230813 Sermon on Peter walking on water (Pentecost 11) August 13, 2023

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“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”

Let’s begin by setting the scene. Our Gospel reading today picks up where last week’s reading left off. Last week Jesus fed the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. Immediately after that, as we heard in today’s reading, Jesus sent the disciples off in a boat on the sea of Galilee. Jesus went up on a mountain by himself to pray. He was praying by himself well into the night.

While Jesus was praying, the disciples were in the boat, but the wind was giving them trouble. The wind was making big waves. The wind was blowing against the boat. The wind was whistling in their ears. They were out there all night long, battling that wind. The fourth watch of the night finally came, which in our time would be somewhere between 3 AM and 6 AM.

It was at this time that Jesus came towards the disciples in the boat walking on the water. The disciples must have been very tired, given what time it was. They had to have been frustrated that their journey was not going well. When they see Jesus they don’t recognize him. They thought he was a ghost. And that’s understandable. People can’t walk on water.

So try to put yourselves in the disciples’ shoes. This was a very unpleasant, even dangerous situation. It’s dark. The wind’s howling. The waves are crashing. They’re probably trying to keep the bow of the boat into the wind so that the bow can cut through the oncoming waves instead of being swamped by them. Then, to top it all off, there’s a stinking ghost. What else can go wrong?

Jesus’s words then break into the darkness, the wind, the confusion. He says, “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” It is good to spend a little time here on Jesus’s words. The first thing that Jesus says is, “Take heart.” That means, “Be courageous.” The disciples were in trouble. Jesus tells them to have courage.

Why should they have courage? Jesus says, “It is I.” With the words, “It is I,” certainly Jesus is telling the disciples that he is no ghost. But Jesus might also be saying something more here too. What it says in Greek is: “Ego eimi.” Maybe some of you have heard that before. “Ego” is Greek for “I.” “Eimi” is Greek for “am.” So “ego eimi” means “I am.”

What is the significance of Jesus saying, “I am”? Perhaps you recall God identifying himself to Moses at the burning bush. Moses wanted to know what name he should give to the Israelites when they ask him who sent him. God responds, “I am who I am. Tell them that ‘I am’ has sent you.” “I am” is a name for God. Here Jesus says, “I am.”

So although Jesus doesn’t say many words, the few words he does say are powerful: “Be courageous. I am. Do not be afraid.” “Be courageous because I am who I am. I am God. Do not be afraid.”

It appears that Jesus’s message hit home with Peter by his reaction, which you might say is unusual. He says to Jesus, “If it is you, Lord, then command me to come to you on the water.” Remember all the stuff that is going on around them. The wind and the waves have not stopped. The wind is howling. They were shouting just to hear one another.

Peter’s mind, however, has been taken away from what was happening around him. The cares and concerns that have kept them up all night long recede into the background of his mind. He has an audacious idea. Peter believes in the “I am.” So he has the courage to step out of that rocking and swirling boat onto the tempestuous sea.

I’d like to point out that there is an obvious alternative to Peter’s plan. The alternative would be to focus on what was going on around him. He could have said to Jesus, “Can’t you make this wind stop that’s been tormenting us all night long? Can’t you see we’re suffering!? Make it stop! We loathe this worthless sea voyage, which, by the way, you put us on.” The sensible thing would be to get the wind and the waves to stop. That’s what a responsible person would do.

The responsible person seems to be proven right, also, by what ends up happening. You know how the story goes. He ends up sinking! So a responsible person might say, “See, first things first. Get rid of the waves.” But there’s more to the story than that. Peter did end up sinking. He had to cry out: “Lord, save me!” But before that he was walking on the water and was making his way towards Jesus. Maybe if Peter had sunk like a stone the second he stepped out of the boat those responsible people would have a point, but for a time Peter believed, and it was glorious.

Now when it comes to applying what we hear in this Gospel reading to ourselves, the applications are almost innumerable. This is a very rich text and could teach us many things. But I’d like to focus just on Peter’s reaction and how we might imitate him so that something glorious might take place in our lives too.

We all, like Peter had with the wind and the waves, we all have our troubles and frustrations. If we thought hard enough we could all come up with a good long list of stuff that we’d like to have different. All of us would have minor stuff. Maybe we would have some terribly, terribly big stuff too. Maybe your life is in danger of being lost—not by wind and waves, but by disease. Perhaps more important than merely surviving, though, are all the relationships in our lives. Maybe you are estranged from someone. There’s a cold war happening in your family or in your house. We all have our cares and worries of every kind, and perhaps they are so bad we haven’t been able to make headway no matter how hard we try. It’s the fourth watch of the night. When is it ever going to end?

Then, to top it all off, Jesus can show up in a sense, similar to how he did with the disciples. What I mean is that Jesus can make himself and his will known to us, and what Jesus says is not always welcome. His thoughts on life are usually not our thoughts. How he says we should live our lives can seem impractical, impossible, otherworldly—ghostly. He tells us, for example, that we should forgive those who trespass against us. What should we do with those who have hurt us? We should do good to them and love them. Love, in general, would be Jesus’s way. Can’t go wrong with love.

To which we might sensibly respond, “Don’t you know what’s been going on with me? Don’t you know the hell I’ve been through? I’m just trying to survive. How dare you ask anything more of me?” Away with you, you ghost! You’re not here to help us. You’re just making it worse!

But Jesus doesn’t remain a ghost to the disciples, nor does he wish to remain a ghost to us. He tells us who he is so that we may believe in him. He says, “Be courageous. I am God. Do not be afraid.” Faith comes first. The life of love, especially to our enemies and to those who have hurt us, would be as impossible as walking on water if faith did not come first.

And faith in Jesus is always good and gracious. All the disciples were probably relieved to hear Jesus’s voice, but Peter did something more. He also gave up worrying about himself. You will never be harmed by believing in Jesus. But believing in Jesus will mean that the other things that are going on with you will need to be pushed to the background.

Imagine if Peter didn’t react the way he did, but responded differently. Imagine if he faintly, distantly heard Jesus say what he said, but instead of taking it to heart he would have been too busy with the boat. Look! See there. The bow is turning against the wind! The wind is going to push us sideways! Look at the wave that’s coming. It’s going to sink us! Everybody on the left row forward! Everybody on the right row backwards! Row for your lives!

Can’t you see how something like that could happen? Not only could it happen, it’s what comes naturally to us. We believe that we must solve all our own problems. How are we going to solve them? How about we start by obsessing over them? That’s what responsible people do. It’s irresponsible, in a sense, to move all thoughts to the background and focus on Jesus and his words to us. But that’s what faith does.

Faith in Christ requires us to push all kinds of important and seemingly relevant thoughts to the background. You must, for example, set aside the sins that you’ve committed. Either your sins are supreme and you should worry yourself to death about them, or Jesus is supreme.

Or how about your failures? If you’ve failed at love, failed at business, failed at life, either this is going to be the supreme thing in your life or Jesus. But maybe you’re more of an upbeat sort of person. You’ve succeeded at life. You’ve take those waves head on and sailed right through!

There’s no stopping the wind though. Death must relentlessly and ruthlessly take its prey. There’s no stopping that no matter how many waves you’ve made it through. Let’s turn that on its head, though, and say, “I’ve only got one life to live so I’m going to be glorious!” All that is still just playing around with the oars and the rigging.

By nature, with our unbelief, we can’t do anything different. We can’t help but mess around with all the things in our life. We want to decrease that long list of stuff we’d like to have different. So we pull on this and move that. Patch and mend and reinvent ourselves. Motivate, educate, reinvigorate.

Or, on the other hand—and this makes up no small number—we’re tired of all that. We sit hunched on the bench, staring at the hapless rudder and the flapping of sails.

These two ways of being seem so different from one another, but really they’re not. Whether we’re busy or whether we’ve given up—it makes no difference ultimately—the boat is doomed if Jesus is not there. “Moth and rust destroy; thieves break in and steal.” But what if there were something more important, more life-giving, outside the boat?

And there is! Jesus does not come from inside the boat, from inside this life. Jesus comes from heaven. And here’s the amazing thing: We’re safer with Jesus. Peter held on to that strange thought for quite some time as he was making his way towards Jesus. All the disciples would have been safer with Jesus than they ever were in the boat. But, boy!, is it ever hard for us to believe that. It was hard for Peter too. He looked at the wind and the waves. We’re not told this by the text, but maybe there was a huge wave coming towards him, towering way above him. He shouldn’t have doubted, but can any of us blame him? We are cut from the same cloth. “Lord, save us!”

The truth remains, though, despite how we feel: You are safer with faith in Jesus than you are in any other possible place. Jesus is the great “I am.”

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”

230806 Sermon on Matthew 14:13-21 (Pentecost 10) August 6, 2023

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Jesus said, “The things which are impossible with man are possible with God.”

In our Gospel reading today we are told about an impressive miracle. There is a very large crowd. Maybe we can use our imagination to get a mental picture of this crowd. The crowd would have been about the size of all the residents of Fairmont. Our town has about 10,000 people. At the end of our reading it says that there were about 5,000 men, not counting the women and children. So if you took every last person who lives in our town, and maybe add a little bit more, then you’d have an idea of how large this crowd was.

The occasion for Jesus’s dealings with this crowd is that they heard Jesus was able to do miracles. They heard that Jesus was able to cast out demons, give hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, preach the good news to the poor, and so on. So although Jesus had taken a boat on the Sea of Galilee, to go to a deserted place to pray, the people had followed him, going great distances so that he could help them.

So, maybe we could get a picture of this in our mind’s eye: It would be like the whole town of Fairmont were to leave their homes and walk out to a deserted place. Just so that we have the same place in mind, let’s imagine all of Fairmont walking east of town on the highway until they got to the Fairmont airport. There you have a nice, big stretch of grass. The whole town is gathered out there. When Jesus comes and sees the crowd with all their needs he has compassion. He begins to heal and help the people gathered there.

It seems that this went on for many hours. The disciples can see that there are too many people and not enough time. Night was coming and the people needed to walk back that distance to get home. So they told Jesus that it was time for the town of Fairmont to walk back home. They had to have been hungry. Once they got to town they could stop at Arby’s or Taco John’s.

Jesus must have surprised them when he said, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” What could Jesus possibly be referring to? You’re out at the airport. There isn’t any food out there. There aren’t any stores out there. There’s just a bunch of grass. “You give them something to eat,” Jesus said. Ok. How?

In John’s Gospel the apostle Philip says, “Two hundred denarii wouldn’t buy enough bread so as to give each of them even just a little.” To put that into today’s terms, “$20,000 wouldn’t be enough to give them all just half a sandwich.” And that’s quite right. There’s not just the lack of available food. There’s also the lack of funding. Tens of thousands of dollars would need to be spent for even something meager.

As it turned out, though, they did have something meager. They had five loaves and two fish. When Jesus heard that they had this, he was satisfied: “That’ll work. Bring me the bread and the fish.”

Then Jesus ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. They were going to have supper. The people probably were as baffled at that idea as the disciples were. Where’s the food? Then Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish and he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. We are not told the words of that blessing, but this is not something unfamiliar to us. Our table prayers are blessings. Essentially a blessing is asking for God’s goodness to be present. Jesus blessed the bread and the fish.

Then the miracle happened, and it isn’t perfectly clear to me how it happened in my mind’s eye. It says that “he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.” It doesn’t sound like $50,000 worth of bread and fish suddenly showed up so that there was a mountain of provisions that were then distributed. It sounds like Jesus broke the loaves, giving pieces to the disciples, and that when they came back to Jesus he always was able to give them more to distribute.

In a way the miracle is quite humble. The actions involved are quite humble. A mountain of food doesn’t suddenly appear. There’s only breaking and giving, breaking and giving, until everyone has had more than enough. On the other hand, this miracle is arguably grander than anything that Jesus had done up to this point. Jesus had already done miracles for this individual and that individual. The feeding of the 5,000 was for a huge crowd, the whole town of Fairmont and more.

Having gone through what happened, what can we learn from this? This shows that Jesus has power and authority in his creation. We all know that it is not in the nature of bread or of fish to spontaneously multiply. In physics there is a law called the conservation of matter. The law says that if you start out with a certain amount of material, you are going to end up with the same amount of material no matter what you do to it. You might change it from one thing to another, but you can never make something out of nothing.

God, on the other hand, is well acquainted with making things out of nothing. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This means that he made them out of nothing. In fact, the laws that we have in physics or thermodynamics or what have you were created by God too. The Creator of these laws is not bound by these laws like we are.

When Jesus creates more bread and fish than what was originally there, he is making use of power and authority that belong to God alone. That which is impossible with man is possible with God. There are other passages that are applicable here too.

When Jesus rose from the dead and before he ascended into heaven the apostles met him on a mountain in Galilee. Jesus said to them: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples, and so on.” The part I want to emphasize is that first part: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus.” This is also what is important with Jesus reigning and ruling at the right hand of God the Father. The right hand of God the Father is not so much a physical location. It is the position of authority, God’s right hand man, so to speak.

Paul in his letter to the Colossians talks about the extent of Jesus’s power and authority. Jesus created all things, visible and invisible. He is the creator of thrones, dominions, powers, and authorities. He is before all things and in him all things hold together. He is the first-born from the dead so that he might be preeminent over all things.

It is good that Jesus has this power and authority. It has always been good for him to have such power and authority. God already and ordinarily uses his power and authority in such a benevolent and life-giving way. Think of how he sustains life ordinarily and regularly. He’s like clockwork. He causes the seasons. He gives us our rain. He gives us our daily bread. In his ordinary way he provides for all the needs of body and soul for not just 5,000, but for billions.

What Jesus’s miracles reveal in addition, though, is that he can also circumvent the laws that he has put in place if he should so will it. It seems to us that the laws of physics are pretty well set in stone, but Jesus can alter them. Bread and fish spontaneously multiply when Jesus so wills it. He altered the laws involved in order to feed this great crowd of people.

Jesus can also do this for us, if need be. That’s something always to keep in mind. If we should be in need we can lift our eyes to heaven and ask him for help. We should especially be confident when we pray to him for the things we know he wishes us to have. If we pray the words of the Lord’s Prayer, for example, we should have no doubt that our prayers will be heard, because he himself taught us to pray in this way and promised to hear us. I can’t be as certain about being able to feed the town of Fairmont or the other things that Jesus did. If the need was there, though, that might be a different matter, as we see miracles being done by God for his people throughout the Bible. Laws can still be circumvented today if Jesus should so will it.

But we might not experience the kinds of miracles that we hear about in the Bible. Realize that the people who lived in Bible times did not always experience the miracles you hear about in the Bible. Sometimes many generations would pass, hundreds of years, when the Bible doesn’t record even a single miracle. It’s not the miracles that are important, but the relationship we have with God that’s important.

But regardless of whether we experience the kind of miracles you hear about in the Bible you should know that greater things lie in our future—especially in the end times. The Scriptures say, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him.” Jesus has the power and authority to feed the 5,000. We can imagine that. You will experience much greater things—things beyond our imagining.

For example, you will experience Jesus breaking the law of death for you. Things that are dead are supposed to stay dead. That’s a law. Things that are dead do not have life, they have the opposite. The decompose and decay even further. Jesus, however, has the power and authority to give life to the dead. Scripture says that when he comes he will change our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subdue all things to himself. He’s going to use his power and authority to make our worn out, crumbling, sin-infested bodies to be like his glorious, holy body.

In summary, it is right to consider Jesus’s miracle of feeding the 5,000 to be impressive. It is impressive. It was impressive to those who ate and were satisfied. They were all astounded, just as we would be too if we were gathered together with him at the airport. But better and more unusual things lie ahead for us in our relationship with Jesus. What seems to be unchangeable, inalterable, unredeemable, is not impossible with God. The dead will rise. The perishable will put on the imperishable. The mortal will put on immortality. The power that Jesus used with the 5,000 will be used in an even greater way on each of you and to your eternal benefit.

Jesus said, “The things that are impossible with man are possible with God.”

230730 Sermon on Matthew 13:44-52 (Pentecost 9) July 30, 2023

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For the past few weeks our Gospel readings have been from Matthew chapter 13. This chapter has a bunch of parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. So you heard about the kingdom of heaven being like a farmer who sows his seed so that it falls on all kinds of different soils. You heard about the kingdom of heaven being like a field that was sown with good seed, but the enemy came and sowed weed seed.

With our reading today we are at the end of this section of parables. We have three more parables about what the kingdom of heaven is like. It’s like a man who found a treasure in the field. He sells all he has so that he can buy that field. It’s like a pearl merchant who finds a pearl of great value. He sells all that he has so that he can buy the pearl. Finally the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that pulls in all kinds of different things. Only when it’s all brought to shore is the good separated from the bad.

I’d like to begin today by talking about the parable that seems the most straight-forward, which would be the second one. A pearl merchant, who travels hither and yon buying and selling pearls, finally comes upon one that he simply has to have. He liquidates his inventory. He sells his property. He empties his bank account. He buys it.

Jesus’s parables almost always have some kind of twist, something unexpected, and the thing that is unexpected here is that this is no way to run a jewelry business. Someone has said, “The business of business is business.” This fellow no longer is interested in making money. He couldn’t make money even if he wanted to. He doesn’t have anything left except this pearl which he presumably won’t sell at any price.

The only explanation for this merchant’s strange behavior is love. He loves that pearl. He loves it so much that he sells everything that he has so as to buy it. He is willing to live as a poor person, with all the deprivations that go along with having no money, because of his love.

This might seem like a harmless little story, but that’s not how people are with money and business. There is a rule seemingly come down from heaven above that a person or a business must always be making more and more money. If you aren’t always making more money, then you’re a loser. So for this fellow to check out of the money making business because of love sounds ridiculous. It sounds like something a Liberal Arts major might do. People like that are always poor.

Since this mentality is so strong and so widespread I’m a little nervous pointing out to you that you will not find even a hint of this seemingly heaven-sent rule in the Bible. Being money hungry is not a virtue in the Bible. It’s a vice.  Other things get praised in the Bible. These other things are not talked about as often in common conversation, nor are they taken very seriously. Stuff like: Love. Wisdom. Suffering. Weakness. Righteousness. Joy. Patience. Faith. Where do these things and more all come together? In the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. There, in the cross of Jesus, are all good things.

Just as a great many people could be disgusted with the love that this merchant has for that stupid pearl, so also a great many people could be disgusted by the love a person might have for the cross of Christ. How’s that cross going to make you any money? Plus, it’s not even pretty like a pearl. It’s bloody, gory. And it sends a bad message to kids. Jesus just takes it. He passively suffers. There’s no get up and go. What a worthless thing to throw one’s life away for.

So it goes, though, with the kingdom of heaven. Those whom God chooses love the cross of Jesus. If you sold everything that you had so as to have the cross of Christ, you would not be disappointed. There’d be a happy ending. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who found a pearl of great price, who sold everything that he had, and bought it.

Let’s move on to the first parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” This parable is not quite as pretty, not quite as pure as the story about the pearl. The morality police know that something’s not quite right here.

First of all, what is this man doing wandering around on somebody else’s property—and with a shovel no less! This is highly improper. Then, when he finds the treasure, he doesn’t inform the landowner. He buries it someplace else so that only he knows where it is.  

He’s tricky and clever in the way that he obtains the treasure. If he would have stolen the treasure as soon as he found it, people would have wondered where he got his new-found riches. But if he buys the whole field—maybe it was rumored that there was a treasure in there—if he buys the whole field he can say, “Look, here’s that treasure that everybody’s been wondering about and it’s all mine! Sure is a good thing that I had the good sense to buy it!” Then he could spend the treasure as though it were his very own even though it really was not. He cheated.

So how is this similar to the way the kingdom of heaven works? According to a certain way of thinking, there is something “dirty,” so to speak, about our salvation, about how we are judged before God. A classic definition of justice is that each should get as each deserves. So what would each deserve if each were to be judged by God?

Depends on the person, right? Some are good. Some are bad. The good ones should be rewarded. The bad ones should be punished. The guy who owns the field should get the treasure. The guy who doesn’t own the field shouldn’t get the treasure.

But what God reveals about the way he judges is that there is a righteousness available that doesn’t depend upon how you have lived, whether you own any fields, or what you have done with your thoughts, words, and deeds. This righteousness is that available is the righteousness of Jesus—the righteousness of God himself. This treasure is given, possessed, and used by those who don’t deserve it.

There’s something of a scandal with the kingdom of heaven, with the Gospel. The scandal is that people don’t get what they deserve. Real sinners are declared by God to be righteous for Jesus’s sake. Why? Because God wants to.

This is similar to other parables of Jesus’s, such as the pharisee and the tax collector. A pharisee and a tax collector go up into the temple to pray. The Pharisee is a vastly superior human being compared to the thug of the tax collector. The pharisee thanks God that he is the way that he is. The tax collector prays, “Have mercy on me, a sinner, O Lord!” The tax collector goes to his home justified, that is, regarded by God as being righteous, rather than the pharisee.

It’s With the parable of the workers in the vineyard some workers go out first thing in the morning. Some at mid-day. Some work only one measly little hour. When it comes time to pay the workers they all get the same. Why? Because that’s what the owner of the vineyard wanted to do. He wanted to be generous. The owner says, “Can’t I do what I want with what belongs to me?”

So it is that people who truly have sinned, who have not right whatsoever to have any good thing, are given the perfect righteousness of God in Jesus.

Finally, the last parable is that the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that pulls in everything that’s in the water no matter if it good or bad. It’s when the net is drawn on shore that the good are separated from the bad. “So it will be,” Jesus says, “at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

This last parable shows us the seriousness and the importance to each individual of the kingdom of heaven. It appears so often to so many that God’s Word is at best some kind of old-fashioned hobby. We sit around and come up with interpretations and applications, but it doesn’t really matter to a person’s life. What really matters about life is making money. Or feeling good about yourself. Or having a good time. People will be serious about those things, but not about the kingdom of heaven.

What this parable points out is that whether we are good or bad, righteous or unrighteous, is of the utmost importance to our continued happiness at the close of the age. Either we will be gathered together with those who are good, or we will be cast in the fiery furnace where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And how is it that we will be righteous? It isn’t by making a lot of money. It isn’t by filling our life with pleasures. It isn’t even by trying our best to be a good person and never giving up. It’s by embracing the cross of Christ. It’s by believing that it is no longer you who are living, but Christ who lives within you. The life that you now live is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you. Because he did that, you have an inexhaustible treasure. That’s how a person will be judged by God as good.

At the close of the age, apart from Christ, even the most outstanding specimen of a human being will be like a piece of trash snagged up from the murky depths. On the other hand, even the foulest sinner who believes in Jesus will be righteous with God’s own righteousness that is freely communicated to him and held to by faith.

So let us be prepared for the dragnet that will pull us all on shore. Let us take refuge in Jesus our Savior.