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.