Sermon, Sunday Sep 15, 2013

Brothers and sisters,

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Speculation about the nature of heaven is pretty common in both secular and Christian pop-culture. Most of us have probably seen the movie “It’s a wonderful life” and no-doubt remember Clarence talking about how every time a bell rings an angel gets their wings. Some of the most popular of Christian books in the last few years are books that re-count alleged visions that people have had of heaven, whether it is through dreams or near-death experiences or some other experience. And as interesting as these ideas might be, as Christians we should stick with what God reveals to us through His Word. And this morning we are given a glimpse of heaven that is far more glorious than anything that can be found in un-biblical speculations. In the Gospel lesson our Lord Jesus declares “..there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” And He also speaks of angels rejoicing over one sinner who repents.

   Think about that image of the angels rejoicing over one sinner who repents in light of something that I read recently. Christians ministering in the middle-east are reporting that “Muslims are coming to Christ at an unprecedented pace despite intense persecution of those who leave Islam.”  According to Tom Doyle, Middle East-Central Asia director for e3 Partners, a Texas-based missions agency, "Probably in the last 10 years, more Muslims have come to faith in Christ than in the last 15 centuries of Islam,". There have even been reports of Muslims having dreams about Jesus and being told to trust in Him in those dreams. Think about the rejoicing in heaven among the angels that is takings place as a result all of these people turning from the darkness of Islam to the glorious light of the Gospel.

    This is a powerful fulfillment of what Jesus talks about in the two parables from this morning’s Gospel lesson. Both of these parables are punctuated with images of great rejoicing among the angels and as such each parable is an invitation for us to rejoice. These parables are both celebrations of the finding of the lost.

    In the parable of the lost sheep there is the shepherd who is in charge of a flock of 100 sheep who realizes that one of the sheep is missing and so He leaves the 99 sheep to go after the one lost sheep. Think about that. Would a shepherd really do that? Would a shepherd really risk the 99 in order to go after the one? Well Jesus’ point is that He does. He goes after the one lost sheep and when Jesus finds the lost sheep what does He do? Does He find the sheep and say “OK come with me if you want.” ?  No, He lays the sheep on His shoulders and carries the sheep back to the flock, rejoicing the whole time.

   Then there is the parable of the lost coin where you have this woman who has ten coins and loses one and lights a lamp and sweeps the house and seeks diligently until she finds the one coin. And when she finds the coin what does she do? She calls together all of her friends and neighbors and invites them to come to her house and rejoice with her because she has found this one coin that she lost. This is totally illogical to us. She likely spent much more on entertaining and feeding her friends than whatever one coin might have been worth. To us this makes no sense, but it’s an illustration of the abundant nature of God’s grace in Christ; finding the lost is what He does and the essence of who He is.  

    And so this begs the question who then are the lost and who are the found? There are many type of people who could be considered lost, but the essence of being lost comes down to being content with your own righteousness. The lost are those who have been deceived to believe that they don’t need forgiveness, that they don’t need a Savior. The found are those who have been gathered to Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit and realize they need a Savior from sin, death and the devil.   

    The Muslims converting to Christianity in the midst of an environment where simply being a Christian can get you killed were among the lost but are now among the found. They have been found by Christ Jesus, He has placed them on His shoulders and brought them to His flock, and there is great rejoicing among the angels over this. They are among those that God speaks of through Ezekiel in the Old Testament lesson: I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.

    On the other hand, I believe it is very likely that the we- the western church- were among the 99 found that Jesus has left to seek the lost, but have now become the lost. Not that He abandoned us. He promises to be with us to the end of the ages. He still comes to us in Word and sacrament, but there is a spirit of revival and a hunger and a thirst for the Word in places like Africa, China, Afghanistan and many other places all across the globe that seems to be lacking in the west. I believe in the west we are among the fat sheep that God speaks of through Ezekiel. The western church has, in many ways become complacent in her own righteousness. The western church does not celebrate the weak and lost sheep but thrusts at the sheep with horns until we have been scattered. The Gospel has been thrust aside for social justice, purpose, inclusiveness, prosperity, and how-to lectures and whatever other church-growth trend comes down the pike. The western church has, in many ways, forgotten her need for a Savior.  And I believe that this has a lot to do with why we often hear that the fastest growing segment of religious preferences are the “nones”; those who have no religious preference.

    But there is no reason to fear for the Good Shepherd comes looking for the lost. The truth of Christ that God reveals to us in the lesson from 1^st Timothy remains true; the truth that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  This leaves only one thing for us to do: be sinners. If we are sinners then we are among those whom Jesus comes to save. This is me. This is you. This is everyone. You may have held back your hand and perhaps even your mouth from some sins but the reality is that your heart and mind are constantly bent toward sin. Remember how Jesus shows this to us? In Matthew 5 He tells us that to be angry is the same as committing murder and that looking upon someone with lust makes us as guilty as if we had committed adultery.

     You are a sinner. And this is good, because you are among those whom Christ Jesus came to save. We are sinners and we hate to admit it. But as our Lord reveals to us in Romans 3, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”   Still, to confess that we are sinners is to admit that on our own we are powerless to sin, death and the devil, and we don’t want to do that. But the cure only makes sense after the diagnosis.

     Would you take a pill that someone told you to take if all they told you about it was that it had all sorts of side-effects like your hair falling out and loss of appetite? Of course you wouldn’t. But what if the person is your doctor and they told you that you had cancer and that taking the chemo-therapy pill was going to take care of it? It’s a bad diagnosis but you would take the pills. You would probably rejoice that the pills were available. 

      We are sinners, but we have to admit it. Sadly many preachers will not talk about sin. Instead they will talk about mistakes and say nobody’s perfect, everybody messes up, or maybe they will say as long as you try your best that is what matters.  But you haven’t tried your best have you? And just because everyone else sins does not make it OK to God. God does not grade on a curve.

   One of the most comforting of Jesus’ parables is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector. It’s  about a Pharisee and a tax-collector who go to the temple to pray. The Pharisee says when he prays ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; jI give tithes of all that I get.’.  But then the tax-collector came up and he would not even look to heaven and he simply said ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’  Jesus declares that it is the sinful tax-collector who went home justified rather than the Pharisee.  The Pharisee didn’t think he needed forgiveness. He didn’t think he needed a Savior. He was content with his own righteousness. The tax-collector knew he was a sinner and in light of that all he could do was plead for mercy from God, and he received it. He went away justified-which is to say his sins were forgiven.

   Jesus came to save sinners, and this is exactly what He accomplished for you when He laid down His life on the cross and paid the price for your sin. His agony in your place, his death for your life. His blood washes away your sin, your fear of death and your condemnation and it all comes through His cross. Your sin cannot stand in the way. Your death cannot stand in the way. Nothing can separate you from Him. You are a sinner and Jesus is your Savior because He came to save sinners, He came to find the lost sheep and carry the lost sheep on His shoulders as He brings them back to the flock. Even when you wander off and get lost, the good Shepherd will look for you with the same intensity, concern, and love and He finds you. And for this there is much joy in heaven.

Amen  

Sermon, Sunday Sep 8, 2013

Sermon: Luke 14:25-35

Brothers and sisters,

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to honor our parents and to love our neighbors as ourselves. How can those commands be reconciled with the words that we hear from our Lord Jesus in this morning’s Gospel lesson where He says “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  

    Jesus is speaking here of the cost of discipleship. And it is appropriate that you are hearing a Word that addresses the cost of discipleship on Rally Sunday. This is a day that recognizes the importance of passing on the faith of the church to the next generation. This is a day when we recognize our call to make disciples. And what Jesus is describing here is the life of a disciple.

    So does being a disciple of Christ mean that we are to literally hate our family? Well the original Greek word; miseo, does mean “to hate”.  But understand, the central message of Luke is that Jesus is the friend of undeserving sinners.  Jesus wants us to realize that if we are going to have Him as our friend, He does not want us to be half-hearted in it and so He uses strong words and images, as He often did. In Matthew 18 He gives what seems, on the surface to be a call for self-mutilation where He says: And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.. Of course we know that Jesus does not literally call us to cut off our hands and feet.

    And in the same way He is not calling us to literally hate our family. Hating basically means “loving less” here. In Genesis 29 we read that God saw that Leah was hated by Jacob. But in the verse right before that it says that Jacob loved Leah less than Rachel. Clearly Jacob loved Leah, but he strongly preferred Rachel. Jesus is talking about priorities. He is talking about not letting anything; not even our family; come between us and our relationship, our friendship with Him.

   And so being in fellowship with Jesus, being a disciple means rejecting anything that might separate us from Jesus. At the same time though we are of course still called to honor our parents and love our spouse and our children and value our life. All of us are called to strive to put Jesus before everything in our life.  Is Jesus the center of your life?

    If we truly lived up to this we would have more volunteers to help out with Sunday school than we knew what to do with.  If we truly lived up to this I would be inundated with different ideas coming in all the time on how to have a richer and more fruitful ministry. And yes, if we truly lived up to this, we would have no money concerns whatsoever.

    But that is not the reality. The reality is that excuses get made and we try to make our relationship with Christ take a back-seat to sports or work or family or whatever else might come down the pike. And  the biggest casualties of this might just be kids. Look around you. Watch the news. There are so many attacks on the Gospel right now. Christians are being persecuted left and right in places like Syria and Egypt. And here is a sobering thought. It has been predicted that by 2050 Islam will be the majority religion here in the United States. For those in my generation that is the world that our grandkids and great-grandkids are going to be growing up in.

    These kids that are here today for Sunday school are part of the generation that is going to be raising kids in that world. Can we expect them to be prepared for that when we tell them that football is more important than church??  Jesus calls us to reject even our family for Him, and yet we too often are not willing to tell our kids to reject sports for Him. Jesus calls us to be willing to renounce all that we have to be His disciple. He is talking about picking up our crosses.

   Of course the truth is, none of us love Jesus exclusively and strongly enough or rejects their family enough or renounces all that they have enough. We are not able to be Jesus’ disciple by virtue of our own strength or reason. Martin Luther said that we don’t need to go looking for crosses to pick up because crosses find us. The fact that Jesus mentions cross-bearing in the context of the family and our possessions shows us that our crosses come to us in our every day lives; in our vocations; at home, at work, at church.  

   A cross can be a loved one in need of constant care; or a child who has become a real problem. Jesus is warning us against fearing, loving and trusting our families, our jobs, our possessions and casting God to the side.

    The good news of this difficult lesson is that Jesus welcomes sinners into His fellowship, and He calls sinners to bring their crosses into that fellowship. Look at the illustrations He uses. He uses the example of an unthinking king who fails to count the cost of his impending battle and a short-sighted builder who begins building a house without counting the cost. Counting the cost of discipleship means recognizing from the beginning that we are not worthy of being Jesus’ disciples, that we are not able to carry our crosses on our own.

    Those who assume they can enter into Jesus’ fellowship on their own efforts or worthiness will blunder. But those who recognize from the start that they are not worthy are the ones whom Jesus chooses to be friends with. And of course when you recognize this then you will treasure your relationship with Jesus above every relationship, no matter how noble a relationship might be.

    You can do nothing to enter into fellowship with Jesus. He chooses you; you do not choose Him. But in this fellowship Jesus joins you under the sign of the cross. And in the midst of our crosses, whatever they might be, sinful human nature tempts the Christian to seek the easy way out; the path of least resistance.

   But Jesus did not look for the easy way out. Jesus drank the cup of suffering and death that the Father set before Him, for the joy that was before Him. And because Jesus chose the hardest way for us He is everything to us. He gave Himself to rescue us from sin. He chose us, who cannot pay the cost of discipleship, to be in fellowship with Him. He promises to give us all we need. He assures us that nothing will be able to separate us from Him. He gives and gives and gives to those whom He has chosen to be His own.

    You need not run from the cross that has been set before you. Because Jesus sacrificed Himself for you though you do not deserve it, you can look to Him for strength that you would be able to make sacrifices for others. You can look to Christ for strength in the midst of your crosses.

    And so we have this cross of a culture that is becoming more and more hostile to the Gospel as secularism and false-beliefs take hold more and more each day.  And the passing on of the faith to the next generations is at the core of this cross, but it is not just about the children, it is also about our neighbors.  But here is the good news. Romans 10:17 promises that faith comes through hearing and that hearing comes through the Word of Christ. The creation of faith is for us a passive act. It comes through listening to the Word of Christ. And we have the Word of Christ. We have the words of eternal life that create faith. It is not up to us. We don’t do it. We don’t have the ability to do it. The Holy Spirit does it through the Word of Christ.

    So Romans 10 also challenges us with this “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ 14How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?”  How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? This is a challenge not just for me, not just for the Sunday school teachers, but for parents and grand-parents and brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors; all of us. The Holy Spirit creates faith through the Word of Christ that we are called to share, proclaim, teach and pass on.

   When you have received what Christ Jesus gained on the cross, you become His disciples, and you learn to give to others as He gives to you. You are sent out with the Words of eternal life and with these words you are able to share with your kids, your neighbors, your co-workers your friends etc, the things they need to enjoy the abundant life-the strength of Christ that we all need when we are weak, depressed, helpless or lacking courage; the promise that no matter what this world and the devil throw at us nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus; that nothing can snatch us from the hands of our Shepherd Christ Jesus; the promise that in Christ Jesus our sins have been forgiven. Jesus took up His cross for you. He promises that He is with you to the end of the ages, so you can go ahead and pick up your cross, because the same Christ Jesus who comes with a cross also comes with the promise of the resurrection.

Amen

   

  

Sermon Sunday Sep 1st 2013

Brothers and sisters,

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

What do you think of when you hear the word “wicked”? Chances are what you think of is not something very nice or pleasant. Maybe you think of witches and demons and things of that nature. Maybe you think of pedophiles or drug-dealers or rapists. Maybe you think of people like Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer. Or maybe you think of some of the images we have seen from Syria this week. The word “wicked” no doubt evokes images of something that, in some way shape or form, creates fear or anxiety or anger in you. It is a word that is used, in some form, in the Bible roughly 500 times. So scripturally it is clearly an important word. We see it in our lesson from Proverbs this morning where we read take away the wicked from the presence of the king, and his throne will be established in righteousness.   

    So going by these words from Proverbs we can see that wickedness is basically anything that opposes righteousness. So this begs the question then “What is righteous?”  The word “righteous” or some variation of it, appears in the Bible roughly 555 times so it is also clearly an important word in scripture. Well perhaps the first thing that we should understand about what is righteous is that without Christ, we’re not. As Paul says in Romans 3 For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,. Paul also cites Psalm 14 when he writes “None is righteous, no, not one;  no one understands; no one seeks for God.” 

    Nobody can live a holy life. It might seem that some come closer than others when we look around, but when it comes right down to it we are naturally born with sin. Our confessions define the sinful condition that we are born in as being born without the fear of God, without trust in God and with the inclination to sin. This is a deadly condition to be plagued with as it brings eternal death on those who are not born anew in Christ. And so we are born in opposition to righteousness.

    We are born wicked. And so when we look around and we see anything that is in opposition to righteousness we are seeing wickedness, and we are seeing where we used to be. We are seeing what we used to be bound by. When we see wickedness, we should not be quick to exalt ourselves and boast of our own piety and righteousness. We should see it as if we were walking past a prison that used to hold us, but that we have been graciously freed from, though we did not deserve it. And we should see those still mired in wickedness as prisoners, and with the Gospel we have the power to free them, we have the power of God unto salvation. We have the words of eternal life.

     And this power to free the wicked comes from Christ Jesus, Who is righteous. We have no righteousness of our own. Christ Jesus is righteous and He is the very source of our righteousness. Paul writes in Romans 3  But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.  And Paul writes of this righteousness, that your faith in Christ is counted as righteousness. Theologians refer to this as the imputed righteousness; like we are stamped with the righteousness of Christ. At the cross, Christ Jesus pours out His righteousness to you and you receive this righteousness through faith.

    And this righteousness that we receive from Christ Jesus is nothing else than the forgiveness of sins and the gracious adoption as children of God on account of Christ’s obedience and merit alone. You have been adopted by God the Father in baptism and you receive the gracious outpouring of His love and mercy and forgiveness through faith in His Son Christ Jesus, and so through Christ alone, you are righteous. This is why Paul writes in Romans 1 that the righteous will live by faith. In Christ you are righteous, but you also know that since wickedness opposes that which is righteous then there is wickedness that opposes you.

     And how do we identify this wickedness? Is it all the atheists? Is it all the Muslims? Is it all the Buddhists? Going back to the lesson from Proverbs, it says take away the wicked from the presence of the king, and his throne will be established in righteousness. Does this mean that we should look to get rid of all non-believers, all non-Christians, all those who would, in some way shape or form, place themselves in opposition to our King, Christ Jesus? By definition they would be “wicked”, so how should we see them, how should we look at them?? Should we see them as enemies who need to be taken out??

    How did Jesus look at them?? How did Jesus look at the prostitutes or the tax-collectors? How did He look at the adulterous woman?? He looked at them in the same way that He looks at everyone; in love.  When Jesus sees sinners He sees us as someone He loves and desires to save and heal. He sees us the way He saw the man with dropsy in the Gospel lesson; the man whom Jesus healed in front of the Pharisees and lawyers, even though it was the Sabbath.

    When the Pharisees and the lawyers saw this afflicted man, what did they see? Well they never really say but our Lord Jesus gives us an idea by what He says to them. As if Jesus were reading their mind it says that Jesus responded-though the Pharisees and lawyers did not actually say anything- by asking whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus knew that this was exactly what was running through their minds and He gave them their answer: no. Just prior to this in the previous chapter of Luke we see where Jesus had a previous run-in concerning healing on the Sabbath.

    The Pharisees and the lawyers saw this sick man. They saw his need for healing, they saw his pain, they saw his illness-they saw someone with a problem, and that is all they saw. They did not see someone they loved. They did not see someone in need of mercy. They did not see someone they cared for or for whom they could sacrifice. So they did not see reason to help him.

   And indeed I am sure it seems cruel and heartless to you that someone would have more concern over legalistic traditions and customs than the welfare of an afflicted person. But let’s be careful about translating that scenario to our lives. Speaking about customs of first century Jews to 21^st century Lutherans isn’t always easy. But asking whether we always see those who need help as those whom we love strikes closer to the heart. Do you grow weary and tired when people ask for your help? Do you find yourselves rationalizing that you have to set boundaries or that you must not be an enabler? Not that setting boundaries or being cautious of being an enabler is a bad thing-but they can become an excuse or justification for our lack of love, or at least unwillingness to love.

      When you look around you at people with problems how do you react? When you hear of someone struggling with addiction of any kind; drugs, pornography, alcohol, gambling etc. how do you react? When you hear of someone who cheated on their spouse, is your default instinct to have mercy?? Or is it to judge and condemn?  How Jesus treats this man and reacts to what He can see as the growing contempt of the Pharisees and lawyers toward this sick man gives us- those made righteous in Christ-a picture of how we should see the wicked.

    Jesus cuts right through the Pharisee’s and the lawyer’s deception, and our deception and points to the true problem. If it were someone that they loved, they would have acted. If it were their ox or their son then they would not hesitate, because they would see someone they love. They cannot even respond to Jesus when He asks them if it would be different if it were their son or an ox that they owned that they were talking about. Jesus brings it on a level that is personal. Jesus is no longer talking about a stranger or a hypothetical person, now He is talking about someone we love. What if your child was a non-believer or a Muslim or a Bhuddist? You would see with them with love and mercy.

     Your heart would likely ache for them. You would see them the same way that Jesus saw the sick man in the Gospel lesson; as someone He loves. Jesus acts immediately and shows His love.  He heals the man and sends Him away healed, restored and refreshed. He did not delay.

   Jesus does not delay with you either. In baptism He cleanses you and forgives you. He knew you before you were even born and bore the penalty of all your sins and endured God’s wrath for you. He endured the punishment that we deserve. He did not delay in healing you. He did not delay in restoring you. He did not delay in forgiving you. He did not put off your pain. He did not put off your needs. This is because Jesus acts out of love on your behalf.

    The truth is we cannot remove the wickedness, the wickedness can only be removed by Christ. And so the best thing we can do for those still in bondage to wickedness is to give them Christ in Word and deed; to love them as Jesus loves us. Jesus expects no reward, no reciprocation with His love. His love asks nothing and expects nothing. He loves purely and simply to free and unbind sinners from sin and death. This is the love of God that led Him to send His Son for your salvation. This is the love of God from which we will never be separated. In this love we see the gracious salvation that is indeed our’s now.

Amen