220227 Sermon on Moses and Jesus (Transfiguration) February 27, 2022

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God did many important things through Moses. God did many “new” things through Moses. We are not accustomed to thinking about things being “new” when it comes to God, and that is not a bad attitude to have. When it comes to God, new things are probably lies, coming from the father of lies, who loves to deal in all things spiritual. Nevertheless, with Moses God did all kinds of new things.

First of all, the number and power of miracles that are done through Moses is a definite difference from the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God did miracles for them too, but they were much more connected to their family life. God caused Abraham and Sarah to conceive and bear Isaac even though they were both extremely old. God gave Isaac his wife at the well. God caused Jacob to flourish with his flock of sheep when he lived with his father-in-law Laban.

These signs and wonders should not be poo-pooed. Every time the sun rises and gives its warmth, every time a flower blooms, God’s wonder-working power is what is behind it. Every day we are the beneficiaries of God working and working. We would have a better sense of what is going on if we understood that miracles happen every day and every moment as God does his work, but that is not how we normally understand the word “miracle.” We take the word “miracle” to mean that God does something unusual. He doesn’t use the ways and means that we are accustomed to him using.

With Moses God does things that are very unusual. God called him to be his servant at the burning bush. From that time forward there is practically one unusual thing after another. God does signs through him before Pharaoh. God pours out one bowl of wrath after another on the nation of Egypt until Pharaoh decides to let his slaves go. God opens up the Red Sea for his people to pass through on dry ground, but Pharaoh and his army and destroyed by those same waters. He rains down bread from heaven and makes quail fly into camp with the wind. He causes water to flow out of the rock. God manifests his glory with the pillar of cloud and fire. When he takes up residency at Mt. Sinai it is with fire, smoke, thunder, earthquakes, and all manner unusual things. God sends fiery serpents. He opens up the ground to swallow his enemies. There is just one thing after another that God does.

How can we explain this? One explanation might be that it was necessary. Pharaoh had to have his stubborn will broken. The Israelites needed to be gathered together as a nation numbering many hundreds of thousands. (God wasn’t just dealing with a family anymore.) Plus the Israelites themselves were stiff-necked and hard-hearted. They had to have their own will broken over and over again, and this was done by God’s miracles.

So the number and power of miracles that God does through Moses is something that was unprecedented. These sorts of miracles have not been done since that time, as our reading from Deuteronomy said.

The other thing that is new with Moses is all manner of religious things. God reveals his name to Moses at the burning bush. God gives his people their first festival, which is Passover. God gave his people a succinct statement of his Law with the Ten Commandments. God instituted worship for the Israelites down to the smallest details. He gave them the tabernacle, sacrifices, blessings, and the Aaronic priesthood to carry this all out.

From the time of Moses onward God blessed his people and they returned their prayers and praises according to the way God set things up through Moses. The Old Testament is dominated by what God did through Moses. The word “testament” or “covenant” is about an arrangement between two or more parties. God made an arrangement with his people whom he had chosen. The most extensive covenant was set in place through Moses. Even at the time of the New Testament, all the people we hear about—including Jesus—are still doing things that God set in place with Moses.

With the coming of Jesus, however, we have someone who is greater than Moses. Hebrews says, “Jesus is worthy of greater glory than Moses, in the same way that the builder of a house has more honor than the house.” The apostle John says, “The Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were put into place through Jesus Christ.”

Jesus performed miracles. Jesus’s miracles were different than Moses’s. Moses did not have power within himself to bring about miracles. The source of that power was God. Moses was the means through which God worked. With Jesus we are dealing with God himself. He is true man, born of the virgin Mary, and true God, begotten of the Father from eternity. Jesus performed miracles because he is God. This is hugely different than how it was with Moses.

Jesus’s miracles lack no power, but Jesus’s miracles are at the same time deeper and more homespun. Jesus deals with the most fundamental aspects of our lives as human beings. He casts out countless demons. Our willingness to submit to the devil goes all the way back to the first disobedience in the Garden. There is no more fundamental problem for us than that we are born in subjection to the devil until and unless Christ sets us free.

Jesus’s miracles also tend to have to do with people’s domestic lives. He raises the dead on account of the grieving members of the family. He restores sight, hearing, and speaking so that life may be lived to the full. Most of Jesus’s miracles are kind of like the miraculous things that God did at the time of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—things connected with daily life.

And, of course, Jesus does things that are of supreme importance religiously speaking. It is in Jesus that we have been given the authority to become children of God. Jesus became one of us. Thereby we are given the gift to become like him. The Son took on our flesh and blood. Having joined himself to us we are given what he has. This is fully and completely communicated to everyone who is baptized. It is by baptism that we are born again by the water and the Holy Spirit to be a child of God—not figuratively speaking, but literally. “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved,” Jesus said. “Whoever does not believe will be condemned.”

Jesus does not institute a whole raft of statutes and regulations like God did at Mt. Sinai. The statutes and regulations at Mt. Sinai take up well over a dozen chapters in Exodus and the whole book of Leviticus. Instead Jesus leaves behind a simple ceremony, the Lord’s Supper. Although this ceremony is extremely simple—so simple that a seven year old understands perfectly what is going on—it is also extremely profound. It is so profound that most people, and even most Christians, can’t bring themselves to believe it.

Jesus took bread, gave thanks, and distributed it to the disciples. He said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” A seven year old understands that Jesus is speaking about his flesh which was crucified on the cross. Then Jesus gave them a cup of wine. He said, “This cup is the new testament—the new arrangement between God and you. This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins. As often as you drink it, do so in remembrance of me.”

A seven year old who was unfamiliar with the Christian church came to a service not too long ago and asked his grandma, “Are they drinking blood?” The correct answer is, “Yes. That is Jesus’s blood, in, with, and under the wine. It is the blood that was shed as the atonement for our sins.”

Jesus leaves behind this simple ceremony. He says that we should do it often. When we do it we should remember him. In remembering Jesus we remember how he fulfilled God’s Law for us—the Law that otherwise cries out for our condemnation and punishment. By Jesus fulfilling the Law for us we are freed from death.

Paul says, “As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” When Christ comes again we will enter into the fullness of our promised land. Our promised land is not the land of Canaan, as it was for Moses and the Israelites. Our promised land is the place that Jesus has prepared for us.

Jesus says in John 14: “Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have said to you, ‘I go to prepare a place for you?’ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you along to myself, so that where I am, you may be also.”

Moses was a great man. God hammered together a people into a nation through him. Jesus is beyond orders of magnitude greater. He makes poor miserable sinners into holy children of God. How does he do this? By the sacrifice of his body and his blood on the cross. This is obviously at the very heart of the sacrament that he has left behind for us. He, in this sacrament, comforts us with the forgiveness of our sins. When we believe what he says in this sacrament, we may be sure that we have exactly what he says.

The cross also looms large in Jesus’s transfiguration that we heard about this morning. However, it is mentioned so unassumingly that it is easy to overlook. When Peter, James, and John see Jesus transfigured he is with two men, Moses and Elijah. Luke says that he is speaking to them about his “departure which he was going to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem.” What Luke literally says is that Jesus is speaking with them about his “exodus” that he is about to fulfill in Jerusalem.

The term “exodus” is loaded, particularly when Moses is involved as he is here at the mount of transfiguration. Moses led the exodus of God’s people from their slavery under Pharaoh. All the signs and wonders that we have been talking about were connected with that whole exodus process.

Jesus has the greater and more fundamental exodus in mind. The exodus Jesus brings about is the exit from slavery under the devil. Through Jesus we become not only God’s people, but even his children. We do not just enter a promised bit of geography, but the eternal dwelling God has prepared for us. We will not have our interactions with God through a tent or a temple. We will see him face to face. Without a shadow of a doubt, Jesus’s exodus is greater than Moses’s exodus.

To say the least, however, not everyone would agree with me about this. If we put the grand and magnificent miracles that God did through Moses on one side of the scale, and Jesus’s exodus—his mistreatment, suffering, death, and resurrection—on the other, our reason would go with the miracles done through Moses every time. Our reason is impressed with the manipulation of earthly forces. But our reason is very foolish when it comes to the things of God. The biblical record bears this out even with the events that we have been talking about.

God shook the earth and all the powers thereof at the time of Moses. Our reason says that this should work like a charm for making people believers and obedient. But what were the Israelites like? Over and over and over they disbelieve. They want to return to their slavery. Despite the power and the glory they are constantly breaking the first and most important commandment. God many times over says that they are a stiff-necked people. This is not the greater exodus.

The greater exodus is through Jesus. Grace and truth are established through him. The gift of the Holy Spirit, who creates faith and softens our stony heart, is a greater miracle than what God did at the time of Moses. You are beneficiaries of Jesus’s exodus. You have been made into God’s children, having been born again by the water and the Word. Embrace this life of fellowship that Jesus has established between God and you. Believe the promises. Wait for their fulfillment.

220220 Sermon on Genesis 45:3-15 (Epiphany 7C) February 20, 2022

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The shortest creed in Christendom is this: I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord. Jesus being our Lord is a wonderful thing. He is King of kings and Lord of lords, but he is so different than all these other lords. All these other lords are very eager to “lord it over us.” That is to say, they’d like to sit at the head of the table. They’d like tributes and praises brought to them. They’d like to skim as much cream off the top as they can get away with.

When we come to learn about Christ being our Lord we somewhat have to unlearn what we otherwise know about the word “Lord,” because Jesus is so different. As he himself says, “I did not come to be served, but to serve, and give my life as a ransom for many.” Luther, in his Small Catechism, penned perhaps the most beautiful words he ever wrote as he spoke about Jesus being our Lord in the second article of the Creed:

I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sin, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. Why did Jesus do this? So that I may be his own. He purchased and won me so that I may be his own.

“No greater love has any man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” “God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” In order to lift us out of all our futile idolatry, in order to save us from the corruption and rottenness that must come for every person, Christ redeemed us. Christ purchased us so that we may be his own.

By Christ making us his own we are lifted above all the things of this world. When Jesus is your Lord you can sweat the small stuff. Simply being able to identify the things of this world as being “small stuff” shows that a person has made a lot of progress in their understanding as a Christian. What we are to understand as being “small stuff” is what other people would take to be “big stuff”—“huge stuff” even—where you can hardly get any huger.

Take, for example, Joseph, that wonderful man. Joseph was his father’s favorite son. That wasn’t Joseph’s fault. Nonetheless, that didn’t prevent his other brothers from being jealous of him. One day, when his brothers see him coming to check up on them according to their father’s wishes, their hatred for him burns white hot. They hate him so much that they start to plan to murder him. Joseph’s oldest brother, Rueben, barely saved his life, but the end result was nothing to write home about. The brothers sold Joseph to some passing traders. He ended up being a slave in Egypt.

We’ll fast forward through all the twists and turns that happened to Joseph while he was in Egypt. You can read about that for yourself. Let’s talk about our reading this morning. This is many years later. Joseph is with his brothers again, but, my, how the tables have turned! Joseph has come to be second in command in Egypt. He is rich and powerful. His brothers are poor and destitute. How does Joseph treat them? Unbelievably graciously. Joseph had every option available to him for payback. If nothing else he could have thrown them into prison to rot there for the rest of their days. And they would have deserved that.

But instead of hurting them like they had hurt him Joseph comforts them. His brothers brought about unimaginable misery to him, but this wonderful man says, “Don’t be upset or angry with yourselves.” Note what has been made into “small stuff” for Joseph: attempted murder, kidnapping, false imprisonment. Joseph doesn’t wait for his brothers to be sorry. He doesn’t wait for them to ask for forgiveness. He is lord. He is the one who is working. He’s working at comforting his brothers: “Don’t be upset or angry with yourselves. God sent me ahead of you in order to preserve life. You weren’t the ones who sent me down here. God sent me down here so that good may come.”

This is so unusual that Joseph’s brothers never seem to have been completely convinced that he was being genuine. It sounded too good to be true. Nobody’s that gracious. Nobody’s that forgiving. They were prepared for the hammer to drop after their father died. But Joseph meant every word he said.

He let go of a grudge that you would think he had every right to nurse and grow until it became fully grown into a fit of wrath. That grudge ended up starving to death because Joseph didn’t nurse it. The result is that God’s love had its way. It is extremely beautiful. Joseph, like Christ, does not give people what they deserve. He gives and gives like a limitless fountain.

Here you should notice another aspect to Jesus Christ being your Lord. We’ve already talked about how this strange Lord Jesus slaves away and serves. He does this so that you may be his own. He just wants you to be with him. He wants to be with you. But there’s more to this gift. He doesn’t redeem you so that you can go right back to serving the devil. He doesn’t die for you so that you can nurse grudges and let people “have it” whenever the opportunity arises to do so. He has redeemed you so that you may become like him.

Luther’s explanation that I referred to earlier goes on: Jesus Christ is my Lord who has redeemed me so that I may be his own. Then it continues: “so that I may be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness; just as he is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity.”

We are Jesus’s own. He wants us to live in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness. Why does he want this? Simply because it is good. It is so unbelievably, surpassingly good! Look at the goodness in Joseph’s actions towards his brothers. How can he treat them that way? It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the Holy Spirit’s working. It is a miracle. It is no less of a miracle than splitting the Red Sea in two or the feeding of the 5,000. Flesh and blood wants payback. The Holy Spirit makes us sweat the “small stuff,” which, in the eyes of the world is anything but “small.”

This is how Jesus’s words in our Gospel reading must be understood also. Jesus says: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other too. If someone takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes away your things, do not demand them back.”

When we hear these words we pretty much think, “Uh oh. What am I in for now? What am I being asked to do? What’s going to happen to me and to all my stuff?” There’s a part of us—it’s our Old Adam, the way we were born by nature—that thinks this all sounds perfectly dreadful. We don’t want to be troubled. We want to be comfortable. Jesus’s words simply can’t be understood as anything but irrational and impossible with this frame of mind.

How you should think about these things, however, is that they are opportunities for goodness to flow down from God, through us, to others. You must see how what happened with Joseph was good. Of course the kidnapping, enslavement, imprisonment, lies, and so on and so forth were not good. These are extremely sinful and harmful. None of us have endured anything close to this kind of harm. But Joseph overcame all these evils with good.

Other options were available for Joseph. He would have been within his rights, so to speak, if he were no Christian, to hate his brothers. The damage that his brothers inflicted upon him was too great to ever be repaid. Joseph could never get back those many, many years that he was removed from his beloved father. With the money and power that he acquired in Egypt he had enough resources to make life miserable for his foul, unlovable brothers.

The way that the devil likes us all to be is continuously stirred up against one another. But he likes it even better when we have ironclad, unassailably good motives behind our acts of revenge. Hurt is caused by one person. Then the other person has the full and complete license to take back eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Revenge sometimes masquerading and justice goes round and round until the fires of hatred burn white hot. One party blows on the fire from one side. The other blows on it from the other. And when they both feel good and righteous about their hatred, I don’t see how it can ever stop except through death—death of the individuals or the death of the relationship.

Otherwise the only way that this tit for tat kind of thing can stop is when one or the other party quits throwing fuel on the fire. That is to say, the one party allows itself to be defrauded, or hurt, or shamed, or what have you. If one cheek is struck, the other is not withheld.

Our Old Adam really hates this kind of thing. Our Old Adam might be willing to do this sort of thing with our kids or someone that is really close to us (but even there I’m not so sure). Our Old Adam would sooner die than do this with one of our enemies. Here’s why: Because this would mean that the other party would win! They’d get what they want. We’d lose. And from a certain point of view this reasoning is ironclad and irrefutable.

Do you know that there are still a great many people who think this very same thing about Jesus Christ our Lord? He lost. He didn’t free the Jews from their enslavement to the Romans. He didn’t reform the Jewish church by kicking out all those evildoers who put him to death. There is a way of looking at Jesus where he is extremely weak and passive. He was beaten, mocked, spit upon, crucified and died. And he just took it. What a waste!

But, of course, this was the way that Jesus overcame evil. He was like a sponge. He sucked up all that evil into himself so that he “became sin,” as Paul shockingly says of him. He didn’t return evil for evil. He took evil into himself and gave blessings in return. Joseph is a chip off the old block in this regard. He also absorbed evil and gave blessing.

This is good, beautiful, and at the very heart of Christ’s kingdom into which we have been brought. This is the way of life that overcomes the devil, shuts down his white hot forges and furnaces of hatred, and brings balm and healing to our sore and inflamed relationships. This is glorious, just as our crucified and risen Lord Jesus is glorious. It radiates with the love of God the Father. We are to be merciful, just as he is merciful.

The shortest creed in Christendom is: I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord. There are two parts to that lordship. First he purchases and wins me so that I may be his own. Then he would have us live and serve in his kingdom. Living in Christ’s kingdom is hard on our Old Adam, to say the least. In fact, as the Bible itself days, there’s a crucifixion that takes place. But there is also the promise of the resurrection. What is resurrected is holy, good, and beautiful.

220213 Sermon on Luke 6:17-26 (Epiphany 6C) February 13, 2022

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How did Jesus’s words strike you this morning? “Blessed are you who are poor, because yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, because you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, because you will laugh. Blessed are you whenever people hate you because of the Son of Man.”

Then, on the other hand: “Woe to you who are rich, because you are receiving your comfort now. Woe to you who are well fed now, because you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, because you will be mourning and weeping. Woe to you when all people speak well of you.”

How did these words strike you?

Unfortunately, they probably didn’t strike you very hard. We are lazy. These words are hard. Jesus is saying something that sounds like the very opposite of how we naturally think. And so, like a math problem you don’t know how to solve, you might look at it for a few seconds, and then push it aside. We can’t understand it. And it’s not our fault. According to our customs, if something is said, but not understood, then it is always the speaker’s fault. The hearers are never held responsible for their lack of effort. If the speaker wanted to be understood he should have said it better. So it’s Jesus’s fault.

However, we won’t even let our thinking get that far. That conclusion might come around to bite us. We might be held responsible for coming to the conclusion that Jesus just isn’t a very good teacher. So we just mentally push it aside without further ado.

This is a simple, common way to make Jesus’s words have no effect. There is another, more sophisticated way to deal with Jesus’s words. If you can’t figure it out and you stare at it like a math puzzle, who is there better to turn to than an expert? Call a theologian. They can turn Jesus’s extremely plain words into something a little less definite. They can give us some wiggle room. A couple very handy tools that the theologians have in their tool bag are principles and distinctions. By applying principles and distinctions he can probably shape and mold Jesus’s words into whatever you might want to have those words say.

So, with the text at hand, a theologian might immediately point out that here we are dealing with something that is quite unworkable. It doesn’t fit in with what we already know. Jesus’s words can be taken to mean that being poor, hungry, sad, and not well liked is the way that a person can earn his or her way into heaven. On the other hand, no one is allowed to have nice things, nice food, good times, or lots of friends. Hell is the reward for these things.

This, of course, is not what Jesus actually says, but, close enough right? We know that it is not necessarily a sin to be rich or well-fed or well-liked. We especially know that the opposite of these things doesn’t get us any closer to heaven. The price that is needed to get into heaven is much costlier than that—the very blood of God is what is necessary. And so Jesus’s plain words get pitted against other truths in such a way where what Jesus says is emptied of its meaning. The lawyer-like handling of his stark words make them say hardly anything at all. Or, if the theologian is really good, he might even manage to make them sound something like the very opposite. Instead of “Blessed are the poor,” for example, you might get “Blessed are the rich,” “so long as they give their fair share in the offering plate.”

But I’m not against doing a lot of learning when it comes to God’s Word. How could I be? I’ve spent many years and many thousands of dollars to learn principles and distinctions. Even with the words that we are considering today, it’s helpful to have someone lead you into understanding them. The assumed meaning can be too hard so that we push them aside in the hopes that we won’t be responsible for having heard them.

That won’t do if we wish to be Jesus’s disciples. Note the way Jesus begins this talk. Luke says, “Jesus lifted his eyes to his disciples and said, ‘Blessed are the poor,’” and so on. These words aren’t meant for all people everywhere. They would never accept them. These words are meant for those who want to be his disciples, that they might learn from them. So my goal is not to undo Jesus’s words, nor can I really persuade you of them. Most people won’t be persuaded. But I hope to help you understand them so that you can embrace them as something good, which they truly are.

Toward that end, I think there is one huge factor that prevents us from hearing the good in Jesus’s words. That factor is fear. Fear is a big problem for us. It made its entrance into this world when Adam and Eve rebelled against God. Before that they were not afraid. They could always turn to God. After that fear would never completely leave them so long as they lived in this flesh. They and we shouldn’t fear. If God is for you, who or what can be against you? But that requires faith that God is actually for us. “Who knows?” we think. “Maybe he will let us down.”

Do you know what won’t ever let us down? Money. You can’t ever have too much money. Money is the most useful and versatile little devil you ever did meet. It is for good reason that Luther says in his Large Catechism that Mammon is the commonest idol on earth. Jesus blasts a broadside against this idol when he says, “Blessed are you who are poor, because yours is the kingdom of heaven.” Then, on the other hand, “Woe to you who are rich, because you are receiving your comfort now.”

That’s bad enough, but, I’m sorry, it gets even worse: “Blessed are you who hunger now, because you will be satisfied,” and, “Woe to you who are well-fed now, because you will be hungry.” How often have any of us have been hungry involuntarily? How often have we been hungry because we couldn’t afford to buy it? We maybe even haven’t imagined such a desperate situation for ourselves. I can imagine, though, that if this were to come to pass we might long and plead for money with our whole heart: “Pretty, pretty please! Just a little more money!”

But it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. We mourn when we can’t afford this or that. If only we had just a little more money we could get a car that doesn’t break down. We could take a trip to somewhere fun. I’m bored to tears, and I’m sick to death of this scraping by. I want some good times. Jesus says, “Blessed are you who weep now, because you will laugh.” And, on the other hand, “Woe to you who laugh now, because you will be mourning and weeping.”

The overall message that we tell ourselves is that we can never have enough money. It ticks all the boxes. It solves all kinds of problems. We tell ourselves that of all the gods that we could choose from so as to worship it, there’s nothing like money. Jesus disagrees. He flatly, plainly says that this god is going to let you down. You might think that  you have it pretty good now, but you won’t later. On the other hand, if you leave money behind as a god, if you trust in the Lord your God, then there will not be anything that you have given up for Jesus’s sake that will not be restored to you 100fold. But it is hard, you might say impossible, for us to believe that because we are afraid.

The reason why we are afraid is because that’s what happens when the gods, that is to say, the things that we have trusted in are brought to nothing. Whatever we take to be stable and reliable, when that is taken away, we become very afraid. The thought, for example, of the end of the world is very frightening. If the sun didn’t come up this morning—the moon, the stars, the tides, everything that we have taken to be reliable and predictable were no longer reliable and predictable—we might faint in fear.

But what does Jesus say that we should do when we see these things beginning to take place? He says we should lift up our heads, shoulders back, and start looking. Jesus is coming. Our redemption is coming; our complete and final deliverance from evil is coming. Those who are looking for this—looking for Jesus—will laugh and go out leaping like calves from the stall. Those who have believed in other gods will be horrified at the utter failure of the gods that they had believed in.

They won’t take too good of a shine to the one true God either. They might wonder, “Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you warn us?”

And, of course, you know the answer. How could Jesus be any plainer in the words of his sermon? If there is a failure here, it isn’t on the part of the speaker. Jesus is plain as plain can be. The failure is on the part of the listener. They didn’t listen because they didn’t want to listen. They wanted to keep all their stuff. None of us can say that we really want to listen because we are so predisposed to idolatry. We think our idolatry is going to work like a charm. Trusting in God, on the other hand, who knows?

So we need some encouragement if we are to embrace Jesus’s words as our own. We need some encouragement with emphasis on the middle part of the word “encouragement,” which is, “courage.” We have to fight against our fear. Our fear makes us run for cover. We can find our comfort any number of various gods—the bottle, the fridge, our wealth, the progress of civilization, what have you.

The one we should run to for comfort, however, is our God. Psalm 130 says, “Out of the depths have I cried to you O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.” Our anchor that is to hold in the veil is Christ, the solid rock on which we stand. All other ground is sinking sand.

Our Lord Jesus has died for us and been raised for us. As you trust in him do not be afraid of the size of the wave that is coming towards you. That is to say, do not let the circumstances of life turn you away from God, away from his will and his commandments, to run after other sources of meaning and comfort. Instead, trust his promises.

You have money today. That’s all well and good. Thank God for it, because that’s who it comes from. Tomorrow you might need to give it away. Today you laugh. Praise God! That’s such a precious gift from him. Tomorrow you might be mourning.

With all the changes of life Christ, the rock, does not change. There is no wave so high that might come towards you which you cannot survive. Even that wave that comes crashing down on you so as to snuff out your very life and breath—it’s no matter for the one who trusts in Jesus.

I’m going to conclude by reading Jesus’s words one more time. Jesus’s words are good words. They are for you, his disciples. As you listen, keep in mind the way that Jesus overcomes everything for us—even those things that we are afraid of.

Jesus lifted up his eyes to his disciples and said:

Blessed are you who are poor,

because yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who hunger now,

because you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now,

because you will laugh.

Blessed are you whenever people hate you,

and whenever they exclude and insult you

and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy because of this: Your reward is great in heaven! The fact is, their fathers constantly did the same things to the prophets.

But woe to you who are rich,

because you are receiving your comfort now.

Woe to you who are well fed now,

because you will be hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now,

because you will be mourning and weeping.

Woe to you when all people speak well of you,

because that is how their fathers constantly treated the false prophets. 

 

 

220206 Sermon on Luke 5:1-11 (Epiphany 5C) February 6, 2022

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Everyone has something that he or she wants. Everybody’s calling has its own challenges and disappointments. We take it as a given that not everything is going to go right all the time. It would be quite a surprise if all of a sudden all those things that we want were suddenly to fall into our lap.

This is what happened to Peter. He was a fisherman together with at least three of the other apostles—his brother Andrew, and James and John. Being a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee was probably not the most lucrative of jobs. The Sea of Galilee is a fairly small body of water. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for expansion. So it might have been a kind of hand to mouth sort of existence.

On the night before Jesus asked to come into his boat in order to preach to the people who were on the shore Peter had been out trying to catch fish. He had had little success. So they had called it a day and were washing up their nets. He wasn’t overly excited about going fishing again with Jesus. But, who knows? Might as well give it a shot.

Peter, like all people, would have had some mental picture of success. There was some number of fish that he knew would pay the expenses. He knew what would turn a profit. If he got a whole bunch there would have been things that he would like to buy. That picture was completely exceeded, however, by what Jesus brought into his nets and into his boat. The nets were straining under the load. His boat, as well has his partners’ boat, were so weighed down that they started to sink.

Peter could have responded to all of this by saying something like, “Gee whiz, mister, thanks a lot! I’ll put you on my speed-dial.” Then he could take his haul, sort it, count it, and laugh all the way to the bank. Flush with cash he could buy those things that he had been wanting to buy for so long. Jesus gave him exactly what he had been hoping for.

But, as you know, this is not what Peter did. The only way his actions can be explained is that he was lifted out of the normal course that he otherwise would have taken by none other than the Holy Spirit. We often think that unbelievers are nasty, dark individuals. I suppose they can be, but those are the outliers. Most unbelievers are trying to make a living for themselves, raise their kids, and make memories. Being an unbeliever is what is normal. Being a believer is what is unusual.

Peter’s actions are unusual. He loses interest in the fish and suddenly becomes very interested in Jesus. Behind his humble words of “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord,” is a heart that is hoping for the opposite. He doesn’t feel worthy to be with Jesus, but there is nothing he would like more than to be with Jesus. And Jesus does not disappoint him. He tells him, “Do not be afraid.” Then he adds, “From now on you will be catching people.” Peter used to catch fish. Now he will be catching people.

Finally Luke says that when they reached the shore with their boats, Peter and those who were with him left everything and followed Jesus. This means that they left behind all that wealth that they had had in their mind’s eye as the very picture of success.

It’s as though Peter could have been singing one of our hymns: “What is the world to me With all its vaunted pleasures? When You and You alone, Lord Jesus are my treasure? You only dearest Lord, my soul’s delight shall be. You are my peace, my rest. What is the world to me?”

Although Peter’s actions are unusual, in one sense, at least, his actions, worked by the Holy Spirit, are eminently practical and reasonable. What is the world with all its vaunted pleasures? What would it benefit a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his soul? We are so attracted and crave the things that have been created. But behind all that is the Creator. If the creature or the created thing is good, doesn’t the Creator have to be that much better?

And, of course, he is. Let us not forget what God is like. Those instances in the Bible when God partially reveals his glory should be of the highest interest to us. Things will not always be as they are now, as Jesus lives and reigns quietly through his Word and Sacraments from the right hand of God the Father. One day Jesus will come in power and great glory to judge the living and the dead. Then we won’t have the created things. We won’t even have our clothes. All the created things that have given us comfort will be no more. Only the One who created all those comfortable things will be there in his full splendor. How vitally important it will be at that time to have been given faith in our Lord Jesus Christ who has reconciled us to God. At that time him being our friend and our brother will be more important than a kettle of fish. So it’s not like Peter’s desire to be right with God is unreasonable or impractical.

But we are pretty clever with our reason, especially when it comes to turning things to our own advantage, so we might come up with a third option. It would be foolhardy to just say, “Thanks for the fish Jesus,” and go shopping. On the other hand it seems a little extreme to just leave all that money sitting in the boat and following after Jesus. How about a third option where we could have both? Maybe we can cash that big fat check and, in some sense, also follow Jesus.

I plan to show you how, according to God’s Word, this option that appears to be ever so reasonable won’t work out as we hope it would. Before I do that, I have to admit that there is something to it that is true.

We have been made by God to be creatures who require food and drink, clothing and shoes, house and home, wife and children, and so on. To leave absolutely every created thing behind in our pursuit of the Creator would not be pleasing to God. That would be putting God to the test. We need money and goods. To do otherwise would be like throwing yourself off from the pinnacle of the Temple, relying on the angels to save you, when there’s a perfectly good set of stairs that you can walk down. Again, if God wanted to feed us by flying a roasted chicken into our mouths, he could surely do that, but the ordinary way he works is that we do this is by working, buying, cooking, and so on.

But there’s a big difference between surviving and thriving. We should see to our needs in order to survive while having our sights set on the Creator. The problem is that we don’t just want to survive, with our Lord Jesus being our treasure. We want to thrive. We want an abundance of created things. We are no different than the Israelites in the wilderness. They soon grew tired of manna and water. They remembered the cucumbers, melons, and garlic that they used to enjoy in Egypt.

While they were eating their bread from heaven and drinking their water from the Rock the Israelites were the supreme people on earth. They were blessed beyond measure, far above every other nation on earth, because they were a nation of priests. They were a people who lived in God’s presence and thrived on the holiness that he communicated to them. They were surviving with the Lord as their God. But what did they want to do? Over and over and over and over again they want to kill Moses and head back to their old lord Pharaoh. In Egypt, at least, they had something decent to eat.

I’m sure that if you took a poll among those Israelites they all would have agreed that God was God. They were all for acknowledging him and keeping him on speed-dial even if they had gone back to Egypt. But where was their heart? It’s obvious to see the truth of Jesus’s saying: “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.” Even though Jesus clearly says that no one can serve both God and mammon, that’s never stopped us from trying.

So it was, also, when the Israelites came to settle in the promised land. In the histories recorded in the Bible, and in the prophets’ preaching, you hear about their idolatry. Folks often assume that they turn completely to Baal or to Ashtoreth. That is absolutely not the case! The Israelites never saw themselves as rejecting the Lord their God. In fact they even named their kids these extremely pious names like “Jonathan,” which means, “The Lord gives,” or “Joshua,” which means, “The Lord saves,” and so on. The very names of their children proclaimed the praises of the Lord.

But they also wanted to thrive. Thriving meant that they had to be practical. The way to get ahead in life is not by putting all your eggs in one basket. Do don’t drop your membership in the Lord’s church, but riches can be had by following the practices of Baal, Ashteroth, or Molech. Plus the entertainment that is offered at these places of worship ain’t half bad either, if you know what I mean. So don’t be stupid. Don’t drop your membership or you might go to hell. But there’s no harm in making sure you don’t miss out on the good things of life. This dual allegiance to both God and idols is what God complains about so bitterly. The Lord our God is a jealous God.

Among us, also, we are in very bad shape. God, for most people, is just an insurance policy that is supposed to bail you out from going to hell. But even in the church conditions are not much better. What people really want for their kids is for them to thrive. They want them to be prosperous and successful. To have a kid not get a good education, not get a good job, this is horrible! Tragedy of tragedies! Catechesis, growth in faith, practicing prayer, living as Christians regardless of the consequences—these are side dishes. They’re good side dishes. I don’t know of any parents who don’t want their kids to be actively participating in church, but they’re side dishes just the same. What is really important is that they are good citizens with good jobs and that they make many happy memories.

So if we had to vote between a couple boatloads of money on the one hand or catching men alive for the kingdom of God on the other, unfortunately I know which would win. What good will catching men do anyone? The salvation of the fellow sinners is pretty low on the priority list. “Have the pastor do it. That’s what we pay him for. Meanwhile, let’s get busy thriving!”

Who’s the god here though? What do people believe in for their happiness? What are their greatest ambitions? It isn’t the one and only true God. God is hardly more than an assumption. Nobody is getting ready to meet the one whom Isaiah saw in the temple, high and lifted up. The voice of the created seraphim made the foundations of the threshold shake. What could that Creator do?

We must not be short-sighted with our lives. We only live 70 years, or, by reason of strength, 80. Whatever we might cling to in this life inevitably rots and decays. Folks could shovel your casket full of stuff. It will do you no good. These fake gods stink. Jesus has come to redeem you from them, so that you may know the true God.

You are not in too terribly different of a situation than Peter. God has not called you nor even me to be an apostle. But he has indeed called you to have a higher conception of life than earthly riches, power, or glory. He calls you to know him, for Jesus to be your treasure, and for you to catch other people alive, just as you yourself have been caught.