Sermon for Advent 3, December 13, 2015

Text: Luke 7:18-28

            Beloved in Christ, two weeks ago I mentioned that Christ not only came in the flesh two thousand years and will return visibly sometime in the future, but He also comes to us today, as His Word is read and preached. Thus, the most important thing in the Christian church is hearing the Scriptures read and explained. That is why our liturgy is steeped in the Scriptures; it is one passage from the Bible after another. That is why we sing hymns that are rich in the language and message of the Bible. It isn’t enough that a hymn mentions an idea or two in the Scriptures, but that it expresses biblical content as fully as possible. That is why we make sure that the sermons are based on the Bible and convey its full riches. This is how Christ comes to us and dwells among us today. And we want to make sure that nothing interferes with His coming.

            But preaching isn’t easy—for the one preaching or the people hearing. And we are reminded of that fact in today’s Gospel. John the Baptist had discovered by that point that preaching wasn’t as easy as he had thought. In fact, it looked as if all that time he had spent preaching had been for naught. And so our Lord had to encourage Him. But at the same time He had to have a little talk with the people who had heard John preach. They had found it difficult to understand what John was trying to do. And so Jesus had to explain to them what his preaching had been all about. Preaching is tough, for all parties concerned. But let us listen carefully to what our Lord has to say to preachers and to the people preached to.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger,
  St. John the Baptist Preaching.
As in many of Brueghel's paintings, the main action
(John's preaching) takes up only a small portion of
the canvas. Notice how many of the larger figures in
the foreground are talking among themselves,
some even with their backs toward John.

            From John the Baptist we learn, first of all, that preaching is tough on preachers and those who long to see good preaching. The real problem is that it seems that preaching doesn’t succeed. Last week I mentioned the real topic of all good preaching: repentance. Repentance is more than feeling sorry for our sins, although it includes that. It is rethinking everything that we have been taught by our sinful flesh and our selfish world. It means, of course, to stop looking for excuses for sin or for ways to justify what is wrong and find fault with what is good. But it also means to start putting our trust in God, recognizing Him as our creator, who still takes an active role in preserving this world. It means calling upon God in every trouble and thanking Him for His ever constant help. It means relying upon Christ for our salvation instead of our own righteousness. It means welcoming the work of the Holy Spirit, as He guides us out of unbelief, enlightens us with the truth of His word, calls us to faith in Christ, and helps us to grow in godliness.

            If preaching succeeds, then you would expect people to come out of wickedness and unbelief and instead embrace God’s forgiveness and the life of trust in God and holiness that follows. But we see people like John pour out his entire career into preaching, only to see that little has changed. The Herods of this world seem to be still in control. Sin has been rebuked, but no one has repented. The cry to receive the forgiveness of sins has been mocked or ignored. Maybe there was a brief moment, a flicker of hope. But soon the cold, dank walls of the dungeon seem to have shut in the gospel.

            Meanwhile, preaching is equally tough on the hearers. “Who is this guy?” the crowd asked, when they had heard John. “Why is he out here, standing in the wilderness and flapping his jaw?” Today some people don’t even know why they go to hear a sermon. As far as they are concerned, they might as well look at “a reed shaking in the wind.” Neither John nor a reed have any meaning for them. Other people come to hear preaching because they think that they will be entertained. They went out to see John because he was known for wearing unusual clothing, a shirt made out of camel’s hair and a belt of raw leather. But, of course, more unusual—and more admirable—clothing could be found in a royal court than in the wilderness.

            Still other people go to have a spiritual experience, but on their terms. There were spiritual seekers back in John’s day, and Judaism had a full range of different forms of spirituality that were popular. So it wasn’t unusual for people to go off to the desert and try to “find themselves.” Well, our Lord granted that John was a spiritual man, a prophet of God, but there was something deeper going on. He was the one who, more than any other prophet before him, pointed to Christ as the Savior of the world.

            So listening to the preaching of God’s Word is tough because it isn’t all about being entertained or crafting a spirituality that suits our individual tastes. Instead, it is all about getting us to see Christ—to see our sin that made Him have to come and to see the mercy of God that impelled Him to come willingly. But that is also what makes faithfully hearing the Word of God and the preaching of it so rewarding. There are plenty of places to be entertained. It would take you a few years to visit all the theaters, cinemas, music venues, museums, gin joints, and the like in this city, even if you visited one every day. It would probably take you over a year just to see all the shows that are offered in one day on cable TV. And then there’s all the music on Pandora and Spotify, and all the movies and TV shows to watch on Netflix and Hulu. Entertainment is not in short supply. Something of eternal value is. And that is why hearing God’s Word being preached is so valuable.

            It also satisfies us in a way that all our efforts at crafting our own spirituality don’t. Few people realize that creating your own spirituality puts an awful burden upon yourself. The Scriptures reveal a God who establishes right and wrong and has given us the Ten Commandments. They also show where eternal life and fellowship with God are to be found. More than that, they proclaim that these things are gifts from Him. But those who reject that and want to create their own spirituality put a tremendous burden upon themselves. Not only do they have to keep the rules they invent, they have to play god and create the whole system themselves. But a correct faith lets God be God.

            Jesus pointed out how blessed we are when we hear preachers like John the Baptist and take their message to heart. He said, “I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” John was a great preacher, but he would die before Christ would complete His work. All John could do was to point people to be ready for Christ’s ministry, death, and resurrection. But John wouldn’t see those things. Instead, he would spend the last months of his life in a jail and would eventually be executed. Thus, ordinary people who heard his sermons would see things fulfilled that John could only foretell.

            John would have been okay with that. After all, we pastors want people who hear God’s Word to pay more attention to it than to us. But still our Lord had something to say to preachers like John as well as to their hearers. We have already heard our Lord say that there is something powerful in preaching. Now let us consider what He had to say to John, and by extension to all pastors.

            Our Lord didn’t deny that preaching God’s Word sometimes lands pastors in trouble. It always has. But He allowed John’s disciples to see all that He was doing. People were healed, comforted, and given the good news of the gospel. Maybe that didn’t seem to extend to where John was sitting, but God’s kingdom was active, nonetheless. Some of the people who were coming to Jesus had heard John preach. Maybe John hadn’t convinced people like Herod, but he had still had some kind of effect on many people. A preacher has to know that a lot of the work he does will not be visible to him. People may hear a sermon only once, but it will stick with them. And the pastor will never know. The only hint we get is when someone shows up at our church because another pastor had preached well and made an impression, and so we assume the same is happening with us. But preachers are like John the Baptist or Moses: we lead the people to where they need to go, but we may not see them enter the Promised Land.

            We should also be encouraged to know that God’s kingdom is always growing somewhere in the world. There is no promise that the church in all places at all times will grow and expand. In fact, church history indicates the opposite. But the church always sprouts up where you least expect it. The good news of salvation in Christ Jesus is preached, the Holy Spirit works faith in the hearts of those who heart it, and saints are gathered into the church. If you do not see the church growing powerfully in your corner of the world, know that it is doing so in other parts of the globe. And so we keep on “preaching the Word, in season and out of season,” for we know that God will use that Word in ways that we may not know right now. His Word never returns empty-handed.

            So, yes, preaching is a big bother—both for the person who must do it and those who have to listen to it. But there is eternal life in those words, and so we should look for the blessing found there. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Advent 2, December 6, 2015

Text: Luke 3:1-14

            Beloved in Christ, last week we heard that Christ came two thousand years ago and will come in great glory sometime in the future. We also heard that He comes to us today through His Word, so that we can rejoice in His past coming and look forward to His return. And so we are not surprised to hear today that repenting has always been the primary way to prepare for His coming, then and now. John the Baptist called His fellow Jews to repent before Christ began His ministry. And we read John’s call to repentance today because we need to repent before Christ returns in glory.

            But “repent” and “repentance” are tricky words. We use them all the time in the church, and we can sort of figure out what they must mean from the context. But whenever we guess a word’s meaning, there is always the danger we might overlook some important nuance it has. That is why we are often told to look up an unfamiliar word in a dictionary to make sure that we fully understand it. In the same way, we ought to make sure that when we come across a word in the Scriptures that we are using it in the same sense that the Scriptures do.

            If you talk with most people, they will say that repenting means “feeling bad about something” or, to be more specific, “feeling sorry for some wrong thing you have done.” They have a point. Repentance does involve those sorts of things, but it also involves a lot more. Plenty of people are very, very sorry for what they have done, but they don’t know much about real Christian repentance. It might be helpful to know that the Greek word for “repentance” literally means “a change of thought.” Now part of genuine repentance involves changing your attitude from thinking that sin is okay to thinking that it is wrong. But there is much more that we need to change our minds about.

            You could say that “repentance” means “rethinking” something that we had thought was already a settled matter. And so today I invite you to rethink the matter of repentance. Instead of putting repentance into a tiny little box and saying it applies only if you have done some big, stupid mistake, I urge you to think of it as a big part of a Christian’s life. A Christian ought to realize that their sinful nature not only gets them to misbehave, but also to think wrongly about who God is and whether He can be trusted, what determines the standards of right and wrong, what counts as progress, what the good life looks like, where hope is truly to be found, and a thousand other matters. We are born with a selfish attitude, and that in and of itself would be enough to distort the way we look at things. But then the errors in our minds are compounded by the way that other people get us to look at things wrongly. We are taught such things as “God doesn’t intervene in people’s lives” or “prayer doesn’t work” or “you can do anything, if you put your mind to it”—and thousands of other foolish sentiments. We have to unlearn such things and instead learn the wisdom that comes from and is the holy, Christian faith. Therefore, the chief part of repentance is turning from unbelief to trust in God. Knowing oneself as a sinner is, to be sure, an aspect of repentance, but knowing God as our Savior is an even more important aspect.

            And so part of being a Christian is to rethink everything in light of God’s Word. Now, that rethinking process often starts with morality, and so repentance usually begins with being sorry for some recent sin we’ve done. If we are going to be led into a different way of thinking, it is usually because we discovered something that the old way of thinking just couldn’t explain. Now our selfish nature has tried to convince that we are perfect and that there is nothing seriously wrong with us. But when we have clear evidence to the contrary—when we see that we have done something that we would be angry about if it had been done against us—then we don’t know what to think or say. We are saddened by the situation and are open to rethinking our whole life.

            Now both John the Baptist and Jesus encountered many people who were at a crossroads because they had seen their entire life fall apart. They hadn’t aspired as children to become the town drunk, the village prostitute, the hated turncoat who collaborated with the Roman enemies. But each and every one of them realized that they had sinned in these flagrant ways and nobody in their town liked them. So they assumed that God did not love them, either. There are many people today who are in the same situation. They have hit rock bottom. A serious addiction, a broken marriage, trouble with the law, or some other serious problem has shown them reality and they are ready at last to acknowledge it. Maybe that is you today. It is right that you are sorry for those sins and that you look to God for forgiveness. But, come, let me show you and all people an even deeper repentance, an even deeper way of rethinking your life.

            You see, repentance isn’t just for the convicted criminals or the social outcasts. It is for everyone. There were many respectable people who went to see what John was doing. They thought that it would be good to see all the evildoers get a good tongue lashing for their misdeeds. But instead John turned on them and said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” In other words, if you think that you have to be a convicted felon before you are called to repent, think again! Sure, some people may sin flagrantly, but don’t forget that you are cut out of the same cloth as the rest of humanity. If they have sins to repent of, so do you. Just because your sins are more socially acceptable or more easily hidden doesn’t mean that you have nothing to repent of, too.

            Now you might think that all this rethinking about our lives means that ethics is horribly complicated. Not at all. When John was asked about what people should do, he said to share with those in need. He told people to do their work honestly and not for greedy gain. He didn’t tell people to quit their work and hole up in a monastery, but rather to do their work and not abuse their office. It was as simple as that. And yet sin prevents us from doing what is rather simple.

            That is why we need to rethink something else: what makes people God’s people. We naturally assume that being good makes us dear to God and so our good behavior makes us His people. Or maybe we need to come from a long line of godly people. But John warns us to rethink. “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.” Now we usually hear this as a warning: shape up because the right ancestry doesn’t make you right with God! And that is true. But there is a deeper truth as well: God turns stones like you and me into His beloved children.

            Yes, we were stones. Even the children of Abraham were stones. The Old Testament reveals that idols are made of useless stone. As Psalm 115 tells us, “They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat.” Okay. We understand that. Idols are senseless hunks of stone. But there is one more thing the psalmist wants us to know about these idols: “Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.” And so we are not surprised to hear God tell Isaiah that the Israelites “keep on hearing, but do not understand; [they] keep on seeing, but do not perceive.” They have become as senseless as blocks of stone. Worshipping stone has turned them to stone, so much so that the prophet Ezekiel refers to their heart as no longer being made of flesh but of stone.

            But Ezekiel foretold that Christ would come and remove our hearts of stone and put hearts of flesh in us. We cannot take our stone-cold hearts and make them living and warm. But God can change stones and the stone-hearted into children of Abraham, indeed into God’s own beloved children. That is because while we were becoming more and more like the idols we worshipped, that is, more stone-like, Christ (the true Son of God) became like one of us. He became a full human being, albeit without sin.

            More than that, He lived a holy life, died in our place, and rose again. And He poured out His Holy Spirit into us so that we might be transformed from stone images of the idols we worshipped into a living temple of the true God. Consequently, when we think about ourselves and what it means to be a human being or when we think about God and how we stand in relation to Him, we no longer think from our own vantage point, but from the perspective that comes from knowing Christ.

            This new perspective does not come easily. That is why we gather again and again to hear God’s Word and deepen our knowledge of it. Even things we have heard dozens of times need to be heard again, since it is difficult to rethink everything in accordance with His Word and it may take several times before it sinks in. Therefore, beloved in Christ, let your life be one of continual repentance—of rethinking of what you had known of sin and grace and coming to know those things from God’s perspective. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent, November 29, 2015

Text: Luke 19:28-40

            Beloved in Christ, whenever Christ shows up, He shakes up everything. It doesn’t matter if Christ is coming in a lowly manner or in great glory. Things never stay the same. The world is turned upside down. Evil is forced to go on the run. God’s faithful people are encouraged. Joy breaks out. Gloom and despair come to an end.

            But when exactly does Christ show up? Many people know of only one time when He came, namely, two thousand years ago, when He was born in Bethlehem, lived his life in Galilee and Judea, was a pretty decent chap and taught others to be so too, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate. And they assume that was all. These people know that Napoleon and Michelangelo and Shakespeare came only once, and so they assume that Christ came only once and will never return. But they don’t even understand why Christ came the first time. They assume He was just an ordinary man, living an ordinary life and trying to do a little good in this world.

            Now we Christians ought to know better. Christ had more in mind than just going through the normal human lifecycle from birth through childhood and adulthood to death. Instead, He came to deal with the ugliness of sin in human life. For it is sin that makes our life a drudgery. It isn’t being born that is the problem, but being born with a sinful nature, where our vices seem to be as much a part of us as our skin and bones. It isn’t childhood that is the problem, but rather the fact that even as adults we behave all too often as bratty children, who gossip about our peers, are mean to those we dislike, and want our way and want it now. It isn’t work that is the problem, but rather the fact that our work is easily frustrated. We labor and build, only to see things decay over time. We expect help from our coworkers, but receive none. It isn’t marriage and family that are the problem, but the way that this institution created by God has been turned into a place where we fight and claw against the people whom we ought to love the most. In short, every facet of human life has been ruined by our sin and that of others.

            Life wasn’t supposed to be this way. God had created a beautiful world, but we have marred it by our sin. It is as if we had been invited to the most wonderful party we could imagine, a party that we had been dying to attend. But once we show up, we start quarreling with others and they put up a fuss. The party ends with all the guests being hauled to the police station and spending the night in the pokey. That is the real world, life as it is lived in this sinful, fallen world.

            Christ came to deal with the sin in this world. That meant that He had to do everything right that we had done wrong. This was no vacation Christ was on. It was work. That is why He came into Jerusalem on a donkey rather than on a horse or in a chariot. It was the ancient equivalent of driving into town on a forklift or in a work van rather than in a limousine. Christ meant business. He was on His way to Jerusalem to die on the cross, bearing all our guilt. But Christ didn’t leave anything undone. He completely atoned for all the sins of every last human being who would ever live. There was no sin overlooked. That sin that you think is too small and not worth being atoned for by Christ—well, it was dealt with by Christ on the cross. That sin that keeps you up at night and that you think is too big for God to forgive has also been dealt with once and for all on the cross. There isn’t a sin or sinner that was overlooked. Therefore, do not stubbornly cling to your own sin. Do not continue in the old evil ways, as if sin were really no big deal and it didn’t matter what you did. Instead, see the enormous cost of your sin: it drove the Almighty Son of God to have to take on our flesh and be led even into death. At the same time, though, trust that God has indeed removed your guilt and forgiven you. Trust with all your heart that you are now dear to Him and that He wants to live with you forever.

            If you understand that this is why Christ came the first time, you will also understand why He will come a second time. The first time around, it was all work for Him. He died on the cross and rose again so that repentance and faith could be proclaimed to the nations. But when He returns, He will gather all those who trust in Him into His kingdom. We will bow before Him with as much eagerness and excitement as that crowd did on the first Palm Sunday. But if our Lord looked majestic on that day, it will be nothing like His glory on the final day, when His face will shine like the sun. If you think that the throng that stood outside Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was a sight to behold, wait until you see the countless millions or billions who will greet Him with joy on the Last Day.

            Not everybody appreciated Christ’s first coming. The Pharisees told Jesus to keep His disciples in line and to stop them from praising Him. But He told them, “If [the crowd were] silent, the very stones would cry out.” Well, on the Last Day, the stones and the hills and all of creation will cry out, acknowledging their Lord and King. Even the Pharisees, atheists, and every other person with a heart of stone will have to acknowledge “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” and bend their knee before Him.

            Therefore, we do well to worship now the Lord Jesus Christ and His Father who sent Him and the Holy Spirit whom Christ sends. We do well to worship them as the Holy, Blessed Trinity. We will do this for all eternity, and so even now we should begin to delight in doing this. After all, what could be dearer than loving the one who loves us so much? And that leads us to consider one more coming of Christ. Wait, you say. How can there be another coming of Christ? He came once long ago in humility and He will come again in glory, to stay with us forever. So how can there be another coming of Christ? Well, that is the one coming most often neglected: He comes to us whenever His Word is read, proclaimed, and preached.

            If we neglect Christ as He comes to us daily through His Word, it will matter little that He came long ago and it will bring us no joy that He will return. But Christ comes to us through His Word so that we may believe in Him and live a life full of faith and godliness until He comes in glory.

            Do not underestimate what happens when Christ comes to us through His Word. On Palm Sunday He spoke a few words to His disciples, and they spoke those words to the owners of the colt. All He said was to tell them, “The Lord has need of it.” Without any further explanation, that was enough to get the owners of the colt to release it. That is the power of His Word. Christ didn’t have to be seen by those people. Instead, His words were authoritative enough on their own.

            His words still have that power. That is because He is the Almighty Son of God, and He is wherever His Word is. Now He can be resisted, much as the Pharisees resisted Him during His triumphal procession into Jerusalem. In fact, our Lord can be resisted all the way until He comes again in glory. But that is not how He would like you to greet Him. Instead, He stands before you with forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation. Therefore, embrace Him enthusiastically, just as the crowd did two thousand years ago. Welcome Him and hail Him as the one “who comes in the name of the Lord.” Call out, “Hosanna,” that is, “Save us, please,” and hail Him as the one who came to Jerusalem to be your Savior. In short, welcome Him as He comes to you today. Then you will be ready for Him when He comes again in glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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.

Sermon for Pentecost 17 (Proper 20B), September 20, 2015

Texts: Jeremiah 11:18-20 and Mark 9:30-37

            Beloved in Christ, can you believe what Jeremiah is saying? “Let me see Your vengeance upon them.” That’s just wrong. That’s wrong and unchristian. Someone needs to sit down and have a little talk with Jeremiah and warn him that that is not how Christians talk. We are not to ask God’s vengeance to fall upon anyone. We are never to complain about injustices that we see or experience. Instead, we are to be happy and cheerful, no matter what happens. We are to smile and be tolerant of everything. But maybe we should give Jeremiah a pass. After all, he is from the Old Testament—you know, that benighted age when they didn’t know anything about grace or forgiveness or Christ.

            I dare say that’s what many Christians would say. But that is because of our prejudices about the Old Testament and the New Testament. We think that God was angry in the Old Testament, but mellowed out by the time of the New Testament. But that is just not true. Our Lord Jesus Christ had far more to say about hell than you will find in the entire Old Testament. And in the Revelation, one of the newest of the New Testament books, you see the martyrs crying out to God to do something about those being slaughtered for Christ’s sake. Meanwhile, the prophet Jeremiah himself would go on to write eloquently about the forgiveness God would impart to His wayward people and the new heart He would implant in them. So maybe our prejudices about both testaments is getting in the way of us hearing God’s law in the New Testament and His gospel in the Old Testament—and thus of understanding what God is about.

Jeremiah Lamenting over the Destruction of Jerusalem
by Rembrandt van Rijn
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Home : Info. Licensed under Public Domain
via Wikimedia Commons - SK-A-3276.jpeg

            We in our post-modern society struggle to pray the words, “Let me see Your vengeance upon them.” But there are two reasons why we might decline to pray this kind of prayer. One is that we are cold-hearted robots without a shred of human empathy in our teeny, tiny hearts. We have no time to consider anybody else’s sorrows and problems. If they are the victims of injustice, well, they should just suck it up and soldier on instead of asking us or God to get involved in their troubles. The second reason is that maybe we do not want to be called out for our injustices. If we complain too much about the injustices that we ourselves experience or that we see going on around us, we might become the target of God’s avenging wrath. And so we pretend that God has no reason whatsoever to be concerned with the injustices in this world.

            But God does not shrug off injustice the way we do. You must understand that in both Greek and Hebrew there is only one word that means “righteousness” and “justice.” They are not two separate concepts, as they are in English. Thus, God is opposed to injustice even as He is opposed to unrighteousness. At most, He may delay His punishment until people have shown themselves to be fully guilty. He warns Cain about the anger and hatred lurking in his heart, but He doesn’t intervene until Cain has shown himself to be the murderer that he was. And so we shouldn’t assume that God is indifferent to the injustices of the world. Instead, He is giving enough rope to people to see if they will hang themselves with it.

            Nowhere do we see God saying that injustice is okay. And so we do well to consider the injustices of our day, that is to say, the injustices that are praised by our society and that we have a hard time avoiding. You see, every era, every culture, and every ideology is marked by some kind of injustice and we are no exception. We are unjust to the elderly, whom we are willing just to stick in some corner and neglect. We are unjust to the unborn, whom we are willing to kill because they are inconvenient. We are unjust to children, because we prefer to hop from one bed to another rather than create a stable household with a lifelong mother and father for our children. We are unjust to the poor, whom we despise for not having made it in our land of plenty. We are unjust to the gullible, whom we try to exploit for our advantage and then excuse it with “Buyer, beware!” We are unjust to people who do not look like us or talk like us or think like us. Injustice is not to be found just on the Left or on the Right or in the Middle. It taints our whole society.

            Now you might say, “But I do my best to respect and help the poor, the unborn, the elderly, the weak, and the vulnerable. I try not to be part of the problem, but part of the solution.” Good! That is a fine and Christian thing to do. But it is not always easy to extricate ourselves from the injustices of the world in which we live. Think, for example, how in our country the people in early 1800s New England were quick to denounce the evils of slavery in the South and bristled at all of its horrors, but they didn’t think much about using the cotton in their mills, even though the cotton had been planted and harvested by slaves. And they didn’t think much about forcing children to work long hours in their mills and putting them at risk of losing life and limb on the dangerous machinery. Often we find it difficult to extricate ourselves from the evil and injustices around us, and we find it easy to see other people’s injustices, but not our own.

            Moreover, we tend to rely on force (whether real or threatened) to end injustice, and this often leads to further injustices. The Communists in Russia claimed to be avenging the wrongs the tsar had done, but they ended up creating a bigger gulag than had ever existed in human history. The Nazis claimed to be helping Germany when it was being picked on unfairly by its neighbors, but they ended up killing millions of innocents. To be sure, there is such a thing as righteous indignation—and Jeremiah and the saints in the Revelation are examples of that—but it is a rather rare phenomenon. Usually our righteous indignation is soon channeled into unrighteous directions.

            But the good news is that God has come to put an end to the injustices of the world and to do so in a most unusual manner. Christ didn’t overcome evil by the ballot or the bullet. Instead, He Himself became a victim of the world’s injustices. He was falsely accused. He was framed. He was given a show trial. He was executed, though He was innocent. But it isn’t just that He was a victim. No, He took on both our injustices and the vengeance God wreaks upon those injustices. We cannot reconcile victim and victimizer, but Christ did so through His body on the cross. For there He was the victim but He also endured the just vengeance God poured out. Jeremiah’s prayer was heard. Injustice was ended. Righteousness was established. Peace began to reign.

            And that affects the way that we live now. Christ gives a new future to both victim and victimizer. Justice is rendered to the victim as evil is dealt with once and for all, and forgiveness and new life are offered to the victimizer—and both at great cost to our Lord. But this opens up to us all sorts of new possibilities. We are not bound to continue in the same old pattern of perpetuating injustice or excusing it or overlooking it. Instead, we show what God’s true justice looks like in the way we treat other people.

            The people who are victims of injustice are almost always the weaker people. Most people don’t pick fights with someone who can overpower them, since they don’t want to be hurt. That’s why it is the weak and the vulnerable and the lonely and the outcast who are most vulnerable to injustice. And that is also why we strive after power and try to be the greatest, because we know that we will be picked on mercilessly if we are a nobody. But if we understand that Christ has come to defend the weak and to turn the hearts of the mighty away from their pride, then we can look at ourselves and other people differently.

            That is what our Lord was doing after the disciples argued about who was the greatest. He held a child in His arms and said that the greatest person was someone who would receive such a little child. On another occasion, He would hold up a child as an example of the greatest person in the kingdom of God. Here He is saying that the greatest person is someone who would receive such a child and in so doing receive and honor Christ. These two ideas complement each other. The humble and lowly are great, and so are those who receive the humble and lowly and care for them.

            The child was apparently small enough to be held in Christ’s arms. We’re not talking a twelve year old or so. This is a small child. What can such a child do in God’s kingdom? Not much—just receive the gifts that Christ gives. But what use are even the best of us to God? Not much. All we can do is receive His gifts. But what makes the child and us valuable to God is that He loves us. And, therefore, we are the greatest in the world to Him. But so too are our fellow believers in Christ. The best thing we can do then is to love and to help our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially the weaker ones.

            If we counted others as our betters and received in humility whatever gifts God gives—in other words, if we acted with the humility of a small child who knows how dependent he or she is upon others—we would stop many of the injustices in the world. It would hold us back from participating in those injustices ourselves. And if all Christians would live their lives consistently this way, it would change the world.

            Yes, I know that we have not yet attained a perfect world nor will do so ever as long as the world lasts. We will remain part of the problem until the day we die. But Christ has come to listen to the pleas of Jeremiah and to take up his cause—and that of all who suffer unjustly at other people’s hands. Therefore, let us pursue humility and let the love of Christ flow through us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.