Sermon for Easter 6B, May 10, 2015

Text: John 15:9-17

            Beloved in Christ, it is so easy to misunderstand the word “commandment” as it is used in our English translations of the New Testament. For us, “commandment” is exclusively a law term. It tells us what to do and not to do. It is all about laying down the rules and enforcing them. It is all about changing our behavior and getting us to conform. But as you look throughout the New Testament—and especially in the writings of John—that is just not the case. You see that the Greek word that is being translated as "commandment" must have a broader use than the English word allows. And if you approach today’s Gospel with the assumption that Jesus is giving some rules to His disciples before He takes off, you will grossly misunderstand what He is saying.

            It might be helpful for us to begin by looking at 1 John 3:23, where John writes, “And this is [God’s] commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as He has commanded us.” Now the words “love one another” are a commandment as we traditionally use that term. Those words are telling us to do something, something that will require hard work on our part. But look at the first part of this commandment: “that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ.” That isn’t a statement of the law, but an invitation of the gospel. It is an invitation for us to find our life in Christ.

            Instead of saying “commandment,” it might be more useful to say “teaching” or “lesson.” If you want to be more literal, you could say, “something that has been entrusted to us by a teacher.” Sometimes these points to be learned are rules. Other times they are truths that God has revealed about Himself. Still other times they involve both. Now go back to that sentence in 1 John 3 again with this new understanding: “This is what God has entrusted to us, that we believe in the name of His Son Christ and love one another.” That puts a different perspective on things, doesn’t it?

            Why do I mention all this? It’s because so many people think that Christianity is all about following rules. Even people who don’t like a multitude of rules still think that Christianity involves one rule—loving other people—and they judge others based on how well they have kept that one rule. And people naturally assume that this is the case because there are rules in Christianity, just as there are rules everywhere. We can’t live without rules. Even people who say that there are no rules have their own rules. Don’t believe me? Imagine what would happen to a man dressed in a tuxedo who walked into a Hell’s Angels’ bar and tried to order a Shirley Temple, especially if his limo was blocking their motorcycles in. What would happen to the “there are no rules” or “live and let live” philosophy then? And so there are rules everywhere, including in Christianity. They are summarized by the Ten Commandments, but of course those commandments go very deep. The commandment “You shall not murder,” for example, also forbids anything that would harm anyone, including ourselves. It forbids not just murder and suicide, but domestic violence, fighting, brawling, and the like. It also forbids anger, hatred, name-calling, and bullying. And so with all the other commandments.

            Now these rules are absolutely necessary. They are exactly what we need as a society and especially as Christians. To talk about “holiness” without taking these rules seriously would be to make the Christian life into a joke. Yes, I know that they are difficult, indeed impossible for us to keep, but we cannot set them aside for that reason. Even the command of Jesus that we His disciples love one another is so difficult that no Christian has kept it consistently. But that doesn’t mean that we can set it aside. And so if we assume that Christianity is all about keeping the rules, we really end up in a dilemma. Either we fudge the rules or we fudge our record of keeping them. But our Lord Jesus Christ came to bring us life—life that is deeper than merely keeping the rules. Rules may help our lives to be more orderly and constructive, but they really do not give life. And so the real power for life comes from outside these rules.

            You see, what makes us “us” isn’t the way we have kept the rules but rather the fact that God has given us life. He gave us life when He created us in the first place, but He also gave us new life when He forgave our sins. Talk about something that energizes us and fills us with joy and hope! All our sin, all the evil we have done, all the mistakes we have made that still cause us deep regret—all of those things have been forgiven. God loves us, not based on how well we have kept the rules, but based on how generous and good He is.

            This is what got Jesus excited in today’s Gospel and what He longed to talk about. He didn’t start by saying, “Do this” or “Don’t do that,” but instead He spoke about His great love for us. It is a God-size love. Jesus said, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.” Think about that for a moment. The intensity of Christ’s love for us can only be described in terms of God the Father’s love for His Son. It is epic. It is cosmic. It is beyond all telling. It is more intense than all the quasars and black holes combined. It is more beautiful than the forests. It is more enduring than the mountains. God the Father didn’t love His Son half-heartedly, but always and with the deepest love. That is the same measure of Christ’s love for us.

            That is the legacy Christ wanted to leave us. He wanted us to abide in His love, and therefore He directs us to His words, where we will find His love. Earlier in this chapter our Lord had urged His disciples to abide in His Word as a way to abide in Him. Now He adds that His words (what He calls here His commandments) are the means by which we abide in His love. Just as the Son clung to His Father’s words and found in them nothing but love, so we will find nothing but love if we cling to Christ’s words. Make sure that you understand that Jesus is not saying that if we obey Him sufficiently He will love us. No. He talks about keeping His words, that is, treasuring them and clinging to them. We hold onto them because they are words of love.

            They are like letters that you got from home when you were away. Maybe some of you can’t relate because you never were away from home or because you’ve never used snail mail to correspond with loved ones. But when I left for college, which was a thousand miles away from home, there was no email, and so I would write to my parents and they to me. I also corresponded with some friends from high school. I still cherish the letters that I got, for I know that there was a lot of time and effort that went into these handwritten letters. By reading those words, I would abide in my parents’ love. Furthermore, nobody would say that I had to read the letters several times to prove my worthiness and then my parents would love me. No, it was precisely because they loved me that they sent these letters to me. So it wasn’t my reading of the letters that caused my parents to love me, but rather I learned even more how my parents loved me as I read the letters.

            Now there would be instructions in those letters. A mom can’t write a note to her son without giving helpful reminders about what to do and not to do. But nobody would say that the letters were just all about laying down rules and guidelines. Instead, whatever she wrote in those letters was intended to be helpful advice spoken out of love. And that is true with the instructions our Lord gives. Not every instruction our Lord gives is a rule or part of the law, but some things our Lord teaches are. That is true with His commandment to “love one another.” Without a doubt it is law, and not an easy one either. But just as my mom’s advice was couched in an attitude of love, so is Christ’s. He is not giving an order for the sake of giving an order. No, He entrusts us one to another so that we can love each other and thereby experience again the same sort of love that He has for us.

            Look at the second paragraph in today’s gospel. It begins and ends with the commandment to love one another, but most of it is all about Christ’s great love for us. He is the one who lays down His life for us, as a true friend should. Lest we lose the point, He calls us friends. And if we are friends, we are no longer mere servants who are kept in the dark. Instead we are friends who have the privilege of knowing all that Christ has revealed about God the Father. Furthermore, we aren’t the ones who initiated this friendship, but rather Christ is. He wants that rich life of love to flourish in us and bear fruit so that we may pray completely confidently to the Father. Yes, Christ wants us to love one another. That is a command, not a suggestion. But the more we look at it, we see that it is simply another way of abiding in God’s love—and that is not burdensome at all.

            And so, beloved in Christ, abide in Christ’s love. That is His legacy to you. And also embrace your brothers and sisters in Christ, for they too are part of His legacy to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Easter 5B, May 3, 2015

Text: John 15:1-8

            Beloved in Christ, living a godly life is not optional. It is absolutely necessary. Or to put in terms that our Lord used, bearing fruit is not optional. If we believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, we will show it in the way that we think, talk, and act. Our thoughts, words, and deeds will be the fruit of a living faith. We will delight in His Word and call upon Him in prayer. We will strive to love God wholeheartedly and our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. We will gather with other Christians regularly in worship and support one another with our burdens. Our genuine trust that Christ is our Savior will show itself in the way that we live our lives.

            Where that is altogether missing, faith too is missing. The fruit of faith naturally follows wherever faith is present. People can talk all they want about their faith, but if there is no fruit of faith, they have no faith in God. You see, godly living and the whole fruit of faith follow faith as naturally as a tree produces fruit.

            Now when I talk about bearing fruit, I know that some people get their hackles up. They assume that we are talking about being perfect people, and they want to insist that there is no such thing as a Christian who is perfect. But there is a big difference between saying that Christians don’t always bear the fruit they should and saying that Christians don’t have to bear fruit at all. Of course, I acknowledge that we will not become perfect in our lifetime. In fact, our Lord indicates as much. He notes that we will be pruned again and again because He wants us to bear even more abundant fruit. That hardly sounds as if we had achieved perfection. But just because we will never become perfect in this life, it doesn’t follow that we don’t have to strive to grow in faith and in its fruit, godly living. If we think so, we’ll find ourselves judged and removed from the living vine, Jesus Christ.

            So, then, bearing fruit is not optional. How do we do it, though? After all, just because we want to do something doesn’t mean that it is going to happen. People envision doing all sorts of things—and many of their plans never come to fruition. So, just talking about bearing fruit doesn’t mean that we actually will do so. And Jesus Himself agreed with that assessment. In fact, He went further and said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” Whatever you do, whatever you plan and carry out, is nothing apart from Him.

            Now that sounds a bit of an overstatement to many. Can’t people do something good without Christ’s help? Aren’t there plenty of people who do good things and never believe in God, let alone in Christ? Here it is helpful to distinguish between what is good in human eyes and what is truly good in God’s eyes. There are plenty of things that are good in human eyes, but aren’t in God’s eyes. People are content with someone who doesn’t cause any trouble and occasionally does something nice for a neighbor. But God’s standard is higher: we are to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. People are okay with someone holding a grudge, as long as they don’t do anything violent toward that person. But God doesn’t countenance our selfish rage. The world will pat us on the back because we aren’t criminals, but it never understands that we haven’t even come close to the standards that God has set for us.

            You see, the world sees people putting aside crass sins and adopting subtler sins. The world is content with that, but God isn’t. Three-year olds have learned that temper tantrums don’t work and begin trying flattery instead. We praise the children for improving, but they are still trying to manipulate others to get their way. So it is with all our moral reformations. What God really wants—what He counts as the only thing worthy of being called “good fruit”—is that we fear, love, and trust in Him above everything else. And we cannot do that by our own will power.

            The great news of the gospel is this: God does what we have been unable to do. We could never love God with even half our heart, but God loved us wholeheartedly and still does. It was no half-baked love, but a love that demanded the greatest sacrifice. Someone had to march into the very abyss of death and hell. Someone had to enter into the mess of the world that we had created by our sin. And that someone was none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Father and the Holy Spirit also delighted in this mission and they did everything they could to bless it and support it. But it was Jesus Christ, the Son, who undertook the mission for our sake.

            We could never give God the reverence and fear that He deserves. He is holy, and should be respected just for His holiness. He is our creator, and deserves honor for that. But we are too selfish to give Him that honor. But God dispenses honor. The Son honors His Father and is obedient to Him, even when the cost was great. The Father and the Holy Spirit honor the Son. And, marvel of marvels, the three Persons of the Trinity honor us by choosing to go to these great lengths for our redemption.

            In short, every virtue that a Christian should excel in is exhibited by God, and especially by the Son of God incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ. If we are going to grow in godliness, it will not be enough for us to imitate Him. No, He must work in us. He must be the vine that sends His sap coursing through us His branches. For just as branches do not have life in themselves apart from the vine, so we too do not have life in ourselves apart from Christ.

            We receive two things from Him: forgiveness and new life. We are forgiven, first of all. Our guilt is no longer charged to us but has been given to Christ, who carried it all the way to the cross and dealt with it once and for all. Instead He credits His righteousness to us. This is not based on anything we have done. We are not forgiven because He has seen some progress in us. He doesn’t give us time off for good behavior. No. It is completely a gracious gift on His part—and at great cost to Him. It isn’t even given because He thinks we’ll turn out all right in the end and so He’ll give us an advance based on how He thinks we will perform. No, it is purely a gift. It is a gift He longs to give to all people, no matter how wicked they have been, for Christ died for all people, not just for those who will embrace the gift in the end.

            With this forgiveness of sins comes new life. Christ doesn’t forgive us because of what we have done, but He doesn’t want us to continue doing the same old things that have brought grief to ourselves and others. Christ loves us as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us as we are. By that I mean that we don’t have to become lovable people before He steps in and reaches out to us. He forgives us before we have even thought of Him. But He doesn’t want us to continue to live in ignorance of Him and in the miserable ways of sin. And so He gives us new life.

            Through His Word He makes us clean. He makes a new creation. He makes us a branch on His vine. Then the Christian life that follows consists of us drawing our strength from Him. A branch needs the sap that comes from the vine. The branch doesn’t produce the sap itself, but totally relies on the vine to do that. In the same way our power to live a godly life comes from Christ working in us. That is why we need to abide in Christ, and that comes about by abiding in His Word.

            In this new life, though, we will be trimmed back from time to time. We would like to think that once we become Christians, we get our act completely together and we don’t have any more difficult times in our lives. Our Lord points out that we will need to be trimmed back again and again. Healthy branches require sap, but they also require trimming back. If you let your tomato plants grow wildly, instead of culling branches here and there, you are not going to get as many tomatoes as you would like. Instead, the branches will keep growing longer without producing as much fruit. It is essential that branches be trimmed back so that they can focus on producing fruit. That is why God trims us back from time to time. Sometimes we are just growing wildly and instead need to focus on the most important things. And so He brings suffering into our lives to help us focus on Him and His kingdom. This is painful, but over time it helps us deepen and mature as Christians and produce more abundant fruit.

            This is what the Christian life looks like. It is not optional for us. May God “who began a good work in you…bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Easter 4B, April 26, 2015

Text: John 10:11-18

            Beloved in Christ, preachers often try to use illustrations to help make their point. But I must confess that I am not impressed by many of them. You can compare God’s kingdom to jet-skiing or to French fries or to an old Waylon Jennings song, and I’m sure that you can find some sort of similarity. But it’s usually a trivial connection, some superficial way that the two are alike. There is one—and just one—point of comparison between these illustrations and divine truth.

            Those illustrations are not like the parables Jesus told. One pastor has explained this well. He said that our Lord’s parables are like sturdy houses. You can go inside of them and look around and see all sorts of things. In fact, our Lord’s parables invite you to come on in and sit down for a while and enjoy the scenery all around. This is especially true of all the times our Lord speaks of sheep and shepherds. What helps is that He isn’t the first person to speak about the relationship between God and His people in terms of a shepherd and sheep. Ever since at least the days of Moses, prophets have used that particular metaphor. It works on several levels: God takes care of us as a shepherd looks after sheep; we wander away from God, as sheep wander from their shepherd; there are bad shepherds who don’t look after the interests of the sheep; and so forth. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah are just some of the prophets to use that imagery. In the New Testament Peter uses that metaphor, as does our Lord. In fact, in each of the four gospels there is at least one “good shepherd” reference or parable.

The Faithless Shepherd
by Pieter Brueghel the Younger

            It’s useful to ask, then, whenever you encounter a parable involving sheep or shepherds to ask just exactly what is being emphasized in this particular case. The framework will always be the same, but the emphasis will differ. So, for example, when you read Psalm 23, there is nothing said about bad shepherds, but Ezekiel talks at length about them. Thus, when we approach today’s text, we see that Jesus uses the image of a shepherd and a sheep to make three main points.

            First, Jesus proclaims Himself to be the Good Shepherd, which He defines as the one who is truly willing to lay down His life for the sheep. He contrasts Himself with the hired hands, who have no such dedication. Shepherding is dangerous, dirty work. On a good day a shepherd has to chase after straying sheep, walk the sheep over from one pasture to another, and do all sorts of other exhausting work. But the sheep also face predators who would devour them—and all who would take care of the sheep expose themselves to the same dangers. A bear or lion that is intent on devouring some mutton won’t think twice about harming a tiny shepherd who is getting in its way.

            A hired hand who finds himself in that situation could easily say, “It’s not worth it” and run away. We all can sympathize with employees facing dangerous situations where they would be tempted to say, “I’m not paid enough to risk my life. If the boss wants me to do that, he can take this job and shove it.” And unless you’re someone like a firefighter, most people would sympathize with you. And so you can see the hired hands thinking to themselves, “What are these sheep to me? They don’t listen or cooperate. I always have to drag them out of trouble, only so that they can get into more. Enough! My life is worth something—far more than one lousy sheep.”

            The same could be said of us. We’re not that great of a catch. We wander from God and get ourselves into trouble. We are selfish, lazy, greedy, gluttonous, licentious, and every other kind of bad adjective that you can muster. Sure, there are moments when we are cute like sheep. But, morally speaking, we are as dumb as sheep, too. If we’re not bad all the time, we still get into enough trouble to make us rather undesirable.

            No wonder that the hired hands decide after a while that we’re not worth the bothers. These hired hands—the spiritual gurus and teachers of all other religions—have no problem telling us about all the right sort of things we should be doing. They, as well as Christ, are eager to tell us that we should lead moral lives and strive to be excellent people. But when we fail, they leave us on our own. They don’t want to be bothered with rescuing us. No religion other than Christianity teaches that we have a Redeemer who has saved us because we couldn’t save ourselves. But if they leave us to ourselves, what good are they? They are like hired hands who run away from the sheep when the sheep need them most.

            You can’t tell the difference between a real shepherd and a hired hand when the sheep are grazing peacefully on the plain. You can only tell the difference when the wolf or the lion is bearing down upon them. In the same way, you can’t tell the difference between the true Good Shepherd and the hired hands (the wannabes) when life is calm. But when we are entangled in our sins and you hear people say, “Work it out yourself” or “I told you not to deviate from my advice,” then you know that you are dealing with a hired hand rather than the Good Shepherd. For our Good Shepherd longed to save His sheep. He made it His mission, even though He knew that it would cost Him His life. That is why Christ said, “No one takes [My life] from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.” No one got the jump on Jesus. He intentionally laid down His life for us.

            But if you look at the cross and think it went badly for our Lord, you should see the other guys. Sin, guilt, death, hell, and the devil came out even worse than our Lord did. In fact, they still haven’t recovered two thousand centuries later—and they never will. But just three days later our Lord was back in the flesh, ready to take on all comers. That is why our Lord not only said “I have authority to lay down” my life but also “I have authority to take it up again.” Christ remains the Good Shepherd, alive for eternity.

            So far we have seen that a major point of this parable is that Christ is the Good Shepherd, one totally dedicated to the sheep, unlike the hired hands. We turn to the second point He makes, namely, that He knows the sheep and the sheep know Him. Sheep may have their faults. They wander and get into trouble. But there is one great virtue about sheep, and that is they listen to their shepherd’s voice. Shepherds in the Middle East develop their own ten-second melody that they use to call the sheep. Often they will sing it; sometimes they will play it on a flute. But sheep learn to recognize that particular song and will always follow it. You can have a dozen flocks all come together at the same watering hole and mix together, but the shepherds won’t worry. When the shepherd starts calling the sheep, his sheep come and the other sheep ignore him.

            You can easily see the application to us Christians. We are often in the hubbub of life, where we graze and drink next to people who are not Christians. Wherever you go, you see that often the flock of Christians is mixed in with the flocks of other religions. We do not live in isolation, like Old Order Amish or like Trappist monks. We live, work, and play cheek by jowl with people of other faiths. But above the din around us we hear the words of Christ. More than that, we spend time gathered as His flock, attuning our ears to hear His Word so that we won’t be confused by the noise all around us.

            The sheep know the shepherd, but the shepherd also knows the sheep. To us all sheep look alike. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But a shepherd can tell his sheep from quite a distance. In the same way, our Lord knows us individually. We are not just one more number. He cares for us as a person. We have a hard time really knowing more than 150 people. Yes, we can have acquaintances that number well into the hundreds, even thousands, but it is impossible for us to know all these people well. But our Lord is no ordinary human being. He is the Son of God. And He knows us as a shepherd knows each member of his flock.

            Finally, our Lord makes one last point: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Most flocks are rather stable. Sure, new sheep are born into the flock and old ones die off. But the flock remains much the same. You don’t typically see sheep from other flocks added to an existing flock. It probably happens occasionally, as people inherit someone else’s sheep, but it is not a common occurrence. But our Lord is concerned to increase the size of His flock.

            We shouldn’t think of this as just Christ getting greedy and wanting to have a bigger market share. This isn’t a business strategy on His part, as if all He cared about was having a thriving and growing company. No, He wants to save people. He wants a bigger flock because He wants more people to know the forgiveness of sins and the new life that He alone can give. It is important to remember this truth in our own congregation as we seek to grow. We want to become a larger church and are not content to be a small congregation. But we are not doing so to have a better income stream or to have more volunteers or to get greater recognition. We want people to experience the salvation Jesus Christ has won. And so in all that we say and do, we will lift up and proclaim Jesus as the Good Shepherd, so that His voice may be heard and sheep added to His eternal fold.

            Beloved in Christ, may you find in Christ the Good Shepherd who delights in taking care of you, His beloved sheep! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Easter 3B, April 19, 2015

Text: Luke 24:36-49

            Beloved in Christ, one of the serious dangers the church has always faced is to make Christ less than He really is. Most people don’t have a problem with believing in a God who is all-powerful. They do have a problem with believing in an all-powerful God who gets so much into the muck and mire of our life that He will take on our human nature. Most people don’t have a problem with a holy man who spouts off pearls of great wisdom. They do have a problem with a holy man who is also true God. Most people don’t have a problem with the idea that something in a human being survives death—a soul or some such thing. They do have a problem with someone rising from the dead and continuing to exist in body as well as soul. In short, most people don’t want a real Lord God in the flesh. And once He has been killed off, they don’t want Him back in the flesh again. They don’t want Him standing authoritatively in their midst.

            But we in the Christian church want no other Jesus. When the disciples thought that Jesus was merely a ghost, they were frightened. Only when they realized that it truly was the risen Lord were their hearts calmed. A ghostly Jesus terrifies. A risen Lord in the flesh brings comfort.

            Think of the comfort that our Lord brings and think of the comfort that some people would substitute. Every so often you hear people say after a loved one has died, “As long as we remember them, they will live on in our hearts.” That sentiment is cold comfort. After all, we are all forgetful. Does that mean that whenever we forget our loved one, even just for a while, they have ceased to exist? It’s a ridiculous and cruel notion. And if we believed that about Christ, it would give us no hope.

            After all, we want more than just memories. We face flesh-and-blood problems. We need a flesh-and-blood Savior. We need a Savior who was so flesh-and-blood that He could march into death to deal with our very real sins. And we need a flesh-and-blood Savior who has risen again to give us forgiveness and new life. We need a flesh-and-blood Savior who will continue to work in and through us, as He daily forgives our sins and guides us in paths of righteousness. An idea or a memory is not enough for us Christians. Anything less than the real Jesus—the real God in human flesh—won’t cut it.

            But where do we meet this risen Savior? I think most of us would naturally think of the Lord’s Supper, where our risen Lord gives us His very body and blood under the bread and wine. Most certainly He is there—in the flesh. He is there in perhaps the most powerful way that we can imagine. He brings His very body and blood that won our salvation. He not only shows His body and blood to us, but He gives us these very things for us to eat and to drink, to assimilate them into our very being, so that He and we can be closely bound for all eternity. But it is not a dead Lord who does these things, but the very much alive Jesus Christ. For just as it was the living Christ who instituted the sacrament on Maundy Thursday, so it is the Christ who lives again who continues to serve as our host at this most holy meal. Here we encounter Christ as in no other way—as host and banquet—as we come with hungry souls in weary bodies.

            Not that that is not the only place we encounter the risen Lord. No, when we were baptized, we were united in a very real and powerful way with His death and resurrection, yes, with Christ Himself. But today’s Gospel reminds us that we encounter our risen Lord in another way, namely, through the Scriptures. The Scriptures are about Jesus Christ from beginning to end, from Genesis to the Revelation. And when those Scriptures are read, the Holy Spirit brings us fully into the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

            But you may say, “Is the Old Testament about Jesus? After all, He hadn’t been born then.” But from beginning to end, the Bible is about Christ. He was there when we were created, for He, the Father, and the Holy Spirit held a special conference before creating us and they agreed, “Let us make man in our own image.” And as soon as mankind turned to sin, His birth was foretold. He would be the “offspring of the woman.” Since nothing was mentioned about His being an offspring of a man, one could already understand that He would have no earthly father but would be born of a virgin. He would come to “crush [the devil’s] head,” even though it would come at the great pain of having His heel bruised.

            With the dawn of every new era, there would be a further prophecy given about what He would be like. After the flood, Shem was told that he would be the ancestor of Christ; several centuries later, Abraham was told the same; and then Abraham was told that this blessing would come through Isaac, not through Ishmael. Generation by generation this promise was passed down: to Isaac, to Jacob, and then to Judah. Before Jacob died, He foretold how Christ would come from Judah, but only when Judah would lose total control over its people, which occurred when Pilate took away the right for the Jewish council to hear capital cases. (Even in exile, the Jewish community had retained that right.)

            Now as we turn to Exodus, you might think that here the story wanders away from Christ, but that would be wrong. God delivered the Israelites from slavery to the Egyptians, but it was no mere political act or military act on God’s part. After all, there have been all sorts of oppressed nations throughout world history. Why did God single out the Israelites? He wanted to foreshadow the sort of deliverance that God would provide through the Messiah. Just as the blood of the Passover lamb spared the Israelites from death and set them from bondage, so too our Lord’s death set us free from bondage to sin and death. Just as God commanded the building of the tabernacle and instituted the office of high priest, so Christ would be our true temple and our great high priest. Israel was called to be God’s people and to bring His light and salvation to the whole world, but they ultimately failed. That is why Christ had to come.

            This is underscored by two passages in the books written by Moses. You see, you could get the false impression that the first five books of the Bible (called the Pentateuch) are just about Moses delivering the Israelites and establishing a new nation. You might think, as the Jews today still do, that Moses’ law was the culmination of all of Israel’s hopes, and that was that. But in one of Moses’ last sermons he said that God would raise up a greater prophet than himself, for He would speak with the very voice of God. Shortly before he had said those words, the prophet Balaam had outlined Israel’s history, from Israel’s settling in the Promised Land to the coming of the Romans. But as far as Balaam was concerned, everything revolved around “the Star of Jacob,” the one whose coming would not happen for centuries, but whose coming would change everything.

            The Prophets added further details to what the Law of Moses had revealed. So too did the Psalms. We do not have time now to explain all the passages in the Bible that foretold the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Several come to mind. David was told that He would be the ancestor of our Lord. Micah foretold that Christ would be born in Bethlehem. Isaiah gave such complete descriptions of our Lord’s life and ministry that he has been called “the fifth evangelist.” Indeed, Handel’s Messiah, which tells the life of Christ, is drawn largely from Isaiah, not from the four New Testament gospels. In all the prophetic books of the Old Testament you see a common pattern. The prophet will complain about the wickedness of his generation and call people to repent, but he will also point forward to the coming of Christ. The Messianic promises are almost always an exact antidote to the current problems that the prophet was facing.

            Of course, that’s still true today. Just as the Old Testament Scriptures proclaimed “that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead” so “that repentance and forgiveness of sins” could be also preached, so we in the New Testament proclaim that Christ has died and risen from the dead and we call people to repent of their sins and to receive the forgiveness of their sins.

            Beloved in Christ, may you understand the Scriptures fully and believe what they are saying, and thereby meet the real flesh-and-blood Jesus who has risen from the dead! Amen.

Sermon for Easter 2B, April 12, 2015

Text: John 20:19-31

            Beloved in Christ, we spent several weeks in Lent considering the way of the cross. We saw that we are redeemed by Christ’s death on the cross. We also learned that Christ’s cross sets the pattern for our lives, for we too are called to serve rather than to be served. But we live in the days after Easter. We wouldn’t for a second deny the death of Jesus Christ or say that it was unimportant. But we know how the story ends. It ends with Christ rising from the dead on the third day, vanquishing death for Himself and for us. And so we cannot live as if Christ remains dead and our joys have all been vanquished. What are we to do?

            Today’s Gospel gives us the answer. Here we meet some of the first people to learn that Jesus had risen from the dead. More importantly, Jesus Himself directs them so that they would do what the church would do ever since, at least until He returns in glory. Christ appeared to the disciples twice in today’s Gospel, and we learn something important from each visit.

            First, we see that Christ commissioned the church to deal with sins—forgiving repentant sinners and withholding forgiveness from the unrepentant. In fact, that is why the church exists at all. If we ignore sin or if we ignore the atonement for sin, we really have no reason for existing at all. We would be just another club or social organization. But we exist because sin is a serious matter. Sin is a problem for every human being, for the pious as well as the ungodly, for the enforcers of the law as well as the outlaws. Sin is a problem that we cannot extricate ourselves from. The more we struggle, the deeper we fall into the quicksand and mire of sin. It is for that reason Jesus Christ had to die on the cross in our place and rise to give us new life.

            You don’t believe that sin is that much of a problem? Just ask your spouse, who can fill you on some details you may have overlooked. Or, if you are single, ask any neighbor who knows you well; or consider that you have a number of ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends who are more than willing to say why you weren’t perfect. But I would hope that you wouldn’t have to look that far. Instead, I would hope that you would see that the same problems that we complain about as prevailing in the world also exist in you, although on a smaller scale. The same rage that leads nations to war is in you. You may never harm another person physically, but that doesn’t mean that you are exempt from that rage. Maybe overall you are overall a fairly calm individual, but don’t tell me that there haven’t been moments when your anger just bubbled up to the surface and you vented it. We could say the same about all the other attitudes that lie behind open rebellion, sexual misconduct, thievery and robbery, and every other vice that we don’t like on the grand scale.

            Nearly two thousand years of life after Easter hasn’t brought evil to an end, inside or outside of the Christian church. We continue to stand in need of God’s forgiveness. We continue to need the words spoken by Jesus, “Peace be with you.” We continue to need the wounds of Jesus on “His hands and His side.” Yes, we continue to meditate on them, to poke and to prod, for “by His wounds have we been made whole.” Easter does not end our need for a Savior. Instead, Easter proclaims that our Savior has triumphed.

            But Christ does more than forgive us. He commissions the church, especially her pastors, to forgive sins wherever Christ Himself would forgive our sins. Thus, Christ sends the church on a mission, just as He Himself was sent by the Father. The Father sent Him to make atonement for the sins of the world. Christ now commissions us to bring the benefits of that atonement to wherever it is needed and to proclaim His Word so that people can come to faith in Him and so be saved.

            It is with that mission in mind that our Lord imparts the Holy Spirit. Note why our Lord says that He is doing this. It isn’t so that we can roll around in the pews or do other crazy antics. It is all about forgiveness and withholding forgiveness. Let me start with the latter. There are times when the church (and her pastors) must withhold forgiveness. Given that this is mentioned last, you would (rightly) assume that this is less common than imparting forgiveness. But there are still times when we must withhold forgiveness. It has nothing to do with us adopting a peevish attitude or bearing a grudge toward someone. Rather, when people are unrepentant, we cannot give them God’s forgiveness. They don’t want it, anyway, and it would be pointless to give it to them. Instead, they would come to think that God’s forgiveness is a meaningless phrase, rather than something won at great cost—the cost of our Lord’s life.

            Therefore, we explain God’s Law carefully so that everyone will know how holy God is and what sort of things He expects out of us. When we hear this Law, we should be moved to see ourselves as sinners who need forgiveness or else we will be doomed forever. When we see ourselves for who we are—a microcosm of the world’s problems, as I mentioned before—then the good news of the forgiveness of sins makes sense. More than that, we desperately want it and greatly appreciate it when it is offered.

            Moreover, we will see that the thing that most radically transforms people and entire societies is understanding that they have been forgiven by God for Christ’s sake. Don’t accept any substitute for that wonderful gift. Don’t substitute self-forgiveness for God’s forgiveness. You hear people saying, “You’ve got to learn to forgive yourself.” Poppycock. Only a self-centered, self-indulgent egomaniac would have the gall to forgive himself or herself. Such forgiveness would actually be a grave sin. But God’s forgiveness—that’s what we really want. We want none other than the Creator of the universe to say that our sins have been dealt with once and for all, and we are now innocent before Him. And when He forgives our sins, we can look forward to the future. We are no longer bound by our past sins. Instead we are marked with the new life that He gives us. We are free to walk in new paths of righteousness rather than in the well-worn trails of evil. We can strive to live as children of God, not because we have achieved perfection or soon will, but because we live with God’s favor and good will.

            The church exists, therefore, as something distinct from all other entities in society. We are not about educating, networking, creating technology, organizing activities, providing entertainment, or doing any of 1001 other such activities. Individual Christians may have callings to do those things, but that is not the church’s mission. Instead, we provide the forgiveness of sins. It is as simple as that—and as radical as that.

            So far I have talked about what the church and especially her pastors do. But how are individual Christians supposed to respond? Here we look at the second time that our risen Lord appeared to the disciples. From that incident we learn that we are to live by faith, not by sight.

            When our Lord rose from the dead, He did not continuously stay with His disciples. He appeared to them now and then until forty days after His resurrection, when He removed Himself entirely from their sight for good. He had a good reason for doing this. For the previous three years they had shared all their waking moments with Him. They had eaten their meals together, wandered from town to town together, stayed in the same homes together—in short, done everything together. But our Lord wanted them to know that He would still be with them, although they would not see Him as before. And so He popped in and out several times. When He came, He reminded them that He would always be with them and would leave His peace with them. When He disappeared, He was getting them used to living by faith, not by sight.

            Unfortunately, Thomas did not understand this truth. He was used to the old way of “seeing is believing.” He had to see Jesus before he would believe in Him. More than that, he demanded the right to poke and prod to see that it really was Jesus. The Greek is rather blunt about what Thomas was asking. He didn’t just ask to “place [his] finger into the mark of the nails.” More accurately, you might translate it that he wanted to “thrust” it there.

            Jesus warned Thomas—and us—not to put aside God’s Word in order to demand something “better” or “more trustworthy.” The Word is all that we have. Few people in world history would be privileged to see the wounds of Christ. Instead most of humanity would have to rely on His Word as it was preached by His pastors throughout the centuries. But Jesus said that that Word was sufficient. As Jesus noted elsewhere, people really don’t believe even when they see something miraculous. Yes, even if someone were to come back from the dead, it wouldn’t mean that people would get over their skepticism. Either people believe that Word or they don’t. That is the way it has to be until Christ returns in glory.

            Beloved in Christ, our Lord has spoken through the apostles this word of forgiveness. May you take it to heart and believe and so be blessed. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Easter, April 5, 2015

Text: Mark 16:1-8

            Beloved in Christ, how are we supposed to react to Easter? Over the centuries we have developed a script as to what to do: we place lilies in our churches and in our homes; we might put on new clothes; and we devour eggs and chocolate. These are all customs developed by Christians over the centuries to show their great joy in the Lord’s resurrection. Lilies are one of the earliest flowers to break through the winter landscape as a harbinger of spring. So too our Lord has broken through the landscape of a humanity pockmarked by death and heralded our own resurrection on the Last Day. New clothes remind us that we have been clothed with the righteousness of God and the joy of Christ’s resurrection. The eggs and the chocolate proclaim that the season of Lenten penance is over and the joy of Easter has begun.

            Those customs are fine in and of themselves. But the first Easter wasn’t like that. The women who went to Christ’s tomb weren’t wearing new Easter bonnets while nibbling on chocolate eggs. They were going to deal with a grave matter—literally. They were going to arrange further our Lord’s body. They had hastily placed His corpse in the tomb since the Sabbath was about to begin that Friday evening. They had wrapped Him in a shroud and put a minimum amount of spices on Him. Now they were going to go back and do a proper job. They knew that His body would soon decay, and they couldn’t stop that. But they could put spices all around it so that it would stink less when they came back in a year or so to put His bones in a box called an ossuary. It was a dreary task.

            But Easter surprised them. We are told, “Trembling and astonishment…seized them.” And I pray that you too will be surprised by Easter. Sure, you may know the Easter story, but may its message take hold of you as it did the women at the tomb.

            I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised to hear Mark write in his gospel, “Trembling and astonishment had seized them.” It may be some of the last words that Mark wrote, but he had been saying something like that all along in his gospel. As we have been reading the gospel of Mark, we have seen again and again how Christ acted with great power, as He cast out demons, taught the perplexed, and healed the sick. But there is also a corollary: wherever Jesus went, people marveled at Him. The demons trembled at His presence; the people in the synagogues were astonished at His teaching with authority; and the sick and helpless were utterly amazed at what He had done. All along Christ had been bringing God’s kingdom in great power, which had made people tremble and be astonished. Why should His resurrection from the dead be any different?

            Now you may ask, though: Why should people tremble at the thought of Christ’s resurrection? The answer is clear enough: Every time people in the Bible encountered God, they trembled and were afraid. Even when God or one of His angels was bringing a piece of good news, everyone’s first reaction was one of fear. Why? We are sinful human beings and so we are naturally afraid of God. Adam and Eve were not afraid of God at first, when they lived pleasantly in the Garden of Eden. But when they had broken His commandment, they cowered in fear ever thereafter. They knew that judgment rightly followed sin.

            The women who went to the tomb were also rightly afraid. They thought of how righteous our Lord had been. Indeed, He was the one human being in all of history who never committed a sin. Now if such a righteous person could be grabbed off the street, unjustly tried and condemned, and then led off to execution, what could happen to a person like you and me who could not claim such innocence? And if God had stepped back and let this all happen to a person without the slightest fault, what sort of justice should we expect from God? They were afraid before they had even approached the tomb. The smallest of things, no matter how benign, would have only sent them over the edge.

            And then they discovered that God wasn’t doing a small deed. He was dealing with life and death. He was turning everything upside down and inside out. He had condemned His innocent Son so that we guilty ones could be exonerated. He had brought the Prince of Life into the bowels of death and up to the gates of hell so that we who had been marked by death might know life. This is all more than we can take in. And if we have any sensibility at all, it does strike a bit of fear into us.

            But it should also astonish us. Now at last we see what sort of a God we have and what sort of a Savior. If we were looking earlier in the Gospel of Mark, we would have seen a wonderful teacher well worth studying. We would have seen a person who brought healing to a sick world. We would have seen someone who spoke truth even to the powers that be. All of those things are good. But we have seen other people do similar things. We have seen wise people offer us their learned insights. We have some physicians heal horrible diseases. We have seen people challenge injustices in the world. All of those things are admirable, but not necessarily astonishing. What is really astonishing is that someone was willing to go into the depths of death and hell in order to redeem us from them—and that this someone was none other than true God.

            As we see Christ risen from the dead, we learn that He did not die as one more martyr to a cause or one more victim of a cruel world. Instead we see someone who wanted to transform the world deeper than we ever could. He came to do more than make us wiser or healthier. He came to restore us as creations of God, holy and righteous before Him. He came to bring us back into fellowship with Himself. He came to put an end to the death sentence that has stood over humanity for millennia. By rising from the dead He guaranteed that we will all rise from the dead on the Last Day and that all who believe in Him will have eternal life. There have been many great men and women over the centuries, but nobody else has done such an astounding feat.

            Even more astonishing is how deeply God loves us. That is now apparent, as never before, now that Christ has been raised from the dead. Now God’s whole plan has been laid out in front of us. It is as clear as day. We see how His great love for us moved Him to send His Son to become one of us. And the Son of God loved us so much that He became like one of us. He was carried in His mother’s womb as each of us were. He was born as we were. He grew up like one of us, complete with skinned knees and all the other childhood frustrations. And though He had an amazing career, He chose to be like us in one more way: He chose to die, even as we do. But more than merely die like one of us, He took on all our deaths. He faced the loneliness and pain that we fear will mark our own deaths. He did all this because He loved us.

            But then He rose from the dead—not just for His sake, but for our own as well. You see, He wanted this to be a shared experience. This was not just going to be His private little victory, but the victory for all of humanity over death. Just as He became like us in every respect even to the point of death, so He will make us like Him in rising from the dead. It may take some time before we experience this. Already the church has been waiting for two millennia. But one day our Lord will return in glory and raise our bodies to be like His glorious body. Why? Because He loves us. A lifetime with Him is too short a time, He thinks. He wants to spend eternity with us.

            In fact, what God will do in and through us because of Easter is no less astonishing. The cowardly disciples would become pillars of the faith. A persecutor of the church would be made into an apostle. A small band of hopeless people would become a mighty church that would spread into all continents and embrace billions of people. People who had given themselves to every vice or who despised God or didn’t even believe in Him would be changed as they lived lives of faith in Him, now revering Him and walking in His commandments and trusting fully in His promises.

            Yes, Easter remains astonishing to this very day. Let us not be so overwhelmed with all the conventions of chocolate and Easter bonnets and the like that we overlook just what an amazing day it is. Let us with trembling and astonishment join the saints over the last twenty centuries as we contemplate exactly what God has done in raising Christ from the dead. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Good Friday (April 3, 2015): The Fruit of the Spirit: Self-Control

            Beloved in Christ, we have been considering the fruit of the Spirit this Lenten season. As we have been looking at each aspect of the fruit of the Spirit, we have seen how it was most visible in the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is no less true of the last aspect, which we explore tonight: self-control. Christ exhibited this virtue in a way that no other person has ever done before or after.

            First of all, there is the fact that He allowed Himself to be crucified—and stayed on the cross. Now you and I have a hard time following through and completing difficult tasks. Sometimes we are able to stick with it and get everything finished. Other times we get distracted or frustrated or bored or tired and give up. We’ve all had those occasions when we’ve undertaken a major project and vowed that we would complete it all in one day. We work for several hours and realize that it is bigger than we had imagined. And we may just give up and say that we’ll complete the task the next day or sometime in the future—and then we never get around to it. But that is not what Christ did.

            He could have said, “It’s not worth it” and walked away from the cross. He could have said, “This is more than I had bargained for.” He could have pulled rank, using His divine nature to loosen Himself from the cross, scatter the Roman soldiers, and smite all who had wrongly condemned Him or mocked Him. But He didn’t use His divine nature to free Himself from the pain. Instead He joined His divine nature with His human nature so that it intensified what He was going through infinitely. Had He suffered as one more human being, He could have saved one person. But because He suffered as true God and true Man, joined together for all time, He was able to suffer on behalf of all people and save all.

            That took a high degree of self-control. It’s one thing to use your self-control to keep soldiering on when times are tough. It’s quite another thing to use that self-control to ratchet up the intensity of the task. And yet that is what our Lord did.

            Next, we see our Lord’s self-control in the way that He forgave other people, especially the way He forgave those who were crucifying Him. Again, think of how you and I would have handled the situation. We would have said, “Fine. I’ve got to do this painful task because it will help humanity. But I won’t forget the people who were responsible for doing this. Those Roman soldiers will regret the way they’ve had their fun with me, scourging me and mocking me with a crown of thorns. They’ll be sorry they ever drove a nail in my hands or gambled over my clothing. And I won’t forget the lying witnesses, the high priests, the Sanhedrin, Pontius Pilate, and all the rest.” You see, we may do what we are ordered to do, but we aren’t going to let off the hook those who made our life miserable.

            And yet what does Christ do? He forgives even the people who had carried out the execution. He charitably said of them, “They know not what they do.” They weren’t complete innocents. They knew that they were being needlessly cruel, but that’s how they always behaved. They didn’t understand that He wasn’t a person they should treat in that way. And so He asked His Father to forgive them. He showed self-control rather than the natural anger we would have shown.

            Another way He showed self-control was that He refrained from drinking the sour wine until the very end. The soldiers had taken vinegary wine and added myrrh as a pain-reliever. However, Jesus had refused to drink it. He would bear the full pain of the cross. If He had deadened the pain somewhat, He might have left some people out when He was atoning for the world’s sins. And He didn’t want that.

            We are told that the fifth word our Lord spoke was “I thirst.” But note when our Lord said those words: He said it when He “[knew] that all was now finished.” Not until the job was finished would He ask for a little relief from His pain and thirst. Also note why He said it: “to fulfill the Scripture.” Psalm 69, which had predicted Christ’s crucifixion, had said, “When I was thirsty, [My enemies] gave Me vinegar to drink.” If He had had to forego that drink of vinegar and myrrh, He could have. But the psalm had predicted that His enemies would “poison [His] food and…give [Him] vinegar to drink.” And thus He allowed Himself to drink that wretchedly spiked potion.

            In one last way He showed self-control, and that is how He addressed His Father. You would have expected Him to have railed against Him, complaining how unfair it was for Him to bear mankind’s burden. We are tempted to curse God when life becomes hard. At the very least we want to mutter and complain. But Christ did not.

            Now He did say, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” At first glance, that sentence appears to be a complaint against God. But our Lord was quoting the opening lines of Psalm 22, and He expected everyone who heard Him quote the Psalm to think not only of the first verse but of the entire Psalm. You see, in biblical days people assumed that you knew the whole context and were thinking about more than just the line quoted. For us it is different. We quote lines from movies all the time, completely oblivious to their context. If the jingle fits, we’ll use it. But that’s not how people in Christ’s day would have handled quotations, especially from the Scripture. They would think not just about the words being quoted, but also the broader context.

            And the Psalm that Christ quoted—Psalm 22—poignantly sets forth His suffering and death, but also proclaims the resurrection from the dead that would follow. Thus, when our Lord quoted the first verse, He was showing His confidence in His Father in the end to deliver Him from the grave. He professed His willingness to continue to undergo all that He was experiencing because He knew that it would end well for Him. Although He would naturally feel abandoned by His Father, He knew that that was not the end of the matter. For even though He was experiencing the full fury of His Father’s wrath, that would come to an end and He would be vindicated by being raised from the dead.

            That is why He was also able to pray later on that day, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” He did not have control over His own life, but He exercised self-control so that the power would really rest in His Father’s hands.

            I have spoken quite a bit about Christ and the way that He exercised self-control. Well, what about us? If I’m going to talk about self-control, shouldn’t I talk at great length about how we should resolve to go out and do likewise? Shouldn’t the whole point of this sermon—indeed, of the whole Lenten season—be to motivate us to be better people? And yet, every time that I have talked about us in this sermon, I have contrasted how weak our self-control is compared with the vigor of our Lord’s self-control on the cross. Shouldn’t I praise us more or at least say that we can approach His level of virtue? Isn’t that what Christianity is all about?

            No. It is not. I certainly want you to grow in all the virtues. I certainly want you to bear the fruit of the Spirit in you. I want you to excel as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. But never, ever think that you can attain the same level of virtue as our Lord Jesus Christ. Never, ever think that you can become so virtuous that you will no longer need a Savior. Jesus remains the only completely holy person ever to have lived. Even on the best of our days we show far less self-control than He did on one of His most relaxed days. And we certainly could never imitate the self-control He showed on the cross.

            But that is all right. Good Friday is all about Jesus and what He has done and the virtue that He has shown. It’s not really about us—or it’s about us in the sense that we are receiving His good gifts. Nonetheless, confessing our feebleness and having received the benefits of His self-control and of all His other virtues, let us be moved to grow in holiness of life and imitate Him as best we can. Let that happen not because we will ever be our own Saviors, but rather because we hold our Savior dear. In Jesus’ name. Amen.