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.

Sermon for Epiphany 3C, January 24, 2016

Text: Luke 4:16-30

            Beloved in Christ, the Old Testament makes up over three-fourths of the Bible and is God’s holy Word, but it can be a bit puzzling to understand at times. It’s easy enough to read various events that occurred in the Bible and reflect on them from a Christian perspective. We read, for example, of how the Israelites rebelled against Moses and murmured against God in the wilderness, and we are warned by that example not to do the same or to repent when we see a spirit of bitterness settling upon us. Or we look at the heroes of faith and are moved to imitate their life of repentance and faith. With David, who repented after his adulterous affair with Bathsheba, we too humble ourselves before God and deplore our sins. With Abraham, who set out to a new land solely on the basis of God’s promise, we trust in and rely upon the promises of God in Christ Jesus.

            Somewhat harder but still easy enough are the direct prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament. Often that is because we Christians have not been trained to look for them and to contemplate their meaning, although they are there for people to see if they will pay attention. In every book of the Bible there is something that points forward to the coming of Christ. You see that, with each new generation from Abraham through Jacob’s children, there was a repetition of the promise that the world would be blessed by one of Abraham’s descendants. When the Israelites left Egypt and were about to enter the Promised Land, when David was established as king, when they were about to go into exile, there were direct prophecies given about how the Christ would come. Meanwhile, every book of the prophets not only chastised God’s people for their slowness to believe and their eagerness to do evil, but also pointed out how the coming Messiah would be the exact antidote to Israel’s waywardness. The more scathing the prophecy against the Israelites, the sweeter and brighter the messianic promises tended to be.

            But what is really difficult for us to make sense of are all the rules and regulations God gave in the Old Testament. Some Christians assume that all the rules and holidays are still in force. But this overlooks the repeated testimony of the New Testament that the moral law is still in force, but the rules about holidays, kosher foods, clean and unclean states, and the like are not. They applied to the Israelites in the Old Testament, but they do not apply to Christians in the New Testament.

James Tissot,
Jesus Unrolls the Scroll in the Synagogue

            Now this seems a bit bizarre to us. Why should God have given those rules if He was going to abolish them anyway? And what benefit can we Christians get from reading about these rules, when the ceremonies seem a bit strange to us and we know that they no longer apply to us. We naturally are inclined to skip over the entire book of Leviticus and huge chunks of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, because they all talk about these sort of things that we find hard to apply to us.

            But as always, it is Jesus who comes to our rescue. In today’s Gospel He preached His first recorded sermon in his hometown. And He preached it on a topic that we might find puzzling: the Jubilee Year that occurred once every 49 years. But it might help us to understand that our Lord did not just talk about the Jubilee Year as Moses had described it in Leviticus, but rather as the prophet Isaiah had further explained and shown how the Messiah would bring about what the Jubilee Year was pointing to. All Christ had to do was then point out that He was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

            In other words, already in the days of the Old Testament the prophets had reminded God’s people that the rituals and ceremonies and holidays pointed to something greater. So when we Christians say that our Lord fulfilled all the rituals and holidays of the Old Testament, we are not inventing that interpretation. It is an idea that goes back to the Old Testament days and was approved by the prophets of old.

            And so with that in mind we consider what the Year of Jubilee might mean for us Christians today. It would help to begin by looking at what that festival actually consisted of. The Hebrew calendar not only observed the Sabbath every Saturday and several other festivals such as Passover and the Day of Atonement each year, but they also observed two other holidays that occurred only in some years. Every seventh year was a Sabbath year. The people took a year off from planting and harvesting their crops, although one could eat what grew naturally.

            Then following every seventh Sabbath year—that is, every 49 years, there would be the Year of Jubilee. It was like getting an extra year off. No crops were planted, but one enjoyed the food stored up from previous years. All Israelite slaves were freed. Now no Israelite could be enslaved for more than six years and they were to be treated as indentured servants rather than slaves, but if someone had only served a couple of years when the Year of Jubilee rolled around, they were still to be set free. At the same time, land was returned to the original owners. In this way nobody would amass all the land in an area and nobody would be permanently bereft of land, which was the only way to gain income in that kind of society. So this holiday helped the poor, but it brought joy to all.

            Well, when Isaiah wrote his book, he reflected on what the Year of Jubilee might be pointing toward. Yes, it was good that the poor, the afflicted, and the enslaved were being set free. But was that all that God had in mind for people? Did He just want everybody to enjoy a little time off? No, there was something deeper. It pointed to the fact that the Messiah would come and set the whole world aright, not just a corner of it. Not only would the poor receive good news and the captives be set free, but the blind would be given sight. Now that had never happened during a Jubilee Year in Old Testament days, but of course Christ would heal several blind people during His earthly ministry.

            But Isaiah had more than mere earthly poverty and blindness in mind. Throughout his book Isaiah had complained that God’s people had become blind by their constant idolatry. They had eyes, but they could not see. And so when Isaiah talked about the blind seeing, he was also including the idea that people would finally come to see the truth about God and would worship Him alone rather than the idols. And that is why Isaiah said that the coming of the Messiah and thus the true Jubilee would be when God’s favor would finally rest upon His people.

            And then our Lord Jesus entered that synagogue in Nazareth and spoke those words that still amaze us: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Yes, already the Jubilee Year—the year of the Lord’s favor—had begun and it would continue to last for all time. Of course, Christ wasn’t referring to the year on the Jewish calendar, since He was speaking these words around 30 AD and the next Jubilee Year wouldn’t come for another 30 years. But Christ was beginning the New Testament age that very moment, the age in which those promises of Isaiah came true.

            Christ had good news for the poor. The word Isaiah had used to describe the poor literally means “the bent-over ones.” They are the people so weighed down by life that they stoop underneath the burden. Poverty remains a horrible burden. How wonderful it is to hear that Christ cares for the poor in their misery. But it isn’t just the penniless who are bent underneath a terrible burden. So is every last human being, for we have squandered our eternal inheritance and chosen instead the squalor of sin. We have been cheated out of our birthright and face nothing but the grinding poverty of death and damnation. To us Christ proclaims good news: He has come to free us from captivity to sin. He gives us that freedom by our forgiving our sins—something He could do only because He went to the cross and died for us and then rose again by God’s power. No wonder Christ calls this era “the year of the Lord’s favor.”

            And so, beloved in Christ, consider all the treasures that Christ has given to you that our Old Testament counterparts knew only in small measure. They knew only about a rest that came from taking off a day every week. You have the permanent rest that comes from knowing God and enjoying fellowship with Him. They knew about the Passover that had set them free from slavery in Egypt. But you have the true Passover that sets you free from slavery to sin, death, and hell. They kept the Passover by scouring their homes and removing any yeast in them. But you should keep the true Passover by letting God scour your hearts and remove the taint of sin within them. They knew about a Day of Atonement where year after year the blood of goats was sprinkled that the sin of Israel might be removed. But you know of the true Day of Atonement, Good Friday, when once and for all the blood of the Son of God was shed that we might have our guilt removed.

            And so, beloved in Christ, let us consider the joy and hope that the ancient holidays of Israel brought to them. But then let us consider the greater joy and hope that are ours through Christ Jesus. Amen.

Sermon for Epiphany 2C, January 17, 2016

Text: John 2:1-11

            Beloved in Christ, parents warn their sons to steer clear of a lifestyle of “wine, women, and song.” Drunkenness, lechery, and frivolity never helped anyone. It certainly never helped develop moral character or maturity. And so it might seem strange that our Lord would go to a party and turn water into wine. Even if there was nothing immoral going on, it seems too ordinary, too secular, too profane an occasion for Him to perform His first miracle there. His first miracle should have been something grander, such as a matter of life and death, not a simple embarrassing situation.

            But “God created the heavens and the earth” and so “the earth is the LORD’S and the fullness thereof”—including all the mundane things such as a wedding party. But because the whole world has been tainted by sin, everything in it—including mundane things such as a wedding party—need to be redeemed by the Lord. Young men should be told that there is nothing wrong with “wine, women, and song,” as long as we receive them as gifts from the Lord. But when we abuse these gifts, when we get drunk on wine, turn women merely into sex objects to satisfy our lusts, and when we never “sing…the songs of Zion” but only vulgar ditties, then we must be redeemed, that is, brought back to wholeness. That redemption takes place only in Christ Jesus, and so it is not surprising that our Lord would attend a wedding and show us what a redeemed life would look like with regards to wine, women, and song.

Bartolome Murillo, Wedding at Cana

            That would be grounds enough for us to look carefully at this first miracle of our Lord. But the Apostle John goes on to call this miracle a “sign.” In fact, John will call all our Lord’s miracles “signs.” We instead tend to speak of them as “miracles” because we want to emphasize that these are not ordinary happenings, but rather something supernatural. But John calls them “signs” because they point to something greater than the merely miraculous event. They are teaching something about God and His kingdom. And so today I would like to look at this particular sign and what is pointed out by the wine, women, and song of the miracle at Cana.

            Long before Christ came, wine had been used by the prophets of the Old Testament as an image of the joy of fellowship with God, especially the fellowship that the Messiah would bring. To be sure, there are some negative references to wine also throughout the Scriptures. When they speak of God punishing the unrepentant, they often compare the wicked to people who are forced to drink wine down to the last drop. One gets the impression that such people are not altogether unwilling drinkers, even if it leaves them reeling. You see, the wicked who refuse to repent would rather cling to their wickedness, even if they know that there will be consequences. It is as if they want to be drunk on their own selfish desires, and God says, “Drink up,” even if it means they have a bitter hangover. But notice that it is drunkenness—not moderate enjoyment of wine—that is a metaphor for judgment.

            Instead the moderate use of wine is often a metaphor for the joy of fellowship with God. The psalmist notes that God had given “wine to gladden man’s heart.” Therefore, it is not surprising to see another psalmist say, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” In other words, he would savor God’s salvation as one might savor a wine of fine vintage as he prayed to the Lord for help. But lest we think too literally about this wine, another psalmist makes it clear that God’s salvation is better than wine: “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their wine and grain abounds,” he says. And so the messianic age is described with images of grapes and wine. It is like a feast on a mountain with rich wine. It is like hills and mountains dripping with wine.

            But, of course, there wasn’t much wine at this wedding party in Cana. The closest thing they had to wine was water, and even that water wasn’t in pitchers used for drinking water. Instead, this water was stored in massive stone containers designated for ceremonial washing. It would take all the water in these six jars to bathe one’s whole body or all the water in just one of these jars to wash one’s hands adequately so that one would not be ceremonially unclean when entering the house.

            Now why did they have these jars here? There is nothing in the Old Testament law about washing frequently in order to become holy. Yes, if you had become unclean, you would have to wash at the end of the day so that you could become clean again. But there was nothing about washing your hands whenever you came back from the market lest you have any taint of uncleanness sticking to you from there. That was an invention of the Pharisees. But that sort of idea percolates when you do not focus on the true Redeemer of the world. You blame your sins on the uncleanness out in the marketplace rather than on the sinful heart that resides within you. You pretend that washing yourself of the world will make you all right. Yes, religious people are greatly tempted to do this, but even utterly secular people wash themselves of others whom they deem the great unwashed. They deny the evil that resides within themselves but think others cause all the problems. We all like to pretend that the problem comes from outside of ourselves rather than inside of us.

            But sin was vanquished when Christ atoned for our sins and the sins of the whole world. He could rightly have washed Himself of humanity since He was not responsible for our sins, but instead He poured out His blood that was as red as the wine that flowed from those jars. His blood would take the place of the repeated washings done in Judaism. The joy of Christ’s salvation takes the place of our efforts to purify ourselves and make ourselves acceptable to God.

            So that is the meaning of the wine in this miracle. Let us turn now from wine to women—or to be more accurate, marriage. Like wine, marriage is an ancient biblical metaphor for describing the relationship between God and His people. Throughout the Scriptures God is compared to a husband and the church is compared to a wife. The intimacy a married couple enjoys is like that between God and His people. Just as a good husband naturally is willing to lay down his life for her, so Christ, the Son of God, laid down His life in order to save the church. Just as a good wife loves her husband in return, so the church loves and honors Christ. In fact, as Paul makes clear in Ephesians 5, it isn’t that the relationship between God and His people imitates a marriage but rather the opposite: human marriage imitates the relationship between God and His people. That is why we Christians are going to have a different understanding of marriage than our secular counterparts do. They see the family as a short-term arrangement that can be construed any way they want. They see lifelong fidelity as a burden to be minimized, since they value passion over commitment. But we understand things differently. God doesn’t love us and leave us. His love lasts forever. And so we will naturally live differently in our marriages because we have a different view of God. We do so not only because we think that it is a better way of living, but to change our view of marriage would mean we would have to change our view of God.

            Now when Christ came, the marriage between God and His people had been very rocky. The prophets Hosea and Ezekiel were quite frank about this, pointing out that God had been faithful but His people had been cheating on Him by sinning and worshipping idols. And so by performing this miracle at a wedding, Christ was announcing that God was going to undertake the hard work of getting the marriage back on track. He was going to shoulder the burden, even though He wasn’t the one who had made the marriage a wreck. But because He gave Himself wholeheartedly to redeem us, the marriage has been saved. There is love between God and His people once again.

            So far we’ve talked about wine and women. Next comes song. I know that I’m stretching things here, since there isn’t anything mentioned about music in our text. Nonetheless, we in the church sing about the things that are talked about in today’s Gospel. We read that the “disciples believed in Him.” And we are told that the master of the feast praised the wine that Christ had created. That is what our songs are about. They reflect our faith in Christ and praise God for His goodness. They confess, “He has done all things well.”

            Yes, there are other forms of music besides church hymnody. They have a proper setting. There is nothing wrong with listening to some popular music as you work out at the gym or drive in your car. There is nothing wrong with singing some sea chanties or folk songs with people who enjoy them. Of course, I’m assuming that the lyrics of all these songs are fitting for Christians to sing—and not all are. But in the Christian church the hymns and canticles we sing proclaim our faith so that we can strengthen ourselves by those words and teach the faith to those who do not yet know it.

            So, yes, indeed this miracle is full of “wine, women, and song,” but it points us to the wine of gladness that comes from our salvation, the bride of Christ redeemed by Him and loved deeply by Him, and the hymnody that proclaims these truths. In Jesus’ name. Amen.