190317 Sermon on Genesis 32:22-32 (Lent 2) March 17, 2019

190317 Sermon on Genesis 32:22-32 (Lent 2) March 17, 2019

I’d like to begin today by setting up the background to our Old Testament reading about Jacob wrestling with the mysterious Man.  Jacob was the grandson of Abraham.  Abraham was the man God chose from among all others to be his own.  God promised to bless him and his offspring.  They would be fruitful and multiply.  They would possess the land of Canaan.  The Messiah would come from among his sons.  This promise was passed down to Abraham’s and Sarah’s only son Isaac.  Isaac and his wife Rebecca were given twin boys by God, Esau and Jacob.  Esau was born first, Jacob came right after, grasping his heel.

Normally Isaac’s blessing would fall upon Esau since he was the firstborn.  But a couple things intervened to make that not so.  First of all, one time Esau came into the house extremely hungry and Jacob had made some food.  Esau evidently cared so little for God’s promises that he agreed to give them to Jacob, if only Jacob would give him his food.  Second, later, Jacob and Rebecca his mother tricked his father Isaac into giving him the blessing by dressing up and acting like Esau.  And so it happened that Isaac as a blind old man blessed his second son Jacob instead of his firstborn Esau—the one he preferred of the two.

As you might imagine, Esau was extremely displeased to hear that his birthright had been stolen away from him by his brother Jacob.  Esau was also nobody to mess with.  He was a ferocious opponent.  And so Jacob’s mother sent Jacob away to Laban her brother.  God was good to Jacob.  He gave him his two wives Leah and Rachel.  God gave him many children.  God also blessed both Laban and Jacob with wealth.  Jacob ended up living and working together with Laban for twenty years.

Eventually, though, God told Jacob that he should return to the land that God had promised to give him and his descendants.  But to do that Jacob would need to leave his father-in-law and business partner.  Jealousy, like it so often does, had degraded the relationship that Jacob had with Laban.  Laban thought that Jacob had become successful at his own expense.  And so not long before the time of our reading this morning Jacob left Laban’s country secretly and when Laban found out about it, he was hot on his tracks.

Soon Laban caught up with Jacob.  Jacob and all his household were worried about what might happen, but God had intervened with Laban.  He had told him that he was to leave Jacob alone and let him keep his property.  And so Jacob and Laban established a boundary between them.  Laban would not continue to pursue his son-in-law and his daughters.

Jacob then sent messengers to his brother Esau because he was now moving closer to the territory of where Esau lived.  The message he sent to his brother was that God had richly blessed him and he was intending to give Esau a goodly share of his bounty.  He was telling his brother that gifts were on the way.

But when the messengers returned to Jacob they did not have the reply that Jacob was hoping for.  Jacob had hoped that Esau would be satisfied with the promise of gifts and stay where he was at.  But what had happened is that Esau gathered four hundred men and they were on their way to meet Jacob.  Jacob thought that Esau was still angry for having stolen his birthright, and that now he was coming to kill him, his wives, his children, and his servants.  Jacob’s desperation can be seen in his subsequent plans.  He splits his family and servants into two groups.  His hope was that if Esau attacked they would stay busy slaughtering the one half, while the other might have time to get away.  Think of the frame of mind that is necessary to come up with that plan and carry it out.

This brings us to our Old Testament reading today.  Jacob had sent his whole family and all his possessions across the river.  He was on the other side all alone.  At some point a mysterious Man emerges and the two get into a tussle.  It wasn’t clear to Jacob who this Man was.  He didn’t seem to be friendly.  Jacob was using all his strength to prevent his defeat.

Who was this Man?  The most common answer among Christians is that this was the pre-incarnate Son of God.  That seems the most likely answer to me too.  God the Son wrestled with Jacob before he also became true Man in the womb of the Virgin Mary—something that would happen well over a thousand years later. 

There are several reasons why this Man is identified as being true God.  He was able to dislocate Jacob’s hip by touching it.  Jacob asks for a blessing from him and is given a new name—something that God also did with Abram and Sarai.  God gave them the new names of Abraham and Sarah.  Jacob is given the name “Israel,” which is the name that his descendants would go by.  Finally, the most convincing proof that this was not just an ordinary man is the name that Jacob gives to the place.  He calls it Peniel or Penuel, both of which mean in Hebrew “face of God.”  Jacob believed that he had wrestled with God at that place and he had lived to tell the tale.

So what should we make of this?  Is this a good thing or a bad thing that happened to Jacob?  It was a good thing, but we should say that too quickly without putting ourselves in his shoes.  I’ve brought up the back story to what was happening before Jacob was attacked at the ford of Jabbok so that you could better understand the state that he was in.  To say that he was under stress is inadequate.  He had just been pushed to the limits with his father-in-law.  He was about to enter into a territory that was unfamiliar to him after having been gone for twenty years.  He had the worry and toil of carrying all his earthly property on the move.  The person he had been fearing for twenty years, his brother Esau, had given him ominous signs of impending doom.  The best Jacob seems to be hoping for is that he can somehow straggle away with half his family and property.  All of this responsibility and worry was weighing heavily upon him.  I don’t think that any of us have borne such a burden as he was carrying.

And then, to top all this off, he is attacked by a stranger in the middle of the night.  Doesn’t that seem like a fine time for God to test him?  Why doesn’t God just leave him alone?  Why doesn’t God let him get his strength and his peace and his sanity back, before he throws another monkey wrench into the mix?  This night at the ford of Jabbok may have very well been the lowest point in Jacob’s life.  That night even left its mark on him for the rest of his life.  He walked with pain and he walked with a limp, because God had put his hip out of joint.

And so what happened to Jacob that night was a good thing, without question, but according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh.  The flesh does not like pain and suffering.  It does not like worry.  It does not like uncertainty.  It does not like living by faith.  The flesh wants to have a comfortable chair and a comfortable bed.  It wants the table filled with tasty things and a whole bunch of money in the bank.  It wants perfect health and it never wants to grow old or die.  None of these things that the flesh wants are sins in and of themselves.  In and of themselves these are good things—blessings from God.  But the flesh is incapable of looking past all the creature comforts of the earth to the God who has made them and us and with amazing generosity loads up all people with gifts.  That is why God will discipline those whom he loves.  He will take away the things that we love so much so that we become aware of our real state and live alone by mercy and by faith.

Most people will recognize that living by mercy and by faith in the one true God is a good thing—at least theoretically.  But nobody by nature can see that living by mercy and by faith alone is a good thing.  That can only be taught by the Holy Spirit in the school of hard-knocks.  What we all would like is that we could live by mercy and by faith and at the same time have everything else that we want.

That desire is understandable and reasonable, and in fact it is the way that things were supposed to go as God originally intended it.  If we were not sinners then we would be able to have both earthly bliss and that our hearts would be overflowing with faith and love towards God.  God intended for Adam and Eve and their children to have lives of happiness, lacking no good thing—and the greatest portion of their happiness would have been the joy that they had in their Creator.

But sin changed all this.  We became incapable of not committing idolatry with all the good gifts of creation unless God himself would intervene.  Whatever gifts God gives us, because we are sinners, we can’t help but receive them in a bad way.  We love them and trust in them and become proud of them. If we could only receive what we have without hanging our heart on it, and if only we could have no fear of losing it, and if only we could be truly thankful to God for it, then none of this stuff could hurt us.  But our hearts are corrupted.

And so God must break our hearts.  That sounds odd.  It sounds cruel, perhaps, but it is not.  God must break our hearts that are ever so eager to love and trust in everything except for him.  And so he will take things away.  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  This is what is happening at the time of Jacob’s wrestling with God.  His peace and security and happiness are taken away.  As he’s wrestling with this stranger it seems even as though his life is about to be taken away.  Everything either has been or is about to be or seems to be taken away.  All hope is lost.  The only hope that is left is in this One who is attacking him.

Here we must learn an all-important lesson from Jacob (and we can learn it from the Canaanite woman in our Gospel reading today too)—the way that we should respond.  Everything has been taken away—even their dignity has been taken away—but what do they say?  “I’m not going to let you go until you bless me.”  Both of them know full well who it is who has been causing them their difficulties.  They are not stupid.  But they say, “Bless me!”  And this is what we must do too, when God is putting us through the wringer.  We must look to the one who has put our life out of joint and say, “Bless me!”  You heard how Jesus responded to the woman.  He didn’t hate her.  He loved her very much: “O woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you have desired.”  The same is true with Jacob and with you.

I want to point out to you how different this is from the way that the world responds to trouble—and this is what is also comfortable to our unbelieving flesh.  The way that the world responds to trouble is it says, “Oh, that’s too bad, but things will change.  Time heals all wounds.  Better luck next time.  But don’t give up.  Think positively.”  I could go on and on.  This is the wisdom of the world, and indeed, there is some wisdom to it.  But you know when that kind of wisdom falls silent?  It has nothing to say at the death bed.  When death is approaching the world can’t say, “Thinks will get better.  Your luck will change.”  It can’t say anything.  But that can be awkward, and so I’ve noticed actually that it will change tack and instead of looking to the future it will only look to the past.  Past experiences and joys will be recollected.

Instead of those vain babblings that can’t change a thing, how about turning to God and saying to him, “I’m not going to let you go until you bless me?”

All those things that the world speaks about in the face of trouble and death, can’t actually do anything.  Nobody has ever been blessed by luck.  Nobody has been redeemed or saved by the quality of life that he or she has had.  None of this stuff has the power to save.  The only reason why the world clings to these things so firmly is that they do not believe in the true God.  These substitute gods are the best thing that they have or that they know of. 

But that God from whom you demand a blessing is able to help you—truly help you.  He helped Jacob.  He helped the Canaanite woman.  And he will help you too.  And there is nothing that he can’t help you with.  Even death, our worst enemy, must submit to our Lord Jesus Christ, because he has defeated it with his atoning death and his glorious resurrection.

And so there is wisdom to be gained from Jacob and the Canaanite woman.  It is especially important for us to think about this wisdom carefully and thoroughly because it is so different from the way that the world deals with trouble.  But the world is a fool who says in its heart there is no god—or at least that God can’t help me in my present troubles.  That is a lie.  The truth (and it is demonstrated to you powerfully by our readings today) is that God will bless those who cling to him and demand mercy from him.

190310 Sermon on Matthew 4:1-11 (Lent 1) March 10, 2019

190310 Sermon on Matthew 4:1-11 (Lent 1) March 10, 2019

Temptation is tricky business.  It’s tricky because the devil is tricky.  He is a liar and the father of lies.  The trouble with lies is that they can become so believable.  The devil is very good at lying, and we aren’t very good at sorting them out.  Who can know the heart of Man?  The evilness of it is beyond our comprehension.  And so the devil’s lies find a ready reception in our heart.  So far as our Old Adam is concerned, we vastly prefer his lies to God’s truth.

Compounding the trouble of temptation’s trickiness is time and change.  Perhaps if we were only tempted once, and the temptation would go away, then we would have more success at it.  But the devil and his demons are persistent.  If we do not fall today, then it might be tomorrow.  Today they try this, tomorrow they try that.  And then they go back to this again.  We’re thrown off balance.  Pressures increase.  Release is desired.  It is as the hymn writer puts it: “I walk in danger all the way.”

We are given some help in this dangerous, difficult, and tricky business by the example of our Lord Jesus recorded for us in our Gospel reading today.  Jesus is tempted three times in three different ways.  There is a similarity in his response to each temptation.  He quotes Scripture all three times.  He also focuses his attention on God all three times.  The devil would like him to think of other things instead of waiting upon God.  In the first temptation he would like Jesus to focus on his hunger.  In the second he’d like Jesus to focus on an idea, on a bit of theology.  In the third he’d like Jesus to focus on the glory being offered to him.  All three times Jesus turns the mind’s eye away from these things to God and his Word—his will and his promises. 

But today instead of dealing with all three temptations, I’d like to look closely only at the first temptation.  The first temptation is the devil’s suggestion that Jesus should satisfy his hunger by turning stones into bread.  What is going on here?  Some Christians have thought that the devil is trying to taunt Jesus like, “I bet you can’t do that.”  This would be asking Jesus to use his divine power in a superfluous and unbecoming way.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with this interpretation, but I don’t think it really gets to the heart of the issue.

What is at the base of this temptation is a desire.  Jesus is hungry.  That’s one desire people might have.  There are many others.  We desire comfort.  We desire health.  We have sexual desires.  Fulfilling these desires gives us pleasure.  Having these desires and being given pleasure are not sinful.  God himself built these desires into us as his creatures.  The trouble is that we are predisposed to treat these things as though they are the ultimate purpose in life.  What is life all about?  What are we doing here?  How should we live?  A very common answer to these kinds of questions is that we are supposed to enjoy life.  We should live for pleasure.  We should live for loaves of bread.  We should live for the weekend where we can live only for ourselves.

Having pleasure as your goal in life will inevitably bring about specific sins that are too numerous to list them all—I’ll only mention a few.  It will promote lust and perversion.  Why deny urges if they give you pleasure?  It will promote greed and stinginess—if you give all your money away, then what will be left for you to enjoy?  It will even bring about murder.  Why do most murders happen?  Is it not because someone has gotten in the way of somebody else’s pursuit of pleasure?  This can even lead to the murder of one’s self in suicide.  When pleasure is gone, when the devil convinces a person that life isn’t worth living anymore, then a person might kill himself or herself.  But God has given us no authority to kill ourselves.  The only ones God has given authority to kill are those in government, and they are only to kill those who are guilty where justice demands death.  Otherwise it’s strictly hand-off to everybody else, including murdering yourself.

Here I’m going to mention again something that is coming at a hundred miles an hour—physician assisted suicide.  It’s going to be legal before you know it, and your friends and your family might start doing it, and you need to be prepared to call it a sin—not encouraging it or condoning it.  Otherwise if you are not prepared, then you are going to be invited to their goodbye and going away parties before they do the deed, and you will go, because you want to be polite. 

The reason why physician assisted suicide is coming so quickly is that the logic for it is already in place.  It’s the way people already think.  People believe that the way life should be lived is to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering.  So if someone has a terminal illness, and the illness is going to be difficult or painful, then why should a person continue on?  Can’t you almost hear the devil saying that?  The alternative seems like unnecessary suffering: You want happiness.  It seems that happiness is not in the future for you.  So why not call it quits?

The reason why we should not kill ourselves is because we fear and obey God.  God has said, “Thou shalt not kill.”  He has not given that authority to us.  That should end the matter.  In addition, though, is this important thought—that we are not on this earth only for pleasure and enjoyment.  The reason why we are on this earth is because God has created us.  This is the main thing.  Life is not about the enjoyment of eating a loaf of bread, nor is this what is even necessary for sustaining true life.  True life comes from eating every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  It is recognizing that God is the one who is in control of my life, and I will take what he gives me.

Now God is not stingy.  He satisfies our desires, gives us pleasure, and almost always alleviates our pain.  And so we should be filled with thanksgiving for all that he gives.  If you are wondering what you can give thanks to God for, go and read in your catechism the answer to the question, “What is meant by daily bread?”  There you’ll have a good long list of things we ungrateful grumblers never think about, much less give thanks for.

But I won’t pretend that God doesn’t also send us sadness.  He might put us on an involuntary fast where we don’t have money to buy our pleasures and comforts.  He might take away our health in this way or that way.  What are we to do then?

Jesus shows us in his answer to the devil: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  It is not bread or pleasure or health or happiness that constitutes our life.  It is our God who does that.  God the Creator and you the creature are the main thing.  And so lift up thine eyes to the hills from whence cometh thy help.  Do you want someone to complain to?  Complain to God.  The psalms are full of lamentations—complaints—to God, and one of the reasons why the psalms have been given to us is to teach us how to pray.  God is not impressed by our lying to him.  We dare not try to manipulate him by being polite to him.  Instead, pour out your bitterness and frustration to him, and await his salvation.  How different this is from stoically remaining silent, or using empty philosophies and popular sayings to make yourself feel better!  We should move our eyes from the lack of bread to our God.  We should turn our eyes away from what we want to the God who ultimately withholds nothing from his saints that is good for them.

In addition to turning our eyes to the Lord, Jesus also calls attention to the Word that God speaks.  This also is very important and helpful when we are being afflicted with sadness and trouble.  God’s Words spoken in his commandments will turn you away from solutions that involve you in murder, or theft, or adultery, or some other deal with the devil, and to seek your help from God alone.  God has also given you his promises.   And since God is not a liar, these promises are something you can count on.

You know the promises God has made to you.  We speak of them all the time.  He has promised you rescue from death and the devil, the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.  Laid up for you in heaven is a rich inheritance that surpasses all the experiences we have had on this earth that are weighed down by sin and death.

Luther often likened these promises from God as being like the sun and the afflictions that are laid upon us as being like the clouds.  Sometimes there isn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sun is a plain as day.  We need only to look up and know of God’s good favor towards us.  But sometimes he gives us sadness and trouble.  And like clouds can black out the sun, so also our troubles can seem as though they are going to totally overwhelm us.  Pain, sorrow, death—all these things are not child’s play and it can make a person wonder what is going on.  Why is God doing this?  Where can I get some relief?  What is going to happen to me or to those I care about? 

This is where it is necessary for faith to pierce through those clouds and remember that there is the sun behind them.  Though you can’t see the sun, and you can only see clouds, you know that it is still there.  Eventually the clouds must pass and the sun will shine again.  It could very well be that the clouds will not part before we die, but if we hold on by faith, then we will see the glory of the promises that have been made to us like we never have before.

Our life does not consist of the relative happiness or unhappiness that we might be feeling at any given time.  What our life consists of is God and his will towards us.  So long as that remains constant and so long as we remain faithful to that, then we can put up with anything for the time being.  No matter how bad something might be that we are experiencing, we know that it will last only for a little while.  What are even years or decades compared to eternity?

Although Jesus experienced pleasure, he did not live for pleasure.  He lived for God and for love.  That is how it must be for us as well, since we are his disciples.  By not indulging every pleasure, by not despairing when we are put into misfortune, and by keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, we overcome the devil’s temptations.

Remember always that the devil operates by lies and deception.  It is only by getting us to believe his lies that he has any power over us whatsoever.  The truth is that Jesus has overcome the devil and ransomed the whole world so that none belong to him anymore.  That is what Jesus’s atonement did.  That is the truth and that is a fact.  And so it is only by redirecting our eyes away from Jesus, away from our God, that the devil is able to do anything.

That is why Jesus always goes to the Word of God, and that is where we must go also.  No philosophies about life, no common sense, no experiences are going to teach you about the inheritance you have in Jesus.  If anything, the wisdom that can be gained from these things tends to lead you away from trust in God’s promises to some other understanding of life. 

And so we must imitate Jesus.  He does not argue with the devil.  He does not debate him.  He does not try to beat him at his own game.  He simply speaks the truth.  Life is not for pleasure.  Life is for faithfulness.  God will give me what he deems fit, whether that be pleasurable or painful.  If it is pleasurable, then I will give thanks to God for it.  If it is painful, then I will await his deliverance when it is right for him to lift his heavy hand that afflicts us.  What I will not do is take my life into my own hands and live only for myself.  That might seem like it should get us ahead in this life, that is should give us happiness, but it doesn’t.  That rebelling against God is not good for happiness can already be seen in this life, but not as clearly as we’d like.  It will only become clearer though with the coming of the judgement and the eternal realities of heaven and hell.  And so don’t be tricked!

190306 Sermon on Joel 2:12-19 (Ash Wednesday) March 6, 2019

190306 Sermon on Joel 2:12-19 (Ash Wednesday) March 6, 2019

190303 Sermon on 1 Corinthians 13 (Quinquagesima) March 3, 2019

190303 Sermon on 1 Corinthians 13 (Quinquagesima) March 3, 2019

Love is the highest of all possible things.  Love is the content of God’s Law.  There are a couple Bible passages that we might mention in this regard.  When Jesus as asked what is the greatest commandment he said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Loving God and loving your neighbor are the highest things.  St. Paul is saying the same thing when he says “All of the commandments are summed up in the word ‘love.’” And “’Love’ is the fulfilling of the Law.”

Knowing what God’s Law says is a great gift and privilege.  It is the most important knowledge there is.  Perhaps it is only because it is so readily accessible that it is despised the way that it is.  If God had hidden what his will for us was—the way that he wanted life to be ordered—no doubt folks would crave this knowledge and savor it once they had learned it.  But since all you need to do is to open your Bible to know what God’s will is, it is despised. 

But that is inexcusable.  Who do you think you are?  Are you not a creature?  Is God not your Creator?  Then knowing God’s will that he has revealed to us is not some optional thing.  It is something that we are to meditate upon day and night.  Assuming that we are believers and are going to heaven, we will be students of God’s Law forever, the content of which is love.

What is love?  What does it mean?  Since we use that word so much, we might think that we know what it means.  But that would be a mistake.  The way that the word “love” is used by the natural Man, the way that it is used by the person who is fallen into sin, is always going to be bound up with selfishness and personal advantage.  When we sinners speak of love we are talking about the way that other people or other things are beneficial or rewarding to us.  We do not love just for love’s sake.  We love because something is good for us.

Maybe a picture might make this clearer.  Think of breathing.  You breathe in.  You breathe out.  We breathe in the goodness that we find around us.  Our love is the response to these good things.  If we get a favor from someone, then we are likely to give a favor in response.  If we receive affection from someone, then we are likely to give affection in response.  When you hear about love in movies or music, this is always the kind of thing that is going on.  It is because of mutual and reciprocal affection that love is spoken about as being present.  But what happens when that affection starts to dry up?  What happens then?  Unfortunately this cold and loveless world has no better advice than that we should move on to someone else who hold better prospects of providing us with affection.

That is what the world means when it speaks about love.  What is real love—the kind of love that God speaks of as being his will for us?  Instead of love being a breathing in and a breathing out, real love is a breathing out continually.  It one big, long, exhale, filled with goodness and kindness and truthfulness and patience.  Love is giving and giving and giving and giving some more—not just to those who deserve it, but to whomever it might be that God puts into our path.  One big, long exhale—to whomever it might be who’s there.

But you might say, “Pastor, that’s not how breathing works!”  I’m glad you noticed that.  True, divine, Christian love is a miracle.  It is something that only God can do and give.  It is a gift God gives to those whom he has chosen for salvation.  It is the reversal of what happened with the fall into sin.  At the time of the fall we lost God’s image.  We quit loving and became slaves to our own desires instead.  When we are baptized into Christ’s death, this old way of life is to be drowned and die.  A new man is daily to emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.  Dying to ourselves and living to God—denying out urges, stilling our anger, and being obedient to God instead of ourselves—this is the miracle worked by the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christians.  Just as impossible as it is for us to resurrect ourselves, so also it is impossible to live with true love.  But what is impossible with Man is possible with God.  It is impossible for us to only exhale, to only give.  But with God all things are possible.

I’d like to look at another example so that we can learn more about this true love.  In John chapter 4 we hear about Jesus’s exchange with a woman from Samaria.  Jesus knows about the way that this woman “loves.”  Jesus knows that she has had many husbands—trying to find that one who will give sufficient mutual, reciprocal affection.  She’s gone from man to man looking for love.  She’s been thirsty for love, you might say.  But her thirst for love has been according to the flesh’s understanding of love that is always looking to receive rather than give.  So Jesus says to this woman, “If you knew the gift of God and who I am, then you would have asked of me and I would have given you living water.”

Now living water is not just plain old water.  It’s a miracle, you might say—something out of the ordinary.  The woman is only thinking of normal water and so she wonders where Jesus’s bucket is, and how he’s going to draw the water out of the well, and whether he is greater than Jacob and his many descendants.  Her thoughts are entirely confined to an earthly understanding of water and wells, just as our thoughts about love might never rise higher than the kind of love spoken about on the radio.

So Jesus teaches her some more.  He says, “Everyone who drinks of this earthly water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water bubbling up to eternal life.”  Earthly, natural love can only go so far.  Eventually it is going to run dry.  But the love that Jesus gives quenches and satisfies.  Furthermore, in those who believe in him there is a spring that is created by God.  A spring of water comes up out of the ground and its supply is endless.  Water just keeps on coming out of it.  It gives and gives and gives and gives some more unto eternal life.  The will of God is that our supply of love be endless, just as the supply of love in God is endless.  We are to love and do good not just to those who benefit us, but also to those who hurt us—to those from whom we get no inhale of fresh air. 

Again, with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.  Wherever and whenever you have this gift of God given, you will have this divine love—this endless spring.  With this gift of love we have the beginning of our eternal lives.  The process of us being conformed to the image of God in the crucified Christ begins when we are baptized.  Throughout our Christian lives in this earthly existence we are conformed more and more to this image of inexhaustible love.  This happens with great weakness and many fits and starts because the devil, the world, and our sinful nature never tire of trying to turn us away from this way of living.  This process of being turned outwards in love will be complete when we are in heaven with our resurrected bodies, and yet at the same time, I believe, it will only have just begun.  Heaven is the place where divine love reigns forever.  Everybody in heaven loves with a perfect love just as God loves, because God is love.  The life of sacrifice and giving and service is what is truly good and it will overcome what people imagine to be strong according to a worldly, natural way of thinking.

People think that scraping and cheating and using one another is the way to get ahead in life.  That is being so shortsighted as to be nearly blind.  Maybe the devil, the prince of this world, will reward these his followers with earthly riches, but they will always get thirsty for more.  Already in this life people should see that selfishness and greed are bankrupt and get you nowhere.  But that will only become clearer in the next.  This damned dog-eat-dog world is held in check by God’s goodness in this life.  God doesn’t allow people to run riot over one another.  But all these restraints will be taken away in hell.  People will go after what they believe to be their own without anything to stop them.  The people and demons will claw each other’s eyes out.  This is the very opposite of what will be in heaven, which is love.

Our Epistle reading, 1 Cor. 13, speaks about the love that we have been talking about today.  The situation in Corinth at the time of St. Paul’s writing of this letter, was that these eager converts were filled with joy upon receiving the seed of God’s Word.  In their eagerness they were desiring God’s spiritual gifts.  They were wanting to be wise and eloquent.  They wanted to be able to do miracles of healing like they had heard about and seen in the apostles.  They wanted to be able to speak in tongues.  All of these things are indeed good gifts from God.  He has given and still today gives these kinds of things in order to build up his Church.  But St. Paul recognizes that the Corinthians were not just interested in the gifts because these gifts would be useful in building each other up, but they also wanted these gifts so that they could cut a good figure in the eyes of their fellow congregants.  They wanted others to be impressed.

And so in our reading St. Paul is showing them a more excellent way.  The Corinthians were desiring the gifts that were showy and impressive.  The vastly greater spiritual gift is love—sacrificial, selfless, service.  Love is so much greater and essential that the other, seemingly more impressive gifts, are useless and vain without love.  Even if a person should speak with the eloquence of an angel, but there be not love, then it sounds like tin pans banging together.  Nobody is edified by that kind of loveless talk because it is inevitably going to be more about establishing the greatness of the speaker than it is about leading the fellow sinner into the rich pasture of God’s Word.

Love also brings people together.  Other shiny, glittering gifts have the tendency to drive people apart because we are all miserably envious.  We naturally resent it when someone else is given more than what is given to us.  But when a person serves, when a person girds up their loins and washes the feet of their fellows, when a person does what is unpleasant—nobody envies that person.  Our stupid reason thinks that lowly service is worthless, when in fact it is the highest thing.  But because love has this lowly unimposing form it is also friendly and brings people together.  It is gentle, patient and kind.  It does not envy or boast.  It is not rude or arrogant.  It does not insist on its own way.

Finally, St. Paul shows that love carries over into eternal life.  God gives us the gift of preachers and teachers and many other spiritual gifts that are necessary to bring people to faith and to keep them in that faith.  But these things shall pass away when the fulfillment of Christ’s kingdom comes with his second advent.  And so we must not think that pastors or professors or other people whose job it is to speak or lead are higher or better than any layman or even a Christian child who is given the gift of love together with their faith in Christ.  In the life of the world to come there will be many, many saints who were not recognized for their greatness in this life, but who will there be honored by God.  Housewives, factory workers, janitors, and others who were Christian, and who loved according to the gift that God worked in them, will be rightly exalted, while those Christians who were regarded as pious or wise in this life will have already received their reward.

Love never ends.  In this life we only see the greatness of this good thing dimly, like in a hazy, distorted reflection (which was what mirrors were like in St. Paul’s day).  When we die and when Christ will come then we will know love face to face when we see him.  And so we should become wise according to the Word of God that is spoken to us.  Because of the fall we are predisposed to think that the true love that the Bible speaks about is undesirable.  It sounds like a lot of work and suffering.  It seems weak.  And in a way it is these things, just as Christ hung in great weakness on the cross.  But those whose eyes are anointed by the Holy Spirit will see that love is the best of things, the highest thing there is, and it will prevail over everything else eternally.  And so it is something that we should ask for, pursue, and cultivate.

190224 Sermon on Luke 8:4-15 (Sexagesima) February 24, 2019

190224 Sermon on Luke 8:4-15 (Sexagesima) February 24, 2019

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he was arrested and brought to the chief priest’s house.  St. Peter followed at a distance and when Jesus entered the house, Peter stood in the courtyard, warming himself by a charcoal fire.  While he was standing there someone recognized him as being one of Jesus’s disciples.  And so she asked him, “Aren’t you one of Jesus’s disciples?”  And he said, “No.”  Then he was asked again, “You are one of Jesus’s disciples though, aren’t you?”  And again he said, “No.”  Finally they said, “But I can tell from your accent that you are a Galilean, you must be one of Jesus’s disciples.”  Then Peter swore, saying, “I do not know the man.” 

Peter had talked big about sticking with Jesus, come what may, but after Jesus was arrested, fear seized him.  He did not also want to be arrested and killed and so he cursed, swore, lied, and deceived in God’s name that he had nothing to do with Jesus.  Prior to this he had certainly believed.  In fact his fervent love for Jesus is clearly evident.  But now in the courtyard he is an unbeliever.

This goes to show that nobody is safe because of some imagined strength in the individual.  If anyone should have had the ability to retain his faith, then it should have been Peter.  He had been bold and courageous and all the other apostles looked up to him.  But he lost his faith here in the courtyard.  Likewise this can happen to anyone of us, and frankly it does happen.  None of us are safe until we close our eyes in death with the word of “Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner,” on our lips.  The forces against us and our Christian faith are strong and no joking matter. 

The only real history that counts is not about politics or progress or the other things you might find in history textbooks.  The only history that counts is the way that the Word of God has fared among certain peoples, families, and individuals, and this history is full of people who once believed, but in one way or another lost their faith.  Something happens along the way, just as we hear about Peter’s fall, and Christ is no longer confessed.  Without faith in Christ the forgiveness of sins is not received.  If such people are not converted again, then upon their death they will receive the just punishment for their sins in hell.

This extremely grave and serious matter is what Jesus takes up with his parable today.  Because we are familiar with this teaching we easily become complacent.  We know how the parable works and so we imagine that we understand it.  But we must realize that eternal lives are at stake.  This parable deals with the decisive factor of history sifting all people and every individual: What happens when people hear the Word of God?  Some believe.  Some don’t.  Some believe for a while, then fall away.  Some believe, but then the cares, riches, and pleasures of life choke it out.  Then there are some who endure and produce fruit.  The Holy Spirit rules their hearts and minds so that they are enabled constantly to serve God.  Jesus Christ becomes a living fountain in them, bubbling up more and more, unto eternal life. 

At the end of the history of this old world, there will be a story about each and every one of us.  The story of our earthly life will consist of stumbling, falling, and (God willing) getting back up again.  The reason why Jesus tells us this parable today is so that we can become wise, fear God, and be warned and strengthened for the battle of the Word of God for possession of our soul that lies ahead for each of us.  Opposed to the Word of God are the devil, the world, and even, mysteriously, our very own sinful flesh.  Jesus’s parable is about the fight that takes place in a person’s soul between good and evil.

And so let us get into it.  First is the soil that is along the path.  This soil is compacted and the seed doesn’t really have a chance.  The birds of the heavens come and gobble it up, lest it should sprout and grow.  Jesus says that these are those who hear the Word but it does not sink in.  Demons prevent it from happening.  These are people who hear God’s commandments and threats of punishment, but they do not fear.  They hear of the redemption and salvation that is worked for all people in Jesus Christ, but it changes nothing.  They go on living their lives according to their own lights.

Just as God’s goal for us is that the Word of God should have its way with us and that we should produce fruit, in like manner the goal for the devil and the demons is that our hearts should become stony and cold and hard.  The goal for them is that we should not be moved by anything.  Threats and punishments bounce off.  The love of God in Christ makes no impression.  For them life is about something else.  Their thoughts and actions that make up their life might involve noble and high goals and achievements.  Such people might cure cancer or bring about world peace.  But they have no love for Christ who died for them.  They remain under the devil’s thumb.

The second type of soil describes those who undergo persecution.  Everyone who believes in Christ is going to undergo persecution.  We might not yet be killed in this country, but that is certainly not unheard of elsewhere.  But even if we are not killed or physically harmed, we still must undergo the scorn or ridicule or belittlement of friends, family, or false brothers and sisters in the congregation if we hold to the truthfulness of our Christian convictions.  The devil’s goal with persecution is always that fear, shame, and other intense disagreeable emotions would turn us away from confessing the truth. 

The example of Peter with which we began shows us this.  Fear and shame silenced him at first, and then eventually he outright denies Christ altogether.  We face this difficulty when people challenge us about the truth.  There are many ways this might happen.  They might say to us that God’s Word isn’t that important, or that it’s not reliable, or that something God has said isn’t actually true but outdated or harmful.  Confrontations are always unpleasant, and so we’d like to avoid them.  But these spiritual confrontations are more important than even physical conflicts like war, because these confrontations have to do with the soul and eternity.  Therefore we must pluck up our courage and open our mouths, regardless of the consequences. 

When we do not fight against lies, but instead remain silent, the fall has already begun—as we see with Peter.  That’s because the course is already being set where we are no longer desiring the praise of God, but rather the praise of our fellow human beings.  This is an intense, difficult, and dangerous struggle.  Jesus pictures that with the hot sun beating down upon the soil.  If there is no root, the plant will burn up and die.

Challenges to our faith, to say the right word, are intense and require courage.  Supposing we maintain our courage and our convictions, what then?  Then come the weeds of desires.  They start out small.  They grow over time.  They are never enough to choke out the life of faith at the start, but inevitably if they are not resisted, they will take over the entire garden.  The hot sun of persecution is the devil’s short game.  The weeds of cares, riches, and pleasures are his long game.  Slowly, ever so slowly, he nurses along what our flesh is already predisposed to prefer over the Christian life of sacrifice and love.  Discipline is gone and so the garden turns shabby.  At some point the crop is lost.  It’s hard to say just when.  And that works to the devil’s favor.  If we can’t tell just when our greed and lust will choke out our faith, then our flesh sees an advantage for itself.  If we can’t tell just when the cares, riches, and pleasure of life will choke out the Christian faith, then we might as well indulge these lusts up to but not past the point where we are no longer Christians.  Then we could have our cake and eat it too.  We could live for pleasure and not for love, but still go the heaven. 

But this is awful logic, particularly because it seems like it should work.  Fish might nibble at bait that is offered to them, and as every fisherman knows, sometimes they get a tasty meal without getting caught.  Likewise we can nibble at the cares, pleasures, and riches of life—disregarding sacrifice and love—and might get away with it for a time.  But somewhere in that bait is the devil’s hook.  And the trouble with all that tasting of it is that it only creates a hankering for more, until before you know it all our sacrificing and love are gone.  We produce no fruit.  We are living for ourselves.  Although we might remain members in good standing of the Christian congregation, we no longer care about the Gospel.  There is an honoring of God with the lips, but the heart is far from him.

Finally, the fourth type of soil are those who upon hearing the Word, hold it fast with an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience.  Being a Christian is much more a matter of standing and enduring, rather than wiping out all our enemies once and for all and being done with them.  We’d, of course, like that because then we wouldn’t need to continue to fight and work.  But overcoming the challenges that come with the Christian life is like doing the dishes.  As soon as you are done with them, they only get dirty again.  Likewise, the challenges to our faith do not stop until we lay down our heads in death.  Over and over again Christians are put to the test with persecution.  They are constantly annoyed by their sinful flesh which is always pulling them away from their first love of Christ.  But by God’s grace they endure these things. 

Therefore, Christians have their battle stories to tell.  The story is not of their own fortitude or strength or greatness, but the abiding love of God towards them—strengthening them when the stand, and picking them up when they fall.  What becomes abundantly clear with all the things that come in the Christian life is that we are dependent upon God’s mercy.  The Word of God is a precious thing that over and over again brings us to repentance and through faith in Jesus we receive the divine and almighty power of salvation—the forgiveness of sins that Jesus worked through his death and his resurrection.  The Christian story is the story of the sowing of the seed.  The word of God comes and does its work.

And so from Jesus’s parable today we can learn something important—especially in our day.  People think that being a Christian is the easiest thing in the world, that it’s no big deal, that seemingly nobody loses their faith, or ends up in hell if they have made some vague commitment to being a Christian.  But the truth is as the hymn writer puts it: “I walk in danger all the way.”  Jesus tells us this parable to warn us so that we are not complacent and apathetic when it comes to the Word of God.  If St. Peter was able to fall, then certainly each of us can also fall.  God was gracious to him and Jesus restored him to faith, but that is not something we should assume will always happen.  That would be tempting God.  Instead, we should learn from what Jesus actually teaches us in our parable.  Pay attention to the Word of God and do not think of it as a small matter.  In it is the Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.  Hear it with glad and open hearts, hold fast to that promise—applying it to yourself, and do not let anything get in the way of it.  Nothing is more important that the Word concerning the Son of God who became Man, suffered, died, and rose again for the salvation of sinners.

190217 Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16 (Septuagesima), February 17, 2019

190217 Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16 (Septuagesima), February 17, 2019

“What’s in it for me?”  That is a question that comes oh-so-naturally to us sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.  “What’s in it for me?”  Sinful human beings are somewhat willing to sacrifice, work, and suffer, but only if there is a handsome payoff for all of that at the end.  If there isn’t a payoff, or the payoff isn’t as big as we want it to be, then good luck getting someone to sacrifice, work, or suffer. 

The only other way that the sinner is going to be impelled to work in that case is by fear.  Every kid knows what it’s like to be put to work on the basis of fear.  Mom or Dad or both are going to make my life miserable if I don’t do what they told me to do, and so I will do it.  How does it feel to work under those conditions?  Don’t they just hate doing it, and can’t wait to be done with it?  That’s because the only thing that we sons of Adam and daughters of Eve care about is what’s in it for us.  If we can avoid pain or be handsomely rewarded with money or glory or praise or self-esteem or some other payoff, then we might do something unpleasant.  Otherwise, it’s “no thank you.”

Suppose God thought the way that we do.  What’s in it for him with all the things that he does every moment in sustaining the universe?  The answer is nothing.  He isn’t benefited in any way.  But he is not slavish like us.  He is free.  He has his head up looking around.  He gives and gives and gives and gives.  He does this in spite of the way that he is paid back.  If he only did good to those who do him good, then even the very best and pious Christians would find that they have no help or comfort from God because they wouldn’t deserve it.  And what of those who are less than the best—are disobedient, unbelieving, unthankful?  If they were paid tit for tat they would have no happiness and only misery.  Life would be hell for them.  But God is patient and long suffering, desiring that his goodness might bring us to repentance.  He loads up even those who hate him with all kinds of good things.  God is love.  He is not motivated by what is in it for him.  He suffers so that we are benefitted.

There are a couple of Jesus’s parables that throw a spotlight on this difference between God who loves and we who don’t.  These parables are the one we find perplexing, because our Old Adam can’t understand them at all.  Our Gospel reading this morning is one of them.  There’s something that doesn’t sit quite right with us in the way that these workers are treated.  Some are hired at 6 o’clock in the morning.  Some are hired at 9:00.  Some are hired at noon and at 3:00.  Finally, some are hired at 5:00, one hour before quitting time.  You know how work is.  It takes you a little bit to get in the swing of things, and then at the end of the day you need to pick things up.  This doesn’t allow these last workers to get hardly any work done.  And yet they receive the same amount of money as the people who have been working all day long.

What gives?  Guess what happened the next day when the master of the house went strolling through the marketplace looking for workers?  If word got out what was going on he probably wouldn’t find anybody until 5:00.  Then he would have a busload of workers.  Why?  Because we are driven by the thought: “What’s in it for me?”  If I can get paid the same for working one hour or twelve hours, I think I’ll choose the one hour option.

But this is only because we don’t care about anybody else except ourselves.  This is proof that those workers don’t give a rip about the master of the house who hired them or the work that he might need to have done.  They wouldn’t care that they aren’t contributing anything, but only taking, so long as they get what they want. 

This is why it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.  Employers don’t give a rip about their employees and so they squeeze them for everything they possibly can.  Employees don’t give a rip about their bosses, and so they will do as little as they can—just enough to keep the boss off their back.  Or maybe if they have some self-respect, they’ll do more than the rest, but only so that they can have the payoff of praise or self-righteousness.  If the work should become harder or if they don’t feel sufficiently appreciated, then they will say, “See you later!” and move on to someplace else that holds better prospects of giving them what they want.  Because all any sinner cares about is, “What’s in it for me?”

Most people, and perhaps a goodly number of you included, do not think that this is sin.  But this is the root sin that corresponds to the root of God’s Law.  As St. Paul says, all the commandments are summed up with the one word of “love.”  God is love, and that is why he gives and gives and gives and gives some more.  And so there is nothing more wrong about us than that we don’t care about other people except ourselves and perhaps those select few whom we choose to also care about.  But Jesus says, “Love your enemies.”  Enemies are people who are out to get you and to hurt you.  “Love those,” Jesus says.

Again, most people are going to reject this because they hate God’s Law.  They think that it is unrealistic.  They might even think that it is dumb or evil because it tells us to always give.  If you are always giving, then that might hamper your quality of life.  It might even shorten the length of your life.  People who are always giving get worn out and used up.  This is good and holy in God’s sight because it is the way that we are conformed to the image of God’s Son.  Jesus loved and so he gave, until there was nothing left.  Blessed are those people who are his disciples, who learn from him, and follow him.  But the world doesn’t think of that as being blessed.  It sounds like a lot of work without any payoff.

At the heart of why Jesus’s parable is perplexing is that the supreme wisdom of the natural Man is taken down.  There is no more highly prized bit of wisdom to us as sinners than that we should try to get as much as we can for ourselves with as little effort as possible.  It is offensive to the natural Man, therefore, that there are workers who suffered more and did not get paid more.  According to the Old Adam that is either stupid or evil. 

What the Gospel teaches us, however, is that neither the work nor the reward is the main thing.  Our flesh is always drawn to pay close attention to both these things.  But what is important and life-changing for these workers in the vineyard is not that they are going to get filthy stinking rich.  Rather the main thing is that they were chosen by the master of the house.  They had been standing in the marketplace as worthless pieces of trash—standing idle, caring only about themselves, knowing nothing of love, deserving of nothing but punishment—but the master of the house has called them unto himself: “Come, and be mine,” he says.

Likewise, the main thing for us as Christians is the call that we have received from God to be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him with everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.  Each and everyone one of you has been called to be God’s own.  Each of you have been spoken to by God.  You have all been baptized.  You have all been united with Christ.  That is God saying to you, “Come, and be mine.  Come, and work in my vineyard.”  I said the word “work” and your Old Adam might immediately protest, “I don’t want to work!” but don’t be fooled—that is not where the emphasis lies.  The emphasis is on the word, “Come.  Come, and be mine.” 

It’s like when Jesus said, “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.  Come.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  Jesus speaks of “work” here too with the word “yoke.”  A yoke is that piece of equipment that animals use to pull stuff—to do heavy work—but the emphasis obviously is on the invitation to fellowship with him.  The yoke will follow as a matter of course, but it will be found to be easy and light.  That is not because what Christians do is not difficult or dangerous.  To the contrary!  But the joy that we have in God our Savior renews the spirit and makes difficult thing easy and bitter things sweet so long as we don’t give in to our Old Adam.  This is part of the transformation of our hearts and minds that the Holy Spirit works in us so that we are made different from this old, evil, selfish world and begin to covet those true treasures which rust and moth cannot destroy, and thieves cannot break in and steal.

Those who by the Holy Spirit know the goodness of being called into the vineyard of the Lord are not going to begrudge that joyous thing to anyone.  If someone is a Christian his or her whole life, then this is a cause for rejoicing.  If someone is brought to repentance for sin and is saved from hell only moments before their death, then Christians will rejoice then too.  What matters is not the work or the suffering of the enduring of persecution, but that the love of God has been poured into our heart and Christians are glad to see that happen also for another.  In the parable all the workers receive a denarius.  They all get the same thing.  The reward for Christians is the crown of everlasting life of fellowship with God who is Love.  There is nothing more or higher or better that can be given than that.

At the end of Jesus’s parable today he says, “The last will be first, and the first last.”  This contradicts the way that we normally think.  According to our thinking the last will be last and the first will be first.  In a similar way we might think that those Christians who work more or suffer more should receive higher wages.  But Christians themselves will tell you that it is not the work or the suffering or the hope of reward that they are care so much about.  They treasure the call to be God’s own.  God has loved them and therefore called them.  They now love because he first loved us and want to be with him.  Something inevitable that goes along with this is enduring the attacks of the devil and the world who hate them, but that is not the main thing.  The main thing is being together with Jesus.

And so as Christians we need to learn new ways of thinking that are different from the ways that we might think by nature.  The mentality that asks, “What’s in it for me?” is the reason why this world is torn apart by greed, lust, divorce, frustration, bitterness, sadness, and a whole host of other evils.  The world knows nothing of genuine love, even though it chatters about love unceasingly.  Those who think that the highest wisdom of life is the accumulation of pleasure and riches will be offended by Jesus’s parable.  It won’t seem fair that although the experiences of Christians differ, and some have it harder than others, that they are all made equal receiving the same reward. 

But only caring about yourself and your own interests is not the supreme wisdom.  The devil and sinners are dead wrong.  Love is better wisdom and it will finally prevail.  In this world it might seem as though the opposite of love is what is going to get you ahead, but that is false already in this life.  The apostles and martyrs who died because they loved Jesus did not live bad lives.  The lived the best of lives.  It is foolish to want to live differently than them.  We should covet their zeal and love, for these are treasures that will not be destroyed at the end of the world.  Everything else will.

The supreme wisdom of love also continues into the life of the world to come, in heaven, love will fill everything as St. Paul describes in 1 Corinthians chapter 13.  Meanwhile in hell those who are only looking out for themselves and their own interests will be tearing each other apart.  All the restraints God places on our lives in this world to keep people’s lusts in check (and there are many of them), will be taken away.  We live in a dog-eat-dog world, but hell is a dog-eat-dog world where nothing is held back. 

Jesus tells his parables so that we can learn from them and become wise according to the true wisdom.  The world’s wisdom of self-interest is false.  The better wisdom of love will prevail over everything. 

190210 Sermon on Matthew 17:1-9 (Transfiguration), February 10, 2019

190210 Sermon on Matthew 17:1-9 (Transfiguration), February 10, 2019

Glory is something that is very important and yet it is something that is hard to understand.  What is glory?  We’ll get to God’s glory, but let’s start with glory among us.  Glory is when a person is set apart and made praiseworthy because of something about them.  An athlete achieves glory and is given praise when he or she is better than the rest of the competitors.  The scholar achieves glory and is given praise when a scholarship or award is given.  A rich person is glorious in the display of treasures that sets him or her apart from those who can’t afford such things.  Glory makes a person different and praiseworthy.

What is the glory, then, that God has?  He is set apart and different.  He is worthy of praise.  He is the most powerful.  He is wisest.  All wealth does not really belong to any person, because each will die and it will go to somebody else.  God alone possesses it all.  This makes him glorious, set apart, and worthy of all praise because nothing is good except him.

What effect does glory have on the person who is beholding it?  Again, we might see this better if we first consider the glory of human beings.  When we come into the presence of someone whom we know as having more glory than us we become bashful.  If we aren’t sure that they have more glory than us, then we might compete with them, hoping to have more glory than they have.  But when we are sure that they have more glory than us, then we become reserved and deferential.  Someone who is poor, for example, might become embarrassed of their poverty when they come into the presence of someone rich, because the richness of the one brings attention to what is lacking in the other.

This might help us understand a little bit better what is going on when people come into the presence of God’s glory.  The surpassing goodness of God brings into sharp contrast what is lacking in us.  This is what we see in the Bible, without fail.  Whenever the fullness of the glory of God is beginning to be made known the people who see it are deeply affected. 

There are many examples of this, including our readings for today, but we can see this effect in a special way with Moses on Mt. Sinai.  Moses boldly asked God once, “Show me your glory,” but God said to him, “No one can see God and live.”  But so that Moses could get an idea of God’s glory he shunted him away in the cleft of a rock, shielding his glory from Moses with his hand as he passed by, and Moses was allowed to look after he had passed by.  Even though Moses did not fully see God’s glory, it had a lasting effect on him.  When he came down from the mountain his face glowed with the reflected glory of God.  The people couldn’t stand to look at him and so he put a veil over his face and would only take it off when he went to speak with God.  Here you see the power of God’s glory, and it was not even the fullness of his glory, but only his backside.

Now consider the final destiny of all people and every individual, including you.  Job says that he knows that his Redeemer lives and at the last he shall see him face to face with his very own resurrected eyes.  The glory of the Lord is coming to you.  This is not something that is boring.  Rather, it is precisely the absolute opposite of that.  There is nothing more stupendous, terrifying, amazing, mind-boggling, exciting—and maybe we can wrap all these words into one: there is nothing more glorious than to be in the presence of the living God.

Experiencing the glory of God is the major theme that runs through all history including each of you and this present day, and we see this clearly taught in the Bible from beginning to end.  In the beginning, Adam and Eve were created in God’s image.  They were by no means as glorious as God.  They were less than him.  But they were also compatible with God.  They did not feel ashamed when the thought of him and his glory came to mind.  They took delight in God even as God took delight in them.

This, however, was horribly marred by sin.  After Adam and Eve sinned they did not want to be together with God.  They ran away from him.  They were now in need of redemption, which God promised to provide for them in the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head.  From this point on, because of the marring effect of sin, Adam and Eve and all their children could no longer see God and live.  There was no longer fellowship and communion with God by sight, but only by faith, and this faith is notoriously weak as we can see in all of God’s people from the beginning until now.  It is not until the sin in us is dead by virtue of the fact of us dying, and being transformed by the resurrection from the dead in Jesus that we will once again be partakers of the fullness of God’s glory like Adam and Eve were before they sinned.

In the meantime, before we are transformed by the resurrection of our bodies, we are nursed along by God as we see in the Old and the New Testaments.  In the Old Testament God hid his glory in the tabernacle and later the temple, but the people were given access to him and his glory to strengthen and preserve them in their faith.  The Law that Moses received on Mt. Sinai taught the people how they could live together with God and his glory without being harmed by it, because they were sanctified by the sacrifices God prescribed for them.

The Old Testament was preparation and a foreshadowing of what would come with the New Testament.  The sacrifices and blood of animals would be replaced by the one and only great atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the cross.  He was punished in our place for the sins that we have committed, having taken them upon himself.  The price of our redemption from the serpent was God’s own beloved Son.  It is by his death and resurrection that we have the sure and certain hope of seeing God in all his glory and being blessed by the radiance of that Sun instead of being scorched and burned as we otherwise would be with all our sin.  The warmth of that Sun has healing in its wings and we shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.  Meanwhile the wicked shall be burned like stubble.

Between that first Easter and the culmination of all these great things with Christ’s second coming, God continues to nurse us along with his New Testament just as he did in the Old.  He gives us his glory—not in its raw, naked power, which would destroy us—but clothed, so that we may be strengthened and preserved in our faith by it.  And so God has given us the washing of rebirth and regeneration in holy baptism by which we are united with Christ in his saving death and anticipate our resurrection with him.  This is a truly glorious thing even if it goes unrecognized by the scoffers and unbelievers who think that it is nothing.

God gives us the glory of Christ’s own body and Christ’s own blood united with the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.  Jesus himself calls this the “new testament” that is given and shed for the forgiveness of all our sins and for the remembrance of Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross.  Those who receive this sacrament worthily, that is, by faith in Jesus’s words, are greatly benefited by this contact with the glory of God.  Those who receive this sacrament unworthily are scorched and harmed by it as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11.  God’s glory as it is communicated in the sacraments are no play thing to be taken lightly.

Thus we see in the New Testament that God nurses us along with his glory.  He does not do this with tents, tabernacles or temples.  He does it by the proclamation of the Gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.  The proclamation can be done with words alone as Christians testify to their hope in Jesus, or it can be in the form of the sacraments which God has given to us to receive his glory and to be enriched by it.  This nursing along of our faith has taken place from the first preaching of the Gospel in the Garden of Eden and will last until the end of the world.  The whole reason for this preaching is so that one day our faith may be replaced by sight and we can behold the full glory of God in heaven.  This is the salvation that we are speaking about when we speak of Jesus as our Savior.

What we have been talking about today with God’s glory and the way that he communicates that glory to us is relevant to our topic today, which is Christ’s transfiguration.   Here we see Jesus transformed in his appearance.  The glory that he has as the eternally begotten Son of God shines through, and Peter, James, and John see what was otherwise hidden.  Jesus speaks to Moses and Elijah, the two great figures from the Old Testament.  Moses represents the Law.  Elijah represents the prophets.  Both of them point to Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s revelation.

Upon seeing this glory St. Peter has a pretty reasonable suggestion from an Old Testament point of view.  He knows that he is seeing God’s glory before him just as the Israelites saw God’s glory being manifested at Mt. Sinai.  He comes up with a way to keep that glory around and suggests tents or tabernacles—one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus.  He’d like to make this situation more permanent because he recognizes that this is something good that is happening before them.

But he isn’t even done speaking when the Father interrupts him.  Peter’s plan won’t do.  This man Jesus is God’s beloved Son with whom he is well pleased.  The Father is well pleased with the Son not just as he goes from triumph to triumph and is praised and lauded by the people like he was on Palm Sunday.  The Father is also well pleased with the Son when he is abandoned by everyone, is spit upon, mocked, and nailed to the cross.  Jesus was not going to sit in a tent or a tabernacle to be worshipped that way.  He was going to be glorified (as Jesus says several times) when he was lifted up upon the cross, dying for the sins of the whole world.

The Father says to Peter, James, and John, “Listen to him.”  “Listen to Jesus.”  It might be relevant what happened just before the transfiguration.  Just before this is when Peter tells Jesus that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Jesus gives him the name “Peter” for his good confession.  But then Jesus tells them how it is necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, be mistreated by the authorities, suffer, be crucified, and die, and be raised on the third day.  This is when Peter is given the awful name of “Satan” when he discourages Jesus from such a course of action.

Perhaps when the Father tells these men to listen to Jesus he is telling them to put aside whatever thoughts of glory they might have or how they think God ought to be worshipped.  Jesus is going to be glorified and should be worshipped when he is on the cross, in agony and sadness and despair, for that is where the love of God for you is made manifest.  His greatest glory is not so much just in the way that he is more powerful than everything else, but in the depth of his love for you, and the lengths that he goes to for your forgiveness and salvation.

When the bright cloud overshadowed these men and the voice spoke to them they fell to the ground.  I think our translation might be a little bland when it says that they were “terrified.”  It was more than that.  They were extremely, extremely terrified.  They were so frightened that they almost died.  The glory of the Lord brought out all that was so sorely lacking in them.  But then when it was all over they lifted their eyes and saw Jesus only.

That is a good word for us to end on today.  Although I’ve spoken a lot about God’s glory today, I don’t really understand it.  There is no way for us to understand it until we experience it.  And even then, I’m of the opinion that it will take eternity to begin to understand it.  But what is really necessary is that we focus on Jesus only.  If we look to him, the Good Shepherd, then we will not go wrong.  Sheep do not understand what the shepherd is doing, and we won’t understand everything about God and his glory.  But as the Father say, “Listen to Jesus.”  In another place Jesus says, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.  They hear my voice and follow me.”

Great, magnificent, mind-blowing things are in store for each one of us.  The glory of God awaits us.  That can be a frightening thing.  But Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.  Follow me.”