Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 6, 2016

Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

            Beloved in Christ, is forgiveness truly possible? Can someone truly receive real forgiveness? I don’t mean the sort of forgiveness that says, “Okay I’m too angry and frustrated with the situation and so I’ll just accept the apology and not do anything against you, all the while I harbor a grudge against you and never really warm up to you.” I don’t mean the sort of forgiveness that says, “I don’t trust you for a minute or believe your apology for a second, but I’m just going to pretend that I do because it’s expected of me.” And I certainly don’t mean the sort of forgiveness that says, “Well, I never considered the matter all that significant, even if you did, and so I’m more than happy to overlook such a trivial thing.” I’m talking about real forgiveness, where everyone agrees that someone has seriously wronged another person and the wronged person truly and heartily forgives the other person from the bottom of their heart.

            In today’s Gospel we see that our Lord Jesus Christ believes in that kind of forgiveness and freely gives it. And He tells a parable where there is only one person who believes that that kind of forgiveness is available, namely, the father of the two sons. But as we will see, the two sons do not believe such forgiveness is possible or maybe even desirable.

            Let me begin with the older son first. He may make his appearance last, but it is obvious that he doesn’t believe in forgiveness or redemption of any kind. He has the crasser attitude toward forgiveness—it would be highly unfair towards those who did what they were supposed to do in the first place—but his own sin is subtler and has disguised itself so much that it has fooled him into believing that he doesn’t need forgiveness and therefore forgiveness shouldn’t be offered to anybody.

Il Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Return of the Prodigal Son

            But what do I mean when I assert that he too has sinned and is in need of forgiveness? Well, first of all, consider what he did when his younger brother demanded his share of the property. In his culture he as the eldest son was supposed to bring about some reconciliation between his father and his brother. He was supposed to have sat down with his brother and talked him out of his foolish request. But he did nothing. He just let his brother misbehave because it would make him look better.

            But it there’s more. The father didn’t just give his property to the younger son, but to the older one as well. The parable clearly tells us that “he divided his property between them.” Granted, the older son didn’t sell his share and then move away. But he didn’t exactly protest either when the father gave him his share. He should have. He should have said that it was the wrong thing to do and that he wasn’t going to claim a single thing before his father’s death. But he silently went along with what his father was doing. The younger brother may have instigated the division of property, but the older brother shared the guilt for letting it take place.

            And then we see his attitude fully on display when his younger brother finally arrived home. Listen to his words to his father: “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.” Now is that how a loving son shows his affection for his father? Does he say, “I’ve been slaving away for you for many years,” as if his dad were the world’s harshest taskmaster? And do you think that a father who was so generous to his youngest son, even to the point of giving him the inheritance in advance, would begrudge his son a little party with his friends? No. The older son was as distant from his father as was the younger son. The sad thing is that he didn’t know that the father who forgave and loved his younger son also loved him and wanted to forgive his churlish attitude.

            That is a real tragedy: not knowing your own faults, your own most grievous faults, and thus not realizing that you need forgiveness or that forgiveness is available to you. But the younger son reminds us that even people who are deeply burdened by their sins don’t understand that God forgives them. And so we turn now to the younger son.

            We see that the younger son had no clearer concept of forgiveness than the older son did. To his credit, he did recognize that he had done wrong. He acknowledged that his bad behavior had broken the natural father-son relationship. At most he hoped that he could become an employee of his dad’s, for he knew that his father was a good boss to have. He thought about working hard and proving himself to his father—not to be taken back as a son, but to be recognized at least as a decent human being. And so he made the same mistake as his older brother. The older brother told his father that he had been slaving away for his dad all those years. The younger brother wanted to be treated as one of the hired servants. Neither brother believed that they had a gracious father who wanted to treat them as his beloved sons.

            If only they had known that their father loved them and forgave them! Not in some kind of half-hearted way, either. No, He forgave them from the bottom of his heart. And he did so at tremendous cost to himself and his own dignity. I think that we as westerners are likely to overlook some of the ways in which the father in the parable was downright generous in his forgiveness. Of course, first, most fathers in just about every culture would understand a child’s request for the inheritance to be nothing short of telling him, “Drop dead.” Such insolence was very much frowned upon in our Lord’s society. Most people would have expected a father to treat his child as dead after such an insult, no matter how much they came groveling later on. But notice also that the father doesn’t allow his son to grovel. His son begins his speech, but the father cuts him off. The son would naturally have stooped to kiss his father’s hand, a custom of that day, but instead the father falls upon his son’s neck, which prevented the son from doing that. It isn’t because the father is angry. Quite the opposite. He doesn’t want his son to grovel in the least, but is glad to forgive him wholeheartedly. He doesn’t want the other people in the village to see his son groveling, lest they mistreat his son, even though he is at peace with him.

            To reinforce that he has completely forgiven his son and that no one in the village should interfere or act as if the son needed to make further amends, the father threw a banquet that would feed the entire town. He made sure that everyone saw that he had put his own best robe on his son and put his own ring on his son’s finger. This reconciliation would have been a costly affair, to be sure, and the father had to bear all that expense. But if he had not done it, the villagers might well have lynched the son.

            In the same way, God forgives us at great cost. It isn’t just a word or two spoken half-heartedly. It is something that cost God the Father His very own Son and that cost the Son His very own life. Nor was this a decision made on the spur of a moment, when God was overwhelmed by emotion and decided to pay such an extravagant cost—an impulse buy, if you will. No, it had been decided before the dawn of time that this is what the Son would do. The Father and the Holy Spirit poured themselves out into the Son’s work, so that it would have their blessing. The entire Triune God was intent on saving us human beings. No cost was too great to pay in order for mankind to be redeemed.

            And that forgiveness is ours today. It is real and total forgiveness. We aren’t put on probation for a while or made to be servants until we can show that we are worthy of God’s trust again. Nor is it a one-time deal, as so many people mistakenly think. You don’t just get one chance to be forgiven after you royally screw up and nothing thereafter. Rather, God gives forgiveness throughout our entire life, because He knows that we will struggle with sin as long as we live.

            God forgives lavishly and generously, for He knows that is exactly what we need. And that is why He gives that gift in many forms. He forgives us by washing our sins in holy baptism and calling us His beloved children. He forgives us our sins through the Word of God, as it is read both in church and at home. He forgives our sins by holy absolution, where the pastor by God’s command and not his own initiative imparts the forgiveness that God has commanded to be given to all repentant sinners. He also forgives our sins by imparting Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. There we are given the very means by which Christ won forgiveness for us—the body once nailed to the cross and the blood once shed on Calvary for us.

            And that is why we gather every week. There are places that can entertain you better. There are other places that can lecture you on various enlightening topics. But only here, that is, in the holy Christian church, do you find the forgiveness of sin offered again and again. Real forgiveness for real sinners.

            Yes, real forgiveness is possible for real sinners who have committed real sins. May you believe that with all your heart! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, February 28, 2016

Text: Luke 13:1-9

            Beloved in Christ, we are in Lent because we need another chance. As we learned two weeks ago, if someone like the holy Son of God can be tempted, so can we—and we will not be as successful as He was. And so we need another chance. We need another chance to take on temptation and this time get it right. As we learned last week, if the high priests and religious leaders in the holiest of cities, Jerusalem, could fall into hypocrisy, formalism, and other sin, so much so that they ended up clamoring for Christ’s death, so can we. And so we need another chance. We need another chance to repent of our mediocre Christianity and to embrace the life that God has given us.

            But what shall we do with another chance? The problem with second chances is that we will simply do what we did the first time around. We will make the same errors and end up in the same place. Or we will compound the old errors with new ones and make things even more of a mess.

            That is what some people in the crowd did in today’s Gospel. They had come to our Lord Jesus Christ because they knew that He offered forgiveness and new life. But what did they do when they had a chance to live and think better than they had in the past? They pointed to some people who had suffered horribly and thought themselves better. They assumed that those Galileans who had been butchered mercilessly and in a sacrilegious manner were worse people than themselves. Because they had escaped such a fate, they assumed that everything was all right with them. But, of course, such an attitude was a very foolish one to take. After all, the Galileans who were butchered could also have reasonably thought themselves superior to their peers until Pilate killed them. Don’t boast about the downfall of others when you don’t know your own outcome.

            It is tempting to look at the manifest sins of other people and the consequences they suffer rather than to look at our own. It doesn’t help that we live in a society that is dead set against God and His Word. Just when you think it cannot get any crazier, it does. Our culture long ago decided that it was going to deify every person’s desires. Whatever you feel in your heart has to be right, it decided. At first, it simply meant that you should pursue your dreams, even if it meant shirking your responsibilities. Then it meant that you should marry someone you had fallen madly in love with, even if it was just five minutes ago and you were already married. Then people started saying that since marriage ought to be all about following your heart as it feels right now, then it doesn’t matter if it is a marriage between a man and a woman, two men, two women, or three or more partners. More recently, men have said that if they feel more like a woman (or vice versa), they must be called one by the rest of society. Even more recently, a woman has declared herself to be a cat trapped in a human body and has demanded to be treated accordingly. The Crazy Train has definitely left the station and is not turning back. And I fear that this is simply the first act of a long play in the Theater of the Absurd.

            We religious people are tempted to shake our heads and mutter about the world going to hell in a handbasket. We look to see people getting their comeuppance for this crazy behavior. Indeed, we might well point out that one craziness has grown out of earlier forms of craziness, and that there is no worse punishment than when God allows people to follow their hearts’ desires all the way to the bitter end. We expect our pastors to preach long and hard about the wickedness in this world and the folly it has unleashed. We expect our pastors to proclaim how God smote the Galileans and the people upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell in Jerusalem.

            It feels good to see people get their just deserts—or failing that, to know that those just deserts will soon be meted out. But it is not spiritual helpful for us. It takes the focus off of ourselves and problems, where it needs to be. For we ourselves are also a boiling cauldron of wicked desires. We too often live more by how we feel than by what God has to say. And so while we think of how God might smite the wicked who serve their flesh or their belly, we might easily overlook how the same fate might await us.

            A far more sensible approach would be to realize that we have been given a second chance. The Galileans didn’t have such an opportunity. They might have wanted to amend their lives in several different ways and even resolved to do so once they got back home after making their sacrifices. But they never had the chance to follow through. The people who were crushed by the collapsing Tower of Siloam were even less lucky. At least the Galileans could see the swords coming and steel themselves for the moment of death. But by the time those eighteen unfortunate souls realized that the tower was collapsing upon them, they would have been dead. But we are still alive. We still have the chance to hear the call to repent, to turn from evil, and to turn to God—and live.

            We are like the fig tree that should have borne some kind of fruit by now, but hadn’t. We have been given another chance. We may still have another chance tomorrow and the day after that and next week and in the decades to come. Maybe, but then maybe not. We don’t know when the ax will finally be laid against the tree. But we have been given another chance today. Let us avail ourselves of it.

            But why do we have another chance at all? Is it simply because God doesn’t really care whether we repent or not? Of course not. He just has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but [desires] that the wicked turn from his way and live.” He wants us to use our opportunity to hear His Word at long last and to stop thinking that indulging ourselves is the best way to live. He wants us to take seriously the fact that He has sent Christ into the world.

            For it is in Christ Jesus that we have all been given another chance. That second chance wasn’t an easy thing for Him to acquire on our behalf. Like the vinedresser in today’s parable, He had a lot of work to do if that second chance was going to hold. We are tempted to look at people who give second chances to people as lazy. The vinedresser didn’t want to wield an ax and that is why he talked his way out of that task. But actually the vinedresser signed up for more work. It would have taken just a few whacks with a stout ax to chop down that relatively young fig tree. But the vinedresser signed up for a more ambitious project. He would dig all around the tree and mix manure into the soil. That would take much longer to do than simply chopping down the tree, and it might even have had to be repeated more than once. And it must have stunk when he brought the manure over to the tree, and the vinedresser himself must have stunk at the end of the day. So, no, this second chance did not come cheaply to the one who gave it.

            Neither did it come cheaply for our Lord Jesus Christ. It required Him to live a completely holy life for us and then to go to the cross. It stank to have to do such a thing, especially when not everybody would welcome what Christ was doing or avail themselves of the second chance that He was winning for people. And yet He enthusiastically threw Himself into this effort.

            Because He did so, we still have another chance. In fact, we have another chance each and every day. He gave us that second chance resolutely when He baptized us and called us to faith. That was what began the good work in us and began to produce the fruit of faith—things such as trusting in God, loving Him and our neighbors, doing good works that please Him, and the like. But, of course, we realize that we do not do as much of those things as we should. It isn’t that we bear no fruit, for we are true Christians and not utterly unbelieving heathen, but we recognize that we still need more chances, for our life is not as God would have it be.

            That is why God is not just a God of second chances, but third chances and fourth chances and so on. Yes, there will ultimately be a day when we will not have any more chances to amend our sinful lives further. But until our Lord calls us home, He will greet us each day with the forgiveness of our sins. That is why we gather as Christians here every week, so that we can hear His holy words of absolution, listen to the sweet gospel being preached here, and receive Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. We not only hear about a second chance through these gifts, but we actually receive another chance through them.

            And so, beloved in Christ, let us not focus all our attention on the way that the heathen are living. Yes, they need to be admonished, for God wants them too to have another chance. But let us take seriously the call to repent and then even more seriously enjoy the forgiveness of sins that gives us another fresh start. If we do that, if we take seriously the additional chances we have been given, then others will perk up and take notice. But the rest of society only will be moved to consider the Christian way of thinking and living when God’s own people take His Word seriously.

            Therefore, beloved in Christ, let us focus on the additional chance given to us. Let this renew us and increase the fruit of the Holy Spirit that we bear. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, February 21, 2016

Text: Luke 13:31-35

            Beloved in Christ, when the prime ministers of Great Britain and Canada talk about the political parties that are out of power, they usually refer to them as “her Majesty’s loyal opposition.” By so doing David Cameron and Justin Trudeau are acknowledging that Queen Elizabeth had asked them to form their respective governments, but that the parties not in power are still loyal subjects of the queen, even if the government will not always take their ideas into consideration. However, all parties concerned would recognize that there is such a thing as a disloyal opposition. It would be the people who would try to overthrow the government by bullets and bombs, not the ballot box.

            Well, in the same way not every disagreement among Christians makes a person disloyal. Christians may legitimately disagree with each other about the best way to organize a congregation or which activities in a local church will have precedence over others. Some will want to decorate the church one way and others another way. Christians ought to listen to one another and weigh those ideas. But at some point a decision will have to be made, and one idea will prevail over others. In that case, those in the minority are invited to be “the loyal opposition.” They will loyally support the decision of the majority for the sake of Christian love and peace in the church, just as they will ask the reverse to hold true when they happen to be in the majority.

            Today’s Gospel, however, does not introduce us to the loyal opposition, but rather to the not-so-loyal opposition. Just as any country faces the danger of those who would overthrow it, so we as faithful Christians must recognize that there are people who oppose Christ and desire to thwart the coming of God’s kingdom.

            Some of that opposition comes from people like Herod—tyrants who see Christ and Christianity as a threat to their government. They do not want citizens who might be beholden to a higher power. They do not want to have to deal with people who live by a different standard than their edicts and laws. But people like Herod are rather crass in their opposition to God and to the Christian faith. They use rather crude instruments such as executions and imprisonments to stop the spread of Christianity. And their rather crude measures usually fail in the end because they cannot deal with something like the gospel, which is so radically different than the political machinations that they are used to dealing with. And so some of the real opposition Christians face comes from worldly powers, and we must acknowledge as much.

            But, interestingly, it isn’t the worldly powers-that-be that pose the greatest danger to the church. Instead, the gravest dangers come from those who pass themselves off as godly and pious while in reality they are rank unbelievers. It is so easy to focus on wicked people like Herod and to overlook seemingly pious Jerusalem. The Pharisees thought that the real showdown would take place between Herod and Jesus. After all, Herod was a self-indulgent, heathenish, two-bit tyrant. Surely Herod was our Lord’s enemy and Jerusalem was His friend. But Jesus saw Herod as a sideshow. The real contest would be in Jerusalem. It was Jerusalem that had murdered the prophets. It was Jerusalem that had rejected God’s attempts to win her over. It was Jerusalem, not Herod, that would crucify Jesus. To be sure, it would be Pontius Pilate—the governor—who would execute Christ, but only because the religious leaders in Jerusalem had demanded it. One must remember that Jerusalem wasn’t a political capital at that time. Rome was the capital of the empire, and Caesarea was the local power base for the Roman government. It was only because of the Passover that Herod and Pilate were in Jerusalem. Thus, Jerusalem wasn’t a political capital, but rather a holy city, a religious place—the center of godliness, of Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes.

            Now our Lord did recognize that Herod posed a threat. He was a sly fox. He may very well have sent some Pharisees—people Herod normally would not have stomached—to warn Jesus to flee. This way Herod wouldn’t have any blood on his hands, as he had after he had killed John the Baptist, and he would still have gotten rid of Jesus. Our Lord knew that Herod was a crafty one and you had to watch him as you would a fox. But it was Jerusalem that was our Lord’s great enemy. You see, the craftiness of the heathen is not as dangerous as the hypocrisy of the pious.

            God detests those who simply go through the motions of being religious while having completely unrepentant hearts. We call this “formalism.” It is the belief that all that matters is having an outward form of godliness, all the while letting our hearts think and do anything they want. It says that we can “walk as enemies of the cross of Christ,” “with minds set on earthly things,” as long as we utter pious platitudes now and then. The problem isn’t the words. The problem isn’t the outward forms themselves or the patterns of piety. After all, we will always have to use one form or another. The problem is that we do not listen to what the words are saying.

            As the apostle Paul writes in today’s epistle, Christ had come so that He could “transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself.” He didn’t come merely to go through the motions. He didn’t come to pretend to redeem the world by pretending to die on the cross. He came to deal with our death by undergoing a real and agonizing death. He came to deal with our sin by handing Himself over into the hands of sinners. He came to deal with our separation from God by undergoing an intense feeling of loneliness on the cross. He came to deal with a broken world by allowing Himself to experience its brokenness at its worst. And He came to bring us healing and life by rising from the dead. He didn’t appear merely as a ghost when He rose. He came back with flesh, blood, and bones. He didn’t doff His body as if He had had it only to go through some motions here on earth for three decades. He still dwells in that body. He will always be the Son of God who has taken on human flesh throughout eternity. He stays forever the God-Man because He is seriously committed to us human beings and He wants to “transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body” when He returns and raises the dead.

            Where does that leave us then? We do not want merely to be going through the motions.  But what is the cure? It is to cry out, as our Lord tells us to, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” There are two things going on when we do that. We recognize that He is the one who comes in God’s name in order to save us. And we confess that our hopes depend upon Him, for He is the blessed one. If that is our understanding, then we will do what Paul tells us in our epistle. We will be heavenly-minded instead of earthly-minded. We will imitate godly people who have lived before us rather than just living for our bellies.

            Above all, we will approach God’s Word differently. Ultimately, the problem with Jerusalem was that it was a “city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.” And, ultimately, that is the problem with us when we are going through the motions, when we are pretending to be religious but are not listening to the Word of the Lord. Every time we open the Scriptures or come to church, we should say, “God is speaking to me here. Let me listen as if my very life depended upon it, as if all of eternity was at stake. He calls me to recognize my sin and to repent. I will do so as if I were fleeing a bear that was intent on devouring me. He calls me to trust in Him for my salvation. I will do so as if I were clinging to a branch and if I were to let go, I would fall off a cliff. He comes to transform me. He will raise me on the Last Day and give me a glorified body, just as His body was glorified after His resurrection. But in the meantime, He wants to still transform me in this life. He wants me to grow to be more like Him. And so in the time I spend with Him, I will let His Word have its way with me so that I know Him better and have a mind no longer conformed to this world, but transformed and renewed.”

            This is the attitude that we need to maintain all the time. It is an attitude that we must especially cultivate if we are like Jerusalem, people steeped in years of acquaintance with God. We may think that we know it all and have done it all. But each and every day, each and every week we must approach God’s Word as if we were coming to it for the first time and hearing its life-changing word for the first time. May God grant us to do this during this Lenten season! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, February 14, 2016

Text: Luke 4:1-13

            Beloved in Christ, Lent is a time for renewed discipleship and a time to focus upon Christ our Savior. The two go hand in hand. The more we take seriously the call to discipleship and struggle, the more we see that we need a Savior. And the more we see all that our Savior has done for us, the more eager we are to be truly His disciples.

            One of the first things we need to learn is the struggle against temptation. No one can be a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ without earnestly wanting to avoid sin. And no one can be a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ without understanding how quickly and unthinkingly we surrender to temptation. Some temptations are severe, some more ordinary, but temptations aplenty there will always be.

            Perhaps the one thing that is most distressing is how simple but successful temptations are. Yes, the devil can use all sorts of subtle tricks, but he usually doesn’t have to resort to such measures. He can use the very same temptation that has tricked us a thousand times before, and he will still succeed far too often. We are like Charlie Brown, who has seen Lucy pull the ball away a thousand times before whenever we try to kick the ball. It doesn’t matter. We believe Lucy when she says that this time is different and that she will really hold the ball. And then we are surprised to see that she has lied once again. In the same way, we are tempted to believe Lucifer when he says that this time is different and that the forbidden sin will bring us happiness this time. But in the end we see that we are as disappointed as always.

Simon Benning
The Temptation of Christ

            Temptations come in several forms, but there are three worth mentioning today. There is the temptation that says, “Your immediate need outweighs God’s law.” This temptation recognizes that God’s law is a worthy ideal, but it asks us to make compromises. It tells us that it is no good killing ourselves by keeping the law, but that rather we should do what we need to do to live another day so that we can keep the law then. A second temptation tells us that the only way to acquire power and glory is to go along with evil to some degree. It flatters us with the thought that we, of course, would use that power for good, but first we have to acquire it so that we can make good use of it. And then there is the third temptation that often goes with the first two; it tells us that God really wouldn’t let any serious thing happen to us if we were to break one of His rules.

            These are three common temptations that are nonetheless still successful, despite the fact that the devil has been pulling these tricks for millennia. In truth, when Adam and Eve fell into sin, they succumbed to these same three temptations. First, they said that their need outweighed God’s command. As far as they were concerned, the fruit was good to eat and a delight to behold, and that was all that mattered. Second, they craved godlike power. I’m sure they could easily justify their aspiration for power by saying that they planned on doing a lot of good in the world with it. And, third, they believed the devil’s lie that there would be no consequences. They wouldn’t die, he had reassured them, and they fell for that lie.

            And so the first thing that we need to do is to discern that temptation is all around us. It won’t come with a warning sign. There will be no notice that this is a test. And so you will likely not see that it is a temptation until it is too late. And so if you can’t think of any temptations you’ve had to face this past week, it is probably because you yielded to all of them without even realizing what you have done. If that is the case, be on the alert. Understand that you cannot escape being tested from time to time, as long as you are in this world. And so be ready for temptations when they come.

            You see, being a faithful Christian means that we should be on the lookout for temptation and be ready to fight it. But being a faithful Christian also means looking to the one person who has defeated temptation again and again, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ. We look to Him for help in two ways. First, we ask that He would be our Savior amid temptation and that His victory over sin would defend us from all evil. And then we look to Him as an example so that we too can conquer temptations when they come.

            It begins with Christ being our Savior. It isn’t that we cannot learn from His example, for we certainly can. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But first and foremost Christ is our Savior. Try as hard as we might, we will not leave this world without succumbing to a number of temptations. And so we need someone who can conquer—indeed, has conquered—the devil and all the forces of evil. We need someone to win the victory that our will power just isn’t strong enough to accomplish.

            That is why Christ underwent a more severe testing than anyone else has done so that He could overcome Satan on behalf of all humanity. Very few people go without any food for forty days. Moses and Elijah did, when each of them spent forty days with God, but we do not read in either instance of them being hungry. In fact, an angel gave Elijah a special meal to last him through the forty days so that he wouldn’t become hungry. But Christ underwent this serious ordeal and suffered horrible pangs of hunger. Furthermore, none of us have been tempted with all the kingdoms of the world. The best we might hope for is the corner office or a small company to manage. We’re not even one of the umpteen people who ran briefly for president. But Christ was tempted with all the power in the world. And we are unlikely to find ourselves transported miraculously to the top of a tall building and then told that we could be equally miraculously delivered if we jumped from it. So, even if we face some temptations that resemble our Lord’s, none of them match in their intensity what He went through.

            Nonetheless, He did not succumb even for a moment to the devil’s lies. And so He lived a truly holy and perfect life on our behalf. That was the first step He had to undertake in order to redeem us. You see, Christ had to do two things if He was going to save us. He had to live a perfectly holy life to substitute for all our rotten deeds. And then He had to suffer the punishment we had deserved by going to the cross and dying there. In today’s text we see the first step rather than the second one. But without that first step of Him living a perfect life for us there wouldn’t have been a second step. Instead, He would have gone to the cross for His own sins, not for ours. But because He lived a holy life in our place, He could also go on to die in our stead, too.

            But as I mentioned, Christ is not just our Savior, but our example, too. We appreciate the fact that He has delivered us from the devil’s power and from hell. And we show that gratitude by trying to fight temptation whenever it comes along. We can learn a lot by watching Christ in action, as recorded in today’s Gospel. The main point is to rely upon the power of God’s Word. Notice that Christ didn’t invoke His own divinity. He didn’t say, “I am the Son of God. I have power over all creation. Be gone!” That is a good thing, because we wouldn’t be able to do the same thing. Instead He quoted the Scriptures. He had obviously studied them in advance and was prepared to quote them. And that is a tool you and I have. The Ten Commandments and other passages of the Scripture give us more than enough guidance to determine what is the right thing to do in any circumstance. We need only repeat them, as appropriate.

            But as the way Christ handled the last temptation clarifies, when we quote the Scriptures, we really must understand what they are saying and why they are saying it. We have to put each Scripture passage within its own immediate context as well as the context of the entire Scriptures. If we don’t, the devil will be able to mangle the Scriptures and confuse us.

            Skeptics, cynics, and other followers of the devil love to take one passage from the Bible and try to set it against another. You can quote them a clear passage from the Bible, but it won’t make an impression because they can twist fifty other passages to prove their point. For example, have you noticed how people will quote the words of our Lord, “Judge not,” whenever someone shows from the Scriptures the difference between right and a wrong and ever so gently calls people to change their behavior? But, of course, such people don’t really want to look at what our Lord is saying there. Instead, they quite judgmentally chide others for being judgmental. But if you look at the immediate context of Matthew 7, you will see our Lord criticizing all sorts of bad behavior and even calling people “hypocrites” and worse. So if “judge not” is supposed to mean “never criticize,” then clearly our Lord did wrong. But a more natural explanation is that we should never write someone off as being irredeemable. Yes, we may and should criticize bad behavior and evil attitudes, but we should do so with the attitude of leading people to repentance.

            And so our Lord was not fooled when the devil tried to quote a Bible passage that said that God would send His angels to protect His people and then drew a false conclusion, namely, that one should provoke God into acting and giving this protection. But Christ knew that that wasn’t what that passage meant, and so He quoted another passage of Scripture. So while the devil was trying to set one passage of the Bible against another, Christ was interpreting one Scripture passage in the light of another. He was making sure that He was interpreting in its context.

            And so, beloved in Christ, may you be armed with the Scriptures and with the forgiveness of Christ as you confront temptations this week. Christ has already won the war. Now let Him help you in your daily battles. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Ash Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Texts: Joel 2:12-19; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

            Beloved in Christ, from time to time we need an attitude adjustment. We settle into routines, which become habits, which lead to a settled frame of mind. And that settled frame of mind produces new vices, so that one sin in the end compounds another. Lent is a time to examine our attitudes and get them more in line with God’s way of thinking.

            But what exactly is wrong with our way of thinking? Well, there may be several things, but let us focus on two things this evening. First, there is the attitude that doesn’t recognize any problem at all. Life is good. Sin is either non-existent or a trivial problem. We are too prosperous, too smart, and too socially well-adjusted to think otherwise.

            What allows this attitude to take root is that we live in a land that is always Christmas and never winter. You may recognize that I have inverted a phrase from C.S. Lewis’s book, The Chronicles of Narnia. There the land had been put under the spell of a wicked queen, who had made it always winter, but never Christmas. For us who live in northern climes, we bear the onset of winter in early November or so, with its cruel winds and frigid temperatures, with the thought that Christmas will come near the harshest time of winter and bring us a bit of joy to remove the bitterness of winter. But it would be awful, thought Lewis, if there would be one cold, dreary day after another, with no Christmas to alleviate the gloom.

            But Lewis couldn’t have imagined a land like ours, where it is always Christmas and never winter. He had served in one world war and lived through another, with a depression between the two. Rationing had been normal for vast stretches of his life. The idea that anybody could go to a store and buy anything they pleased because society was prosperous enough to offer everything at all times—well, he couldn’t have imagined such a thing. But we in our affluent country begin celebrating Christmas sometime in September or so, long before the leaves have turned colors or fall chills have entered the air.

            Such luxury can deaden our senses to the reality of sin. We see that money can buy food for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and homes for the homeless. And then we make the illogical leap that our affluence will solve all our problems—our broken friendships, our troubled marriages, our strained relationships at work, our negligence of God and prayer. But it is when we begin to think this way that God calls us to fast, weep, and repent. He calls us to put aside the joys of Christmas for a while and feel the biting winter wind. It is not that He will cruelly deprive us of Christmas in the future, but rather that we need to feel that wind in order to appreciate the gift of Christmas.

            That is why Joel called his affluent society to take a break from their overindulgence and instead to put on sackcloth and ashes and to fast and mourn. That is why the church for centuries has found it useful to set aside the forty days before Easter as a time of fasting and intensified prayer. Now the Scriptures do not mandate a particular way that this time must be observed, and we Christians have some freedom in exactly how we observe this season of Lent. But let me encourage you not just to do the same old things that you normally would. Instead, let this be a time when you deprive yourself of some of your usual joys so that instead you can focus on God and His kingdom.

            But at the same time we ought to recognize that there is another attitude that might need to be adjusted. And this is an attitude that most affects religious people, the sort of people who would tend to make a big deal out of Lent. While the world overindulges, we make a big deal out of the fact that we don’t.

            For us, Lent poses a hidden, but deadly danger, for we are tempted to show off our fasting, our intensified prayers, and our good works. It is bad when we give nary a thought to righteousness, but it is equally bad when we pursue righteousness only so that we can count ourselves superior to the vast majority who are less spiritually-minded than we are. In fact, the latter action may be more dangerous than the former, for those who are altogether worldly might one day be brought to repentance, but those who deem themselves spiritual think themselves to be in no need of change.

            That is why we need to hear our Lord’s words today. They do not forbid us to pray, fast, and give alms, but remind us to do these things in a truly spiritual way. These things cannot merely be an act where we look more pious than the people around us. Instead, they should be true spiritual disciplines whereby we repent of our sins and draw closer to God. When we do these things, we will not be looking around to compare ourselves with others. We will fast because we are disgusted with the way we have filled ourselves with everything in life to the point of bursting and realize we need to take a break from stuffing ourselves. We will pray because we know that we have serious issues we need to talk over with God, issues that others have no need to be privy to. We will give alms and do other charitable deeds because we want to get over our selfishness and let God’s love shape our own.

            In short, we will do these pious activities with the understanding that they are not really about us or the way we appear before others, but are about God. We will see that it isn’t our righteousness that will get us into heaven, but rather Christ’s righteousness will accomplish that. Because Christ has suffered and died to atone for our sins and has risen from the dead in order to forgive us, everything has been done to reconcile us to God. Our holiest deeds won’t make us more beloved to Him. All they can do is show that we take seriously what Christ has done for us.

            And so, beloved in Christ, we are freed from the awful burdens we place upon ourselves. We are freed from the burden of self-indulgence, which makes us responsible for our own happiness and which teaches us that that happiness is found only by ever-increasing pampering of our desires. And we are freed from the burden of justifying ourselves, of trying to prove to ourselves and others that we are really superior to others in our morality and thus ought to be accepted by God. Instead, we receive Christ’s righteousness and we acknowledge that true happiness comes from knowing our creator rather than piling up created goods.

            With that in mind, let us keep the Lenten discipline of fasting, prayer, and alms. Let us put aside the things that encumber us and devote greater attention to God, for He is always attentive to us. Let the next several weeks be a time when you come to understand Christ at a deeper level and take more to heart all that He has done for you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, February 7, 2016

Text: Luke 9:28-36

            Beloved in Christ, “Jesus…went up on the mountain to pray.” He did so, “taking with him Peter and John and James.” Now at last we think that we might learn the reason for Christ’s success. We’ve seen Jesus preaching with authority. We’ve seen Him do miracles. We’ve seen Him cast out demons and heal the sick. He was the most spiritual man of His generation. Now if only we could see what gives Him that power so that we can go and do likewise!

            It looks as if the answer is prayer. Throughout Luke’s gospel, we see that Christ is portrayed as a man of prayer. When He was baptized, He was also praying. When crowds were pressing upon Him and demanding His attention, He systematically took time out to pray, even going to a desolate place to escape the crowd. Then, when He had to make the momentous decision of which twelve men to choose as His disciples, He spent the whole night in prayer first. Later in Luke’s gospel, we will see Jesus teaching again and again about what prayer is to be like. And so when we hear that Jesus went up the mountain to pray and especially took some of His best students with him, we think that we might finally learn how to have all the power our Lord has.

            But we get a real lesson in prayer, all right. Our Lord prayed all night long while on the mountain, but His disciples fell fast asleep. And we recognize ourselves in them. We snooze and we lose. Our wandering minds prevent us from connecting with God in prayer. And then when we do wake up, we babble nonsense and make requests that are wrong or inappropriate. So, for example, Peter woke up rather late and saw that everything was nearly over. And so he tried to salvage the situation by asking Christ’s permission to build three tents, so that Moses, Elijah, and our Lord could continue their conversation indefinitely. Luke tells us that Peter made this request not out of some sort of genuine piety, but out of ignorance. He hadn’t been paying attention to what Moses and Elijah had been talking about with Christ, namely, how Christ had to go to Jerusalem and be crucified there and rise from the dead. If he had taken that conversation to heart, he wouldn’t have made the request to stay on the mountain; he would have known from the beginning that such a request was impossible. In the same way, we often make ignorant and foolish requests in our prayers because we don’t know God’s Word very well or we disregard it when we pray.

Carl Heinrich Bloch,
The Transfiguration of Christ

            But when we pray, we discover that it isn’t all about us—our strength, our power, our spirituality, our ability to tap into the divine. Instead, it is all about Christ. Yes, our prayers should imitate those of Christ in their fervency and seriousness. But the good news is that our salvation and well-being does not depend upon us and our prayers, but upon Christ and His. For pray as hard as we might, the appearance of our face will never be made glorious and our clothing will never become dazzling white because we are shining brightly. Moses and Elijah will not appear and beg to have a conversation with us. And so we see that Christ is unique. He is the Son of God, and we are not.

            I do not mean to denigrate or deny His humanity. He is fully human and did many things that human beings have to do. He ate, He drank, He got tired and slept. Even in His relationship with the Father, He behaved in many ways as all humans should: He prayed, He meditated on God’s Word, He lived a holy life in obedience to God’s commandments, He showed love and compassion toward those who needed it. By trying to do these very same things, we would embrace what is the very best for humanity. But we can imitate Him in many ways, but not in all, for He is also true God. And when it comes to His divinity, the best thing we can do is not to imitate Him in ways that are beyond our ability, but rather to receive the gifts that He brings.

            You see, there are two things that we learn about Christ in this passage, as well as many other places in the Scriptures. We learn who Christ is and what He does. We learn who Christ is from the words spoken by the Father: “This is my Son, my Chosen One.” Now we might have been able to figure this out by considering various things. He had to be superior to Moses and Elijah, the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, given the way that they showed deference to Him. Christ had to be at least an angelic being, the way that His clothes shone and His whole body radiated with glory. But, of course, He was more than a prophet and greater than any angel. And so it is helpful to have the Father’s words pointing to Christ and explaining who He is.

            But how does it help us to know that Christ is God’s beloved Son? It helps us to see that being a Christian isn’t merely about imitating Christ. Now, of course, we should imitate Him in the ways that we can, as I mentioned earlier. But there will come a point when we realize that He is so far above us that none of us, not the saintliest among us, can come close to equaling Him. Instead, the truly Christian thing to do is to honor His unique mission on behalf of mankind.

            And that leads us to consider the second thing we learn about Christ: what He has done. On the Mount of Transfiguration, He spoke with Moses and Elijah about “His departure, which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” He didn’t talk to them about what laws would most improve mankind. It isn’t because the law that Moses had proclaimed and Elijah repeated was bad. The Ten Commandments are the very best for explaining the sort of moral obligations we have. But giving a detailed explanation of the law won’t save humanity. Trying to enforce that law rigidly won’t save us either. That is because the problem is the human heart. We can recognize the goodness of the law, but it doesn’t mean that we will keep it.

            Let me give an illustration that might be helpful on this Super Bowl Sunday. The rules of football are rather straightforward, even if there might be some nuances that escape most people. The major strategies for playing football are also learned easily enough. Even people who watch only the Super Bowl are able to figure out that it’s a bad idea to run the ball when it’s third down and sixteen yards to go. But when you actually are put in the middle of the game, everything that you’ve learned goes out the window. There will be plenty of plays made today that we will call stupid, rookie mistakes, but we wouldn’t be any better—in fact, far worse—if it were up to us to play the game. In the same way, it is easy enough to understand God’s rules, as laid down in His law, but that doesn’t mean that we will be able to keep them, especially in the hustle and bustle of life.

            That is why we need more than a lawgiver or a law preacher. We need a savior. We need someone who can delve into the heart of the problem and take it on, no matter the cost. And that is why our Lord went to Jerusalem. He went there because it was the heart of the problem. There the law had been preached for centuries, but it had saved no one all by itself. The law left some people in despair, since they realized that they would never be able to keep its demands fully. Others became hypocrites when they heard it, because they didn’t look at it carefully and just assumed that, since they were decent folks, they hadn’t ever really broken the law. But in each instance the law all by itself—apart from the promises of the coming Messiah—had been unable to save people. And so Christ stepped in to do what the law demanded. He didn’t just observe the sacrifices being offered at the temple; He Himself became the sacrifice for the whole world. And it didn’t take place in the beauty of the temple grounds, but on an ugly, barren hill, far removed from the ornate buildings of Jerusalem. It wouldn’t even be on the Mount of Transfiguration that it would take place, but on the gloomy mountain of Golgotha, the Place of the Skull. And to reconcile God and sinners, Christ had to and keep His glory under wraps. Instead, He would appear as the weakest, most despised human being.

            But because Christ went down from the Mount of Transfiguration and went up to Calvary, we have been redeemed from sin, death, and hell. And so God delights in us, for He delights in His Son and His Son delights in us. And if God delights in us, then that means that we can talk to Him, that we can pour forth our prayers. But our prayers ought not to be the sort of babbling and drowsy nonsense that Peter poured forth. Instead, they should be voiced only when we have done what God bids us do: listen to Christ.

            When we take seriously what Christ has to say about Himself and His mission, then we are able to pray to Him as we ought. It won’t be about holding on to the glory of a moment. Instead it will be about Christ and His redemption. Prayer won’t frighten us or bore us, but instead delight us. And that sort of prayer will sustain us as we leave the mountaintop and head back down to the dark valley. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Epiphany 4C, January 31, 2016

Text: Luke 4:31-44

            Beloved in Christ, when God’s Word is preached, it changes things. We see this quite clearly in today’s Gospel. When our Lord preached, it opened the way for demons to be expelled from people and for the sick to be healed. Even today, wherever Jesus Christ is proclaimed as our divine Savior, the devil is put on the run and healing comes to people burdened with disease and illness. That is because Christ comes to restore both soul and body to wholeness.

            Now I and my fellow pastors do not have exactly the same authority that Christ does. Christ is the Son of God. In His very nature He has power over the entire universe. Just as the Father and the Holy Spirit have absolute divine power, so does He. Just as they exude life and bring life wherever there is death, so does He. Christ doesn’t have to go up the chain of command to see if possibly it would be okay to vanquish Satan or bring the fullness of life into a particular situation. He can act on His own initiative. But that is not true of me, my fellow pastors, and Christians in general. To be sure, Christ entrusted pastors with the task of teaching His Word. He gave them authority “to forgive the sins of those who repent and to withhold forgiveness from those who refuse to repent.” In fact, he calls all Christians to proclaim the good news of salvation to all who do not know it and to encourage those who do. But our authority comes from Him, not from ourselves. It is not my holiness or my sacrifice or my power that will rout the devil or heal the sick. Whatever my prayers or your prayers can accomplish comes from Christ, not us. That is why ever since Christ ascended into heaven, Christians have prayed, read the Scriptures, and explained them to people who were troubled by the devil and his temptations or who were battling some kind of disease. We do so, confident that God hears us, but also knowing that healing is not always quick or automatic.

Jesus Heals a Deaf Man Possessed by a Demon,
Originally placed in the City Hall of Ulm

            But let us consider the two forms of healing—in soul and in body—that our Lord came to bring. Let us begin with the healing that takes place in the soul. The man with an unclean demon called out, “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” That is how Satan and every demonic being talks to the Son of God. They recognize Him for who He is: “the Holy One of God.” But they also want to have nothing to do with Him. They want Him to stay out of their little world, for they know that He will turn it inside out, if given a chance.

            But it is not just demons that talk this way. Everybody is born with an attitude that would like to cry out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Even believers in Christ struggle with a part of themselves that would still try to keep Christ out of the picture. We may welcome Christ’s presence in some corners of our life, but there are other areas where we say that He has nothing to do with us. We may welcome Him on Sunday mornings when dressed in our best and surrounded by upstanding people whose approval we want. But on Monday through Saturday we may say, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” When He wants to speak to us about the sort of ethics we should have at our workplace, we want to say, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” When He says that there is a right way and a wrong way to treat other people in your life, we want to say, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” When He wants to talk about such matters as our egos, our selfishness, our lust, our pride, our anger, and the like, we want to say, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

            But, beloved in Christ, do not talk that way. Submit yourself humbly to the LORD God. When you resist His so-called meddling, you are resisting the Physician who alone can heal you. You are delighting the devil and his wicked angels, who seek only to enslave and destroy you. You are not helping yourself or bringing yourself any greater happiness. You will in the end bring yourself only misery and despair.

            But what would happen if we brought Christ, the Holy One of God, to our Mondays through Saturdays as well as to our Sundays? We would see that God’s love, forgiveness, and grace extend to those days as well. Christ cleaned the temple on a Monday, taught on a Tuesday, was plotted against on a Wednesday, washed feet on a Thursday, was crucified on a Friday, and lay in the tomb on a Saturday. He did all those things so that He could redeem you from your sins, no matter what day they occur on. He died on the cross, all but naked. Do you think that He will forgive you only on Sundays when you are dressed in your finery? No, He loves you on weekdays when you are dressed in a grease-spotted shirt and muddy jeans.

            God is the one who created work. Don’t you think that He has some wisdom to offer about what is right and wrong in how we work? Don’t you think that His love could bring healing to what troubles you most on the job? God created other people and loves them as much as He loves you. Don’t you think that He wants them to be loved by you, even as He wants you to be loved them? Don’t you think that He wants both you and them to experience His love through the way you treat each other? And when He talks about your ego, selfishness, lust, pride, anger, and the like, He does so precisely because these are ways in which you continue to hurt yourself. It hurts to touch those areas, much like it is painful for a doctor to touch an open sore. But it has to be done. The infection has to be dealt with. The more we avoid it, the more the sore festers and the more damage is done. It is painful to have that sore opened, but it is only so that the salve can be poured in. Christ confronts us with our sins in these areas, so that He can proclaim forgiveness for them. When we take that forgiveness to heart, these matters that had long been plaguing us begin to heal. We understand at a deeper level that we are a new creation in Christ. Now the infection of sin will linger and we won’t get rid of it altogether. But we will see that Christ is making a difference as He brings healing to our souls.

            He also brings healing to our bodies, as today’s Gospel reminds us. Now how can I say this, when I know that every founding member of this congregation, including the saintliest, are all dead? How can I say this, when each and every one of us will succumb to disease or injury or old age and die? How can I say this when I know that many in our church suffer from chronic medical conditions or are homebound?

            The key to understanding this is that Christ’s holy life, death, and resurrection has secured perfect healing in body and soul for all who believe, but we are only given a taste of that now. We have been given complete forgiveness and victory over sin, and we will experience that fully in the resurrection. But now we still struggle with sin, and it is only the forgiveness of sins that enables us to keep moving forward. In the same way, Christ has won for us perfect healing in our body, and we will experience that fully in the resurrection. But for now we still struggle with disease and injury. It is only God’s love and grace and forgiveness that enable us to keep moving forward, despite our physical struggles.

            But consider how He continues to heal. We have all had dozens of colds, scrapes and bruises, lumps and bumps. Any one of those things could have killed us, if God had not given us a healthy body able to mend itself. The common cold or some other simple disease could kill us if we did not have a healthy immune system. Likewise, the smallest of wounds could become infected and lead to loss of limb or life. We may take all these things for granted, but we shouldn’t. The fact that we recover from illness, that medicines and vaccines work, that doctors can diagnose things—all of these things are blessings from God.

            But also consider how God comes to us in the midst of our illness and supports us and comforts us. The medical condition may remain, but we know that we have not been abandoned. We recognize that God loves us and is listening to us as we pray. We know that other Christians are praying for us, and their prayers encourage us, too. The burden becomes easier to bear.

            And so, beloved in Christ, may you experience the healing Christ comes to bring through His Word. Let Him be the Good Physician for both your soul and body, and look forward to His return when you will be completely whole in body and soul. In Jesus’ name. Amen.