"Rejoice in God's Generosity" (Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16) | October 4, 2020

Text: John 20:1-16
Date: October 4, 2020
Event: The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Matthew 20:1–16 (EHV)

“Indeed the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing to pay the workers a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3He also went out about the third hour and saw others standing unemployed in the marketplace. 4To these he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will give you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour and did the same thing. 6When he went out about the eleventh hour, he found others standing unemployed. He said to them, ‘Why have you stood here all day unemployed?’ 

7“They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ 

“He told them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8When it was evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last group and ending with the first.’ 

9“When those who were hired around the eleventh hour came, they each received a denarius. 10When those who were hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But they each received a denarius too. 11After they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner: 12‘Those who were last worked one hour, and you made them equal to us who have endured the burden of the day and the scorching heat!’ 

13“But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not make an agreement with me for a denarius? 14Take what is yours and go. I want to give to the last one hired the same as I also gave to you. 15Can’t I do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16In the same way, the last will be first, and the first, last.”

Rejoice in God’s Generosity!

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Last week we briefly considered our personal or natural feelings toward justice. We figured that many (if not all) of us would typically rather see justice carried out for the wrongdoer who is not us and for mercy to be shown when we are the wrongdoer. But it’s not just justice and mercy; our selfish, sinful natures rear their ugly heads again when we consider generosity of any sort. We want someone to be generous to us, but if someone else doesn’t seem to “deserve” it, we’d rather they not be shown the same generosity.

Jesus is addressing that sentiment in our Gospel for this morning. To truly appreciate the point Jesus is making to his disciples (and to us) let’s back up a chapter and understand what has come just prior to our lesson. Starting in the middle of Matthew 19, a man asked Jesus what he needed to do to be able to enter eternal life. He felt like he had been good enough to enter heaven by his own deeds and wanted confirmation from Jesus. Jesus showed him where he was wrong, though. The man was rich and Jesus said that the only thing separating him from heaven was to give all of his possessions to the poor. Jesus wasn’t suggesting that the man could buy eternal life through charitable donations. He was showing the man that he wasn’t as perfect as he assumed. He went away “sad” because he didn’t want to give away his stuff. Jesus showed that the man actually loved the things of this world more than he loved God. Not only had he not kept all of the commandments, he clearly stumbled at the very first one as he loved money more than God!

Peter follows this conversation not long after with a question about himself and his fellow disciples. “Look, we have left everything and followed you! What then will we have?” (Matthew 19:27). Peter’s essentially saying, “Look, we don’t have anything here, but we want to be rewarded too! What bonus will we get because we’ve sacrificed to follow you, Jesus?” Peter, again, is misguided at best.

That question is really the lead-in to the parable before us. At it’s base, it’s pretty simple. A landowner hires a group of people to work in his vineyard, putting in a 12-hour day starting at 6am. They all agree to a denarius for compensation which (as we learned last week) was a standard day’s wage. The landowner goes out several more times during the day—at 9am, Noon, 3pm, and even at 5pm—to hire people to work in the vineyard until 6pm. 

At the end of the day, the workers line up for their pay. The workers who only worked from 5-6pm each receive a denarius. Those who put in a 12-hour day see this and assume because they worked 12x longer than those people, that they will clearly get more. But, when they reach the one doling out the wages, they each receive a single denarius, the same as the people who worked for only one hour, but also exactly what they had agreed to receive from the landowner at the start of the day.

And here’s where we see the natural reaction towards selfishness take over. “It’s not fair!” the tired workers yell. “Those who were last worked one hour, and you made them equal to us who have endured the burden of the day and the scorching heat!” The landowner’s reaction shows his confusion to the sentiment and also directs the workers to reevaluate their thoughts: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not make an agreement with me for a denarius? 14Take what is yours and go. I want to give to the last one hired the same as I also gave to you. 15Can’t I do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” 

“Are you envious because I am generous?” That question hits hard, doesn’t it? Because, yes, if someone seems to be getting preferential treatment or even equal treatment that we deem that they do not deserve, our natural reaction is to cry foul, to say, “This is not fair!” But it’s not really fairness or justice that we’re wrestling with in that moment—it’s envy and jealously. The problem isn’t so much that this person got something, it’s that I didn’t get that thing or I didn’t get something more. 

I hope and pray that we do not take issue with someone who converts to Christianity on their death bed. I pray that we do not view God working faith in the heart of someone to trust in Jesus’ death in the last hours of their life as somehow unfair. I pray that a situation like that is cause for rejoicing—another person spared from the hell they deserve who then will enjoy eternal life with us! Praise the Lord!

Maybe the issue isn’t exactly that, but I do sense that we have a special struggle especially in the place where we live. More than many other places in our nation, we live among people and in a society that couldn’t care less about God, his Word, or his actions. And that can feel lonely and isolating, it can lead us to feel sad for them, but that sadness can also easily warp into a sense of entitlement and superiority. We might think, consciously or subconsciously, “These people around me are so misguided, so warped in their perception of reality. Good thing I know the truth about God—and that makes me better than them.” 

And you see where we’ve crossed the line, right? Am I better than someone who hates God and everything to do with Jesus? No! If I feel that way, I don’t actually understand who I am by nature and what God has done for me. Without God, I’m on exactly the same footing as what society would call the “worst” of people. In God’s eyes, there is no difference between me and a serial killer, a rapist, or someone who defrauds helpless people. Why? Because my sin, and any sin, is rebellion and war against God. He demands perfection and even one sin is punished with hell—and I have a lifetime full of innumerable sins! That means that on my own I certainly have no favored status with him. I haven’t earned any kindness from him; I’ve only earned his wrath and punishment.

True as that all is, still my selfish sinful nature wants to warp God’s generosity into bragging rights for myself. Thinking of myself as superior to an unbeliever totally ignores how I got to know the truth in the first place. It wasn’t something great and grand I did or something spectacular inside of me—it was only God’s grace, his undeserved love for me, his generosity toward me that makes me a believer because he worked that faith in my heart. The only thing I contributed to the process was sin that fought and still fights God every step of the way.

How did God show his generosity to me? He sent his Son, Jesus, to live a perfect life in my place. The flawless obedience of Jesus is credited to my account. His hours slaving away in perfection is now mine. And Jesus also died in my place to pay the penalty for my sin, the world’s sin. So he suffers the punishment for sin—hell—so that you and I wouldn’t have to. All of my natural rebellion and war against God, my feelings of self-entitlement and superiority, all of it is done away with in Jesus’ life and death for me. His resurrection proves his victory.

If there is anyone in all of this that could be justifiably upset at the Father’s generosity, it would be Jesus, right? He lived a flawless life only to be punished as if he was the only sinner ever to live. That happened so that sinners like you and me, enemies of God, could be freed from our sinful life and live with him in eternity. Injustice! Unfair! And yet, exactly what Jesus came to do, and what he was happy to do for you and me, because he loves us. This is God’s generosity for us.

So, we are not superior to anyone because we have had more time than someone else as a Christian. We are blessed to have known God’s love for this time, but the gift of eternal life is just that, a gift. Whether God has given me faith to trust it for decades or for minutes before my death doesn’t matter. Timing doesn’t matter. Status doesn’t matter. All that matters is God’s generosity to people who deserve hell, whom he longs to have with him for eternity. That’s the message you and I are privileged to know and trust now and to cherish for the rest of our lives. That’s the message that we have the honor to share with those who are “standing unemployed in the marketplace,” who don’t know what God has done for them. 

Thank you Lord for your unfathomable and unending generosity. Help us to share this generosity with others. Bring this faith to many more, whether they have a long or short time left in this life that they may enjoy eternal life with you only because of your generosity! Amen.

"Forgive as God has Forgiven You" (Sermon on Matthew 18:21-35) | September 27, 2020

Text: Matthew 18:21-35
Date: September 27, 2020
Event: The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Matthew 18:21–35 (EHV)

21Then Peter came up and asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother when he sins against me? As many as seven times?” 

22Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but I tell you as many as seventy-seven times. 23For this reason the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24When he began to settle them, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25Because the man was not able to pay the debt, his master ordered that he be sold, along with his wife, children, and all that he owned to repay the debt. 

26“Then the servant fell down on his knees in front of him, saying, ‘Master, be patient with me, and I will pay you everything!’ 27The master of that servant had pity on him, released him, and forgave him the debt. 

28“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began choking him, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ 

29“So his fellow servant fell down and begged him, saying, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back!’ 30But he refused. Instead he went off and threw the man into prison until he could pay back what he owed. 

31“When his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were very distressed. They went and reported to their master everything that had taken place. 

32“Then his master called him in and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt when you begged me to. 33Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?’ 34His master was angry and handed him over to the jailers until he could pay back everything he owed. 

35“This is what my heavenly Father will also do to you unless each one of you forgives his brother from his heart.”

Forgive as God has Forgiven You

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Have you ever considered your attitude toward mercy and justice? I don’t think I can speak for everyone here, but I think the way it naturally plays out in my mind is something like this: when someone does something wrong, I want justice! I want people to be held accountable! Especially when someone has wronged me, mercy seems weak and dishonest. But, when I do something wrong, I want mercy! You can’t hold me accountable; it’s not fair! Please have pity and ignore the wrongdoing!

That’s quite the double-standard, isn’t it? If it is justice against someone else, the full force that that justice should come crashing down on the person, but if it’s justice against me, then I desire mercy to prevail. 

This justice vs. mercy dichotomy is the subject of Jesus’ teaching in the famous parable before us today. It is my prayer that the Holy Spirit will use Jesus’ words to reign in our natural inclinations towards justice and mercy and move our thoughts and hearts toward God’s view of them both.

It’s important to note that our Gospel takes place immediately after the Gospel we had last week. You remember that Jesus has some pretty important things to teach about our responsibility to our brothers and sisters in faith last week. “If your brother sins against you,” Jesus had said, “go and show him his sin just between the two of you” (Matthew 18:15). The goal of that difficult work as individuals and even including the church if need-be was to bring someone to repentance, to get them to acknowledge that their sin was wrong and harmful to them, and that they desire to turn away from it. The final goal is being able to share the certainty of Jesus’ forgiveness with that person, thus regaining our brother or sister.

But right after Jesus’ brief teaching about this, Peter comes to Jesus with a question that begins our Gospel for this morning: “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother when he sins against me? As many as seven times?” We might speculate on what would’ve motivated Peter to ask this question. Was he concerned about how much time the work Jesus had just outlined would take? Was there perhaps someone that Peter had forgiven seven times but now had just wronged him an eighth time and he wanted to feel justified in cutting off that person from forgiveness? Did he want some acknowledgement and praise that he had been ultra-patient and forgiving by going so far as to forgive someone seven times?

We’re not told Peter’s motivation behind the question, but Jesus shoots down any selfish motivation Peter might have had and corrects any misconceptions that might have been floating in Peter’s mind: Not seven times, but I tell you as many as seventy-seven times (or perhaps even seventy times seven). Do not mistake Jesus here: he’s not putting a limit on the number of times someone should be forgiven at 77 or even at 490. Jesus is effectively saying, “There is no limit to the number of times that you forgive someone.”

But why? Why is there no limit on forgiveness for us when dealing with others? Jesus tells a parable to answer that question.

A man owed the king an impossible sum of money—10,000 talents. A talent is a weight measurement, and a single talent of gold could be worth upwards of 20 years’ wages. In today’s money, if we assume someone earns $50,000/year, that’s $10,000,000,000. Jesus is setting this debt up as a ridiculous sum that could never, ever be repaid by an individual, let alone a servant. The man begs and pleads with the king, and the king has compassion on him: the master of that servant had pity on him, released him, and forgave him the debt. There would be no debtor’s prison, slavery, or lifetime of payments. That impossible debt was just gone.

But then this very servant leaves the king and sees a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii. A denarius was roughly a day’s wage, so if we use a similar scale of $50,000/year, this servant owed the original servant around $19,000. Not a small amount, but also not even worth comparing to the debt the first servant had just been forgiven. But how does he treat this fellow servant? He grabbed him and began choking him, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ 

The comparisons between Jesus’ parable and our lives are probably obvious: the king is God, the first servant us us, and that impossible debt is our sin. The other servant is our fellow Christian or even simply fellow person, and the much smaller debt is a sin or sins they have committed against us. Note that the debt they owe us, the sin against us, is not nothing. It’s real, and it’s painful, and it difficult. But, when we compare the debt of $10,000,000,000 with a debt of $19,000, that is, when we compare that God has forgiven us for all of our sins against him, what is one, or seven, or 77, or even 490 sins against us from someone else? 

As we consider how we should respond to someone who hurts us, the words that Jesus put into the mouth of the king should resonate in our minds as well: “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt when you begged me to. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?”

How has God treated us? Has he held us accountable for our sins, those sins that deserved not being sold to pay the debt but suffering death in hell? Has he left some lines on our ledger that we need to clear up and get rid of? Has he allowed us to to simply defer payments to a later date? Has he left us even a single denarius, or even a single penny worth of sin to deal with ourselves? No! God has had pity, mercy on us, and forgiven our debt in totality. Jesus’ death was complete and did everything we needed him to do. We could not pay off any of that debt so Jesus did it for us. Our God and King has declared us forgiven and justified; our debt is completely gone. 

It’s interesting, then, that Jesus would teach his disciples to pray about this in that model prayer he gave them, “Forgive us our sins as we also forgive everyone who sins against us” (Luke 11:4). Think carefully about that petition of the Lord’s Prayer before we get to it later in the service. What are we really asking God to do there? We’re asking God to forgive our sins in the same way that we forgive others. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. I often don’t want to forgive others when they sin against me; should I pray that God forgives me with the same fickle feelings that I show to others? Jesus concludes his parable with a similar warning, “His master was angry and handed him over to the jailers until he could pay back everything he owed. This is what my heavenly Father will also do to you unless each one of you forgives his brother from his heart.”

Refusing forgiveness for someone else is a sin. We might find ourselves working toward forgiveness, not quite done, but the progress should always be forward-facing. The problem comes when I dig in my heels and say, “I will never forgive this person for what they’ve done to me!” That is wrong. It is a sin, and like any other sin that we hold on to and coddle, it separates us from God. In our refusal to forgive our brother or sister in faith or anyone else, we are refusing God’s forgiveness for our sin. As we desire to hold our fellow people accountable for their sins, we are at the same time telling God that we want to be held accountable for our sins.

Could there be a worse fate? Not only do we sink ourselves into the depths of hell for eternity because of our sin, but we go there holding grudges and making our lives now miserable with bottled anger and animosity! It’s lose-lose, both in the here-and-now and especially for eternity!

So what’s the solution? Well, it starts by bringing our sin—even our refusal to forgive—to God. We fall on our knees before him and we plead for his mercy. We ask God for his forgiveness for our many, daily sins against him. And because Jesus lived and died in our place, the debt is canceled. We are fully and freely released from our debt we owed to God! There is nothing left; Jesus paid every last cent.

But we don’t want to just know that, we want that to change the way we live. Knowing what we have been forgiven means we will treat people who wrong us differently. It doesn’t mean ignoring sin; Jesus was very clear last week that we need to address sin with people who wrong us, especially our fellow believers. But, it does mean that we can forgive that sin, just like God has forgiven us. We can rejoice in wiping the small wrongs someone owes to us off the slate because we know that God has wiped our innumerable wrongs off of his slate. We’ve been forgiven the 10,000 talents; what a joy to forgive the 100 denarii! 

This isn’t always easy, though. Whether it’s the sinful nature that wants to hold someone accountable for their wrongs against us, or simply the real hurt—emotional, spiritual, or even physical—that someone’s actions have caused. That hurt might be to the point that we don’t trust that person again, that we can never go back to the way things used to be. But God’s forgiveness for us also means that we don’t hold it against the person; we’re not fostering anger and grudges in our heart. We forgive like God has forgiven us because God has forgiven us.

Lord, you know how often we struggle with this. Keep us ever mindful of the debt you have forgiven us, even our sin of not wanting to forgive others. Use your forgiveness to empower our forgiveness for those who sin against us. Amen.

"Be Your Brother's and Sister's Keeper" (Sermon on Matthew 18:15-20) | September 20, 2020

Text: Matthew 18:15-20
Date: September 20, 2020
Event: The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Matthew 18:15–20 (EHV)

15“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And, if he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as an unbeliever or a tax collector. 18Amen I tell you: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19Amen I tell you again: If two of you on earth agree to ask for anything, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. 20In fact where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am among them.”

Be Your Brother’s and Sister’s Keeper

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There are certain tasks that we don’t like to do, but that are important, right? If you have a pet, you know cleaning up after the pet be it a litter box, an aquarium, or while out for a walk is important. If you’re like me and tend to have a chaotic desk and workspace, cleaning up and organizing it regularly, while a pain, is important to make sure you can find anything and things don’t get lost or damaged while they’re spread all over the desk or floor. Perhaps it’s cooking meals to ensure your family is fed or doing preventative maintenance on the car so that it runs well. 

Some tasks are unpleasant or tedious, but important. So it is with what Jesus directs us to today. Sin is eternally dangerous, and we have the duty to warn people about that eternal danger, especially our brothers and sisters in faith.

If you think back to the earliest chapters of Genesis, the first children born to Adam and Eve were Cain and Abel. Cain was jealous of Abel and his approval from God, so he ended up murdering him. God came to Cain to talk with him, to show him his sin and bring him to repentance. God’s first question for Cain is, “Where is Abel, your brother?” Cain’s response is callous, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9).

That’s not just the response of a murderer trying to hide his sin; that might be our response to many different situations. Am I my brother’s or sister’s keeper? Surely not! They have their own lives, and I shouldn’t meddle. They make their own decisions, and that’s none of my business. They do their own thing, and I shouldn’t interfere.

And in a lot of ways, that’s true. We do well to mind our own business. But what if someone is plunging themselves into danger and don’t know it, or even if they do know it, what if you have the ability to rescue them? Shouldn’t you act to rescue them from known or unknown danger? You’re walking along a bridge and someone near you slips and slides through a broken part of the fence and is barely holding on. You’re right there. You can pull them up. Do you say “Well, that’s none of my business”? No! You stoop down and help them! Or someone is ready to take a drink from a bottle they think is filled with soda, but you know you’ve repurposed that bottle to store hazardous cleaning chemicals. Do you say, “Well, they clearly want to drink what’s in that bottle. They think it’s good for them. I’ll just keep to myself”? No! You interject yourself into that situation to rescue them from making themselves really sick or even dying!

There are a lot of things that people might choose to do that is not in the scope of what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel. Sin is not the same thing as something I disagree with. Someone might make a choice I find to be unwise in regards to a chosen career path, schooling options, books to read, movies to watch, places to live, etc. But doing something I disagree with is different than sin. Sin is not a matter of opinion; sin is disregarding what God clearly says is right and wrong. Sin is always a problem not because it makes me uncomfortable and might be something I find to be morally repulsive; sin is always a problem because it is discarding God’s will. Sin is always disastrous because sin always harms saving faith in Jesus, and left unchecked sin always leads to eternal death in hell. Even if someone feels that it’s no big deal, that it’s “not hurting anyone,” sin as God defines it is always hurting the one committing it. 

That’s why Jesus is so adamant, “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother.” If someone has sinned against you—really sinned, not simply done something you disagree with or makes you upset, but has done something that God says is wrong in his Word—you have the solemn responsibility to talk to them about it. Not talk to others about it—talk to the person about it. This is a private conversation to address the sin. And, ideally, that conversation is productive. The person recognizes their sin, apologizes, maybe even tries to do something to make up for it. And in that moment, you can assure them of your forgiveness for them and even more importantly God’s forgiveness for them. Thus, you have regained them. 

But, it doesn’t always work like that, right? Sometimes the person is resistant to the rebuke, correction, the call to repentance. They deflect and ignore like Cain did. And so, Jesus says, your work is not over. “But if he will not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ” While the initial approach is private, it begins to be slightly more public as you have to call in some help, to reinforce that this is not simply you trying to get your way, but confirming that this is dangerous sin. But perhaps the person will even ignore the small group, so then what is happening must be brought to the church: If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And, if he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as an unbeliever or a tax collector.

In the end, a lack of repentance indicates that someone has cut themselves off from God’s forgiveness. They’ve rejected God’s clear directions on right and wrong and, more to the point, have rejected Jesus. They have decided that their actions are fine, that they don’t need forgiveness for this sin, and that they are fine to stand before God in judgment for it. Of course, you and I know that’s not true, and so the last option we have to warn this person of the horrible severity of their sin is to separate them from us to make clear that their actions have separated themselves from God. So, the church’s last act of love is excommunication, a final warning that says, “You’re no longer connected to this congregation because you’re no longer connected to your Savior.” It is a harrowing, gut-wrenching thing. Our prayer is that this last action leads them to see their sin as the danger it is, that they turn from it, returning to their Savior and thus also to their brothers and sisters in Christ.

Sometimes this work ends in an encouraging way—you have regained your brother! Sometimes it ends in a troubling way—treat him as an unbeliever or a tax collector. But, regardless, the work must be done. So we cannot deceive ourselves. We cannot think, “I won’t talk to that person about this. It won’t do any good anyway. They won’t listen to me. They won’t change. It will always be the same.” Does Jesus say to address sin only when you assume your words will have an impact? Does he leave room for avoiding the situation and just holding on to animosity or a grudge against the person who has wronged you? No! “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you...” There’s no wiggle room here. This is not optional. This is the responsibility of the Christian to his or her brother or sister.

Likewise, we should be ready to be on the receiving end of this work. If I am caught in a sin that is enticing or frustrating, and my brother or sister comes to me concerned about that, how should I respond? In anger at them for being nosy? Should I ghost them because they are frustrating? No, I should see them as the loving brother or sister that they are, even if I don’t really understand at first what they’re talking about. I should listen to them, dig into God’s Word with them, and see if their concerns are backed by God.

We don’t embark on this work out of spite or pettiness, but out of spiritual concern for the one who is trapped in a sin. We know what it is to be besieged by sin because we’ve been there ourselves. We know what it is to feel trapped because we’ve been dead in sin as well. But we also know what it means to have our Savior wipe that slate clean. We know that every time we’ve refused to talk to the brother or sister who has sinned against us, every time that we haven’t wanted to turn away from a sin, every stumble, every fall, every rebellious act we’ve had toward God—all of these are why Jesus lived and died for us. He has removed them all.

So we go into this work knowing what it is to be rescued and brought from death to life. We reach out to the person dangling off the spiritual bridge; we slap the spiritual soda bottle filled with chemicals out of the person’s hand; we address sin. In every case, not to hold ourselves up as the be-all, end-all of doing the right thing. It’s not about us at all—it’s purely concern for the people who are killing themselves, whether they know or acknowledge it or not. It’s to show them their Savior who has rescued them from this sin, no matter what it is!

This work is difficult, regardless of whether you’re the one addressing sin or the one whose sin is being addressed. No matter what the outcome, whether joyful or disastrous, it’s important to remember that this work is backed by God. A few weeks ago in our Gospel, we saw Jesus give Peter the “keys to the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:19). Here, Jesus revisits the concept and assures the disciples that this isn’t just something for one person to manage; this is the responsibility of the Christian church at large: “Amen I tell you: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 

When we have to say to someone who is unrepentant that their sin is not forgiven, God supports us in that—whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. When we get to tell someone who is repentant that their sins are forgiven, God assures us that is true—whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. So when you do this work, uncomfortable as it may be, as an individual or if we even have to do it together as a congregation, we’re never doing it alone. God is by our side, supporting and backing this work up, work that he’s told us we need to do.

We have the solemn responsibility to address sin, but we also have the unbelievable joy to announce God’s complete and free forgiveness in Jesus to the repentant person. Lord, give us strength to carry out this task as you direct and to your glory alone! Amen.

"The Christian Life Is Sacrifice" (Sermon on Matthew 16:21-26) | September 13, 2020

Text: Matthew 16:21-26
Date: September 13, 2020
Event: The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A

Matthew 16:21–26 (EHV)

21From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised again. 

22Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “May you receive mercy, Lord! This will never happen to you.” 

23But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a snare to me because you are not thinking the things of God, but the things of men.” 

24Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 25In fact whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26After all, what will it benefit a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what can a person give in exchange for his soul?”

The Christian Life Is Sacrifice

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As 21st Century Americans, we have a real problem processing the idea of “sacrifice.” Attitudes and actions that are truly sacrificial are deeply unpleasant to us. They are an affront to our selfish sinful natures and our national attitude toward individualized freedom. Often, we view “freedom” as a lack of sacrifice. I’m free to do what I want when I want so that I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. I never have to sacrifice any desire or good thing because I’m free!

The anniversary of the September 11 attacks this past week maybe gave us some reflection on sacrifice in a physical sense: first responders rushing into danger rather than away from it, brave people on airplanes sacrificing their lives to protect others on the ground so that the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania never reached its target. But those are extraordinary, almost mythical situations. Few of us ever face that kind of situation—thanks be to God!

This morning, though, Jesus has words of caution for us not as Americans but as Christians. We have a life in front of us that is going to be mean sacrifice, and that sacrifice is not something we should run away from, but embrace as a gift from God.

Our Gospel picks up shortly after where we left off last week, perhaps even part of the very same conversation. Last week, Jesus had asked his disciples what people were saying about him, and then he asked his disciples what they thought. Peter had the beautiful confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus praised that confession and said that he would build his church on that confession to the total destruction of every plan of Satan, death, and hell.

But then Jesus starts to become a little bit more clear and blunt with his disciples—what does it mean that he is the Christ? What had he really come to do? From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised again. Jesus didn’t come to be a popular teacher. He didn’t come to be a crowd-gathering miracle worker. He didn’t come to have a ruling position among the people. Jesus came to suffer and die. That’s what the role of the Christ was. That was what the promised Savior had to do. That was the only way to solve mankind’s problem of sin.

But, understandably, this doesn’t sit well with the disciples, and especially Peter.  We’re told that Peter had the audacity to even rebuke his teacher, rebuke the one he had confidently said was the promised Christ! “May you receive mercy, Lord! This will never happen to you.” It’s very possible that Peter had a misguided view of what the Christ’s job actually was. It was a common misconception of that e day that the Christ, the Messiah, would come and be a political Savior. He would be someone who would rescue the nation from the Romans, he would come and restore the glory of Israel as a powerful country, to relive the glory days of King David. You can’t do any of that if you are killed by the current regime in power. So it’s possible that this statement was so incompatible with what Peter knew the Christ would do, he had to correct him.

It’s also possible that Peter saw in Jesus’ words trouble for himself. As goes the teacher, so goes the disciple. If this fate befell Jesus, what would that mean for Peter himself? What would it mean for the rest of the twelve? Peter had to stop this happening for Jesus so that it wouldn’t happen to him!

A third option is simply that Peter loved Jesus and he didn’t want these horrid things to happen to him. So his care and his concern for Jesus (which was at least a factor in all the possible motivations for what he said to Jesus if not necessarily the factor) also is in the picture here.

But really, regardless of what Peter’s motives are, it’s clear how his actions are being used. Jesus is clear that Satan is using Peter’s concern for his friend (and perhaps Peter’s concern for himself) to try to sway Jesus off course. Jesus called Peter a “snare,” literally something that causes someone else to fall or even to sin. Satan is trying to steer Jesus off course here. And you can imagine that even for Jesus the thoughts of not sacrificing yourself, not dying horribly on the cross, would have been appealing. We see that clear as day sometime later when Jesus prays to his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane minutes before his arrest where he prayed that if there was some other way to save mankind, let’d do that.

But this is Jesus’ role and mission; this is what the Christ had come to do. All of mankind was lost in sin. Peter, you, and me are all alike. We have been selfish and arrogant, we have looked out for our own good not the good of others, we have not done what God has told us to do and done what he told us not to do. For our rebellion and sin we deserve death—eternal death in hell. Jesus came to change that. He came to live a perfect life for us and to endure hell in our place. It wouldn’t simply be an abuse of power on the part of the Jewish leaders or the Roman government—it would be you and me, our sins, that nailed him to the cross. He sacrificed himself to save us.

Because Jesus sacrificed himself, we are free from sin. We have no concerns that it wasn’t done correctly, there’s no leftover work to be finished up. Jesus did it all, and he did it all for us. Jesus’ sacrifice saved us. He has made peace between us and God.

Earlier we noted that part of Peter’s concern over Jesus’ well-being was that he might potentially have to follow down the same path. And Jesus seems to lend some creditability to that concern. He says, “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 25In fact whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26After all, what will it benefit a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what can a person give in exchange for his soul?” That doesn’t sound like a happy-go-lucky, carefree life, does it? It sounds like a life of sacrifice that we naturally try to avoid. 

So what is Jesus saying here? What should we expect as Christians in this life? As goes the teacher, so goes the disciple. We will not sacrifice our lives for the sins of the world—that work has been done—but we will face similar backlash to what Jesus faced. The world is no more receptive to Jesus’ message of sin and forgiveness today than it was 2,000 years ago. So as we share that message, we should expect to be rejected, mocked, and run into failure after failure. 

And it may not be just embarrassment or frustration. We may find our livelihood and relationships threatened. In particularly dire circumstances, Christians even have their life on the line for their faith. So what is our reaction to those moment? To turn tail and run away from the sacrifice as quickly as we possibly can? What benefit will that be to us? If we give up Jesus, if we give up our faith, just to live more comfortably in this life, what have we done? We’ve exchanged the infinite for the finite; we’ve exchanged the eternal for the temporal; we’ve exchanged the perfect for the corrupted.

No amount of peace and security in this life is worth giving up on our Savior. No struggle we face here, no cross that we have to bear, is worse than taking the punishment of our sins back onto ourselves. It is a bad trade to give up heaven to find peace here. It would be eternally regretful to have to suffer hell forever just to avoid something temporarily unpleasant here.

The Christian life is sacrifice. We sacrifice to be Christians, to share Christ. We sacrifice as we live in this sinful world, while knowing that an eternity of perfection is around the corner. But let’s not run from the sacrifice, let’s embrace it. Let’s not just take the sacrifices imposed on us—let’s sacrifice for each other. What can you sacrifice to help your brother or sister in Christ? What can you sacrifice to serve the person you don’t even know? What pain can you endure that other might benefit? What beneficial thing might you give up that others may be comforted?

Maybe we think of being generous with our time or money. Maybe we think of the simple act of wearing a mask in these pandemic-laden days—a very minor sacrifice that could save someone’s life. Maybe we think of potentially sacrificing our pride or our standing with people to invite someone to join us for worship or to share our faith or to confess that we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God which means that by him we have forgiveness and eternal life. 

Anyone who would say that God wants us to live a life without sacrifice is misguided. Anyone who says that God wants the Christian’s life her eon earth to be full of health and wealth, earthly comfort, is lying. Jesus is clear to you and me, “Take up [your] cross, and follow me.”

As you sacrifice in this life, you give thanks to God for his forgiveness. God bless your Christian life of sacrifice to the glory and praise of our Savior! Amen.

"Not Even the Gates of Hell..." (Sermon on Matthew 16:13-20) | September 6, 2020

Text: Matthew 16:13-20

Date: September 6, 2020

Event: The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Matthew 16:13–20  (EHV)

13When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” 

14They said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 

15He said to them, “But you, who do you say that I am?” 

16Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 

17Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overpower it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20Then he commanded the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. 

Not Even the Gates of Hell…

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Earlier this week Alex and I were watching a baseball game on TV. As one of the outfielders came up to bat, the announcers said, “He came in to this series looking good, but he’s gone 0-8 since this series started. A bit of a slump.” Could the formally productive player be washed up? Was he going to have time to get out of a sudden slump given the COVID-shortened season? Well, as he stepped up to the plate he blasted a 2-run home run; his next time at bat he hit a 3-run home run. Not the pitcher, not the rest of the defense, not even his own personal struggles at the plate would stop that player from winning the game for the team.

There was some uncertainty, though. No one knew that he would pull through for his team the way he did. And there remains uncertainty. What will the next game bring? The slump could return.

Jesus in our gospel this morning makes his disciples and us promises of success for us no matter what happens. It may not feel like we can have any certainty in this life, with job, family, neighborhood, pandemic, fire, smoke heat—whatever—stress. But Jesus assures us that not even the gates of hell itself will overcome us, nothing can overcome our Savior.

Jesus was continuing his traveling, preaching, and teaching work. But in our Gospel for this morning he has a brief moment of time with his disciples. We’re going to focus on that conversation for the next two Sundays, but for today we have the first promise that Jesus makes in this lesson. Jesus begins, as they walk, with a question. “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” In other words, “What are people saying about me? What’s the word that you hear?” Jesus, because he is God, of course knew what anyone was thinking about him. But he uses this question to start to probe at his disciples’ hearts.

Everyone had seemed to hear something just a little bit different: John the Baptist, raised from the dead (what an odd thought given that Jesus and John had clearly worked at the same time before John’s execution by Herod!)? Elijah, one the great Old Testament prophets, returning to continue his work? Jeremiah, another giant among the prophets who had brought God’s Word to his people during the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians and their subsequent exile? Someone else from the past who was very important? 

What is clear from all of those ideas is that there was simultaneously a great deal of respect and a great deal of confusion about Jesus. He had fed the 5,000 men plus women and children with a small lunch, but then refused to do any more free-food miracles for that crowd. He taught with authority, but people didn’t always want to hear what he had to say. He clearly was sent with power, likely by God, but what were his final goals? The people were lost.

Having heard the answers from the crowd, Jesus turns the question on his disciples: “But you, who do you say that I am?” Now, we know that Peter often let his mouth get him into trouble. But, here, Peter’s impetuousness answers with a beautiful answer on behalf of the twelve: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Let’s take just a moment and unpack that. Peter doesn’t say that Jesus was some legendary figure brought back from the dead. As amazing as that would be, Peter knew that any such ideas were selling Jesus far short of who he truly was. “You are the Christ,” he says. “Christ” is a Greek term meaning “anointed one” or “chosen one.” Hebrew used the term “Messiah.” This was a technical term for the promised one, the seed of the woman promised in the Garden of Eden who would defeat Satan, the suffering servant from Isaiah who would be pierced and crushed for our sins. This was far more impressive than “just” being some miraculously-raised prophet. The prophets were important in large part because they pointed ahead to the Christ; Jesus was the Christ himself!

Peter might have had some mistaken ideas about the role of the Christ (which we’ll talk a bit more about next week), but Jesus is clearly delighted by his confession. He says, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Faith in Jesus as Christ, as Savior, doesn’t come because we do a lot of studying or are very smart or have worked really hard. Faith is totally and completely a gift from God. That you trust Jesus as your Savior is a gift from your God who loves you dearly. 

Peter’s confession is so important, that Jesus is set on building the entire foundation of the church upon it. Jesus goes on, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overpower it.” Boisterous Peter has given Jesus an example to point. His name literally means, “Rock,” but Jesus is using a bit of wordplay here. He’s not saying he is going to build his church on Peter—grammatically, that’s impossible based on what Jesus says—but he is saying that he will build it on Peter’s confession of him as the Christ. The fact that Jesus is the Savior from sin would be and continues to be the foundation of any true-teaching church.

And it’s easy to lose sight of that, right? Churches start out wanting to do good in the world, in their communities, and that’s wonderful and important. But if a congregation becomes primarily concerned with people’s physical well-being rather than their spiritual well-being, they’ve lost sight of their foundation. If the focus is on sharing self-help tips rather than pointing to Jesus as the Christ, the Savior from all sin, they’ve lost the thread and the message they’ve been tasked with sharing. Lord, keep us from falling into this trap!

But, when we proclaim Jesus as the solution to all sin—yours and mine—then something amazing happens. Then we have something that cannot be taken away from us. Then we have a message then cannot be defeated. The promise of God is clear: nothing will be able to permanently undo this message of sins forgiven in Jesus, not even the gates of hell. The gospel message advances triumphantly, and Satan is powerless to stop it. It will and does bring comfort to the aching hearts of sinners around the world.

And that message is going to be proclaimed in some pretty direct ways. Jesus says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Jesus here singles our Peter and elsewhere gives these keys to the church as a whole. The keys Jesus speaks about are of binding and loosing, locking and unlocking, forgiving or not forgiving.

Jesus’ death paid for all sin. Everything is done. When Jesus said, “It is finished!” (John 19:30) from the cross, he wasn’t lying or exaggerating. But, you and I have the horrid ability to reject that forgiveness. We can look God in the eyes and say, “No thank you.” We do that by ignoring God’s Word. We do that by embracing and relishing sin. And that’s where Jesus gives to his church the keys, to announce forgiveness and a lack of forgiveness to people.

For the person with a troubled conscience, who is worried that what they have done will prevent them from ever entering eternal life, we have the joyful duty and privilege to bring the gospel to them, to point them to Jesus, the Christ, and say “There is your Savior! There is your forgiveness! It’s been done and won for you! Thanks be to God!” And the person with whom we share that message can be certain that it is just as valid as if Jesus himself were sharing it, “whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 

But what about the other end of the spectrum? What about the person who doesn’t care about their sin, who thinks it’s no big deal, or actually really likes it and says they will not make any effort to remove it from their life? Such an unrepentant person spurns God’s mercy and love and separates themselves from God’s forgiveness. To that person we have the solemn responsibility to warn them that they are condemning themselves because they are rejecting God’s love. They are taking the burden of their sin away from Jesus and putting it back on their own shoulders. We have to warn them that going down that path will mean no joyful entrance into eternal life, “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.”

Sin, Satan, Death, and Hell cannot stand up against the advancement of our Savior’s Word. We conquer all of our enemies, because he conquered it all for us. Because of Jesus’ life and death for us, because of his promises to us, nothing can stand in our way from sharing the gospel, nothing can stop us from entering into eternal life, not even the gates of hell! Amen.

"We Have a Listening Savior" (Sermon on Matthew 15:21-28) | August 30, 2020

Matthew 15:21–28 (EHV)

Jesus left that place and withdrew into the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22There a Canaanite woman from that territory came and kept crying out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! A demon is severely tormenting my daughter!” 
23But he did not answer her a word. 
His disciples came and pleaded, “Send her away, because she keeps crying out after us.” 
24He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 
25But she came and knelt in front of him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 
26He answered her, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to their little dogs.” 
27“Yes, Lord,” she said, “yet their little dogs also eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 
28Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, your faith is great! It will be done for you, just as you desire.” And her daughter was healed at that very hour. 

“We Have a Listening Savior”

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I’ve never been especially handy. I think in the 14-plus years that Karen and I have been married, I’ve improved a small amount in that regard, but doing plumbing or landscaping or woodworking has never been anything that comes naturally. And, because those things don’t come naturally the temptation is strong to avoid them completely, or give up on them at the first moment of friction or frustration. 

And yet, not bailing on something immediately can lead to great blessings righT? If you stick with a problem and try to solve it, you might figure something out, acquire a new skill, or at least learn that, yes, for sure, in the future, I should hire a professional to handle this problem. But to get to that point, you have to be persistent. 

Through the great faith in the Canaanite woman, Jesus teaches us about our prayer life and how we should bring requests to our God. He doesn't want us to give up or to question whether we have permission to ask for him help. No, Jesus assures us that We Have a Listening Savior. That's true regardless of who we are, and so we pray with persistence.

The Gospel for today takes place close to the midpoint of Jesus' earthly ministry, just after the events from the previous weeks’ Gospels coming after Jesus finding out about John the Baptist’s execution by King Herod, the feeding of the 5,000, and Jesus going out to meet the disciples on the water in the middle of the storm. At the beginning of our lesson, Jesus withdrew from Jewish region of Galilee and headed northwest, to Tyre and Sidon, two prominent cities for the Phoenicians. Jesus was now in Gentile country.

The Jewish people very often saw themselves as above the Gentiles. Despite God making clear that his promises were for all people, you rarely see the Jewish people showing spiritual concern for the Gentiles. Instead, they tended to flaunted their superiority. They were God’s chosen people after all!

That helps to add some color to the disciples' attitude toward the woman who was crying out after Jesus. They didn't want to be bothered by this woman, let alone a Gentile. Even Jesus' words, initially, can put us off a bit and make us wonder what he was doing and why he was acting that way. Despite the cold shoulder the woman was getting from Jesus and his disciples, she was still confident that Jesus not only could, but would heal her daughter. 

It was pretty brazen of her, a Gentile woman, to ask Jesus, a Jewish man, for anything. She had no right to even talk to him, culturally speaking. Yet she makes this great request of him. But there was a much bigger divide between she and Jesus than just cultural norms: she was a sinner, and she was talking to God.

You and I had the same wall separating us from God as well. And this isn't little chain-link fence that you can see through. This is a solid wall, hundreds of feet tall, covered in razor wire. It's an unscalable and unconquerable wall. We can't talk to God, we can't see God, we can't get any help. We can't do a single thing to bring that wall down.

And yet that woman still prayed and sought Jesus' help. Because our Listening Savior didn't care where she was from or who her parents were. He was concerned about her. He himself tore down that wall of sin that was between them. That was his whole reason for being here. He was to bring and be the bread of life to all people, including this humble and persistent Canaanite woman!

That gives us food for thought too. It can be easy to slip into stereotypes and prejudices. What do we think about people who are different than us? Does race change what we think about a person before we even meet them? Do socioeconomic differences change what we think about a person? Do we think someone is not worthy of our time or attention because of how different they are from us? Do we think, like the disciples might have, that they're not worthy of our Savior?

And really, that's true. They are not worthy of Jesus. But it’s not that we are and that aren’t. We are not worthy of Jesus either. In the end, there is no difference between any of us. In God's sight we were all sinners, walled-in by our willful disobedience.

Praise be to God, though, that he didn't just come to save a select group of people! Jesus came to save all people! He made that point very clear as he praised the woman's faith. Jesus’ death and resurrection is for all people, everywhere. Jesus death is for you and me, your neighbor and coworker, the person who loves you and the person who despises you—the entire world! All the things we did wrong? They're gone, nailed to his cross! All the things we should have done right? Jesus did them in our place. The wall has been broken down and we are now God's children, dearly loved by our Heavenly Father!

But there's something else striking about this woman's plea for help beyond her ignoring of cultural norms. Did you notice how persistent she is? Jesus completely ignores her request, and she keeps crying out after him. She races ahead and kneels down before him and begs. Jesus even insults her by calling her a “little dog”, a dog that would've been permissible in the house as a pet but not of any use in hunting. Yet still she doesn't swerve from her request. Her desire to have her daughter healed was that great, and her faith that Jesus could do it was that strong.

Why did Jesus behave like that? Is Jesus betraying some hostility to the Canaanite people himself? Is Jesus himself being the racist that we just warned each other against? Hardly. Jesus had a two-fold purpose to his attitude and his answers here. The first was to test the woman's faith. The second, and perhaps more important, was to teach his disciples, including you and me, how to be persistent in our prayers.

The temptation is there, in our prayer life, just as it might be for me doing home repairs: try once, and if nothing happens, give up. “I prayed about it,” we might say, “and nothing happened. God must either not want to give me what I asked for or simply wasn't listening.” How much farther from the truth could we be? God wants us to pray with confidence to him, knowing that he does indeed hear and answer our prayers.

So God didn't answer us 15 seconds after we prayed about something once? Pray again, and again, and again, and again. And then what do we do if it seems like Jesus isn't answering our prayers? We ought to examine what we are asking, and how we're asking it. Are we praying like Jesus prayed, that above all else God's will would be done in our lives? Are we praying that whatever is best for us, that's what Jesus would allow to happen to us?

We pray confidently, boldly, and persistently because God has attached such awesome promises to prayer. The apostle Paul urges us to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17) because, as James wrote in his letter, “The prayer of a righteous person is able to do much because it is effective” (5:16). The power doesn't rest in the prayer itself, but in the one answering it. The prayer isn't just a good mental break and exercise for us, it's asking our heavenly Father for the things we need, or even the things we'd just like to have happen. We don't pray hoping God will hear us; we pray knowing God will answer us. James said that the prayer of a righteous person is able to do much, to be effective. That has nothing to do with our worthiness to come to God, the strength of our faith, or how well we pray; it has everything to do with God making us righteous in his sight through Jesus' death and resurrection.

And that's where our comfort lies. It doesn't matter who we are or where we've come from. God loves us. It doesn't matter what we've done or the guilt we carry with us. God's forgiven us. And it doesn't matter how unworthy we think our prayers and requests are. God will answer us. Sometimes it might be a resounding yes, sometimes a no, and sometime God might simply be telling us to wait  for something better to come. Regardless, we continue to pray persistently, with confidence, and in Jesus' name because he’s forgiven you according to his will because he loves you. How awesome it is to be heard, day or night, by our listening Savior! Amen.