210725 Sermon on Mark 10:35-45 (St. James the Elder) July 25, 2021

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July 25 is the day that has been set aside in the church calendar to commemorate James the Elder or James the Greater. Calling him the elder or greater differentiates him from James the Younger or James the Lesser. There are two men named James in the New Testament who are rather important. The James who is commemorated today is one of the twelve apostles. The other James is known as the brother of Jesus. He ends up becoming the bishop of the congregation in Jerusalem. This other James is also the author of the book of James. But today we are focusing on James the Greater.

Let’s begin by briefly reviewing what we know about James. James was one of the twelve. He was also part of that inner circle among the twelve who were with Jesus on a few occasions where the other nine were not. The other members of this inner circle were John, his brother, and Peter, his cousin. Peter, James, and John were all called to be apostles at the same time as we heard several weeks ago. They were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. When Jesus ushered the fish into Peter’s nets so that they began to break, it was James and John whom Peter called out to in order to help him. After that all three of them dropped their nets and followed Jesus.

James and his brother, John, were sons of a man named Zebedee. They also got the nickname of being sons of thunder. It is believed that they got this nickname because they were exceedingly earnest and zealous. One time when they came upon a village that did not receive Jesus they asked him if they should call down fire upon it. Also in our reading today they ask Jesus if they can sit at his right and his left—a rather cheeky thing to do, which we will speak more of in a minute. Obviously these two were not wilting daisies.

In our first reading today, from the book of Acts, you heard about how James died. James was the first of the twelve who was martyred. He was executed by King Herod. This might have been as soon as only a couple years after Pentecost. Jesus had asked James whether he was able to drink the cup that Jesus drank, and to be baptized with the baptism Jesus was baptized with. So it happened. James died because he testified that this world is evil, God is good, and Jesus is the Savior of sinners. For disrupting the party, which all the Herodians seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed, he was put to death.

And yet, even though he has died, he lives. Whoever lives and believes in Jesus never dies. Whenever the Christian church commemorates the saints it is different than when the world remembers someone. For the world, when someone dies, that’s it. Fiery James, faithful unto death, is alive with his soul with Jesus. His body awaits the great Day of the Lord. Whatever fame or recognition he might have from men is unimportant. He has received his reward from God. There is nothing better that any creature could hope for than to hear these words from the Creator: “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your master.”

Now let’s turn to our Gospel reading where we heard about this interaction between Jesus and the brothers James and John.

Mark tells us that James and John came to Jesus with an unusual request. Let me quickly note that Matthew adds a significant detail. Matthew tells us that James and John came to Jesus by sending their mother—which is what the art on the cover or our bulletin depicts. Sending your mother as an ambassador only makes the situation more unusual when they say: “Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask.” Whenever a conversation begins that way, you can be sure that something unusual is about to happen.

“Make it so that we sit at your right and your left in your glory,” they say. Something we might expect is that Jesus would not be pleased with such an idea. The world is always hungry for glory and honor. The Bible teaches that this honor and glory belongs to God. We are told over and over again in the Scriptures that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Here James and John are asking to be seated at the best spots.

Jesus does not rebuke them, however. Jesus had a fine sense for what people were actually after. He must have sensed that James and John were not thinking in a worldly way. Jesus asks them if they are able to drink the cup that he is going to drink and be baptized with the baptism Jesus is going to be baptized with. They answer, “We can.”

The way that Jesus then responds shows that he is not like us. Proud men are fond of asking rhetorical questions of those they deem unworthy. Proud men ask others whether they think they can do their job. Proud men believe that only they can do their job. Everybody else is unqualified or inexperienced. So if proud men ask whether someone can do their job and the other says, “Yes, I can,” then proud men say, “Ho, ho, ho! You think so do you? You’d better have a second thought coming!”

If there were ever a situation where this lording it over others seems to be appropriate, it might be this situation. When Jesus speaks of this cup and this baptism he is speaking about his suffering and death. By his selfless love, Jesus was going to drink the cup of suffering and be baptized in blood. He would not be put to death because he was a criminal and evil doer, but precisely because he loved God and strove for what is good. Jesus’s suffering and death would redeem all people as justice is carried out upon him for the sins that you and I have committed. When James and John say that they can do what Jesus does, it seems like the more accurate answer for Jesus to give would be, “No, you can’t.”

But Jesus is an unusual person. When there are differences among us, we always want those differences to remain so that we look good. If we are better looking than someone else, we want it to stay that way. If we have more money than somebody else, we want it to stay that way. If we are more morally upright, we want it to stay that way. With Jesus, even though he is vastly superior in every respect to everyone else, he does not use this difference to glorify himself, to magnify how terrible everyone is compared to him. He uses his immense power to lift others up so that they become like him. He doesn’t laugh at how others don’t measure up. He wants others to be better. If it were possible, he would even have others be better than himself.

So Jesus says to James and John, “You’re right. You will drink the cup that I’m going to drink and be baptized with the baptism that I’m going to be baptized with.” He wonderfully does not domineer over these disciples, who probably don’t know what they are saying. It’s like he’s looking on them as a kindly father might deal with his young son. The father knows that the son has a long way to go before he can do what the father does, but he wants to help his son, not humiliate him. He wants to encourage him. So he tells the son that he’s going to be just as good as he is, if not better.

Here James and John were wanting to follow in the footsteps of their master, Jesus. Here is a greatness and a glory that is good to strive after. Striving to have your name written in the history books, or to have everyone wish that they were you, is sinful pride. Luther called pride the queen of sins. It was sinful pride that came before the fall into sin. They wanted to be like God. This is the kind of pride that angers God so that he becomes an iron wall. But striving to become more like Jesus is no sin. This kind of glory is beneficial to others, because the goal is to make other people better—even better than yourself. It is not the one who has a lot or who is receiving a lot who is great. It is the one who gives who is great.

But if this endeavor is genuine and Christian, it will always be a kind of glory that is utterly hidden and even repulsive to the world. Jesus died in shame. He was bruised, covered in spit, and mercilessly mocked. This is what the world always does when their works, that they are so stinking proud of, are pointed out as evil. That would be the way that the apostle James died too. People thought that he was judgmental and insubordinate to the Jewish authorities. I’m sure he made no secret of what he thought of Herod’s abominations. He was too religious, too zealous. Perhaps you noticed in the reading that his arrest and execution pleased the people. They were  glad that he got what was coming to him. The people didn’t like James.

Do not romanticize the cross that Jesus gives us to carry. The cross is ugly and offensive to the world and to our reason. It appears to be unnecessary and fruitless—like someone is just throwing his or her life away. Christian suffering is not just when our money, our business, or even our lives are taken away. These are things that people might be willing to bear because there is a kind of glory that our reason can recognize as being great in that. No, Christian suffering includes even having our good name taken away.

In this we follow Jesus. Nobody was better than Jesus, but what did people say of him? The Jews thought that he was a dangerous heretic, the worst of the worst, destroying Moses’s Laws and leading people into hell. To this day the orthodox Jews see Jesus as the worst of the worst. The Romans thought that he was a total nutjob. He claimed that he was a king. He claimed to be important. When he was hanging on the cross they came up with some pretty funny jokes about that. Even Jesus’s own disciples, by and large, abandoned him. They thought that he must have been an imposter when he said that he was the Christ, because there he was—condemned and dying. Only those who have eyes to see and ears to hear can perceive the glory of God in such things.

But if this is the glory that you would like to strive after, then blessed are you! If you want to drink this cup and be baptized with this baptism, then you should be encouraged, just like Jesus encourages James and John here. Having the ambition of loving more, serving more, suffering more gladly, blessing those who curse you, loving your enemies—these are the best of things. These are the things that the Son of God did. God loved his Son and everything that Jesus did. Every moment of Jesus’s life was precious to him as he loved and loved and loved even to the end. You may be sure that God is well pleased with you, as his good and faithful servant, when you are following in the footsteps of Jesus.

And when we follow in the footsteps of Jesus we don’t need to be too worried about falling into pride. The cross will see to that. When the other disciples heard about James’ and John’s request they were indignant. “Who do they think they are?” they wondered. But Jesus cleared that up pretty quickly. Worldly people are always wanting to be the best and sit at the best seats and have everybody wish that they could be as good as they are. “That’s not how it should be among you,” Jesus says.

“Instead,” he says, “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. 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.” Here we do not have a race to the top, where we are stepping on whomever we have to in order to get there. This is a race to the bottom if you will. Who can serve more? Who can put others ahead of themselves? That one is the great one.

And so the apostle James was made great. He walked in the good works that God had prepared beforehand for him to walk in. He did not despise the cross and seek to be rid of it. He was not ashamed of the name of Jesus or of the Gospel. He was faithful unto death and has received the crown of everlasting life. He is an example for us to follow. God approves of his Son, so you should strive to drink the cup he drank, and to be baptized with the baptism with which he was baptized.

210718 Sermon on Genesis 2:7-17 (Trinity 7) July 18, 2021

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Over the centuries there have been a lot of different ideas about what an ideal human existence might be like. The Egyptians had their views. The Greeks had their views. So on and so forth. There is also a certain view of what our existence as human beings should be in our own time and place.

An important component of our own views that we should mention right off the bat is that we don’t really care about those ancient views because we have advanced far beyond them. The ancient people were primitive and stupid. We are advanced and brilliant. So unless you want to be primitive and stupid, you had better think like all modern people think. We are essentially taught that there is only one right way to think about how we should exist as human beings.

Let’s speak a little bit about the content of this modern view. Perhaps its most important idea is that we are masters of our own destinies. We are competent, and we have been empowered. We have invented marvelous machines, marvelous drugs, marvelous systems of government, marvelous financial tools, and so on. All of these marvelous things allow us to shoot for the stars—literally. One day we might discover some wormhole in space-time that will allow us to colonize other planets. We have the potential to dominate. The only thing that can stop us is if we quit trying.

But all of this dominating doesn’t come without a cost. It’s not very popular to talk about these costs. It hurts the narrative. But you can judge for yourselves whether our belief in ourselves hasn’t come back to bite us.

This miserable plague that has afflicted our planet for the last 18 months seems to have been cooked up in a virology lab in Wuhan. Scientists from around the world thought it would be a good idea to engage in some “gain of function” research. What “gain of function” means is that they take normal viruses that have appeared in nature and they see if they can somehow soup them up and make them more contagious and lethal. Why? Who knows?

Another important example of the price we’ve had to pay is with more immediate ways of destroying ourselves. Surprisingly we have managed to refrain from baking whole cities at a time with our thermo-nuclear bombs. We’ve had the technology available for 76 years. We’ve had the bombs on hand, ready to go, ready to mutually annihilate one another, for about 60 years. I wonder if some day there might be someone who believes that he has the potential to dominate, and he will stop at nothing until he has brought it about. Perhaps it’s better to rule over a wasteland than be a small fry, lost in the shuffle of history.

A few years ago a massive machine called the Large Hadron Collider was brought online in Switzerland. This machine smashes together atoms and parts of atoms at tremendous speeds, just to see what might happen. The theoreticians said that what might happen is that they’d create a black hole. The possibility was ever-so-remote, but just maybe. The problem with a black hole, though, is that they don’t get smaller. They suck into themselves whatever might be around them. They are very mysterious, unimaginably powerful things. A black hole in Switzerland would crush this planet in short order.

As Christians who confess what the Bible teaches, we believe that this world is going to end. To be sure, it is God who is going to bring that about. It seems fitting to me, though, that the way that God might do that is by us destroying ourselves. In mankind’s relentless pursuit for the dominion and the power and the glory, perhaps one of these experiments is going to blow up in our own face. Perhaps they already are.

So if this is the modern view of how we should exist as human beings, what is the Bible’s view? Our Old Testament lesson gives us some insight into that question. This reading is from Genesis chapter two. Here Moses is speaking about life in the Garden of Eden prior to the fall into sin. God created Adam. He made trees grow from the earth—beautiful trees and beneficial. He put Adam into that Garden to work it and take care of it.

And what was Adam thinking about while he busied himself? He wasn’t thinking about buying the neighbor’s back forty. He wasn’t thinking about ways that he could capture the market and take everybody’s money. I don’t think he was thinking all that much about tomorrow. He was receiving his daily bread, day by day. He was like the birds of the air. The birds are not wracked with worry about where their next meal is going to come from. The heavenly Father feeds them. Adam was seeking first the kingdom of God and all other things were added unto him.

Instead of being preoccupied with his own glory, Adam was having the best of times tracing the glory and beauty of God. We like looking at the lines and contours of the things we love. Adam loved the Lord God. No one had to tell him to fear God or trust God because Adam loved God. Adam loved the Name of God. He called upon it in every trouble, prayed, praised, and gave thanks. God’s Word was a lamp to his feet and light to his path. God’s word was good to eat and nourished his mind. It gave him light and life and happiness.

So if Adam was happy, and Modern Man is unhappy, do we need to get rid of our cars and computers in order to be happy? This thought shows us how foolish we have become. We are always thinking that we can fix things by manipulating the outward things in our life. We think, “If only I had this, then I’d be happy.” Or, “If only I didn’t have this, then I’d be at peace.” Whether a technology, a program, an institution, what-have-you exists or does not exist is not what is important. It was not the presence or absence of gadgets or what nots that made Adam happy. Adam’s love of God is what made paradise paradise.

The way that paradise was lost was by Adam changing his mind. He came to believe that he could secure his happiness by manipulating the fruits of a created tree rather than dealing with the Creator. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil made Adam wise precisely in his being obedient to God’s command and heeding his warning.

A lot of people think that Adam and Eve became wiser when they ate this fruit. However, whatever knowledge they gained of evil, they lost even more knowledge of what was good. I suppose they came to know evil in a different way than before, but they most certainly lost their fear, love, and trust in what is good.

Accordingly, immediately, they began to prepare for their battle against nature and against God. When God, who is goodness itself, strolled his way through the Garden in the cool of the day, Adam and Eve hid in the bushes. There is no more tragic and awful scene than that. There is no better description of the way that we are with our fallen nature—hiding from God. Hiding, because we have sinned. The wages of sin is death. “In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” The failure to know what is good, and to believe in him, is terrible.

While cowering in the bushes, wishing that mountains would fall on you, being terrified of God, is tragic and awful, it is the best and the highest knowledge that we can attain with our fallen human nature. It is the wisest we can get. It is far wiser to do this than it is to believe the devil’s stupid lie that God just won’t care. There are precious few in this world who hold to this knowledge—precious few who are afraid of God. They think that they’ve somehow gotten some kind of special knowledge about God. As it turns out he doesn’t really care whether we are sinful or not! Or they believe that we’ve moved on from God and can do better by making our own way with our own inventions and plans.

Not only have these people lost the knowledge of what is good. They’ve also lost the knowledge of what is evil. They are stupider than Adam and Eve, who at least still had the good sense to be aware of their guilt and shame, and to take God at his word when he told them they were going to die when they sinned against him.

God could have left them in that tragic and awful state, but he didn’t. He did not wait for them to redeem themselves or even to come to their senses, because that would never happen. Instead he spoke the truth to them to undo the newly entered lies. He did not hold back on their sins. They tried to wiggle out from under their guilt by passing the buck, but to no avail. They were sinners. God also plainly told them that they would be cursed because of their sin. No facet of this earthly life was left untouched, which is true to this present day. Nowhere is the fall into sin more evident and palpable than in our own darkened souls. But he also promised to give them Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world. A second Adam would be born from a second Eve. He would bind the devil and plunder him of all his possessions. This Son of God and seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. God received them back for Jesus’s sake.

God took them back, and he really meant it, but things were never the same for Adam and Eve or for all the believers after them. The flesh is fallen. The curses endure. We have to believe in God’s goodness rather than fully experience it. There is a part of us that is unbelieving and hostile to God and everything about him. That same part of us loves and trusts in created things rather than in the Creator. All believers have something of a split personality. We do not always feel like tracing the fair beauty of the Lord our God.

This is a terribly humiliating and disappointing thing for us believers who are still in our flesh. Thank God, it will not always be that way. A day is coming when our sinful flesh will die and we will be raised with purified bodies. Then, for the first time, we will know the joy of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, and with all our soul. Once again we will be wise. We will know what is good.

But we do not sit idly by, waiting to be raised and healed in the future, as though our baptism is ineffective in this life. A beginning of the holy life is already begun in this life by the almighty Holy Spirit. And thus there is something that we can learn from Adam in his pre-fallen state. We can copy him. Outwardly our lives might be rather different than his. We have clothes and tools, nuclear bombs and souped up viruses. But what is the same is that we have the same Lord God. He loved and accepted Adam. He loves and accepts us for Jesus’s sake.

We do not need to depend upon how we can supercharge this life, escape to another solar system, or have our name written in a history book. The goodness of God is to be seen in the so-called little things in life that aren’t actually that little: He daily and richly provides me with all that I need for this body and life. He gives me food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like. We do not need to look for exotic and unusual things that are good. His mercies are new every morning.

Because we value such different things, there will always and necessarily be a disconnect between worldly people and believers in Christ. Worldly people are always going to be looking for the next big thing that will give them happiness. They will move, and they will shake. They will cut figure. People will put their trust in them.

Believers always have to work on putting their trust in the Lord our God. Sin has put cataracts on our eyes so that we have a hard time seeing how God takes care of us every day, just like he did with Adam, and that our future is secure in him. Our future is secure to the point where we can say:

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”

“I know that my Redeemer lives. At the end of time he will stand over the dust. Then, even after my skin has been destroyed, nevertheless, in my own flesh I will see God. I myself will see him. My own eyes will see him, and not as a stranger.”

We are not looking for how we can conquer nature and extend our lives and influence to the greatest extent possible. We are looking for God.

210711 Sermon on Matthew 5:17-26 (Trinity 6) July 11, 2021

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Why do people sin? Isn’t it because sinning gives us pleasure? It can feel good. It might be more convenient or easier than doing what is right. It might be more interesting than plain old vanilla. Simply put, people sin because they want to.

There is a certain view of the Christian life where this love of ours for sinning doesn’t have to change. According to this view of how we can live as Christians we can continue to live in sin and God’s grace will abound so as to cover over all those sins. The way those sins are taken away is by coming to church. Make sure that you use the means of grace, and you won’t go to hell. So long as you know this and make use of it, you can otherwise live your life just like everybody else.

All good lies have truth in them, and this one has more truth than most. It is true that Christians are sinners and will remain sinners this side of the grave. It is true that Christians continually must be forgiven until they die. It is true that the means of grace forgive sins and thereby prevent sinners from going to the hell that they deserve. So, then, what’s wrong?

What’s wrong is that this false view of the Christian life has the Christian going in the wrong direction. It has Christians pursuing sin instead of pursuing righteousness.

In our Gospel reading today you heard him say, “Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law and the prophets. I have not come to destroy them but to fulfill them.” The goal is not that we should continue to live in sin, neither is it that we should live like everybody else, and then, at the end, get a free pass. Instead, God’s law should be fulfilled in us.

God’s Law is good and holy. Its essence is love. It protects life so that God’s creative activity may thrive. God’s Law protects every part of our life. He wants our souls protected, our physical bodies protected, our spouse protected, our possessions protected, our reputation protected, our spirits and emotions protected.

It was the devil who deceived our ancestors into thinking that God’s Law was a drag. Ever since then our natural minds have been darkened so that we cannot believe that God’s Law is as good as it really is. Meanness, despair, oppression, adultery, murder, and so on, are assumed to be the spice of life. Consider all the greatest works of art in literature or movies. At the heart of practically all of them is either murder or adultery.

This is not just with our present-day, decayed, and decadent culture. It’s true of the greatest ancient works. In fact it can be traced back all the way to Lamach, a descendant of Cain. It appears that he was the first polygamist. His work of art is recorded by Moses. In his poem he brags to his wives about how he had killed a man for crossing him. So if anybody else starts getting ideas, they better have another thought coming!

Ever since the fall into sin we can hardly think of anything higher than standing on the top of the heap, or accumulating for ourselves the greatest amount of pleasure with the least amount of pain. Paul speaks of this ambition and greed as being enslaved to our flesh. Slaves have no choice, and so it is with us. We can’t help it. We don’t have a will of our own. We’re always going to choose what’s best for us. Not being free to choose for one’s self is in the nature of being a slave. That is why Paul speaks of our Old Adam as being enslaved. We are enslaved to our desires. Whatever they say we do.

Notice that this is pretty much the opposite of the way that we normally and naturally think about freedom. We think that freedom is having the ability to choose to do whatever we might want. Freedom is the ability to watch whatever we want, eat whatever we want, drink whatever we want, charge whatever we want, say whatever we want, and so on.

But what kind of freedom is this, where we are always only doing what are sinful desires dictate to us? Our desires say, “Do this,” and we say, “Coming right up.” If our desires say “Do this,” and we, for some reason, can’t say, “Coming right up,” we are filled with sorrow. We will look for more ways to accumulate power or money so that we can carry out whatever it is that our desires dictate to us.

The only way to be truly set free from this slavery to our own desires is by knowing the truth, who is Jesus, who is God. Knowing Jesus also means that we are baptized into him and into his death. Thereby we have died with all our sins and evil desires. Paul says in Galatians, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” We have to be set free from our old Lord, the devil, whom we renounce with all his works and all his ways in the baptism service. Then we are joined to our new Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives us liberty.

With this liberty we are set free from slavishly obeying whatever the devil, the world, or our flesh dictates to us. We no longer always have to choose what is best for us and ours. We can be generous with our money, our efforts, our emotions, with every part of us. We can be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful. We can choose to keep God’s Law. If you were to keep the Ten Commandments in all of its dimensions and implications you would be the most loving, upright, and helpful creature.

We are far, far too weak to accomplish this way of living on our own. In fact, it is quite impossible for us to set ourselves free from our slavery to our own desires. You’d find it easier to shove a camel through the eye of a needle. Although it is impossible for us to live this new life of choosing love, nothing is impossible for God. The Holy Spirit is given to those who are baptized. Through his Word he teaches and leads us into the glorious liberty that we have in Christ.

This maggot sack of our flesh is such, however, that while we live in it we are hampered, harassed, and hindered on every side. We are hounded by unbelief which makes us afraid of opening up and living generously with every part of our lives. Like the Israelites in the desert we are constantly afraid that God’s promised provisions won’t hold out. Accordingly we believe we have to protect ourselves, take for ourselves, live for ourselves; otherwise we will die. The Israelites were always wrong about this though. God will provide. He’s like an endless spring that keeps on bubbling up even unto eternal life.

Consider the very common problem of anger and strife that Jesus speaks about in our Gospel reading. Jesus says that not only is pulling the trigger murder, but also the evil anger of the heart is murder. In fact, if we had to assign guilt to the different parts of the body wouldn’t the evil heart be much more culpable than the trigger finger? The evil heart is the root and the source of the murder. And so we are guilty of breaking the commandment with our heart regardless of whether it gets translated into our finger.

So what can be done against this evil desire of our flesh? How can we be set free? Walk by the Spirit, putting your trust in God. That is not the empty pious phrase it might appear to be at first glace. Trusting in God is the first and indispensable step for being set free from the desires of our flesh. Why do we need to trust God to be set free from anger? It’s because we are vulnerable when we set aside our anger. Anger keeps our defenses up. It prevents us from being abused—or at least not being abused so easily. We don’t want to get hurt.

But another facet of this wonderful liberty into which we have been called in Christ is that we can even choose to suffer, to get hurt. Our flesh is incapable of this. Our life in Christ calls us to this, for Christ says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” What is the cross? Is it not the way that Christ was hurt in love for us and for our good? He freely chose love, putting his trust in the Father’s will. The result was the greatest, highest, most helpful and loving thing that has ever happened.

When we take up our cross as we follow Jesus, we also need to trust God. Otherwise we will not have the courage to reconcile with the brother who has something against us. The pitfalls of reaching out across the divide are so numerous and so painful that our flesh tells us we better stay safe and secure in the fortress of anger we have constructed for ourselves, using one grievance after another to build it.

Imagine reconciling. How can you even begin the conversation? What words will you say? How can you put the words just so that you will be on top and retain your dignity? What if the other party (which is hardly without guilt in the matter) just uses the peace offering as a way to say that they were right all along? You will look like a weak fool! And what if they don’t say they’re sorry? Won’t that tick you off even more? Maybe the whole thing will get worse than it already is!

All these doubts are but a small sample of what we can come up with. And it’s not like our flesh is a complete idiot either. If the goal is to not get hurt, to not be stressed, to not rock the boat, then the reconciliation will probably not even start. But who says that not getting hurt or not being stressed are the best things? Where is that written in the Bible? Faith, hope, and love—these are the best and most fruitful of things. Do not be afraid. That is one of the most common refrains in the Scriptures. God is always telling his people, “Do not be afraid.” Put your trust in the Lord.

God is at work in us, his Christians. He is forgiving us. He is putting to death our flesh. He is raising us with his Holy Spirit. With this work of sanctifying us it is not as though it happens in such a way where we are a hunk of wood or a robot—unfeeling, unchallenged. The Israelites, as they were making their way through the wilderness, most certainly experienced feelings. So we should not be surprised when our flesh kicks up a fuss against us doing things that are difficult or dangerous. But you are not a slave to your flesh, where you have to obey its desires. You can strike out on a new path, where the Law is fulfilled in us. By doing that—no matter what may happen, how much it may hurt, and so on—you must necessarily have 100% certainty that you will be blessed. God will see to that.

I’m sure that you have those relationships in your life that are broken, strained, or tender to the touch. Be reconciled. And here’s my advice: Don’t think about it too much beforehand, otherwise your flesh will talk you out of it. Say a quick prayer for God to help you. Then be courageous in the Lord. He will sustain you. He will equip you.

Then see what adventures the Lord will give you. He will make your feet like the feet of the deer. He will set you on the heights, but you will not fall. He will train your hands for war so that your arms can bend a bow of bronze. He has given you the shield of salvation. His right hand supports you. His gentleness makes you great.

210704 Sermon on 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (Trinity 5) July 4, 2021

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The message of the cross is that Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Jesus brought about a change by his death on the cross.

We have a couple special, theological terms for what happened at the cross: redemption and atonement. With the cross God redeemed us from the devil to whom all human beings belong because of the fall into sin. The sinless Jesus was handed in, thereby all human beings were set free. The devil lost his right to own any human being. This is what is meant by redemption.

The other word for the message of the cross is atonement. To understand this word you can break it apart: at-one-ment. Atonement brings together and makes those who were separated one. The ones who are brought together by Christ’s cross are the righteous, holy, almighty God on the one hand and poor, miserable sinners on the other. The way that these two are brought together is by Jesus paying the penalty for our sin. He who knew no sin became sin. As sin he was punished with all of God’s wrath, all of God’s righteous punishment, for the sins that all human beings have committed. Through faith in Christ we receive the forgiveness that he has worked for the whole world. Although we are otherwise sinful and unclean, we are forgiven and righteous through faith in Jesus.

Christ the crucified is the alpha and the omega of the universe. The world was created through the Word who became flesh in the womb of the virgin Mary. A time is coming and now is when this world will be brought to an end. All things will be brought into subjection under Christ’s feet. The last enemy to be destroyed and placed into subjection is death. This will happen with the great resurrection from the dead. Then all things will be handed over to the Father so that God will be all in all. At the heart and center of this is the crucifixion. Through Christ’s sacrificial death we are reconciled to God, even though we should be his enemies because of our sins.

Christ the crucified is also the alpha and the omega of our lives as Christians. When we are baptized we renounce the devil, and all his works, and all his ways. We are united with Christ by being baptized into his death. We die to sin and are raised to newness of life. Jesus says: “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. Whoever does not believe will be condemned.” This is the beginning of our life as Christians.

The end of our earthly lives as Christians is the same. A blessed, Christian death is where we confess that we are poor, miserable sinners, who have deserved God’s punishment now and eternally in hell because of our sinful thoughts, words and actions. But we pray that God would be merciful to us for the sake of Jesus’s holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. Whoever dies this way, whoever dies with this faith in Christ, will find that the grave is but the door to everlasting life. This is because Jesus was crucified and resurrected.

Christ the crucified is the beginning and the end of our lives as Christian. He is also everything in between. There is no better way to start your day and live your life than to remember that you have been baptized into Christ’s death. You have died to sin and been raised to newness of life. There is no other way to be forgiven and acceptable in God’s sight. Jesus’s cross alone accomplishes this. We live in this daily. It is what makes us Christians.

The word of the cross is the beginning and the end. It claims supremacy over everything. However, it is not the only word. There are a lot of other words. When we get up in the morning we probably think about a lot of other things besides our baptism into Jesus’s death. The other things we think, the other words that we meditate upon, hold out promises that we will be happy if we are obedient to them. To put it into religious language, we believe that we will be blessed by these other words besides Christ and him crucified.

These thoughts might be high or low, respectable or disgusting. Serious people might believe in the power of hard work, thriftiness, and ingenuity. Frivolous people might believe in having a good time, distracting themselves with stimulants and recreation. Idealistic people might believe in the power of the scientific method, democratic government, or economic theories. Everybody believes in their own way of living. They believe that everyone should think and live just like them. The only thing holding us back from happiness, that is, blessedness, is that we have not yet come together, believing in those same things that you believe in.

We all believe in the wisdom and strength of our own thoughts, theories, and plans. If we didn’t believe that our thoughts, theories, and plans were the best, then we wouldn’t hold to them or promote them. We’d believe in something else. Since we believe in the wisdom and strength of our own thoughts we regard the thoughts of others as foolish, impractical, or even downright evil.

Is it really surprising, then, that we hate each other? There’s no way that we are going to come together. This is nothing new. What might be new is that the divisions among us have been deepening. Strife has increased. But everyone’s belief in their own supremacy has caused division from the beginning, from the fall into sin.

This does not mean, however, that there is no right answer. This does not mean that unity is impossible. The word of the cross has brought believers together from the very beginning. Adam and Eve believed in Christ. Among their children, Abel believed in Christ; Cain did not. Cain’s children and grandchildren did not believe in Christ. Seth and his descendants did. They called on the name of the Lord. Thus it has been, is now, and forever will be. Believers in Christ are united in believing that their forgiveness, righteousness, and sanctification is in Christ alone. This sets them apart from everyone who believes in other things.

In our epistle reading Paul is teaching about how people believe in all kinds of different things, but we, as Christians, believe in the message of Christ and him crucified. He says, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. In fact, it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will bring to nothing.’” Sometimes people wonder why others do not believe in Christ’s cross. The answer is simple. They believe that it is foolish and weak. We, on the other hand, believe that it is the power of God—assuming, of course, that we actually believe that.

We can’t always assume that everyone who identifies as a Christian actually believes in the word of the cross. Consider even the occasion of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. He is not writing to a bunch of worldlings who are open enemies of the power of Christ’s cross. He is writing to people who identify as Christians. They are part of the congregation in the town of Corinth. Being part of a congregation is no guarantee that a person believes in Christ’s cross. The Christian’s flesh is just as prone to believe in the power of other things as any unbeliever’s flesh. The devil dresses himself up as an angel of light to deceive Christians into believing in other things—high, spiritual, and important things.

This is what was taking place in Corinth. This congregation was young, energetic, and bold. God gave the members of this congregation many gifts. But the reason why Paul was writing to them is that they were vying and competing with one another over who had the greatest gifts. Factions developed among them. Some followed one guy. Others followed another. The members of the various factions believed that they were the wisest and the strongest. The portion of Paul’s letter that we heard today is where he is bringing them back to what is fundamental: God’s salvation is in Christ’s cross alone.

No one is saved by speaking in tongues. This was an issue in Corinth because God gave this extraordinary gift to some of them and not to others. Those who had it were prone to pride. Those who lacked it were prone to envy. No one is saved by the ability to speak well. This was another gift God had given some of them. Paul indicates that even he was not given this gift to the extent that it was given to others. No one is saved by the gift of generously and sacrificially giving. No one is saved by the gift of good works. No one is saved by anything in one’s self. Whoever will be saved will be saved by one thing that is outside of all of us—by the saving works of Jesus that culminated in his death and resurrection. Although the gifts God gives to Christians are many and various, Christians are united in their confession of Jesus’s death as their sole source of forgiveness and salvation.

This also means that we are equal. We are all from that same class of people called sinners. This is especially important to remember for those Christians who have gained some experience and been given some gifts by God. Our flesh can’t help itself. In our flesh’s desire to believe in anything besides Christ’s cross we can be led astray into believing in spiritual gifts as our assurance of God’s love and acceptance instead of the word of the cross spoken to us, instead of the redemption and atonement that Jesus worked.

It is more pleasant for us to think of ourselves as good Christians who are on our way up—“Oh, the places we might go”—rather than to think of ourselves as foul beggars who are in need of constant, daily forgiveness. It is more pleasant for us to believe that we are wise and that we are strong, than it is to believe that Jesus is the power of God and the wisdom of God. It feels better to believe in ourselves than to believe in Jesus.

But believing in ourselves is to believe in all manner of deceit and falsehoods. The only way that we can be pleased with ourselves is if we tell lies about ourselves. We have to smear on the cosmetics with a spatula to cover over the blemishes. We have to accentuate what we deem to be positive with trumpets and flashing lights. Unfortunately we can get so good at this salesmanship of ourselves to ourselves that we might actually come to believe it. But if we are honest with ourselves, there is no other conclusion we can draw than that we are poor miserable sinners.

There is another option, though. We don’t have to believe in ourselves. Whereas believing in ourselves involves belief in lies, believing in Christ is believing in the truth. The truth is that God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not sent his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved though him. God is pure. His motives are pure. He really means it when he says that sinners have been reconciled to himself by the holy precious blood and the innocent suffering and death of his beloved Son.

Believing in lies never turns out. Eventually the lies have to be exposed. Believing in the truth will not disappoint. Even when it appears that the truth won’t win, that it is foolish or weak, the truth will win out. You will not be disappointed if you believe in the word of the cross. When Christ comes in power and great glory you will know that Jesus is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the center of the universe. Blessed are you if you believe in him.

210620 Sermon on Luke 15:11-32 (Trinity 3) June 20, 2021

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That we already understand forgiveness is something that we can take for granted—particularly as Christians. There is nothing more central to Christianity than the forgiveness of sins. Accordingly, we talk about forgiveness a lot. Since we talk about it a lot, we assume that we must already understand it. But maybe familiarity is not enough to understand forgiveness. For example, if forgiveness is to be forgiveness it seems to need to be somewhat surprising. If it is not surprising, then it turns into something else.

In Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, the prodigal son is forgiven. It is surprising. He was hoping that his father would take him on as a hired hand. Instead he is received back with love and honor. This is a delightful surprise.

But suppose we change the story a little bit. Suppose we have this younger son who has wasted his father’s estate with prodigal living. He’s off at a bar, far away, chatting away with his buddies. He tells them he has to make a trip home: “I’ll just go back to the old man. He’s got plenty of money. He can give me some. I’m his son, after all, and he has to give it to me.” Relationships like this are by no means uncommon—especially with rich kids. Rich kids get a taste of the good life, and they assume that they can always get some more from dear old dad. Sometimes dear old dad gets sick of this and cuts them off.

This, then, is another surprise. The rich kid has certain expectations about what the father will do. He’ll always forgive—that’s just the arrangement that we have in place. Then, all of a sudden, there’s no more forgiveness. But we probably shouldn’t call this forgiveness. Forgiveness that is assumed is not really forgiveness. Probably a better word for this kind of arrangement is abuse. The rich kid abuses his father until the father won’t put up with it anymore.

And sometimes, even when father doesn’t want to put up with it anymore, he can be compelled. Fathers can be weak. If the father tries to cut off the kid, and the kid is psychologically brazen enough, the kid can intimidate and threaten the father—crush the father, if you will—until the father has no other choice but to continue with the gravy train.

What if we tried to do this kind of thing with God? What if we thought of God as a rather weak character who could be bullied into forgiving our sins? Our theology says that God has to forgive. It’s part of the rules. In such a situation a person could assume that it doesn’t matter how much a person sins. God will forgive. He has to.

While this might be what some theologians believe, Jesus plainly teaches something different. You cannot bank on sinning as though you can always count on be forgiven. Jesus says, “Strive to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. Once the master of the house gets up and shuts the door, you will begin to stand outside and knock on the door saying, ‘Lord, open for us!’ He will tell you in reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence and you taught in our streets.’ And he will say, ‘I don’t know where you come from. Depart from me, all you evildoers.’”

God is not like the weak father in our pretend scenario. He cannot be bullied into letting us into heaven. If we haven’t cared one bit that our sins have angered him, then it seems that he won’t care one bit when he bars us from heaven and sends us to hell. The Bible says, “God cannot be mocked.” Therefore we should not take Jesus’s gracious, merciful parable today as though some kind of principle of inexhaustible forgiveness is being laid down that enables me to sin with reckless abandon. If that were what the parable were teaching, then the father would be a ridiculous, lazy, weak coward.  I assure you, God is not like that.

So what is our God like? He is just like he is portrayed in this parable. He is not lazy or weak. He is good, strong, kind, and—let’s not overreact and end up steering into the other ditch—forgiving. The most important thing is that all of the father’s actions are motivated by love. This means that he was not driven by principles or regulations or guilt or fear. He saw his boy and loved him. He acted accordingly. He forgave him and received him back. In fact, the forgiveness happens in the blink of an eye. He does not dwell on whether he should forgive or not forgive. That decision is made in a split second without him even knowing it when he saw him from afar. By the time he had hitched up his robe to start running he had already forgiven him and was now working on receiving him.

Principles and regulations are not at work here. If they were, then the father wouldn’t be able to avoid the very important question of setting a precedent. If he acts this way now, what will happen if he does it again? Guilt, also, is not at work. The man isn’t judging himself. He isn’t judging his son. If he were, then there’d have to be some kind of reckoning, and who knows how that might turn out? Nor is there fear, even though the situation is loaded with pitfalls. What if the son gets the itch again? What if he pawns that ring, that family heir loom, and heads off again? What if the whole relationship turns sour? All these things and more are very reasonable, in a way, but the heart has reasons of its own of which the mind knows nothing. Divine love was in the driver’s seat.

Love is what is primary here. Forgiveness is just a facet of that love. That is what makes the forgiveness genuine. If forgiveness were the only thing, if it were just a matter of cancelling guilt, then we’d be dealing with something else here.

Let me explain. Let’s suppose another alternate scenario. Suppose that the father is as forgiving as all get out. The son comes back and the father immediately gives him a whole new inheritance. He does it all over again, just like before. The son gets penny for penny all that he had wasted. He’s given a blank check. Go and waste it all again to your heart’s content.

I hope that you can see that this “forgiveness” is far from loving. In fact it can be vicious and wrathful. It can be a way of sending people away and keeping people away. They can have the money, they can have the license to do as they please, but they won’t get a single sliver of the person’s heart. This is the kind of thing that Paul talks about in his famous “love chapter:” “If I give away everything I own, and if I give up my body that I may be burned, but do not have love, I am of no use to anyone.”

It is a terrible perversion of Christianity when it is assumed that God’s grace is nothing other than a get-out-of-hell-free card. The debt gets cancelled. You’re off the hook. Then what? Go do it all over again? Live however you want, just don’t forget to take along your get-out-of-hell-free card?

This is not God’s grace. In a way, if it were true, it would  be vicious and wrathful. It would basically be God saying that he doesn’t care about you. Go, live however you want. Have it your way.

God’s grace is such that not only does he forgive, he also receives us as one of his own. We become one of the family. We are given honor like this son in the parable. His filthy rags are replaced with attractive, comfortable clothes. His poverty is taken away with a luxurious ring. He is to sit at the table as a member of the family and eat with them. There are a lot higher and more valuable things that are being dealt with here than mere money. He’s brought back into the family’s confidence, the family’s business.

Jesus once said to his disciples: “You are my friends if you continue to do the things that I instruct you. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you.”

Jesus calls you a friend, a confidant. If there were ever a situation where somebody should be kept out, excluded, it should be in a relationship with Jesus, and, through him, to the God-head. Theoretically and philosophically we should just be content with continuing to exist in our relationship with God. Maybe, just maybe, we can hope that he won’t hold our sins against us.

But not only does he not hold our sins against us, we are brought into everything. All that he has is ours. We hold all things in common with Jesus. God is our father. Mary is our mother. Jesus is our brother. We are brought into the family business. The family business is love and truth. With love and truth we spurn the works of darkness and deceit. We put on the armor of light. We are made more and more like Jesus, our brother. We lay down our lives for our friends. These are some examples of the good works that God has prepared beforehand, that we, his Christians, should walk in them.

Being forgiven, being received for Jesus’s sake, makes all the difference. There is nothing more central to the Christian faith than this forgiveness. But God’s grace doesn’t stop there. Sanctification, God making us holy, is also God’s grace. Without God incorporating us into the family business, forgiveness is alienating. It is merely paying somebody off so as to leave you alone. God does not want to leave us alone. He would like to run to us, embrace us, put a ring on our finger, and a robe to cover us. He would like to kill the fatted calf, feast, and make merry, with us seated beside him. All of this is to say that he would love us.

There are many churches, and some in our own circles as well, who stop short at forgiveness. They sound very Christian. They say that we are all sinners. They say that Jesus died for all. Thus we are all forgiven. These things are all as right as rain. But then they go on to say or imply that this means we have a blank check. All our debts are cancelled, so let’s sin all the more so that grace may abound. Forgiveness is turned into a principle, and they are going to squeeze as much as they can out of this principle to their own advantage.

There’s a lot of truth in what these folks say. We are, indeed, sinners. God, indeed, forgives for Jesus’s sake. These folks like those parts of the Bible. What they are not so excited about is the life that Jesus lays out for his disciples to live—the family business, you might say. That is not what they are hoping for. What they really want is to go live in a far off country. There they can do as they please. Maybe, if the money runs out, they might come back and see dear old dad. Otherwise they are going to keep their distance.

But the Lord our God is a jealous God. He will either have all of you or none of you. He will not just have part of you. There is no element of hell, no pet sin, that we can take with us to heaven, no matter how many times we come to church for the forgiveness of sins. That would be like the younger son secretly eating the nasty carob pods that he brought with him on his journey home instead of eating the nutritious food laid out for him by his father.

It might be scary to think that you have to give up these illicit things that you love so much. But that is a misplaced fear. Just look at your loving Father. He will help you. He knows your weaknesses and sins. Nonetheless, he wants you to be further incorporated and integrated, closer and closer to him. He already holds you in honor. That is for sure. After all, he has caused you to hear this message of his grace and wants you to apply it to yourself.

Money is one thing; the father’s heart is another. God would sooner give you his heart. This gift presupposes forgiveness as you are brought back into the family.

210627 Sermon on Luke 6:32-42 (Trinity 4) June 27, 2021

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