplicity of mind, but are not blasphemers against the truth of the heavenly doctrine. Much less, indeed, do we intend to condemn entire churches that are either [in our nation] or elsewhere. Rather, it has been our intention and desire in this way to openly criticize and condemn only the fanatical opinions and their stubborn and blasphemous teachers….We have written condemnations also for this reason: that all godly persons might be diligently warned to avoid these errors. For we have no doubt whatsoever that—even in those churches that have not agreed with us in all things—many godly and by no means wicked people are found. They follow their own simplicity and do not correctly understand the matter itself….We are also in great hope that, if these simple people would be taught correctly about these things—the Spirit of the Lord aiding them—they would agree with us, and with our churches and schools, to the infallible truth of God’s Word.” (Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions: A Reader's Edition of the Book of Concord [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2005], Preface to the Book of Concord, paragraph 20.)

            In other words, we are concerned about false teaching and that is why we do not enter into fellowship with everyone and anyone who purports to be a Christian. We do not want to approve those teachers who cannot confess the Christian faith properly. But we acknowledge that there are many sincere believers in Christ to be found in other confessions of faith, for they cling to God’s Word and don’t understand that their pastors are teaching error along with the gospel. I am reminded of what a parishioner (who is now with the Lord) told me many years ago. He had grown up in a church that taught that Christ’s body and blood were not present in the Lord’s Supper, but that it was all symbolic. He was dating a young woman who was a member here and whom he eventually married. The pastor here at the time asked, “What do you think you receive in the Lord’s Supper?” “Christ’s body and blood,” he replied. The pastor then asked, “Do you know that’s not what your church teaches?” The man was taken aback a bit, because that was news to him. But when he went back to his home congregation, he discovered that that was indeed the case. Here was a genuinely Christian man, who believed Christ’s words about the Lord’s Supper. He had been taught false things about it, but the false teaching hadn’t stuck because in the simplicity of his faith he had rightly clung to God’s Word. There are plenty more people like him spread across Christianity.

            But as we are grateful to God that His Word has that effect and as we are gracious to those fellow believers, allowing them time to grow, we also take seriously the call not to cause someone to stumble in their faith, either by our wicked living or by false teaching. We do not want our selfishness, our egos, our penchant for the pleasures of the world, our lust, our greed, and the like to get in the way of others coming to faith or to lead others into the same vices so that they lose their faith.

            By the same token, we also don’t want any false ideas about God to destroy our faith or that of others. We want to worship the true God—the blessed Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in one Godhead—not some idol or some figment of our imagination. We want to be saved by Jesus Christ, true God and true man, united in one person. We don’t want a Savior who is a mere human or a distant God, but rather someone who is true God getting into the midst of our earthly problems by taking on our flesh. We want a Redeemer who saves us by living a holy life in our place, then dying to atone for our sins, and then rising again to impart forgiveness and new life. We want to find the Holy Spirit at work in the Word, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper—rather than think that they are merely empty symbols. We want to know that the Holy Spirit works amid our sufferings and uses them for our good and God’s glory. We don’t want to be misled by those who teach that Christians never have grief or disease and thus drive those who do have them to despair. We want to cling to this blessed hope throughout our life so that we will die a godly death and then rise again on the Last Day and receive eternal life. We don’t want to be led astray by thoughts that say that this is the only life we will ever know and that dead is dead.

            And thus we will be gentle toward those who are still in ignorance, even as we take care not to allow false teachings to creep in and corrupt things. In short, we will do what Jesus says: “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” We will have salt, that is, we will go against the countervailing forces of this world that would lead it to destruction. We will teach sound doctrine and strive to live godly lives. But we will also be at peace with each other. We will not make it our goal to pick a fight with everyone. We will gently guide and teach the ignorant and patiently admonish the recalcitrant. But our goal is to bring people to know our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father who sent Him. In Jesus’s name. Amen.