Mark 13:32-37 - Because No One Knows - November 21, 2021

The Bible contains many passages that describe the end of the world. Some of them are troubling – even to Christians. One of the more troubling is before us this morning. Jesus says no one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. That’s pretty troubling, isn’t it? How can God the Son not know the time of his own return? Is he, therefore, not really equal to God the Father in regard to his knowledge of all things? (Is he not really God?) Most of all, how is Jesus’ apparent ignorance of the most important Day in human history supposed to be comforting? Didn’t he come to give comfort and peace; not fear and uncertainty? How are we to handle the known unknown of Judgment Day?

It’s called xenophobia – that is, the fear of the unknown. While you may not have known the psychological term for it, I’m sure we’ve all experienced this fear in our lives. When we’re facing a new job, a new home, a different teacher, a different schedule, a new or different anything, we justify our jitters by calling it “the fear of the unknown.” Just five words can send the heart of a person of almost any age racing. “The test results are in.” If you’re young and in school, you may think of a test you took. If you’re a bit older, you may think of a medical test and what it will reveal about the status of your health. As we get older, we gain experience, we know more things – but there will always be things that we don’t know – and what we don’t know can be scary.

In fact, there is one thing that no one, no doctor, no teacher, not even your president knows – it’s called the future. No matter how hard we try, we cannot see or know anything for certain beyond this moment in which we are living. We all live with this unknown every day of our lives. What will school be like? What college and what major will I choose? What will I wind up doing for a living? Who will I marry? What’s happening to our country? What will happen to my kids or grandkids? What will retirement be like? What will I do when my spouse dies? Will I end up living in a nursing home? Questions like these can drive people to the point of insanity. Even worse, it can drive them to the point of idolatry – sending them to psychics or horoscopes or false teachers to find insight. People will run to these idols because they imagine that if they know what the future holds, even if it’s bad, at least they can prepare for it.

The truth is that the future isn’t ours to know. This is offensive to “sophisticated” people like us who think we know so much (and that if we don’t know something, we can just Google it). We can send rockets into space and develop vaccines. We have smart calendars on our phones that we think can tell us what we are going to do tomorrow, next week, and even next summer. And yet, the reality is that we don’t really know if we will have a tomorrow at all. James issued a strong warning against anyone who thinks that they know what the future holds: come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that city, spend a year there, do business, and make a profit.” You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? Indeed, it is a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears (James 4:13-14). We don’t and we cannot know what the future holds. All we know for sure is that our time on this earth is short, that our time here is running out (Psalm 90). A short life and certain death are known knowns.

Knowing that, at some point we all wind up asking: “How much time do I have?” That’s the question everyone asks sooner or later, isn’t it? Especially when sickness or disease strike. When your doctor calls to give you the test results, you might find some peace in knowing in the specific type of disease, the prognosis, the suggested treatment – but, let’s be honest, in the end only one question matters: “am I going to live or die?” The problem is that no one; not your doctor, not your pastor, not even Anthony Fauci himself can tell you how much time you have on this earth. They might be able to prescribe a certain treatment or medication that may delay death, but they can’t promise that you won’t be killed in a car accident today or that Jesus won’t return tomorrow. These are the known unknowns: I know that I will die and face judgment – but I don’t know when, where or how.

And what does my Savior say to comfort me as I face these known unknowns? He throws up his hands and says, “I don’t know either!” It’s kind of like a sad game of “Follow the Leader,” where the leader has no idea where is going. Wouldn’t it have been better for us if Jesus just kept quiet about it? If he had just continued teaching and said nothing about the end of our lives or the end of time rather than say, “Even I, the Son of God, don’t know when that will occur.”

Maybe from our perspective – but, as we know, ours is often not the best perspective…Jesus’ is. Jesus did say this and what Jesus says is always for our benefit. Let’s take one big theological step backwards. From all eternity, God the Son most certainly knows everything that the Father and Holy Spirit do. There are no secrets within the Holy Trinity. As true man, however, Jesus didn’t always make full use of his divine knowledge. These are the known knowns that God has revealed in his Word about Jesus: He gave up the full and constant use of his divine power and glory so that he could live on this earth in our place under the Law – obeying it perfectly as our substitute (2 Corinthians 5:21). He did this so that he could die for our sins (Philippians 2:5-11). When Jesus says that he doesn’t know the day or hour he will return, it’s an example of the depths to which he humbled himself for us. His life was just like ours. He had known knowns and known unknowns right in front of him – just like we do. He knows what it’s like to live with fear of the future. We need look no further than the Garden of Gethsemane for proof (Luke 22:39-46).

So where’s the comfort here? While Jesus in his humility didn’t know the date of his return, he knows who does: the Father. In John 12, Jesus tells us just what type of things the Father was interested in telling him – and in telling him, telling us: I have not spoken on my own, but the Father himself who sent me has given me a command regarding what I am to say and what I am to speak. And I know that his command is eternal life (John 12:49-50). Jesus knows that even in the face of an unknowable future, everything he does tell us has one certain, known goal: eternal life.

Therefore, if Jesus doesn’t tell us something – like the day or hour of his return in judgment – what must we conclude? That it isn’t important for our salvation! That’s good news, isn’t it? While Jesus says that he is like a man going away on a journey, and that we are to keep watch for his return, he doesn’t tell us to know the day or time when he will return. In fact, he tells us just the opposite: that you do not know when the owner of the house is coming: whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or early in the morning. This means that you don’t have to nail down the “when” of your salvation! That’s unknown. Here’s what we do know: 1) We are saved by God’s grace alone (Ephesians 2:8-9); 2) Jesus purchased our salvation by his death on Calvary’s cross 2000 years ago (John 19:30); 3) this salvation is delivered to us personally through the means of Baptism, Absolution and Holy Communion here and now (Romans 10:17). This means that knowing exactly when Jesus will return has nothing to do with our salvation.

I know it’s a strange idea, but isn’t Jesus’ ignorance comforting? During his humiliation on this earth Jesus didn’t know the timing of the Last Day – but now, even in his exaltation, he doesn’t have a clue about your sins of yesterday, last week, or last year. The Bible says that he has thrown those behind his back (Isaiah 38:17) and into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19), and he doesn’t know where they landed. Jesus doesn’t even know what you were like before you were baptized, absolved and communed. When he – who, incidentally, happens to be the Judge – sees you, all he sees is a new creation, created like he is in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:24). Therefore, don’t mistake what you know for what Jesus says he doesn’t know: you may never forget the sins you’ve committed or that have been committed against you – but Jesus has; when he said it is finished (John 19:30), he forgot those sins – and so should you. Cherish Jesus’ ignorance – because what Jesus doesn’t know will save you!

So here’s what we know: the future isn’t ours to know and Jesus’ ignorance is comforting. But what about the elephant in the room: what can or should we do about the fact that we don’t know when our Lord will return to take us home – either through death or through his coming on the Last Day? Make no mistake, no one on earth knows when this will happen. You might be here next year to celebrate the Last Sunday in the Church year – or you might not. Same with me. What can we do about this final great known unknown? Well, you can do one of two things: you can either worry or watch.

It’s understandable that unbelievers would worry about the “when” of the Last Day. They should be worried. They have no “knowns” to place against this last, greatest “unknown.” By definition, unbelievers refuse to acknowledge who they are, where they came from, where they are going – more importantly, they are blind to God – who God is, what he’s done for them, and what he’s preparing to do. And because of this unbelieving blindness they haven’t a clue as to what they should be doing or believing during their brief lives on earth. And isn’t that ignorance glaringly obvious today? The only thing unbelievers appear to know today is that they are against anything and everything God has instituted. They have taken their stand against creation, against marriage, against the church, against law and order, against the family and even against gender itself. And yet, in their battle against God, in their search for comfort from their worry, what have they actually achieved? They’ve only succeeded in replacing God’s “known” institutions with their own “unknown,” undefined, and aimless lives here on earth. Don’t let the media fool you: LGBTQ individuals are not happy; divorce is always tragic; and trying your best to be “environmentally responsible” does absolutely nothing to alleviate the fear of knowing that a Day of Judgment is coming. Unbelievers can only and always worry about the Last Day because they know nothing about the One who is coming.

But that’s not you. You don’t have to be worried. You know who is coming and you know why he’s coming – to take you to heaven. That’s why instead of worrying you do something far more productive and beneficial: you watch. During his humiliation Jesus didn’t know when the Last Day would come, but he did know what his servants should be doing: it is like a man going away on a journey. When he left his home, he put his servants in charge and assigned what each one was to do. He also commanded the doorkeeper to keep watch. Therefore, keep watch.

Don’t worry; keep watch. How? Many have severely misinterpreted (or maybe overinterpreted) what Jesus means when he tells us to keep watch. But Jesus is simply using this parable to illustrate that as we await his return we are simply to be doing what he has told us to do – thereby placing what the Lord has given us as “known” against the “unknown” of the timing of his return. What do we know? We know where God has placed us: are you a father or mother, a husband or wife, a son or daughter, an employer or employee? Then you know what God has given you to do here and now. Most importantly, you know that God has given you his Baptism, Absolution and Communion as tangible signs of his eternal love for you. So even if we don’t know the “when,” we do know the “who” and the “why.” We know that the same Jesus who was born in a manger for us, who lived a perfect life for us, who died on the cross for our sins and who rose again is coming to take us to live with him in heaven forever. And when you know the “who” and the “why” – the “when” doesn’t really matter, does it?

So what should we do in the meantime as we wait for the unknown day of Jesus’ return? Stick to what you know! Watch. Work. Live. Love God and the people around you. And trust that through the means of grace Jesus is preparing you to receive him whenever he returns. In the end, that’s all we really need to know. Amen.  

Mark 13:24-31 - See (and Understand) the Signs - November 14, 2021

When it comes to signs, it’s one thing to see them; it’s another thing to understand them. For example, traffic signs are intentionally positioned so that you can’t help but see them – that is, unless you have your head buried in your phone like many of the drivers on the road. It seems to me that even though you can’t help but see the red, upside-down triangle at each entrance to a roundabout, a good number of drivers don’t understand that the “yield” sign means that unless there is a car coming from your left, you don’t have to stop. Also, if you’ve driven on the beltline lately you’ve no doubt noticed that they’ve begun installing the signs that will regulate the left-hand shoulder for an additional lane of traffic – I’m just guessing that there’s going to be a pretty lengthy learning curve – not for people to begin seeing the signs, but for them to understand and obey them. Today our Lord points out signs of his Second Coming; signs which everyone will see, but only those his listen to his Word will understand.

The first signs Jesus describes have been seen by all people of all time. Solar and lunar eclipses are world-wide events that have been observed for at least 4500 years, according to records from Babylonia and China. [1] NASA estimates that in the 5000 years between 2000 BC and 3000 AD there will have been almost 12,000 solar and lunar eclipses. [2] It’s safe to say that every adult on earth has seen an eclipse. (Fun fact, our second child, Joel, was born on the day we in Wisconsin were able to view a solar eclipse – August 21, 2017.) The same can be said about the shooting stars and comets that streak through the vacuum of space. If you look back in history, almost every ancient people viewed these astronomical events as signs of something big.

Of course, we aren’t ancient people. We are sophisticated, intelligent, scientific people. We might find it interesting that ancient people found meaning in a solar eclipse or a shooting star – but we have computers and big, fancy telescopes in space; we know better today. We know what shooting stars really are. We know that comets don’t really just appear out of nowhere. We can predict down to the second how long an eclipse will last and where and when it will be visible. We aren’t foolish, simpleminded barbarians who think that these signs in the heavens above us actually mean something.

But who’s really the simpleminded fool in this situation? Person who sees the signs and knows they mean something or the person who sees the signs but regards them as utterly meaningless? (Which type of person would you like to meet at a roundabout?) Jesus says that after that distress in those days (that is, the period of time after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD (Mark 13:1-23), the rest of the NT era), the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light. The stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Everyone on earth sees these signs. But few, even very few Christians, really understand what they mean. We don’t have any excuse, though. In Genesis: God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night, and let them serve as markers to indicate seasons, days, and years (Genesis 1:14). From the very beginning God said that the sun, moon and stars are markers or signs of time – now Jesus gives them a deeper meaning (perhaps similar to what the Lord did with rainbows for Noah (Genesis 9:12-17)). Jesus says that when they fall out of the sky or go dark we shouldn’t just look at them as neat phenomena that can be explained away scientifically; but that we must understand that they are not only signs that he will indeed return, but as visible – yes, scientific – evidence that this world, this universe, won’t endure.

There are other signs that everyone sees, but that even many Christians do not understand. Jesus says that even as the powers of the heavens are shaken you will see the Son of Man coming on clouds with great power and glory. Have you seen this? Do you understand it? I’ll give you a hint: you’ve seen it if you’ve heard these promises from Jesus’ own lips where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am among them (Matthew 18:20); and, surely I am with you always until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). Do those verses clarify this sign for you?

Here’s the reason so many can’t see this sign and even fewer can understand it: you can only see Jesus with great power and glory if you understand – and believe – what the Bible says about his work. Most important is what Jesus himself declared from the cross: it is finished (John 19:30). Jesus only rarely displayed his great power and glory at his First Coming. He humbled himself to be born as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem (Luke 2). He went through a lifetime of humiliation so that he could take your place under God’s Law and keep it in your place (Matthew 5:17). He took the nature of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross for our sins (Philippians 2:7-8). But as he said, that’s over and done with. Since Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, he has resumed the full and constant use of his divine power and glory. Easter Sunday introduced the last days, the end times. That’s why 50 days later, on Pentecost, Peter told the crowd that the last days which Joel had predicted were now here (Acts 2:14-41). That’s why Paul told the Corinthians that the end of the ages has come (1 Corinthians 10:11). Right now is when Jesus can be seen coming in great power and glory.

Here's the catch: this sign can only be understood with eyes of faith. Those with eyes that remain darkened by unbelief may see this sign, but (like those roundabout drivers) drive right past it without understanding the significance. Unbelief doesn’t see Jesus coming to earth in great power and glory to raise the dead to life in the water of Baptism (Romans 6:3-4). Nope, they just see plain tap water – or, at best a sign of a person’s commitment to Jesus. Unbelief doesn’t see the Judge of mankind (John 5:22) declaring his final verdict in the words of Absolution (John 20:23). They just see some lunatic in a robe pretending to play God. Unbelief doesn’t see Holy Communion as the first course of the wedding banquet that will be served in heaven (Matthew 26:27-28; Revelation 19:6-10). Nope, that’s just a piece of stale bread and a cup of cheap wine – or, at best a symbol which makes us think about what Jesus did on Calvary 2000 years ago. Faith not only sees and receives and believes in these means of grace but also understands that Jesus is coming in great power and glory right here and now through them!

The signs are all there: in the heavens, here at this font and altar. Does that mean that we should pack our bags and cancel our Thanksgiving plans? No. These signs don’t tell us when Jesus will return but rather that his return is certain. How can I be so sure that these signs don’t indicate timing but certainty – that these aren’t signs at the end but of the end? Because an angel told me. No, really. Here we must let Scripture interpret Scripture. In Matthew 13 and Revelation 14 – sections which are undoubtedly describing the Last Day, Jesus doesn’t only send out his angels to gather the elect. He also sends out other angels to gather unbelievers for judgment (Matthew 13:47-51; Revelation 14:14-20). This isn’t the Final Judgment here. It’s something else. This is Jesus sending out human messengers (the Greek word angelos means “messenger) with the Gospel during the New Testament era to gather his elect from the four winds, from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of the sky.

During his earthly ministry Jesus had restricted the scope of his disciple’s mission to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 10:5-6). But after his resurrection he sent them out to all nations (Mark 16:15). This is still going on today. It’s been going on worldwide for 2000 years wherever and whenever the Gospel of forgiveness, life and salvation is proclaimed to people dead in sin and they believe it. Right then and there Jesus’ messengers, his angels, are gathering his elect. This happened at some point in your life – and, by God’s grace, this happened in my life. See – an angel told me! Jesus is coming in great power and glory right here and now!

Can you see all these signs? More importantly, do you understand them? Can you not only see eclipses and shooting stars but understand that these signs indicate that this world is passing away? Can you not only see Baptism, Absolution and Communion but understand that through these means the Son of Man is coming with great power and glory to forgive and save? Can you not only see but understand that we as a Christian congregation; that Christian pastors and teachers, parents and grandparents are doing more than instilling morality or teaching Bible history – that they are actually God’s messengers gathering God’s elect?

Then listen as Jesus tells us what these signs mean: Learn this illustration of the fig tree: Whenever its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is near. So also when you see these things happening, you will know that he is near – at the doors! I know that in the 21st century we tend to look to groundhogs and meteorologists to tell us when spring is coming – but they can be and are often wrong. But when certain trees – like fig or pecan trees – begin to bloom, you can be sure that summer is near. In the same way, every generation since our Lord’s first coming has seen these definite signs of his Second Coming. Every generation has seen the eclipses, the shooting stars, the passing comets and the worldwide proclamation of the Gospel gathering the elect. Every generation gets all the warning signs that eternity will soon smash the clock of time; that the created order is about to become extremely disordered; that this heaven and earth are passing away. No matter what the skeptics, the unbelievers, the scientists say about these signs – we need to understand that Jesus’ return is as sure as the changing of the seasons; and that even now he is near – right at the door!

And for that reason, we need to find a sure foundation to stand on – so that we will be ready to welcome him with joy when he comes; not cower in fear. By nature, we’ve got it all backwards. We think that this world we can see, touch and rely on will always be there. Jesus swears here that it will not. We think that we can find safety and security for ourselves and our families in things like money and real estate and insurance policies – but all of those things will pass away. Jesus swears that while the stars above your head and the earth beneath your feet will pass away, [his] words will never pass away.

Human words don’t last forever. Copyright protections only last 70 after the death of the author. [3] Pharmaceutical drug patents only last 20 years. [4] Even the vows you made on your wedding day don’t last forever – they expire upon death (Romans 7:2). But Jesus’ words – they will never pass away. The words of Baptism that were spoken over you 5 or 15 or 55 years ago are just as true today as the day you got wet; you have been joined with Christ in both his death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-4). The Words of Absolution constitute your Judge’s unchanging verdict: you are not guilty (John 20:23). The life Jesus gives you through his body and blood from this altar doesn’t end when your heart stops beating – in fact, that’s when your true life begins. Yes, heaven and earth and everything in them are passing away. But of this you can be sure: [Jesus’] words will never pass away.

There are signs of Jesus’ Second Coming all around us. And yet it’s one thing to see the signs, it’s another to understand them. Many who see these signs see in them a reason to cling all the tighter to the things of this world. By God’s grace, we don’t just see these signs, we understand them – and instead of clinging to this fading and decaying world we cling to Jesus’ words, which will never, ever pass away. Amen.

[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar-eclipse-history.html

[2] https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SEcatalog.html

[3] https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html#:~:text=The%20term%20of%20copyright%20for,plus%20an%20additional%2070%20years.

[4] https://hmsa.com/help-center/what-are-generic-drugs/

Mark 12:38-44 - A Widow's Faith - November 7, 2021

It’s Tuesday of Holy Week, just days before he will be arrested, beaten and nailed hand and foot to a tree – and what Jesus is up to? He’s not worrying about himself, preparing himself mentally and spiritually for the spit and the shame and the cross – but teaching his disciples. That in itself is pretty shocking, but perhaps even more shocking is what Jesus chooses for his object lesson. Today’s “teachers” – politicians, news anchors, celebrities – tend to focus on the big and notable issues of the day: What has Covid been up to lately? What do these past week’s elections mean for America? What’s going on with Aaron Rodgers? As we’ve worked our way through Mark’s Gospel this year, it’s hard not to notice that Jesus has a radically different style of teaching. Instead of choosing to focus on the big, important things of the world, he directs his disciples – and our – eyes and ears to small, unimportant things – in order to teach us big, important lessons: he uses mustard seeds (Mark 4:30-34); a young boy’s lunch (Mark 6:30-44); little children (Mark 10:13-16); and a withered fig tree (Mark 10:46-52). Small, insignificant things and people seemed to be important to Jesus – in his hands, they teach the biggest lessons.

Today he chooses a widow. Widows seem to be the theme of the day, don’t they? We had the widow at Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-16). Widows serve as evidence of the Jewish leaders’ hypocrisy – in that they devour widows’ houses and then try to cover it up by offer[ing] long prayers (compare them to today’s televangelists who speak and act very piously and sanctimoniously – but what they really want is for you to buy their latest video or book). And, last but not least, Jesus draws the attention of his disciples to a poor widow who drops her last two coins into the offering box at the temple. Widows may seem insignificant to the world, but they have a special place in God’s heart – and in his Word. Think of Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi – God caused an entire book of the Bible to be written about them! Or Anna, who was one of the few people in Israel to celebrate the birth of Jesus; and who was also a widow of eighty-four years – her name will forever be linked to Jesus (Luke 2:37). Paul spent a good portion of his first letter to Timothy urging him to honor widows (1 Timothy 5:3-16). And James writes: religion that is pure and undefiled in the sight of God the Father is this: to take care of orphans and widows in their affliction (James 1:27). Clearly, our Lord has a special place in his heart for widows.

And for good reason. In Biblical times, women couldn’t normally go out and get jobs – and therefore they couldn’t support themselves. With no real social safety net, they were left with few options. If a woman was widowed at a young age, she could remarry – like Ruth did (Ruth 4:10). Ideally, older widows would be taken in by other friends or relatives – like Jesus commending his mother Mary to John at the cross (John 19:26-27). But if a widow had no one to take care of her, she was virtually helpless. She was one notch below a beggar – not only did she have nothing but she had no socially acceptable way to get anything. That was the situation in which the widow at Zarephath found herself and her son. Zarephath was a town in Sidon, located over 100 miles north of Jerusalem on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. She wasn’t an Israelite, she wasn’t one of God’s people, not one of the insiders. She was what the Israelites called the “goyim,” an outsider. And that’s what makes the Lord’s command to Elijah to go to her so noteworthy: it proves that God’s mercy knows no boundaries; that the blessings and Savior that were to come through Israel weren’t only for Israel but for all nations, even for widows…even for “goyim” like us.

She had enough for one last meal and no assurances that another could be found. Sadly, how many single mothers in our own wealthy nation have faced a similar situation? And then Elijah shows up…another mouth to feed. Her pantry is bare, where was she going to find enough food for everyone? Elijah offers her nothing more than the Word of the Lord: do not be afraid. Go and do just as you said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from the flour and bring it out to me. Then go and make another for you and your son. (1 Kings 17:13-14). She could have said no. She could have done the responsible thing and taken care of herself and her son and told this strange, foreign prophet to buzz off. But she didn’t. She did what Elijah told her. Imagine what must have been going through her mind after she gave Elijah his bread and went back inside hoping there was just a pinch of flour and a drop of oil remaining for herself and her son. And then, imagine her surprise when she reached into the jar of flour and shook the jug and felt that they were full again! More than enough for herself and her son for that day – and, not only that, but day after day, there was always enough. Every time she reached into that cupboard, there’s enough for her to bake her daily bread.

What does this teach us? We pray – at least weekly, and hopefully daily – “give us this day our daily bread.” You understand what we’re praying for, right? Just enough bread for this day, for today – and nothing more. Unfortunately, outside of the 4th petition I don’t think that we limit our prayers and petitions to God to just the necessities for today. We often pray that the Lord would give us enough bread for a month, a year, our retirement, a lifetime – enough so that we don’t have to work (or at least worry) anymore. While we may take 10 seconds to thank God for the meals we eat three (or more) times a day, we spend far more time thinking about saving for our children’s education, our own retirement, and the estate we will leave behind when we’re dead. Instead of appreciating the bread that’s on our plate we lose sleep over the volatility of the stock market and its impact on our investments. Like the rich fool in Jesus’ parable, we spend a lifetime working and saving to build barns (or bank accounts) we don’t need to store grain (or money) we will never use (Luke 12:13-21). We buy and store and hoard until we’re tripping over all our stuff and complain about having to organize so much junk (and if you doubt that, just try moving!). You know what that is, right? That’s greed. And Paul says that greed is idolatry (Colossians 3:5). It’s idolatry because it reveals that instead of trusting God to provide our daily bread we are placing our trust in our our wealth, our investments, our nest egg – in whatever promises to keep us safe, secure, well-fed and happy. What’s the cure for this insatiable greed, for this soul-destroying idolatry – not to mention, the cure for the stress, the anxiety, the heart-burn, the sleepless nights that come from placing your trust and hope in things that can never satisfy?

Let’s go back to Zarephath for a moment: The jar of flour did not run out, and the pitcher of oil did not become empty, just as the Lord had said through Elijah. In my mind this miracle was a lot like Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 (Mark 6:30-44). I imagine that Jesus just kept putting his hand into that little boy’s basket and kept pulling out more bread and more fish – but his disciples never would have seen a big pile of bread and fish. All they would have ever seen was those five loaves and two fish. I imagine that all that widow ever saw was that same jar of flour and that same jug of olive oil – no Costco pallet of flour or oil – but every time she reached for them there was more – just as the Lord had said. There’s the key. There’s the solution to the idolatry of greed. The Word of God. It not only exposes our sin and leads us to repentance, but it provides the cure. The creates everything out of nothing (Hebrews 11:3). It makes enough out of too little. The Word of the Lord provides daily bread. And that poor Gentile widow, who had nothing, trusted that Word of the Lord spoken by Elijah and found that the Lord gave her enough, and more than enough, for her and her son.

Which brings us our Gospel lesson. After Jesus had warned his disciples against the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders, Jesus was sitting in the temple courtyard, watching how (note that little word how!) the crowd put money into it, a nameless widow walked in to deposit her offering. Offerings were placed into these metal “trumpets” with long necks (something similar to the one you see on the bulletin cover). You can imagine, then, that when the wealthy came with their many coins it made a whole lot of noise when they dropped them into the offering box. And then this poor woman came. And there was no great clattering, nothing to draw anyone’s attention. Two little copper pennies, worth just a fraction of a day’s wages. If anyone heard anything at all, it was a quiet “plink, plink.” Nothing much to see; even less to hear.

But Jesus saw and heard something. He heard that barely audible “plink, plink.” And what he heard was a window into this widow’s heart. Now, admittedly, Jesus’ accounting standards would seem dubious to even a five-year-old: this poor widow put more into the offering box than all the others. No, she didn’t! She only put in on a fraction of a day’s wages. What’s wrong with Jesus’ ears? What Jesus heard wasn’t the clang of coins; it was faith and trust; a poor widow’s trust in the goodness and mercy of a God. For Jesus, it’s not the quantity that counts – it’s how that amount is given! It’s not about coins or cash or checks or direct deposits – it’s about faith. Sola fide – faith alone. That’s all that matters before God (Romans 3:28).

But faith is never alone. Faith, as Paul says, is always working itself out through love (Galatians 5:6). That’s what this widow was doing. Out of gratitude to God for his gifts to her, this poor widow was obeying the 1st Commandment: loving and trusting God above all things! This poor widow held those two tiny coins with the dead hands of faith. Dead hands, because that’s how easily she could let them go. She was dead to them and alive to God. Hers was a true sacrifice of love: For they all gave out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all that she had to live on. In those two plinking pennies – that had emptied this poor widow’s bank account – Jesus saw a heart filled with faith. So what’s the point? Is this about proportional giving? Is it that unless you’re giving everything, giving until your financial advisor fires you because you don’t have any more money to manage, that it doesn’t really count in God’s eyes? In working through this text over the past week one of my biggest questions was: why did the Holy Spirit even include this story in Mark’s Gospel? It seems to be a rather trivial event to record during the most important week in human history: Holy Week. And maybe that’s the point. With God, it’s never about the things the world deems to be so important. It’s about your heart. It’s about faith.

I doubt that any of us are putting every last cent into the offering plate this morning. I know I’m not. And while our offerings may amount to more than a couple of pennies – it’s definitely not enough to buy our way into heaven. You could give until the sheriff showed up at your house with a representative from the bank to repossess it – and it still wouldn’t make you right with God. God doesn’t really care about your money – he cares about your heart. But, for our sake, he recorded this story to show us that how we spend our money IS a window into our hearts; that is, that it shows us – us, not others, not the church council, not the pastor – whether our trust is in the Giver (James 1:17) or his gifts.

Two weeks ago we agreed with Martin Luther’s assessment that “we are all beggars.” Today we might say, “we are all widows.” We have nothing to give to God and we have no way to get anything to give to him. And yet God in his grace fills our empty hands with things we could never earn for ourselves. He redeemed us – bought us back from sin, death and the devil – not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19). He baptizes us into an inheritance that is undying, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you (1 Peter 1:4). He feeds us with food we cannot purchase at any grocery store – his own body and blood – food that doesn’t just sustain your life today but forever. And he invites us to receive all of his gifts without money and without cost (Isaiah 55:1). And when you believe that, no matter your net worth, you are truly rich.

This text leaves us with many unanswered questions: How did that poor widow survive when she returned home from the temple? What did she eat? How did she pay her mortgage? I don’t know. But Jesus knows. And Jesus knows you, too. And he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7). Learn this big lesson from these poor, insignificant widows: God doesn’t need your offerings but he does give us the privilege of giving them as a window into our hearts – so we can see whether our hearts are set on the Giver or his gifts. Worrying about money will never put a single slice of bread on your kitchen table, but through faith created by the Word of God you already have the Bread of Life (John 6:35) forever – and your offerings allow you to put this faith into action. God grant us a widow’s faith. Amen.  

Mark 13:5-13 - Stand Firm in God's Word - October 31, 2021

Standing firm in God’s Word – and facing the consequences for it – has a long and storied history. In fact, that’s exactly what many of the best-known Bible stories are about. Think of Elijah taking his stand against the 450 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18-19:3). Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego choosing to be roasted alive rather than bend the knee to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol (Daniel 3:16-28). Daniel choosing to face hungry lions rather than pray to King Darius (Daniel 6). Skip ahead to the New Testament and you see Stephen taking his stand against the Sanhedrin and being stoned to death for it (Acts 6:8-7:60). Or Paul, one of the men who approved of Stephen’s death, later facing trial before numerous officials and kings and finally losing his life for his testimony. And this theme transcends even Bible history. Fast forward 1500 years and you will hear another Christian give his own testimony, not in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek – but in German: Heir stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.” [1] These were Martin Luther’s final words at his trial in the German town of Worms 500 years ago as he refused to deny or recant the three core truths of Christianity: faith alone, grace alone, Scripture alone. He said: “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me.”

As Lutheran Christians, its easy to take these stories of bold and fearless confession for granted. But in view of the culture in which we live, it’s kind of shocking, isn’t it? That these men would give themselves over to torture and death rather than give up their faith and confession? I’m sure we can all think of famous people – especially famous politicians – who have reversed their supposedly strongly held principles the moment their principles became unpopular or politically incorrect. But perhaps we don’t even have to look out there for example of breaking under pressure. We all know people who stood before an altar like this and swore to endure all things, even death, rather than fall away from the Gospel – and yet now have no regard for the means of grace. And yet, for all those who have denied the faith – thousands more have stood firm in spite of public and private pressure and even threats to their wealth, families and life. The question is: how will we react when we are put on the spot, when we are pressured to either deny Christ or confess him and face the consequences – whatever the consequences may be? First, we need to know what to look for and second, we need to have a firm foundation on which to stand. Jesus gives us both in the words before us this morning.   

It’s Tuesday of Holy Week. Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Mark 11:1-11). In a matter of days he would be betrayed, put on trial, tortured, and crucified. And yet, even knowing all this, Jesus’ concern was for his disciples who would very soon be questioned, put on trial, tortured and put to death themselves. It’s out of this compassionate concern for his disciples – and for us – that Jesus says: be careful that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. It may seem like detecting false teaching and false teachers is a big, complicated task – best left to trained theologians – but it’s really not complicated at all. Both Old and New Testaments identify exactly what false teachers will do: they will either add to, subtract from, or twist the Word of God (Deuteronomy 4:2; Revelation 22:18-19). If you know your Bible, then you are equipped to detect false teaching. And there always have been and always will be false teachers. In Jesus’ day, there were already false prophets trying to deceive many – in the form of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Experts in the Law – by adding their own manmade rules to God’s Law and telling people that their works could save them. In Luther’s day, the Roman Catholic church had added the purchase of indulgences and prescribed “satisfactions” to Christ’s all-atoning sacrifice. In our day, there are still false prophets trying to deceive many – in churches that proclaim a gospel other than “Christ crucified for sinners;” that give in to public pressure to support movements and morals which trample all over God’s will and natural law; in those that teach that all roads, all religions lead to heaven. Confronted by these threats, we stand firm on God’s Word – like those of the Apostle Paul: even if we or an angel from heaven would preach any gospel other than the one we preached to you – a curse on him (Galatians 1:8).

Jesus also warns that there will be signs in society which we must be on guard for: whenever you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled. Such things must happen, but the end is not yet. In fact, nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places. There will be famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. Jesus could be reading off the news ticker at the bottom of the TV screen, couldn’t he? Wars and rumors of wars? While America’s longest war in Afghanistan is over, it seems like the real wars are taking place on our own soil. The gang and drug wars of Chicago and Milwaukee have been migrating here to Madison. Nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom doesn’t just mean the United States versus China or Russia or Iran – it’s school boards against parents; prolife against pro-abortion; supposed LGBTQ rights versus freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Earthquakes and famines? I’m not aware of any recent earthquakes – but famines: is there any practical difference today between having a farm on which nothing will grow or grocery stores in which shelves are empty? And yet, we stand firm in two of God’s promises: first, never will I leave you and never will I forsake you (Hebrews 13:5); and, second, such things must happen, but the end is not yet…these are the beginning of birth pains.

Finally, Jesus warns us that we will be persecuted and prosecuted, in public and in private, for his name. People will hand you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues. You will stand in the presence of rulers and kings for my sake as a witness to them…brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rise up against their parents and put them to death. Elijah, Shadrak, Meshak and Abednego, Daniel, Stephen and Paul all stood trial before rulers and kings for Jesus’ sake. So did Luther. And still today Christians around the world are persecuted and prosecuted for Jesus’ sake. So be on your guard Jesus says. How? Remember that Jesus was originally speaking to Peter, James, John and Andrew (Mark 13:3-4). Was he telling them to arm themselves, to run for the hills or lock the doors and hide? No, while Jesus did tell the disciples to bring their swords to Gethsemane, he told Peter to sheathe it, not use it (John 18:11). After his resurrection, Jesus didn’t tell his disciples to hide in their homes but to take the Gospel to all nations (Matthew 28:19-20). He was telling them to guard the faith – to closely guard what he had taught them over the previous three years and to closely guard the suffering, death and resurrection they would soon witness.

So too today, we don’t remain on guard by arming ourselves or by hiding from the world – we remain on guard by guarding our faith – by going again and again to our Baptisms in which God has claimed us as his own, by hearing again and again that our sins are forgiven in the Absolution, by receiving our Lord’s body and blood in Holy Communion, and by becoming ever more deeply rooted in God’s Word. I don’t know where you’re going to face persecution in your life – it may be at home or at work; it may be on social media; your confession of Christ may cut you off from a friend or family member; it may be that someday your church or pastor are prosecuted for alleged “hate speech” – but whatever form the persecution takes, remember that you remain on guard not by arming yourself or hiding your faith but by carrying the saving truths of the Gospel in your heart and mind and having them always on your lips.  

“But that seems so trite, so ineffective, so weak – in the face of such strong opposition and persecution. That doesn’t seem to be standing firm; that seems to be cowering in a corner.” I know that’s the way it seems, but that’s not the way it is. Jesus arms us with several more promises which provide the foundation on which we will stand. First, in the midst of his warnings, Jesus said the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. What a promise to make knowing that in just days he will be lying in a tomb, stone-cold dead! The Gospel must, the Gospel will be preached to all nations. And yet, Jesus has kept his promise, hasn’t he? The Christian Church has survived 2000 years of persecution by the devil and his earthly minions. The Lutheran church has thrived for over 500 years. Our own Wisconsin Synod has been proclaiming the Gospel in our country and around the world for more than 170 years. The Gospel has been preached, Absolution has been proclaimed, and the Sacraments have been administered right here at Risen Savior for 22 years. Previous generations have preached the Gospel to you and now you are preaching it to the next generation. Yes, it may happen that you will be slandered or attacked as being bigoted or closeminded or intolerant for confessing the faith – but the Gospel will be preached to all nations. And when you face opposition, here is Jesus’ promise to you: whenever they arrest you and hand you over, do not worry beforehand what you should say. Say whatever is given to you in that hour, because you will not be the ones speaking; instead it will be the Holy Spirit.

How could Elijah, Shadrak, Meshak and Abednego, Stephen, Paul and Luther stand so firm in the face of such fierce opposition? It wasn’t because they were especially bold or courageous – if you read through Luther’s Works, you will hear about the spiritual, mental and emotional anguish he went through as God used him to reform his church. In fact, when he stood before the imperial court at Worms, and was commanded to recant, Luther initially wavered and asked for time to think about it (not exactly the bold, fearless picture of the reformer we often have). No, these men stood firm only because the Holy Spirit held them firm in his unchanging Word and unshakeable promises and gave them the words to speak. Standing firm today – at home, at work, on social media – isn’t about us either – it’s about God and his promises to us.

Which brings us to two final promises on which we can take our stand; promises that may just have been on Luther’s mind as he wrote A Mighty Fortress is Our God. Jesus said: You will be hated by everyone because of my name, but the one who endures to the end will be saved; and Luther wrote “and do what they will – hate, steal, hurt, or kill – though all may be gone, our victory is won; the kingdom’s ours forever!” (CW 200:4) Here are the two promises on which we can stand firm in life and in death. First, everyone hates Christians. Don’t be surprised by it, expect it – even embrace it for it puts you the good company of the faithful saints who have gone before you. Second, the word endures here doesn’t mean that our salvation depends on our unfailing, fearless, bold confession of Christ – if that were true then all of the men we’ve mentioned would be lost. No, it means that even when we fail to boldly stand firm in Christ, we are forgiven and salvation is ours – because we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Scripture alone. Clinging to those truths – especially in times of weakness, even in times of denial – is what it means to endure to the end – because even if you and I waver, they never will.  

I’d like to end this Reformation sermon with one more word. Tetelestai, it is finished (John 19:30) In the end, if this is the only Word you had, you would have enough to stand firm. This word assures you that there is nothing more you need to do for your salvation. You are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, found in Scripture alone. That’s where Elijah, Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego, Daniel, Stephen, Paul and Martin Luther stood. That’s where we stand. God help us. Amen.

[1] Kittelson, Luther the Reformer 161

Mark 10:46-52 - We Are All Beggars - October 24, 2021

While few men in history have written more or had more written about them than Martin Luther; there is surprisingly little written about the last days of his life. One of the only noteworthy items from his last days comes from a scrap of paper his friends found near his deathbed. In this note Luther had written two short phrases, one in Latin, one in German. What was this man – who went from being the son of a copper miner in Eisleben, Germany to the 3rd most influential of the 2nd millennium AD; this German monk – through whom God had brought the mighty church of Rome to its knees; this theologian – to whom God had granted extraordinary gifts to translate, interpret, communicate and rightly divide the Word of truth – what was on his mind as his life drew to a close? “Hoc est verum. Wir sind alle Bettler.” “This is true. We are all beggars.” [1] Is he right? Are we all beggars? The beggar we find in our text will help us answer this question today.

Let’s set the stage. It was just days before Holy Week; just days before Jesus would ride into Jerusalem to shouts of “hosanna” (Mark 11:9) and be marched out to cries of “crucify him!” (Mark 15:13) Mark picks up his account as Jesus was passing through Jericho – a city roughly 15 miles from Jerusalem. As Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, a blind man, Bartimaeus the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road begging. Partially due to poor hygiene and unsanitary conditions, partially due to a lack of sound medical advice [2], blindness was very common in Jesus’ day. Blindness is a terrible affliction in any age, but it was especially so in the 1st century. There were no guide dogs, no talking traffic lights, no braille, no specialized schools or homes or services. Because no one would hire them for work – they were inevitably left to beg for their daily bread. To add insult to injury, the blind also lived under the social stigma that their blindness was God’s punishment for some sin either they or their ancestors had committed (John 9:1-2). These were the conditions under which Bartimaeus lived. He may have been blind, but he was under no illusion: he knew he was completely dependent on the mercy of others for his very existence; he identified as utterly helpless.

But as blind as Bartimaeus was, there was one thing that, by God’s grace, he could see more clearly than many who had 20/20 vision. He was unable to work, unable to get to the temple by himself to present any sacrifices – but his ears worked just fine and he used them. And what he had heard was people talking about a man, Jesus of Nazareth, who had traveled throughout Israel preaching a message of God’s grace and mercy and forgiveness for sinners and performing miracles of healing that had never been seen before. And while many people saw nothing more than a mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary (Mark 6:3) – Bartimaeus saw the promised Messiah, the Son God had promised to David 1000 years earlier, who would establish God’s kingdom on earth and rescue his people from the misery of sin (2 Samuel 7:11-16). Because Bartimaeus believed that this was the one man who could help him, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

There are several lessons we can learn from this blind beggar. First, while our world demands to see before it will believe, Bartimaeus believed without having seen anything! Just think – at least some of those in that crowd in Jericho had probably seen Jesus’ miracles with their own eyes – and we know for certain that many of the Jewish leaders who crucified Jesus did – but they still did not believe that he was the Son of God, the promised Savior. That’s because faith does not come from seeing, faith comes from hearing the message (Romans 10:17) – still today. In the absolution, I cannot show you your rap sheet that has been cleansed of all your sins by Jesus’ precious blood– you can only hear and trust Jesus’ promise in John 20: whenever you forgive people’s sins, they are forgiven. Whenever you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven (John 20:23). In Baptism, to our eyes nothing more dramatic happens than someone gets wet. But Peter testifies that baptism now saves you (1 Peter 3:21). The bread and wine you receive look like normal bread and wine but don’t believe your eyes, believe Jesus’ words: this is my body…this is my blood…which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:26, 28). Many are waiting and demanding to see proof before they believe in Jesus, and they will be waiting all the way until Judgment Day – and the only thing they will see is Jesus’ wrath at their unbelief. Let us learn from Bartimaeus: faith comes from hearing, not from seeing.

Second, whether we care to admit it or not, we are no different than Bartimaeus, we are all beggars before God. Scripture is crystal clear in teaching that we are all completely helpless to save ourselves (Romans 3:28; Galatians 3:10). We are conceived and born without true fear of God or true faith in God; dead in sin, blind to the Gospel, enemies of God; doomed to damnation in hell. Left to ourselves we cannot even obey the least of God’s commands, much less obey all of them to God’s standard of perfection. We are miserable beggars before God who can do nothing but cry for mercy. That’s why one of the first things we do each week is sing the Kyrie: “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.” [3] These words not only remind us that we are beggars; they also direct our focus to the only one who can and will show us saving mercy: Jesus the Son of David.

Bartimaeus believed that Jesus would be merciful to him, and so he persistently kept shouting all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” They called the blind man, saying, “Cheer up! Get up. He is calling you!” You would think that Jesus would have better things to do, people to see, preparations to make as he walked the lonely road to the cross than be bothered with a miserable, blind beggar, wouldn’t you? In times of suffering and times of weakness Satan tempts us to think that Jesus has better things to do than concern himself with us and our problems. We might think that we shouldn’t bother him – that he must be too busy taking care of the great, big, important problems and people in the world. And we would be wrong. There is no problem too big and no believer too small for Jesus – because he came to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10). The whole reason Jesus came was to help beggars – beggars like Bartimaeus…beggars like you and me.

Fourth, when Jesus called, Bartimaeus didn’t waste any time. He tossed aside his outer garment, jumped up, and went to Jesus. That cloak was quite possibly Bartimaeus’ only earthly possession. It was the roof over his head and the mattress under his back, it was his shade tree and his pantry. And yet, at Jesus’ invitation, he threw it all aside to run to Jesus who he believed could give him everything he needed and more. He would let nothing keep him from Jesus. We, too, have a standing invitation from Jesus: come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:30) Is there anything hindering you? Why aren’t we jumping up and running to Jesus in prayer weekly, daily, hourly? Is pride getting in the way? “I can handle this myself.” Is it embarrassment? “I shouldn’t have to beg for help.” Is an unhealthy trust in earthly helpers keeping you from Jesus? “My doctor, my financial adviser, my lawyer can figure this out for me – I don’t need Jesus.” Is it doubt or unbelief? “Jesus couldn’t possibly help me in this situation.” Or maybe, is it guilt or shame? “Jesus knows what I’ve said, done, thought, why in the world would he help a miserable sinner like me?” Whatever it is, remember this: coming to Jesus for help is not about you, your worthiness or unworthiness; it’s all about him – his mercy, his power, his promises, his love. Remember: we are all beggars with nothing to offer, and everything to ask – and Jesus welcomes beggars.

Here’s the proof: “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man replied, “Rabboni, I want to see again.” Think about the guts it took to make that request. Bartimaeus wasn’t merely asking for money for gas or beer, or for some food – he was asking for an impossible miracle. But he was convinced that this was God’s Son standing before him – the Son of David God had promised who would open eyes that are blind and…release…those who sit in darkness (Isaiah 42:7). Jesus answered Bartimaeus’ bold and impossible request. “Go. Your faith has made you well.” Immediately he received his sight.

Why did Bartimaeus receive his sight? Jesus said your faith has made you well. In what way did Bartimaeus’ faith heal him? Well, not in the way that “faith-healers” claim today – that it was because Bartimaeus’ faith was so strong, so powerful that he was healed. If that were true, why didn’t Bartimaeus simply “believe” himself restored sight sooner, why did he have to wait for Jesus to come walking past him? (“Faith healing” is a dangerous false teaching that turns faith into a work and grace into something we earn from God!) Bartimaeus’ faith was nothing more (and nothing less) than a beggar’s open hand (organon leptikon – “receiving organ”) that would receive the gift Jesus would graciously give. Bartimaeus’ faith only saved him because, to put it bluntly: he asked, he begged the right person – he extended his empty hand in the right direction. Saving, healing, justifying faith doesn’t “do” anything; saving faith saves because it humbly receives what Jesus freely gives.

But Bartimaeus’ faith didn’t stop there, he began following Jesus on the road. It’s still just days before Holy Week. Jesus’ road is still leading to Jerusalem, to the hornet’s nest of Jesus’ enemies who wanted him dead – which Bartimaeus was likely aware of. Jesus’ road led directly to the cross. It would lead to suffering and pain and persecution – not only for Jesus but for all who were bold enough to follow him and confess his name. But Bartimaeus did it – because even though he would no longer have to beg for his daily bread – he still needed Jesus to suffer and die for his sins; he was still a spiritual beggar, he still needed what only Jesus could give him.

Unfortunately, that’s a lesson that so many people forget. Many people in every age behave like nine of the ten lepers in Luke 17 who, once they get what they want from Jesus, walk away from him and go their own way. Let us never forget that after we have come to Jesus in our time of need, after he has answered our cry for mercy, after he has assured us that our sins are forgiven and heaven is ours – that we are still, and will always be beggars. We never graduate beyond begging Jesus to provide everything from clothing and food to forgiveness and salvation. From the day we were brought to the font as helpless infants to the day we breathe our last – we remain beggars who must rely fully on Jesus’ mercy. The good news is that Jesus’ invitation to receive his gifts still stands! Even though we won’t see him walking by on the street, he does promise to meet us right here, where his Word is proclaimed, his Absolution is declared and his Sacraments are distributed. This is why we come to church: this is where beggars like us come to receive the gifts Jesus freely gives – and receiving those gifts gratefully and faithfully is how we joyfully follow Jesus.

Martin Luther made huge contributions to the world in many areas – even beyond religion. He protested injustice when he saw it. He was a strong advocate of law and order. Some call him the inventor of social media for his use of the printing press to spread his reforming message. But today we thank God for Luther’s help in understanding our own personal identity. “We are all beggars.” Beggars who can do nothing but cry for mercy; who must do nothing but receive what he wants to give; and beggars who joyfully want to follow Jesus to eternal life. Thank God that Jesus has time and mercy in abundance for beggars like us. Amen.  

[1] Kittleson, James A. Luther The Reformer Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 1986. (296-297) – LW 54:474

[2] “Mothers, in fact, allow [flies] to cling in half-dozens round the eyes of their babies, to ward off the ‘evil eye’…” (Wenzel, 556)

[3] CWS p. 15

Mark 10:35-45 - In God's Kingdom, What Is the Difference Between Irrelevance and Importance? - October 17, 2021

Does the name Grant Stuard mean anything to you? Probably not – unless you happen to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan – there’s no reason you should know who he is. Grant Stuard is this year’s Mr. Irrelevant. Mr. Irrelevant is the award, if you can call it that, that is given to the very last player chosen in the NFL draft each year. Occasionally, the winner of this less-than-prestigious award will enjoy some success and fame in professional football. But far more often, he will quickly fade even deeper into obscurity. Obviously, no one really wants to win the Mr. Irrelevant award – football players would much prefer to be drafted in the first round, fought over by teams, the recipient of a huge contract and signing bonus. And we understand that, don’t we? Who strives to be irrelevant? Who is ambitious to be unimportant and forgettable? In our homes, classrooms, workplaces, even in our church, we want to think that we’re doing important and glorious things, things that will be seen and praised and admired by others. By nature, we want to be Mr. or Mrs. Important, not Mr. or Mrs. Irrelevant. Today, Jesus overturns our understanding of the difference between irrelevance and importance in God’s kingdom.

It all started when two of Jesus’ inner circle – James and John, whom Jesus had labeled the Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17) – once again made waves by asking the wrong question at the wrong time. Jesus had just, for the third time, poured his heart out to his disciples, telling them that he was about to be betrayed to the chief priests and the experts in the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him. On the third day he will rise again. (Mark 10:33-34) You would think the disciples would be shocked and humbled, offering “Lord, how can we help?” Nope. Instead, it’s Teacher, we wish that you would do for us whatever we ask. Most parents have been in Jesus’ shoes, “so…you want me to say yes before you tell me what you want…do you think I was born yesterday?” But Jesus is not us and he patiently allows them to make their request: Promise that we may sit, one at your right and one at your left, in your glory.

James and John clearly had ambitious plans for themselves when Jesus began his reign in Jerusalem. If this petty power struggle among the disciples sounds familiar – that’s because it is. Just a few chapters earlier, shortly after Jesus was transfigured before their eyes, they were caught up in arguing over which of them was greatest (Mark 9:30-37). And on the very night Jesus was betrayed to his enemies, same story (Mark 22:24). And it wasn’t just James and John either. When the ten heard this, they were angry with James and John. This selfish, ambitious drive for personal glory is one of the more prevalent themes throughout the pages of Scripture. Satan was cast out of heaven and sin entered the human race through Adam and Eve because all three coveted the glory God had reserved for himself (Isaiah 14:12-15). God confused human language at Babel because the human race was determined to build a monument to their own glory (Genesis 11:1-9). God struck Moses’ sister, Miriam, with leprosy because of her desire for honor and glory (Numbers 12:10).

Is it any different today? Are we still ambitious for glory and honor for ourselves? Our sinful nature doesn’t want to serve anyone but ourselves – not even God. Maybe we don’t, like James and John, envision ourselves as kings and queens. But we do like to receive glory and praise, we like to have power, we want things done our way. We carefully protect our “downtime” or “me time” and how dare anyone ever try to take that away from us. The sinful nature rationalizes this attitude, “I have to look out for number 1, because if I don’t, who will?” Not to mention the fact that serving others is often dirty work. Serving usually means having to make a commitment and a sacrifice, serving may mean having to do something that’s unpleasant, serving may mean doing something that is beneath me, uncomfortable, unimportant or even seemingly irrelevant. Unfortunately, this selfishness, this reluctance to commit, this desire for glory often brings disharmony, conflict and even outright arguments to our marriages, families and church.

So Jesus sits us down with the Twelve and tells us, “you know those things that you feel are beneath you, uncomfortable, unworthy of your precious time, and irrelevant? Those are the things that are truly important in God’s eyes.” Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave of all. With the benefit of 2000 years of hindsight, we can see just how timely Jesus’ words were. Even as Jesus is telling his disciples they must plan to be servants, not lords, he was in the process of humbling himself to become their servant!

Jesus is echoing what Isaiah had prophesied about him 700 years earlier. That it was the Lord’s will to crush him and allow him to suffer…that he would [pour] out his life to death, and let himself be counted with rebellious sinners. (Isaiah 53:10-12) Whenever resentment rises in your gut, whenever you begin to think that any kind of service is “beneath you” remember how Jesus poured himself out for you. He let the soldiers strip him of his dignity and his clothing while wrapping him in a contemptuous purple robe. He let the spitters spit on him and the liars lie about him, even though he knew it would trash his reputation. He let them press a crown of thorns into his skull and drive nails through his hands and feet, even though he knew the pain would be indescribable. He let our mountain of sin be piled on his shoulders, knowing that the guilt of the world would buckle his knees and drag him down to the depths of hell. He willingly let all those things be done to him – because he knew it wasn’t about him. It wasn’t about saving himself or preserving his life or striving for glory. It was about serving and saving us.

James and John had requested seats at Jesus’ right and left – but Jesus told them that these positions had been reserved for others. Do you know whom they were reserved for? Two thieves – who weren’t sitting on thrones but were nailed to crosses (Mark 15:27). When Jesus let himself be counted with rebellious sinners (Isaiah 53:12), it wasn’t just with two thieves; it was with us. The Son of God humbled himself to be counted as one of us with all of our selfishness, arrogance and sinful ambition. On Good Friday, Jesus willingly gave up his life as a substitute for rebellious sinners like us. And this was his mission all along: even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

We generally look at serving others as a humbling experience, but often isn’t the opposite more often true: that being served can be even more humbling – especially when the one serving us is greater than us, especially when it’s Jesus. Like Peter in the Upper Room, we look with wonder at all he has done for us, all he continues to do for us, and we say, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? (John 13:6) It’s truly humbling to remember that just as Jesus once stooped to wash dirty feet, so he still stoops to wash the sin from our hearts today. In fact, he’s doing it right now. We call this a worship service. Who is serving whom here? It’s not really me, it’s not really you. It’s Jesus. It’s Jesus who stoops down out of heaven to be present with two or three or 85 who have gathered in his name (Matthew 18:20). It’s Jesus bending down through the water of Baptism and words of Absolution to wash away our sins. It’s really Jesus who is serving us with his true body and blood – that’s why we call it the Lord’s Supper. Through these humble means of grace the Son of God serves the sons and daughters of sinful men, the immortal serves the mortal, the Creator serves his creatures.

And so it’s not the demand of a tyrant, but the gentle invitation of our suffering Savior that helps us redirect our own personal ambition. The words of our closing hymn for today provide a perfect summary: I gave my life for thee; my precious blood I shed, that thou might’st ransomed be and quickened from the dead. I gave my life for thee; come, give thyself to me! (CW 454:1) To first be served by our Savior and then to leave here to serve others – that’s the heartbeat, the rhythm of Christianity. To first receive the forgiveness of sins, the promises, the sure hope of eternal life; to then respond with our confession, our offerings, our attention, our prayer and praise. And then to serve our Lord when we leave. How can we serve a Lord we can’t see? By serving the people we can see. By putting the needs of others ahead of our own. In yet another example of his abundant grace, Jesus welcomes our small, even seemingly unimportant and irrelevant service to others as service to himself (Matthew 25:40). What a glorious and honorable privilege we have: to serve the one who served us first!

Maybe now is a good time to recognize exactly how much service goes on around here on a daily and weekly basis. Every week our janitor comes here to take out the trash, mop the floors, vacuum the carpets and clean the toilets – when’s the last time we recognized or thanked him for his service? All summer long individuals have sacrificed their free time to take up the dusty and teeth-rattling job of cutting the grass. Sunday school teachers spend hours preparing and teaching our children about their Lord and Savior. Organists prepare hymns and liturgies to beautify our worship. Councils and committees meet to ensure that Risen Savior’s mission can be carried out in the best and most efficient way possible. Parents rouse themselves and their children early on their day off. Friends and family provide encouragement and support. Snacks are provided, enjoyed and cleaned up and no one leaves hungry. I could go on. But all of these things can only happen because you are willing to serve. And here’s the difference between Christian service and the world’s idea of charity: you don’t do it to be noticed or thanked or glorified, you do it because you love your Savior and because it needs to be done.

But please don’t leave here thinking that the only place you can serve your Savior is here at church. That’s not the point, and really, most of the opportunities you have to serve are not here but in the places you spend the other 167 hours of your week: your homes, classrooms, offices. I can’t enumerate all of them here. But I can encourage you to look for those opportunities. Look for chances to serve your spouse, your family, your neighbors, your coworkers, yes, even your enemies. Don’t just look for the things that are important, that will bring you glory or honor or gratitude. Look for the unimportant and irrelevant things – because those are the important things in God’s eyes, and rest assured that even if no one else knows, Jesus does and he approves.

We know that the world won’t get it. Jesus said as much: you know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But Jesus says it’s different for Christians; not that it should be or must be different, but it IS different. It’s different because we know and believe that Jesus served us first with his life, death, and resurrection. That’s why I don’t have to scream at you or shame you into serving others. You will – often without even realizing it. Yes, it will require sacrifice. Yes, some of the things you do may go unappreciated or unnoticed. But you’re not doing them to be appreciated or noticed. You’re doing them out of appreciation and imitation of your Savior. No matter how irrelevant they may seem, works of humble service done in his name – those are the things that are really, eternally important. Amen.  

Mark 10:17-27 - What Must I Do to Inherit Eternal Life? - October 10, 2021

The individual we meet in these verses appeared to be in possession of the three secret ingredients necessary for human happiness. Mark tells us that he was wealthy (10:22). Luke tells us that he was powerful, a ruler (Luke 18:18). Matthew tells us that he was young (Matthew 19:20). To be young, rich and powerful – that’s what the world tells us will make us happy. His wealth and powerful position were likely inherited. In Jesus’ day, you didn’t ordinarily acquire wealth and power at a young age unless you inherited it. That’s why while his question might sound strange to us, it makes sense, given his circumstances: Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? It’s a good question. Actually, it’s more than that; it’s THE most important question anyone can ask.

There is something curious though: if this man already possessed everything necessary for human happiness, why was he here on his knees before Jesus? Well, why – as inhabitants of the wealthiest nation in human history – are so many Americans so terribly unhappy and depressed? Why do the wealthiest and most powerful people in our world – the Elon Musk’s, the Jeff Bezos’, the Richard Branson’s – spend billions of dollars rocketing off to space? He’s there because he still felt an emptiness, a hollowness, a lack of something that his money couldn’t buy and power couldn’t grab. Do you know what it was? An answer to his own mortality; an assurance that this life is not all there is. It’s no accident that what nagged at this young man’s heart nags at the heart of every human being. Ecclesiastes tells us that [God] has…put eternity in [our] hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We can try to deny it or ignore it, but we all sense that there’s something more, something bigger than us, something beyond our five senses.

There are a couple positive things that should be said about this rich young ruler. He’s not like the Pharisees and the experts in the Law who spent all of their time concocting ridiculous hypotheticals (Matthew 22:23-33) and trick questions to trap Jesus (Mark 10:2). He’s sincere. And he’s not messing around with foolish questions. He gets right to the heart of the human condition with the most important question that can ever be asked: What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Now, he has an idea of what it might involve: what must I do… Doing something – that’s how you get eternal life. You also see this in how he addresses Jesus: Good teacher. He recognizes that Jesus is a wise teacher who might be able to tell him what good thing he can do to guarantee that he will get eternal life. But Jesus will have none of his flattery. Why do you call me good? No one is good except one – God. Why would Jesus respond this way? Two reasons. First, because, according to Scripture, no one is good. Everyone is conceived and born in sin (Psalm 51:5). Paul states it categorically: there is no one who does what is good; there is not even one (Romans 3:12). And second, because while this rich young ruler may have recognized that Jesus was a good teacher, he didn’t yet acknowledge him as his God and Savior. Only God is inherently good. To call Jesus “good,” you must first call him God.

But let’s take a closer look at his question: what must I do to inherit eternal life? How do you inherit something? Is there something you must do? I suppose you could try. Maybe you butter up a wealthy relative to ensure that your name finds its way into their will. But really inheriting something involves two things: 1) someone to freely decide to give you their stuff; and 2) that someone to die. That’s probably how this man became so rich and powerful at such a young age: someone, presumably his father, died and left him a fortune and a position of power. But this man wants to know what [he] must do. Questions shape answers. This is a law question – and so Jesus gives him a law answer. He tells this rich young ruler exactly what he must do: you shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony. You shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother. There’s plenty to do there! Enough to keep you busy for a lifetime.

Though, apparently not enough for this guy: Teacher, I have kept all these since I was a child. This guy is like far too many people – even far too many Christians – today: he was sincere but inexcusably ignorant. Clearly he had never studied Luther’s Small Catechism. He seems not to have been there to hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). If he had, he’d know that murder, adultery, theft, false testimony, fraud and insubordination live in every heart. You and I are guilty of these sins, even if we’ve never been charged with them in a criminal court. Neglecting a neighbor in need, racism, prejudice and hatred are murder. Merely thinking about adultery is adultery in God’s eyes (Matthew 5:28). False testimony is not only offered in a courtroom, it’s served up at the dinner table and spread on social media. Fraud includes “forgetting” to scan an item at the self-checkout or filing a shady tax return. As much as we may disagree, honoring father and mother includes public health officials.

Jesus’ response is fascinating, isn’t it? He doesn’t argue with him; he doesn’t give an encore of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus looked at him [and] loved him. This is what love looks like. And, for someone who is blind to their sin and speeding down the highway to hell, this is what love sounds like: one thing you lack. Go, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. Jesus goes right to the heart of this rich young ruler that he loves. He sees his heart the way only God can (John 2:25), he sees a heart consumed by greed, enslaved by the idol called “Money.” He sees someone who has failed to keep the 1st and most important commandment: you shall have no other gods (Exodus 20:3).

Martin Luther summarized the essence of the First Commandment like this: we should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. An idol is anything and everything we fear, love or trust more than God. The scary thing is that an idol doesn’t have to be a statue or live in a temple; most idols are invisible, they live in our hearts. Probably the most prevalent idol in our society is the idol of “Happiness.” Ask almost anyone what they want most today for themselves and their families and there’s a good chance you’ll hear: “I just want to be happy.” Are there any idols lurking in your heart? A good test for idols is to assess what makes you anxious, worried – what keeps you up at night. It’s been said that anxiety is the liturgy, the service, the sacrifice we offer to idols when they (inevitably) fail to deliver on their promises. We fear the loss of our health, we love our riches, we trust our power to control not only our lives but the lives of others as well. And when they fail, we worry, we get anxious. And yet, in the backlash that always results from idolatry, the blame ends up falling on us instead of the idols. We fear death and so we worship the idols that promise life and health – whether that involves wearing a mask, getting a shot or running dozens of miles each week and meticulously watching what we eat. But no matter how devoted we are – our bodies always end up breaking down, we end up getting sick and eventually dying. And who’s to blame: you are! You didn’t serve your idol with the right procedure, the right diet, enough exercise, etc. We love Money because money seems to be able to make life easier and happier. But then we realize that the more stuff we have the more problems come with it or that we never have enough money. And whose fault is it? Money doesn’t take the blame. It’s you. You didn’t buy the right thing, save enough, invest in the right way. One of the most prevalent idols in our world is named Power. We strive for power and when we have it we think we can control our lives and the lives of those around us. But then we try it. Especially as parents and grandparents, we try to use our power to convince our families to do the right thing; for example, making worship a priority. But they ignore our pleas. They stubbornly despise the means of grace. And Power says that the problem is that you weren’t persuasive, passionate or convincing enough. It leaves us anxious and empty. It exposes the idol living in our hearts. That’s the Law. The Law doesn’t take prisoners. The Law – especially as it is expressed in the 1st Commandment – only and always kills.

Jesus loved this rich young ruler. He wanted to give him the one thing he lacked. What he lacked was not poverty or sincerity. What he lacked was an understanding that he couldn’t earn eternal life; that he needed a Savior. And what got in his way was his wealth. And so Jesus gives him a law solution: give it all away. Give it away to the poor who need it far more than you do. Tear your heart away from the riches of this world – which will eventually rust and rot anyway – and place it on the riches of heaven which will never decay (Matthew 6:19-20). Would that have worked? If he had given everything away would he have earned a ticket to heaven? No. You could easily empty your bank account, quit your job, leave your family and society behind and go to live as a hermit somewhere – and still wind up in hell. Because while the Law can – and does – kill, it cannot give eternal life (Galatians 3:21).

Did you catch the real answer? It’s easy to miss. It’s just two words: follow me. The young man missed it. All he heard was Jesus’ command to sell all his stuff and give it to the poor – another commandment, more law – this time, law he hadn’t and couldn’t keep. But because his heart was still captive to money, he missed the answer. Mark tells us that the young man went away sad. Did he hear and believe? Did he go home and do what Jesus said? Did he look at all his stuff and say, “This isn’t worth it” and give it all away? Did he eventually repent and come back to Jesus to receive the inheritance of eternal life? There’s some speculation that this rich young ruler was actually Mark, the author of this Gospel. It’s an interesting thought, but the fact is that we just don’t know the rest of this man’s story. And that’s a good thing, because it forces us to examine our own hearts; to ask “what would I do?”

To be clear, the point of this text is not that money is evil or that rich people can’t be saved. The point is that no one, not even rich, young, powerful people – can earn eternal life. That’s what had the disciples so worried. That’s the point of Jesus’ image of trying to push a camel through the eye of a needle: it’s not merely hard; it’s impossible. What that young man hopefully realized what that it wasn’t really his wealth but his determination to earn his way into heaven that was preventing him from getting there. The real good news is that while we can’t earn eternal life – Jesus can and Jesus did. Jesus calls to us, just as he did to that young man, to follow him to the cross, to the tomb, to his resurrection to receive the gift of eternal life he has earned for us. He issued that invitation first to us in his Baptism and he does it daily through his Word. And remember that to follow Jesus does not mean to keep his rules, to follow his example, to ask what would Jesus do – and then do it. To follow Jesus means to trust that he has kept all the rules for you, that he has satisfied his Father’s demand for a perfectly good life, that he has suffered the punishment for your idolatry and greed so that you never will, that he died so that you might have eternal life.

In the end, this rich young ruler was so close to eternal life. He was right: eternal life is an inheritance. Someone else has to freely decide to give you their stuff and then that same someone has to die. And that’s exactly what Jesus did. He wrote you into his will before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-6). He sealed you as his heir in Baptism (Romans 6:1-5). He gives you a down-payment on your heavenly inheritance every time you eat his body and drink his blood in Holy Communion (Matthew 26:17-29). In his Word he gives promises that are infinitely better than anything any idol can promise – and the best part is that you do have to do anything to receive them. Don’t ask what you can or must do to earn eternal life, instead follow Jesus to heaven by grace through faith. And if there’s anything, any idol, anything at all that gets in between you and Jesus – well, then it just has to go. Compared to the riches of heaven Jesus has promised to you no idol is worth serving for even a minute. Don’t take my word for it, just ask that sad young man – or better yet, ask Jesus and then follow him to life. Amen.

Mark 10:2-16 - Where Does Jesus Stand on Marriage? - October 3, 2021

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? This may sound like a relatively simple question – but it wasn’t in Jesus’ day and it isn’t today. In fact, that’s precisely why the Pharisees were confident that they could use it to trip up Jesus: they knew (or thought they knew) that no matter how Jesus answered their question, he would fall into their carefully laid trap. Among the Jews of Jesus’ day – just like in any group of any day – there were people who fell on the liberal side and people who fell on the conservative side of the issue. The conservative followers of rabbi Shammai claimed that the only legal cause for divorce is adultery, marital unfaithfulness. The liberal followers of rabbi Hillel claimed that Moses allowed divorce for any and every reason, and that the important thing was that you give your wife a piece of paper certifying the divorce – to make it legal. I think this would make for a fascinating Bible class discussion question but because this is not a Bible class – and because, in the end, our personal opinions don’t matter, we’re going to ask: where does Jesus stand on marriage?

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? is the kind of question that should immediately set off alarm bells. It’s like when your teenager drives the car into the garage, walks in the door and asks: what’s the name of our insurance company again? Why are you asking? Have you been looking for an excuse to dump your wife? Do you already have a replacement picked out? Are you trying to justify your past behavior? The Pharisees were talking about wives the way we talk about cars or boats – “when is the right time to trade the old girl in?” Why would they ask such a question?

Well, besides trying to trap Jesus, they were trying to do what everyone of every age has tried to do: get Jesus on their side. Republicans think Jesus is a Republican. Democrats think Jesus is a Democrat. These days, Jesus supposedly stands on both sides of masks, both sides of vaccines, both sides of immigration – and, shockingly, both sides of abortion. The truth is: Jesus hasn’t registered with any political party. He doesn’t pick CNN over Fox News or vice versa. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36); instead, every kingdom is under his feet (Ephesians 1:22).

But back to the question: where does Jesus stand on marriage and divorce? Is Jesus conservative? You bet he is. You think Moses was strict? Moses only dealt with externals; Jesus goes right to the heart. Moses said you shall not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14); Jesus said “don’t even think about it!” (Matthew 5:27-30). He’s the one who said that not even the smallest letter, or even part of a letter, will in any way pass away from the Law until everything is fulfilled (Matthew 5:18). Is Jesus liberal? He is when it comes to forgiveness. He’s as liberal with forgiveness as the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). He’s so liberal that he tells Peter to forgive the same person for the same sin 77 times (Matthew 18:21-22). Jesus is a hardcore conservative when it comes to God’s commandments and a hardcore liberal when it comes to forgiveness. But Jesus’ position isn’t really the problem – the attitude of the Pharisees’ hearts was. And that’s what Jesus seeks to expose by answering their question with another question.

What did Moses command you? Moses, the author of the first five books of the Bible, said and wrote a lot about marriage. So which of Moses’ words on marriage did the Pharisees choose? Naturally, the exception, the loophole, the one that seemed to justify their ungodly desires: Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. I would read what Moses actually said in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, but it’s rather long. Moses’ civil law did not legalize divorce – it prevented frivolous divorces and protected the rights of the innocent party (in those days, usually of the wife – because if the husband sent his wife away – society would automatically assume that she had committed adultery – Moses demanded that the provide a certificate stating the real reason – thereby offering her protection from being stigmatized and allowing her to freely remarry. That’s a long way from saying, “Moses said that divorce is okay.” But that’s how the legalist always thinks. They’re always looking for loopholes in the law. The exception becomes the rule. That’s how the Old Adam in each of us thinks. In the New Testament we don’t have to worship on any particular day (Colossians 2:16-17) is turned into, “I don’t really ever have to attend worship.” Everyone must submit to the governing authorities (Romans 13:1) becomes, “Not if they’re riding roughshod over the constitution or my civil rights.”

But with Jesus, legalistic loopholes become nooses. If you try to justify yourself with the Law, you’ll wind up condemned. Jesus caught the Pharisees in their own trap. [Moses] wrote this command for you because of your hard hearts. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Jesus trumps Moses…with Moses. Jesus doesn’t go back to Sinai – he goes back to Creation. He doesn’t appeal to what God allowed as a concession to maintain peace among the stubborn, rebellious Israelites but to God’s original will for marriage. There’s no question that God’s original design for marriage was one man and one woman for life. Period. No loopholes. No exceptions.

Jesus was trying to show the Pharisees that they were looking at marriage all wrong. They had made two huge mistakes: 1) They had lost sight of the essence of marriage; and 2) they were viewing marriage as a burden rather than a blessing. The essence of marriage is not the ceremony, not the marriage license, not even the vows. The essence of marriage is the joining of two distinct people into “one flesh.” And that “one flesh” is more than physical, more than ceremonial, more than legal…because it’s more than human. Marriage is not man’s work but God’s. And what God joins together, man cannot separate. Sure, you can undo the physical, the ceremonial, the legal aspects of it with loveless words and actions, lawyers, and court orders – but you can’t undo the one flesh relationship God has created between husband and wife. Only death can do that. And death is God’s business, not man’s (Psalm 31:15).

The Pharisees were also ignoring the great blessings God wants to give through marriage. In confirmation class we talk about the three “C’s” of marriage: 1) that God intends to bring children into the world through marriage; 2) that God provides for chastity – that is the proper avenue for sexual desires within the bonds of marriage; and 3) that God provides loving and lifelong companionship through marriage. But as great as these blessings are, they pale in comparison to the greatest blessing of all: that the union of a man and a woman is to be a picture – although an imperfect picture – of the union between Christ and his church. Marriage, unlike any other earthly institution, is to paint a picture of the intimate, all-encompassing and indissovable union God creates between Christ and Christians through Holy Baptism (Ephesians 5:22-32). But you miss all of those blessings if all you’re looking for is loopholes and excuses and justifications to end your marriage.  

The disciples were bothered by Jesus’ answer, perhaps feeling guilty themselves, and so they ask him for further explanation behind closed doors. But Jesus doesn’t back off. Instead, he presses even harder: whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. If she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Jesus sews the last loophole shut. Getting a divorce in order to marry someone else is nothing less than adultery. The disciples were shocked at how strict Jesus was. Matthew records their response: if this is the relationship of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry (Matthew 19:10). (Ironically, this is the same logic that couples often use today to justify living together outside of marriage: “well, it’s better than getting married only to later on get divorced!”) But that’s missing the point. The point is not that you can keep the 6th commandment by avoiding marriage but that no one can justify themselves by the Law (Romans 3:20). If you try, all you’ll succeed in doing is damning yourself while, at the same time, missing out on all the blessings God wants you to have through his gift of marriage.

Here's the bottom line: Jesus didn’t come to this earth to save marriage from all of our creative attempts at screwing it up. He didn’t come to stop the United States from legalizing same-sex marriage. He certainly didn’t come to condone divorce or adultery. [He] came to seek and to save the lost (Matthew 19:10). Jesus came to save sinners. The outwardly good and the obviously bad. The conservatives and liberals. The Samaritan woman at the well who had had five husbands and was living with a sixth (John 4). The woman caught in adultery the Pharisees wanted to stone to death (Luke 8:1-11). The men and women who have crossed the line while dating as young people; those who commit adultery with images on the internet or by flirting with coworkers; the innocent and the guilty divorcee – Jesus came to save them all.

While we are all hardwired to think that we can save ourselves by our obedience to the Law; Jesus didn’t come to earth to clarify how you can obey the 6th commandment to earn your way into heaven. Whether you’re single, married, divorced, or widowed – the 6th commandment condemns us all. Jesus didn’t come to justify our sin but to justify us by becoming sin for us – to become the adulterer, the murderer, the liar, the thief that we all are – so that by being baptized into him and believing in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). He came to obey the Law in order to free us from the Law so that we can be free to be who God has made us – single, married, divorced or widowed – without fear, without dread of judgment, without the shame that causes us to hide from God and throw blame at others. He came to free us from searching for loopholes and legal excuses to justify our abuse of marriage. If you think you can come to Jesus and expect him to help you justify yourself in God’s eyes – you’ve come to the wrong place. On the other hand, if you know you have nothing – no excuse, no justification, no loophole – nothing but your sins to offer to Jesus, then you’re in the right place.

And do you know how Jesus proved that? With children! People (probably mothers who picked up on Jesus’ compassion toward the cast-offs of society) were bringing their children to Jesus so that he would touch them and bless them – in many cases, probably because their children were sick or dying. And, of all people, the disciples rebuked them: “Keep those filthy, bratty children away from Jesus! He’s got better things to do, better people to see, better places to go!” Jesus was having none of his disciples’ foolishness. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. Let the little children come to me! Do not hinder them, because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen I tell you: Whoever will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. What a contrast! We have the Pharisees and the disciples on the one hand who are so intent on proving themselves, justifying themselves, making themselves good enough for God by their works and logic and effort. And Jesus shoos them away to take dirty, snotty, sick, useless little children into his arms. Do you want to get right with God? Do you want to be welcomed into his kingdom now and eternally? Don’t come to him with your explanations of how pure you’ve been as a single person, how faithful you’ve been to your marriage, or how justified you were in getting divorced – you, I, and – most importantly – God, knows better. Come to him as the dirty, snotty, filthy, sinful child you (and I) are and fall into his open arms for forgiveness, life and salvation.

Where does Jesus stand on marriage? Is he conservative or liberal? I guess I’d have to say both and neither. Yes, Jesus is absolutely conservative when it comes to upholding God’s original will for marriage; and he’s absolutely liberal when it comes to forgiving every sin against the 6th commandment. But Jesus refuses to allow liberals to pervert God’s will for marriage and he refuses to allow conservatives to claim righteousness based on how well they’ve defended, defined and lived marriage. Thank God that our hope for salvation is not that we have handled God’s gift of marriage properly – but that through Baptism Jesus has committed himself, his life, his death and his resurrection to us and for us (Ephesians 5:22-32). You’ve been joined to Christ – and that’s one marriage that no one can separate (Romans 8:38-39). Amen.

Mark 9:38-50 - Where's the Line? - September 26, 2021

The Word of God before us this morning contains some of the most difficult, most cryptic and enigmatic verses in Mark’s Gospel. When you first read it (or at least when I did), it just seems like a patchwork of random, unrelated pictures and phrases. There’s an anonymous exorcist driving out demons, a point where the better option is to have a millstone hung around your neck and be tossed into the sea and to cut off your hands and feet and gouge out your eyes, we have Jesus own horrifying description of what hell is like, and, perhaps strangest of all: everyone being salted with fire. Are these just random details of Jesus’ ministry that Mark somewhat sloppily pieced together? I don’t think so. I think that what ties all these random pieces together are Jesus’ final words: be at peace with one another. And where does Jesus want there to be peace? Well, given the context of the disciples bickering among themselves (Mark 9:34) and John’s criticism of an outsider – I think Jesus is talking about the visible church.

It’s no secret that one of the things that turn people off from Christianity is the fact that there are so many different denominations, so many different churches, so many different worship styles – and all of these denominations, churches and styles appear to be at war with each other. And I’m not going to argue that they’re wrong. From Luther’s day to today the Catholic church has consistently cursed the Reformation doctrine of salvation by faith alone through grace alone based on Scripture alone. [1] Lutherans, in turn, have consistently identified the Roman Catholic papacy as the Antichrist. [2] Mainline and Evangelical churches mock confessional churches for their “antiquated” and intolerant positions on marriage, gender, the inerrancy of Scripture and the Sacraments. Confessional churches criticize Evangelical and mainline churches for failing to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once and for all (Jude 3). Even within Lutheranism there are countless divisions and conflicts. It’s undeniable that the visible church is a mess. But the Bible tells us that there must be divisions in the church (1 Corinthians 11:19); Christians must be intolerant to some extent. The question is: where’s the line between sinful and biblical intolerance.

John brings up an example of sinful intolerance. John and the other apostles had tried to stop a man from driving out demons in Jesus’ name. Why? He wasn’t opposing Jesus or spreading false teaching or using Jesus’ name to harm people or for personal gain – he was proclaiming Jesus’ name and driving out demons. They weren’t judging him based on what he taught but simply because of who he was – or, better, who he wasn’t: he wasn’t one of them. To borrow the title of a movie I’ve never seen, the disciples were guilty of simple pride and prejudice. Pride, because they were among Jesus’ little chosen band – this Jesus who has just revealed his divine glory on the Mt. of Transfiguration to Peter, James and John (Mark 9:2-13); and, who, in their minds, was headed to Jerusalem to inaugurate his glorious reign. The apostles were special; they were “in” – and they didn’t want anyone else stealing their glory. That’s pride. And where there’s pride, prejudice is never far behind. They had judged this man, not because he was opposing the Gospel – but simply because they assumed that because he wasn’t with them, he was against Jesus.

Here’s Jesus’ review of his disciples’ pride and prejudice: Do not try to stop him, because no one who does a miracle in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil about me. Whoever is not against us is for us. Amen I tell you: Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you belong to Christ, will certainly not lose his reward. Jesus makes it clear: there is a line; you can be for him or against him – there is no middle ground. But if it’s a good work to simply give a fellow Christian a glass of water, why would you want to silence someone who was doing exactly what Jesus had sent the apostles out to do earlier – to cast out demons and tear down Satan’s kingdom (Mark 6:7-13)? This man was on Jesus’ side. Two things prove it: 1) He was driving out demons in Jesus’ name; and 2) he was successful; the demons were driven out. Jesus’ name is not a magic charm; unbelievers can throw it around all they want, but God won’t hear or answer them (Isaiah 59:2). In Acts 19, the seven sons of Sceva tried to cast out a demon in Jesus’ name and the demon-possessed man beat them up and sent them running away naked (Acts 19:13-16). It was nothing but pride and prejudice that led the disciples to reject and try to silence this exorcist. Opposing Christians who are preaching the Gospel simply because they aren’t one of us is sinful intolerance. It is unacceptable to Jesus.

At the same time, not all intolerance is wrong; some is Biblical. Jesus teaches about Biblical religious intolerance in these words as well. Jesus calls his followers salt. Salt is a potent spice that always has an effect. If you put it on your food, you will taste it. If you put it in water, your water will be salty. Salt both purifies and preserves. And here Jesus is saying that there are some things that his disciples must not tolerate – that they must seek to purge and purify; and other things that they must seek to preserve.

It is completely Biblical to be intolerant of anyone and everyone who causes one of these little ones who believe in me to fall into sin. It’s not wrong to refuse to tolerate those who lead others astray from the teachings of God’s Word. On the contrary, God demands it. In Romans, Paul says I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the teaching that you learned, and keep away from them (Romans 16:17). John adds if someone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house. Do not even wish him well (2 John 10). God has called us to oppose anyone who leads others astray by teaching things that are not in agreement with God’s Word. The Lord has not authorized us to agree to disagree with those who defy, deny or contradict God’s Word. Rather, according to Jesus, it would be better for that person to have a millstone hung around their neck and dumped into the bottom of the sea.

That being said, there’s something we need to do before we climb onto the high horse of orthodoxy to expose and oppose false teachers. Do you know what that is? We need to look into the mirror. When God calls us to oppose everything that is contrary to his Word – that includes our own sinful thoughts, words and actions. What do you see when you look into the mirror of God’s holy Law? I see a hand that is always more eager to serve myself than others; a hand that is quick to point out when others are in the wrong; a hand that is quick to pat myself on the back for the few good things I do. I see a foot that wants to go its own way; not God’s. A foot that prefers to walk the wide, easy, pleasurable highway to hell than the narrow, treacherous, painful path to heaven. A foot that is tireless when it comes working and playing but has to be dragged to worship God for one hour. And I see an eye that loves to lust after forbidden fruit; that is blind to my own sins – but sees better than 20/20 when it comes to pointing out the sins of others.

So what are we to do with these sinful hands, feet and eyes of ours? Jesus says cut [them] off…pluck [them] out. Jesus uses this strong, vivid, gruesome language to describe how intolerant of sin we should be in our own lives. But here’s the thing: even if you did that – even if you cut off both hands, both feet and gouged out both your eyes – would that solve the problem? No. Even if you didn’t have any hands or feet or eyes with which to sin – you would still have a sin-filled heart that wanted to. Sure, it would be better to be maimed and blind than have your whole body burn in hell – but maiming yourself won’t get you into heaven. Going to heaven requires more than drastic cosmetic surgery – and more than merely changing your outward behavior. God requires perfect purity – inside and out – for admission into heaven. And this requires a heart transplant – a new heart, a repentant heart, a believing heart. How does the Lord give us one of those? By taking hands that had never hurt anyone, feet that had never wandered from the 10 Commandments, eyes that had never lusted or coveted – and submitting them to the horrors of hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. The only surgery that could save sinners like us from the hell we deserved was the one God performed on Calvary when he nailed the holy hands and feet of Jesus to a cross and shoved a Roman spear through his sinless heart.

By that surgical procedure – by the holes in Jesus’ hands and feet and side – you are healed; you are forgiven. Jesus has paid for the sins you’ve committed with your heart, hands, feet and eyes. That’s why you can come here week after week and fearlessly confess your sins right out in public; you can come here and cut off those sinful thoughts, words and actions that you performed with your hands and feet and eyes and heart and lay them at Jesus’ feet. You can plead for God’s mercy – knowing that in Jesus God has had mercy on you. All those sins of the past that you can’t forget – God has forgotten them (Isaiah 43:25). All the wounds you have inflicted on others or that others have inflicted on you – Jesus bore them in his body so that you may be healed (1 Peter 2:24). The sins of habit that you can’t seem to overcome – Jesus has overcome them and he will help you to overcome them, too (Romans 6:1-4). And that starts right here and right now. Just as Jesus rose from the dead and left your sins buried in that grave – so you can leave here without your sins on your back, on your account, on your conscience.

And when that proper combination of Law and Gospel has knocked us off the high horse of religious pride and prejudice onto our knees in repentance where we belong – only then are we in the proper position to expose, oppose and be intolerant of those both inside our church and outside who lead others into sin and false belief and who refuse to repent. What’s important is why we do this; what our motivation is. We don’t expose and oppose them because, well, we’re right and they’re wrong – because in the end we’re all wrong in God’s eyes. We don’t judge others compared to our personal standards – but compared to God’s standards. We expose and oppose and are intolerant of sin and false doctrine because Jesus commands us to (Romans 16:17; 1 John 4:1) out of love: love for God’s Word, love for the souls who are being misled, and love for our own souls. He has made us salt through the power of his Word and Sacrament. Salt always has an effect. Salt always purifies and preserves. Salt – that is, true believers – must always burn off, purge out false doctrine and work to preserve true doctrine. And when we are salty, purging out sin and false doctrine and preserving true doctrine – then we will be at peace with one another.

A woman I recently visited reminded me of a joke about Christian denominations. A group of believers had died and arrived at heaven’s gate for intake. Peter was busy guiding another tour group – so Jesus himself stepped up to lead this tour. He led them down hallway after hallway, past hundreds and hundreds of doors. Above each of the doors was a sign indicating the denomination inside: “Baptist,” “Catholic,” “Evangelical,” “Orthodox,” “Non-Denominational.” And then, as he was approaching the last door at the end of the hallway – the one with the sign that said “Lutheran” above the door – Jesus turned to the group and said, “Shh, don’t make any noise…these Lutherans think they’re the only ones here.” Now that might be the stereotype – but that’s not what we believe or teach.

Although like John it can be tempting to view the situation in the visible church as “us” versus “them” – the real issue is not who is with us – that is, who is confessional Lutheran – but who is with Jesus and who is against him. We must repent of judging others based on anything other than God’s Word. And we must remain steadfastly intolerant of anyone who denies, defies or contradicts God’s Word in their teaching or life. Whoever is not against us is for us, Jesus said. Jesus and his Word are the line between sinful and Biblical intolerance – and only when we focus on him can we be at peace with one another. Amen.

[1] Council of Trent, Canon VIII, January 1547

[2] Power and Primacy of the Pope, 39-59

Mark 9:30-37 - Jesus Demonstrates Perfect Humility - September 19, 2021

If you were reading this section of Mark on your own at home what would your takeaway be? What would you think Jesus is trying to tell you? I think many people just take the bumper sticker away from this text: if anyone wants to be first, he will be the last of all and the servant of all. Understood that way, this text is all law; it’s all about Jesus telling me that if I want to go to heaven I have to be humble. Have you ever met anyone who has taken that message to heart and tried to live it out in their lives? They’re terribly frustrating people to be around. They never go first. They refuse to be served. What if we all took it that way? No one would come into church and sit down because Jesus says that if you want to be first you should be last (and not everyone can walk into church during the last stanza of the first hymn!). No one would ever eat at our potlucks or soup suppers because everyone would insist on serving rather than being served. More to the point, is it really humility if your whole reason for going last and serving others is so that in the end you can be first? That’s a round-a-bout way of drawing us to view this text in a different way: that the main takeaway is not how we are to demonstrate our humility, but how Jesus demonstrated his.

The first place we see Jesus’ humility is in his teaching. For the second time in Mark’s Gospel Jesus spells out in crystal clear terms what lies in his future: the Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill him. But three days after he is killed, he will rise. I know we confess these truths each and every week in our creeds – but please don’t pass over them lightly. These are the things of our forgiveness, life and salvation. This is the Gospel of salvation that Jesus never tires of teaching us day after day and week after week. We might ask, then, “if these things are so important – and the disciples didn’t understand them – why were they afraid to ask him about it?” Probably two reasons. First, if this was really what the future held for Jesus, then their hopes of glory and honor as senior advisers in his administration would be dashed – and they obviously weren’t ready to give those up quite yet. Second, if the future held suffering and death for Jesus, their leader, what would it hold for them? You don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to. I don’t ask my wife if she has any housework for me to do. There may be some times that you don’t ask the doctor for the results of the test. Parents of teenagers may not ask them where they were and what they were doing when they come home at 2a.  

The disciples don’t understand and they’re afraid to ask because they don’t want the answer. They were basically unteachable at this time. Have you ever tried to teach a person who didn’t want to be taught? Perhaps a child who didn’t want to learn his fractions or an older relative who didn’t want to learn a new piece of technology. And if they don’t want to learn, you just want to say, “Fine, then just stay ignorant!” I don’t know how you react to the unteachable, but I know that I don’t always react like Jesus did. Even though the disciples were just as unteachable this time as they were the first time Jesus laid out the path he would walk to win their salvation – in his humility he didn’t stop teaching them.

So what’s the lesson, the takeaway? No, it’s not that you should be more like Jesus when you’re teaching the unteachable, but that Jesus continues to humble himself to teach us even though and even when we are just as unteachable as the Twelve. Jesus speaks to us in plain language in the pages of Scripture – but we don’t understand and we’re often afraid to ask. He has laid out his will for our lives in the 10 Commandments and yet every single day we wander off on our own way, thinking that we know better than our Creator. Jesus told Eve that there would be conflict in every marriage and Adam that it wouldn’t be easy to scrape a living out of this fallen world – and yet we expect that our marriages and jobs should be trouble-free (Genesis 3:16-19). He tells us that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and yet we’re surprised when some virus pops up and people die. Yet, Jesus continues teaching us these truths, day after day, week after week. That’s humility.

But there’s more. Here’s Jesus, heading through Galilee, to Capernaum, and from Capernaum to Jerusalem to be betrayed, arrested, tortured, and crucified – and the whole trip Jesus overhears his disciples bickering about which of them was the greatest – that is, in their minds, which of them would be elevated to vice-president when Jesus took the throne in Jerusalem. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a whole lot of patience for arguing in the back seat on a road trip. I can listen to it for maybe 10 minutes and then it’s: “Do I have to stop this car?” But Jesus listens to this petty bickering for hours, probably even days – because they didn’t get to travel 70 mph on an interstate in those days. Here again Jesus shows his humility – and again, the point isn’t that we should be more patient with our children’s petty bickering but that Jesus demonstrates his humility in putting up with our petty bickering.

“What? Fight? Us? Here at Risen Savior?” Let’s not be naïve. I do and say things you don’t like. You do and say things that I don’t like. Someone on this side has rubbed someone on that side the wrong way. And from time to time those petty arguments rise to the surface in a meeting or hallway or in a conversation in the car on the way home. If you had given up your life to redeem this room of people and saw how they treated each other – how patient would you be? And yet Jesus doesn’t slam on the brakes and say “Do I have to stop this church?” He doesn’t scream or shout (or turn up the radio) like I do. He hears all this bickering but he doesn’t think that he’s too good to be the Head of our church. He knows that it’s not the healthy, but the sick, who need a doctor (Mark 2:17). He’s the Good Shepherd who doesn’t expect his sheep not to smell. He doesn’t call the righteous but sinners.  

“But didn’t he confront them with their sin when they finally get into the house?” Did he? He said: what were you arguing about on the way? Is that really confrontational? What’s really going on here? Jesus is patiently and gently teaching his disciples two lessons that they should have learned long before this. The first is that God’s view of greatness is not man’s view. Just skim through the OT. Esau should get the birthright, but it goes to Jacob (Genesis 25:23). Joseph is sold into slavery but winds up ruling Egypt (Genesis 41:33-57). Moses was a murderous shepherd, yet God chose him to lead his people out of Egypt and to speak to him face to face (Numbers 12:8). David was the youngest of Jesse’s sons – yet God chose him, not his older brothers, to be the King of Israel (1 Samuel 16:1-13). Jesus is subtly reinforcing the truth that God doesn’t view greatness the same way they do.

Second, Jesus is teaching them something about himself. Luke tells us that Jesus asked this question because he knew exactly what they were arguing about, exactly what was in their hearts (Luke 9:47). He subtly demonstrates that he’s no ordinary teacher, that he knows the thoughts and desires of their hearts; that he is God in human flesh and blood. And yet – even though he knows that even as he is on the road to Jerusalem where he will wash their feet, suffer their betrayal and desertion, be whipped and spit on and beaten and crucified for the sake of these disciples who are more worried about which of them is the greatest – Jesus is patient with their bickering and he gently leads them to repentance.

But Jesus has one more demonstration of his humility up his sleeve. Up to this point Jesus had been teaching his disciples through lecturing. Lecturing is a sophisticated method of instruction. It’s used primarily with adults. How do grade school teachers instruct children who have a hard time grasping abstract concepts? They use object lessons. So what does Jesus, the Lord of heaven and earth, do when his lectures cannot be understood? He changes his method. The wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24) humbles himself to use an object lesson to teach his disciples what true greatness looks like.

Jesus brings a little child, possibly one of the disciples’ own children, into the center of the room and then takes the child in his arms. This doesn’t seem like a strange act to us today. After all, today it’s a children’s world and the rest of us just live in it. But in Jesus’ day children were on the same level as slaves. They were a drag on a family’s finances and couldn’t grow up and get out of the house – either by getting a job or by getting married – quickly enough. But Jesus injects incredible significance into this simple act. He says whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me. The disciples thought that greatness in the kingdom of God consisted of doing great things for Jesus: trying to prevent him from being nailed to a cross (Mark 8:33); calling down fire from heaven to burn up cities that rejected him (Luke 9:54); casting out demons in his name (Luke 10:20) – doing all these great, big magnificent things – but they were wrong. Jesus says that simply picking up a child in his name accomplishes the great act of receiving him – and not just him, but also his heavenly Father. In other words, ordinary, everyday, mostly unnoticed works were significant to Jesus.

And they still are. Greatness in Jesus’ eyes – and greatness in God’s eyes – is most frequently found in those little acts that no one else (other than God) notices. Greatness in God’s eyes is found in the mother who does more for her family on a daily basis than any CEO, accountant, doctor, counselor, chef, teacher, or financial advisor. Greatness is found in the father who not only takes the time to teach his children to ride a bike and throw a baseball but to teach them the Catechism, to read them the Bible, to show them how to pray. Greatness is found in parents who forgo career advancement or a newer model car or a breathtaking vacation to give their children a Christian education. Greatness is found in grandparents who demonstrate in word and action that greatness is not defined by personal achievement but by humble service to others. Greatness is found in visiting or calling or simply sending a card to a fellow believer who is lonely, sick or suffering. Greatness is even found in taking a little child in your arms.  

Why? Why does Jesus so esteem these humble acts? Because whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes not just me but also him who sent me. Because these acts of love are motivated by childlike faith in Jesus. What does that mean? It means that while we believe and confess that Jesus will return one day in power and glory to conquer his enemies once and for all (Revelation 19:11-21) – the Jesus we receive, believe and confess today looks as “useless” as a little child to the world today. He is the Son of God who was laid in a dirty manger, as a man of sorrows and a cross, as a servant who dies for his enemies. And Jesus still comes to us in what many regard as “childish” ways today. He uses “object lessons” to bestow the riches of heaven on us. He brings adoption and new life through a handful of water. He brings forgiveness of sins through the mouth of a sinful man. He offers himself, his own body and blood, as a down payment on the life of glory he has promised through a bit of bread and a mouthful of wine. Through these “childish” methods, Jesus brings himself and the Father and all of the greatness of heaven to us.  

Now, it wouldn’t be bad if all you took away from this sermon was the bumper sticker statement: if anyone wants to be first, he will be the last of all and the servant of all – as long as you understand that that is not primarily Law but Gospel. That it first and foremost doesn’t describe Christians but Christ. It’s a reminder that Jesus doesn’t define greatness the way the rest of the world does – either for himself or us. Jesus humbled himself to be born of a peasant girl, to live a humble, homeless life, to suffer at the hands of the people he came to save and to die under God’s wrath for thankless sinners like us. He humbles himself today to come to us in the tap water of baptism; the bread and wine of communion, the simple words of Absolution. And, he sees greatness in your humility – in you simply being the mother, father, son, daughter, grandmother and grandfather that God has called you to be. See the greatness in Jesus’ humility – and then you will understand how he sees greatness in yours. Amen.

Mark 8:27-35 - What Are The "Things of God"? - September 12, 2021

I know that we Lutherans tend to be a rather reserved, subdued kind of people – but I’m stunned that none of you stood up to silence me as I was reading our Gospel lesson; no one came up and took me aside and said, “Pastor, you really shouldn’t be saying these things.” There are a number of shocking things in our text, aren’t there? The fact that even after his baptism and his miracles – the people still didn’t know who Jesus really was; that Jesus warned his disciples not to tell anyone who he really was – he’s forbidding evangelism, really?!?; Jesus’ announcement that he must suffer many things, be killed, and after three days rise again; that Jesus would call Peter Satan; that he would teach that if anyone wants to follow him, he must also deny himself, take up his cross and follow him – through shame, suffering, and even death; and last, but not least, that Jesus commands his followers to lose their lives – is Jesus encouraging suicide? It’s all very shocking. You may not have tried to silence me – but Peter did try to silence Jesus. Why? Well, according to Jesus, Peter was acting like Satan because he had the things of men, not the things of God on his mind. The obvious question is: what are the things of God?

There’s an easy – albeit theologically lazy – answer to that question. The answer that has always been popular and is especially popular in the church today. It suggests that the things of God are denying yourself, taking up your cross and following Jesus. This theory argues that Peter rebuked Jesus for commanding his followers to do these things; that these are the things Peter refused to accept. And it sounds quite reasonable, doesn’t it? These three commands are certainly Godly. They are good, doctrinally and biblically sound advice for running your life. There have been hundreds of books and sermons and devotions that use this text to proclaim themes like “God’s Plan for Your Life,” “How to Be a Christian,” or “Christianity in Three Steps.” And in every case, you’re told that if you really want to be a Christian, if you really want to be saved, then you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus – and the more you do these things, the godlier you become.

I’m not suggesting that those things aren’t godly. They are; they come right from Jesus’ own lips. I do, however, reject the idea that these are the things that Jesus rebuked Peter for not minding. Why? Just follow the text. Jesus doesn’t issue his call to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me until after he had called Peter Satan and rebuked him for having his mind on the things of men, not the things of God. Peter’s problem was not that he didn’t want to obediently do what Jesus told him to do.

What we have here is an opportunity to refresh our understanding of the distinction between justification and sanctification; between what God has done for us and what God is doing in us. Peter was always very “mindful” of the need for sanctification, for holy living. Peter was one of the first people to follow Jesus – even when he was still a no-name rabbi (Mark 1:16-18). He was one of the first to give up his career as a fisherman, leave his home and family, and spend three years wandering around Israel. When many disciples left Jesus because he wanted to feed their souls not only their bellies, Peter didn’t leave, he said that there was nowhere else for them to go (John 6:66-69). When Jesus prophesied that all of the apostles would abandon him, Peter vowed to never leave him and later would even promise to die with him, if necessary (Mark 14:31). Peter was devoted to what we might call 3rd Article Christianity – the article that deals with us and our good works. He’d do anything for Jesus; he believed he could do a lot for Jesus.

Now that sounds good right up until you remember the rest of Peter’s story. When the shame of arrest and possible torture rose up before him in the Garden of Gethsemane, he didn’t pick up that cross, he ran away (Mark 14:50). When he was pressed to give his confession in the temple courtyard, he didn’t deny himself, he denied Jesus, three times (Mark 14:66-72). Later, when Jesus called Peter to follow him in preaching the Gospel to Gentiles, Peter initially said certainly not (Acts 10:14). Peter may have intended to live for Jesus; to lead a sanctified life, but when the rubber met the road, he failed miserably.

The things of God that Jesus accused Peter of not minding didn’t involve sanctification but justification; not the 3rd but the 2nd Article of the Creed: that Jesus must suffer many things; be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the experts in the law; be killed; and after three days rise again. These are the things of God Peter didn’t want to mind, didn’t want to hear about, didn’t want to study, didn’t want to know.

Are we any different? I’ll tell you this: many of our kind neighbors out there aren’t. When we knock on their doors to invite them to our church, do you know what most of them are interested in? What kinds of programs do you offer for my children, for women, for marriage, for child-raising, for career and personal success? In other words, many people aren’t interested in the things of God but rather the things of men. What about you? Which sermon do you find more practical and relevant: the one that is filled with “how-to” instructions or the one filled with instruction on how Jesus did it all? The one that claims to have the secret to making you a “winner;” or the one that tells you that by nature you’re a “loser” and need someone else to win salvation for you? The reason that so many people, even Lutherans, are so drawn to “how-to” Christianity is because the human heart is, by nature, inclined to the law. Like the crowds on Pentecost (Acts 2:37) and the jailer in Philippi (Acts 16:30) our ears itch for someone to tell us what we must do to be saved. So it’s music to our ears when Jesus finally says, “Here’s what you can do: deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.” The problem is that these three commands are not the things of God but the things of men because they are things for men, not God to do. When you believe that Christianity is all about you and what you’re supposed to do, you’re no less Satanic than Peter was.

Now, Peter does deserve a little credit, doesn’t he? After all, he had the first half of the 2nd Article down. He knew who Jesus was. He confessed: You are the Christ. Peter knew that he was the only Son of God the Father, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He knew that he was the Christ, the Messiah, the One God had repeatedly promised to send starting already in the Garden of Eden. Peter didn’t object to who Jesus was, he was fine with that; he rejected what Jesus had come to do. He rejected the second half of the 2nd Article; the part about Jesus’ suffering under Pontius Pilate, being crucified, dying and being buried. Did Jesus really have to be so harsh with him? Did he really have to call him Satan? Well, yes. Not only because Peter didn’t want his friend [suffer] many things; be rejected…be killed; and after three days rise again but because he didn’t think they were necessary; he didn’t think he needed Jesus to do those things for him – he thought he could save himself.

How about you? Are you satisfied with “deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Jesus, DIY” Christianity? Do you think that being a Christian is mostly about your coming to church, receiving the Sacrament, trying to be a faithful spouse and a good parent and a responsible citizen? Would you be content if we skipped over the 1st and 2nd Articles of the Apostles’ Creed right to the 3rd – the one about us? If you ever begin to believe that Christianity is about what you can and should do then you have to ask yourself: can you deny yourself enough to please God? I’m not asking if you can deny something about yourself: your pride, your greed, your lust, your fear, your addictions. I’m asking, can you deny you; the me, myself and I that dominates your thinking and speaking? Are you willing to be slapped, spit on and mocked? Are you willing to not only fail to be thanked for the good things you do but be blamed and shamed and punished for what others have done wrong? Are you willing to follow the will of God even if you know it will lead to shame, physical, mental and emotional suffering, and even death? I’ll be honest: I’m not. I complain when people don’t recognize the good things I do. I don’t want to take responsibility for the wrong-doing of others; I try to distance myself from it. I don’t stop daily to pick up crosses of suffering and self-denial – I avoid them at all costs. And the stark truth is that if my salvation depends on my sanctification – I’m doomed; I’m going to hell.

The truth is that I don’t need a life-coach to construct a better version of me; I need a God who humbled himself to become just like me – with the exception of my self-centered sinful nature. I don’t need tips on how to deny my sinful self; I need One who was willing to deny his perfect self. I don’t need self-help directions; I need a Savior. The good news is that that is exactly what Christianity is all about. The single most important thing God had in mind – going all the way back to the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:15) – wasn’t to tell humanity how they could make themselves right in his sight – but how he would send One who would. The fact is that none of us has ever denied ourselves enough to satisfy God. But Jesus did. Jesus was the Son of God, the rightful heir of all the riches and the glory of heaven – and yet he denied himself, he humbled himself to be born to a peasant woman in a barn here on earth. Jesus did what I’ve never done, what I will never be able to do: he took up the cross of our sin and guilt and shame and carried it to Calvary where evil men nailed him to it. Jesus followed his Father’s will through excruciating mental, emotional, physical and spiritual pain – all the way through hell and back. And when he had finished burying our sin and guilt and the tattered, filthy shreds of our failed lives of sanctification in the grave – he rose again from the dead to prove that his work was finished. This thing; this work that only Jesus could do was what was and is front and center in the mind of God – and it’s what he wants front and center in our minds as well.

I know that in preaching this text this way some may accuse me of being antinomian, that is, against the Law. That I’m suggesting that because Jesus died for our sins, we can live however we want. That’s not what I’m saying. Sanctification is important. Following God’s will in our lives is important. Good works are important. It is important that we take Jesus’ command to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him seriously. But this must always, always come after the 2nd Article truths of Jesus suffering, dying and rising. The things of men must always follow the things of God. This doesn’t come naturally to us. That’s why we don’t naturally appreciate sermons about what Jesus did for us as much as sermons about what we should do for Jesus. We don’t find them to be “relevant” or “practical.” Like Peter we tend to have our minds on the things, the works, the doings of man instead of the things of God. But the truth is that no matter how hard we try, our denying, taking up and following will never be good enough. The things of men can only lead to death. We need the things of God – specifically the Son of God, Jesus Christ – his suffering, his being rejected, his dying, his rising – for life.

Jesus wants us to leave here today with a proper understanding of the difference between the things of men and the things of God. The things of men, the things that we can do to please God and others – even our own denying, taking up of crosses and following Jesus – look so noble, so wonderful, so shiny. But what we really need is not noble, wonderful or shiny – what we really need is bloody and disgusting and helpless – because we are, in the end, bloody, disgusting and helpless. We need the things of God – the bloody, gruesome, and lonely life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. Lose yourself in Jesus’ self-denial; his bloody cross; his perfect following of his Father’s will and then you will have found true life, now and forever. Amen.

Mark 7:31-37 - Ephphatha: Be Opened! - September 5, 2021

In our text, the crowd did something remarkable, something almost unheard of in 21st century America: they all agreed on something. This Jesus guy, they all agreed, he has done everything well. That’s not exactly the consensus reaction to Jesus or his teachings today, is it? More often, Jesus receives blame when things go wrong. People use natural disasters and terror attacks to justify their unbelief “I would never believe in a God who would let this happen.” Jesus’ teachings are regarded as at best flawed and dated advice, at worst doctrines of hate and discrimination from hell itself. His miracles are seen as myths and fairy tales. Those who follow his Word are slandered as bigots, sexists, racists, and hypocrites. Now, none of that should surprise us, since Jesus tells us to expect a hostile reaction from the unbelieving world (John 15:18-25). A bigger problem arises when we are tempted to doubt God’s goodness. When we and our fellow believers seem to always be suffering while the unbelieving masses always seem to be thriving, when the unwavering truth of God’s Word conflicts with our deepest reason and emotions and opinions, when we pray and pray and nothing seems to change – do we ever wonder if Jesus is working for us or against us? If you’ve ever felt that way, you’re not alone, tempting us to doubt God’s love is one of the oldest tricks in Satan’s playbook. And since we face that temptation so often, we need constant reassurance that Jesus does indeed do everything well. Only God’s Word can accomplish that. Today it says: Ephphatha: Be Opened.

The first thing we should say about this miracle may seem so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said; but it does: this healing really happened. Jesus really opened the deaf man’s ears to hear and loosened his tongue to speak. Sometimes we are so eager to “spiritualize” Jesus’ miracles and apply them to ourselves (which we will do) that we fail to treat them as real, historical accounts. The historical account alone tells us several important things about our God. First, he is not a faraway, disinterested, alien god; He cares about us as individuals, body and soul. The one who numbers the hairs of our heads (Luke 12:7) is certainly aware of our aches, pains, and illnesses. And he knows better than we do that birth into this world brings us little more than a lifetime of futility, brokenness and finally death. He cares about us in our misery. Second, it tells us that Jesus is the Messiah, just as he said. He proves with this miracle that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy: Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unplugged. The crippled will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy. (Isaiah 35:5-6) Third, in line with Mark’s emphasis on the kingdom – that is, the active reign of God in this world – by this miracle Jesus brings God’s kingdom to earth; in that he restores or recreates what sin has broken: this poor man’s ears and tongue. Here is a bit of heaven on earth.

In spite of the world’s sinister accusations, witnessing to the truth that God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world but to save it (John 3:17) is the central message of Christianity. The church is not to be filled with self-righteous hypocrites spewing a message of homophobia or transphobia or sexism or hatred. But neither does Christ call his church to soften, distort or ignore his holy Law or to pursue an agenda of social, economic or political justice. Christ has commissioned his church to proclaim a simple, two-part message: there is no difference, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:23). Jesus doesn’t expect his church to heal the world, but to be like that deaf man’s friends; to bring those who are suffering from sin and its effects to the feet of the one who can offer true healing. This miracle summarizes the essence of the Gospel: God does care about poor, miserable sinners and he sent Jesus to heal and to save them.

But, as we all know, it’s not always easy to remain confident of that fact. Sometimes it seems like God has forgotten about us; that he doesn’t care about our pain and sorrow. Sadly, sometimes hearing about the miracles Jesus performed during his earthly ministry even makes us cynical, “If Jesus could heal that man – a man who may not have even been a believer – why doesn’t he heal me or my loved ones?” Don’t forget: even during the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, not everyone was healed. And even those he did heal, like this man, ended up dying from something else later. In the end, this miracle is not a sign that Jesus will heal every problem we will ever in this life – but a sign that when he returns he will heal us perfectly, completely, body and soul, when he returns in glory.  

And we can be sure of that because Jesus has already healed the underlying issue. Deafness and the inability to speak weren’t this man’s real problem. His real problem, the reason he couldn’t hear or speak, was the same problem we all have: he was infected with original sin. The visible side effects of that infection vary from person to person, but every physical weakness and illness we face is a result of that original sin. And only God himself can cure that deep-rooted infection.

That’s really why God’s Son came. He came to restore everything that sin had ruined. He came to destroy the devil’s work. (1 John 3:8) He came to open a path to life for a human race that was destined to die. He has done all things well the crowd declared – an understatement if there ever was one! Yes, from living a perfect, sinless life to dying an innocent, atoning death on a cross – he did it all perfectly. And he did it all for you. He lived for you, died for you, rose for you, ascended to his Father’s right hand to keep watch over you, and one day he will return to breathe eternal life into your lifeless corpse. You have this hope today – no matter which of sin’s symptoms you are facing right now – that is what the real, physical healing of the deaf, dumb man tells us today.

And grounded firmly on that historical truth, we can move on to the “spiritual;” the more practical application of this miracle. Jesus’ word Ephphatha, also opens spiritually deaf ears and dumb tongues – which are actually the more dangerous of sin’s side effects. By nature we don’t listen to God and we don’t praise him. If you’ve ever listened carefully to the words that are spoken before baptism, you’ve heard this: “All of us are born into this world with a deep need for baptism. From our parents we inherit a sinful nature; we are without true fear of God and true faith in God and are condemned to eternal death” (CW p. 12). By nature we ignore God’s voice and tune out his Word. By nature our tongues give glory to ourselves, not God. In other words, by nature we are in open rebellion against the 1st commandment. And the only treatment for that spiritual pandemic is the all-powerful Word.

The early Christian church had a unique way of recognizing this. In the early centuries, when a person was baptized, the pastor first would take his fingers and touch the person’s ears and lips and say: Ephphatha: be opened. The symbolism was to be the same that Jesus was conveying to the deaf and dumb man when his took him away from the crowd and put his fingers in his ears and spit and touched the man’s tongue, sighed and looked to heaven: in Baptism, God rolls up his sleeves and goes to work. Through water and the Word the Holy Spirit gets our ears and lips working again. He opens our ears to hear his calls to repentance and to believe that he has declared us not guilty for Jesus’ sake. He loosens our tongues to confess our darkest sins and to praise Jesus as our Lord and Savior. That real, spiritual healing is yours through water and the Word.

The obvious question is, then: given that the essential message of Christianity is one of healing and hope and reconciliation between God and sinners, why are Christianity in general and Christians in particular so often blamed for the world’s woes? (For example, last week the Supreme Court refused to file an injunction to prevent a fetal heartbeat bill from Texas from taking effect. This bill says that once a heartbeat is detected, abortion is prohibited. By the reaction of many on social media, you’d think this bill was aimed at taking life, not saving it.) Why are Christians and Christian morals so hated and reviled? Martin Luther, in a sermon on this text, explains: [They]…are a thousand times worse off than this poor deaf and dumb man, for they have ears that are really stopped up. They hear God’s Word and yet they really don’t hear it, nor do they want to…Our Lord Christ preached beautiful sermons concerning the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life, but they became mad and furious, not only refusing to listen but also reviling him on top of it. Today, yet, people who refuse to hear God’s Word are altogether deaf and dumb, worse off than this poor man here, because their tongues know only how to revile God and to speak very evilly of his Word, the most precious treasure. Those, however, who hear God’s Word gladly and to whom Christ says, as to the deaf man, “Ephphatha,” or “Be opened,” these are the ones helped against the devil” (Luther’s House Postils, 6:398).

If the symptoms of sin in our hearts, our homes, our neighborhoods, and our world grieve us, then the best thing we can do is not try to heal those wounds ourselves, we can’t – but to be like this man’s friends, bringing people who are hurting and suffering to the only One who can be true healing. Bringing our babies to be baptized, our children to sit at Jesus’ feet in Sunday school, our friends and neighbors to hear the healing message of the Gospel – because Jesus continues to heal our sin-sick world only and always through His Word. Luther explains: God has shown us no other way by which we can come into heaven than through his precious Word, the Holy Gospel. Whoever gladly and diligently hears and receives it, and who loves and delights in it, will be helped. That is the one miracle that daily still takes place in Christendom, that our ears, which the devil stopped up through sin, are again opened by the Word, so that we receive it” (6:398).

The list of problems sin has caused in our world and in our own lives is long – much longer than just being deaf or dumb. Satan loves to use sin’s side-effects to tempt us to believe that God doesn’t care, that Jesus can’t do anything, much less anything well. But the truth is that God reserves his best and most important work for those who are physically and spiritually broken. When you are hurting and in need of help, remember this miracle, hear Jesus’ word: Ephphatha, be opened. Listen to the good news that Jesus preaches through that deaf and dumb man: healing has come! Your Savior has taken care of the underlying cause by wiping away your sins away with his blood. When he returns he will give you fully restored bodies with everything – from head to toe – in perfect working order. This is the message our world needs to hear. This is our faith, this is our hope, this is our certainty: in a world broken by sin and unbelief, God has opened our ears to hear and believe and loosened our tongues to confess and sing: Jesus has done everything well! Amen.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 - The Benefit of a Proper Diagnosis - August 29, 2021

If you have to go to the doctor, which kind of doctor would you prefer? A kind, gentle doctor who is very sensitive to your feelings but almost seems like he’s just telling you what you want to hear – or a kind of rough, gruff doctor, who doesn’t have a very pleasant bedside manner but is fiercely determined to properly diagnose your trouble and provide the proper treatment? About a decade ago, there was a TV series called House M.D., which focused on the latter kind of doctor. A doctor who wasn’t interested in easy cases or easy diagnoses or easy solutions, who didn’t really care about his patients’ feelings – all he cared about was getting the right diagnosis and finding the right cure. In the words before us, Jesus is somewhat similar to Dr. House – he is focused on one thing: giving us the proper diagnosis of what is wrong with us so that he can give us the proper cure.

Dr. House often found himself at odds with the medical establishment, the hospital administration. He advocated the best practices for his patients even when the hospital administration wouldn’t. Jesus does the same thing here. He defends his disciples against the religious establishment – the Pharisees and…experts in the law who had come to spy on Jesus and his disciples. They didn’t have to wait long to find something to charge Jesus’ disciples with: they saw some of his disciples eating bread with unclean (that is, unwashed) hands. Mark explains, for Gentiles like us, why this mattered – beyond merely practicing good hygiene: according to the tradition of the elders…the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they scrub their hands with a fist.

Jesus responded with a scathing rebuke. He called the Jewish leaders hypocrites – that they were nothing but pretenders; that while they pretended to worship God and hold to his commandments, they had, in fact, abandoned God’s commandments and were holding instead to man-made traditions. Anyone who attempts to place the authority of God behind the words (or laws) of men is a hypocrite. The Catholic church does that when it forbids priests to marry. [1] Baptists do this when they say that God forbids consuming dancing or playing cards or consuming alcohol. [2] Revivalists do this when they say that you must “decide” to invite Jesus into your heart and have a highly emotional “conversion experience.” [3] Do Lutherans do this? Well, not in our official doctrine. But in practice it’s always possible for us to give the impression that we are teaching manmade rules as if they were God’s Law – for example, that you must marry a Lutheran or you must send your children to a Lutheran school or else you’re sinning. That may be good, sound advice, but God has not commanded those things.

Against this hypocrisy, Jesus launches a two-pronged defense. The first is a defense against the wrong diagnosis. What the Pharisees had been teaching the people is that their real problem, the real issue between them and their God was what they were doing (or not doing) with their hands before they ate a meal. That sin was merely an outward matter. It’s like if you were going into cardiac arrest and yet the doctor diagnoses you with a sprained ankle. The wrong diagnosis masks the far more serious underlying issue.

The second prong of Jesus’ defense deals with the Jewish leaders’ tendency to abandon God’s commandment and instead hold to human tradition. Here he’s dealing with the wrong prescription, the wrong medication, the wrong cure to fix the wrong diagnosis. The human traditions that the Jewish leaders forced on their followers were a relatively easy solution. Wash your hands, your cups, your pitchers, your kettles and dining couches and God will be pleased with you. This is the doctor who prescribes you an opiate to dull your pain – while leaving the underlying condition untreated. This is the church that tells you that if you just don’t eat meat on Fridays in Lent, don’t smoke, don’t dance, don’t drink alcohol, don’t visit dirty websites or put a little bit more in your offering envelope – that’ll cure all the problems that exist between you and God.

Jesus turns away from the Jewish leaders and comes to the bedside of his patients: his disciples and the crowd. “Everyone, listen to me and understand.” Now that’s the kind of doctor you want, right? For example, if your primary care doctor, the one you’ve seen every year for decades, sat you down and said, “Listen up, here’s the real story, the real science behind masks and vaccines,” you’d listen, wouldn’t you? Well, here is Jesus Christ, the Son of God in human flesh and blood pulling us aside to give us the proper diagnosis to our problems. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear indeed!

Listen to Jesus bluntly and forcefully contradict the Jewish leaders’ diagnosis: there is nothing outside of a man that can make him unclean by going into him. This goes contrary to everything our world – and the false religions in our world – say. The world says that the reason you die is because of what you eat or drink or breath; that you’re a miserable spouse because you had miserable parents; that you’re self-centered because you live in a narcissistic society; that you’re greedy because of capitalism; that you’re filled with lust because of the filth you see on TV and the internet; that you have a short temper because of all the really bad drivers out there. Just like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, the world and the world’s religions teach that whatever sin you’re guilty of is not really you’re fault – it’s caused by someone or something or some situation outside of you.

Jesus presents the exact opposite diagnosis: the things that come out of a man are what make him unclean. Outward factors, outward situations don’t make you evil; they merely bring out the evil that’s already festering inside of you. It’s not what goes into your body that makes you guilty before God but what comes out of you. And here’s the scary part; here’s what Dr. Jesus sees on the x-ray of our hearts: evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. Do those things sound like they can be cured by washing your hands? That’d be just as dumb as listening to a doctor who prescribes aspirin for brain cancer. The cure the Pharisees and experts in the law were prescribing was completely inadequate.

In the TV show, Dr. House always has the answer, the right treatment for the real disease. You may have noticed that Jesus does not give us an answer here. Now, if this were an episode of House M.D. – or, if you happened to be sitting in any number of other churches – then this is the point where the sermon would veer far away from the text and seek to put words in Jesus’ mouth, to provide a clever second opinion for Jesus’ apparent lack of solutions. These are the churches in which the good news, the gospel consists of directing you to follow certain steps and practices and behaviors, that if you just buy this book or attend this seminar or strive for this mindset then you can conquer all the wicked things that live in your heart. You recognize what those strategies, those programs, those prescriptions really are, don’t you? They’re not gospel – they’re just more law. Manmade laws. Inadequate solutions.

Here's where the genuine Gospel veers away from the House M.D. TV show. In the show, House always has the answer. In our text, Jesus doesn’t have the answer…he is the answer. Jesus is the answer, the only answer, to the evil that streams out of our hearts 24/7. Who Jesus is and what Jesus did is the only cure for the terminal disease of original sin that you’ve been infected with ever since conception (Psalm 51:5).

Jesus is the real solution because unlike you and me, Jesus wasn’t born with original sin. He wasn’t born with the awful infection of wicked and evil and filthy inclinations in his heart. He wasn’t born of two sinful human beings, he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. And yet, Jesus was born under the Law – that is, he was obligated to obey the same Law of God that you and I are (Galatians 4:4-5). But he wasn’t born, he wasn’t obligated to keep man-made laws – and that was one of the main reasons that Jesus always seemed to be fighting with the Pharisees and experts in the law. That’s really what this whole hand-washing controversy was about: Jesus didn’t care about their made-up laws and broke them regularly because he knew that two things happen when you try to put your own fabricated laws into God’s mouth: 1) you create laws that make people feel guilty when they shouldn’t and; 2) you cover up real sin so that those who should feel guilty don’t. (To use a very contemporary example: the so-called Critical Race Theory – a philosophy which is being propagated in public schools from pre-K through the university level – is an attempt to make some people feel guilty for the sins (and they are sins) of racism and discrimination, even if they’re not actually guilty. At the same time, this same theory seeks to give false comfort to the supposedly “oppressed” classes for their laziness or covetousness or violence or rage (because, after all, we’ve got to even the score).

And yet, while Jesus didn’t care about man-made laws, he cared deeply about the God’s Law. The stream of sewage that flows out of our hearts never flowed out of Jesus’ heart. He was never guilty of evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance or foolishness. Jesus’ heart, hands, mind and tongue were perfectly pure, perfectly clean – he didn’t need cleansing for his heart, much less his hands. But even that is not yet the Gospel. Maybe your doctor is perfectly healthy, but that doesn’t do you much good, does it? On the TV show, Dr. House saved lots of people with the proper diagnosis and the proper treatment – but he never saved anyone by suffering, bleeding or dying. He never saved anyone by bearing their sicknesses, sorrows, sins and punishments. He never saved anyone by having the cup of God’s wrath handed to him and drinking it. Dr. House not only never went to a cross for anyone; he never experienced death or the horrors of hell for them, either. But Jesus did. Jesus did all of those things for you, for me, for everyone you know and everyone you don’t. The only cure for our sin-sick hearts is the blood of Jesus which cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).

I remember one episode of House M.D. where he’s on a plane and someone gets sick and over the loudspeaker the pilot asks, “Is there a doctor onboard?” – a modern take on: “Is there a doctor in the house?” The sick person was relieved when Dr. House stepped forward to help. Well, we’re not on a plane and I don’t see anyone throwing up on themselves – but we’ll close by asking two related questions: First, are there any sinners in the house? Is there anyone here who can’t do anything to get rid of their sin and guilt? Is there anyone who has tried to stem the flow of evil from their heart but feel like they’re trying to plug a leak in a dam with a finger? Is there anyone who has tried their best and yet still feel guilty before God? Is there anyone who has tried following all the manmade rules in the world and yet can’t seem to get themselves clean? If that describes you, then you need to hear the answer to our last question:

“What kind of doctor do we find when we come to this house?” We don’t merely need an advisor, a life-coach, or even a role model. We need someone who can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves; we need a Savior. Do we have that here? The Absolution says we do. The hymns we sing say we do. The Scripture readings say we do. The sermon (I hope) says we do. The baptismal font and this altar from which Jesus gives himself to us says we do. The means of grace don’t offer you a “to-do” list of laws, manmade or otherwise. They offer you Jesus, who lived a perfect life for you and died an atoning death for you to reconcile you to God (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). The means of grace don’t just address your dirty hands, dirty thoughts, or dirty words; they offer targeted treatment for the underlying source of all of our problems: our sinful hearts.

Jesus is blunt in our text so I’ll close by being blunt with you: if you think your real problems are outside of you, then we’ve got nothing to offer you. Then you need to find someone who will tell you that the solution to your problems is in you. But, if you hear and believe Jesus’ diagnosis, that the real problem isn’t out there but in here, in your heart, then we don’t just have suggestions or advice, we have the solution because we have Jesus. He’s the doctor who not only makes the proper diagnosis but is the only real solution. Amen.

[1] https://catholicstraightanswers.com/why-does-the-church-mandate-that-priests-be-celibate/

[2] https://christianityfaq.com/baptists-believe-drinking-alcohol/

[3] https://www.britannica.com/topic/revivalism-Christianity

John 6:51-58 - You Are What You Eat - August 22, 2021

“You are what you eat” is an axiom, that, for obvious reasons, is usually applied to the food you consume. For example, if you eat cream puffs all day, you’re probably going to end up looking like a cream puff. But the same principle holds true in other areas of life, too. In school, if you don’t do your homework, you’re going to fail; for physical fitness – if you sit on your butt all day, eventually, it’s eventually going to be difficult to get off your butt; even in regard to your worldview and opinions, you are a stew of whatever TV, radio or other media you consume (whether you realize it or not). But according to Jesus today, the most important realm in which “you are what you eat” holds true is the spiritual, eternal realm – the realm of what you really believe and trust.

In our world, there are countless “foods” that eventually and inevitably end in death. Our society, just like every other society throughout history, is determined to discover a “food” that will banish death, a proverbial “fountain of youth.” This universally desired “food” can take many different forms. Many turn to diet and exercise to prolong their lives and delay death. Billions of dollars are spent each year on cosmetics, injections, and plastic surgeries which are meant to give the appearance that you’re not the slave to time and gravity and decay that you are. On a global level there are many who believe that if we can just stop burning so many fossil fuels and become “greener” we can not only prolong our own lives, but that we can even prolong the life of our planet. And, last but certainly not least, (and I know you’re probably tired of hearing me talk about this – but how can I ignore the single most important issue in our and our children’s everyday lives today?) – there are the “foods” of masks and vaccines that millions believe can and will preserve their lives and the lives of the people around them.

I’m not saying that any of these things are evil, in and of themselves. Some of them are very good. And yet, where does consuming, believing, trusting these “foods” eventually end? Every year people who have truly treated their bodies as “temples” with strict diet and exercise routines die. You can smooth out your wrinkles with creams and fight off gravity with plastic surgery, but you can’t fool time. Does anyone really think that turning off the A/C or driving an electric car will stop hurricanes and forest fires and tornados from taking lives and destroying property? And masks and vaccines may serve to minimize the risk of Covid-19 for some, but as a result of the policies put in place to defeat this single disease, how many people have died of drug overdoses? Are in the process of dying from obesity or alcohol abuse? How many have or are contemplating suicide caused by isolation and depression? How many have put off or not been admitted to see their doctor for an annual checkup or cancer screening? Think what you want about masks and vaccines and social distancing – it’s undeniable that these tools do absolutely nothing to prevent deaths caused by heart disease, cancer, depression or addiction. These “foods” that so many people trust for life – invariably end in death.

And yet, as big an issue as those false “foods” are, they aren’t the biggest issue. They aren’t the real issue that Jesus was addressing with that crowd in Capernaum, either. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus got to the heart of the “food” controversy. Many in the crowd Jesus had fed with just 5 loaves and 2 fish chased him across the Sea of Galilee – hoping to score another free lunch. But when they arrived, Jesus issued a warning: do not continue to work for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life (John 6:27). And what was their response? What should we do to carry out the works of God? (John 6:28). They got the point. They understood that the point of life here and now is not the here and now but the hereafter. They understood that how long you live on this planet is less important than where you spend eternity. But they made one huge, soul-destroying mistake: they believed that while Jesus may have proven his ability to provide food for their stomachs, that it was up to them to secure the “food” that would win them eternal life. This is the most toxic and deadly type of “food” humanity has ever cooked up: the idea that we can do something to escape the eternal death we deserve and earn eternal life.

This is really what Jesus is talking about using “food” terms when he says: Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. Whether it’s the “food” of following a strict diet and exercise regimen, your own ideas of morality and spirituality, or even trying your best to follow the 10 Commandments, you don’t have life in yourself. Trying your best to obey the Law – or any law – brings only death (2 Corinthians 3:6) because we cannot keep God’s Law perfectly. (And if you doubt that, just consider how many diets and exercise routines you’ve tried and failed; how many times you failed to recycle because it wasn’t convenient; how many times you’ve touched or adjusted or removed your mask – thereby rendering it useless. Better yet, consider how many times you’ve failed to trust in God above all things; to gladly and faithfully hear and read his Word; to honor those in authority; to uphold the sanctity of marriage in your own life or boldly confess that marriage is only between one man and one woman. Consider how many times you’ve stolen time from your employer; harmed someone’s reputation with your tongue; or coveted the spouse or life or children or car or home of someone you know.) This is what ties all of the topics we’ve touched on: whether it’s about diets or greenhouse gasses or masks or obedience to any and every law – we don’t have life in us. From conception, we have only sin and death in us (Psalm 51:5; Ephesians 2:1). That’s why anything you may eat or inject into your body or put on your face or do (or don’t do) with those hands and tongue and heart of yours – can only lead to death. And, just like in Jesus’ day, there is an abundance of those foods in our world – and, sadly, many people are eating them to their inevitable and eternal death.

Given Jesus’ message, the reaction of his disciples is hardly surprising, is it? This is a hard teaching! Who can listen to it? (John 6:60) This is a hard teaching. I don’t want to hear – any more than you do – that no matter what I do, think or say (that is, whatever “food” I consume with the goal of life) – it’s all just leading to my death now and eternally. Who would want to hear that? Well, whether we want to hear it or not, we need to hear it. We need to hear that even when we think that – like that crowd in the synagogue in Capernaum – we’re full of bread and fish or vaccines and good works – we’re really starving. Why? So that we would crave and seek the one food that leads to life.

What is that food? I am the living bread which came down from heaven. The bread of this world can and does sustain life. Without a doubt, certain diets, exercise routines, masks and vaccines, etc. can and do prolong life – at least from a human perspective. But there is only one living bread. Living bread doesn’t just sustain life, it gives life. I could take a truckload of bread down to the cemetery just down the street – and it wouldn’t do a thing for those rotting corpses. But Jesus says that if anyone eats this bread, he will live forever – the food he offers gives life to the dead.

And here Jesus is claiming in absolutely exclusive terms that he alone is this food; that only by eating him will anyone have eternal life. That’s quite a claim, isn’t it? Where’s the evidence, the clinical studies, the “science” that Jesus is the bread of immortality? Right here: the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. What does this mean? At the risk of oversimplifying it, I think it means the 2nd article of the Apostles’ Creed. It means that Jesus had life – life without end – coursing through his veins as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary; that he had eternal life in him as he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. And he proved this by rising to life three days later under his own power.  

Why did the Son of God do those things? For the life of the world. Jesus gave his life in place of the life of the world. Jesus stood in for you under God’s Judgment and received every ounce of God’s wrath that you and I deserved. The food of fear, guilt, suffering and judgment that we deserved – Jesus ate and drank (Luke 22:42). And he did it for you. He, the living bread, took on death so that he could give you life. He took your sins on himself so that you could stand before God sinless. He became mortal so that you might receive immortality. And this is his promise: if anyone eats this bread, he will live forever.

The is real life. This isn’t like pretending that 60 is the new 40. This is living like you’re 18 (or pick your favorite age) forever. This isn’t only being as old as you feel; this is being forever young. This isn’t living in defiance of time; this is being timeless. This is not working 5 days a week to sweat off the pounds or denying yourself an extra helping of dessert – this is reclining and feasting at a buffet that preserves you forever. This is not taking extraordinary steps to avoid one disease – only to succumb, eventually, to something else – this is the vaccine for all diseases, all sources of death. This is not another one of the many “foods” in this world that inevitably leads to death; this is the one “food” that leads to life.

That sounds like a good meal, doesn’t it? How do you get it? Well, according to Jesus, just like you get any other type of food – you eat it. I know what you’re thinking – “Jesus must be talking about the Lord’s Supper here.” Nope, he’s not. And if I had another 20 minutes, I’d explain to you why Lutherans have always confessed that Jesus can’t be referring to the Lord’s Supper, but because I don’t, I’ve put a brief explanation on the backside of the bulletin for you to review. The single most important evidence is that here Jesus says that this “eating” is absolutely essential for salvation (John 6:53). Receiving Holy Communion is not essential for salvation – and, in fact, those who receive Communion in an unworthy many eat and drink judgement on themselves (1 Corinthians 11:27-32).

John 6 is not about the institution of the Lord’s Supper. That won’t happen for about another year on Maundy Thursday. But John 6 is indeed about the Jesus’ flesh and blood. In fact, Jesus goes out of his way to make it clear that salvation, life and immortality are intimately connected to “eating” his flesh and blood. The interesting thing is that the Greek word he uses for “eat” in verse isn’t the word you would use for politely eating a meal. It’s the Greek word for “feed or gnaw on.” To eat audibly. It was typically used to describe the sound animals make when they’re feeding. You get the point, don’t you? This isn’t just having a head knowledge of the facts, this is staking your entire life on these facts. It’s being more intent on daily and weekly feeding on Jesus in his Word than anything else in the world – even your diet, exercise, and the precautions you take to preserve your life here.

This is the crux of the issue. This was what the Jews were objecting to. They refused to accept that the flesh and blood Jesus that stood before them could really be the Son of God and the Savior of the world. And yet, how does Jesus respond to their grumbling and arguing? He doesn’t do another miracle, he doesn’t try to explain it to them, he doesn’t appeal to their reason. He simply makes promises; he simply preaches the Gospel. Listen again to the promises Jesus makes to those – to you – who eat his body and drink his blood in faith: The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day. For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink…the one who eats this bread will live forever. I challenge you to find any diet, any exercise routine, cosmetic lotion, any vaccine that guarantees these results. Feast on these promises, chew on them, digest them – and you will truly live, now and forever.

So what are you eating? There are all kinds of food out there begging for us to eat them – to place our hope for life in them. They may carry promises of life, but end only in death. As Jesus told the Jews about the “food” they were looking for: in the wilderness your fathers had unlimited manna, but they ate and died. In stunning contrast, Jesus promises that the one who eats this bread will live forever. Pay attention to what you’re eating, because now and eternally, you are what you eat. Amen.

John 6:1-15 - Why Does God Cause Problems? - August 1, 2021

Of the many reasons that the unbelieving world scoffs at Christianity, one of the most common is the one proposed in our sermon theme this morning. It can sound like this: “So you Christians believe and confess that God is all-loving and all-powerful and so he can help you in any and every need – explain this to me: why doesn’t he? Why doesn’t he solve your every problem and take care of your every need? Either he doesn’t care or he’s not all-powerful!” Maybe you’ve heard that criticism, maybe you’ve thought it yourself. This well-known story gives opportunity for us to confront the question: Why does God cause problems in our lives?

Now, I understand that the question itself might appear to be offensive or even blasphemous to some. “What? God sends problems into our lives? I thought that the source of all evil in the world is the devil, the world and our sinful flesh – not God.” Well, while I could cite a number of passages which prove that God does indeed sometimes send trouble into the lives of his children – (40 years wandering in the wilderness or the exile, for example), but I don’t have to do that today. Our text proves the point. Who caused the problem of hunger on that hillside? Jesus did. Jesus could have shooed the people away immediately – given that he had intended to give his disciples a little vacation to rest after their first missionary journey (Mark 6:7-13; 30-33). Jesus could have listened to the apostles when they came to him and said, basically, “Alright Jesus, time to wrap it up, time to send the people away so that they can find something to eat” (Luke 9:12). But he didn’t do that. He continued preaching until dusk. I suppose he could have let his disciples know his plan for solving the problem before it even emerged – as he knew he would. But no. Jesus didn’t only create the problem – he then delegated it to Philip, asking where can we buy bread for these people to eat?

So what did Philip do? The obvious thing: he used his head. He turned to math. He calculated that two hundred denarii (perhaps the amount in the disciples’ treasury?) worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to have just a little. While he’s obviously right that 200 days’ wages wouldn’t feed a crowd that likely numbered closer to 20,000 – if you include women and children – that’s not very helpful, is it? It’s like when the spouse who pays the bills goes to the other and says, “Honey, we don’t have enough in checking to pay all of these.” Accurate – but not helpful. Math isn’t the solution to every problem. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, apparently went off exploring for a solution. I’m not sure what he was expecting to find. A fleet of food-trucks? A Costco? All he found was a boy… [with] five barley loaves and two fish. The disciples come up empty-handed. They have no solution to this problem Jesus caused.

So what’s the point? The point is that not every problem you face in life is there for you to solve. Sometimes God doesn’t give you problems so that you can solve them but in order to test you. This is nothing new. Before God created a huge problem for Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac, Genesis 22 explicitly says that this was God testing Abraham (Genesis 22:1). After God had created numerous problems for the children of Israel by forcing them to wander in the wilderness for forty years, Moses told them remember the whole journey on which the LORD your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you and test you, in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments (Deuteronomy 8:2). The question is: who is this testing for? Well, it can’t be for God’s benefit, right? He already knows what’s in our hearts, better than we do (Jeremiah 17:10). So who needs the testing that problems provide? We do. We’re the ones who really don’t know what lies in our hearts. Jeremiah says that the heart is more deceitful than anything. It is beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9) We can’t know what’s in our own hearts unless and until God holds up a mirror to us. In other words, God sometimes sends problems into our lives, not to see if we can solve them – but to force us to do a little self-examination.

And what do you see when you’re forced to examine yourself under the pressure of life’s problems. Well, it’s not a pretty picture, is it? I see that I break the 1st commandment daily, because I often do exactly what Philip and Andrew did. I look right past Jesus. I don’t see him as the solution to whatever momentary problem I’m facing. And that’s really sad, isn’t it? I come here and sing and confess that Jesus is the solution, the only solution, to eternal problems, but I don’t think that he’s capable of solving momentary, earthly problems. “Yes, Jesus, you may have conquered sin, death and the devil once and for all – but what do you know about viruses, 401k’s and dysfunctional families? Jesus, you may have been able to create the universe with a word and feed a multitude with a boy’s lunch – but I think my marriage and my children and my career are beyond your control.” It’s pretty ugly, isn’t it? To look in the mirror and come to the realization that all this time you’ve been singing: “I’ve got the whole world in my hands.” Here’s the thing: you don’t come to that understanding of yourself until God sends a problem into your life that those hands of yours can’t solve.

Not every problem is there for you to solve – and John tells us that Jesus didn’t create this problem for Philip to solve: Jesus was saying this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. And right there we have another answer to why does God send problems into our lives, don’t we? There are times in life when we think that we’re caught between a rock and a hard place – with nowhere to go, no one to turn to, no answers in sight. But God is never in that position. He always has a solution – and often that solution is something we never would have imagined.

In other words, God sometimes sends problems into our lives to help us understand that he doesn’t live in the same box we do; he isn’t limited like we are. Andrew and Philip were stuck in that box. Their experience and logic told them that neither 200 days’ wages nor five loaves of bread and two fish were enough to feed the crowd. They couldn’t escape their own limitations – and so they concluded that there was no possible solution. But they’d forgotten something, hadn’t they? Hadn’t they forgotten what God had said in Isaiah 55? Certainly my plans are not your plans, and your ways are not my ways, declared the LORD. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my plans are higher than your plans (Isaiah 55:8-9)

One reason we can’t escape the box of what math and logic and science and effort declare possible is that we don’t see that God does impossible miracles on a daily basis. Take bread, for example. Every day he makes it possible for tiny little seeds to be planted into dirt, multiplied into millions of more seeds, harvested, processed, baked, and delivered to your table for lunch. But because God works so reliably and regularly through the observable “science” we don’t regard our daily bread as the miracle it is; we don’t see our eternal God at work in our everyday world and everyday lives. We only come to this realization when there’s a problem with the “science.” And so, like in our text, God often causes the problem.  

Again, there’s nothing new here. God led the Israelites into the wilderness where there was no source of food according to the “science.” But when they turned to him for the solution and he provided it, they could see their food for the miracle it was. In the same way, when Philip and Andrew had run out of options and thrown their hands in the air – Jesus steps in and overturns the “science” with a miracle. He came up with a solution they never would have imagined or asked for to show them that God isn’t restricted to working in the ways we can dream up, think up or imagine.

So what does that mean for us? It means that when some problem has us so stumped that we actually turn to God in prayer for help, that we need to repent of, to stop trying to tell him how he should solve the problem. All of the solutions that we can come up with are limited by what we can see, do and think. This miracle proves that God is not limited by what we think is possible. It also proves that he often works in ways that are the exact opposite of our thinking. Andrew concluded that five loaves and two fish weren’t enough. Jesus proved that they were. And the counterintuitive ways of God are certainly not limited to feeding a crowd. God kills our sinful nature with the Law in order to make us alive with the Gospel. He threatens us with hell so that we may cling to his promise of heaven. His strength shines brightest when we are weakest (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). His foolishness is wiser than all the experts in the world combined (1 Corinthians 1:25). And when he provides unimaginable solutions to our unsolvable problems, he helps us better understand his ways.  

So, God sends problems into our lives so that we would understand ourselves, our weakness, our arrogance; he sends them so that we would better understand that his ways are far beyond our understanding; and, finally, he sends problems so that we would better understand who Jesus is and what he came to do.

With full bellies, the crowd had decided who Jesus should be and what he should do. They decided that he should be their king. Note that they didn’t come to this conclusion after they had heard Jesus’ preaching but only after they had eaten as much as they wanted. He had fed their souls for eternity, but all they were really interested in was satisfying their hunger for a few hours. Here was a guy who would write them unlimited stimulus checks; here was the welfare king they’d been waiting for! Sadly, isn’t that the kind of Jesus we often look and long for? Every single week – and every single day, if you take the time to meditate on the Word of God – Jesus comes to you to forgive your sins, to give you eternal salvation, to free you from sin, death and the devil – he will bring you these heavenly gifts from sunup to sundown. And yet, how often do we actually pray for those eternal gifts? How often don’t we desire a “welfare King” who will solve all our earthly problems? A Jesus who can and will fix the problem I’m facing today, right now. If he just did that, then he’d really be my king.

Well, that’s not who Jesus was then and that’s not who Jesus is now. Jesus didn’t descend from heaven into the womb of the virgin Mary to be nailed to a cross just to fill our bellies, heal our bodies and fix our finances. Jesus didn’t come simply to take care of our earthly problems. He came to redeem us from our eternal problems of sin, death and the devil. And that redemption couldn’t be accomplished by feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and giving a handout to the poor. That redemption demanded that Jesus trust his Father’s plan perfectly, never questioning his absolute love and power and then die the damned death we deserved. Jesus didn’t come to be your earthly king, to solve your temporary problems – but to be your eternal king, to solve your permanent problems by his life, death and resurrection. Jesus doesn’t just want to keep you alive today – he wants you to live forever.

And this becomes very clear in the things he left us; the miracles he still does on a regular basis today. He didn’t leave us bread to fill our bellies but the Bread of Life to fill our souls. He didn’t leave us water to quench our thirst but the water of Baptism to wash away our guilt. He didn’t leave us a book of life-hacks or bits of advice to make life easier – he gave us the words of absolution which solve the problem of sin forever. These are the miracles Jesus continues to perform on a daily and weekly basis. So what’s the problem? The problem is that these means of grace don’t look like miracles. When I baptized Liam he didn’t glow with Jesus’ righteousness – but we know he has it (Galatians 3:27). When we receive Communion we don’t see Jesus coming to us in flesh and blood with a meal straight from the wedding banquet in heaven – although with the saints and angels we sing about it! When we hear the absolution we don’t see our record of sin being wiped clean – but we have Jesus’ word on it (John 20:22-23). Whether it’s the feeding of the 5000, baptism, communion or absolution – these miracles remind us that while Jesus is fully capable of providing for our every earthly need – and he does, on a daily basis – that Jesus didn’t come to be our “bread king” but our Savior.

If you have problems in your life there are three things you can be sure of: God sent them to help you better understand yourself, himself and your Savior. And when that’s where your problems lead you, that’s really no problem at all, is it? Amen.

Mark 6:7-13 - Who Is Mark Writing To? - July 25, 2021

One of the many things pastors do during their time at our Seminary is learn great big complicated words that most of their members will find to be incredibly dull and boring. Well, today, I’m going to take the risk of using one of those great big complicated words. The word is hermeneutics – which is just a fancy term for the practice of interpreting the Bible. There are many levels of Biblical interpretation; letter by letter, word by word, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, book by book. A specific, and very important, principle of Biblical interpretation is to try to understand who the authors were originally writing to and what their purpose was in writing to them.

If you haven’t fallen asleep yet, you might be wondering where I’m going with this introduction. I’m guessing that most of you have heard a sermon preached on this text before. I’m also guessing that if you have, you were told to think of yourselves as the apostles, as if you’re the ones who have been called and commissioned and sent out into the world to preach the Gospel. Think about that for a minute. Who is Mark writing to? Is he writing to the apostles? No, they were there; they heard Jesus’ words; they went out and followed Jesus’ directions. Why would they need to read this account? Mark is not writing to those Jesus’ sent but to those to whom they are sent. Another way to put it is that Mark didn’t include this account to motivate his readers to go out and do evangelism, but so that they would have a proper understanding of the public ministry.

In the verse right before our text, Mark tells us that after he was rejected by his hometown neighbors, [Jesus] went around the villages teaching (Mark 6:6). But that wasn’t enough for Jesus. He wasn’t satisfied with only reaching the relatively limited number of people he could reach on his own – he wanted the proclamation of the gospel to be multiplied exponentially. So he called the Twelve and began to send them out two by two. And Mark summarizes the message they carried throughout Israel with a single word: repent. “Repent” means to change your mind or to turn around. While there is certainly a negative side to repentance – that you are to turn away from your sins – there’s a positive aspect to it as well. If you’re turning away from something wrong it means you’re, necessarily, turning toward something that is right. In other words, even as faithful preachers use the Law to tell you to repent, to turn away from your sins; your works, your efforts, your wisdom, your righteousness – they must follow that up by preaching the Gospel; telling you to turn to and rely on Jesus’ sinlessness, Jesus’ works, Jesus’ efforts, Jesus’ wisdom and Jesus’ righteousness. Jesus so desperately wants people to be turned away from the road that leads to hell and instead turned onto the road that leads to heaven that he sends out men to proclaim the only message that can do that: repent.

However, if you’re supposed to read yourself into this text; if you are to picture yourself as the apostles; if this text is telling you that you’re supposed to go out like them and preach the Gospel – then what in the world are the apostles and pastors supposed to do? If your job is to preach, then what is their job? Doesn’t it turn them into nothing more than organizers, motivators and coaches? Here’s another hermeneutical principal: Scripture interprets Scripture. What did Jesus command Peter to do in John 21 – coach the sheep or feed them (John 21:15-17)? Before Jesus ascended into heaven in Luke 24, did he command his disciples to go to all nations and organize outreach seminars and motivational Ted-Talks or to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:47)? In the Great Commission, did Jesus send his disciples out to recruit and motivate or to gather disciples by baptizing and teaching them (Matthew 28:19-20)? I know it’s very popular today to say that every Christian should be a missionary – and there are certainly places in Scripture that teach that very thing – but that’s not what Mark is teaching here. Here, he’s teaching about the public ministry – making it clear that preaching and teaching is the special responsibility of his public ministers.

When you understand that Mark is not writing to the apostles but to you, that puts the rest of the text in a different light, too. When Mark records that Jesus told his apostles to take nothing for their journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in their money belts. They were to put on sandals but not to wear two coats – he’s telling you that he expects you to take care of the pastors he sends your way. That is your ministry. Again, the wider context of Scripture supports this interpretation. Paul says in Galatians: let the one who is taught the word share all good things with his teacher (Galatians 6:6).

I’m not saying these things to shake you down or make you feel guilty – you are doing a great job taking care of your called worker. I’m saying these things because there are flocks of sheep – countless Christians and Christian congregations – who go around hanging their heads because they’ve been taught that they’re supposed to go out and preach the Gospel like the apostles – but they don’t and can’t do it – because they, like you, have marriages and children and jobs to take care of. They leave church forever guilty because they’re no good at evangelism. But Mark didn’t write this to the apostles but to those who would hear the apostles. You are doing your part of the Gospel ministry when you support your pastor – not just with your financial support, but with your talents, your gifts, your skills, your prayers and your encouragement. By supporting your pastor in these ways you are supporting the spread of the Gospel.

Of course, there’s another side to this coin. If you do not welcome a preacher of the Gospel – particularly, Jesus says, if you do not listen to them – then that rejection will stand as a witness against you on the Day of Judgment. If I or any of the pastors I know have any complaint, it’s not that you aren’t providing for our material, physical needs – it’s that you aren’t listening to me. Stick with me here. You are not listening to me when you don’t take comfort in your baptism. If you leave here with a guilty conscience, you’re not listening to me when I tell you that Peter says that your baptism is the guarantee of a good conscience before God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:21). If you leave here still weighed down with sin or feeling that you don’t have the strength to say “no” to your pet sins, then you haven’t listened to the absolution in which God removes your sins as far from you as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12; John 20:22-23). If you leave here thinking that God is distant and detached and that he couldn’t possibly care about little old you, then you’re not listening to the Words of Institution. You’re not hearing that in this Sacrament Jesus himself comes here and gives himself to you. He couldn’t care more.

He cares so much that when he sends his preachers to you, they leave evidence behind as a testimony. Jesus told his apostles: any place that will not receive you or listen to you, as you leave there, shake off the dust that is under your feet as a testimony against them. Jesus is “following the science” here, long before anyone had coined the term “following the science.” Today, anyone who has watched CSI knows that a crime can be solved by the smallest amount of forensic evidence: a single fiber, a single hair, a partial fingerprint. This evidence can be – and is – used in courts of law to prove that a certain person was in a certain place at a certain time. Jesus is saying that his Gospel preachers leave evidence of where they’ve been. He’s saying that those who do not listen to them will have no excuse on Judgment Day. They will not be able to say, “We’ve never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel” – the dust that the apostles shook off their feet will serve as a witness against them. We don’t have a whole lot of dust in here – what does this mean for us? What’s the dust today? It’s the sermons preached here, the Bible classes taught, the Sacraments administered. Of course, someone may say “Well, I never came; I didn’t feel a need to hear or study the Gospel; I had better things to do – golfing or fishing or camping or walking the dog were more important.” But doesn’t that just prove the point? Jesus’ messenger was there! The Gospel was proclaimed. Salvation was freely offered. But they didn’t want anything to do with it.

Part of the reason we fail to listen is that we fail to recognize the incredible authority Jesus has given to his messengers. Mark says that Jesus gave them authority over the unclean spirits. I know, you’re thinking that you’ve never witnessed a single exorcism. I’m here to tell you that you have – in fact, I’m here to tell you that every time you’ve come here you’ve been personally exorcised from unclean spirits. One of Satan’s lies is that his demons are only present in people who are bodily possessed, who behave like sociopaths, who have superhuman strength or speak in foreign languages. Satan’s demons are actually present in the things we all deal with; things like guilt, lust, despair, anxiety, fear, greed, depression, envy and addiction. Jesus wants you to know that he has authorized his messengers to drive out these demonic spirits. Baptism is the clearest form of exorcism Jesus has authorized his pastors to use. In Baptism God executes a covert special forces mission in which he lands in Satan’s kingdom and abducts one of Satan’s slaves and brings them into the freedom of his kingdom. In baptism, God clothes sinners with Christ (Galatians 3:27) – and, as we’ve seen throughout Mark’s Gospel – where Christ is, the demons must flee (Mark 1:24; 5:7).

In a more general and regular way, Jesus is also present wherever and whenever the Gospel is proclaimed – and where the Gospel is proclaimed, the demons must flee. They can’t stand to hear that the Seed of the woman has succeeded in crushing their master’s skull (Genesis 3:15). They can’t handle hearing that the Son of God appeared and accomplished his goal of: destroy[ing] the works of the Devil (1 John 3:8). When they hear the Gospel they can’t help but be reminded that Jesus has defeated them; that their power is broken; and that all they have to look forward to is weeping and gnashing their teeth forever in hell. And they can’t stand to be reminded of this. So bring your demons here – however they manifest themselves in your life – to be driven out by the Gospel.

There’s one more thing that Jesus’ messengers do: they anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. Yes, you heard that right, Jesus authorized his ministers to provide physical healing. Now understand this properly – Mark is not saying that pastors today have the ability to cure paralysis or blindness or even an ingrown toenail. The apostles of Jesus’ day did what we do today. They used the medicine of the day, olive oil, and they healed. There is no promise in the Bible that the Church will always be given the gift of healing. Today, you don’t come here for oil or healing – you go to the doctor for medicine and surgery and therapy. But you also receive physical healing from pastors, too. The ancient Church called Holy Communion the medicine of immorality – in that when all of the medicines and surgeries your doctor prescribes inevitably fail and your life comes to an end – this medicine guarantees that your body will rise to eternal life.

But there’s more. Absolution brings physical healing. You can read in the psalms how many of the authors described how they were literally, physically sick with guilt. As I think many of us would attest to, guilt does affect the body. David says when I kept silent, my bones wasted away as I groaned all day long (Psalm 32:3). Absolution cures this by sending your sins away for Jesus’ sake. This is the power and authority that Jesus gives to his messengers, his pastors to use for you, your good now and your salvation eternally. Jesus wants so badly for you to be relieved, to be at peace, to find rest in his atoning sacrifice that he sends men to proclaim and deliver forgiveness to you regularly – both publicly and privately.

Now, while you may have heard a sermon on this text before, I’m guessing you’ve never it preached this way. That’s because we love to make the Bible about us. It’s not. The Bible is about Jesus and how desperately he wants sinners to repent and be saved. Jesus is so desperate for you to be saved that he sends you pastors to preach the saving Gospel and administer his powerful Sacraments for your eternal good. Don’t leave here today guilty that you haven’t preached like Peter or Paul; leave here today relieved – because these verses aren’t about you; they’re about what Jesus has done and is doing for you. Amen.

Mark 6:1-6 - Christianity's Greatest Scandal - July 18, 2021

If you saw the headline “Christianity’s Greatest Scandal,” what would you assume the story would be about? Sexual abuse? Embezzlement? Manipulation? Something worse? Our text makes it very clear that Christianity is scandalous. The phrase they took offense at him in verse 3 is literally “they were scandalized” (skandalizo) – but the source may not be what you think.

Most people would probably assume that Christianity’s greatest scandal are the sins Christians commit. The sins of Christians, especially those of famous ones, are often heavily publicized. When Jim Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison for fleecing millions of dollars from his flock; when Jimmy Swaggert was exposed for spending his free time with prostitutes; when Ted Haggard was accused of homosexuality and using illicit drugs [1]; or more recently, when Hillsong megachurch pastor Carl Lentz was fired for cheating on his wife [2] – these scandals spread like wildfire through the media. Hollywood made movies about the epidemic of priestly abuse in the Catholic church. And even though these things had nothing to do with us, all of Christianity got a black eye when these scandals were exposed. This is not to say that the Lutheran Church is immune from scandal. While they usually don’t generate national headlines like the scandals of megachurch pastors or the Catholic church, Lutheran – and WELS – pastors and leaders have been accused and convicted of cheating on their marriages, child abuse, and even possession of child pornography. The unbelieving world loves to point to these scandals to justify their unbelief, to defend their scorn for the church, to gloat over Christians – “Look at your leaders, you’re no better than the rest of us.” And to that, I, and every pastor I know would honestly admit: “No, we’re not.”

And yet, without minimizing what Christian leaders and pastors have done to scandalize Christianity, could the same thing be said of regular Christians? Could it be said of you and your sins? Could your sins scandalize Christianity just as much as those of any megachurch or local pastor? Think about those secret sins of your youth. Couldn’t people from your past criticize Christianity because of the things you did years or decades ago? And what about the sins of your heart? Can even you believe how foul, how lewd, how disgusting some of your thoughts are? Good thing no one else knows about the filth that lurks within your heart. If they did, don’t you think that would create quite a scandal?

The sins of Christians are truly wicked, dark and serious – but they’re not Christianity’s greatest scandal. Because while such sins may be shocking to the media, to unbelievers, and even to other Christians – there’s one person who is not scandalized by them: God. While no one else knows the filth that lurks within our hearts, God does (Psalm 94:11). God knows our every thought before we think it; every word before we say it; every action before we do it (Psalm 139:4). God is not surprised when Christians sin. After all, God is the one who declared that people are sinful from the moment they are conceived (Psalm 51:5). He is the one who looked at the world of Noah’s time – and likely our time – and said that all the thoughts and plans they formed in their hearts were only evil every day (Genesis 6:5). God is the one who said that [we] were dead in [our] trespasses and sins and by nature objects of Gods’ wrath (Ephesians 2:1,3). Jesus himself described our hearts as cesspools of murder, adultery, sexual sins, thefts, false testimonies, and blasphemies (Matthew 15:19).

God is not scandalized by sin. God was not shocked when King David committed adultery and murder (2 Samuel 11). God was not scandalized when Peter denied his Son (Matthew 26:69-75) or when Judas betrayed him (Matthew 26:48-50). He didn’t “cancel” Paul because he spent his early years persecuting Christians (1 Corinthians 15:9). You can be sure that he is not shocked that we sin every day in thought, word and deed. In fact, sin is whole reason God sent his Son into this world. He sent his Son into the world to soak up the real, disgusting, repulsive, filthy sins that nothing else could clean up. Jesus didn’t come into the world to make good people better but to save rotten sinners (Romans 5:8). He didn’t come to teach us how to dig ourselves out of the pit we’ve fallen into, he came to jump down into the sewer and take our place. Jesus is not scandalized by the sin, the failing, the wickedness, the evil that he finds in the pit of my heart or yours or anyone’s – just as people who work in sewers aren’t surprised by what they find there.

The sins of Christians are certainly scandalous, but they aren’t Christianity’s greatest scandal. What turns people off to Christianity is not really the adultery, murder, or lying done by pastors – but the holy, innocent Lord Jesus Christ they preach. What scandalizes your neighbors, coworkers, and friends isn’t really your foul language or short temper, but the meek and mild Jesus you follow.

It’s ironic, isn’t it – that even though every year the whole world celebrates Christmas and enjoys Christian Christmas carols – many, if not most, people are offended by the central truth of Christmas: the incarnation? The world is offended that the Bible would dare teach that a young, unwed peasant girl actually gave birth to the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. They’re offended that God would come to us – rather than we having to go to him. They don’t like to think of God taking on human flesh and blood and dwelling here on this earth. They can’t imagine how all the fullness of the Godhead can dwell bodily in Jesus (Colossians 1:19). They’ll perhaps confess that Jesus is like God – but they choke on the core truth that Jesus IS God.

Perhaps people would be more accepting of that truth if Jesus looked more like the gods of mythology – which have, in many ways, been reincarnated in today’s superhero movies. If Jesus was handsome, musclebound, charismatic, powerful, superhuman – maybe then they’d pay attention. But the Bible says that Jesus didn’t fit the superhero paradigm; it says that had no attractiveness and no majesty. When we saw him, nothing about his appearance made us desire him (Isaiah 53:2) and that he was like someone whom people cannot bear to look at (Isaiah 53:3).

“But didn’t Jesus teach out-of-this-world things and do miraculous, superhuman deeds?” He sure did. Even the people of Nazareth testified to his wisdom, power and miracles right here – but all the miracles in the world can’t convince someone who rejects who Jesus is. It always comes down to the question Jesus asked his disciples: who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16:15; Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20). If you reject who Jesus is; you cannot accept what he does. The people of Jesus’ hometown rejected who he was. He was just a carpenter. He was Mary’s illegitimate son. They knew his brothers and sisters – and they knew that they were just ordinary people. How could Jesus be any different? He can’t be the Messiah. He can’t be the Savior. He certainly can’t be God!

And remember, all of this took place before Good Friday. Those who view Jesus from this side of Calvary have even more reason to be offended. There he’s not only offensive because of who he is but because of what he did there. There we don’t just see God as man; we see a God who suffers and dies as a convicted criminal. There we see a God who is beaten and tortured and nailed to a tree. God is supposed to be all-powerful; on Calvary he hangs powerless on a cross. God is supposed to be a winner; on Calvary he is a loser. God is supposed to be in charge; on Calvary Pilate and his soldiers are in charge. God is supposed to punish his enemies; on Calvary God is punished by his enemies. Scandalous, isn’t it?

And the scandal wasn’t removed when Jesus’ feet lifted from the earth and he ascended into heaven. Many are still scandalized by the ways, the means in which Jesus chooses to come to people today. It’s scandalous to many – even many who claim to be Bible-believing Christians – that Jesus would use ordinary tap water to actually adopt children and adults into God’s family; to forgive sins, deliver from the devil and give eternal life. It’s scandalous to many that Jesus would use ordinary bread and wine to deliver to us the very body and blood that was born of the virgin Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate – and that through this humble meal we receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Perhaps the most scandalous thing of all to many people that Jesus has given sinful men the authority to absolve sins – and that this absolution is valid before God in heaven (Matthew 16:19; John 20:22-23). Everything that we do here, week after week – it’s all pretty scandalous, isn’t it?

Why does Jesus choose to use such ordinary, weak, scandalous things to bring us the wonderful gifts of forgiveness and salvation? Doesn’t he know that if he only came with power and glory – with all the prestige of a Presidential entourage and the glamour of a Hollywood star – then he would actually gain some honor and acclaim – not to mention, disciples – from this world? Why does Jesus purposely come to us in ways that are so offensive?

Because the very things that scandalize human sensibilities and human reason are the same things that form the object of faith. In other words, if salvation came in ways that made sense to us, then salvation could no longer be by grace alone (Romans 11:6). In the end, it’s not only Jesus who is offensive to human reason, it’s what he stands for; what he represents – namely, God’s grace. It doesn’t make sense that a holy God should love his worthless, rebellious creatures enough to become one of them and take their place on the cross. Nor does it make sense for God to use ordinary things to deliver that salvation to sinners. Here’s the thing: no one believes in Jesus because it makes sense. No one can accept that a virgin conceived, that God became man, that God died on the cross and rose again because it agrees with human understanding; it doesn’t. No one believes that Baptism is a divine adoption, that a pastor’s absolution is God’s absolution, that Jesus’ body and blood are really present in this bread and wine because it makes sense.

That’s because saving faith isn’t something human beings can create. It isn’t something you decide. We can’t reason our way into it. We can’t be persuaded into having it. We can’t drum it up in ourselves. The only way we can have saving faith is if God gives it to us (1 Corinthians 12:3; Ephesians 2:8-9). If you believe that God became man to pay for your sins so that you will go to heaven – and if you believe that God chooses to deliver this salvation through the words of a man, water, bread and wine – then you are the beneficiary of a miracle, then God has given it to you purely by his grace. Salvation that comes by grace through faith in Jesus – that ordinary looking man who died on a cross as a criminal, but is really the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world – that’s the greatest scandal in Christianity.

Christianity is scandalous. It always has been and always will be. But not in the way that many think. The real scandal isn’t my sins or your sins or the sins of any priest or megachurch pastor – because God has taken away the scandalous sins of Christians by forgiving them for Jesus’ sake. But, thank God, he hasn’t removed the greatest scandal of Christianity. For if he had, then there would be no Christianity. Christianity is the religion of miracles that can only be received by faith: God becomes man, God suffers and dies for man, God forgives sins for Jesus’ sake, God works heavenly things by water, words, bread and wine. It’s all very scandalous. Thank God that he has included us in this scandal. Amen. 

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/11/us/gallery/pastor-scandals/index.html

[2] https://nypost.com/2021/05/05/fired-hillsong-pastor-carl-lentzs-wife-breaks-silence/

Mark 5:21-24a, 35-43 - What Jesus Says at Funerals - July 11, 2021

Imagine for a moment that you had come here to church – only it wasn’t for a regular Sunday service. Imagine that instead you’re here on a weekday around 11a – for a funeral. And not just any funeral, but a funeral for a child; the child of one of your closest friends; his only child. Imagine standing in the visitation line waiting to walk up here to offer your condolences as he’s standing next to the casket of his little girl – what would you say? Even those of us who always seem to have something to say often struggle when it comes to saying something at funerals, don’t we? What do you say, what can you say at a funeral? We might have difficulty finding words to say at a funeral, but Jesus doesn’t. Today we will focus on the three things Jesus said at a funeral and what they mean to us today.

Jesus’ first words come in response to the voice of death. Did you know that death has a voice? Did you hear it in our text? While he was still speaking, people from the synagogue ruler’s house arrived, saying, “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the Teacher anymore?” That’s death speaking. Death saying, “that’s it; there’s no hope; just give up.” Have you heard death’s voice in your life? It’s the voice of the doctor on the phone who tells you to sit down before he gives you the results of the biopsy; the voice of a friend telling you that their cancer has metastasized; the voice of a sibling telling you you’d better drop everything and come and see mom or dad because the doctor says they have days or hours, not weeks. Why do those voices stop us in our tracks, make our hearts skip a beat – why do we need to be sitting down to hear the voice of death? Because the voice of death says that he’s arrived and there’s nothing you can do to stop him. And, humanly speaking, he’s right. If this pandemic has proved anything, it’s that mankind is utterly powerless to stop death’s brutal and violent war on life. But how does Jesus respond to death’s voice? He ignores it; he rejects it; he dismisses it; he defies it. And he urges Jairus to do the same: don’t be afraid.

Now, according to Mark, Jairus’ hadn’t said anything about being afraid. All he had done is beg Jesus to come and place his hands on his daughter so that she may be healed and live. Then why does Jesus tell him don’t be afraid? You know, and so do I. He’s afraid because his daughter is near death. Why is death so scary? First, especially if the death is sudden and unexpected, it’s hard to wrap your mind around the fact that the person you hugged or talked to on the phone just yesterday is gone. It’s hard to come to grips with the fact that we won’t ever see them again. We fear what we don’t and can’t understand.

But the second source reason is probably even more potent: when someone close to us dies it serves as a uncomfortable reminder that nothing more than a single distracted driver, a single strand of infectious disease, a single breath, a single heartbeat stands between us and death. Sure, we spend most of our lives trying to ignore and distract ourselves from the fact that death is so close. But at a funeral, you can’t avoid it. The only reason you’re there is because someone’s heart has stopped, their lungs have stopped heaving, they are dead. And one day that will be you. And that’s terrifying. And the closer you were to the deceased person, the harder and heavier fear comes at you – especially when that person was only a child.

In the face of this storm of fear gathering around Jairus, Jesus says don’t be afraid. Jesus says that there is no reason to be afraid at a funeral, no reason to be afraid of death. I imagine that Jesus would probably be kicked off of social media for making such a statement today. The “experts” today write long papers and give long speeches telling us how we should be paralyzed with fear at the thought of death. And that’s because, according to them, the “science” has determined that when a person dies – that’s it, they’re gone for good; you’re never going to see them again.

Well, Jesus doesn’t have much regard for the experts or the science – at this funeral he says don’t be afraid. Only believe. Believe what? Jesus hadn’t yet given Jairus anything to believe. He hadn’t told Jairus that he was going to go to his house, take his daughter’s hand and raise her from the dead; he hadn’t even told him to believe that on the Last Day his daughter would be raised from the dead and they would be reunited forever. So what was Jairus supposed to only believe? What was the only thing he could possibly believe? Nothing more – and nothing less – than the guy standing in front of him; in Jesus.

This isn’t such a foreign story for us, is it? There are many times we’d like a clear and direct word from God regarding something we should believe or do. “Lord, just tell me what school I’m supposed to attend or what person I’m destined to marry or what job I should seek.” “Lord, just tell me that my children will remain steadfast Christians, that our marriage will survive this latest argument, that I made the right decision to put mom or dad in a nursing home.” When you open your Bible, do you find those direct, clear answers and explanations? Nope. What do you find? You find Jesus. That’s the thing about faith. It’s not based on what we can understand, know, feel or think possible. It’s not necessarily based on specific details or rational explanations. Faith is based on a person. Faith is based completely on Jesus and what he has done, can do and has promised. At this funeral, Jesus tells a grieving Father to not be afraid of death but rather to believe in him, his power and his love.

In our culture, funerals are generally quiet, somber events – with everyone speaking in hushed voices (as if you might accidentally wake the dead). That wasn’t the case at this funeral. Mark says they went into the house of the synagogue ruler, and Jesus saw a commotion with people weeping and wailing loudly. Now you have to understand the culture. In first century Israel it was common to hire professional mourners. Even a poor person felt obligated to have a minimum of two flute players.  Jairus, being a synagogue ruler, would likely have been able to hire an entire band of instruments and a choir of mourners. It was an intense scene.

And Jesus walks right into this intense scene and says: Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping. Why is death such a commotion for us? Because from our point of view dead is a black hole. It’s something we haven’t experienced, can’t figure out, and can’t see the other side of. But that’s not what death is to Jesus. To Jesus death is sleep, a nap. The dead are no farther away from Jesus than a sleeping person is from us. Even more, Jesus raises the dead as easily as we raise someone who’s sleeping: with nothing more than a word and a touch. Can you see why Jesus tells Jairus and us that we don’t need to be afraid of death? Are you afraid of going to sleep? (Now, granted, some of us may suffer from nightmares or painful flashbacks while we sleep – but in general, we’re not afraid of falling asleep.) Do you call 911 when your children take a nap? (Most parents instead say, “Hallelujah!”) Sure, you might miss their presence temporarily, but you know that you can wake them up at any time. That’s the power Jesus has over death. He can raise anyone at any time – and on the Last Day he will raise all people of all times.

Jesus could do this and he will do this because he is the Lord of life and of death. Jesus earned this right by descending from heaven and taking on human flesh and blood in the womb of the virgin Mary. As true God, Jesus could not and would not have died, but by taking on our flesh he took on our being able to die. Of course, death is the wages of sin (Romans 6:23), and Jesus had no sin (1 Peter 2:22)., so that there was no reason for Jesus to die. He was completely innocent as Pontius Pilate himself declared no fewer than seven times (Luke 23:4, 6-15, 22; Matthew 27:24; John 19:4, 6, 7-12). But Jesus did die. The Romans made sure of it by piercing his side with a spear (John 20:33-34). Jesus’ heart stopped beating; his lungs stopped breathing; his brain stopped sending electrical signals. Death didn’t take Jesus – Jesus gave himself over to death, for us (John 10:18). Jesus died the only death we should be afraid of: the death of the damned; death without hope; death that not only meant the separation of the soul from the body but the separation from God’s love in hell. But while Jesus died in our place, death couldn’t keep him. Because he was true God, death had to spit him out in the resurrection. And the good news is that where Jesus has gone, so will we – through death to life. Paul says for as in Adam they all die, so also in Christ they all will be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22). That’s why we don’t need to fear death – because in the hands of Jesus, death is nothing more than a nap; than sleep.

We’ll close by comparing what Jesus said at funerals during his earthly ministry; what he will say on the Last Day; and what he is still saying to the world today. Jesus’ third statement was directed to the little girl: “Talitha, koum!” (When translated, that means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”) Jesus is recorded as having raised three people from the dead. And in each case, his words are very narrow, very specific, very personal. Here he says little girl, I say to you, arise. At Nain he says, young man, I say to you, get up! (Luke 7:14) At Bethany Jesus said Lazarus, come out (John 11:43). In each instance, even in that cemetery at Bethany, Jesus only raised three particular individuals. (Had he said “All you dead people, get up!” all the dead people in all the world would have arisen.) It wasn’t yet time for that, but that is exactly what Jesus will say and what will happen on the Last Day. Jesus says a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out (John 5:28-29). On the Last Day, Jesus’ word of resurrection won’t be narrow, specific or personal – it will be global and universal – he will raise all people of all time to life. But that won’t be good news for everyone. Daniel writes that many who are sleeping in the dusty ground will awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame, to everlasting torment (Daniel 12:2).

So what’s the difference? The difference lies in whether or not a person hears and believes what Jesus is saying today. What is that? Well, he’s obviously not showing up at funerals raising dead people out of their caskets. Jesus’ – and his apostles’ words which raised the physically dead to life were limited – Jesus only raised three people from the dead and Peter and Paul raised one each (Acts 9:40; 20:7-12). Jesus didn’t use his voice to raise many to physical life, but what did he constantly, continuously, consistently preach and teach day in and day out? The forgiveness of sins. In the words of Absolution, Jesus gives life – here and now – to people dead in sin. Jesus’ words that raised the physically dead to life were limited, but the word of Absolution Jesus has commanded his messengers to speak by his command and with his authority (John 20:21-23) is unlimited right up until the moment the last trumpet sounds (1 Corinthians 15:52). And the right to speak the words of absolution isn’t limited to pastors, either – these are words you can – and should – use on a daily basis; especially with those you are closest to (James 5:16). No, these words won’t bring a loved one out of the casket – at that point it’s too late. But today, to the people you know who are dead in sin – or who have hurt you with sin – there are no words more powerful than “For Jesus’ sake, your sins are forgiven,” – because those words truly do bring the dead to life.

There’s an old joke about a group of guys sitting around talking about what they want to hear said at their funeral. One person says, “I want to hear that I was a good father.” Another says, “I want to hear about my service to my country in the military.” A third says, “I want to hear that I inspired many people.” Finally, a fourth say, “I want to hear, “Look, he’s still breathing.”” That might be the next best thing to hearing Jesus say at your funeral get up, but it’s nothing compared to hearing today: “As a called servant of Christ, and by his authority, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Because hearing and believing those words now not only determines what the pastor will say at your funeral, it determines what Jesus will say to you on the day of Judgment. Amen.

Mark 4:35-41 - Our God Sleeps?!?! - July 4, 2021

There are several curious – even mysterious – details in this text. What does it mean that the disciples took him [Jesus] along…just as he was? What happened to all of the other boats that were following along when the storm struck? Why does Jesus speak to the wind and the waves, the forces of nature, like they are personal beings – the same way he spoke to the demons when he drove them out (Mark 1:25) – was there something demonic about this storm? But none of those details are as curious or mysterious as the simple fact that in the midst of a great windstorm Jesus was sleeping. Isn’t that curious? Isn’t that amazing? Jesus is God. Our God sleeps?

Actually, is it amazing or is it unnerving? False gods sleep. There’s a famous statue of one of the gods of Hinduism – Vishnu – doing just that called “the sleeping god.” [1] Or remember the confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal? Elijah mocked and ridiculed Baal when his prophets couldn’t get him to answer their requests: Shout louder! He is a god, isn’t he? He may be deep in thought or busy or on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep and will wake up! (1 Kings 18:27)

False gods sleep. The true God doesn’t. Psalm 121 says: he who watches over you will not slumber. Yes, he who watches over Israel will not slumber. He will not sleep (Psalm 121:3-4). So what’s going on here with Jesus sleeping in a boat in the midst of a storm? Can you think of another famous Bible story involving storms and sleeping? Jonah. Of course, Jonah was no Jesus. He was trying to run away from God’s commission to call the people of Nineveh to repentance. But when God threw a storm on the sea, where was Jonah? Jonah had gone down into the hold of the ship. He was lying down and sleeping soundly (Jonah 1:5). And, very similar to the disciples’ response in our text, the captain approached him and said, “How can you be sleeping so soundly? Get up and call on your god! Maybe your god will treat us with favor so that we will not perish (Jonah 1:6). Did you catch the parallel between that captain and the disciples here? The pagan sea captain says “Maybe your god will care enough to save us.” Jesus’ disciples wake him up and say Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to drown? That’s the heart of the issue, isn’t it? Does God care when he appears to be sleeping – when he seems to be failing to intervene to help in our lives?

Has God ever fallen asleep on you? Have you ever felt like God doesn’t care about you? If you’ve never felt that way, then you’re all alone; you’re a special kind of believer. There are times when we’ve all said or thought, along with the author of Psalm 44: Get up! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Wake up! Do not reject us forever (Psalm 44:23). Hard times come, problems arise, health and relationships deteriorate – and we pray – but it seems like the winds just blow harder and the waves get bigger. The little boat that we call life begins to fill up and it feels like we’re about to drown. And we think: “Where is God? Doesn’t he know what I’m going through? Doesn’t he care?” We pray, we beg, we bargain, we teeter on the brink of despair. Ironically, when we’re led to believe that our God is sleeping, we can’t seem to sleep anymore. God may not lay awake at night worrying about us – but we sure do.

So what’s the answer to the question: does our God sleep? The Bible says that God neither slumbers nor sleeps – but here, Jesus, true God in flesh and blood is blissfully dreaming. So which is it? Does our God sleep or not? Yes, in Jesus, God sleeps. But far from terrifying or unnerving – this is tremendously comforting!

Sleeping Jesus proves how completely human he is. Jesus, the one, true God, knows what it’s like to be exhausted, to find yourself nodding off while you’re driving or eating supper or brushing your teeth. Jesus knows what it’s like to come to the end of a long day or week exhausted, weak and worn out. He knows how you feel after a long day of chasing after your children; how you feel after long days at work; how many of you feel trying to juggle work and kids and mortgages and budgets; how those of you will a few more years under your belt still lay awake worrying about your adult children and grandchildren; how some nights you wonder if this is the night you wake up on the other side of death, in heaven. He even knows how you feel when you can’t keep your eyes open during a sermon. Jesus sleeping means Jesus knows how exhausting life can be.

Why is life so exhausting? Why do we reach the end of each day, of each week, and – really – the end of a lifetime completely worn out? Well, like every other challenge and trial in this world, it’s the result of sin. It’s the result of living each and every day under the demands of the holy Law of God and failing each and every day to keep it. And it’s exhausting. So it really shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus was tired, should it? Even though Jesus had never failed to keep the Law, he was exhausted because he was not only keeping it perfectly, but he was carrying the burden of our sins, our failures, our exhaustion. It’s no wonder that Jesus was worn out!

Jesus sleeping in the stern of a storm-tossed boat shows you just how difficult obeying God’s Law perfectly in your place was for him. Yes, he was and is true God. But in his humiliation he gave up the full and constant use of his divine power and strength. He didn’t coast through life like Superman with all of the bullets of temptation and sorrow and sadness – and exhaustion –bouncing off of his chest. He lived it just like you and me – like Superman exposed to kryptonite: vulnerable, exposed, human. And that’s how it had to be if his obedience was going to count for us (Hebrews 4:15).

And a wrong understanding of what Jesus experienced has real-world effects on our lives. Why do we still live as if we need to keep the Law or else we will be damned? Why do things like trusting God, gladly hearing and learning God’s Word, respecting the government, remaining faithful in our marriages, keeping our tongues on a leash, and being content with what God has given us – feel like such burdens? Could it be because we don’t really believe that Jesus actually kept it perfectly already for us? Could it be because we have this haunting feeling that Jesus may have done most of what we need for salvation, but we had still better be good little Christian boys and girls if we really want to get to heaven? Jesus sleeping in the stern of a boat destroys those lies. Whereas at the end of each of our days we must pray for God’s forgiveness for our failures – at the end of every day of his life, an exhausted Jesus could offer up his perfect life to God, the Judge, for examination and hear him say, “My law is done, completed, fulfilled, finished.” To which we are to respond with just one word: “Amen.”

But Jesus sleeping in that boat proves more than that he fulfilled the commandments for us in general; it proves he fulfilled the most important commandment in particular, the one we break most frequently: the First Commandment. You shall have no other gods. What does this mean? We should fear, love and trust in God above all things. Let’s just focus on fear for a moment. The First commandment means that we’re not supposed to fear what the rest of the unbelieving world fears (Isaiah 8:12). It means we’re not supposed to be paralyzed by the fear that a virus may take our lives; that runaway inflation will drain our savings or wreck our retirements; that if we fail to carefully monitor our diet or exercise routines we may die; that if we aren’t constantly vigilant something will happen to us or the people we love. According to the First Commandment, we’re not supposed to be afraid of anything more than God, the one who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:28). But we are. And when we’re afraid of things that aren’t God, we prove we’re not perfect – that we haven’t kept the 1st commandment. Jesus was perfect. By sleeping soundly, Jesus proved that he had no other gods. It proved that he feared, loved and trusted God above all things. He slept soundly because he feared God more than he feared a stormy sea. He loved what God willed even if that meant death by drowning. He trusted in God more than he did the sea-worthiness of the boat or the experience of his disciples.

So what’s the point? I suppose one could conclude that the answer is: just do what Jesus did, don’t worry, be happy, sleep peacefully – even in the middle of the physical, moral, spiritual storms that we face in life. To that all I have to say is: “Go ahead and try. Try not worrying about your health, your wealth, your children, your life – or even death itself. Go ahead and try and I guarantee that you will fail.” We could conclude that whenever the storms of life arise, we can just ask Jesus and he’ll calm them right that moment with his almighty power. But we don’t have Jesus’ promise to do that. In fact, while Jesus did indeed calm the wind and the waves with just a word, his almighty power isn’t really the point of this story. As God told Job, he’s always had the power to control the wind and the waves (Job 38:8-11).

The comfort, the Gospel, in this text is that Jesus – as both true man who, exhausted, sleeps; and as true God, who, with just a word, can command the sea to be still – is wide awake, he is present, he does care about us and he has the power to work out everything, every little and every large detail of life, with the goal of navigating us safely to heaven. That’s really what he was urging his disciples to realize when they woke him up and accused him of not caring about them. Why are you so afraid? Do you still lack faith? That’s a good question, isn’t it? Why were they still afraid? The wind [had already] stopped, and there was a great calm. They were afraid because in that moment they realized that compared to the perfect fear, love and trust of the God-man who stood before them, they were miserable, wretched sinners. They were filled with the fear that strikes us when something goes wrong in our lives: “oh boy, does this mean that God has turned against me?” (How many times have you thought that when something has gone wrong in your life?) It wasn’t just that they failed to recognize that Jesus was true God – it was that they failed to recognize that in Jesus God has proven – beyond all doubt – his love for us (Romans 5:8). God didn’t send his Son to be born into a peasant family, to live as a homeless, wandering preacher, to be mocked and ridiculed and persecuted, to be stuck on a boat with faithless disciples on a stormy sea, to march into Jerusalem to be whipped, mocked, and crucified – for people he hates. That’s the point of this story, the good news: God has proven his enduring and unchangeable love for you by sending Jesus to live and die for you. And neither the storms of life nor our own failure to fear, love and trust in God above all things can change that!

There may be a lot of curious and mysterious details about this story – some that we will likely not understand this side of heaven. But is there anything more amazing than the fact that Jesus, our God, sleeps? His sleeping is Law – a demonstration of what perfect fear, love and trust in God looks like. But even more, it’s Gospel – because Jesus obeyed the First Commandment for us and by his presence on this earth, in that boat, and on the cross – he proves beyond all doubt that God cares about us and loves us. Does that mean that your life will never be rocked by wind and waves? No. It means that no matter how hard the wind blows or how high the waves get, nothing – not even your own lack of faith – can keep Jesus from bringing you to the safe harbor of heaven. Knowing that, you too can sleep peacefully tonight and every night. Amen.

[1] https://vedicfeed.com/budhanilkantha-temple-of-sleeping-vishnu/

Mark 4:26-34 - God's Contrarian Kingdom - June 27, 2021

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary / How does your garden grow?” goes the 18th century English nursery rhyme. [1] Some think this rhyme is about Mary Queen of Scots or Mary I of England, but those Mary’s lived in the 16th century, not the 18th. Regardless of who or what this rhyme is about, the question “how does your garden grow” gets us to the heart of this morning’s text and the answer is certainly “quite contrary.”

Contrary to what we may think at first, when Jesus tells a parable, there’s more there than meets the ear. Parables don’t make for good bumper sticker or Twitter theology. You can’t just skim them and then move on. They challenge you, they are intended to make you stop and think: “What does this mean?” At the end of our text, Mark describes Jesus’ use and purpose of parables in his preaching and teaching: with many similar parables he continued to speak the word to them, as much as they were able to hear. He did not speak to them without a parable. But when he was alone with his disciples, he explained everything to them. To unbelievers, Jesus only spoke in parables. To his believing disciples, however, he explained everything. One of the main questions we asked in the continuing education course I took on the parables a few weeks ago was: “Do Jesus’ parables serve to conceal or reveal?” And the answer is: both! To those who have already hardened their hearts against Jesus, they conceal a truth about the kingdom of God. To believers they reveal a hidden truth about that same kingdom. I’m going to assume that we’re all believers here, so what are we to hear in these two rather mysterious and enigmatic parables?

Well, contrary to what many believe, these parables are not about what you should expect to see, but what you should believe about God’s Kingdom. In the first parable, the man scatters seed on the ground and then what does he do? He goes about his business and believes that the seed he has sown is growing, on its own (which is the Greek word from which we get the English automatically). In the second parable, a tiny mustard seed is planted and we are to believe – again, contrary to sight and reason – that this tiny seed is going to produce a bush that is larger than all the other plants in the garden.

These parables do describe how the Kingdom of God grows, but contrary to what many Christians think, these parables are not church growth manuals. In the first parable, the focus is not on the man but on the seed and how it grows without any intervention from the man. In the second, we’re told that kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which when sown is one of the smallest of all the seeds planted in the ground – but there’s no planter in the picture at all. So contrary to all the narcissistic interpreters out there – these parables are not about us or what we do to cause or force the kingdom of God to grow.

The Kingdom of God is contrarian; it’s contrarian because it grows contrary to human reason. Principles of sociology, psychology, and business might be able to grow a great business or non-profit organization – but they can’t grow the kingdom of God. In fact, the kingdom regularly grows contrary to those principles. The first parable says that while [the man] sleeps and rises, night and day, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. The tense of the verb know (perfect), indicates that the man doesn’t know and never will know. This is one of the characteristics of Jesus’ parables: the central analogy is often found in a detail that is unreal or seemingly out of place. When we see a field full of corn or a garden full of vegetables – we usually give the credit to the farmer or gardener. But here the focus is specifically not on the man because he doesn’t have a clue how the seed grows once he sows it. The focus, instead is on the power inherent in the seed itself.  

What does this have to do with the kingdom of God? Well, like that man, we should not expect to ever know or understand how the kingdom, the church, grows. But we try, don’t we? We complicate the gospel ministry with countless programs, demographic studies, committees, seminars, mission statements, 1,3,5,10 year plans – all attempts to find a silver bullet to hasten or force the numerical, visible growth of the church. (Now, I’m not saying that those things are wrong in and of themselves – but they can, and often do, distract from the actual mission Jesus gave to us, his church.) Remember, Jesus didn’t send his apostles out with the command to count the sheep or create volunteer positions for the sheep or even to grow the flock. He simply told them to feed my sheep (John 21:17). The Great Commission was not to recruit workers for the church but to gather disciples from all nations (Matthew 28:19). When Jesus ascended into heaven the seed he left his church was Baptism, Absolution, and Communion. These are the things Jesus commanded them to go and do – because through these means of grace the Holy Spirit delivers Jesus to sinners.

Speaking of Jesus, where does he fit in here? Well, while these parables are not directly about Jesus, we can certainly see how Jesus’ own life fits the template of these parables, can’t we? By all accounts, Jesus’ was an invisible, a stealth mission in this world. God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit sowed his only-begotten Son into the womb of the virgin Mary. From the little town of Bethlehem, a hurried flight to Egypt, and in the backwoods town of Nazareth, little Jesus just grew – hidden in plain sight from the people around him – even his own family (Mark 3:21). What did he grow into? He grew into the perfect church member, citizen, father, mother, sister, brother, son and daughter by obeying even the smallest of God’s Laws perfectly. While he had no sin or guilt of his own to answer for, much less pay for, he shouldered the sin and guilt of the world and hauled it to the cross where his Father harvested his life as the payment price for the sins and sinners of the world (1 Timothy 2:6). And three days later God raised Jesus from the dead to publicly declare that his wrath has been satisfied and the world has been justified (Romans 4:25); to declare that heaven’s door has been opened to all. And he did all of that in a relatively invisible way, didn’t he? How many people saw the Son of God growing and obeying God on their behalf in that little boy from Nazareth? How many people identified the Son of God suffering for their sins – as a convicted criminal – on that cross? Who was there to see his resurrection? No one! He just did it – everything we need for our salvation – rather invisibly and automatically – with no human intervention – right?

And what’s the result? Well, is it anything less than the result of the second parable – a tiny, almost invisible seed which grows into the largest of the garden plants? Tiny little poor, homeless, hated and crucified Jesus has somehow grown into the largest religion in the world – his name is known to the ends of the earth. The book that was written about him – the Bible – is the bestselling book of all time. Why? Because sinners of all races, languages and nations are drawn to him like a magnet; they flock to him to find shelter in his perfect life and atoning death. Contrary to what most of the Jews of Jesus’ day expected and contrary to what many people expect today, Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, grew from obscurity into a Savior big enough to redeem and shelter the whole world from God’s wrath and judgment.

What does this mean for you? Well, it means you can stop agonizing over your sins; stop searching for ways to numb the guilt that lives in your heart; stop trying to excuse and justify your sinful behaviors; stop thinking that you’re so deeply stuck in a rut of sin or addiction that you can never get out. Jesus took all of your guilt, all of your sins, and even all of your foolish excuses and justifications and nailed them to a tree and buried them in a tomb. It means you can stop trying to content yourself with the always tainted, often rare, and short-lived joys that can be found in this world. There is so much more; an eternity of more. A new heaven and earth where babies don’t cry, let alone die; where old people aren’t old (Isaiah 65:20) and pain and sorrow and evil don’t exist (Revelation 21:4). And, contrary to all expectation – often even our own – Jesus wraps these eternal treasures in earthly things. He puts them in regular old tap water. He puts them in words spoken by sinful men. He wraps his body in bread that can rot and his blood in wine that can expire.

Contrary to all expectations the kingdom of God sown in such weakness by such weak men wrapped in such weak things actually grows and produces a bountiful harvest. This happens against all odds. Jesus says that the ground produces fruit on its own. He’s not saying that once the Word is sown in a human heart, it’s up to us to bring about growth. He’s simply describing what any farmer or gardener observes when they plant seeds: they plant an apparently dead seed into dead ground and it somehow brings forth grain or flowers or trees all by itself. He’s really describing the work of the church: we sow the seed – the seed of Baptism and Absolution and the Word (things which of themselves may often seem dead and lifeless) – on the apparently dead ground of sinful human hearts – and contrary to all reason, all expectation, even, sometimes, contrary to all hope: it sprouts, it grows, it matures, and it is eventually harvested. But as the book of Revelation makes clear (Revelation 14:14-20) – this harvest won’t come until the Last Day, so now is not the time to weep or wail or despair over how small the yield looks right now. It’s not harvest time…yet; it’s sowing time.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean that the Kingdom of God provides no benefits here and now. It does. Just like that tiny mustard seed grew up into a huge tree in which all kinds of birds could find shelter – so here on earth, God’s Kingdom, the Church provides shelter for sinners today. Your Baptism is a mighty oak of new life as a member of God’s family that not even the devil himself can chop down. The Absolution is a lofty elm that no storm of guilt can blow over. Communion is a giant redwood whose indestructible promise of eternal life will not shudder or shake even in the face of death.

Contrary to the preaching and teaching of many today – do you get any hint of panic in Jesus’ parables? Do you get any sense of doubt that the Word will produce the harvest he intended? Do you get any sense of the fear that anything on earth or under the earth can stop his harvest from being gathered in or his mustard seed from becoming a mighty tree? Where’s the panicked cry that thousands are going to hell every minute? Where’s the crazed call to change or modify the seed, the Gospel message, for every new generation? Where’s the guilt-trip that if you don’t get up and do something right now the Kingdom of God can’t come?

Where is anything but the quiet confidence that we confess in our explanation to the Lord’s Prayer: “God’s kingdom certainly comes by itself even without our prayer”? (SC, Lord’s Prayer, 2nd Petition) And it comes apart from our working, worrying or handwringing because the kingdom comes with Jesus. That’s exactly what Jesus announced whenever he arrived at a new place, isn’t it? The Kingdom of God is here (Mark 1:15; 9:1). Today, wherever you find the Gospel of Jesus purely preached and his Sacraments administered according to his command, there you will find the Kingdom of God – an incredibly big and strong tree of shelter for sinners in this broken world which is invisibly, but inevitably, growing towards the harvest.

Contrarianism is a school of thought in journalism, science, and investing. [2] It says that the truth, the right way of thinking and acting is often the opposite of majority opinion. (This school of thought has certainly been validated in regard to the way we reacted to the pandemic over the past year, hasn’t it?) In his parables, Jesus is teaching us to be contrarian theologians. The people of Jesus’ day – and let’s be honest, many people of our day – expect that if God is really actively building his kingdom here on earth than we should play a major role in making it grow and that it should be a mighty, powerful, visible thing. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary / how does your garden grow?” How does God’s kingdom grow? I have no idea. In fact, that’s not even the right question. Whenever and wherever the seed of the Gospel in Word and Sacrament is sown, God’s Kingdom grows. Period. That’s what Jesus is telling us in these two parables. God’s Kingdom might grow contrary to all reason and wisdom and expectation, but it grows. It grows invisibly and it grows incredibly. You have Jesus’ word on it. Amen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Mary,_Quite_Contrary

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrarian