"The Days Are Coming!" (Sermon on Jeremiah 33:14-16) | December 1, 2024

Sermon Text: Jeremiah 33:14-16
Date: December 1, 2024
Event: The First Sunday in Advent, Year C

Jeremiah 33:14–16 (EHV)

Listen, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the good promises that I have spoken to the house of Israel and concerning the house of Judah.

15In those days and at that time,
I will cause a righteous Branch to grow up from David’s line.
He will establish justice and righteousness on earth.
16In those days Judah will be saved,
and Jerusalem will dwell securely.
This is what she will be called:
The Lord Our Righteousness.

The Days Are Coming

The days are coming! How many until Christmas? I’m sure you could ask most of the children and they could give you an exact number. The rest of us could probably do the math, but perhaps we don’t want to think about that just yet. There’s so much to do to prepare—planning, decorating, cooking, emotionally centering ourselves. It’s a lot. But unless the Lord returns before December 25, it will be here. That day is, in fact, coming!

This morning in worship, we are not yet getting into the Christmas season itself, but we are beginning a new church year, and we begin that year in the season of Advent. Advent is a season all about preparation which fits in more ways than one at this time of year. Amid all the preparations that happen for us to celebrate Christmas, spiritually, we are preparing our hearts for a dual purpose. We are, in part, preparing our hearts to hear that glorious Christmas gospel that the angels and shepherds will share that night in Bethlehem. But we also continue to prepare for his second coming, ensuring our hearts are ready to receive him not just as the baby in the manger but also as the returning King of kings and Lord of lords.

In some ways, we begin the new church year in a very similar way to how we ended the last church year this past Sunday. In our Gospel, we saw Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and while there is humility as he rides on a lowly colt of a donkey, it’s still a greatly different picture than what we saw in last week’s Gospel when Jesus was on trial before Pontius Pilate. Shouts of praise from the Psalms, and specifically praise to the promised Messiah, filled the air!

Our focus this morning takes us back, though, some 600 years before that first Palm Sunday. In our First Reading, we spend time with the prophet Jeremiah, who lived and worked in a dreadful time in the history of God’s people.

The Israelites had lived in the Promised Land for over 800 years, and during that period, there was a constant struggle to keep God's commands and directions. Not only did they struggle with the normal sinful natures that would lead them astray from God’s will anyway, but they also allowed people who worshiped false gods to continue to live among them and influence them. So the pull to fictional deities like Baal, Asherah, Molech, and others constantly distracted from the true God and while also incorporating pure sin in their worship practices.

God sent his prophets to them repeatedly, warning them that he would step in with chastisement using the sword of foreign powers if things did not change. That happened to the northern part of Israel before Jeremiah’s time when the nation of Assyria came and exiled most of the people and mixed in people from other nations with the Israelites who remained.

The southern part of Israel had some brighter spots. A few kings like Hezekiah and Josiah would come in and try to clean up the worship life of the nation. They would clean up and repair the temple. They would reinstitute festivals and sacrifices God had commanded, which the people had long forgotten. But things never fully turned around; the people never devoted themselves back to God reliably.

The real issue was not the faithfulness of one nation or several tribes but God’s global promise of a Savior. Just like when God intervened with the flood of Noah’s day because the promise of the Savior was on the verge of being extinguished, so God intervened here. While his actions were not as dramatic and did not require an ark, it was no less critical. The promise had to be preserved, and it wouldn’t be a pleasant road ahead for the Israelites.

At the beginning of Jeremiah 33, before our First Reading for this morning starts, God outlined what this was going to be like: The Lord, the God of Israel, says this concerning the houses of this city and the palaces of the kings of Judah …  I will fill them with the corpses of men whom I have killed in my anger and my wrath. I will hide my face from this city because of all its wickedness (vv. 4-5). There’s no sugarcoating that. Things would be miserable because the people had abandoned God’s ways.

And this makes up a large percentage of the message God sent Jeremiah to share. The people responded to that message as well as you might imagine they did. They viewed Jeremiah as a liar, a blasphemer, a traitor to the nation and king. Who would say such horrible things about their own country, their own people? And yet, Jeremiah was sharing what God had told him to say. Jeremiah was just the mouthpiece; the words were God’s.

However, there is something important to remember about this downfall God promised for the nation of Judah: God set an expiration date. It wouldn’t be short—70 years—but it would end. The purpose of this was not to punish unfaithful people; the purpose was to purify, to rehabilitate an apostate nation because they had a role to carry out for the good of mankind; it was through them that the Savior of the nations would come.

So Jeremiah had the privilege of describing future days. The terrible days are coming! Babylon would come and carry the nation into exile. The difficult days are coming! A seven-decade-long exile would end all but a select few of that current generation. The trying days are coming! Even in return to their homeland, exiles would find it difficult to endure; as they took a stronger stand against the false religions around them, they would find relationships with the other nations much more difficult in the short and long term.

There’s not a ton to be excited about in these promises. These coming days sound dark and cold. But then, there are other days that Jeremiah is privileged to announce: Listen, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the good promises that I have spoken to the house of Israel and concerning the house of Judah. God would someday keep and complete the promises he made to his people. What would that look like? In those days and at that time, I will cause a righteous Branch to grow from David’s line. He will establish justice and righteousness on earth. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. This is what she will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness. The salvation days are coming! God will come and save his people, and the people, the cities, and the nations will be named to reflect the reality of their spiritual condition: The Lord Our Righteousness.

A branch would grow up from the house and line of King David—Messiah would be the descendant, the son, of David. And he would do what David and the rest of his bloodline couldn’t: bring real justice and righteousness. Justice because sins would be truly and fully paid for; righteousness, because by paying for those sins in his own body, the Messiah would put our broken relationship with God back together and make it right again.

So, this was the answer to the Israelites’ sin problem. They couldn’t make things right by suffering in exile. They couldn’t make things right by turning over a new leaf and suddenly being very faithful to God. No, they would need a Savior to rescue them from their sin, pay for their wrongdoing, and put them at peace with God. In his work, Judah would be saved, and Jerusalem would find a peaceful existence.

If we compare ourselves to the Israelites, we note there’s not much difference. Perhaps we’re not building altars to Baal and participating in pagan worship services. But aren’t we often prioritizing other things, letting matters other than God be king in our hearts? When we allow work or school, money or influence, entertainment or relaxation to become the dominant focus of our lives at the expense of God, we’re making that thing or goal our god in his place. We are no better than the Israelites visiting shrine prostitutes to worship fertility gods or sacrificing their children in the fire to Molech. It just takes different forms for us: pornography use and sex outside the bonds of marriage, neglect of family or children due to work, play, alcohol, drugs, or anything else that pulls us from our God-given responsibilities. All of these sins can become our gods.

And so, what do we do? Well, nothing. We should not be surprised if we find ourselves in a really bad situation at some point—now or later. Maybe not exile in Babylon, but perhaps something God uses to wake us up from our spiritual apathy or unfaithfulness. Why does he do that? Because the days are coming, or more to the point, the day is coming. Be it the end of our lives here through death or his return at the Last Day, there is a moment when we will have no more time left, where the clock on our time of grace here in this life will stop ticking, and then we will face judgment before our God.

Because that day is coming, Jesus rouses us from our sleepy and sinful spiritual state. He warns us that that day is coming like the day of exile was coming for Judah. But he also points us to himself and reminds us why we do not need to be afraid. All of our unfaithfulness to him, every time we have made other things our gods rather than him, all of our sins of weakness and willful sins of desire, they are all forgiven in him. The days were coming and have in fact come when the King of kings and Lord of lords took on our human flesh, lived and died in our place. By that life and death, he destroyed our sins, justified us, and made us righteous. That branch from David’s line, Jesus from Nazareth, is the long-promised Messiah, the Savior we desperately needed.

My brothers and sisters, because of Jesus, the days are coming when we won’t have to fight this battle inside of us and around us to be faithful to our God. The days are coming when he will pluck us out of this life of misery and bring us to himself in heaven. The days are coming when we will live and bask in the complete fulfillment of everything Jesus accomplished for us, when “The LORD Our Righteousness” will also be the name given to us.

Until that day when we have it in full, hold on to what we have in part. Guard the good deposit of the Holy Spirit that God placed in you. Value God’s work and promises to you above all else. Prioritize him above everything, even in (and perhaps especially in) these busy days before Christmas. The days are coming. Lift up your head! Your King will come to you! Amen.

"Absolute Power for Our Eternal Good" (Sermon on Revelation 1:4-8) | November 24, 2024

Sermon Text: Revelation 1:4b–8
Date: November 24, 2024
Event: Christ the King Sunday (The Last Sunday of the Church Year), Year B

Revelation 1:4b–8 (EHV)

Grace to you and peace from him who is, who was, and who is coming, and from the seven spirits that are before his throne, 5and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his own blood 6and made us a kingdom and priests to God his Father—to him be the glory and the power forever. Amen.

7Look, he is coming with clouds, and every eye will see him, including those who pierced him. And all the nations of the earth will mourn because of him. Yes. Amen.

8“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, the one who is, and who was, and who is coming, the Almighty.

Absolute Power for Our Eternal Good

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If you are watching a movie or reading a book and a character in the story has or acquires the ultimate power to rule, and they don’t start to use that selfishly, at least a little bit, your suspension of disbelief may flounder. We can’t believe anyone who had control of everything around them—all the wealth, all the political and social power—would be truly generous, selfless, and altruistic, using the power to help others rather than helping themselves. It doesn’t make sense because we know that’s not the way things work in this life.

We know what people are like; we even know ourselves. I’d love to think that if I had access to near-infinte money and could pull all the political strings of a nation, I would be kind and loving and use all of those resources for good. But I know that, like you, I have a sinful nature inside of me that would at least try to seize onto that and use it to serve myself rather than others, and perhaps even non-sensically use that large amount of power to try to get more at the expense of others. No, I’m probably good being far removed from that situation.

Sin corrupts everything. Sin is the reason that those in positions of power will often use it for their own advantage. But this morning on the last Sunday of the church year, we have the chance, the privilege, the joy to focus on the one who has literally all rule, power, and authority and yet had no sin, so that he uses that position and power for the good of others. Today, we focus on Christ as our King—the one who defeated our enemies, the one who cares for us in the present day, and the one who will return to rescue us from this life and bring us safely to himself in heaven.

Our Second Reading for this morning comes from the very beginning of the book of Revelation and is really setting the tone for the whole book. Revelation is filled with wild (and sometimes scary) pictures of events, but many of these vivid details picturesquely portray what has already happened or point ahead to what Jesus clearly promised would happen. In fact, there is no teaching in Revelation that is not taught elsewhere in Scripture, and often, we will use the more straightforward, more direct passages in the Bible to help unpack and explain the visions in this book.

But at the very start of this book, which is really one big letter, John sends greetings to those who would read what the Spirit inspired him to write—including us today. His greeting begins, “Grace to you and peace from him who is, who was, and who is coming, and from the seven spirits that are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” Here is a greeting to God’s people from the Triune God himself. The one who is, was, and is coming—the Father, the seven spirits (or perhaps better translated, “the seven-fold Spirit”)—the Holy Spirit, and, of course, Jesus Christ.

The description of each person of the triune Godhead is worth spending a moment on. The Father is described as the one who is, who was, and who is coming. The tenses of those verbs are all very intentional: who is (present), who was (past), and who is coming (future). It speaks to God’s eternal nature. He is here; there was never a time when he wasn’t, and there will never be a time when he will not be. It’s a very similar word picture to the one God used when he revealed his name to Moses at the burning bush as “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14), the forever-present God.

The Holy Spirit is described as being before [God’s] throne. This connects very closely to God’s promises about the Holy Spirit’s work in the book of Romans, where we’re told that he intercedes, prays for us even when we don’t know what to pray for, and even knows the very heart and mind of God (see Romans 8:26-27).

And then Jesus is described as the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Here we see the three-fold office or work that Jesus holds: prophet, priest, and for our focus this morning, king. He is a completely reliable prophet who was and is a faithful witness to God’s Word. He is the perfect priest who offered himself as the sacrifice for sin and then became the firstborn from the dead at his resurrection. And finally, Jesus is not just a king, but the King, even the ruler of the kings of the earth in that, despite all appearances, he has authority well above every earthly power.

All of that coalesces around our focus for this morning of Jesus as our King. Jesus’ work all points to his power and authority. Now, we have examples when he didn’t look like that all-powerful king. We have the example from our Gospel of him on trial before Pontious Pilate—it didn’t look like he was in charge. In just a few weeks, we’ll celebrate his birth again, and the baby in Bethlehem’s manger will not look like the King of kings and Lord of lords.

During his first time being present among his people, Jesus didn’t look the part of the king because he wasn’t here to promote his divine, regal authority. He was here as our loving King to save us from our spiritual enemies, so he humbly laid aside the full use of that divine power for a time to save us. John, thinking about that work, bursts into words of praise to Jesus: To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his own blood and made us a kingdom and priests to God his Father—to him be the glory and the power forever. Amen. The humble sacrifice of his life, the shedding of his blood, means we are freed from sins. That weak-looking man standing before Pilate, who eventually will be nailed to a cross, is still the one who has and deserves all glory and power because he is our God who created us, preserved us, and redeemed us from sin, death, and hell. Jesus’ victory was a baffling blowout, where despite appearances, our enemies never had even the remotest chance of winning.

So now we are a kingdom, his kingdom. He rules us, but not in a way that means trouble for us; he rules us in love and for our eternal good. He preserves and protects us at this very moment, but this feeling of an absentee King, or at least an invisible King, will not remain. There will come a time when he will return as he left, with the clouds of the sky, but now visible to everyone on earth. Look, he is coming with clouds, and every eye will see him, including those who pierced him. And all the nations of the earth will mourn because of him. Yes. Amen.

But why the mourning from the nations? Doesn’t this speak to Jesus being scary? Doesn’t this support the idea that his rule means something negative for us rather than positive? Later in Revelation, we will hear of the massive collection of people in heaven, an uncountable number from every nation and tribe (see Revelation 7:9 and the following). There will be people in eternal life from all over the world. But these nations, these tribes themselves? They are those who, collectively, have separated themselves from the promises and work of God. They sought earthly power above all else and rejected anything perceived as standing in their way, including the King. For them, at the King’s return, they will mourn because his appearance proves all of their aspirations failed and every delusion of their mind and heart false.

But not so for us. That day for you and for me will not be a day of mourning because it will be the return of our King in visible fashion, and it will mean the ultimate rescue from this world of sin, sorrow, and pain. In that moment, we will fully experience all that Jesus did for us. Whether we are caught up to heaven directly from this life or whether that day will mean the resurrection of our bodies laid in the earth with our souls that had been safe with God in eternity, the King’s return will mean the full experience of the peace he won for us—and the final, public defeat of our enemies, especially Satan.

We can and should look forward to that day. It will come soon when we are not necessarily expecting it, and he will bring us home to heaven where we will live forever seeing our loving King’s face every moment of every day.

But what about now? What about until that time of rescue and release? What about that time until we fully experience the victory our King has won for us? Well, all of these things are still true. Our King died for us and rose from the dead victoriously for us. We are still his people, citizens of his kingdom right now, even as we eagerly await his return.

But right here and right now is difficult. There is hardship and sorrow. We see sin corrupt everything that could be good in this life and leave it, at best, as ehhhh. But in this brief introduction, Jesus has another promise for us. Listen to how he describes himself, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” and for those of us who don’t live in the Greek alphabet, we might hear him saying, “I am the A and the Z.” What does that mean?

It means precisely how he described himself—the one who is, and who was, and who is coming, the I am who I am. God is eternal, filling all time and even beyond time. For us, he is the beginning and the end of all things. Our whole lives, start to finish, are wrapped up in the care, compassion, love, and power of the Alpha and the Omega. Our King doesn’t lack anything to help us, provide for us, or save us because he is before and after everything. No matter how much the bully at school, that oppressive boss, or the terror of some world leader might make us think we are in trouble, we are not. Our God fills all things. No one else's power even comes close to God’s power—not even Satan. He’s been defeated in the lopsided victory where Jesus crushed his head, and now we are safe here and forever because our King continues to provide for us and work things for our eternal good until we see that eternal good with our own eyes.

My dear fellow loved citizens in our Savior’s kingdom: lift your heads from these miserable, trying times you are going through. See your King providing all that you need now but also keeping us ever mindful and longing for that ultimate rescue when he will bring us to himself. The Alpha and the Omega, the Lord God, is the one who loves you with eternal love. He’s won the victory over your enemies. All that remains is for us to join the victory celebration that will ring out in his kingdom forever.

Lord Jesus, quickly come. Amen.

"One for All Won for All" (Sermon on Hebrews 9:24-28) | November 17, 2024

Sermon Text: Hebrews 9:24-28
Date: November 17, 2024
Event: Proper 28, Year B

Hebrews 9:24-28 (EHV)

For Christ did not enter a handmade sanctuary, a representation of the true sanctuary. Instead, he entered into heaven itself, now to appear before God on our behalf. 25And he did not enter to offer himself many times, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own. 26Otherwise he would have needed to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once and for all, at the climax of the ages, in order to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27And, just as it is appointed for people to die only once and after this comes the judgment, 28so also Christ was offered only once to take away the sins of many, and he will appear a second time—without sin—to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him.

One for All Won for All

It can be very difficult to look beyond right now to the future. If things are going well right now, it can be hard to think of a time when maybe they will be more difficult. If life is challenging and complicated right now, it can feel almost impossible to think of a time when things will be going better and easier.

This morning on the second-to-last Sunday of the church year, we are attempting to look beyond right now to what is coming. We heard the promise of Jesus in our Gospel that there will come a time when he will return and call us to himself. Daniel also pictured this final rescue and resurrection, when God will deliver his people from a life corrupted by sin to a home in heaven where we will shine like the brightness of the sky and … like the stars forever and ever (Daniel 12:3).

Our focus this morning, though, is on our Second Reading which is no less future-looking, but it also offers us some very specific direction and encouragement for us right here, right now. The last day and rescue are coming, but what do we do until then? How do we stay focused until then? As it so often is, the answer is to keep our focus on Jesus. His victory means our eternal security and even our temporal comfort and peace.

The writer to the Hebrews takes us back to Old Testament worship. There was a special day, one of the (if not the) highlights of the Israelites’ worship life. It is a holy day that is still obsereved in our day, which you probably will see marked on your calendars in the fall, Yom Kippur, or in English, the Day of Atonement.

The Day of Atonement was a celebration focusing on the forgiveness of sins and what the Messiah would provide. This was the one day of the year that anyone was allowed in the Most Holy Place, the most inner room in the Tabernacle or Temple, where the Ark of the Covenant sat. Only the high priest could enter there on this day, and only with blood. He would offer two special sacrifices: first, a bull sacrificed for his own sins, and then one of two goats as an offering for the people's sins. The goat that wasn’t sacrificed was known as the scapegoat, and the high priest would place his hands on this animal to symbolically transfer the people's sins to the goat and send it out to wander away into the wilderness (see Leviticus 16). It served as a picture of how God would send away sin, never to be seen again.

There’s a weakness to this celebration that was present from its establishment. You can even see the weakness as you find Yom Kippur on your calendars—this was an annual event. It happened over and over and over again. If it has been observed annually since it was commanded, it has been celebrated roughly 3,500 times up to this day. And that’s because this holy day is promise, not fulfillment. This was not the actual removal of sins but a picture of how God would remove the sins. And so, while it was undoubtedly important for the Old Testament believers looking forward to the promised Savior, the Day of Atonement always carried with it the idea of something that would happen later that hadn’t been accomplished yet. It was future-pointing to something bigger and better than the high priest, the temple, the sacrifices, and the scapegoat.

This is a constant theme throughout the letter to the Hebrews because it was written to Jewish converts to Christianity who were finding it challenging to stay connected to Jesus. They were tempted to “backslide” into the promises of Judaism while ignoring Jesus' fulfillments. So, the writer repeatedly points out how Jesus fulfilled and is far superior to everything that came before him.

And this idea of repetition looms large in that discussion. If you have to do something repeatedly, it means there is a continual wear and tear. There’s a decay that hasn’t been fixed and a problem that hasn’t been solved. You must do car maintenance with tires, brakes, and fluid changes because things wear out. What if you had brake pads that never wore out? What a blessing that would be! Likewise, the repetition of the sacrifices, specifically on the Day of Atonement, meant that something was still wearing out and broken. If things had been really fixed by the animal sacrifices and other ceremonies, well, then there wouldn’t have been a need to do them over and over again. But they did have to do them over and over again because they weren’t actually fixing things—they pointed ahead to the full repair that God would eventually accomplish.

The writer to the Hebrews latches on to this point at the beginning of our Second Reading and shows how different Jesus is from all that came before him and pointed to him: Christ did not enter a handmade sanctuary, a representation of the true sanctuary. Instead, he entered into heaven itself, now to appear before God on our behalf. And he did not enter to offer himself many times, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise he would have needed to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once and for all, at the climax of the ages, in order to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Jesus’ work didn’t take him into the temple in Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice; he entered God’s true temple in heaven to provide the sacrifice. And it wasn’t something done over and over again. Instead, this sacrifice was once for all, over and done.

On the cross, Jesus offered the singular and complete payment for sin before God in heaven. His life was the payment that had been promised and that we all desperately needed. And Jesus’ work is truly one for all. There is nothing left to do. No further sacrifices have to be made. We are not here this morning trying to make things right with God; we don’t go about our day-to-day lives trying to “earn points” with God. The work is done. Sin is forgiven. We have a perfect relationship with God because Jesus paid for every sin.

We can know and cherish this, but it can be difficult to remember. The problems and heartaches of this life are a constant distraction from this reality. As we slog through this life of sin, heartache, illness, and sorrow, we can start to lose our grasp of it, and the “so what?” question about Jesus’ work starts to loom large.

And then you can again sympathize with the original audience of this letter to the Hebrew Christians. The “so what?” question is especially hard to wrestle with when you are undergoing persecution for the faith, and the temptation to retreat from it. The pull to find solace and comfort somewhere, anywhere, is powerful. And because we can’t see and interact directly with Jesus on a daily basis, our human nature starts to pull us away from him to something more concrete in this life.

We’ve seen this struggle a few times in our readings toward the end of this church year. Satan is relentless in trying to separate us from what God has said, done, and promised. This is nothing new, but it is our lived reality.

And so the writer to the Hebrews encourages us with a look ahead, a reminder of what is coming: And, just as it is appointed for people to die only once and after this comes the judgment, so also Christ was offered only once to take away the sins of many, and he will appear a second time—without sin—to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him. That last verse of our reading is our theme and focus for this morning. Why is this important? What do we want to stay committed? Because while Jesus’ work was one for all, his visible, direct interaction with this world was not a one-time thing. He’s coming back. But unlike the priests dealing with the sacrifices in Israel’s worship system, he’s not coming a second time to deal with sin—that’s done!—instead, he’s coming this second time—without sin—to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him.

And the end, we will see the proof that Jesus won the victory for all through his one-for-all work. Jesus promised in our Gospel for this morning, “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out” (John 5:28-29). This Judgment Day will be the unavoidable, undebatable public proclamation of what Jesus did and who will benefit from it. Jesus said that those who have “done good” (John 5:29) will rise to live, and we know that the only way to do anything God considers good is to be perfect. So those who will rise to live, those who have “done good,” are those who cling to Jesus by faith for the forgiveness of every sin. They are those that God himself as purified in the blood of Jesus, shed for us.

This is open to anyone and everyone. Jesus didn’t pay for a limited amount of sins or die for only a special, select group of people. No, he died for all, which means the victory over sin, death, and hell has been won for all—you included!

And so on that day when he returns (or at the end of our earthly life, whichever comes first), we can look confidently toward our Savior who loves us because that will be the end of this horror show of a sin-corrupted life. Instead, that will be when Jesus bring[s]salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him. At that moment, we will experience and enjoy in full what Jesus won. Then, we will be free from sin. Then we will be with our Savior forever.

Until that day, my dear sisters and brothers, find comfort in knowing that your salvation is complete, your sins are totally forgiven, and that Jesus finished all the work that you needed him to do. Jesus has truly won salvation for all by his one-for-all sacrifice of sin. Find comfort in that for yourself, encourage each other with that certainty, and seek to share this victory with others because no matter who they are, Jesus won it for them too. Thanks be to God! Amen.

"The Sanctified Heart Trusts God" (Sermon on Mark 12:38-44) | November 10, 2024

Sermon Text: Mark 12:38–44
Date: November 10, 2024
Event: Proper 27, Year B

Mark 12:38–44 (EHV)

He also said to them in his teaching, “Beware of the experts in the law who like to walk around in long robes and receive greetings in the marketplaces. 39They love the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. 40They devour widows’ houses and offer long prayers to look good. These men will receive greater condemnation.”

41Jesus sat down opposite the offering box and was watching how the crowd put money into it. Many rich people put in large amounts. 42One poor widow came and put in two small bronze coins, worth less than a penny. 43He called his disciples together and said to them, “Amen I tell you: This poor widow put more into the offering box than all the others. 44For they all gave out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all that she had to live on.”

The Sanctified Heart Trusts God

Does life ever feel chaotic? A family conflict might do that. An election might do that. A job loss, illness, struggles in school, or falling out with a friend might do that. We have so many things that we count on for stability in our homes, our government, employment and other vocations that any changes (or even threats of change) to those things can cause you to feel like you’re standing on quicksand. It feels uncertain. s

And that can be what life feels like sometimes—or always. We’re trying to guess the future. We’re trying to weather those personal or communal storms. We’re trying to figure out how to tend to our responsibilities to self, family, and neighbor. Maybe things are severe enough that you feel a strong connection with the woman in Zerphath, “As surely as the Lord your God lives, I have no food except a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a pitcher. See, I am gathering a couple of sticks so that I can go and prepare it for myself and my son, so that we can eat it and then die” (1 Kings 17:12). There is nothing left; I might as well just give up and surrender myself to the chaos and whatever that might mean for me.

And, boy, does Satan love to hear us think and talk like that. He would love nothing more than for short-term problems to separate us from God’s eternal solutions and promises. And really he doesn’t care what does it; if something divides us from God, he’s in. He delights in it. He longs for it.

This morning I suggest we take stock of our lives, our own hurts, pains, and struggles. They are different for each of us, though we are unified because we all have them. Yours are probably different than mine, and we don’t do any good trying to compare who wins the “trauma championship.” If something is difficult for you, it is difficult for you, no matter how you rank it compared to others’ difficulties. The same is true for others; just because you might view your problems as more significant by comparison doesn’t mean their heartaches and worries aren’t real and legitimate.

Jesus, in our Gospel, uses the model of the widow in the temple courts and contrasts it with the general attitude of the experts in the law to show us where our trust should be centered. Where do we find relief, confidence, and true hope in the chaos of this life? In our God who loves us.

Our Gospel is set in the middle of Holy Week. Jesus is spending these last few days of his earthly ministry with his disciples, doing a final round of teaching and preparing them for what will happen. But he’s not just with the Twelve—Jesus’ opponents are also around peppering him with questions, hoping to get him to trip up and say something they can condemn him for or at least discredit him in the eyes of the people.

And so it is in this context that Jesus begins our Gospel for this morning. He warns against the attitude and actions of the experts in the law, the scribes, who liked to garner earthly acclimation for themselves. They felt secure in their fancy clothes, friendly greetings in public, and the best seats at different gatherings. They had everything they needed, and everything went well for them.

You and I might look at other people and still insist on playing that comparison game. We see others who don’t seem to have the problems, fears, or struggles we do and we long to be like them. Might the disciples have felt that way as they looked at the influential religious leaders while Jesus seemed constantly pushed to the side? Can you imagine the widow we’ll meet later looking at those in billowy, expensive garments and longing to have a bit of the wealth and comfort that they had? I think I might be more surprised if she didn’t.

But what does Jesus say?  “Beware!” Why? Because they are focused on the here and now at the expense of the eternal. This warps them so that they even see sin—devouring[ing] widows’ houses—as justified when it would get them ahead. Jesus warns, “These men will receive greater condemnation.” That’s not the position we would want to be in, so earthly comfort at all costs is not where we want to focus.

After making these statements, Jesus looked across the temple courts to the offering box where people were putting in their gifts—not unlike the plates we use here at church. And there were no envelopes or checks or electronic giving methods to mask the amounts; it was pretty clear who was giving a lot and who was giving less. So Jesus watched as wealthy people came and gave significant sums of money. But then a widow, who had nearly nothing, came and gave two small bronze coins, worth less than a penny. Money comparisons are a little bit difficult across 2,000 year gap, but Mark notes that this gift is worth less than 1/64th of an agricultural worker’s daily wage, and yet, this was everything—all that she had to live on.

Now, why is Jesus pointing this out? The point is not to give all we have to the church. About a month ago, in our Gospel, we wrestled with this when we heard the rich young ruler talking with Jesus, and Jesus directed him to give away all his wealth. Jesus was not pointing out that you need to have nothing in order to have saving faith or to get into heaven; rather, he was showing the man that money was his god and was distracting him from eternal blessings.

The point here with the widow is the inverse. Again, Jesus is not setting up a necessity to give away all she had, but he points out that her trust in God was so strong that she was able to take the minuscule amount that was to her name, entrust it to God, and then trust that God would provide for her needs. Jesus’ praise of the woman’s actions doesn’t lead us to think that this was done in a “this is the end of my life; I give up” kind of way as the widow with Elijah initially approached it. Instead, this gift was given in trust for what God would do for her.

Let’s consider the widow’s attitude toward this offering. First and foremost, she trusted God to do what he said he would. He did not promise daily bread and earthly care as long as you stockpile money. No, she trusted that he would do that regardless.

That trust in God’s promise led to the second aspect of her attitude: thankfulness. She didn’t have much, but she was thankful for what she did have. Did she have what her neighbors or leaders had? No. But she trusted God’s gracious hand and that what he provided was for her eternal good.

That trust and thankfulness to God led to another aspect of her giving—she would not make excuses. She wasn’t intimidated by the large gifts others gave or the meekness of her offering. No, she focused not on those around her but only on her relationship with God. From what he had given—not much by earthly standards—in joy, she gave to God.

All of these aspects of the window’s gift are good for us to keep in mind. God asks us to give out of what he has given. We want to be generous! That means if he has given us much, perhaps the gifts or time will be more significant. If he was given little, they may be smaller dollar or hour amounts. But this is not a comparison game when we talk about trust in God’s promises and stewardship of the things he’s given. You don’t give relative to those around you; you give relative to what God has provided. If you have fewer financial resources or less time, that doesn’t mean your gift is somehow lesser than someone who has more. Regardless of the amount, a gift given in thankfulness to God is a pleasant sacrifice to him.

That spirit of thankfulness goes well beyond the gifts we give to God in offerings, the amount of volunteering we do, or the time we set aside to help our neighbor. Because this trust in God is produced by the sanctified heart that he provides. We know that regardless of our earthly blessings, we all stand on equal footing with God. We are all sinners who deserve his eternal punishment in hell, and the blessings around us are not indicative of what God thinks about us. By nature, we are his enemies, wrapped up in an eternal war with God that we will lose.

But like the widows, both in the temple and in Zerphath, God’s promises and actions change that. What had he promised these two women, separated by nearly 900 years of history? God pledged to them both a Savior from sin to solve this spiritual war we were waging against God. The only difference was that the widow giving her offering was seen by the physical eyes of the incarnate God; in just a few days, he would be laying down his life to keep that promise and pay for the world’s sins.

And so God has forgiven your sins and mine. He sanctified our hearts, setting us apart, when the Holy Spirit worked faith in our hearts through his Word and sacraments. We believe in God's promises not because of us but because of him.

If we are looking for trust, confidence, and peace in the world around us—earthly blessings, human relationships, political policy—we are looking in the same place the experts in the law were looking. And if we do so, it’s no wonder the world and our lives feel utterly chaotic. This corrupted world, with its misguided messages, can never bring the comfort that God provides. But, if, as the children of God, we find our confidence in God’s promises and work, and trust him to do what he said, then every earthly prop can fall away, and we will still stand with confidence in God’s promises. We still look forward, completely sure that God will, in the end, wipe every tear from our eyes.

So, with the faith God gives, trust what he’s promised you. In that trust, support others in their times of difficulty, both to provide immediate relief and to help them see the fullness of the love of our God that provides in all times—be they times of trial or blessing. You, dear Christian, are forgiven. Stand in that forgiveness and trust God to do what he’s promised. Amen.

"Stand Confidently in God's Grace" (Sermon on Daniel 3:16-28) | October 27, 2024

Sermon Text: Daniel 3:16-28
Date: October 27, 2024
Event: Reformation Day (Observed), Year B

Daniel 3:16-28 (EHV)

Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego answered King Nebuchadnezzar, “We have no need to answer you about this matter. 17Since our God, whom we serve, does exist, he is able to save us from the blazing fiery furnace. So, he may save us from your hand, Your Majesty. 18But if he does not, you should know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods, and we will not worship the golden statue that you set up.”

19Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with rage, and the expression on his face changed against Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego. He said to heat the furnace seven times hotter than it was usually heated. 20He ordered some men, who were soldiers from his army, to bind Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego in order to throw them into the blazing fiery furnace. 21So these men were bound in their coats, their pants, their turbans, and their other clothing, and they were thrown into the middle of the blazing fiery furnace. 22Because the king’s order was urgent and the furnace was extremely hot, those men who carried Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego were killed by the intense heat of the fire. 23But these three men, Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego, who had been tied up, fell into the blazing fiery furnace.

24Then King Nebuchadnezzar was startled and immediately stood up. He said to his advisors, “Didn’t we throw three men, who had been tied up, into the middle of the fire?”

They answered the king, “Certainly, Your Majesty.”

25He said, “Look! I see four men, who are untied and walking around in the middle of the fire, unharmed. What is more, the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.”

26Then Nebuchadnezzar approached the door of the blazing fiery furnace. He said, “Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out!” Then Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego came out from the middle of the furnace. 27The satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the royal advisors gathered together and looked at these men. The fire had no power over their bodies. Not a hair on their head was singed, their robes were not damaged, and the smell of fire had not stuck to them.

28Nebuchadnezzar said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego, who sent his angel and saved his servants, who trusted in God and ignored the king’s command. They gave up their bodies and did not pay homage or worship any god except their God.

Stand Confidently in God’s Grace

Our First Reading this morning takes us back thousands of years in history, but it might take you far back in your personal history as well. The Three Men in the Fiery Furnace is an account that is in almost every children’s Bible and Sunday School curriculum. Despite the grim possibility of three young men being burned alive in a furnace, it is often referred to encourage both young and old to stand confidently, to follow in the pattern of these young men and their trust in God’s promises. This morning, as we observe this Reformation festival, let’s join them in standing confidently in God’s grace, his undeserved love for us.

To properly understand what is happening here, we need to back up a bit. Or, maybe a lot. This event occurs in the late 600s or early 500s BC, centuries before Jesus was born. But it was something that God had said was a possibility almost 1,000 years before it happened when the Israelites first settled in the Promised Land. Moses warned the people just before they entered the land God would give them that if they were not faithful to God and even served false gods, this would happen: The LORD will lead you and the king, whom you will set over you, to a nation that you and your fathers have not known, and there you will serve other gods of wood and stone. You will become an object of horror, the subject of proverbs, and the butt of sarcastic taunts among all the people to whom the LORD will send you. (Deuteronomy 28:36-37).

And so it was. The Israelites were unfaithful and ignored God’s continued calls to repentance through his prophets. And so, finally, God sent the nation of Babylon to exile the people to this faraway land where they would be cut off from their homes.

But this exile didn’t happen all at once. Babylon rolls through and makes several deportations, and in the earliest of these deportations, they examine who among the Israelites is perhaps worth having as servants in the government—pillage the best and the brightest to be a blessing to Babylon. The Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar directed one of his officials to choose young men who had no blemish, who were good looking, who had insight into all kinds of wisdom, who possessed knowledge, understanding, and learning, and who were capable of serving in the king’s palace, in order to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. … In this group of young men were the Judeans Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. (Daniel 1:4, 6). This is how Daniel (who much later as an old man would be thrown to the lions yet saved) and the three men in our reading end up coming from Judah to Babylon.

And the Lord was with them and blessed them. They were shown to be very adept at many things; God blessed the work of their hands so much that they rose to be the cream of the crop in the king’s service, not just of Israelites but of all the officials in the land. You can imagine how this might have left some of the other officials feeling—especially those who looked down on these men from Israel as inferior to themselves. The king highly favored our three young men.

And then trouble came. At the beginning of Daniel chapter 3, we're told, “King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue. … [T]he satraps, the prefects and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, and all of the rulers of the provinces assembled for the dedication of King Nebuchadnezzar’s statue. … The herald called out loudly, “To you peoples, nations, and languages, this command is given: When you hear the sound of the horn, the flute, the lyre, the harp, the triangular harp, the drum, and all kinds of musical instruments, you will fall down and worship the gold statue that King Nebuchadnezzar set up. Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into the blazing fiery furnace.” (Daniel 3:1, 3-6). It’s a lot of words, but it boils down to this: the king commanded that when the special music played, everyone gathered had to bow down and worship this giant golden statue he had made.

You can see the problem for these young, faithful Israelites. They knew not only that the worshiping of idols was forbidden, but that was primarily why their nation was in the mess it was currently in. Their people had largely been unfaithful to God, and now here they were, exiles in a foreign land. They resolved to not continue that pattern, be it bowing to sinful weakness or the command of a foreign king. They would be faithful to God and would stand confidently in his grace.

And so, their enemies see an opening! They tattle on the three young men, saying that these guys would not bow down and worship the statue when the music played. The king is furious, but also you can see his love and admiration for these men because he doesn’t just throw them into the furnace as he had declared. He summons them, questions them, and then gives them a second chance to do what he had commanded rather than immediately hurling them into the furnace. And the men’s response to this second chance is where our First Reading picks up: “We have no need to answer you about this matter. Since our God, whom we serve, does exist, he is able to save us from the blazing fiery furnace. So, he may save us from your hand, Your Majesty. But if he does not, you should know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods, and we will not worship the golden statue that you set up.”

There’s a little phrase that we should not miss in that statement, “But if he does not…” That phrase speaks volumes. God had not given them a heads-up about this. He had not appeared to these men the night before to say, “Don’t worry about the furnace; I will save you.” For all these men knew, they were staring death straight in the face and they would not budge. They stood confidently in God’s grace, either to save them from physical death or, at that moment, to bring them to eternal life.

And it’s really that, rather than the rescue itself, that I want us to focus on this morning. Yes, God did intervene very directly to save these men from fire so hot that it killed the soldiers throwing them in. Yes, a fourth person was there to protect them, whom Nebchadnezzar described as the “son of the gods,” whom we might assume is one of the angels or perhaps even Jesus himself before his incarnation. And yes, they were so protected from the furnace that they were spared even the negative effects of a grill or campfire—they didn’t even smell like smoke! But on this Reformation Day, let’s focus on their dedication to God in the face of not knowing any of that would happen, their firm stance to do what was right in the face of immense pressure to do what was wrong.

I won’t speak for you, but I can assure you that no one has threatened my life with fire or anything else because of what I believe. No one has held me over the flames, or put a sword to my throat or a gun to my head and said, “Abandon your God or die.” And for so many reasons, that is reason to give thanks. But then when I consider the faithlessness that is still present in my life, it brings even greater shame.

How often haven’t I remained silent when I had a chance to share God’s comfort? How often haven’t I let my faith and life of thanksgiving fade into the background so that I could blend in with the people or even the world around me? How often haven’t I slunk back from boldly standing for what I believe in not because my life was on the line, but maybe it was my reputation, my family relationships, my friendships, or even just the commradrie of strangers I’ve only just met. How quick I am to bend the knee to save my own hyde and my own comfort. I truly fear what I would have done had I been in the place of these three young men.

Perhaps some of those points resonate with you, too, and sound more familiar in your life than your comfortable thinking about or admitting. The reality is that the temptation to give up on God’s truth can come from many different and varied places. For Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, it came from their king, demanding them to sin against God. For Luther and the other reformers 500 years ago, it came from the false teaching of Rome that said people could earn and even buy their way into forgiveness and a proper standing with God.

Perhaps none of those resonate with you. Perhaps neither your boss nor your government nor (I pray) leaders in your church are leading you into false worship or even demanding it from you. But, all of us struggle with a temptation to veer off course from God’s path in our hearts. Because all of us have a sinful nature that would rather serve ourselves than God, that would rather seek our own ways rather than God’s ways, that would do what seems right to us rather than what God says is right.

And so the sinful nature might lead us to think highly of ourselves, perhaps that we have no real wrongdoing before God or, even if we do, that we can do a few things to make it up to him. We might make compromises to fit in with those around us and avoid scrutiny or justify our actions by thinking that our sin isn’t so bad because it doesn’t seem as bad as what other people around us are doing.

These compromises, big or small as they may seem, are all bowing down to a giant golden statue. Because anything that takes priority over the true God is our false god. Whether we worship money or work or fame or grudges or entertainment or anything else, it all distracts us from God’s truth.

And so, truly, this is why Jesus came for us. Because this situation was as hopeless as it sounds. On our own, we are lost with no abilitiy to get ourselves back on course. In fact, you and I are no more able to make God happy with us by our own work than the people in Babylon could have made God happy by bowing down to that statue. And any time we or someone else might try to fget us to think that we can, Jesus’ warning from our Gospel should ring in our ears, “Be careful that no one deceives you” (Mark 13:5).

Eevn for these three men, with their amazingly brave and bold faith to face near-certain death rather than veer from it, that did not come from themselves. They were not so amazing on their own that they had the courage to stand confidently in God’s grace come what may. No, that faith and that resolve were the gift of God as well. Jesus promised his disciples that before those who persecute them, boldness and courage to speak and even the words themselves would come from the Holy Spirit. So it was for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. So it is for you.

Whether you face a maniacal king trying to get you to worship his latest art project, or those who would seek your life because of your faith in Jesus as Savior, or simply the fear of mockery and rejection by those who are close and important to you, be bold and stand confidently in God’s grace. Not only do you have forgiveness for every time you have caved to internal or external pressure to turn from God, but you also have forgiveness for every sin. That forgiveness won by Jesus in his life and death in your place and given to you as a free gift gives you the boldness and the confidence to stand in God’s grace against anything or anyone who would threaten it, even if that attack comes from within you.

So, stand confidently in God’s grace. He loves you and will protect you from all spiritual harm until that day when he brings you home to heaven—that free gift won for and given to you by your Savior, Jesus. Give thanks for those who have confidently stood on this truth in the past, and pray that we may also pass down this same confidence to the generations that come after us. Amen.

"Jesus Served Us; Let Us Serve Each Other" (Sermon on Mark 10:32-45) | October 20, 2024

Sermon Text: Mark 10:32–45
Date: October 20, 2024
Event: Proper 24, Year B

Mark 10:32–45 (EHV)

They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was leading them. The disciples were amazed, and the others who followed were afraid. He took the Twelve aside again and began to tell them what was going to happen to him. 33“Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the experts in the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles. 34They will mock him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.”

35James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approached him and said, “Teacher, we wish that you would do for us whatever we ask.”

36He said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?”

37They said to him, “Promise that we may sit, one at your right and one at your left, in your glory.”

38But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am going to be baptized with?”

39“We can,” they replied.

Jesus told them, “You will drink the cup that I am going to drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am going to be baptized with. 40But to sit at my right or at my left is not for me to give; rather, these places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”

41When the ten heard this, they were angry with James and John.

42Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 43But that is not the way it is to be among you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, 44and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave of all. 45For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus Served Us; Let Us Serve Each Other

There are a lot of ways to measure greatness in the world that we live in. It could be greatness in the sense of earthly power. It could be greatness in the sense of wealth. It could be greatness in the sense of our family's size or success. And even the word success might have a variety of definitions for people. What does it mean to be successful in this life? Well, you could probably ask ten people and get ten pretty different answers.

But there is a commonality among people: We want to succeed rather than fail. We want to accomplish our goals rather than ignore them or throw them away. Perhaps, in a more selfish mindset, we want to gain favor. We want to be better, or at least better than someone else. In our gospel for this morning, we see the disciples wrestling with that temptation while, at the same time, Jesus is trying to show them how he will be great for them by serving.

Perhaps we struggle with the same things the disciples struggled with. And I know for certain that we all need the same encouragement and reminder of what Jesus has done to save us. So this morning, let's gather around Jesus and learn from him what service and greatness look like. And then let us seek to follow in our Savior’s service path, motivated by his service for us, serving the people that God has placed in our lives.

In our gospel this morning, we meet up with Jesus and his disciples almost at the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry. We are just a few verses away from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday in the beginning of Mark chapter 11. This is the end of Jesus' time with his disciples to teach them and help them understand what is coming.

And so that's where he begins. Now, Mark's writing style is very abrupt. He jumps from subject to subject very quickly, moving from main point to main point. But it doesn’t seem to be a stylistic choice that puts the disciples’ bickering at odds with what Jesus is teaching. Jesus tells them how he is going to be killed and give his life as a ransom for many. And then James and John approach him with that perhaps selfish request, “Promise that we may sit, one at your right and one at your left, in your glory.”

Now, on the one hand, they did get it; they did understand that Jesus was going to be in glory. They knew that he would not be defeated by whatever was coming that he had just explained. But you want to say to James and John, “Guys, read the room a little bit here. This is not the time to be talking about things like this.” And Jesus really does that. He says, “Things are going to go really badly for me. And guess what? They're also going to go really badly for you. You will drink the cup that I am going to drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am going to be baptized with.”

The other ten were indignant with James and John. And it's unclear whether they're resentful because they realize the inappropriateness of this request or because James and John were requesting what the rest of them wanted for themselves. Regardless, this was a source of conflict among the Twelve. And if I were Jesus, and I were on the brink of this catastrophe of being betrayed and murdered by my government, I think I would be pretty short with them. Thankfully, Jesus is not me; Jesus is perfect; Jesus does not sin. He uses this as a teaching moment.

“You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But that is not the way it is to be among you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave of all.” We've heard Jesus over the last several Sundays emphasize similar points. Just four week ago in our Gospel, all of the disciples were arguing among themlseves about who of them was the greatest. Jesus continues to patienly correct and them. What is the goal of the believer’s life? It's not glory. It's not being the best. It's not finding recognition in the world or even among other believers. The goal of the Christian life is service.

We heard it two weeks ago when Paul addressed Christians, especially Christian families, and encouraged them to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21). Put each other ahead of yourself. Consider others' needs more important than your own. Submit. Sacrifice. Serve. Jesus underscores this point in the last verse of our gospel: For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

If there was ever anyone who walked the face of this earth who deserved to be honored and acknowledged as the greatest of all, to have glory ascribed to him, it was Jesus. Not only was he perfect and sent by God, but he is God. And so it would have been justified (and perhaps to our way of thinking, maybe more appropriate) for him to come to this earth and demand honor and tribute and glory and praise from anyone and everyone that saw him. You might think of the wise men when he was a little child coming and bringing their gifts only on a much grander scale. If we're talking about who deserved earthly glory, well, no one deserved it more than Jesus.

But that's not why he came. The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. His time on this earth was not about himself. It was not about his glory, praise, or ego, if you want to put it that way. Everything about what he did while he was on this earth was about laying aside what was rightfully his to serve you and to serve me.

The apostle Paul, in Philippians chapter 2, says that Jesus did not consider equality with God as something that had to be retained, gripped with all his might. Instead, he willingly put that aside. He put aside the full use of his glory as God to become a servant, serve you, and serve me. And this was always the plan; this is not a departure from what God promised. We heard those familiar words in Isaiah 53 in our first reading as a reminder that the Messiah’s task was always to serve you: Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and to allow him to suffer. Because you made his life a guilt offering, he will see offspring. He will prolong his days, and the Lord’s gracious plan will succeed in his hand. It was the Lord's will to crush him and allow him to suffer. Because you made his life a guilt offering, he will see offspring. He will prolong his days. And the Lord's will be the Lord's will to serve you. And the Lord's will to serve you. And the Lord's will to serve you. And the Lord's will to serve you.

From the beginning, the Messiah was coming to be crushed. To offer his life as a guilt offering. To empty himself to serve us. And we should be really clear about why he did this. He's not just giving us a model to follow. He's not just saying, “Here’s how you should treat each other or prioritize others ahead of yourself,” though surely we can learn that from him. But Jesus did not come to be primarily a model for us; he came to save us.

Jesus’ service is not just about him being humble; it’s about him being and doing what we needed. Our sin had trapped us in an impossible place; we were headed for eternal punishment in hell with absolutely no way to change course. So Jesus took our place. He humbled himself and served us by enduring the hell we deserved on the cross. He served us in our greatest need so that we would be spared from hell and instead be with him forever in heaven.

He did this because he loves you, and he loves me. There is no guilt trip here. And you can see that in how he patiently explains to the Twelve what will happen. He doesn’t lash out at their selfish goals and conversations. No, he tells them what he will do to save them from even this sin.

James and John would drink the cup of Jesus’ suffering in some ways. James would be the first of the twelve to be martyred, and while John might be the only of the twelve to die a natural death, he would endure persecution and exile and face challenges to the sound teaching of comfort and sins forgiven in Jesus during his long life. The Twelve would learn to serve for Jesus and about Jesus.

We, too, can serve in this way. We can serve by sharing the good news of what we’ve come to know and believe with those who don’t know it. We can serve by encouraging our fellow Christians with the message that brings true, lasting, eternal comfort—Jesus was crucified for our sins and raised from the dead. We can serve by not seeking personal glory but by striving to support those around us. We can serve by bringing people to Jesus’ feet so they, too, can hear and, by God’s grace, believe what Jesus has done for them.

Dear Christian, rejoice, for Jesus has served you. Let us serve others by sharing what he has done for all people so that many may join us in eternal celebration, away from this world of sin and with our Savior forever in heaven! Amen.

"You Are Safe Now; Rejoice in Eternity!" (Sermon on Luke 10:17-20) | September 29, 2024

Sermon Text: Luke 10:17-20
Date: September 29, 2024
Event: Festival of St. Michael and All Angels

Luke 10:17–20 (EHV)

The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name!”

18He told them, “I was watching Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19Look, I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. And nothing will ever harm you. 20Nevertheless, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names have been written in heaven.”

You Are Safe Now; Rejoice in Eternity!

The young child walks with his parents in a shopping center on a hectic day. The crowds are thick, and the adults are almost shoulder-to-shoulder, to say nothing of the young man whose head barely comes up to the adults’ hips. Suddenly, there’s panic. He looks up in the sea of people, and he’s no longer walking with Mom and Dad. Where did they go? How does he find them? And then he hears his name in a familiar voice and finds himself scooped up by one of his parents. Safe.

There are many minor festivals in the church year. We don’t celebrate all of them yearly; in a given year, we may only celebrate one or two in our congregation. These festivals center on most of the twelve disciples; the apostle Paul; John the Baptist; Mary, Jesus’ mother; Joseph, Jesus’ earthly caretaker; Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus’ close followers; and even celebrating the first reading of the Augsburg Confession, one of the standard Lutheran confessions of faith.

These minor festivals tend to focus on people and other earthly events, yet they are not praise of the person or event itself; they praise God for his work done through these people or at these events. This is also true today on the minor festival of St. Michael and All Angels, where our focus is mainly on the spiritual forces that God uses as messengers and for our protection. We are not here to worship angels this morning—we are here to worship God for his love for us and, in a special way, to remember his protection given to us by this heavenly host.

Our Gospel for this morning helps to give us that focus because Jesus is directing the disciples away from the awe of the spiritual realm (and the power he had granted over it). He wants us primarily focused on what is eternally meaningful: rejoice that your names have been written in heaven. As we focus on God’s temporal promises and his work for us through the angels, we want to keep that in mind. Our primary awe should not be in what the angels do, but our awe should be centered in God’s love for us, the forgiveness he won for us by Jesus, and the fact that our eternal safety in heaven is secure.

Our brief Gospel for this morning comes at the end of Jesus sending out seventy-two of his followers to spread his good news in the towns he would travel to next in his earthly ministry. While Jesus is God, he limited himself during his time on earth so he was not always present everywhere. So, as is true for us, more people working meant more people hearing the message Jesus sent them to proclaim simultaneously and in different places.

The seventy-two come back, awestruck and excited to share what had happened: “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name!” Jesus had often driven demons out of possessed people, and these men discovered, as they went and met people suffering from that very affliction, that in Jesus’ name, they, too, were able to drive them out. Jesus gave them authority to trample … over all the power of the enemy, at least for a time.

Where would these demons have come from? Originally, what we now call angels and demons were one unified group. While God never pinpoints for us exactly when, he created the angels at some point during those six, twenty-hour days of creation. And then, at a moment that is not narratively described in the Bible, a whole group of those angels staged a rebellion against God, and the lead architect of that rebellion was Satan. It seems that the chief issue Satan had was that of pride and conceit—he wanted to be recognized as greater than he was; he wanted to be recognized as God’s equal. So Satan stages a coup of sorts, which fails; so it goes when anyone wages war against the almighty God, the angels included.

Satan is jealous of God’s power and status. It seems possible that Satan is also envious of the standing that mankind has in God’s creation, so one of his first goals after he fell was to get the precious crown of this new world to fall as well. He brings to Eve and Adam the temptation that caused him to fall: The serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die. In fact, God knows that the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5). In other words, “God is holding out on you! You, too, can be like God, even have equal status with God. Just take the fruit and eat!”

After the fall, we can see the clear difference between angels and human beings in God’s heart and perhaps understand Satan’s envy a bit better. Peter describes the fall of the angels and God’s judgment on them this way: “God did not spare angels when they sinned but handed them over to chains of darkness by casting them into hell, to be kept under guard for judgment” (2 Peter 2:4). In fact, hell did not exist until the angels fell; it was not part of God’s perfect creation. Jesus describes hell as the eternal fire, which is prepared for the Devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). Do you see the difference between us and the angels? The angels sin? Boom. Hell. What happened when Adam and Eve sinned, though? God promised a Savior; God promised that he himself would rescue his people from their fallen state. That is an immeasurable difference.

Back to our Gospel, when Jesus says, “I was watching Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” the tense of that verb is very important. This is not a description of Satan’s rebellion and being cast out of God’s presence near the beginning of creation; Jesus is describing a current event, something he was just doing. As the seventy-two were going out, Jesus was then watching Satan fall. So, what caused this fall, this weakening of Satan’s power?

To answer that, we need to understand Satan’s true purpose. He wants us in hell. But as we noted above, he doesn’t want us in hell to rule over us; he wants us in hell to suffer like he will suffer. He wants us in hell because he knows it hurts God to have the precious crown of his creation separated from him forever. And so what undermines Satan’s power? What causes him to stumble and fall dramatically like lightning toppling out of the sky? God’s Word—specifically, the gospel message proclaiming the forgiveness of sins in Jesus.

As the seventy-two proclaimed that God’s forgiveness, which had long been promised, was now present among them, they were undermining Satan’s power. They were causing his plans to stumble and fall because, in sharing that message, the Holy Spirit was working faith in the hearts of those who heard. People who God brought from unbelief to faith were snatched out of that slavery to sin and death; people whose faith was strengthened were put even farther away from Satan’s eternally destructive goals. The weapon most effective against the old evil foe is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.

So, we are safe from Satan’s attack because the Holy Spirit placed faith in us to trust Jesus’ forgiveness. When Satan or one of his cohorts would try to convince us that God doesn’t love us, that we are not forgiven, the words of Jesus’ promise and certainty of our status in his family is enough to send Satan toppling down the hill. Even if Satan were to appear in front of you in a gruesome, Hollywood version of demonic power, you could overcome him simply by stating who you are, “I am the baptized child of God.” Or, if even that seems too long, the name of your brother and Savior, “Jesus,” would be enough to send him scurrying away with his tail between his legs.

Not all of the angels rebelled against God; not all of this heavenly host followed Satan down his path of destruction. In fact, many angels are yet devoted to God and his will. We saw some of them with Elisha and his servant in our First Reading this morning. However, the primary role of the angels is more straightforward than even that narrative account might communicate.

When the term “angel” is used in the Bible, be it in Hebrew in the Old Testament (מַלְאָךְ, malak) or Greek in the New Testament (ἄγγελος, angelos), the primary meaning is the same: the angels are first and foremost messengers for God. We have many notable examples of this throughout Scripture. Angels were sent to bar the way to the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve fell to communicate that they were not allowed back into where the Tree of Life grew (Genesis 3:22-24). When God called Isaiah to be his prophet, Isaiah saw a vision of heaven when an angel announced that God had taken away the his sins (Isaiah 6:1-7). One of the few named angels in Scripture, Gabriel, is the messenger to Zechariah that he would be the father of John the Baptist (Luke 1:11-20) and to Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:26-38).

But God attaches a special promise to these messengers. Not only will they communicate the messages that God sends them to deliver, but he also sends them on missions of protection, as we saw against the forces of Aram. As we sang earlier, God makes specific promises to his people in Psalm 91, “Yes, you, Lord, are my refuge! If you make the Most High your shelter, evil will not overtake you. Disaster will not come near your tent. Yes, he will give a command to his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone” (vv. 9-12).

Does that mean that the angels protect us from every possible harm? Well, if you’ve banged your head or skinned your knee recently, you know that, no, God doesn’t protect us from anything that could cause us pain. But in many ways that we cannot measure or even understand, God sends his angels to tend to, guard, and protect us. Were the angels involved in making it so the skinned knee wasn’t a broken leg? Were the angels engaged in ensuring that the incident on the road was just a fender-bender where no one was hurt rather than something tragic? We can’t say for sure, but we do have God’s promise that this is precisely the kind of work that he will send them out to do.

In our Second Reading, we heard about one of the visions from John’s Revelation. John looked up and saw a battle taking place in the sky. Michael (who seems to be a created angel in a leadership role among the angels) directs God’s forces against the ancient dragon, Satan, and his minions. This is not an account of the fall of Satan. Instead, this vividly depicts the battle waged at the cross, the battle won by God. It was the final battle in the war that Satan initiated both with his personal rebellion and especially at the tree in the Garden of Eden. God promised at that time that this serpent’s head would be crushed (Genesis 3:15), and here in this vision, we see that take place: The great dragon was thrown down—the ancient serpent, the one called the Devil and Satan, the one who leads the whole inhabited earth astray—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him (Revelation 12:9). As is the theme of all of the book of Revelation, so it is in this account: Jesus wins, therefore we win as well.

The declaration that follows the vision makes that understanding clear: Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ, because the accuser [a literal translation of the name “Satan”] of our brothers has been thrown down, the one who accuses them before our God day and night. They conquered him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony (Revelation 12:10-11).

But if this is a depiction of the battle of the cross, if this war is between God and Satan, what role do the angels have in that? Undoubtedly, the angels didn’t suffer for our sins; the angels did not win forgiveness for us in their victory. Those blessings come entirely from Jesus; as was declared, mankind
conquered [Satan] because of the blood of the Lamb.

We have glimpses, little tastes in the Gospels, of the angels’ activity during this time. As Jesus was so distressed in the Garden of Gethsemane, pleading with his Father for another way to save us from our sins that his sweat was like drops of blood, we’re told that an angel came and tended to him before this confrontation began in earnest (Luke 22:43). As he rebuked Peter for using his sword to try to prevent his arrest, Jesus was clear that more than twelve legions of angels, more than 72,000 of them, stood ready to defend him if he wanted, but that was not the plan (Matthew 26:53).

But I believe the most prominent role that the angels played in this battle was like the seventy-two’s role in weakening Satan’s power in their preaching. What special role did some of the angels get assigned? On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women went to the tomb, carrying the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. When they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothing. The women were terrified and bowed down with their faces to the ground. The men said to them, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised! Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again?” Then they remembered his words (Luke 24:1-8). The angels’ power is seen most clearly here, not in a battle or protection or anything like that, but in their messenger role that day—Jesus is alive! He won!

So we can “ooh” and “ahh” over the power of the angels, the descriptions of their might, and their sometimes wild physical descriptions in the Bible. We can get shivers when we think of Satan and the other fallen angels, the demons, slinking around the world like prowling lions, looking to deceive, distort, and tempt us away from God. But all of that must be in service to the real story, the most important work God has done for you: your sins are forgiven. You are safe, not just now for a moment, but for eternity.

Let Jesus’ words to the seventy-two find a permanent home in your mind and heart, “Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names have been written in heaven.” At the end of Romans chapter 8, the apostle Paul gives what is essentially a commentary on Jesus’ words: We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither things present nor things to come, nor powerful forces, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (vv. 37-39).

My brothers and sisters, God commends his angels concerning you to guard you now and will send them to bring you safely to his side on the last day because Jesus has paid for your every sin. Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names have been written in heaven. You are safe now! Rejoice for eternity! Amen.

"Be Great; Serve All" (Sermon on Mark 9:30-37) | September 22, 2024

Sermon Text: Mark 9:30–37
Date: September 22, 2024
Event: Proper 20, Year B

Mark 9:30–37 (EHV)

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know this, 31because he was teaching his disciples. He told them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill him. But three days after he is killed, he will rise.”

32But they did not understand the statement and were afraid to ask him about it.

33They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” 34But they remained silent, because on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. 35Jesus sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone wants to be first, he will be the last of all and the servant of all.” 36Then he took a little child and placed him in their midst. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, 37“Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes not just me but also him who sent me.”

Be Great; Serve All

We don’t live in a society that values service much. Sure, there was that window of time early in the pandemic where, as a society, we tried to be grateful for the people who served us, whether they were the first responders and medical professionals, folks making pizza and hamburgers, or those delivering orders from stores when we weren’t allowed to go in person. But it seems as if that has largely gone away in society, so we seem to be back to this unspoken (or spoken right out loud) hierarchy between those serving and those being served. There can be the impression that the person staying at the hotel outranks the one working the front desk or the one ordering the food is of greater importance than the one bringing it to the table.

Of course, that’s not what everyone thinks, and I hope that you’re not among the people who look down on those serving you. Yet, it wouldn’t surprise me. We all have a sinful nature that latches on to every opportunity to exalt self over everyone else. So, it would make sense if, at times, you might see yourself as “outranking” your fellow people. I know that line of thinking hides in me and can appear even if I hate it; maybe it’s familiar to you, too. As we saw in our Gospel this morning, it was occasionally present in the twelve disciples.

The theme of our worship this morning centers around this idea of service and its relationship to stature and importance, or even simply the view of self. If you serve should you consider yourself lowly? If you are served, should you consider yourself lofty? How should we view ourselves and our relationship to other people? What does it mean to be great? What does it mean to serve?

In our Gospel, we’re quickly approaching the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry; he’s making haste toward the cross. We’re only a chapter and a half away from Palm Sunday in Mark’s breezy narrative account. Jesus is clear and direct about what is coming, especially as his end draws ever closer: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill him. But three days after he is killed, he will rise. Despite being very upfront, this statement communicated ideas that the disciples didn’t understand and perhaps didn’t want to think about. Fear led them to keep silent rather than to ask for more clarification or detail. Perhaps no one wanted to admit out loud that they didn’t “get it,” so no one got it.

You might imagine the awkward silence around Jesus’ words as the group made their way through the region of Galilee to the town of Capernaum. But eventually, the uncomfortable silence is broken by some quiet squabbling. Jesus knew full well what was going on, but he wanted to create an environment to make this a teaching moment, so once they arrived at their destination, he asked them: “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they remained silent, because on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. They knew that their argument had not been the most pious and sanctified topic of discussion—in fact, just about as far from it as you can get!—so, in shame and guilt, they were quiet.

Jesus takes the lead, “If anyone wants to be first, he will be the last of all and the servant of all.” The one striving for the head spot, the most significant place, the most recognition, will find himself with none of it. If a person’s goal is to be “someone” in society, to be respected or adored, that will probably backfire tremendously. Consider a modern-day example—how many people long to be movie stars or famous singers and performers. And yet, how often don’t you hear of people who have had their lives ruined by that type of fame, that they despise it and hate it, that it might even lead to physical or mental illness, or even worse? If you have a moment this week, I recommend reading through the brief book of Esther in the Old Testament. The antagonist in that account, Haman, embodies Jesus’ warnings clearly; it is the downfall of someone who would stop at nothing to get recognition from others.

Now, if the president of the United States or the governor of California wanted to have dinner with you, you’d probably do some things to prepare. You’ll be hosting someone very important! Whether you agree with their political ideas or not, you will have an opportunity to have direct contact with them. Perhaps your ideas would stick in their mind! Maybe you could reinforce their resolve on some issue where you agreed, or get them to see your thought process in places where you don’t agree and enact some meaningful change!

But notice that hypothetical serving is at least a little bit self-serving. You’re serving, hoping to influence the political realm or at least to have a story to share with others. You’re serving, but you can get something out of it. But, Jesus says, that’s not service. What about serving someone who can’t pay you back, who offers little tangible things in return? Then he took a little child and placed him in their midst. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes not just me but also him who sent me.”

Perhaps a parent taking care of a child now will mean the child can take care of the parent later, but what parent thinks that way? What parent would see their child’s needs and address them only because they hope to get something in return? Instead, the parent provides for the child because the parent loves the child. Does the parent “outrank” the child in the family? Sure. But even to think along those lines, the greater serves the lesser. And to welcome and serve the little child is as if we are welcoming and serving God himself.

Biblically speaking, “service” does not mean a lower status or position; “helper” does not signify someone lower than someone else. It’s not about position; it’s about attitude. How do I view others? How do I view myself? When God created our first parents, Adam and Eve, God described Eve as a “helper who is a suitable partner” (Genesis 2:18). But again, this helper and partner status is not about rank or importance. In fact, the Hebrew word God uses to describe Eve in Genesis, eyzer, is most often used in the Bible to describe God himself and his work for us; God is our helper.

Jesus’ sacrifice demonstrated this point perfectly. Jesus was the only one to have a claim of superiority. After all, he is God and man, perfect, without sin. Yet what does he do? He doesn’t go to a castle and have worldly and heavenly pomp bestowed on him. No, he goes to the cross to suffer the eternal punishment of hell because otherwise, you and I would have faced that for our sins.

Elsewhere, Jesus spells out this relationship between his people serving others and his serving the world, “You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It will not be that way among you. Instead whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25–28). His love for you prioritizes you even above his own life so that God himself bleeds and dies, not because he was powerless to stop it but because he wanted to do it because he wanted to save you and me.

Jesus served me. Do I outrank Jesus? Hardly! He is my Creator and Redeemer! He is my God! But his work is not linked to his status, his work is linked to his attitude to you and me, and that attitude is one driven by unilateral and selfless love for us.

So, that should be our approach to other people. We should seek out service rather than being served; we should reflect Jesus’ attitude in our lives, not the attitude of our selfish, sinful nature. But humility in our lives cannot and should not lead to self-loathing and self-hatred. To respect this direction from God, to not worry about myself as being the greatest, doesn’t mean that I have to think of myself as scum. God loves you and me and values you and me above everything that he created. Should we, in a misguided sense of humility, tell God that he is wrong for loving us or caring about us or even dying for us? May that never be!

Instead, let us seek the attitude that the apostle Paul spoke of, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility consider one another better than yourselves. Let each of you look carefully not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4). In our Second Reading, James urged us to be driven by heavenly wisdom—knowing that our sins are forgiven by a God who loves us—so that we can see selfish ambition as being what it really is: worldly, unspiritual, and demonic (James 3:15).

You, my brothers and sisters, are those who have been rescued by the selfless sacrifice of your Savior. You have forgiveness for every sin—even those sins of pride and selfish ambition—because Jesus lived perfectly for you and suffered hell in your place. You are free from the punishment of sin because Jesus took it on himself. You will be with him forever in heaven!

How can you reflect the love of God in how you love others? How can you find peace and satisfaction even if the world may not view you as the “most important” person in the room? How can you love yourself and others as the blood-bought souls that you are? Where has this been difficult for you? Where, my God’s grace, have you excelled in this?

These are all very personal, self-reflective questions. I cannot stand here and make a blanket proclamation to you all because we are all in different circumstances, positions, and situations. But you, this week, can take Jesus’ words and ponder them in your heart. You can look for ways to love and serve those around you in thanksgiving for the love and service God has given you. You can identify those haughty places of your heart that hate serving, bring them back to Jesus’ cross, and let him deal with them.

In Jesus’ death and resurrection, you see your actual status: you were worth the suffering and death of Jesus, the very blood of the Son of God. Take that status and let it empower and influence your decisions, attitudes, and actions this week until our Lord calls us home. Thanks be to God! Amen.

"Be Strong In the Lord" (Sermon on Ephesians 6:10-18) | September 15, 2024

Sermon Text: Ephesians 6:10-18
Date: September 15, 2024
Event: Proper 19, Year B

Ephesians 6:10-18 (EHV)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God, so that you can stand against the schemes of the Devil. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13For this reason, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to take a stand on the evil day and, after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand, then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness fastened in place, 15and with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace tied to your feet like sandals. 16At all times hold up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the Evil One. 17Also take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

18At every opportunity, pray in the Spirit with every kind of prayer and petition. Stay alert for the same reason, always persevering in your intercession for all the saints.

Be Strong in the Lord

Strength is a subjective concept. Maybe it’s objective on the bench press where the strongest person can lift the most. But what if that person who is physically strong cracks very quickly under pressure so that when they need that strength to help someone else, they can’t act? Are they still truly strong if that strength is never used? What if that person uses his strength at every opportunity rather than showing restraint? Are they truly strong if they can’t control their impulses?

How much of strength is optics? Can a leader who struggles in appearance and speech be strong even if they don’t appear that way in person or on camera? Can someone meek be considered strong when they are working tirelessly for the good of others? Is someone who replaces substance with emotion and passion to rile up people actually a strong leader, or just a manipulator?

Even the sentiment we might share with someone going through a tough time, “Be strong!” can be confusing. What do you mean by that? Don’t let things get you down? Maintain a positive attitude despite the circumstances around you? Identify where you need support and help, and go seek that out? Operate as if the bad things aren’t happening? Strength is subjective.

This morning, we have some examples of strength from God’s Word. We heard the classic (and narratively, one of my favorite) accounts from the Old Testament in the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, where Elijah demonstrated unwavering faith and strength in God against the prophets of a false god. Jesus showed his power over even the demons his disciples lacked the strength to drive out. In our Second Reading, which is our focus for this morning’s meditation, we have Paul’s encouragement to put on the armor of God. So, what does it mean to truly be strong? And more to the point, what does it mean to be strong in the Lord?

We first need to establish that we are in a battle. But this battle is not against other people, our neighbors in the human race. We are not set against them; instead, we are at war with the forces of spiritual evil. Paul explained it this way: Put on the full armor of God, so that you can stand against the schemes of the Devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

This is important to remember in an increasingly polarized world. Never mind the upheaval that we find in politics, people pitting themselves or being pitted against each other. But think about things from a spiritual standpoint, of matters of faith and eternity. You don’t have to look very hard to find someone who doesn’t see eye to eye with you on who Jesus is and what he did, how important that is, or what it means to be a Christian. You don’t have to search very long to find someone who considers your faith foolish, your focus on eternal, spiritual things misguided, and your desire to share your faith with others manipulative. But, even as you find so many people set against you and your faith, your battle is not with them. Your battle is with those things that would lead them away from God’s truth and into these misguided beliefs.

However, the focus on other people is, in many ways, missing the true point. We want to be aware of where there is a threat to our own souls and faith in the attacks waged by these spiritual enemies. After all, we can’t help others if we are in need of help ourselves. And so as we walk through this life where spiritual battles rage around us and even inside of us, Paul has one clear direction: Put on the full armor of God.

Paul lists several pieces of this armor set, and this imagery likely originates in Isaiah chapter 59, where God’s intervention for his people is described this way: The truth is missing, and anyone who turns from evil makes himself prey. The Lord looked and saw something evil—there was no justice. He saw that there was no one. He was appalled that there was no one who could intervene. So his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness supported him. He clothed himself with righteousness like armor and wore a helmet of salvation on his head. He dressed in garments for vengeance, and he wrapped himself with zeal like a cloak. … Then a redeemer will come for Zion and for those in Jacob who turn from rebellion. This is the declaration of the Lord (Isaiah 59:15-17, 20). God himself puts on the helmet of salvation, cloaks himself with righteousness, and serves as a Redeemer for those who had turned away from him.

Jesus was that armor-bearing Redeemer, although he didn’t look well-equipped for his battle. Stripped of his garments rather than decked out in armor, nailed to a cross by his enemies, he looked like he had lost the battle before it started. But, as is true for us, so it was true for Jesus: his battle was not against flesh and blood. He didn’t lose the battle against the Jewish leaders or the Roman authorities because he was never actually in conflict with them. Instead, he was making the ultimate stand against the Devil. There at the cross, our Redeemer won despite the apparent loss. His death paid for all sin, and his victory would take just a few days to prove when his tomb was empty because he rose from the dead.

So now we take out stand not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness. The battle that rages around us is a battle for our souls. Satan is trying to pry us away from God, to get us distracted from him, his love, and his forgiveness so that we end up losing our souls the same way he lost the battle with God. So he cowardly launches his flaming arrows of temptation at us—both to sin against God’s will and to doubt God’s goodness to us. Everything that comes from our spiritual enemies is meant, one way or another, to undermine our confidence in God, to separate us from him so that we turn our back on his forgiveness.

This battle may not always feel like a battle. Perhaps we are being pried away from God by luxuries and joys in this life, so we start greatly valuing entertainment, leisure, work we love, or anything else that captures our imagination. These things that, at first blush, feel like blessings, not danger, may lead us to value them more than we value God, to seek them out rather than be concerned about what God says and has done.

Other times, this doesn’t feel like a battle because it feels like we’ve already lost, as our spiritual enemies use fear and desperation for things in this life to pry us away from the comfort of God’s love. Anxiety goes to the extreme, fears and worries sink us into deep depression, and we may approach this life as if the battle is already over and we lost because we’ve stopped considering what God has done and can only see where we have failed.

So whether we feel it or not, see it or not, acknowledge it or not, this battle rages around us; it is enflamed within us. And as a result, we might speak of the fighting as if the outcome is uncertain. Two enter, and one will leave. It’s us against Satan, us against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. But that gives our spiritual enemies far, far too much credit. It ignores what Jesus has already accomplished. Our confidence is not that Jesus will win; it’s that Jesus did win. As a result, our confidence is not that we will win, but because of Jesus’ victory in our place, we have won. This isn’t actually a contest anymore; Jesus won! We win!

How would knowing the outcome change the way you feel about entering a contest? If you knew your team would win the championship, would you sweat the ups and downs of the playoffs? If you knew your nation would win the war, would you despair in the ebb and flow of the battle? Knowing the outcome would make weathering the storms of conflict much easier. There might still be times of distress, especially if the inevitable end slipped your mind briefly, but you could always return to the certainty of the outcome you already know for comfort.

Such is the case with these spiritual battles. Jesus already won; the conflict just has to wind down. Satan and his cohorts will rage and scream and act like they have not lost; they will try to get you to think that they have not already been defeated, but they have been. They die defeated at the foot of your Redeemer.

And your Redeemer does not leave you alone. He gives you his armor to wear to weather the storms of Satan’s death throes. Stand, then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness fastened in place, and with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace tied to your feet like sandals. At all times hold up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the Evil One. Also take the helmet of salvation. All of those pieces of armor serve as defense, not offense. You won’t attack anyone with a helmet or try to whip them with a belt. That’s not going to be effective at all. But that belt will hold your clothing together safely, the plate armor will protect your vital organs, the shield will render the enemy’s assaults worthless, and the helmet will protect your head.

This ultimate defense is what God provides. He doesn’t promise that we will not face trouble, hardship, or sorrow, but he does promise that they will not eternally and mortally wound us. Satan is not able to drag us away from God. Like a dog on a chain, he is limited, and like a violent criminal awaiting sentencing, he will be locked away. God is our sure and certain defense. To use a slightly different picture, we might call our God a mighty fortress.

But there is one piece of this armor set that is for offense. We are to take … the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. The one tool, the one weapon we have to ward off all the ill of this life, is the only one we need—God’s Word. God’s Word is the certainty of our salvation—it tells us of Jesus’ already-completed victory. God’s Word is the thing that Satan cannot stand against. James encourages us, “Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Jesus himself met Satan’s head-on temptations with the promises of God from his Word and stood his ground perfectly (see Matthew 4). So, too, you and I have that sword in hand, ready at all times, to ward off the attacks of our spiritual enemies. And if we look at the description of the other pieces of the defensive armor: truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation—all these, too, flow from God’s Word. God’s Word is for us both offense and defense, unbreakable and undefeatable in both uses.

Remember where we started? What is strength? How can we be strong in the Lord? His Word. Clinging to his promises, clinging to the work he’s done for us, allowing your weak self to find strength in God’s almighty power that forgives your sins and rescues you from all doubt—that is strength.

Personally, I feel like every day I understand the father speaking to Jesus in our Gospel a little bit better, not as a parent, but as a person, “I do believe. Help me with my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). This is how and where God tends to that unbelief and doubt in all of us: his Word. He wraps us in the armor of his protection and assures us of his promises to make our way through this spiritual battlefield. The end is certain; the end is victory in our Savior, Jesus Christ.

So, my brothers and sisters, today, this week, the rest of this year, and until the Lord calls you home, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. How? Put on God’s armor. Amen.

"God Will Come and Save You" (Sermon on Isaiah 35:4-7a) | September 8, 2024

Sermon Text: Isaiah 35:4-7a
Date: September 8, 2024
Event: Proper 18, Year B

Isaiah 35:4-7a (EHV)

Tell those who have a fearful heart:
Be strong.
Do not be afraid.
Look! Your God will come with vengeance.
With God’s own retribution, he will come and save you.

5Then the eyes of the blind will be opened,
and the ears of the deaf will be unplugged.
6The crippled will leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy.
Waters will flow in the wilderness,
and streams in the wasteland.
7The burning sand will become a pool,
and in the thirsty ground there will be springs of water.

God Will Come and Save You

“How are you doing?” We’ve all had that question asked of us, but depending on the context, the answer can be very, very different, even if asked by different people on the same day. If it’s small talk with the cashier at the grocery store, a simple “Good” or “Fine” might come out. But if you’re sitting with a trusted friend, a dear family member, a counselor, therapist, or pastor, the answer might be just a bit… more. It can be terrifying to be open and honest about how we’re really doing, what we’re really feeling, and only in the safest places might we feel secure enough to be vulnerable and honestly share our hearts.

Why are we hesitant to share our fears? Why are we fearful of letting people know what is really going on in our hearts and minds? Maybe it’s shame—we know that the way we’re thinking or the attitudes we’re holding on to are wrong, and we don’t want to be rebuked, even as we might desperately need support to help make some changes. Maybe it’s fear—how will people judge me, or what will they think of me if I let them know what’s happening inside me? Maybe it’s protection, either protection for self or protection for others—if I share what’s really going on between me and that other person, will I hurt the person’s reputation? Or what will the person I’m talking to think about me?

What does my fear or apprehension or anxiety or depression or whatever say about my trust in God? Can someone really be a believer and wrestle with any of those things? Don’t they all, in their own way, betray a lack of faith in God, or at least a faith that is frighteningly weak? Would any true believer, any true Christian, ever have thoughts or feelings like that?

This morning, we will spend some time with a few verses from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah’s book is one of both judgment and peace, harm and restoration. We might know many of the rich gospel promises in his book: A champion is promised, born, astonishingly, of a virgin. He calls himself our Redeemer and reminds us that he is the one who formed us even in the womb. He promises that he will be pierced and crushed to save us from our sins.

But a significant portion of Isaiah’s words also speak God’s condemnation on the world's nations and even God’s own people. He rebukes their hardheartedness and their rebellion. We heard Jesus quote Isaiah last week, saying that his people paid him lip service but did not serve him with their hearts. Isaiah is an Old Testament book overflowing with both law and gospel, God’s anger with sin and his mercy in sending a Savior to rescue us.

Chapter 35, from which our First Reading is drawn, comes near the end of an extended section of law in Isaiah. In fact, while not entirely law, most of the book up to this point is heavy condemnation. Chapters 13 through 23 call out judgment against many different nations on the earth, and chapters 23-35 are primarily focused on a more general judgment upon the earth for sin. It’s necessary to hear but difficult. Consider just these verses from the chapter before our reading, “The Lord is angry with all the nations, and he is furious with all their armies. He has condemned them to destruction. He has handed them over for slaughter. Their fallen bodies will lie unburied, and the stench of their corpses will linger. The mountains will flow with their blood.” (Isaiah 34:2-3). That’s not exactly the pick-me-up we might hope for from God’s Word.

But then, chapter 35 begins with a different tone. It speaks of gladness on the earth where there had been so much destruction proclaimed. And there is a direct command from God in the verse just before our reading, “Strengthen the weak hands, and make the shaky knees steady” (Isaiah 35:3). If the wrath and judgment of God made you afraid, here is God coming to strengthen and uphold you.

And so then our reading begins with pure comfort, “Tell those who have a fearful heart: Be strong. Do not be afraid. Look! Your God will come with vengeance. With God’s own retribution, he will come and save you.” There are still some harsh, condemning words: vengeance, retribution. But these are in your favor, not against you: he will come and save you. This vengeance and retribution are against those who threaten you, against those who are your enemies, or perhaps even more directly, against those who are God’s enemies.

Why would our knees be weak? Why would we have a fearful heart when considering the judgment of God? Because we know who we are. We know that, by nature, we stand as those deserving of this vengeance and retribution. Our sin makes us God’s enemies. So when you hear about God’s wrath and anger over sin, your conscience loudly (and correctly) screams, “This is you! He’s mad at you! He’s coming for you!”

So you, by nature, are the enemy of the almighty God. We asked earlier if fear or apprehension or anxiety or depression would ever have any part in the Christian’s heart. And here we can say resoundingly, yes! When you know what you are by nature, when you know what you deserve, who wouldn’t have their knees buckle? Whose hands wouldn’t shake like leaves? You are held accountable for sin that you can do nothing about by a Judge who has no lack of power or resources to carry out his just punishment.

Then what, in all the world, would there be to strengthen these hands and bring stability to knocking knees? What could possibly make us confident, not fearful, in God’s presence? What could make such a change that we would go from fearful despair and hopeless depression to confidence and joy? What could ever change this fearful heart in us?

God illustrates this change in the latter verses of our reading. Here, the gospel images are a total reversal from bad to good: Blind eyes seeing, deaf ears hearing, the crippled dancing, the mute singing, and where there is just dryness and desolation, there will be life-giving water. What had been broken is fixed; what had been a disaster is now a blessing. This is the change God works when he works for us.

In our Gospel for this morning, we saw Jesus literally doing a bit of this as he opened the ears of the deaf man. “Ephphatha!” (Mark 7:34). Likewise, Jesus gave Peter the ability to help that man who was crippled from birth, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I will give you. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!” (Acts 3:6). Jesus’ mission was not to simply work healing miracles like this, and the promise in Isaiah was not for someone who would heal these physical ailments and provide physical water. As we heard Jesus speaking of himself as the Bread of Life for weeks in our previous Gospel readings, these promises also point to spiritual rather than physical concerns.

Because that sinful nature leaves us blind, deaf, mute, and crippled spiritually. More than that, sin causes spiritual death so that we are left not just in a bad spot or in a difficult situation but as helpless as a corpse. Our sin means eternal death in hell, unless God intervenes, unless God saves. And what is God’s promise to you? He will come and save you.

Jesus took up this reversal work in full at the cross. There, God suffered for the sins you and I committed against him. The punishment that brought us peace was whipped into his back and pierced through his hands and feet, pinning him to that cross. When God the Father abandoned God the Son, there was the truest punishment we deserved, which Jesus took in our place. There was the inevitable judgment of our sins, but God himself suffered it instead of us in the most baffling of reversals.

Everything changes because Jesus paid for every sin—even sins of doubt, fear, weakness, and lack of trust in him. Spiritual blindness to spiritual sight: look at your Savior crucified yet risen from the dead! Spiritual deafness to spiritual hearing of his gracious words, “I forgive you.” Spiritual lameness to spiritual strength, healed and empowered to move by God’s love and mercy. Spiritual muteness to spiritual shouting praises to the God who saves. Spiritual desolation to spiritual water, raised from spiritual death in our sins to eternal life by God’s gracious gift.

Do the thoughts of fearing God, depression over what is to come, and so forth make sense? Certainly. But, my dear sister, my dear brother, you need not be controlled by them because the one who died and was raised is greater than all—even greater than the thoughts and feelings of your mind and heart. When your heart is overwhelmed with guilt that doesn’t feel like even a loving God could forgive, call out your heart’s lies or at least its misunderstanding. When Satan whispers to your mind that God could never love or forgive someone like you, send him and his lies and deception packing. You, after all, are a baptized child of God; Satan knows nothing about God’s forgiveness.

We were in a desperate, helpless, and hopeless place, but the one who has done everything well (Mark 7:37) certainly accomplished your soul’s salvation well. It is finished, complete. There is nothing for you to pay. So my dear friends in Jesus, let your fearful hearts find rest in your Savior’s love and work for you. That work will not mean the end of sorrow and hardship in this life—sin will always be present with us on this side of heaven—but it does mean peace with God forever. It also means that God stands by you every moment of every day, no matter how trying and difficult the circumstances, to make even earthly things work out for your eternal good.

We don’t need to fear God or the future because our God is a God of love and forgiveness, and the future is as certain as Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Be strong. Do not be afraid. Look! Your God will come with vengeance. With God’s own retribution, he will come and save you. Amen.

"Joyful Service Comes from Within" (Sermon on Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23) | September 1, 2024

Sermon Text: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Date: September 1, 2024
Event: Proper 17, Year B

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 (EHV)

The Pharisees and some of the experts in the law came from Jerusalem and gathered around Jesus. 2They saw some of his disciples eating bread with unclean (that is, unwashed) hands. 3In fact, the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they scrub their hands with a fist, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions they adhere to, such as the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles, and dining couches. 5The Pharisees and the experts in the law asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? Instead they eat bread with unclean hands.”

6He answered them, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written:

These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

7They worship me in vain, teaching human rules as if they were doctrines.

8“You abandon God’s commandment but hold to human tradition like the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other such things.”

14He called the crowd to him again and said, “Everyone, listen to me and understand. 15There is nothing outside of a man that can make him unclean by going into him. But the things that come out of a man are what make a man unclean.

21In fact, from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, 22adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. 23All these evil things proceed from within and make a person unclean.”

Joyful Service Comes from Within

Cause and effect and correlation can be tricky to figure out. What is caused by something else and what happens along side it? For instance, since our family moved here in 2012, there have been zero Bengal tiger attacks in Belmont. Now, I don’t want to take credit for that, but it is interesting that our living here has coincided with zero tiger incidents, isn’t it?

Of course, that’s ridiculous. But some things are harder to tell. Did that new, experimental drug really help that person’s disease, or would they have gotten better on their own, and they just happened to be taking the medicine while their body did the work it would have done anyway? Did that questionable fast food burger make you sick, or did you pick up a stomach virus somewhere else along the way?

We can ask related and even more difficult questions about spiritual things. Did this thing happen to me because I did that other thing? Is God upset with me, so he’s letting trouble come my way? Are these positive things in my life because of my devotion to God? What is cause? What is effect? And what just is?

This morning, Jesus has an opportunity to address the Pharisees’ concerns and help them to see the true origin point not only of sin but also of proper, thankful, joyful service to God. Our problems come from the inside, not the outside, and once God has purified us from sin, our thankful life also comes from within us.

We’re in the second “half” of Jesus’ ministry, where his earthly popularity is waning, and more than ever before, everything is heading toward the cross. As a result, Jesus is increasingly more direct and blunt both with his disciples and those who are opposed to him. This morning, Jesus very directly confronted a sinful problem and misunderstanding that the Pharisees had.

A crew of religious leaders, some of the Pharisees and some of the scribes (who were experts in the law), came up from Jerusalem to where Jesus was teaching. They were continually looking for reasons to discredit Jesus in the eyes of the people so that either the people would stop following him and this nuisance would just disappear on its won, or they might concoct some “justifiable” way to get rid of him. And so on this opportunity, this group zeroes in on traditions, or in Jesus’ group’s case, lack thereof. The Pharisees and some of the experts in the law came from Jerusalem and gathered around Jesus. They saw some of his disciples eating bread with unclean (that is, unwashed) hands. … The Pharisees and the experts in the law asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? Instead they eat bread with unclean hands.”

There was a tradition among the leaders and forefathers of the people that, before you eat, you gave your hands a ceremonial cleansing. This had little to do with hygiene in the modern sense of that term (although, we certainly see some hygienic benefit for this tradition) and it had more to do with being having cermonially clean hands so that the food you ate would also be ceremonially clean. Without that, you might pollute yourself spiritually by eating unclean food, which brought with it all sorts of other challenges and requirements in the ceremonial law and in the traditions of the people.

What’s the issue here? The leaders’ question to Jesus is, “Why do you let your disciples sin by allowing them to eat without doing this traditional ceremonial washing?” They were equating man’s traditions with God’s commands. And Jesus, using the words of the prophet Isaiah, condemns them for that: These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain, teaching human rules as if they were doctrines.

Jesus is really getting at the heart here. For the Pharisees and other religious leaders of the day, the widespread consensus was that it was enough to look good, but they would often ignore the heart. If the lips said the right thing, the heart's motivations didn’t matter. If you were pious and upright by all outward appearances, that must be what you were.

But this is a legalistic mindset that presumes we can be right with God through our conduct. Even if we could control our words and actions perfectly (which you and I both know well we cannot), there is still the problem of our sinful hearts. Even doing good things to make God happy with us betrays a total misunderstanding of our relationship with God and why we would do things God deems to be “good.”

Our natural state is as sinners at war with God. We are by nature not honoring God with our lips, but indeed, our hearts are from him. We bring God’s wrath down on ourselves in this hostile conflict with the Almighty. Because God is a just God, our sin needs to be punished; God would violate who he is if he just turned a blind eye to our disobedience. And so there is no escaping the punishment for sin, and no matter how good we might try to look on the outside, we will never be perfect on the inside.

And so, the principle issue we have is not so much the sinful actions we commit or sinful words we say, but the origin point, the cause of those sinful words and actions: our corrupted hearts. Jesus describes who we are by nature: “Everyone, listen to me and understand. There is nothing outside of a man that can make him unclean by going into him. But the things that come out of a man are what make a man unclean. In fact, from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and make a person unclean.”

What is Jesus’ point? Your traditions are worthless because a ceremonial splash in the water does not fix the true source of your uncleanness. Dirty hands didn’t make you unclean, nor even the things you eat, but the spring of spiritual corruption and poison is deep in your hearts. So, if our lives, actions, and words are being corrupted at the very source, if our very motivation is being poisoned by sin, there will be nothing we can do to change that status unless that corruption is removed, unless the spring of raw sewage that bubbles up from inside of us is purified.

Jesus wanted them to see this because until they could see the corruption of their hearts for what it was, they would never understand the purification he was bringing. They had to see themselves as God sees them—hopelessly lost sinners—rather than as the models of good living they thought they were.

The same is true for us. Jesus has very little value for us if we don’t recognize our own complete corruption by sin. Not realizing that is what produces ideas like, “I can be good enough to make God happy with me!” or “I’m not so bad! In fact, I’m mostly good!” This mindset that so easily creeps in is the exact one that Jesus is trying to purge from the hearts and minds of the religious leaders.

No matter how hard we try, we cannot make God happy by how we live our lives. Because God’s requirements are not “do your best” or “give it your all” or “be better than most other people.” God’s requirement is perfection. You and I have not been perfect, and the sinful hearts inside of us prevent us from even making it possible to be perfect from this moment forward—not that that would be what God was looking for anyway.

But Jesus is not trying to get the religious leaders of his day and us today to see this corruption and despair. He wants us to see how we can do nothing about this cause of sin so we can rely on him completely. Because this is the good news that Jesus came to bring and the work he came to do. Yes, God’s justice would never be satisfied if sin was not punished, but God’s love would also never be satisfied if we were condemned to hell with no hope. And so, from the fall into sin in the Garden of Eden onward, God’s plan and purpose was always a rescue mission—to save us from hell, to save us from ourselves.

And that’s what Jesus did. He put his face toward the cross, scorned the shame that would come from it, and endured what you and I deserved. In his mercy, Jesus took our place. The one who had no internal corruption and sinful nature suffered hell as if he were the only sinner that ever lived. Because he lived and died for us, our sins are forgiven. Despite this spring of poisonous sin inside of ourselves, we are healed and made whole again. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead proves that he paid for all our sins and that we will be with him forever in eternal life.

And now, we do what is right, not to try to make God happy with us but because he is happy with us. We live lives that honor God, not to try to make him love us but because he loves us. We seek what is good and avoid what is evil, not to try to prove our worth to God but because he values us so much. The cause of sin was internal, and the cause of joyful service to God is also from within because he has purified us. We obey God in joy, not fear; we follow God’s law in thanksgiving, not terror. As Paul said in our Second Reading, “To everyone who believes, Christ is the end of the law, resulting in righteousness” (Romans 10:4). The law’s purpose of making us right with God has long since become impossible. Its purpose now is to guide our thankful living to God.

So, my brothers and sisters, recognize that the source of your sin doesn’t come from things around you—the company you keep, the things you read, or even this wildly corrupt world in which we live. No, your sin stems from inside of you, from the sinful nature you were born with—conceived with! But see that your service to God also comes from within—from the joy that God instilled in you by forgiving all your sins and assuring you that you’ll be in heaven. Let us not go through the motions of looking like we’re living a Christian life; let us embrace and value the complete forgiveness Jesus gives and let that cause our lives to be ones of joyful service to him.

Lord, keep this motivation ever in our hearts and minds. Thank you for your patience, love, and forgiveness. Amen.

"Jesus, Jesus, Only Jesus!" (Sermon on John 6:51-69) | August 25, 2024

Sermon Text: John 6:51–69
Date: August 25, 2024
Event: Proper 16, Year B

John 6:51–69 (EHV)

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

52At that, the Jews argued among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

53So Jesus said to them, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. 54The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day. 55For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. 56The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like your fathers ate and died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”

59He said these things while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. 60When they heard it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching! Who can listen to it?”

61But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, asked them, “Does this cause you to stumble in your faith? 62What if you would see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh does not help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. 64But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning those who would not believe and the one who would betray him. 65He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is given to him by my Father.”

66After this, many of his disciples turned back and were not walking with him anymore. 67So Jesus asked the Twelve, “You do not want to leave too, do you?”

68Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Jesus, Jesus, Only Jesus!

What is your most valuable tool? Maybe it’s a trusty hammer you’ve had since forever. It’s well-made, solid, and will probably outlive you. Maybe it’s a set of cookware that is made to last generations—it cooks well, cleans well, and properly maintained, could probably be an heirloom in your family. Maybe it’s something a bit more ephemeral and temporary but very useful. Maybe it’s a cell phone that keeps you in touch with people near and far away. Maybe a computer allows you to do your necessary work and do things to unwind and relax.

But no matter how useful any given tool is, you would be hard-pressed to get rid of everything else and rely on that one thing. That hammer might be awesome, but it won't do much good when it comes time to cut something. And trying to drive that nail with your laptop? That’s not going to end well.

For the better part of the summer, we’ve been with the crowds around Jesus’ miracle of feeding more than 5,000 people. In our Gospel readings, we’ve seen the people’s helpless reality like sheep without a shepherd, Jesus’ overwhelming compassion for them, and then the crowd’s misguided hope, thinking that Jesus was providing what they wanted—physical food—not what they needed—eternal life.

This morning’s Gospel is the culmination of all of this. This conflict comes to a head as Jesus stresses why he had actually come and faces the fallout for that. This morning, we will ideally learn the lesson that the Twelve did and showed through Peter’s confession: that when it comes to any needs, there’s one tool, there’s one solution for us: Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus!

In our Gospel, we pick up exactly where we left off last week, repeating verse 51, where Jesus said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The people listening were really confused about what Jesus was talking about. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Then, Jesus goes further and gets more graphic in his depiction. He says, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day. For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink.” Now, that sounds grotesque, and you might well sympathize with the people who reacted negatively to this.

Because what does that mean? Do we have to eat and drink Jesus' flesh and blood? This is the sort of thing that was forbidden by the law that God gave to his people when it came to animals for food. They weren't to eat raw meat but to cook it. They weren't to leave the blood in it, but to drain it out. And this is to say nothing of the raw horror of thinking about what it means to ingest parts of another human being.

Jesus here is not speaking about literal physical eating and drinking. He says, “My flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.” This is a picturesque (albeit alarmingly graphic) way for Jesus to describe what it means to receive him, to believe in him. You're so connected to him for your spiritual needs that you might as well be gnawing on his flesh and drinking his blood that he would dwell in you wholly like food and drink dwell in you after you've swallowed it. Jesus is very clear about the results of this receiving, this eating and drinking: Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like your fathers ate and died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Physical food and drink come and go. That’s not what Jesus is offering. This is not physical food, something to chew with the teeth and swallow. This is only something that can be received by faith.

The people are not pleased with the direction of this conversation. When they heard it, many of Jesus's disciples said, “This is a hard teaching! Who can listen to it?” The people who were following Jesus wanted something easy. They wanted a solution that made sense to them, a solution that they had come up with. And their thought was, “Hey, if we just have an unending supply of physical food, things will be good.”

But Jesus knew that wasn't true. Even if one did have an unending supply of physical food, death would still come. And with death comes judgment. And judgment because of sin means that we stand condemned before God. No, we don't need a solution to the problem of physical hunger and thirst; we need a solution to the problem of spiritual hunger and thirst. And when meeting those needs, Jesus says, "The only thing you get is me." There's no alternative path. There's no way for anyone to do these things on his own. We need Jesus. Jesus is all we get. And Jesus is all we need.

Jesus says, Does this cause you to stumble in your faith? What if you would see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh does not help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. It becomes very clear to the crowd gathered around Jesus that he won't do what they want. No amount of arguing will lead Jesus to give them more to eat.

This is where Jesus' earthly popularity dropped off a cliff. Many of his disciples turned back and were not walking with him anymore.  Jesus lost followers when he presented himself as the sole thing they needed, and they needed to be more focused on the spiritual than the physical. He was the sole thing that they would get from him and the only thing that they truly needed, but it didn't meet their expectations, so off they went.

Not much has changed in the intervening 2,000 years because the message from Jesus is still the same. He's all you get. Truly, he's all you need. But what is it for you that pulls you to turn away from Jesus? What causes you to think, "Ah, this Jesus is not really worth it. This faith is not something I want to dedicate myself to. This is a hard teaching. This is harsh. Jesus is stubborn. He's not going to do what I want him to do. Who could stand to listen to him?”

This will vary wildly among each of us here this morning. Maybe it is some command from Jesus when he says that something that I want to be right is wrong or something that I want to be wrong is fine. Maybe it is dissatisfaction with my lot in life, the reality of where I am, the struggles I have to deal with, and the crosses I have to bear. Maybe you're not dealing with physical hunger like the crowds, but maybe you're really, really tempted to withdraw from Jesus because he's just not doing what you want him to do. He's not making this part of your life better. He's not bringing healing to that loved one. He's not bringing to fruition what I think should be done in my life. And if this is how it will be as a follower of Jesus, it's really, really easy for me to say, "You know what? Enough is enough. I can't do this anymore. I'm done." And to turn back and to not walk with Jesus anymore.

There may be some immediate gains by doing that from our human perspective. Maybe I’m happier ignoring Jesus and seeking my own will and joys. By turning away from Jesus, I might find some temporal joy, some earthly pleasure, some way to satisfy the longings of my heart. But if I do that, what have I just traded away?

Not only do I say thanks but no thanks to Jesus in terms of the day-to-day things of life, but I also say thanks but no thanks to Jesus when it comes to his forgiveness. Unless I eat that flesh and drink that blood, I have no part with him. Unless the Spirit-given conviction, trust, and faith in Jesus are alive here, in my heart, I don't benefit from what he did at all.

As the crowds were leaving, Jesus turned to the twelve and asked them, "You do not want to leave too, do you?" What is Jesus asking? “What are you looking for? Is it me, or is it something else?”

Peter knows that there’s no solution besides Jesus. That was clearly illustrated for Peter just hours before when he asked Jesus to call him out to walk on the surface of the Sea of Galilee. Everything went wonderfully when he was focused on Jesus, but when other things took Peter’s attention, he began to sink into the water. The disciples that were leaving were looking at the wind and the waves of this life and saying, "I don't think Jesus is going to do what I want him to do." They were taking their eyes off of him and found that they were content to fight their own way through the stormy sea.

But again, Peter knows that there's no help outside of Jesus. It is Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus. “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

This trade, giving up the eternal for the temporal, is not a wise move. We don't want to do this. Jesus, and Jesus alone, has the words of eternal life. Jesus is all that you get, my brothers and sisters. He's all you need, and by God's grace, he is all you want. Because here is your God, who, yes, provides for you physically (even if it might not always be precisely what you or I want). But more to the point, here is the one who provides for you for eternity.

God was not content to let us eat bread in this life for a time and then die and face the punishment for our sins in hell. And so Jesus took our place, becoming this bread of life, as he said, by offering and giving his flesh for the life of the world. And in that sacrifice, Jesus pays for your sins and mine, for every time that you and I have wanted to turn tail and go away.

Every time I have sought to serve another master, whether my own whims and desires, money, power, fame, accomplishments, peace, or security in this life. All of those times that for me, it has not been Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus, that those are sins for which Jesus died, sins that are gone.

And now the Spirit gives life to you and to me by connecting us to the bread of life. By his Word, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit creates and sustains our faith in Jesus so that you and I have what we need. And by God's grace, we have what we want because we have Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus!

Lord keep us ever focused on you and content that no matter what happens in this life, we are safe with you forever. Amen.

"Learn from God’s 'Culinary' Wisdom" (Sermon on John 6:35-51) | August 19, 2024

Sermon Text: John 6:35–51
Date: August 19, 2024
Event: Proper 15, Year B

John 6:35–51 (EHV)

“I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus told them. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty. 36But I said to you that you have also seen me, and you do not believe. 37Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. 38For I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. 39And this is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me, but raise them up on the Last Day. 40For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day.”

41So the Jews started grumbling about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42They asked, “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? So how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

43Jesus answered them, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the Last Day. 45It is written in the Prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. 46I am not saying that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He is the one who has seen the Father. 47Amen, Amen, I tell you: The one who believes in me has eternal life.

48“I am the Bread of Life. 49Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat it and not die. 51I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Learn from God’s “Culinary” Wisdom

“Empty calories.” Perhaps you’re familiar with that term. Whether you’ve heard it or not, you’ve undoubtedly experienced the concept. Some foods provide a significant source of energy—calories—but that energy is very short-lived. You can eat 100 calories of candy and 100 calories of carrots, but which will be more food and which will keep you full and energized for longer? As I typed this introduction in my office, I was munching on a couple of little chocolate candies, the very epitome of empty calories!

Not all fuel is the same. Things will go poorly if you put lighter fluid in your car’s gas tank—or coal. All are fuels, all burn, but only one will actually power an internal combustion engine in an automobile. If you have an electric car, what outlet you plug it into will make a huge difference, not in what type of electricity gets into it, but how much gets into it. Certain chargers may fill a car’s large battery in under an hour; others may take all night just to put a few percent back into the battery.

So whether it’s our bodies, our cars, our phones, or our grills, we want to use the right kind of fuel—fuel that will endure, get the job done, and get us where we need to go. And we know that using the wrong fuel, even if it’s close, can be disastrous. A goof at the gas pump to put diesel in an unleaded car will not go well.

So it is for our spiritual “fuel” that we put in us. Not everything claiming to be spiritual, or Christian, or even Lutheran is of the same quality and has the same benefit. In fact, some things in those spheres will be downright dangerous to your eternal well-being. So, how do we know what to do, what to trust, what food will be good for us? When it comes to nourishing our souls, how do we distinguish between a wholesome meal and junk, between safe food and poison? Jesus has direction for us, “Learn from God.”

Earlier this week, I came across an online video account posting supposed messages the person was receiving straight from God. The person used a lot of spiritual and even Christian language, stressing (at times) that we need to be connected to “the Christ,” but when you listened to what was being said, the message was just gobbledygook. It didn’t track with any internal logic. It just felt like a blast of words, almost in a random order, and notably (when the message was making sense), it was really focused on the here and now rather than the eternal. The messages would talk about hurts and harms that you’ve experienced now, a concept that the “One” would help you with them and that you were strong enough to endure.

What was notably missing from any of this was, well, Jesus. The word “Christ” that was thrown around a bunch didn’t seem to be talking about our Savior so much as an abstract concept of a force of nature or something. (It was really difficult to follow.) But it struck me that this is not so different from some of the crowds’ thoughts about Jesus after the feeding of the 5,000.

In our Gospel last week, we heard Jesus urging people to receive the true bread from heaven, to look not to just the here and now, not just to fill their bellies for a day, but to seek after “bread” that endures to eternal life. We closed that reading with the same words from Jesus that we began our Gospel for this morning: “I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus told them. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Jesus is clear that this is not some arbitrary, subjective thing. This is not an invitation to cram your spirit full of junk food or other garbage that may even hurt you. No, this is a call to come to him and to him alone, to eat the bread that he provides—that he is!—because he is the only solution to spiritual hunger and thirst.

But this is not so easy or so automatic. We know the crowds were not on board with everything Jesus said and taught. Jesus himself comments, “You have also seen me, and you do not believe.” They were not trusting in Jesus for forgiveness and eternal security; as we saw last week, they were only looking to Jesus to satisfy their physical hunger. And so Jesus continues, trying to get them to rework their thinking, seeing their need for what he provides and what God the Father does through him: Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me, but raise them up on the Last Day. For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day.”

There’s a tremendous amount of comfort and security in these words. The Father gives people to Jesus, and Jesus will not lose any of them. Jesus and the Father are united in this goal: “everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day.” Three times in this brief reading, Jesus says that he will raise up the believers on the Last Day. This is in keeping with Jesus’ focus, not on physical food and drink, but on that which prepares for eternal life—himself, the Bread of Life.

We are all too aware that physical death will come. Each ache, pain, sickness, and sorrow is a reminder of what lies ahead for all of us. That is what happens to all who live in this sin-corrupted world and have inherited sinful natures like ours—death comes as the wages of sin. But, when you are not just looking for the temporal and the physical but for the spiritual and the eternal, physical death is not the end. Jesus was blunt: Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. Despite eating miracle food, the Israelites all eventually died while wandering in the wilderness for 40 years or after they entered the Promised Land. Those who ate the miracle food that Jesus provided for the 5,000+ people would grow hungry again (clearly, because that’s why they sought Jesus out), and they, too, would eventually die. Proximity to and even ingesting a miracle does nothing to rescue from the results of sin. Death is coming to all because all sinned.

But the Bread of Life is different. The one who feasts on this meal will endure to eternal life, for Jesus himself will raise him up on the last day. We will spend more time with these illustrations next week, but for now, it will suffice to say that eating the bread of life is to do exactly what Jesus described as his Father’s will: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life.

How do we see and believe in Jesus? How do we feast on this eternal-life-giving Bread from heaven? Jesus describes this: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the Last Day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. See what agency you and I do not have! No one can come to Jesus unless God the Father draws him. That word translated as “draws” might even have a stronger hint of meaning—no one can come to Jesus unless the Father drags him. This is not our will cooperating with God; this is not us doing a little part to connect ourselves to God. It can only be God’s work—and his alone—to connect us to the Bread of Life.

God himself must teach us this “culinary” wisdom of eating the Bread of Life. On our own, this is foolishness. Paul said in our Second Reading this morning, “An unspiritual person does not accept the truths taught by God’s Spirit, because they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually evaluated” (1 Corinthians 2:14). God must drag us to his truth against our natural will, against our natural inclination. On our own, if we see any good in God at all, we can only see him as the giver of a free lunch. But with God's wisdom, we know Jesus as he is, the Bread of Life, the Savior of the world.

The Father gave people to Jesus to save them. His mission of rescue and grace was to save all people from all sin. And so, the Bread of Life was crucified; the one who came to save the world was rejected by the world he came to save. But in that rejection, God worked the greatest good. Because on that cross, Jesus took all of our failings on himself: every time we’ve misunderstood him, misappropriated him, felt confident in our own selves, or felt that we didn’t need him. All of those ignorant and willful sins were laid on Jesus; there on the cross, he suffered the eternal death—hell—that our sins truly deserved and made a full payment for them all. The Bread of Life died that we might feast—believe—and live.

We are rescued in Jesus’ body, in his flesh, nailed to the cross. He gave his life to rescue us from death, and by his death, we live forever. God’s wisdom allows us to see Jesus not as a pitiful, crucified victim but as a triumphant Savior. God’s wisdom allows us to see Jesus’ empty tomb and know what that means: he is victorious. And because he is victorious, my brother and sisters, so are we!

God teaches us to see Jesus as he is, not as a miracle worker or bread provider, but as the Sin-Destroyer. “I am the Bread of Life... This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Thank you, Lord Jesus! Amen.

"Jesus' Gifts Are Different; Jesus' Gifts Are Better" (Sermon on John 6:24-35) | August 11, 2024

Sermon Text: John 6:24-35

Date: August 11, 2024

Event: Proper 14, Year B

John 6:24-35 (EHV)

When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

26Jesus answered them, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: You are not looking for me because you saw the miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled. 27Do not continue to work for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

28So they said to him, “What should we do to carry out the works of God?”

29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God: that you believe in the one he sent.”

30Then they asked him, “So what miraculous sign are you going to do, that we may see it and believe you? What miraculous sign are you going to perform? 31Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”

32Jesus said to them, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the real bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

34”Sir,” they said to him, “give us this bread all the time!”

35”I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus told them. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.

 Jesus’ Gifts Are Different; Jesus’ Gifts Are Better

The child is opening presents for his birthday. One from a grandparent feels very promising because it feels like the highest priority on his birthday list—the brand-new video game that everyone was talking about. He opens it up to find a game he’s never heard of. Grandma smiles and says, “I know that’s not what you asked for, but they were all sold out. The clerk told me that this game was great too!” He smiles and thanks Grandma, but inside, he’s disappointed that he did not get what was on his list.

Later that evening, after the party was over, he pops the unknown game into the system and turns on the TV. To his surprise, this game he had never heard of before is great. In a tremendous surprise, the present that was different than he hoped for might actually be better than the one he had wanted. And time proves he’s not just coping with disappointment. In the coming days, friends come over and play with him, and they quickly are hooked on this new game that none of them had known about before.

Sometimes things work out that way. You have in mind one thing, something else happens, and in hindsight, you say, “That might actually have been better.” It doesn’t mean there’s no disappointment in the moment. It doesn’t mean that this conclusion comes quickly. But in the end, you might be able to see a benefit in how things worked out compared to how you had planned them.

In our Gospel for this morning, we have a group of people looking for one thing from Jesus while he’s trying to give them something far better. But can they see that? Can they understand that what Jesus has in mind is better for them? Or are they stuck in their own thoughts and priorities?

Our Gospel readings in recent weeks from Mark and now from John have all been dealing with the events before, during, and after Jesus fed the 5,000 men (plus women and children) with those few fish and loaves of bread. That miracle worked to feed the hungry bellies of those who had chased Jesus down when he and the disciples left them to try to find a solitary place. And then, after teaching them and the miracle meal, Jesus sent the disciples off ahead of him, and he later met them that windy night, walking on the water's surface, as we heard in our Gospel last week.

Now, after that windy trip and the miracle of Jesus walking on the rough sea, they have separation from the crowd. But, the crowd is not so willing to let them go. When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Those in the crowd rush off to Capernaum on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, which served as a type of home base for Jesus during his earthly ministry. They find him and are amazed that he’s there so far ahead of them—how did he get here without traveling in a boat?—but Jesus knows what they’re looking for, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: You are not looking for me because you saw the miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.”

Jesus says that this crowd has a problem. They’re not coming to him because they know his teaching is from God. And they’re not even coming to him to marvel at the miracles that he performed. Jesus says they’re coming to him for a much more crass and base reason, “because you ate the loaves and were filled.” In other words, all they care about in that moment was a full belly they didn’t have to work for or pay for. They wouldn’t care if Jesus had worked another miracle to feed them or if he had been sitting on a warehouse full of free food from which they could take what they wanted. Their goal with Jesus is that he will be able to feed them.

And so Jesus takes this wayward, misguided desire and tries to put them back on the path he wants. “Do not continue to work for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” Jesus has something in store for them that is far better than the physical food he gave them. He wants to give them something that endures to eternal life.

The crowd senses Jesus’ hesitancy to address physical things, so they try to take the conversation spiritually. But even their spiritual turn is misguided. They think that to get something good from God, they have to do something for God. They’re looking for a way to earn what God will give: “What should we do to carry out the works of God?”

Jesus plays with their question a little bit. He says, “This is the work of God,” not necessarily the work that God commands us to do, but the work that God does. “You believe in the one he sent.” This is faith in Jesus as Savior. He’s trying to get the crowd to see that he’s not just concerned about their physical well-being (although he is); he’s much more concerned with their eternal well-being.

This shift from food to faith is not what the crowd is looking for. And it’s gross, actually, the way they attempt to manipulate Jesus. They say, “Well, okay, if we’re going to believe in you, what miraculous sign are you going to do?” And then, they reference the bread and quail that their forefathers ate after their exodus from Egypt. “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. Just as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

They are under the mistaken impression that the “he” in that verse was talking about Moses. They imply that people should have listened to Moses because he could give them food when there was none in the wilderness. But Jesus says that’s not at all what we’re talking about here.

The crowd quotes from Psalm 78, and if you read that psalm, it clearly talks about God’s work, not Moses’ work. The bread and quail in the wilderness was never about a guy earning the respect and admiration of a group of people by giving them something to eat. This was always about God providing for his people—and looking ahead to something far more important. So Jesus says, “‘Amen, amen, I tell you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the real bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ ‘Sir,’ they said to him, ‘give us this bread all the time.’”

And now, here’s the turn. Jesus explicitly states that he is not talking about flour, water, oil, and maybe yeast baked in an oven. He’s talking about himself. “I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus told them. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Does our prayer life reflect an attitude like the crowds or the goal that Jesus states? Are we treating God like some genie in a lamp that can grant us wishes? Would Jesus tell us, “You are not praying to me because you saw the miraculous signs. You are not praying to me because you know that I can grant you eternal life. You’re praying to me so that you can be comfortable here and now”? None of us want to treat God this way, but from my experience, this is an easy trap to fall into.

God has a purpose and a plan for our lives, and that purpose and plan may not always be what we want it to be. We may come to God with a request, and his answer might be, “No.” Frequently, his answer is, “I’ve got something better in store for you.” But that’s hard to deal with, especially from our perspective, especially when we don’t have God’s promise in the front of our mind that whatever he does for us will be for our good.

We have to take these things on faith. We must listen to what God says and say, “Yeah, I trust you, Lord. I trust you to provide what is best for me.” Some days, that might be something akin to the feeding of the 5,000. God might essentially say to you, “Here, this is what you need to get through the day or week or month. You didn’t see where this would come from, but here it is because I care about you, and I love you.”

Other times, Jesus’ purpose is to lift our eyes from this world, this life, and instead look forward to eternity because that’s what’s truly important. God is primarily focused on our eternal well-being, and he wants us to be primarily there as well.

This takes us back to the crowd’s question, “What should we do to carry out the works of God? How can we make sure that we are okay eternally?” Jesus’ whole point in this discourse in John chapter 6 will be, “You can’t.”

Nothing that you do or I do can ever satisfy God’s demand because God’s demand is flawless obedience to his law. And that is not what you have done nor what I have done. In our sin, we starve to death eternally. But Jesus is the Bread of Life. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Jesus did not come to this world to be a popular preacher, a miracle worker, or certainly to provide meals free of charge for everyone all the time. No, Jesus came with a much greater purpose. He came to be our Savior from sin.

This moment is going to be a turning point in Jesus’ popularity. In two weeks, as we continue this account in John’s Gospel, we’ll see the crowds turn away from Jesus en masse. He won’t have the outward, earthly popularity again that he has right here and right now. But that’s not why he came. He’s going to press on to the cross. There, he will do what he came to do, what we needed him to do.

In the moment, it’s tempting to think of Jesus as only providing for our earthly needs because that’s what we can see and feel. But what we really needed from him was forgiveness, to be food that endures to eternal life. And so Jesus will go to the cross without any popularity, being abandoned and denied by the people who were closest to him. And he will suffer the agony not just of crucifixion but of hell itself as he pays for your sin and my sin. There is where Jesus becomes our Bread of Life, food that endures to eternal life. There, we receive the spiritual nourishment we need, the spiritual medicine we require, and the spiritual resurrection that is necessary because we were dead in our sins. And now, through Jesus, we live.

Don’t walk away this morning thinking, “Any concern I have for any earthly thing is wrong.” That’s not the point. And in fact, God tells us to come to him with our concerns for day-to-day life. He wants us to pray to him about those things. But we always pray that God’s will be done in everything, knowing full well that God’s will might not be the same thing as our will and that his will is always focused on eternal life rather than the here and now.

God will give you that daily bread that he told you to pray for. But much more than that, he provides for your eternal well-being. He is your Savior, the one who forgives your sins and will bring you home to heaven. He does this because he loves you and forgives you, because he is the Bread of Life so that in him we will never be hungry or thirsty again. Thanks be to God! Amen.

"The Lord Will Rescue Me" (Sermon on 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18) | August 4, 2024

Sermon Text: 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Date: August 4, 2024
Event: Proper 13, Year B

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 (EHV)

You see, I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. 8From now on, there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness. The Lord, the righteous Judge, will give it to me on that day, and not only to me but also to everyone who loved his appearing.

16At my first hearing, no one came to my defense, but everyone deserted me. May it not be counted against them. 17But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message would be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles would hear it, and I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. 18The Lord will rescue me from every evil work and will bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

The Lord Will Rescue Me

We refer to many of Paul’s letters in the New Testament as “prison letters,” but most were written in circumstances different from those we might think of as a prison. Instead, most of them were written while he was under house arrest in Rome while he waited to appeal charges from the leaders in Jerusalem to the emperor, to Caesar. It is in this state that the book of Acts concludes. Luke describes Paul’s conditions this way: When we entered Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself with a soldier who guarded him…. For two whole years Paul stayed in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to visit him. He was preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without anyone stopping him” (Acts 28:16, 30-31). Prison? Sort of. In chains? Probably metaphorically. But he was able to preach the gospel. If tradition is accurate, he would eventually be freed from this state and be able to continue his role as an apostle to the Gentiles for almost another decade.

While Paul was out presumably preaching around Europe, a devastating fire broke out in Rome in July of 64 ad. Rumors raged that then-emporer Nero had started the fire himself to gobble up land in Rome for his whims, to recreate the city in his design. True or not, Nero had to separate himself from that line of thinking, which meant someone else needed to take the fall. The contemporary historian Tacitus said that Nero pinned the blame “on a class hated for their abominations,” a group that had come to be known as “Christians,” This group had, for reasons that were utterly incomprehensible to the broader Roman public, attached themselves to a criminal who had been executed by “the extreme penalty” decades before. This man was known to the Romans by the name “Christus.” The religion these followers of Christus practiced was described as a “mischievous superstition”—a superstition that had started in the Roman province of Judea and was now thriving to a certain extent even in Rome (Annals, Book 15, Section 44).

A persecution of Christians on a massive scale oozed from Nero’s false accusations. This persecution was so brutal and, to most people, seemed so unfair and unjust that even criminals rightly on death row felt compassion and sorrow for them—perhaps not unlike the thief crucified next to Jesus thirty-some years earlier.

History and tradition tell us that this persecution swept up not only large amounts of Christians but also some very notable leaders in the church, not the least of which were the apostles Peter and Paul. This occurred years after the history recorded in the book of Acts concluded. Paul was again arrested, but there was no house arrest this time. Records indicate that Paul was held in Rome in the Mamertine Prison (as it would later be known).

This prison was as bleak of a setting as one could imagine. Here, Rome held those who were threats to the state as they awaited trial or sentencing. The unfortunate prisoners were thrown into the lower, older cell, twelve feet underground and nearly devoid of light. This place served not only as a temporary holding cell but also as a place to carry out executions. Here, a prisoner might be as likely to starve to death as they would be to survive until their trial. Writing about forty years before Jesus was born, the Roman historian Sallust described this cell this way, “Neglect, darkness, and stench make it hideous and fearsome to behold” (The War with Catiline, ch. 55).

You did not come here this morning for a history lecture, but understanding the context around God’s Word is vital for understanding what God was communicating through his inspired authors. Paul writes 2 Timothy from that horrendous hole of a prison as a result of the imperial persecution of Christians sparked by blame for that fire. So when he says, “You see, I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come,” he’s not being melodramatic. He can probably feel his life draining out of him in that dark, disgusting cell, and he knows, one way or another, his departure from this world has arrived. 2 Timothy is the last piece of writing from Paul we have preserved for us, and perhaps his last overall.

So it’s in this context that Paul pens these words to pastor Timothy. As Peter did in his second letter, Paul is very clearly passing the baton of the gospel to the next generation. But he knows that persecutions will continue and sticking to the faith he has preached will be difficult. After all, Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus; Timothy probably had not seen Jesus with his physical eyes. So, even one generation removed from the apostles, Christians were in a not-so-different situation as you and I are today, trusting in what God has said in his Word rather than trusting what we’ve seen with our eyes.

So, on the brink of death, imprisoned in this dank pit, likely physically chained, what is Paul’s perspective? What does he want our perspective to be?

Paul declares with all certainty: I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on, there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness. The Lord, the righteous Judge, will give it to me on that day, and not only to me but also to everyone who loved his appearing.

Paul knows what is going to happen. Years earlier, he had written to the Christians in Philippi, “Yes, for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Now, staring death in the face, he has no change of heart or mind. He knows that he is unlikely to survive this situation and that still, to die is gain. He clings to Jesus as his Savior; thus, he knows he has a crown of righteousness waiting for him that God himself will give him, a crown signifying this right relationship with God that is not only for Paul because of his work as an apostle, but to all who cling to Jesus as the certainty of their forgiveness, to all “who loved his appearing.”

If we think back a bit further in history to our Gospel for this morning, we will remember that very windy night on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus strolling on the water's surface out to the disciples’ boat. They saw Jesus there and were terrified! Was this a ghost or some other apparition coming to get them? Jesus’ words put their hearts at rest, “Take courage! It is I. Do not be afraid” (Mark 6:50). “It is I” is literally just the two words, “I am.” It seems like here Jesus is referencing the name he provided to Moses at the burning bush almost 1500 years earlier, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14). What’s the implication? The one walking on the water is not just a man but God himself.

Paul had that kind of certainty. Jesus was by his side, even in these horrendous circumstances. No matter how bad things got for Paul physically, he knew that he was safe eternally because the great I am was with him. Paul would not have to reckon with his sins before God because Jesus had already paid for them. All of his wrestling with being the “worst sinner” (1 Timothy 1:16) or hemming and hawing over not doing the good he wanted to do (Romans 7:15ff) does not dissuade him from the fact that Jesus had rescued him, that God was waiting to give Paul that crown of righteousness that was bought with Jesus’ blood.

Thanks be to God that you are not languishing in a wretched prison at this moment. Nor are you struggling to progress against a mighty wind storm in a boat. Nor are you feeling hopelessly outnumbered in a fight like Elisha’s servant was. But that doesn’t mean that you are not dealing with problems, and that does not mean that your concerns are insignificant. Nor are God’s promises to you any less certain or smaller than those God made to Paul. Your confidence can be the same as his: The Lord will rescue me from every evil work and will bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.

But can you see it? Can you feel it? Or is so much in front of you blurred and dark? Does it feel like you’re sitting in that grimy pit of a prison in Rome? Do you feel helpless and afraid as the winds of problems batter you, or feel outnumbered by too many enemies to deal with?

How slow we are to believe God’s promises! How quick we are to think that, for some reason, we are the only person to experience a problem that is too big for God or that we are the one person in the history of humanity to whom God’s promises do not apply.

So, what evil work do you need to be rescued from? Do doubts about God rise in your hearts? God, who gave you your faith, is greater than your doubts. Do fears over an illness or a loved one’s illness grip you? God, the great physician of both body and soul, is greater than any sickness or pain. Do pains of heartache and disappointment claw at you day and night? God is greater than that heartache and has assured you that whatever he allows to happen to you, he will work for your good—now and forever. Whatever the evil work that is plaguing you is, God is greater than it. “The Lord will rescue me from every evil work and will bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.”

My brothers and sisters, you have a crown of righteousness waiting for you. On the other side of this life’s problems, there will be perfection, eternally. This is the ultimate gift God has given you, the ultimate victory he has won for you. This is the basis of every confidence you have in this life: his love and power for you endure well past this life.

But until that day, God is still by your side, walking up to you on the rough waters, standing guard over you in all danger, and even sitting beside you in your greatest griefs. We don’t always know how the Lord will rescue us, but we do know that he will. His rescue may not look like we want it to look, feel how we want it to feel, or be when we want it to happen, but there is no doubt that it will happen. No matter the evil work that plagues you, your God holds you close and says, “My daughter, my son, do not fear. I am and always will be. I am your Redeemer, now and always. I am your Provider, now and always. I am your Protector, now and always.”

The Lord will rescue me from every evil work and will bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

"God's Generosity Encourages Our Generosity" (Sermon on 2 Corinthians 9:8-11) | July 28, 2024

Sermon Text: 2 Corinthians 9:8-11
Date: July 28, 2024
Event: Proper 12, Year B

2 Corinthians 9:8–11 (EHV)

God is able to make all grace overflow to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will overflow in every good work. 9As it is written:

He scattered; he gave to the poor.

His righteousness remains forever.

10And he who provides seed to the sower and bread for food will provide and multiply your seed for sowing, and will increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11You will be made rich in every way so that you may be generous in every way, which produces thanksgiving to God through us.

God’s Generosity Encourages Our Generosity

So there you sit at the presentation. It just wrapped up, and you thought it was really good, but others around you seemed even more into it or seemed to get more out of it than you did. The host for the day asks the crowd gathered to express their gratitude. Applause is almost immediate, but slowly, some people begin standing up to offer the presenter a standing ovation. This ovation slowly works through the crowd so that you find yourself standing up, even though perhaps you wouldn’t have done so on your own.

Some in the crowd can impact the rest of the crowd. Peer pressure is real—both for good and bad. From childhood, we follow models and seek to step in the footsteps of those we respect or who we think have their lives in order. You might read books or articles from successful people and start thinking that if you follow their advice and implement their habits, you might have the same kind of success they’ve had.

Modeling is powerful. Parents can sometimes instill habits in their children without even talking about them but just by being seen doing them. And, again, those can be both good and bad. The attitude of a boss is very often reflected in the attitudes of the department's employees. I will apologize for this in advance, but it is said that this effect can even take place in a congregation, where a group of Christians may be influenced in their drive and attitude by the pastor who tends to them, so much so that the very personality of the congregation can be a reflection of its shepherds.

It's evident that humans can influence others, especially through modeling behavior and attitude. But what about God? Is God’s relationship with people intimate enough to have a similar effect, or are we so distant from God that his influence is negligible?

Our Second Reading for this morning is taken from the latter part of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians preserved in the New Testament. In this section of the letter, Paul addresses a few housekeeping items with the Christians in Corinth. And one of those housekeeping items is about an offering that had been set up to support the very poor and persecuted Christians in Jerusalem at that time. A collection was being gathered from the churches across modern-day Turkey and Greece. Each congregation was setting up the goal of sending support to their brothers and sisters in the faith through Paul as he would soon make his way to Jerusalem.

However, Paul is just as concerned about the motivation for these gifts as he is about the gifts themselves. In the verses just before our reading, Paul gave this encouragement and direction on giving motivation: The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. The one who sows generously will also reap generously. Each one should give as he has determined in his heart, not reluctantly or under pressure, for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:6-7). When gifts are given, be it to support the gospel ministry in a church, or to support an individual person or family in need, or to aid some other charitable group, God’s desire is that it be done in joy, with cheer, rather than as a burdensome obligation. In other words, unlike the standing ovation that perhaps you go along with because everyone else is doing it, God wants our generosity to be decided in our hearts, not just mimicking what others do or doing it out of a sense of compulsion.

For God, the motivation for generosity is just as important as the act itself. Paul lays out where we should look for our motivation: God’s grace. God is able to make all grace overflow to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will overflow in every good work. His grace guides, supports, and inspires us to be generous.

Our Gospel for this morning clearly shows God’s ability and desire to care for us. Jesus’ compassion on the crowds led him to work a miracle that saw a relatively small amount of food multiply into enough to feed thousands of people and even produce many baskets of leftovers. Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer that we should pray for daily bread, asking God for the things we need in this life, and then trusting that God will provide them because that is what he’s promised.

Paul specifically links God’s undeserved love for us, his grace, to our good works. Just as God’s grace overflows to us, good works will overflow from us. These good works don’t seek good things from God, but they are done in thanksgiving to God, who has already given them. God’s overflowing grace causes the overflowing good works, not the other way around.

Paul shows an Old Testament model of that when he quotes from Psalm 112 in the middle of our short reading. He scattered; he gave to the poor. His righteousness remains forever. Within our brief reading, it’s incredibly easy to think that Paul is talking about God with this quotation. But when you read Psalm 112, you see that the psalm writer isn’t talking about God’s actions but rather the believer’s response to God’s blessings. So the one scattering, giving to the poor, whose righteousness remains forever, describes the actions of a cheerfully generous believer seeking to thank God for all he has done for him.

It is impossible to count or quantify God’s generosity. That you could get to or connect online for worship this morning is part of God’s generosity. That your ears can physically hear his Word (although, maybe not always as well as we’d like…) is part of God’s generosity. That you have breath in your lungs, that your heart beats in your chest, that your brain is functioning are all parts of God’s generosity to you. In fact, everything we have that is good in our life comes from God: And he who provides seed to the sower and bread for food will provide and multiply your seed for sowing, and will increase the harvest of your righteousness.

We might define righteousness as a “right relationship with God.” The writer of Psalm 112 said that the person who expresses their thankfulness to God has an enduring, proper relationship with God. Of course, we know that our natural state is not righteous because our sins have ruined our relationship with God. Adam and Eve’s original sin in the Garden of Eden was motivated by the dissatisfaction that Satan sowed in their hearts. Satan had convinced them that by denying them the fruit of that one tree in the garden, God was withholding good, even amazing, things from them! And so their discontent with God’s blessings led them to the disastrous actions of wanting, taking, and eating the forbidden fruit.

Their malcontent has trickled down to each of us. You and I all have a sinful nature in us that spurns God, that figures anything forbidden is just God being mean, and assumes that God clearly doesn’t care about us. We can easily lay anything we feel is lacking in our lives at God's feet and say that he is to blame. If we don’t think we have the right amount or kind of money, cars, relationships, fulfillment, peace, and happiness, we quickly assume lacking these things is God’s fault, that he is holding out on us, just like Satan convinced our first parents. Nothing is new under the sun. And this is hardly an increased harvest of your righteousness!

But spiritual maturity means looking at what you have with gratitude and joy. Is it the same that someone else has? Probably not. Is it everything you ever hoped for or dreamed of? Unlikely. But is it what you need, what God knows is good for you? Absolutely.

Of course, the chief of these blessings is the forgiveness of sins. Jesus’ life and death for us wipe out every sin, including those sins of discontent or even thinking that God is holding out on us and being mean to us. In Jesus’ blood, we are washed clean; in Jesus’ forgiveness, we can reevaluate our lives and see the glorious riches that God provides as they are.

What is the Christian, forgiven of every sin and with a fresh appreciation of her blessings, to do? You will be made rich in every way so that you may be generous in every way, which produces thanksgiving to God through us. Whether now or later today, take some inventory of the blessings of your life. We hear the word “rich” today and immediately jump to our net worth or the amount of money in our bank account. But that may or may not be a richness that God has given. So, how has God made you rich?

Has he given you a great capacity for empathy, for caring about others and their hardships and heartaches? Then be generous with that empathy, sharing it with those in great need of the unique blessing God has given you!

Has God given you a great deal of knowledge and understanding about spiritual things or even the things of this life? Then, be generous with that knowledge and share it with those who need it. Whether your insight is primarily in the realm of God’s promises and how to live in response to those riches, or how to repair the leaky faucet, your generosity with this knowledge and insight will be a blessing to others!

Has God given you a great capacity to encourage people, to lift them out of an emotional pit, or to maintain them so they continue to feel loved and appreciated? Share that encouragement generously! Let people know what you appreciate about them and what you’re thankful for, and help them to see the way out of their sorrows is not as impossible as it often feels.

Has God given you earthly wealth? Share it! Give generous offerings to your church to support the work of the gospel that we are carrying out, support those in more compromised positions than you are to help them through a rough spot, and seek out charities and other organizations who can help your generosity go farther than you could carry it on your own.

Remember your true wealth, no matter what skills or earthly blessings you may be able to list: you have your Savior, Jesus, and you can and should be generous in sharing him and his Word with others. Whether it's encouraging the guilt-stricken Christian with the reminder of God’s love and forgiveness for them or sharing the message of Jesus with someone who has never heard it or has long since forgotten about it. Your true wealth is the access to not just earthly, material support but eternal blessings, a treasure in heaven that will never perish, spoil, or fade, won for you and kept in heaven by your loving God.

My dear brothers and sisters, fight the temptation toward malcontent and see the blessings God bestows on you. Be generous to others as God has been generous to you. Look forward to that day when God’s generosity will not need to be carefully considered, but it will be before our eyes every moment, for we will see our God face to face forever, for Jesus’ sake. Thanks be to God! Amen.

"Jesus' Compassionate Heart Is a Constant" (Sermon on Mark 6:30-34) | July 21, 2024

Sermon Text: Mark 6:30-34
Date: July 21, 2024
Event: Proper 11, Year B

Mark 6:30-34 (EHV)

The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all that they had done and taught. 31He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” For there were so many people coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat. 32They went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 33But many people saw them leave and knew where they were going. They ran there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 34When Jesus stepped out of the boat, he saw a large crowd. His heart went out to them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He began to teach them many things.

Jesus’ Compassionate Heart Is a Constant

How do you feel about a car that has been a reliable form of transportation? It's probably so good you don’t even think about trusting it. But, if the car had been untrustworthy, you might think twice before hopping in the vehicle and zipping off to the store or on to a destination farther away. Being stranded by that vehicle in the past may leave you not trusting it in the future.

In the last few weeks in worship, we’ve heard a few vignettes from Jesus’ earthly ministry from Mark’s Gospel. In these accounts, we find ourselves very close to the high point of his earthly popularity. Next week, we will hear the account of Jesus feeding more than 5,000 people with a small lunch, and that event will really be the top of the popularity mountain for Jesus. Of course, Jesus’ goal and calling wasn’t to become a popular earthly preacher, but we’ll take that up later.

For now, it’s enough for us to consider that Jesus was busy—really, really busy. We got a hint of that last week as Jesus sent out the twelve disciples two by two so that they could cover more ground. During his state of humiliation, when Jesus, though God, was only occupying one physical place at a time, having small teams of preachers traveling the countryside rather than just one person meant that the message could get out a lot faster.

In our Gospel for this morning, we meet Jesus and the Twelve just after they return from this teaching trip. We don’t know exactly how long this mission trip was, but we might assume it was enough time to have some significant things happen, but not so much that they were separated from Jesus for a long time. The disciples are excited to share what has happened and, we might assume, pretty tired from their work at the same time. Jesus himself was practically buried in people seeking him and his help, so Jesus directed the disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.”

Jesus and the disciples go from a situation that is non-stop activity (so much so that they don’t even have the ability to take care of their basic needs like eating and resting) to a solitary boat ride, with the goal of finding a quiet place to just relax.

Put yourself in their shoes in our modern era. You have spent the entire day taking care of things. Maybe you endured a rough day at work and a frustrating commute, and now you’re ready to just sit down for a moment and relax. Perhaps you’ve been doing things to serve other people—likely your family—all day, and now you’re ready for some quiet time to do something you want to do, that would recharge your batteries. And then, the phone rings. Or the requests from others around you start rolling in. Then you are taken from your ideal relaxation into what is far from it. What is your response, even if it’s just internal in your heart and mind?

Perhaps it is grumbling and disappointment. Perhaps it’s tiredness that leads to a wrestling with the ideal—I know that I ought to serve others—and the reality of being too worn out to do so graciously or joyfully. Perhaps it is tempting to put off those seeking help, to leave the phone call unanswered, and to reason that those emails will be there later.

This is really the situation Jesus and the disciples found themselves in because as they approached what was supposed to be a secluded place, they saw a throng of people. Many people saw them leave and knew where they were going. They ran there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. When Jesus stepped out of the boat, he saw a large crowd.

And what is Jesus’ response? Does he roll his eyes? Does he tell the disciples to put the boat out to sea again to find a different place to go? No, he looks at the crowd and immediately has compassion for these poor people. Despite being exhausted and emotionally drained, he doesn’t shoo away the crowds and tell them to come back later. His heart goes out to them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

It wasn’t just that they had been desperately seeking after Jesus and were tired after hoofing it around the Sea of Galilee or were wandering and lost as they sought him out. No, they were sheep without a shepherd in the spiritual sense because the ones who were supposed to be shepherding them, their religious leaders, were, at best, leaving them to fend for themselves and, at worst, leading them down dangerous paths away from God’s truth. And so, how does he act as their shepherd? He began to teach them many things.

This Gospel is not meant to scold us for not being like Jesus, although we readily recognize that we aren’t and can’t be. No, this account and our theme this morning is for comfort. Jesus is not the unreliable car that you need to approach skeptically as if this isn’t going to work. You will not find a time when Jesus is unwilling to listen to you, to help, guide, and support you. 

On our own, we, too, are like sheep without a shepherd. We can’t navigate this life in a productive way. We can’t get ourselves out of our sins and failures. We can’t even find (much less walk) the path to eternal life. It is impossible for us. We are helpless, lost little sheep with no one to blame but ourselves.

But Jesus looks at you and treats you with the same heart-pouring love and compassion that he had on the crowds that day. We heard that promise from God in our First Reading from the prophet Jeremiah that even though the earthly guides and shepherds he had tasked to take care of his people had failed, God would not abandon his sheep. No, he would directly intervene to be their Shepherd: I will gather what is left of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their pastures. They will be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them. They will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:3-4).

Jesus’ ultimate, mind-blowing compassion on helpless sheep came at the cross. Because there, he took on your failures and mine, our sin and our rebellion against him, and he allowed himself to be punished for them. The Good Shepherd endured hell that we deserved; he laid down his life to save us. We almost can’t help but think of the prophecy God put into the pen of the prophet Isaiah, “We all have gone astray like sheep. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has charged all our guilt to him” (Isaiah 53:6).

Jesus not only forgives our sins but gives us his compassionate heart—not just in how it goes out to us, but his heart dwells within us. That means we can start to feel for others the way Jesus feels for us, not as burdens but as those needing direction and help. The more we dwell on what Jesus has done for us—how he has given us eternal life as a free gift—the more we see people who don’t know this message not as enemies or fools but as scared lost lambs who need help that they might not even realize they need. Even the most violent, boisterous enemy of God’s Word is a soul for whom Jesus died. Even the most brazen and outspoken critic of our faith is someone who needs the loving care of his Good Shepherd.

And most often, God brings that care to people through other people. That means that you experience Jesus’ care most noticeably in the love that God works through the hands of others. That means you are privileged to share this compassionate worldview as you seek to bring God’s message of comfort and peace to those around you.

Be it a pastor or teacher, a dear friend, a brother or sister in the faith, a loving parent, or even a concerned child, God reaches out to us in our moments of need to support us, and he uses us to support others. And this is not meant with the goal of some utopic existence in this life where we all care about and support one another (though that goal is truly noble!). No, God does all of this to point us ahead to the time when we won’t need others to share Jesus’ love with us, nor will we need to share that love with others because we all will see him face-to-face in the perfect courts of heaven.

Until that joyful and highly anticipated day, as you struggle with your frustrations and failures to avoid sin or do what is good, your Savior’s loving heart is a constant. While he may primarily show his love outwardly through other people, you need no intermediary between you and God. You have direct access to your Good Shepherd in prayer. And you know that you will never catch him too tired to help or upset to care. Jesus is for you the perfect Shepherd whose loving heart continues to reach out to you day in and day out.

Rest easy in his promises for you; rest easy that your Shepherd’s heart forever goes out to you. Amen.

"God Gives Us His Authority" (Sermon on Mark 6:7-13) | July 14, 2024

Sermon Text: Mark 6:7–13
Date: July 14, 2024
Event: Proper 10, Year B

Mark 6:7–13 (EHV)

Jesus called the Twelve and began to send them out two by two. He gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8He instructed them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their money belts. 9They were to put on sandals but not to wear two coats. 10He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that area. 11Any place that will not receive you or listen to you, as you leave there, shake off the dust that is under your feet as a testimony against them.”

12They went out and preached that people should repent. 13They also drove out many demons. They anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

God Gives Us His Authority

Have you ever been in a position to speak for someone else, someone whose authority level outranked your own? It’s a little surreal. If your boss gives directions for your team but sends you to share the directions, suddenly, you, who are on equal footing in the company with your peers, speak with the boss’s authority. An ambassador is not the leader of a nation. Still, if he interacts with another country, he does so with his homeland's authority and direct commission. The mail carrier doesn’t have the authority to take money from you, but she sure can drop those bills off in your mailbox, can’t she?

Jesus’ authority was something that regularly surprised the crowds. Whereas most religious teaching of the time would have been done through questioning, Jesus made declarative, authoritative statements. His frequent refrain of “Amen, amen!” or “I tell you the truth!” or “Very truly I say to you!” (depending on which English translation you are reading) would have been shocking for many people. Who is this who speaks with such authority?

And it wasn’t just the teaching that had authority. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen Jesus’ words have power over nature as he scolded the sea and the storm to be quiet. His words even had power over death as he encouraged a dead, twelve-year-old girl to get up, and her life returned to her as easily as if he had just gotten her up from a nap. Jesus shows his authority over illnesses as he heals people and even over the spiritual realm as he casts unclean spirits out of possessed people.

This morning, we see a slight change in Jesus’ approach. Despite being God, in his state of humiliation, Jesus was only ever in one place at one time. So, logically, sending out several groups of people to teach and preach would reach many more ears much faster, so Jesus called the Twelve and began to send them out two by two. The disciples would go out and do a practice run in pairs to share the good news with the world. This is how it will work after Jesus has completed his work and ascended into heaven, so while Jesus is still with them, he gives them a taste of that work and practice being his messengers. They didn’t just go because they wanted to; Jesus sent them out.

And that is key. Jesus himself, as God, had authority innate to his being. The disciples did not have that. So, Jesus handed it over to them: He gave them authority over the unclean spirits. When the disciples spoke, it would be like Jesus speaking, up to and including giving orders to the demons. Jesus gave his authority to these six pairs of men as they went out.

How people received the disciples in these pairs would directly reflect how they received Jesus. He would make this more explicit when he sent out a broader group of disciples to share his message a little bit later. Then he told his messengers, “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Luke 10:16). The disciples were not just messengers, but they were Jesus’ chosen representatives and ambassadors, entrusted with the crucial task of spreading his message. Listening to them meant listening to him; rejecting them meant rejecting him.

It was indeed an amazing and humbling position for the disciples. Who were they to speak for God? On their own, they were nothing. But because Jesus gave them this authority, they had everything. They were not God, but God sent them out with a very specific purpose, and they humbly accepted this responsibility. They knew they were not speaking with their own authority but Jesus’ authority.

This was not new when Jesus sent out his disciples. This is how God had been working from the beginning. In the history of the world, precious few people have ever heard God speak directly to them or have had a back-and-forth conversation with God. But God has sent messengers, prophets, apostles, evangelists, teachers, and pastors to be his mouthpieces to spread his Word.

Consider our First Reading this morning. The prophet Amos was sent to the Northern Kingdom of Israel with proclamations of judgment—Assyria was coming, and that would be the end. Unsurprisingly, his message was unpopular, especially with Jeroboam, the king, and Amaziah, the false prophet. What was Amos’ response? He didn’t come by his own authority. He was a farmer, tending to the flocks and fig trees when God sent him. Their rejection of the message wasn’t rejecting Amos but God.

In our Second Reading, the apostle Paul gives Pastor Titus qualifications for the elders (a position most like our modern-day pastor). But those qualifications didn’t grant someone authority—these are higher levels of expectations to whom God had given his authoritative message. There, too, they were not reliant on their own abilities, actions, or life status, but as Paul said, God’s representative must cling to the trustworthy message as it has been taught (Titus 1:9).

This remains true in our day. You hear the refrain almost every Sunday morning. A fumbling jar of clay stands in front of you all. We all, together, confess our sins. And then what do I have the audacity to say? “I forgive you all of your sins…” Who am I to forgive the sins you’ve committed against other people and especially against God? The reminder is there in the words just before that declaration: “As a called servant of Christ, and by his authority.” It’s not my or any other human being’s authority that does these things, even as it’s not your own authority that forgives sins with people in your lives. It is Jesus’ authority that he grants to us; it is Jesus’ power that he has put on us; and it is Jesus’ forgiveness that he won for us.

This is what it means to be people called, sent out, and entrusted with the gospel of God’s forgiveness in Jesus. It means that when we speak to others and even as we live our lives, we have a duty, responsibility, and tremendous privilege to be messengers of God’s love for all people. Our lives—what we do, say, and even our attitude and tone—should reflect that we are the children of God, bought with Jesus’s own blood.

And what will be the result of that? Will everyone we share God’s Word with believe it? Will everyone who hears that Jesus loves them and died to forgive them instantly cling to Jesus as their Savior? Well, no, but that also has little to do with you and me and more to do with the sinful world’s response to God’s truth. Jesus did not promise total success to the disciple duos, and as we saw clearly last week in Nazareth, even Jesus himself did not have a flawless track record of people believing the message he taught—far from it, in fact.

So, Jesus gives the disciples (and us) some guidelines on what to do when this all-important message is rejected, “Any place that will not receive you or listen to you, as you leave there, shake off the dust that is under your feet as a testimony against them.” This was not a direction for the disciples to be petty and whiny, throwing a fit as they left a town. This was done in love for the people who rejected them and the message Jesus sent them to share. This was meant as a sign that what the people were doing was dangerous and had real consequences and that they really should reconsider their approach to this message.

You and I know all too well, not just as messengers but as ones being spoken to, how this goes. Have you always been excited to be corrected by God’s representatives? Have you always rejoiced in everything God has ever said in his Word? I know for myself I absolutely have not. I can struggle with this message as my sinful flesh chafes at God’s truth. And so sometimes I need gentle encouragement to realign my thinking; sometimes I need a spiritual 2x4 to smack me across the face to get me to see the error of my ways.

And sometimes, that whole process takes time. I might wrestle with something for hours or days or struggle for years or decades. We are all works in progress and will come to terms with what God has said, done, and expects at our own times and in our own ways. As those hearing the message, we do well to listen even when it feels like grit in our gears; as messengers, we share God’s truths in love, knowing that the message of Jesus crucified and risen is the only thing that can save people from an eternity of suffering in hell and assure them of an eternity of perfection with our Savior God.

You may not be the person God uses to bring that other one to faith. You may be a link in a chain that eventually leads to God creating faith in that person’s heart. Your shaking the dust off your feet may awaken that person to the realization of just how important this all is—not just for now but forever.

And so when you hear God's message, respect it as being sent from God through someone he has given his authority to share with you what you need. And when you are serving in that messenger role, go with the confidence that God has given you his authority by what he’s made known to you in his Word, and patiently, lovingly, gently share the good news about our Savior who has conquered our sin and freely gives the gift of eternal life through faith.

Dear Lord, bless the message of forgiveness wherever it is shared. Open our hearts to be willing to listen to your Word and embolden us to go with your truth—your authority—to share your love with a world that so desperately needs to hear it. Amen.

"Why Do People Reject Good News?" (Sermon on Mark 6:1-6) | July 7, 2024

Sermon Text: Mark 6:1-6
Date: July 7, 2024
Event: Proper 9, Year B

Mark 6:1-6 (EHV)

Jesus left there and went to his hometown. His disciples followed him. 2When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue. Many who heard him were amazed. They asked, “Where did this man learn these things? What is this wisdom that has been given to this man? How is it that miracles such as these are performed by his hands? 3Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

4Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own house.” 5He could not do any miracles there except to lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6He was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went around the villages teaching.

Why Do People Reject Good News?

Have you ever felt nervous asking someone a question or having a necessary conversation with them? I’m going to guess that it was not because you thought they would be too happy to hear what you had to say or too excited to talk about the topic you needed to raise. No, if you delayed or even outright avoided having a conversation, it’s likely because you were nervous about how the other person would respond—and you likely assumed that their response would be negative in some way. Maybe you thought it would make them sad; maybe you thought it would make them angry; maybe you thought they would lash out at you; maybe you thought you wouldn’t find the right words to explain the situation or ask the question accurately.

Regardless, we all know that there are heavy conversations and topics that can be nerve-wracking to bring up. But it can really hurt when something that you think should be good news is interpreted negatively and when something positive is outright rejected.

If you’ve ever tried to share your faith, you might be familiar with this adverse reaction to good news. While we might understand why someone might react poorly to certain things that we think are good news—they don’t like the person you’re now engaged to, they don’t want you to attend that university you were accepted to so far away, they’re concerned what that new job will mean for the family—when it comes to the gospel, this is universally good news! The forgiveness of sins! Eternal life! What is there to be upset about? Why do people reject good news, especially the good news?

Rejection of God’s message is the central theme of our worship this morning. God was clear with the prophet Ezekiel that his message would not be well received. Paul sat in a Roman dungeon as he authored 2 Timothy, imprisoned for the message he shared, facing imminent execution. And Jesus, in our Gospel, went to Nazareth, his hometown, among the people he knew and knew him, and was rejected. These situations are sad and frustrating in their own ways, but we will focus our attention primarily on Jesus’ experience in Nazareth this morning.

Things seem to start well. Jesus takes his disciples back to where he grew up, to Nazareth. Saturday rolls around, and Jesus is in the local synagogue for worship, including teaching. In Luke’s Gospel, if this is the same event, we hear that Jesus read a messianic prophecy from the prophet Isaiah and then declared that this promise of a Savior was fulfilled among them that day. Mark tells us that many who heard him were amazed. Notably, though, amazement is not the same thing as faith.

In fact, Mark tells us that the people of Nazareth took offense at him as he taught and worked (or they at least heard accounts of) miracles. “Where did this man learn these things? What is this wisdom that has been given to this man? How is it that miracles such as these are performed by his hands? Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” And it doesn’t end there. Luke’s Gospel tells us that this contempt would bleed over into rage once Jesus confronted their offense at him with the assurance that this good news would be given to others, to people they might have viewed as lesser, the non-Jewish Gentiles. The people of Nazareth tried to throw him off a cliff.

Why? Why would Jesus’ own people, the people who saw him grow up, the people who perhaps knew him the best, the people who we might expect to be first in line to support this amazing “hometown boy,” why would they be so taken aback and even furious with Jesus? It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, a psychological principle that suggests the more we know someone or something, the more likely we are to find fault with them, which may be what is at play here. They were too familiar with Jesus (or at least who they thought Jesus was), and couldn’t see him as he actually was.

Maybe you’ve experienced this where someone is too familiar with Jesus to care what he says or thinks. Maybe it comes in the form of a child whom you raised at Jesus’ feet and then, as an adult, seems to care little for their Savior. Maybe it comes in the form of a friend who was dedicated to their church and God’s Word, and then something happened to sour them on the whole thing. Maybe it comes from a coworker who knows the pop culture points about Christianity and finds the whole thing so ridiculous (God becoming a man, dying, and then rising from the dead?!) that they reject it.

However, rejection of the gospel message is usually about more than simply familiarity. After all, many of you have known the truth of Jesus’ forgiveness for many decades, yet here you are, prioritizing time at Jesus’ feet and not rejecting what he has to say. What else plays a role in someone rejecting God’s message?

In large part, it’s about agency. We want agency; we want control. We want to be able to say we had a part in something. Maybe it’s in voting for or against that proposition, and the vote went how we wanted it. Maybe it’s in contributions to a group project in school or at work, even if those contributions are mainly in the background—perhaps no one else will know, but we do!

There is a part of everyone that wants to contribute to their eternal well-being and have a role, no matter how small, in the soul’s salvation. Maybe someone wants to think that they decided to believe in Jesus, that this was their choice. Perhaps someone wants to think that their good deeds are why God loves them. At an extreme, perhaps they don’t view their sins and failures as that big of a deal or that God should be happy that they compare pretty well with many other people in the world, their city, and maybe even their own household.

We know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so when people hear about God’s forgiveness as a gift that we don’t have to and, in fact, cannot contribute to in any way, a large part of our natural selves burns against that. And that friction is present whether you’re hearing the good news for the first time or the millionth time. At the start of the service, we sang “Christ Be My Leader,” but how often isn’t our internal hymn more like, “I’ll take the lead, Lord, and you do as I say”? When we think about what Jesus said and did, perhaps our reaction is more, “Isn’t this the carpenter?” and less, “Thanks be to God!”

All of this forces us to engage in self-reflection. Rather than always thinking about other people’s rejection of God’s good news, we should focus more on how we receive God’s Word. You’re here this morning, yes, but why are you here? Is it because you want to hear what God has done for you or because it’s a habit or an obligation? Whether you’ve been coming to worship Jesus for your whole life or it’s relatively new to you, is there any amount of rejection, apathy, or offense to God’s message in you? Are you excited about everything in the Bible? Is there anything you might have said or done differently if God had consulted with you? Are there parts of God’s Word that you can’t understand, really wrestle with, or flat-out don’t agree with?

To a certain extent, that’s going to be true for everyone. None of us have a perfect understanding of what God has said and done. Because of sin, our wills are not in harmony with God’s, so there will be times when we will find ourselves in conflict with God in our thoughts and desires. How do we find a resolution to that?

The message that our natural selves burn against in the message we so desperately need. The message that the people of Nazareth didn’t want to hear was of the utmost importance for them. The message that so many in our world don’t have time for or think is ridiculous and reject, that message is the solution to the times that we grind against God’s will and Word. Because while we are inclined to think and speak for ourselves and what we want, Jesus never did that. He always obeyed the will of God, up to and including when it was his Father’s will that he suffer that horrible, torturous crucifixion.

He went to that death and faced those physical pains and even greater spiritual suffering, for you, for me, for all the times that we haven’t wanted to listen to him or thought his way was wrong. Jesus paid for every single sin on that cross, which means every time we’ve conflicted with God, those are forgiven; every time we’ve been in church for the wrong reasons, those are purified; and every time we’ve neglected his Word, and will in our lives, those are buried in the depths, never to be seen again.

We are forgiven for the times we have rejected the message that we are forgiven. It’s a bit recursive, but that is the total completeness of God’s forgiveness. He doesn’t take offense at us like the people of Nazareth took at him. He doesn’t treat our rejection or struggles as the “last straw,” so he draws back his love and forgiveness from us. No, even if he is amazed at our unbelief as he was that day in Nazareth, he still forgives us, as he did for those in his hometown. He went to the cross to bear the sin of rejection his neighbors in Nazareth committed, even as he went to bear the sin of rejection that you and I so often commit.

With encouragement and fire in our souls, what is your feeling about sharing your faith? Is there fear that sharing what you believe, inviting someone to church, or even just living your life in thanksgiving to God will mean rejection by those around you? It might. It often did for Jesus, so it should not be surprising when it happens to us. But that is not a reason not to do those things.

Rejection will come, but the message of Jesus being crucified and rising from the dead solves that rejection in ourselves and others. Bring them to Jesus; drag yourself to his cross and empty tomb. This is good news that we should not reject; this is good news of great joy that is for all people. We have peace with God, whether or not we’ve always wanted to acknowledge that. We are forgiven; our Savior will never reject us. Thanks be to God! Amen.

"Where Does Your Power Originate?" (Sermon on 2 Corinthians 4:7-15) | June 30, 2024

Sermon Text: 2 Corinthians 4:7-15
Date: June 30, 2024
Event: Proper 8, Year B

2 Corinthinthians 4:7-15 (EHV)

We hold this treasure in clay jars to show that its extraordinary power is from God and not from us. 8We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, yet not despairing; 9persecuted, yet not forsaken; struck down, yet not destroyed. 10We always carry around in our body the death of the Lord Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11To be sure, while we are living we are continually being handed over to death because of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal flesh. 12So then, death is working in us, but life is working in you.

13Since we have that same spirit of faith, which corresponds to what is written: “I believed; therefore, I have spoken,” we also believe, and therefore we speak. 14For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and bring us (together with you) into his presence. 15In fact, all this is for your benefit, so that as grace increases, it will overflow to the glory of God, as more and more people give thanks. 

Where Does Your Power Originate?

If you’ve spent any time with books, movies, or video games in the genres of fantasy or science fiction (or even a blend of the two), you’re probably familiar with the idea of a character who had great, perhaps even untapped power. Maybe the antagonist seems to always have a trick up his sleeve, some hidden power reserve that the hero wasn’t aware of, some backup plan to his backup plan.

Depending on how these things are presented, they can either be suspenseful and intriguing plot developments, or they can be eye-rolling moments that feel like lazy writing to prolong a conflict that should have been resolved already. And it’s not just the antagonist, either. The hero of the story can pull out some power or plan seemingly out of nowhere, and if it wasn’t at least hinted at or foreshadowed in some way, it could feel like something that comes out of left field. Did that magician really have a secret stash of power he wasn’t using until the last possible moment? Did Batman really have even that tool tucked away in his utility belt? How did that warrior find the strength to overcome the forces of evil when he had been essentially left for dead?

The source of strength and power is important because it can determine how beneficial it is. Outside of the realm of fiction, if I put batteries in a flashlight to go out at night, it’s pretty important to know the quality of those batteries, their age, the amount they may have been used beforehand, etc. Going far from home at night with a flashlight with old or depleted batteries is not wise.

When we face challenges in life, we are often taught to look inward and to find our strength internally. Breathe right, eat right, exercise right, think right, and things will be better. And surely, there’s a lot of benefit in those things. But often, if we look inside ourselves for strength to face difficulties in life or to address a guilty conscience, we will be left really, really wanting.

Paul is very aware of that in our Second Reading this morning. Here, in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, he’s reflecting on the difference between the power of the gospel and the difficulties he and his companions have had in their ministries. They have faced opposition from the Jewish people who thought they were traitors to their people, from Gentiles who thought the message of Jesus was insane, from false teachers seeking to undermine the message of the gospel, from government leaders who didn’t care for him, from business owners who thought this message would impact their livelihood. The list goes on and on. Some said that he wasn’t impressive enough, that he wasn’t trustworthy. But still, Paul did not resort to “shameful, underhanded methods” (2 Corinthians 4:2) to spread the gospel. No, he sticks to the message entrusted to him.

In fact, he doesn’t really even defend himself or make an argument for why people should listen to him and not those who were set against him. He doesn’t lash out with a stern retelling of how Jesus specifically called him on that road to Damascus, plucked him out of his pharisaical persecution of Christians, and set him on the path to be his apostle. No, this hand-selected messenger for Jesus doesn’t boast about himself. In fact, how does he describe himself and his fellow gospel ministers? As clay jars.

That’s not complimentary. If you want something to endure and last, you make it out of stone, or metal, or even wood. But clay? Clay is almost temporary, almost disposable.

So why does Paul use such a self-deprecating picture to talk about himself and his coworkers? While his opponents boasted in themselves, in their own flashiness and ability to wow audiences, Paul says that their apparent weakness is actually a strength because it shows where the real power comes from: We hold this treasure in clay jars to show that its extraordinary power is from God and not from us.

Death is the ultimate moment of powerlessness. The dead person can do nothing to help himself, and often, there is precious little those around the person can do to try to intervene and help. I find it difficult to put myself in Jarius’ place in our Gospel without becoming overly anxious. A child at home, sick and near death. And what our Gospel for this morning skipped over is that Jesus was delayed by the crowds from getting to their home. And then, the ultimate heartbreak comes: before they even get to the house, messengers come to let Jairus know that the child has died. Why trouble Jesus anymore? There was nothing anyone could do now.

Or so it seemed. Jesus addressed that fear head-on: “Don’t be afraid. Only believe” (Mark 5:36). In what was the worst possible scenario, Jesus solves it with just a simple command, “Talitha, koum!” “Little girl, get up!” In my mind, Jesus says that with a smile and all the gentleness of a loving adult comforting a child, not so much a command but an invitation. Yet, in that gentle phrase is the power over death itself.

Of course, the power is not in the words, is it? No, I could go to morgues and funerals and cemeteries my entire life speaking those words—even in Aramaic!—and no one would return from death to life. The power is not the words themselves but the one who spoke them. Jesus, who created the universe, has power and command over his creation. We saw it last week as he rebuked the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and it stopped. Here, we see an even more impressive display of his power as he defeats death itself, not just calming some rowdy waters.

Last week, we journeyed with the writer of Psalm 42 through depression. We saw and learned from him how we might combat some of those misguided thoughts and feelings by focusing on God's promises. And here, the apostle Paul gives us a very specific example. Why might God allow trials and hardships in our lives? He has promised that one of the things he will do through those hardships is remind us where our strength truly lies, not in ourselves but in God.

You would expect clay jars that are assaulted and battered around to break. Try dropping a vase from just two feet in the air onto a tile floor; that won’t end well for the pottery. But what happens to the clay jars of Christians, and even gospel ministers, when they are besieged? We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, yet not despairing; persecuted, yet not forsaken; struck down, yet not destroyed.  We always carry around in our body the death of the Lord Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. To be sure, while we are living we are continually being handed over to death because of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal flesh.

Paul viewed his sufferings and weakness as a component of preaching Jesus. After all, Jesus didn’t look all that powerful on the cross, did he? And yet the one who calmed storms and raised the dead with a word showed his ultimate power at that cross. Because there, as he hung suspended between heaven and earth, he suffered hell for our sins; there, he defeated sin and Satan for us. And if Jesus’ time with Jairus’ daughter wasn’t enough to demonstrate his power over death, he himself rose from the dead on the third day, proving his victory over every one of our enemies.

And so, what does that mean for us? It means knowing where our power really comes from—not from inside us, but God’s power working in us. For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and bring us (together with you) into his presence. We do not defeat death; we do not rid ourselves of sin. Jesus does that. He has completely rescued us, you and me, who were utterly helpless. Clay jars that we are, we see that we are completely and eternally protected by God’s love for us, which he promised.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that things will always be great in our lives. Things weren’t great for Paul and his companions, but still, he saw God working good through that. In fact, all this is for your benefit, so that as grace increases, it will overflow to the glory of God, as more and more people give thanks. Paul saw his sufferings and hardships as being to God’s glory and to the benefit of sharing the good news of Jesus’ forgiveness. The result is that God would work faith in more people, and then more people would be rejoicing in his forgiveness and eternal life, and they, in turn, would tell others, despite the hardships that might come their way.

Paul revisits this theme later in 2 Corinthians as he talks about his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7), which was some ailment, likely physical, that he begged God to take away. But Jesus answered him that the difficulty would not be removed. Jesus explained that this hardship made clear his power and his grace, his love, for Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect in weakness,” to which Paul responded: Therefore I will be glad to boast all the more in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may shelter me. That is why I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For whenever I am weak, then am I strong. (2 Corinithnas 12:9-10).

My dear brothers and sisters, whenever God allows trials in your life that force you to acknowledge your inability to fix them and to see your weakness in stark relief, you have true power. Because that is when you stop relying on your strength, skill, and power and instead fall completely in God’s embracing, loving power for you. Martin Luther is recorded as having once observed, “God both loves and hates our afflictions. He loves them when they provoke us to prayer. He hates them when we are driven to despair by them.”

My dear fellow clay jars, do not let the trials of this life drive you to despair. Remember where your power comes from—from God, and from God alone. We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, yet not despairing; persecuted, yet not forsaken; struck down, yet not destroyed.

We may have all sorts of trials here, but those will all end when Jesus brings us home to eternal life with him. And until that day, he stands by our side with his power. The one who raised the dead, and more than that, died and rose, can certainly guide any hardship in your life for your eternal good. That is what he has promised, so that is exactly what will happen. Thanks be to God! Amen.