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

Mark 3:20-35 - Christianity Is Crazy - June 20, 2021

There are certain truths of the Christian faith as it is revealed in the Bible that Christians are often hesitant to talk about, think about, or confront. They make us uncomfortable. Among them may be how a supposedly loving God would wash away humanity – with the exception of 8 individuals – in a Flood (Genesis 7-8) or command his people wipe out entire cities and peoples in clearing the Promised Land for their own possession. Other Christians are uncomfortable confessing that Baptism with water can save even infants and that the bread and wine of Holy Communion are really, truly our Savior’s body and blood. Our text brings up two more issues that even Christians don’t like to confront: 1) that the devil is real and really active; and 2) that faith matters more than family. And when you put all of these issues together, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that both Jesus’ enemies and his own family came to: Christianity is crazy!

At first glance, there might seem to be three different groups, different types of people in our text. There are really only two, but we’ll come back to that later. The first two groups – Jesus’ family and the experts in the law from Jerusalem take the spotlight in the beginning of our lesson. Jesus’ family thought that he was crazy; that he wasn’t playing with a full deck, that he was a few bricks short of a load. Here he is, so utterly obsessed with preaching and teaching something called the gospel of kingdom of God (Mark 1:14), calling disciples to follow him (Mark 1:16-21; 2:13-17; 3:13-19); surrounding himself with a crowd of religious fanatics and weirdos – that he doesn’t even have time to eat! It’s no wonder that his family had come, metaphorical straight-jacket in hand, to take him into protective custody. The heavy-hitting religious lawyers from Jerusalem had observed the same behaviors but came to a different conclusion: “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He drives out demons by the ruler of demons.” They didn’t just think he was crazy, they accused him of being in league with the devil.

Why did they treat Jesus this way? Well, it’s often hard to tell the difference between brilliance and insanity. Many great poets, artists, inventors and philosophers were judged by their contemporaries to be crazy to one extent or another. Sabastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs – all of them seemed to have a screw or two loose. King Agrippa accused the apostle Paul of being insane because of his faith in Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 26:24). People in Luther’s day thought he was insane for challenging the most powerful men in the world at the time based on nothing more than his conviction that people are saved by faith in Christ alone and not by works. At the same time, we don’t exactly throw open the doors of the church to those who appear to be weird or crazy – ignoring the fact that in the 1st century these are the very people that seemed to be most drawn to Jesus. Crazy people tend to make nice and normal people feel uncomfortable. That’s why we pack them away into institutions where they can be both out of sight and out of mind.

One of the things that we might be forgetting is that the devil is real, he’s really powerful and he’s really determined to torment and terrorize mankind. How much of what we classify as “mental illness” is actually a result of the devil’s work? And I’m not referring to demon possession as it’s portrayed in the movies – where people float above their beds, howl in Latin, and have superhuman strength. I’m talking about the “normal” mental illnesses that seem so prevalent in our society today – depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction – things that afflict even Christians. Who’s to say that those aren’t the work of demonic activity? Why are we so quick to classify these diseases as psychological afflictions rather than spiritual attacks? Well, if we treat them as spiritual attacks, then we have to admit that the devil is real – and it’s scary to admit that there’s an evil out there that is far more powerful than we are. But Jesus wasn’t afraid to talk about the devil. And he dealt with it the same way he dealt with any other illness. He viewed demon possession the way we view cancer: as something foreign that doesn’t belong there. Jesus never stigmatized those who were spiritually tormented – and neither should we. Jesus healed both the physically sick and the spiritually afflicted in the same way: with a word of grace, and often with a healing touch. And he wants to do the same today through the Gospel and the Sacraments!

It was those healings that caught the attention of the Jewish lawyers from Jerusalem. They knew what was at stake with this guy. They knew that if you accepted Jesus’ healings as miraculous signs from God, then you had to accept his teachings as the Word of God. And Jesus was teaching a bunch of things that threatened to undermine their power and authority: that he was bringing the Kingdom of God to earth, that he was the Son of God in human flesh, that he was the Christ who was sent to save the entire world from sin, death, and the devil. I know. It sounds crazy. But that’s what Jesus claimed. And he had the miracles to back it up. So, the question is: Who is this guy? Is he a demon possessed deceiver, playing on the devil’s team? Is he a stark-raving-mad lunatic who just happened to tap into some mystical power? Or, is Jesus telling the truth? Is he really the Son of God, the Savior of the world?

That’s really what’s at stake in our text this morning. Who Jesus is stands at the very heart of the Christian faith. Whether we always think about it in these terms or not – we’ve staked our entire lives and our entire eternities on this one man, this carpenter’s son from Nazareth. And not only have we staked our own lives on him, he is the one message we have to preach to the world. “This is the One you’re looking for – even if you’re not looking! There’s salvation in no one else (Acts 4:12). No one else died on a cross to pay for your sins. No one else will raise you from the dead or give you eternal life. No one else can drive the demons out of your life. No one else but this Jesus, a guy whom his own family, for the moment at least, thought was absolutely nuts.”

You can see why the religious leaders were a bit skeptical, can’t you? Jesus messed up their theology books. He messed up their whole religious system. According to their understanding, this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. The Christ wasn’t supposed to come from the wrong side of the tracks and hang out with the riffraff. The Christ was supposed to be a strong, powerful figure; a leader and mobilizer of men – not a homeless guy with a bunch of stinky fishermen and fraudulent tax-collectors for followers. So, giving the experts in the law the benefit of the doubt – it’s hard to blame them for looking at Jesus’ miracles, listening to his teaching – and concluding that the only way he could be doing these things is by the power of the devil.

But Jesus does blame them. Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking and he met their accusation head-on: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself is divided, he cannot stand but is finished. On the other hand, no one can enter a strong man’s house to steal his possessions unless he ties up the strong man first. Then he can plunder his house. Jesus is doing two things here: 1) he’s pointing out the pure insanity of their accusation (if a general starts shooting his own soldiers, that army is doomed); and 2) he’s putting his entire mission and ministry in extremely vivid terms. Satan is the strong man who claims ownership of the world. Jesus is the stronger man who came to bind him up and plunder his house. He’s essentially paraphrasing the promise God made way back in Genesis 3: “I’m going to make war between you and the woman, between her seed and yours; he’s going to crush your head and you’re going to crush his heel (Genesis 3:15).” Jesus came into this world, into the devil’s own house, to defeat him by dying on a cross on his own turf.

But that’s the craziest part of all, isn’t it? You beat the devil by dying? We think of dying as defeat. Over the course of the past year, the media, doctors and politicians treated deaths linked to Covid-19 as failures of government and medicine (as if people had never died before). But Jesus turns the defeat of death into victory. He crushes the devil’s skull by being bound to a cross. He descends into our death to unbind our chains, to throw open the prison doors and bring us out into the light of freedom. Jesus rips death out of the devil’s hands and uses it to bring about the greatest good of all: salvation for sinners. And so our hope, our goal, our mission in life is to live and die and rise believing in this.

I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true. Easter is the ultimate proof. If Jesus didn’t rise from the grave, then he was just a raving lunatic or a pawn of the devil. But if he rose (as the empty tomb, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter and 2000 years’ worth of Christians bear witness to) then we must take everything Jesus said – including what he says here – seriously. The devil’s been handcuffed, his house ransacked, his prized possession – a world of sinners like you and me – have been released out into freedom in the kingdom of God! And if the whole world – maybe even your own mother, brothers and sisters – call you crazy for believing it – welcome to the asylum; you’re in good company; they said the same thing about Jesus.

But Jesus has two more crazy things for us to ponder: Amen I tell you: Everything will be forgiven people, their sins and whatever blasphemies they may speak. Sheer insanity, isn’t it? Can you believe it? Every sin that has ever been committed has been paid for by the blood Jesus shed on the cross. Think of the worst sin in the world…what is it? Racism, abortion, rape, genocide, pedophilia? Jesus paid for it. Now think of all the insanely wicked things you’ve done…what are they? Whatever they are, Jesus died to pay for them. They’re dead and buried, once and for all. Or what about we fathers? How many times have we taken our wives for granted and treated our children as burdens to be endured rather than blessings to be cherished? Those sins, too, are forgiven, gone forever.

So what could go wrong? Why wouldn’t everyone – both normal everyday folks and the clinically insane – be flocking to Jesus, be racing here to receive this message? That’s the other kind of insanity: the insanity of unbelief. Jesus describes it this way: whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin. So what is the sin against the Holy Spirit? It is the willful and persistent rejection of the work of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel. It’s like having treasure in your backyard but refusing to dig it up; like having a winning lottery ticket in your hand but refusing to cash it in. The only unforgivable sin is the sin of refusing to be forgiven. I’ll say that again: the only unforgivable sin is the sin of refusing to be forgiven.

This point is illustrated in the last five verses of our text. Remember how while there appear to be three different groups there are really only two? Jesus’ family – who considered him crazy; and the experts in the law who accused Jesus of working for the devil – are really on the same side, they are on the outside, not only outside the house but outside of – at least for the time being – the kingdom of God. So who gets it right; who’s on the inside? All those crazy people stuffed into that little house packed in so tight that there wasn’t even room to eat – fishermen and tax collectors and diseased, demon-possessed people of every kind. Jesus points to that busted-up, broken, filthy cross section of humanity and says, “This is my family!” Not the smart and powerful guys from Jerusalem; not the biological relatives who are worried about Jesus’ mental state and want to keep him safe – but the bunch of misfits who have nothing better to do than crowd around Jesus and listen to him talk – those people who are doing the will of God, those are the people Jesus’ calls family.

And do you know what? Jesus is also talking about you. You who are doing the will of God by simply coming here to listen to Jesus are his family. Sure, the world may call you crazy. And, when you stop to think about it, there is something kind of crazy about waking up early every Sunday morning, to sit in a place with a bunch of people you don’t really know, to hear a guy in a robe call you a sinner and then to forgive your sins, to listen to some words from a book that’s thousands of years old, to eat bread that is actually body and drink wine that is actually blood and to pray, praise and give thanks to a God you cannot see for a salvation that can only be believed. Is that crazy? No, that’s Christianity. Amen.

Mark 2:23-28 - Jesus Ends the Legal Debate - June 13, 2021

If you pay attention to politics (which, by the way, I don’t recommend doing these days if you want to live a long and happy life), you know that when you boil it all down, all it is is a great big debate over laws. Which are fair, which should be enacted, which should be enforced. That’s what government does. But do you know what? Legal debates don’t only happen in capitol buildings – they happen right in our own heads, too. There’s a legal debate perpetually going on in our own hearts and minds. What is the law? Did I break it or keep it? Should I feel guilty? Why do I always feel guilty? How do I get rid of this guilt? I know the debate. You know the debate. Today, Jesus ends the debate.

The Pharisees thought they had Jesus nailed dead to rights under God’s 3rd commandment to remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy (Exodus 20:8). You think big brother and cancel culture is bad today, picture this: Jesus and his disciples were simply walking through a grain field and some of the disciples (not Jesus) began grabbing handfuls of grain as they were walking through – and the Pharisees were on them like white on rice – accusing Jesus’ disciples of breaking the Law. Did they have a point? No, not according to God’s Word. This wasn’t stealing, this was permitted under God’s OT Law (Deuteronomy 23:25). Nor was this a violation of the third commandment – because God had not forbidden activities essential to human life – like, for example, eating – on the Sabbath Day (Deuteronomy 5:12-15). This “regulation” against grabbing a handful of grain for a snack was simply one of 39 types of “work” the rabbis had declared forbidden on the Sabbath day. [1] Jesus ends the debate by referring to a similar incident in the life of King David: “If you’re upset that my disciples are grabbing a snack as they’re walking through a field, why aren’t you equally – or even more – upset that David and men ate the Bread of Presence, which is not lawful for anyone to eat, except for the priests.” If God didn’t condemn David and his men for clearly breaking one of God’s commands, why would God condemn Jesus’ disciples for breaking a man-made regulation? In other words, Jesus is making the point that in both cases there was a higher law at work: the law of love and mercy. In Matthew’s parallel account, Jesus says that God desire[s] mercy, and not sacrifice (Matthew 12:7). The Pharisees come at Jesus with law – so Jesus hits them right between the eyes with a higher law: love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18).

Is that where this text hit you? Why would it? What do you care about Sabbath days or holy bread or grabbing a handful of grain – because as we heard in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, those rules don’t apply to us anymore (Colossians 2:13-17)? And yet, Jesus’ words should hit you right between the eyes. Why? Hear it again: have you never read what David did? The Greek makes it clear that Jesus was expecting a “yes” answer. Yes, the Pharisees had certainly read this account. Have you? Have you ever read 1 Samuel 21 for yourself? Have you ever read the Old Testament? (Roughly 70% of God’s words to us are contained in the Old Testament – doesn’t that fact alone make it worth our time?) Even if you have, do you remember it, did you digest it, do you understand it? The Law hits us this morning by showing us that even though God wants us to cherish and constantly be meditating on his Word, all too often we think that if we sit through a 60 minute service once a week we’ve spent enough time in the Bible.

That’s what the Law feels like when it hits you right between your eyes. It doesn’t leave any room for excuses or justifications or comparisons to other people. It’s just you and God’s holy law – and it’s not much of debate, is it? God wants us to meditate on his Word day and night and we can’t do it (Psalm 119:97). So we adjust it to something we can do. Maybe we commit to reading a daily devotion. Maybe we commit to listening to the Bible on our way to work. Maybe we even commit to reading the entire Old Testament. (Someone estimated that it takes around 52 hours to read the entire Old Testament. [2] That means that if you read the Bible just three hours a day you could read the entire Old Testament in less than 18 days.)

Now that’s doable, right? A few weeks without TV, we can do that, right? Sure. That’s what the Pharisees thought. They thought that by not picking a handful of grain on the Sabbath they were pleasing God. They knew they couldn’t keep the spirit of the 3rd commandment, so they adjusted it to something they could do – just as you and I can commit right here and now to reading through the entire Old Testament and know that we could probably be done before the 4th of July. So what’s the problem? Well, when do you know that you’re done – really done – reading God’s Word? When is it ok for you to stop? What if your eyes begin to glaze over as you’re reading the long lists of names? What if you begin to nod off? What if you read for 10 minutes and when you’re done you can’t remember what you read about? Or what if your mind starts to wander away from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the problems of yesterday, today and tomorrow? Does it still count then?

The point being: you can’t fulfill the law by customizing it to your own standards; by making it “doable.” Allow me to illustrate using the recently lifted mask mandate. The mandate said that you had to wear a mask. But then the experts and media layered all sorts of additional regulations on the mandate. It couldn’t just be a single layer – it had to be double-layered. Then it was two or three masks – with an N-95 being the gold standard. But that’s not all. You better not touch it, adjust it, scratch your nose or take a sip of water – because then you’ve contaminated it. Everyone who thinks that the mask mandate was easy, simple, wonderful and virtuous – didn’t really understand how strictly you had to follow the rules in order for it to be at all effective. So what did everyone do? They lowered the bar to a standard they could do. “I’ll wear the mask, but keep it under my nose.” “I’ll wear a breathable mask.” “I’ll wear my mask except when I need to speak or eat or breath.” We all did it. Don’t deny it. Why did we do it? Because it’s doable. The mandate to wear a mask of a material and in a manner which provides 100% protection for you against others and for others against you was impossible. And what do you do with an impossible-to-keep Law? You lower the standard to something you can do.

Now, lowering the standards of a mask mandate is one thing – one thing that will certainly not affect where you spend your eternity. Lowering God’s holy Law is a different story. If you think you can keep the 3rd commandment and make the guilt you are feeling for not treasuring and gladly hearing and reading God’s Word go away by committing to reading it this month or over the next year or by having it playing in the background as you drive to work – then you’ve successfully become a Pharisee. That’s exactly what the Pharisees did. They took God’s 3rd commandment – which was not primarily intended to deal with what you do with your hands on the Sabbath, but rather the attitude of your heart – and added a whole bunch of their own rules and regulations that, in their mind, were more “doable.” Now, you’d think that adding laws would increase your guilt; but the reality is that when we create our own rules, we write them specifically to fit what we’re already doing. (For example, the official speed limit on the Beltline is 55 MPH. But what is the “unofficial” speed limit for you? 57? 59? 61? 65?). Does it work? No. Whether we add to or subtract from God’s Law, it stands rigid and absolute, unbending in any way; it’s still undoable.

So what’s the answer? The answer is to understand the main purpose of the Law – that God didn’t give it to us as a ladder we could climb into heaven but as a sharp double-edged sword that puts our hope of saving ourselves to death. Paul wrote: apart from the law, sin is dead. Once I was alive without the law. But when this commandment came, sin came to life, and I died. This commandment that was intended to result in life actually resulted in death for me. You see, sin, seizing the opportunity provided by this commandment, deceived me and put me to death through it (Romans 7:8-11). Don’t treat God’s Law like we all did the mask mandate: don’t twist it, pervert it, add to it or subtract from it. Rather, when you hear God’s Law, keep in mind the main purpose: no one will be declared righteous in his sight by works of the law, for through the law we become aware of sin (Romans 3:20). Hear the Law put you to death. That’s the first answer that puts the legal debate to rest.   

Don’t like that answer? Neither do I. Is there another one? What is the answer to the Law of a holy God which we are each obligated to obey and that none of us can keep? What is the answer to death? Resurrection! Paul confesses the truth in Ephesians 2: you were dead in your trespasses and sins…but God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses (Ephesians 2:1, 4-5). The answer to the impossible, undoable Law of God is God…specifically, God’s Son, Jesus Christ – the Lord even of the Sabbath. For comparison’s sake, if you find that you can’t wear the mask like you’re mandated to, what should you have done? I suppose you could have gone to Anthony Fauci or Janel Heinrich and told them – “I can’t do it!” – and pleaded for mercy. Now, I’m not sure that they would have had mercy, but here’s what happens when you come to Jesus, the Lord…of the Sabbath, and tell him you can’t do it: he says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. This is first a chronological reality: God created Adam long before he handed down the 3rd commandment. This is second of all a theological truth: God didn’t establish the 3rd commandment or any other commandment for his own good, but for ours. Through Ezekiel God reveals the reason he gave the 3rd commandment: I…gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them, so that they could know that I, the LORD, am the one who sanctifies them (Ezekiel 20:12). The OT Sabbath wasn’t something the people did for God; it was something God did for his people. It was a day for them to rest from their labors to remember God’s promise to provide for their bodily life. More importantly, it was a day for them to find true rest for their guilty consciences in the good news that God was going to send a Savior from sin.

Paul uses a different illustration in Colossians 2: these [the rules regarding food and drink and Sabbath days] are a shadow of the things that were coming, but the body belongs to Christ (Colossians 2:17). What’s a shadow? A shadow indicates what’s coming toward you. But what happens when that object comes into view? The shadow passes away – or, at least, you don’t pay attention to it anymore. The 3rd commandment was a shadow of Christ. It was specifically designed to expose the fact that they couldn’t keep the 3rd commandment well enough to satisfy his holy requirements; that they couldn’t find rest by tweaking or customizing the Law to fit their own lifestyles. There’s no rest there. Rest can only be found in Jesus. He could, he would, he did all that God commanded and demanded of you! He kept all of God’s commandments perfectly. He was never idolatrous, blasphemous, disrespectful, murderous, lustful, greedy, or covetous. And yet, because we have been, he was brutally, eternally and damnably punished on the cross to pay the price for us.

Only Jesus can end the legal debate going on in your own head and heart – to the Law that convicts and kills you. Jesus is the only answer because only under the arms he stretched out on the cross can we find protection from God’s holy judgment. Only in the water that was poured over your head at a font like this can you be reminded that you don’t live under the Law, you live under grace (Romans 6:14). Only in the Absolution can you find God’s verdict of acquittal to quiet your conscience. Only in the body and blood you receive at this altar can you find the assurance that the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord of the Law, the Lord of all Laws has taken away your sins.

Too much of our lives is consumed in a great debate over laws and rules and regulations. Not just in politics but even in our own heads. Wouldn’t you just like to put the debate to rest? Jesus does. Take the law seriously, as you should, and it will kill you. That sounds terrible, but it’s actually good – because once you’re dead then the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection can bring you to life. Take some time regularly to rest from your labors and pick up your Bible – because there you will find true rest for your soul in Jesus. There can be no debate about that. Amen.  

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/39_Melachot

[2] www.euxton.com

Mark 2:18-22 - Jesus Blows Up Religion - June 6, 2021

In comparison to the other gospels, Mark’s gospel reads almost like an action thriller. Even though we’re only in the second chapter, Jesus has already been incredibly busy. He’s been baptized and tempted (Mark 1:9-13). He’s driven out demons (Mark 1:21-28); relieved the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-34); preached throughout Galilee (Mark 1:35-39); cleansed a leper (Mark 1:40-45); and gave a paralytic his legs back (Mark 2:1-12). But in our text for this morning, Jesus does something no one would expect: he blows up religion.

We tend to think of Jesus as a kind of a kind, gentle, even somewhat timid teacher. But when you read the actual accounts of his ministry, you get a totally different picture. Jesus seems to go out of his way to poke the tiger, to offend the elitists of his time: the religious leaders. He knew that the Pharisees are spying on him and his disciples, trying find some way to discredit him – in today’s terms – “cancel” him from Israelite society. And yet when all of the other devout Jews – the Pharisees and John’s disciples included – were fasting, Jesus allowed his disciples to eat. This was a brazen, “in-your-face” rejection of a near universally accepted and centuries old tradition. It would be like us not putting up a tree at Christmas or not having lilies here on Easter. Why would anyone blow up such a precious, almost sacred, tradition?

The first reason is rooted right in the Old Testament. God had only commanded his chosen people to fast on one day of the year – Yom Kippur, the Great Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29, 31; 23:27). On that day God wanted every Israelite to go hungry from sunrise to sunset – as a visible sign of their contrition and repentance over their sin. Certainly, the Israelites could fast at other times for other reasons – especially in times of crisis, death, or when taking a vow – but those fasts were to be voluntary, private and personal (Jeremiah 52; Zechariah 8:19; Matthew 6:16-18). The Jews later added additional fasting days to mourn the destruction of Jerusalem (Zechariah 7) and very devout Jews would fast every Monday and Thursday – to recall that Moses went up Mt. Sinai on a Thursday and came down on a Monday (Luke 18:12). The thought was: “If a little fasting is good, more is better.” For devout Jews, fasting was a big deal; something they did over a hundred days a year.

But we’re not Jews and we aren’t living in the OT; what should we think about fasting? Well, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Martin Luther said that it “may serve a good purpose” in preparing to receive Holy Communion (Holy Communion, IV), by using our stomachs as an instrument to focus our hearts and minds on our desperate need to eat this meal. Many doctors and dieticians recommend alternating periods of fasting and feasting in order to maintain good health. And, today, I will agree with them. Not necessarily because fasting leads to better physical health – I’m no doctor – but because if we can retake control of our stomachs, we can be set free from the false religion of dieting.

Yep, you heard that right. Dieting has become a religion in our country, a religion run by unordained priests who claim to possess secret nutritional knowledge, who demand costly sacrifices of time and money, who hold out the ever-elusive promise that you too can have a perfectly sculpted physique and a perfectly healthy body – if you simply buy their books and do exactly what they tell you. And what do you get out of it? Guilt. You eat a slice of wedding or graduation cake and you feel guilty. So you confess your sin: “I shouldn’t have eaten that. I’m bad.” You vow to do penance: “I’ll just eat a salad tomorrow.” You engage in cult-like rituals: “I’ll go for a walk or run.” Guilt…confession…penance…ritual? It’s a religion! And do you know what happens? The religion of diet and exercise robs you of the joy of freely eating the food that your good and gracious God has provided for you (James 1:17).

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that all dieting or fasting is bad. While God has not commanded us to fast in the New Testament (Colossians 2:20-23), fasting can be a good way to discipline ourselves, to remind our bodies that they belong to us – not the other way around (1 Corinthians 9:27). It’s good to occasionally remind yourself that you don’t have to eat every time you feel hungry; that not every desire needs to be acted on; not every itch needs to be scratched. Fasting can help your prayer life – it frees you to fold your hands rather than cook; your mouth from chewing to speaking to your Father in heaven. Fasting can help you recognize and confess your sinfulness, too. When your stomach aches with hunger your body is reminding you of the poor, miserable, decaying and dying and starving sinner that you are. It reminds us that we are little more than dust and that to dust we will return (Genesis 3:19). So fasting can be good. But here’s the key: it’s not good enough to please God. God is not more or less pleased if you eat only vegetables or only protein or pass on the gluten; whether you drink soy milk or Miller Lite; whether you eat dessert or not. Even when God commanded his OT people to fast, he didn’t do it for his own good, but for theirs. But in the NT, whether you fast or diet or not is irrelevant to your relationship with God.

But back to the question at hand: why didn’t Jesus’ disciples fast like other devout Jews? Jesus answers: The friends of the bridegroom cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. Jesus’ point is pretty obvious, isn’t it? You don’t fast at a wedding – you feast. And being with Jesus is like being at a wedding reception that never ends. Where Jesus is, there is joy. He turns mourning into dancing, grief to joy, death to life (Psalm 30:11-12). He forgives sins and raises the dead. Fasting and Jesus simply don’t go together. He goes on: but the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then on that day they will fast. Jesus is most likely alluding to Good Friday. I doubt the disciples enjoyed an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet as their Savior hung on the cross bleeding and dying. But, when Jesus is present, there can only be joy and feasting. That’s one of the reasons why if you add up the calendar days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, you come up with 46 days, not the 40 days of Lent we usually refer to. Why? The Sundays don’t count. Sundays are a break from the fast of Lent. They are little, weekly reminders that while Jesus would die, he would also rise again – which is a reason to feast, not fast.

But the real issue runs deeper than what or when you choose to eat. It has to do with the demon called Religion and all the ways we cook up to try to get right with God on our own. John Calvin famously stated that “the human mind is…a perpetual forge of idols.” [1] In other words, our minds can take a good thing, a blessing from God, and make an idol of it. Take fasting for example. Like the nutritionists say, fasting can be a good and healthy practice. But if we take fasting and make a good, meritorious work out of it – one that makes us right with God – then we’ve turned it into an idol. And then all you’re left with is Christless, grace-less, salvation-less Religion (just ask any of your Catholic friends who give up meat during Lent – ask them if they feel joyful and free or guilty and burdened).

Jesus illustrates how salvation by grace and salvation by works are incompatible: No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the patch shrinks, the new tears away from the old, and a worse tear is made. Jesus didn’t come to be a patch-job on the Law given on Mt. Sinai, a band-aid to be applied to the few times we’ve ripped up God’s Law. You can’t stitch Jesus on the torn rags of religion and have him stick. He’ll rip the thing to shreds, just like the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom on Good Friday (Matthew 27:51). That’s the day God put Religion out of business once and for all. When Jesus, God’s only-begotten Son, laid down his life for the sins of the world – the sinful world and God were reconciled once and for all (2 Corinthians 5:19-21). How can you possibly improve on what Jesus did? How can you add to it? In fact, if you try, Jesus says that you end up destroying both. If you try to add your good works to Jesus’ completed work of salvation, you end up voiding the blank check of God’s grace. So what should you do with the old Religion of works? Well, what do you do with an old, worn out pair of pants when you have a perfectly good new pair? You throw them away! And what are you going to do with the old, torn up cloth of your good works when God has already covered you in righteousness in Baptism (Galatians 3:27)? You’ll get rid of your own filthy rags and put on the spotless robe of Jesus’ righteousness instead (Ephesians 5:25-27).

Jesus paints another picture of the incompatibility of grace and works: No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will pour out, and the skins will be ruined. Instead, new wine is poured into new wineskins. Trying to squeeze Jesus into Religion is like pouring bubbly, fermenting wine into wineskins that are all stiff and stretched out. They can’t handle the pressure. They will burst Jesus says. That word, burst, comes from the same word as the word fulfill – as in, do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy them but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). Jesus figuratively poured himself into the old wineskins of the Law and filled them up to overflowing by his perfect life and innocent death. Jesus “ruined” the power of the Law that stood over us by keeping it for us (2 Corinthians 3:7-11).

Therefore, Jesus is the end of Religion; the end of negotiating with God, the end of deal-making and bargaining, of obedience and commandment keeping as a way to earn God’s favor. God doesn’t want it; you don’t need it. You are already at peace with God through faith in Jesus (Romans 5:1). That’s the good news that Christianity is supposed to be broadcasting to the world. Christianity is not about rules and regulations but about the good news that Jesus has fulfilled and therefore saved us from the demands of the Law. Don’t believe those demonic “coexist” bumper stickers that equate Christianity to Islam and Judaism and Hinduism. Those man-made religions are all about trying to deal with God on our terms – in terms of obedience and law-keeping. It’s a waste of time and energy – and, eventually, eternity. God and man are reconciled in Christ. You and God are reconciled and at peace in through faith in Christ. Period. And that’s a reason to rejoice.

You may want to diet or exercise – your doctor may even order you to do it, but don’t do it to make yourself right with God. You will want to keep the commandments, but don’t do it because you think that the filthy rags of your good works (Isaiah 64:6) will ever appease God’s wrath over your sins. You will want to come here regularly to remember your Baptism, to hear the words of Absolution, to receive the body and blood of your Savior – and you might even want to fast before church on Communion Sundays – but don’t do it for God, do it for yourself – to remind yourself of how sinful you are and how badly you need to receive God’s grace in this meal. Go ahead and fast and diet and exercise and obey with all your heart – but when you’re all dried up and worn out and starving, come here. Come here to feast on the Gospel truth that the bridegroom is here with tables overflowing with forgiveness, joy, and salvation. Because when you have Jesus, you don’t fast, you feast. Amen.   

[1] https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.iii.xii.html

Romans 8:14-17 - The Trinity Makes Us Family - May 30, 2021

Every year we set aside the first Sunday after Pentecost to marvel at the majesty and mystery of the Holy Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the heavenly things (John 3:12) Jesus referred to in the gospel lesson that no eye has seen and no ear has heard and no human mind has conceived (1 Corinthians 2:9). Even a systematic confession of this doctrine – like the Athanasian Creed – isn’t an attempt to explain the Trinity, but rather is simply a summary of what the Bible teaches – nothing more and nothing less – leaving the mystery where it will always remain: far beyond our comprehension. The essence, the unity, the independence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one of the many truths we can accept only through God’s gift of faith, not by reason.

So why spend an entire Sunday on a doctrine that is literally beyond comprehension? How can a feeble sinner like myself write a sermon on a subject that is, admittedly, far beyond my comprehension? Well, I didn’t. The Apostle Paul, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, did. In a way, Paul leads us to look at the Trinity from the point of view of a child. Do children understand all the connections between the people they will eventually learn to know as their relatives? Can they comprehend how their mother and father met and what their wedding was like? Do they understand what their parents know and are capable of and how they were thinking about them long before they were born? Of course not. But what children do learn, very quickly, is that there are two people in particular who come when they cry, that two people in particular change their diapers and bath them and feed them, that there are two people in particular who are always there for them and always doing what is best for them. While young children can’t understand the essence and extent of the relationships of the families they are born into, they do understand who it is that is active in caring for them. In Romans chapter 8, Paul guides us to a better, fuller faith in the mystery of the Trinity by showing us that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all active in making us Family – a family we join not by birth or marriage, but by adoption.

When we think of adoption in our culture, we usually think of the adoption of infants and children. But in the Roman culture Paul lived in – and in other cultures around the world today – adults (and especially adult males) are often adopted into other families. For example, in Japan many of the family companies (Suzuki, etc.) are run by adopted sons. This practice keeps the company in the family name even if there is no biological son either available or capable of running the company. In 2011, 90% of the 81,000 adoptions in Japan were of adults. [1] In this case, adoption results in some drastic and immediate changes – changes an adult would notice and immediately understand. He knows that his new privileges, status and responsibilities are a gift; a direct result of his adoption into a new family. When the Triune God adopted us into his family through faith in Jesus, we also experience immediate changes in our lives. These changes are what Paul highlights in these verses.

Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. The first change we experience is that instead of being led by the devil or the world we are led by the Spirit of God. Are you led by the Spirit? Consider this: Why did you choose to come to worship today? It’s a beautiful day, right in the middle of the long Memorial Day weekend… there are countless other things you could be doing right now. So why did you choose worship? You were led by the Spirit. This happens more often than we realize. Every time we say no to sin and yes to righteousness (Titus 2:12), the Spirit is leading and guiding our lives. When begin and end every day with prayer, when we give thanks to God before every meal, when we place the needs of others before our own, when we work diligently even though we could slack off – those are all evidence that the Spirit is in charge and is leading us through life. How does the Spirit lead us? Is it like the GPS in our cars? Does He whisper in our ears or appear to us in visions? No – at least the Bible hasn’t promised that to us. Remember, we’re thinking in terms of a family here. How did your parents lead you when you were a child? Through their words (Why haven’t we all jumped off a bridge by now? Because we remember our mothers warning us not to jump off any bridges, even if all our friends are!). The Holy Spirit leads us by speaking to us. The Bible is not a book of fanciful tales imagined by men, but, Peter writes: no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were being carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). The Holy Spirit speaks to us, leads us through the Word. The fact that you are here – being led by the Spirit of God to receive the Word, is proof that you are a [son] of God. And that means that you – whether male or female – are entitled to all of the privileges of sonship. 

One of those privileges is that the Spirit changes our relationship with God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery so that you are afraid again. The first question is: why were we / why would we be afraid of God? Paul says fear is the result of a spirit of slavery. What is that? It’s the natural religion of all people – the innate idea that we must earn salvation ourselves, by our own good works and obedience to the Law. If that’s true, think of your life over the past week – how do you feel standing here before a holy, righteous God? How could you feel anything but fear? If your relationship with God depends on your obedience, how could you feel like anything but a slave to a Law you can’t obey and a God you can never satisfy?

But through the Gospel the Spirit leads you in the exact opposite direction: you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we call out, “Abba, Father!” Children learn almost immediately that they don’t have to make an appointment to meet with their parents. They don’t wonder if 2am is a good time to get them out of bed. They aren’t afraid to ask for anything – especially when they’re hurt, scared or in danger. They are confident that their parents love them and will listen to and answer them and give them what is best. That is the kind of confidence the Spirit instills in us through faith in Jesus. Not fearful of punishment but confident in God’s love and mercy and wisdom, so that we can approach the triune God as boldly and confidently as dear children ask their dear Father. (Luther’s Explanation of the Address)

At the same time, contrary to what many think, this new, intimate relationship with God as our Father is not a right every human being has from birth; Scripture makes it clear it is a privilege possessed only by believers (Isaiah 59:2; Jeremiah 14:11-12). Why? Because only through faith in Christ can we believe the extent to which God our Father loves us: that he knew us and chose us before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-6), that he stitched us together in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139:13), that long before we were born he sent his Son to pay the ultimate price to redeem us – and he did all of that when we were his enemies (Romans 5:8). But the Father’s love overcame all of that and redeemed us from our slavery and adopted us as sons. And now, because of the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work in our hearts, we can confidently come to the Creator’s throne and boldly ask him for anything, for in Christ, he is our dad, our Abba, our Father.

But the Spirit’s work doesn’t stop there: the Spirit himself joins our spirit in testifying that we are God’s children. At one time or another, we all ask: “am I really God’s child?” When do we ask that question? I think there are two main situations: 1) When we’ve done or said something terrible; when guilt and shame overwhelm us; when we fear that we have disqualified ourselves from any relationship with God; and 2) when life takes a turn for the worse, when we suffer some accident, some tragedy, some sickness or disease that would seem to prove that God has abandoned us. How to we respond to those circumstances? Sometimes we can tell ourselves: “yes, I love God and trust Jesus, I am his child.” And when we say that with confidence, that is the Holy Spirit working with our own spirit. But when we are really in trouble, we need more than self-assurance. And that’s when the Spirit steps in with the assurance that we aren’t God’s children just because we say so, but because God says so. How? Where? Through the objective means of grace. Just as a child can point to his birth certificate as proof that he is his parents’ child – so the Holy Spirit points Christians to their baptism, their spiritual birth certificate, which proves that they are members of God’s family – and which nothing can change. When Satan and our own conscience try to convince us that our sins have disqualified us from membership in God’s family, the Spirit sends men to announce that our sins have been absolved, forgiven, removed forever from God’s sight (John 20:22-23). When we fear that we are illegitimate children Jesus gives us his own body and blood to remind us that through him we are as legitimate as he is.

We are led through life by the Spirit, the God of the universe calls us children, and there’s one more wonderful benefit we possess by virtue of our adoption into the Trinity’s family: Now if we are children, we are also heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, since we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him. By his use of the term heirs, Paul alludes to a topic most of us would probably rather not think about: the writing of a last will and testament. It reminds us of death and sorrow and loss. On the other hand, if a rich uncle dies, we are probably eager to hear if we made it into his will. In this last verse the Holy Spirit convinces us that we have something better than a rich uncle. God has actually named us, confessed sinners, in his will. And he hasn’t just promised us a tiny portion of the inheritance – a couple of dusty knick-knacks – he has actually named us as fellow heirs with Christ. Most married couples have a joint bank account. If you do, it means that you have access to 100% of the balance. Everything that belongs to Christ belongs to us. We have access to all of God’s blessings, all of His promises, his entire inheritance and his mansion in heaven. And the best part is that this is one account that we didn’t have to work year, one day or even one minute to fill – because our brother Jesus did it all. Jesus earned all of God’s riches for us by dying in our place and rising from the grave. His holy blood washes our debts away and his perfect life is credited to our account. Now, even though we will share in his suffering in this life, we have his guarantee that we will share in his glory in heaven.

Until we reach that glory, the Trinity will continue to be a mystery we will never understand – one that we can only confess and believe. But by the adoption we have received through the means of grace, our place in the Trinity’s Family is secure. The Spirit leads us. The Father calls us his children. And we are Coheirs with Christ. What more can we say? How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of [the Triune] God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1) Amen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_adult_adoption

Ezekiel 37:1-14 - Can These Bones Live? - May 23, 2021

I’m reasonably confident that if I were to ask almost anyone here this morning to describe the unique work or role of God the Father and God the Son, without too much trouble you could respond that God the Father is the Creator and God the Son is the Redeemer. But what about the third person of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit. What is his role; his work? How would you describe it? Maybe you still remember the confirmation class answer: “The Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier.” But what does that mean? Today, it means that the Holy Spirit is the answer to the question that believers have asked since the beginning of time: Can these bones live?

The immediate context of this question the LORD asked Ezekiel was the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian army right around 596 BC. For centuries the Israelites had ignored and even laughed at God’s warnings of impending doom (Amos 4:6-13) – but now that the Lord had proven good to his Word, their tune had changed drastically. The Lord sums up the national mood in verse 11: our bones are dried up. Our hope is lost. We have been completely cut off. It’s hard to blame them for their despair. They had been conquered. They had been ripped out of their homes and exiled to a foreign nation. And now their temple – their point of contact with God’s forgiveness and love – had been destroyed. They, as a nation, more than that – as God’s chosen people (Deuteronomy 7:6-8) – were as good as dead. “Could those bones live?”

This was neither the first nor the last time that God’s people appeared to have very good reason to despair Think of Abraham and Sarah. He’s 100 years old; she’s 90 – and the Lord had tied all of his promises to this elderly couple having a son (Genesis 15:1-6). “Can these dead bodies really produce a son?” Fast forward to Israel’s return from exile. 70 years had passed since God had sent hundreds of thousands of them into captivity in Babylon to discipline them for their idolatry. Now roughly 50,000 of them have returned – by God’s grace – to Jerusalem. But it’s nothing more than a deserted heap of blackened, broken stones. “Can this city be rebuilt?” (Ezra 2:64-66; Ezekiel 7:11) Fast forward another 400 years. All of God’s promises to Israel are tied to a king who would come from the House of David (2 Samuel 7:12-16). But what did David’s house look like on that first Christmas? Isaiah called it a dead stump (Isaiah 11:1). They’ve been colonized by the Roman Empire. Their “king” – Herod – is little more than the puppet of Rome. For all intents and purposes, the House of David had been reduced to a poor carpenter from Nazareth named Joseph and an even poorer virgin named Mary. “Can this dead, dry stump of a family line – the line of the Savior – live?”

Not much has changed, has it? Don’t we ask the very same question: “can these bones live?” Who of us hasn’t stood at the grave of a loved one and wondered: “will I ever see them again?” Those of us who look in the mirror and have come to the realization that no matter how much we exercise, no matter how carefully we watch our diet, no matter how good our doctors are – that we are slowly but surely dying; doesn’t it make you ask: “can these bones live?” Whether you’ve been married for a week and a half or for half a century – we’ve all had those days when we’ve asked ourselves: “can this marriage survive?” What about all those former believers who – by all appearances – have had their faith swallowed up by the temptations and empty promises of the world: “will they be saved?” For decades now our Synod and her congregations have been heavily focused on outreach – on gaining new members – and yet, what has the result been? WELS membership has been flat for decades, many churches have closed their doors, and our nation is more secular and pagan than ever before. “Can the church survive in America for much longer?” Most importantly, we all have to look at our lives, the days and weeks and years we’ve spent wanting to do good and yet just doing evil over and over again and don’t we all have to cry out with Paul: what a miserable wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death (Romans 7:24)? “Can we really hope to live – and not suffer – in eternity?”

All the observable evidence says: “No! Absolutely not!” Dead people – even dead believers – don’t suddenly rise to life. Despite centuries of research and billions of dollars spent, science hasn’t figured out how to reverse the aging process. Young people who have fallen from faith aren’t streaming back to church, repentant and looking for forgiveness. Marriage often seems easier to escape than to heal. Every poll says that Christianity is dying in our country. [1] We all know that it doesn’t really matter what you or I commit to as we leave here today – regarding whatever sin or sins plague us – we will all need to come right back here next week confessing our sins all over again. “Can these bones live?” All the evidence, everything we’ve ever seen or experienced says “No. It’s hopeless.”

Thank God there is another answer. Ezekiel sets an important example for us when it comes to facing and responding to the truly difficult questions of life. When the Lord asks him Son of man, can these dry bones live? Ezekiel doesn’t look in the mirror, he doesn’t look to his reason or his own ingenuity, he doesn’t look to the brightest experts or the most advanced science. Where does he look? To his almighty Lord: LORD God, you know. Why is that important? Because God knows something we don’t know. God knows something we can’t know unless and until he reveals it to us. God knows the awesome power of the Holy Spirit.

But before we get there, there’s one more thing we need to repent of, change our minds about: our tendency to judge God on our own terms, limiting him to the extent of our own knowledge and understanding. Partially as a by-product of our own arrogance and partially as a by-product of a culture which relentlessly commands us to “follow the science” – we follow the science (that is, the observable data). The science says that humans can be born only according to the established principles of biology and that broken bodies can be healed only according to the advances of medicine. Science defines sin as merely a character flaw or failure or a mental illness that can be cured through therapy and medication. Science says that pagan unbelief is the only right religion – because if we can’t observe and test God, he cannot exist. Repent – that is, stop trying to fit God into the gray matter in between your ears. As God told Zechariah 70 years later when the remnant had returned to Jerusalem, he isn’t limited by our rules of reason, medicine, biology or psychology (Zechariah 8:4-6).

Don’t believe me? Put your God-given reason to its proper use: look at the recorded evidence. 100 year old Abraham and 90 year old Sarah – with their old, dried up bodies – had a son, named Isaac (Genesis 21). Both the city and the temple in Jerusalem were rebuilt – in spite of skeptical and apathetic Israelites and the interference of hostile neighbors (Ezra 5-6). God gave new life to the House of David by completely ignoring the laws of reproduction and causing the virgin Mary to become the mother of his Son (Matthew 1; Luke 2). Jesus himself didn’t give much credence to the laws of nature – he turned water into wine (John 2:1-11), he walked on the waves of a stormy sea (Matthew 14:22-33), he cured people with incurable diseases (Luke 17:11-19), made the lame walk (John 5:1-15) and raised dead people out of their caskets and graves to life (Luke 7:11-17; 8:40-56; John 11) – and he never once consulted any scientific “experts” to ask permission. More importantly, he did the utterly impossible for our salvation. He lived a perfect life – which science says is impossible (don’t we even say “no one’s perfect”?) (1 Peter 1:19). He carried the sins of the world to the cross (John 1:29), he suffered an eternity of hell for all humanity in a span of three hours (Matthew 27:45-46), he rose again – under his own power – to life again three days later (John 10:17-18), he even defied the laws of gravity and physics when he ascended into heaven 40 days later (Acts 1:1-11). In view of that evidence: who are we to stand here and question or judge or doubt what the Holy Spirit can or can’t do?

The Holy Spirit didn’t look at that valley of dry bones the same way Ezekiel did. He didn’t throw his hands in the air and say: “Science, medicine and reason say that dry, dead bones can’t live – so I guess that’s that?” In the same way, when God the Holy Spirit looks at our sinfulness, he doesn’t look at what medicine, psychology, statistics or even everyday ordinary common sense says. He doesn’t agree that dead people must stay dead; that hardened unbelievers can’t be brought to faith; that sheep who have strayed can’t be brought back into the fold; that marriages in crisis are doomed to die; or that through the forgiveness he provides in Word and Sacrament can’t overcome any and every sin or habit or addiction that afflicts us.

That’s because the Holy Spirit doesn’t see things like we do: through the strict categories of possible and impossible. Jesus said that with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). The Holy Spirit doesn’t operate in the realm of the possible and probable but the impossible and improbable. The Holy Spirit clothed those dead, dry bones with tendons and ligaments and flesh – and then breathed the breath of life into them. The Holy Spirit brought about 3000 people to faith in a matter of hours on Pentecost (Acts 2:41). Apparently the Holy Spirit doesn’t have much regard for what we think is possible or impossible.

The question is: how? How does the Holy Spirit choose to accomplish these seemingly impossible things? How did the Holy Spirit bring that valley of dry bones to life? Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.” The Holy Spirit brought those dead, dry bones to life through a – no doubt dull, dry – sermon preached by Ezekiel. How did the Holy Spirit bring 3000 to faith on Pentecost? Not through the rushing wind or the tongues of flame – but through the sermons preached and the baptism administered by Peter and the other disciples (Acts 2:11; 38-41). In fact, that’s a common theme in Scripture, isn’t it? The universe came into existence; Adam received life; Abraham and Sarah had a son; the Israelites returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple, and the Son of God was born of a virgin woman – through the Word of God; simply because God said so.

“Because God said so” – if you want to know where and how the Holy Spirit works, that’s where you should look – to God’s Word. “Because God said so” is the foundation for our faith and our lives. All who died in faith will physically rise to life – because God said so (John 11:25). The Church will endure persecution and pandemics – because God said so (Matthew 16:18). Unbelievers can and will be brought to faith through water and the Word – whenever and wherever God says so (John 3:8). Families and marriages can be reconciled by the power of forgiveness – because God said so (Colossians 3:13). Sins of habit and sins of choice can be conquered by the power of Baptism – because God says so (Romans 6:1-11). The sins you’ve committed every day of your life have been forgiven and removed forever – because God told Jesus to pay for them and he did (John 19:30). That drooping, decaying, dying body you see in the mirror every day will live forever through receiving the Medicine of Immortality in Holy Communion – because God says so (John 6:27; Romans 6:22-23).

“Can these bones live?” No. Not if you’re looking at them through the lens of human reason. But think of it this way: if fickle, feeble humans like us can develop a vaccine for a novel virus, can build cars that don’t need gas, can send rockets to Mars – who are we to question what God the Holy Spirit can do through water, bread and wine connected to his Word? Yes, even through this dry, boring sermon the Holy Spirit is creating and strengthening saving faith in those dead, dry bones of yours. Because God says so (Romans 10:17). Amen. 

[1] https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/

Acts 1:1-11 - Ascension Life Matters - May 16, 2021

For several years now America has been swept up in a debate over which lives matter. You’ve seen the signs and bumper stickers: Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. Brown lives matter. Yellow lives matter. Eventually, once you’ve run through the whole spectrum of colors, even though it’s not politically correct to say, you get to the point where all lives matter. No, this is not going to be a lecture on race relations in our country today. Today we’re going to add another acronym to the list: ALM – Ascension Life Matters.

Now, as you were driving here this morning, you may have seen clear evidence to the contrary. You probably saw people walking their dogs, working in their yards, towing their boats to the lake, headed to the hardware store to pick up material for a DIY project – you saw with your own eyes that to many people, Ascension does not matter – not even a little bit. But Ascension does matter. Sure, out there it’s just another ordinary Sunday. But in here it’s a special festival; a day to sing and rejoice and celebrate. In the early church, Ascension was celebrated, along with Christmas and Easter, as one of the three high festivals of the Christian church year. But it’s hardly treated like that today, even by us. Ascension actually took place 40 days after Jesus’ resurrection, which was this past Thursday, but we didn’t have a special service. We don’t give Ascension Day gifts, we don’t throw Ascension Day parties. Even we, who should rightly celebrate Ascension as heartily as we do Christmas or Easter, don’t. Why not? Probably because like those disciples we find ourselves standing here looking up at the sky, wondering what it’s all about.

What does Ascension mean? When Jesus bodily ascended into heaven 40 days after his resurrection from the dead to reign and rule over all things for the good of the church (Ephesians 2:20-23), he took us with him. Really. He took us with him into heaven where he rules and reigns over all things. Does that sound like a stretch? Does that match up with what you can observe with your own eyes? Do you see Christ and his church ruling the nations or do you see the nations slowly but surely chipping away at the moral and Biblical foundation of the church? Do you want proof? Daniel prophesied about this roughly 600 years before Jesus’ ascension: the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under all the heavens will be given to the people, to the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an eternal kingdom, and all dominions will worship and obey him (Daniel 7:27). Paul confirms this in Ephesians 2: God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses…He also raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:4-6). A number of other passages attest that because of Jesus’ ascension, because he reigns and rules all things – so do we (Isaiah 61:6; Revelation 5:9-10; 22:5). Do you feel, experience, sense that power and authority? No? Why not? Maybe because we’re not minorities.

Allow me to illustrate. On April 15, 1947 something happened that had never happened before: an African American named Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. By all accounts, this event was far bigger than just who was playing first base for the Dodgers. For the African Americans who were watching, it wasn’t just Jackie stepping into the batter’s box, it wasn’t just him running around the bases, it wasn’t just him who was voted the National League MVP in 1949. [1] Jackie Robinson didn’t just play for himself – he played for all African Americans. Even though they still lived in a segregated country, they could identify with Jackie as he played Major League Baseball. Interviews with African Americans who lived through his barrier breaking testify about how it changed everything for them; how they viewed life, what they thought was possible for them in life. When they saw Jackie Robinson on a professional baseball field, at least for a few hours, they saw themselves where he was.

In the same way, we – as Christians – are to see ourselves where Jesus is now. Admittedly, this is a radical idea. Human reason says that it is impossible for human flesh and blood – for humanity – to ascend to heaven. And yet, just as people used to say that it was contrary to nature, reason, even the law, for a black man to play professional baseball with white men, so all of nature, all of reason, all the observable laws of nature say that human bodies don’t go to heaven. Sure, maybe a soul can, but not a flesh and blood body – they are just buried in the ground. But because Jesus shattered all those barriers when bodily ascended into heaven, that’s exactly what is true for us as well. Paul writes: you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (Colossians 3:3-4). Now, just as black men belonged in MLB after Jackie Robinson, so humanity belongs in heaven after Jesus. Jesus’ ascension shows us that the bodies we have right now – which we regard as so confined to earth, so attached to dust and dirt – can – and will – go to heaven! But Ascension is more than that – it has to be. Ascension wouldn’t mean anything if it all it proved is that the perfect Son of God can take human flesh and blood into heaven.

The same was true of Jackie Robinson. “He opened doors.” [2] That’s what many people said about Jackie Robinson. He didn’t just take Black people onto a baseball field; he opened the door for Black people in a variety of fields – from the military, to Hollywood, to government and business. Black people all over American began to dream of what doors they could now walk through because Jackie Robinson had broken through the barrier of skin color which kept them out.

That’s how we should think of Jesus’ resurrection. That’s why today should be a day of celebration and joy and thanksgiving. Jesus has opened the door for humanity to go to heaven. And not perfect humans – but fallen, sinful humans – humans like us. In that sense, Jesus’ ascension contains two miracles. First, in Jesus, humanity now sits where only God had sat before – far above all rule, authority, power, and dominion, and above every name that is given (Ephesians 1:21). Second, the door of heaven – which had previously been locked – now stands open to sinners like us.

Do you see how much this matters? If you’re honest with yourself, if you listen to your conscience, if you’ve looked at yourself in the mirror of God’s holy law and if you’ve seen the pained looks in the faces of the people you have hurt with your words and actions – you know that you are a sinner and that you have always been one. You know you aren’t perfect. There hasn’t been a single day that you’ve been free from sin. All of those witnesses testify that you can’t go to heaven. Jesus’ Ascension testifies that you can!

We can join Jesus in heaven because Jesus descended from heaven to where we are: under the Law and burdened with our sin (Galatians 4:4; Romans 8:3-4). This is all summarized in our Creeds. When Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, he suffered for your sins. When Jesus was crucified, he was crucified for your sins (Galatians 3:13). When Jesus was buried in a tomb, your sins were buried with him. When he rose from the dead, he left your sins in that tomb. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he ascended into that cloud sinless and holy. In Jesus, as you are through the means of Baptism, Absolution and Holy Communion, your sins have been paid for and removed forever (1 Peter 2:24). This means that even though you know that every one of your thoughts, words and actions are dripping with sin, through faith in Jesus you are covered by his righteousness – and you can go where he goes. Ascension Matters because Ascension proves that heaven stands open – even to sinful people like us.

Another thing people often said about Jackie Robinson is that things were never the same after him. He opened doors that could never again be shut. Something changed for Black people when Jackie Robinson ran out onto the field in 1947. If you were a Black person at the time, you knew that, you felt that, you took comfort in that. It wasn’t just that institutions like Major League Baseball viewed Black people differently – but Black people viewed institutions like MLB differently.

Think of how humanity viewed heaven prior to this – remembering that the essence of heaven is being in the presence of God (Revelation 21:3-4). After they ate the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve tried to hide from the presence of the LORD God (Genesis 3:8). When the LORD descended on Mt. Sinai, the Israelites pleaded with Moses to speak with him on their behalf – they were scared to death (Exodus 20:19-20). Isaiah figured that he was as good as dead when the LORD appeared to him to call him as his spokesman (Isaiah 6:5). Peter, James and John fell on the ground like dead men when the glory of the LORD appeared on the Mt. of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:6). Jesus says that when he returns in glory and judgment, many will cry out for the mountains to fall on them to hide them from God’s heavenly presence (Revelation 6:16). Apart from Jesus humanity could only view heaven with fear, terror and dread – because we could only see heaven through the lens of the Law: that the God of heaven is holy and we are not.

Ascension presents heaven to us – not through the lens of the Law but of the Gospel. Luke tells us that Jesus ascended with his hands uplifted, blessing them as he went – no doubt, with the nail-holes in his hands clearly visible (Luke 24:50). Those hands are why we don’t need to fear heaven – or death or judgment any more. Those hands kept the Law, which condemned us, perfectly in our place. Those hands were stretched out and nailed to a cross to pay the price for our sins. Those hands have torn down the curtain of sin that separated us from God’s presence. Those hands are still actively working in this world to bless us. Is it any wonder that the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy (Luke 24:52)? Jesus’ ascension changed heaven for them – no longer was it a foreboding, fearful, mysterious place – but their home – the place where their brother Jesus rules and reigns alongside God their Father – and from where Jesus will return one day to come and take them.  

Because MLB looked at Black people differently because of Jackie Robinson, Black people looked at MLB differently. In the same way, because heaven looks at us differently because the true man and true God, Jesus Christ, now rules and reigns in it – we can never look at heaven the same way again. Does the idea of going to heaven by way of death or Judgment Day scare you? It shouldn’t. Because Jesus, the one who died on the cross for our sins is reigning there. If he didn’t turn against us as he suffered hell for us – would he really turn against us now that he is enjoying the bliss of heaven? If he was willing to endure the cross for us – do you think he would really abandon us to carry our crosses alone? If he was willing to submit himself to the corrupt judgments of earthly authorities, don’t you think he’s more than willing to sit at his Father’s right hand (Romans 8:34; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3) and rule the world for us? Ascension Life Matters because Jesus changes our view of heaven, of death, of Judgment – so that we are no longer terrified of them but, in fact, long for them – praying daily: Come, Lord Jesus (Revelation 22:20).

But Ascension isn’t only a reason for future hope and joy. Ascension Life Matters here and now because it means that Jesus, as he promised, continues to come to us here and now through the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). Heaven is as close to us as Jesus and Jesus is as close to us as the water of Baptism is to our skin, as close to us as the words of Absolution are to our ears, as close to us as the bread and wine are to our lips in Communion. Ascension Life Matters because Jesus took us, our human nature, with him to heaven; Ascension Life Matters because Jesus has changed our view of heaven. Don’t stand there looking up into the sky wondering what this is all about, instead, look here to the means of grace, for here Jesus opens heaven and changes your view of heaven by bringing heaven here to you on earth. Amen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson

[2] https://resources.corwin.com/sites/default/files/07_Excerpt.pdf

Acts 17:1-15 - Where Will You Go From Here? - May 9, 2021

Nick and Mya: what are you thinking about right now? I’m guessing that at this moment you’re probably not thinking about much more than just getting through this service, going home, changing out of your dress clothes and having lunch. But for a few minutes I want to expand your horizon, I want you to think beyond today – to high school, college, a career, marriage, kids. Believe it or not, those things are not as far away as you may think – just ask your parents! Today marks the conclusion of your formal childhood training in the Christian faith. After today I won’t make you memorize any more Bible passages or parts of the Catechism or take quizzes to test your knowledge. That might seem like a huge relief. But here’s the thing. Life only gets more complicated from here and when you walk out those doors as confirmed Christians, the devil will have placed a huge target on your backs. So the question I want you, Nick and Mya – and really all of us – to consider this morning is: where will you go from here?

Our text contains the familiar comparison of the Thessalonians and the Bereans – giving the Thessalonian Christians the reputation of being rather lazy and complacent when compared to the eager beaver Bereans. This reputation has endured through the ages: there are all sorts of Berean churches – have you ever heard of Thessalonica Lutheran Church? But is that reputation accurate? Probably not; at least not completely. In a letter he later sent to the Thessalonians, Paul wrote: when you received God’s word, which you heard from us, you did not receive it as the word of men but as the word of God (as it really is), which is now at work in you who believe (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

Is that you, Nick and Mya? Is that the rest of us? Do we receive the words we hear in worship and Bible class as the word of God and not just as the words of men? How about a little test? Which do we remember more often: the CDC reminder to wash our hands regularly or the washing the Triune God gave us in Holy Baptism? Which of these do we spend more time discussing with family and friends: the proclamations handed out by the county health department or the proclamations given from pulpits like this? Which do we really regard as irrefutable, undeniable facts: the Covid-19 statistics splashed on our TVs, smartphones, and radios or the fact that God delivers forgiveness, life and salvation through the Gospel in Baptism, Absolution and Holy Communion?

The Thessalonians can serve as an example for us in this regard. They received the preaching of Paul as the very word of God. They received, according to Luke’s description here in Acts 17, the three basic truths which are necessary to believe if you are to be saved from eternal death in hell – the same basic truths you, Nick and Mya, were baptized into, learned in Sunday school and confirmation and will be confessing in just moments. Truth 1: the Christ had to suffer on the cross for your sins; Truth 2: the Christ had to…rise from the dead for your justification (Romans 4:25); Truth 3: this Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ. This is the Gospel. This is what God has done to save you. This is what you will be confessing here today.

Now, in spite of the fact that the Thessalonians received Paul’s message as the Word of God – their failure to dive deeply into Scripture on their own left some dangerous gaps in their faith and understanding: about the resurrection of the dead (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), the signs of the end of the world (1 Thessalonians 5:1-11), the importance of individual work-ethic (2 Thessalonians 3:6-15) and even intimacy within marriage (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8). (I mention that last one just to tempt you to go home and read 1 and 2 Thessalonians for yourselves.) The point, however, for you, Nick and Mya (and all of you) is that it if you simply sit in that chair and swallow everything said here without carefully examining the Scriptures for yourself – then it will simply remain something that your pastor or your church believes and confesses. If you fail to examine the Scriptures for yourselves, then you will always be vulnerable to false teachers – for example: high school and college teachers who take great joy in targeting Christians and attempting to shake them from their faith. Don’t get me wrong – I do pray that you receive the means of grace here at church as they are: the words and works of God. But, if one hour a week is your only contact with God’s Word, there’s the very real danger that your faith will remain shallow – and you will be vulnerable to the deceptions of the devil and the troubles and worries of life in this world (Matthew 13:18-23). Martin Luther himself warned about this kind of faith. He called it “coal miner’s faith.” When asked what he believed, the coal miner said he believed what the church believed, and when asked what the church believed, he said it believed what he believed. Luther said, “God preserve us from such faith” (F. Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, II, 429). Why? Because it’s faith in faith, not faith anchored in what God has said, done and promised in his Word.

So, Nick and Mya, where will you go from here? Do you want to go to Thessalonica? Do you want to receive what you learned in confirmation class as the Word of God and just leave it at that? Are you satisfied with just knowing the basics – some of which are probably already beginning to slip from your minds? (For example: could you still recite the 10 Commandments like you could last fall?) Will you take your Catechism and Bible and shove them onto a shelf somewhere, never to be seen again until the day you move out? How about the rest of us? Last week’s examination was pretty revealing, wasn’t it? How many of us were humbled or even humiliated by our own lack of knowledge of the basics of Christian doctrine? Where will we go from here?

That’s not just the question I’m asking you today, it’s the question Paul was probably asking himself after some jealous Jews in Thessalonica stirred up a riot, forcing Paul and Silas to flee the city. Paul may not have known where he was going, but the wisdom of his Christian friends and the will of God guided Paul and Silas to another city in Macedonia: Berea.

Luke says that the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians. How? Why? They received the word very eagerly and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these things were so. Do you see the distinction here? It’s not that the Bereans were believers and the Thessalonians unbelievers – Paul repeatedly calls the Thessalonians believers in his later letters to them (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 1:4; 2:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1; 1:3; 2:1; etc.). It’s not that the Bereans were smarter than the Thessalonians. It’s not that Paul delivered a different or more eloquent or convincing message to the Bereans than he did to the Thessalonians. So if the difference wasn’t the speaker or the message, what’s the difference? What they did with that message! The Thessalonians, apparently, heard it, accepted it, said “amen,” went home – and left it at that – at least some of them. In contrast, the Bereans not only received the word eagerly but they examined the Scriptures to see if what Paul said was true. They were obedient to God’s command through the apostle John: dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1).

What sorts of things do you think they were examining about Paul’s message to them? Well, at the very least it had to include the three truths Paul had proclaimed in Thessalonica and everywhere else he went: 1) the Christ had to suffer and die for their sins; 2) the Christ had to…rise from the dead; 3) this Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ. Paul told them that through faith in Jesus they would be free from sin, death and the power of the devil. Isn’t it important to know with certainty if that’s true or not? Is there anything in the world it’s more important to be sure about than that Jesus is who he said he is and did what he said he was going to do in order to forgive your sins and give you eternal life? If that’s not true, then, Mya and Nick, you’ve just wasted two years of Wednesdays with me in confirmation class and you should never waste your time here again. But, if it is true, then how could there possibly be anything more important? (In fact, in a few moments I’m going to ask you to swear that these things are true in front of God, your families and this congregation. You’re going to swear that you’d rather die than fall away from these truths about Jesus. It’s not an exaggeration to say that your eternity hangs on whether the things you will confess about Jesus are true or not.)

But there’s also a very practical aspect to aspiring to be like the Bereans in their careful examination of the Scriptures too – for you, Nick and Mya, and for all of us. Last week’s examination was a thorough test of your faith – but it won’t be the last. You’ll be tested by your friends, your teachers, your coworkers, by boyfriends and girlfriends – by the godless and depraved culture around you. The testing will never end. How are you going to respond? In large part, that depends where you go from here. When it comes to the origin of the universe, you could simply say that you don’t believe in the “big-bang” or evolution; it’d be better to say that the only eye-witness testimony we have tells us that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). When your friends are wondering why the world is so filled with discrimination and violence and evil, you could get sucked into a debate about systemic racism and economic inequality; but the reality is that out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimonies and blasphemies (Matthew 15:19). When it comes to LGBTQ issues, you could say that your church forbids them; it’d be better to say God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27) and do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor…[homosexuals]…will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). When it comes to the temptations that come with dating, you could say, “My parents don’t want me to do that;” it’d be better to say marriage is to be held in honor by all, and the marriage bed is to be kept undefiled, for God will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers (Hebrews 13:4). I know you know these things because we spent two years together learning them. But you will only be able to give these responses if you become like the Bereans and make the Christian faith you learned in confirmation class your personal Christian faith. And, when you are personally, deeply rooted in Scripture, not only will you always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15), but you will be ever more firmly rooted in those three basic facts that provide the only sure foundation for salvation: 1) the Christ had to suffer and die for the sins of the world; 2) the Christ…had to rise from the dead; 3) Jesus…is the Christ.

For decades now the church has been plagued by and has endlessly complained about the loss of young people like you, Nick and Mya, from the church once you’ve been confirmed. The so-called “silver bullets” have been as countless as the losses: start a youth group, engage them in social service, get them more involved in the church, have them assist with Sunday school – recently there’s been a trend of shifting confirmation class from a comprehensive study of Christian doctrine to a discussion of contemporary cultural issues. None of those is inherently wrong, but I do have two big problems with that last “silver-bullet.” 1) It’s impossible to guess what moral and ethical and cultural issues Nick and Mya will be facing in five years. (Five years ago did anyone think we’d be arguing over whether biological boys should or shouldn’t be competing in girls’ sports?) 2) I contend that being firmly rooted in basic Christian doctrine is the only way to prepare young people to face the challenges they will face in the future. It’s not about equipping them with specific arguments for specific issues – especially when the issues are changing on a daily basis. It’s about equipping them with the tools necessary to formulate answers and arguments based on Scripture for themselves. And that’s what Risen Savior is all about: rooting this generation and every generation in the Scriptures that testify about Jesus (John 5:39), which is the only name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

Nick and Mya, I know that right now you’re probably only thinking about getting through this service, getting out of those clothes, having lunch and maybe eating some cake. But I want you to know that your parents, your family, your brothers and sisters here at Risen Savior and I are thinking about where you will go from here. It might seem like I’ve set up an either/or choice: either go to Thessalonica or Berea. Actually, it’s both/and. I pray you go to Thessalonica by coming here regularly to receive the means of grace for what they really are: the words and works of God for you (1 Thessalonians 2:13). But I pray it doesn’t stop there, I pray you go to Berea and eagerly…examine the Scriptures every day to see if these things [are] so. And as you come here to receive the means of grace and examine the Scriptures for yourselves, it really doesn’t matter where you go, because rooted in that threefold truth that Christ had to suffer, Christ had to rise, and Jesus is the Christ, wherever you go, you can be sure that your Savior is leading you to your true home in heaven. That’s really where you’re going from here. Amen.

John 15:1-8 - Lies Christians Tell Themselves - May 2, 2021

Everyone knows that lying is wrong. I can state that categorically because the Bible tells us that God has written his Law in the hearts of every last human being (Romans 2:15) – including the 8th commandment, which forbids lying (Exodus 20:16). Every lie told is damaging, they damage marriages and families and friendships, they can destroy reputations and careers – most importantly, they damage a person’s relationship with God, who hates a lying tongue (Proverbs 6:16). And yet, as damaging as lies are to our relationships with other people, I would argue this morning that, based on Jesus’ words in John 15, some of the lies we tell ourselves can be just as, if not even more, damaging.

We all lie to ourselves – some of them are so common that I ran across a website that catalogued some of them. Here are a few examples: 1) “If I could just do / be / have ________, then I would be happy.” What was it for you? The degree, the spouse, the children, the house, the vacation, the promotion? If you’ve managed to fill in that blank – are you really happy now? 2) “If I had more time, I would do _________.” Let’s be honest, if you wanted to exercise, take up a new hobby, spend more time with your spouse or children, take care of your “to-do” list, or even spend more time reading your Bible – you would. The problem is almost never time; the problem is desire. 3) I would change ________ about myself, but I can’t because of ________.” Again, in most cases, that second blank is just an excuse for not doing something you don’t really want to do anyway. [1]

But enough with the lies that are common to mankind – that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to discuss the lies Christians tell ourselves. Here’s the first: “I don’t have to bear fruit as a Christian.” I can live like the rest of the world who doesn’t know or believe in Christ. I can call myself a Christian without living as a Christian. I can live without letting my light shine (Matthew 5:13-16) and expect to go to heaven even as I intentionally live contrary to God’s will (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). That’s not what the Bible says. In Isaiah 5 God says that after he planted a vineyard on a fertile hill, he looked for it to produce a crop (Isaiah 5:1-7). In Luke 13, Jesus says that God is like the owner of a vineyard where there’s a fig tree – and for three years he waited to see it produce fruit (Luke 13:6-9). In Matthew 25, Jesus says that those who are saved have an abundance of good fruit and those who are damned have none (Matthew 25:31-46). Paul puts it bluntly in 2 Corinthians: we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he did while in the body, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10).

It’s a damned lie that it isn’t necessary for Christians to bear fruit. Damned because that’s where it leads: damnation. The Lord declared that he would destroy his unfruitful vineyard in Isaiah 5 (Isaiah 5:5-6). In Luke 13, this was Jesus’ verdict on the unfruitful fig tree: cut it down. Why even let it use up the soil? (Luke 13:7) Here in John 15, Jesus says that his Father cuts off unfruitful branches, gathers them and throws them into the fire. And in Matthew 25, what does he tell those who have failed to produce good works? Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the Devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). Judgment, death and destruction are all that lay in store for Christians who think they don’t have to produce fruit.

That shouldn’t be shocking, should it? Isn’t that what we do with the plants and bushes and trees in our own yards? If they’re unfruitful we dig them out and cut them down. Why? Because an unfruitful branch is a dead one. In fact, they’re not really branches at all, are they? They don’t do what branches, by definition, are supposed to do. They don’t carry moisture, nutrients or life – they don’t produce fruit. We saw them off for the good of the rest of the tree. In the same way, unfruitful Christians are dead Christians – and dead Christians are really just deluded unbelievers.

There’s a subset of this lie. It’s to tell yourself at any point in life that you’ve produced enough fruit. We’ve all seen this lie manifest itself, haven’t we? The confirmand who believes that they’ve learned it all – and don’t need to attend worship or Bible study anymore. The parents who go to church until their children are out of the house and then fall away to pursue other interests. The members who feel that they’ve done their share or taken their turn serving and that now it’s someone else’s turn. That’s not Christianity – that’s not what one sees in a vibrant vineyard planted and tended by the Father through the means of grace. Again, just consider your own yard. Say you have an apple tree that’s produced abundant fruit for over a decade – then suddenly it produces nothing. Do you spare that tree because of its past fruitfulness? No, you cut it down. Now imagine standing before Jesus Christ who gave his soul, his life, his all to save us from hell and looking him in the eye and telling him: “I’ve produced enough fruit; I’ve taken my turn; I’ve done my part.” It’s unimaginable, isn’t it? And yet, how many times don’t we tell ourselves that lie?

“I don’t have to bear fruit / do good works / live according to God’s will in order to be a Christian” is a damned lie. But just as bad is the second lie we tell ourselves: “Bearing fruit makes you a Christian.” This deception gives fruit too much credit, arguing that doing good works can give you what only Christians possess, what the Bible says you can only receive through faith: the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, new life now and the assurance of eternal life (Ephesians 2:8-9). And it’s another damned lie.

No matter how many good things you do, there will never be a day that you can tell yourself: “I’ve done enough to make up for my sins.” No matter how much you do for others, for the church, for Christ, you’ll never do enough to find peace with God. No matter how much you sacrifice to serve your spouse, your children, your boss – it can never assure you that eternal life is yours. Those wonderful gifts can’t be found in your doing, sweating or striving. Bearing fruit – no matter how abundantly or publicly or extravagantly – does not and cannot make you a Christian, or bring you the gifts only Christians possess.

Fruit doesn’t make Christians – fruit marks Christians. Isn’t that Jesus’ point in our text? I am the Vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him is the one who bears much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. I don’t know much about trees – but I do know that bad trees bear only bad fruit and only good trees can bear good fruit (Matthew 7:17-18). Practically speaking, while you may know all sorts of people who are good parents, faithful spouses, decent neighbors, good citizens – that doesn’t make them Christian and that doesn’t mean that they will be saved and go to heaven. Again, that’s not my opinion, that’s God’s Word: without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6).

And yet, hasn’t this lie swept through our culture like wildfire? That if you just do all the “right” things – that makes you a good person? Isn’t that the basic premise behind “virtue-signaling” – that if you drive the right car, eat the right diet, support all the “right” movements and causes, even, this past year, if you wear the right mask and eagerly get yourself vaccinated – that you are, therefore, a good, moral person? Here’s the thing: whenever morality is brought up, the implication is that you can make yourself right with God by what you do. In many cases, “virtue-signaling” is just works-righteousness by another name.

Please don’t take those words out of context. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t support positive causes, wear masks or get vaccines. In fact, those may be very good works. But they don’t make you right with God; they don’t make you a Christian. Good works don’t make Christians; Christ makes Christians. Jesus spoke these words to his disciples in the Upper Room on Maundy Thursday. Did you notice that he didn’t once tell his disciples to make themselves branches? Why not? Because the Father, through Jesus, had already made them branches: You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I am going to remain in you. A branch cannot bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Likewise, you cannot bear fruit unless you remain in me. Jesus isn’t encouraging them – or us – to become his disciples; he’s speaking about bearing fruit to those whom he has already made his disciples through the word.

This is why, unlike the unbelieving world, Christians don’t spend their lives “virtue-signaling”; they don’t focus on their fruit, they focus on the Vine – which gives them life. Jesus, the root of Jesse (Isaiah 11:10), sprouted into this world through the womb of the virgin Mary – and, unlike anyone else, he was fruitful. He obeyed his Father’s will perfectly and he produced grapes of love, joy, peace and hope in abundance. And yet, even more was needed; even Jesus’ perfect fruit wasn’t enough to satisfy God’s justice. The justice of his Father, the gardener had determined that unfruitful, dead branches – branches like us – had to be gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned – and so God took his only Son and crushed him in the winepress of Gethsemane and hung him to wither and die under his burning wrath on Calvary. And the good news is that the blood that flowed from Christ’s crushed body both covered our sins and satisfied God’s wrath – and Easter is the irrefutable proof.

This is the message – the only message – that can give us what our good works can never give. This is the only message that can silence those horrifying uncertainties that arise when you consider how fruitful your life has been: “I’ve tried to do my best, but is it enough?” It is finished (John 19:30) tells you your sins are forgiven even when your conscience haunts you. Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1) – gives peace to your uncertain heart. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) – assures you of your salvation even when your fruit appears rotten. You cannot do enough good works to make up for your sins let alone pay for them; you can’t suffer enough, even in all eternity, to pay for your sins – and you don’t have to, because that’s why Jesus came, to produce fruit that is perfectly acceptable to God – which he credits to your account; and to suffer the fire of death and hell that you deserved – so that you never will.

If it all depends not on what we do but on remaining in Jesus then the real question is: how does one become and stay connected to Jesus, the Vine? We’re not born into him; like all the others, we were by nature objects of God’s wrath (Ephesians 2:3). Paul says that we – especially we Gentiles – were grafted in (Romans 11:17). How? Through Baptism you have been grafted into Christ (Romans 6:3-5). Through Confession and Absolution the Father forgives your sins, pruning away the dead parts of your life that get in the way of producing fruit. Through this bread and wine Jesus feeds you so that you may be even more fruitful. It’s not your good works, but the perfect means of grace which connects you to, and keeps you connected to, Christ. Remain in these means of grace and Christ will remain in you, and you will be and remain fruitful.

All lies are destructive, but especially destructive are the lies we tell ourselves. Psychologists can warn you about some common self-destructive lies. I’m here to tell you not to believe the twin lies that you don’t have to bear fruit in order to be a Christian nor that bearing fruit makes you a Christian. Christians will bear fruit; but bearing fruit is not about you, the branch, as much as it is about Jesus, the Vine. He makes Christians. He grafts and feeds his branches. He forgives sins, grants peace with God, gives the assurance of eternal life – and he produces bountiful fruit. Remain in him through his Word and you will produce more fruit that you could ever imagine. That’s not a command, that’s a promise. And that’s no lie. Amen. 

[1] https://markmanson.net/9-subtle-lies-we-all-tell-ourselves

John 10:11-18 - "Good" Shepherd? - April 25, 2021

“Good” is one of those words that we throw around without really thinking about it. Your spouse or child walks in the door and you ask them how work or school was: “good.” Back when teams could shake hands after a game, you would run through the line saying, “good game.” Many of you asked me, “How was your vacation?” “Good.” But “good” is a pretty bland word, isn’t it? It’s pretty vague, it’s not very descriptive. Today Jesus calls himself the “Good” Shepherd, but what does that mean? Given who he is and what he does and where he leads us, we might be tempted to wonder how good Jesus really is at the shepherding business.

Don’t get me wrong, sheep need a shepherd. For a long time I was under the impression that it was because sheep were dumb. But having read the accounts of some actual shepherds and scanning the Bible’s assessment of sheep, it doesn’t appear that sheep are necessarily dumb, but another “d” word: dependent. Isn’t that how David, a shepherd himself, portrays himself in Psalm 23? He’s completely dependent on the LORD, his shepherd, to lead him to green pastures and quiet waters, to guide him with his rod and staff, to feed and bless him. And, in fact, this dependent nature of sheep is rooted in reality. In Palestine, weeds grow that are poisonous to sheep. The shepherd must either lead the sheep away from those pastures or go in and pull them up – because otherwise they’d eat them. It’s the same with water. Swiftly running water can be dangerous to sheep, should they fall in (imagine trying to swim wearing a heavy wool sweater) – they need the shepherd to find quiet pools to drink from. On their own, they are defenseless. Lacking fangs, claws, speed or stealth, they have no protection from wolves. Without a shepherd, sheep are easy targets – and, even if the wolves don’t kill them, they do, as Jesus says, scatter them – and the big, wide, dangerous world will kill the sheep just as surely as the wolves will. This is us. We all have gone astray like sheep. Each of us has turned to his own way (Isaiah 53:6) – we are in desperate need of a shepherd.

Who is this shepherd? Jesus states categorically I am the Good Shepherd. Now to our ears, that sounds like a pretty simple, innocent statement. But to his original audience, especially the Jewish leaders (John 9:40; 10:20), this was a loaded, jarring, offensive, statement. By using the phrase “I am” (Greek: Ἐγώ εἰμι) Jesus is identifying himself as, equating himself with Jahweh, the LORD of the OT. He is declaring himself to be the one who told Moses You will say this to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you (Exodus 3:14) from the burning bush. He’s also claiming to be the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s OT promise: This is what the LORD God says. I am against the shepherds…I will remove my flock from their hand. I will remove them from taking care of the sheep, and no longer will those shepherds take care of themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, so that they will no longer be food for them (Ezekiel 34:10). Jesus is claiming that the people of Israel were like helpless sheep who had been abused by their so-called shepherds – the teachers of the law and the chief priests, the Sadducees and Pharisees – and that the situation was so bad that the LORD himself had to come to earth in human flesh and blood to gather and shepherd his people. The LORD is our shepherd. The question is: is that a good thing?

We know who the LORD is and what he is capable of, don’t we? The LORD created the universe and everything in it (Genesis 1); the LORD destroyed the world and all its inhabitants – except for eight – in the days of Noah (Genesis 7:1-5); the LORD plagued Egypt and killed it’s firstborn (Exodus 7-12); the LORD smoked and thundered on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19-20). No human can see the LORD and live (Exodus 33:19-20) and yet the LORD is present everywhere and sees everything you think, do and say (Psalm 139). The LORD does not leave the guilty unpunished and threatens to punish the children for the sins of their fathers to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 34:7). That’s who the LORD is. Does this sound like a “good” shepherd?

I think it’s fair to say that we all question his shepherding ways at times. Jesus claims here to save the sheep from the wolves, but in Matthew 10 he tells his disciples: I am sending you out as sheep among wolves (Matthew 10:16). Psalm 44 says that we are sheep, sheep to be slaughtered (Psalm 44:22). Or just think of Psalm 23. He doesn’t lead us around or over but right through the valley of the shadow of death. He feeds us, but he does it right in front of our enemies. Consider what that means, practically speaking. Jesus isn’t just leading you through what you consider the good times in life – but even and especially in the hard, painful, bad times. He doesn’t just lead us to green pastures and quiet waters – he leads us right into times of sickness and crisis, of depression and death. Isn’t that a rather strange way for a supposedly “good” shepherd to be leading his sheep? What earthly shepherd would send his flock into a pack of wolves? What shepherd, who is raising his sheep for their wool, would point at them and say, “You, you and you are going to be slaughtered tomorrow?” What shepherd would guide his flock into a valley filled with death?

This is the “good” shepherd we’re supposed to follow? What’s so good about him? Remember, Jesus is contrasting himself – the good shepherd – with the Jewish leaders, the hired [men] who care nothing for the sheep – except to become rich and powerful by fleecing them. So what is it that sets Jesus apart from them, that makes him unique, that qualifies him as “good”? You know how if you want to get a point across you repeat yourself? Well, Jesus answers the question of his goodness by repeating himself five times in our text. Did you catch it? Five times he says I lay down my life for the sheep. That’s the mission his Father had given him (10:18); not to kill the wolves, not to save the sheep from sickness or suffering, not to build a bridge over the valley of death – but to lay down his life.

The Greek is even more vivid. Jesus literally says, I lay down my life instead of the sheep. Jesus didn’t die for us like a soldier dies for his country – he died in our place. Why? Because we are sinners who prove it every minute of every day. Someone had to suffer and die for those sins. Someone had to go to hell for our rebellion against God. It should have been us. But it wasn’t. Jesus laid down his life in place of ours. He endured the wrath of a holy God, he suffered the torments of hell so that we never would. That’s what the Lord Jesus, our Good Shepherd, came to this earth to do for us. This is what distinguishes him from the useless hired [men].

But even here, don’t you have to wonder: is this really what a good shepherd should do? Wouldn’t you expect a truly good shepherd to kill the enemies of the sheep – not be killed by them? Doesn’t that just leave the sheep at the mercy of the wolves? What good is a dead shepherd? Don’t we sometimes think that it would have been better if Jesus hadn’t died – that he would just have continued living on this earth, personally defending us from the wolves of persecution; personally providing everything we could possibly need for a pleasant life in this world; personally guiding us – telling us where to go and making all of the difficult decisions for us; personally healing all of our sicknesses and diseases? In fact, isn’t that exactly the type of Jesus that is sold in all-too-many churches – a Jesus who lives to make life in this world as easy and pleasant and prosperous as possible? Wouldn’t it have been better if Jesus didn’t lay down his life, but kept it – so that he could solve the problems we face here and now? What good is a dead shepherd?  

Here’s the thing: our shepherd is not dead! He says this is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it up again. Now it’s becoming clear how Jesus really is a “good” shepherd, isn’t it? Our sins stood as an impenetrable barrier between us and God (Isaiah 59:2). From the design of the tabernacle and temple to the demands for daily ritual and sacrifice to the limitation of access to one high priest one day per year visibly and viscerally declared to the people that they could not access God as they were, covered in their sins. God couldn’t and wouldn’t hear any of our pleas, any of our prayers, any of our tears for mercy. But by laying down his life Jesus cut through, paid for and wiped away the sin that separated us from God. He died and then rose so that he could represent us, intercede for us with God. Paul writes: Christ Jesus, who died and, more than that, was raised to life, is the one who is at God’s right hand and who is also interceding for us (Romans 8:34). Jesus is the LORD of the Old Testament who came to earth to die on a cross on Good Friday so that he would rise again on Easter – all so that he could live on to defend and justify us before God in heaven. Jesus served as our shepherd by living, dying, rising and continuously interceding for us – to accomplish, win and guarantee our salvation from start to finish. In comparison to the hired [men] who require you to lay down your life to earn your own salvation, that’s pretty good, isn’t it?

The reason we question the “goodness” of Jesus’ shepherding is that we all-too-often have a wrong idea of what the Good Shepherd came to do or should do for us, his sheep. He didn’t come into this world so that we would never have to face the wolves of persecution or the wilderness of sadness, sickness, or depression. It doesn’t mean that all of life will be green pastures and quiet waters. David understood this. David didn’t say that the LORD would come to restore his home, family, health or happiness – but his soul (Psalm 23:3). David didn’t say that his Good Shepherd would save him from experiencing the pain of heartache, loss or death – but so that he would live in the house of the LORD forever (Psalm 23:6).

So here’s the reality we have to come to grips with on Good Shepherd Sunday: Jesus is the Good Shepherd, we are his sheep; and…sheep follow the shepherd. We are going to have Good Fridays in this life; they can’t be avoided – and Jesus says that from time to time he will even lead us directly into them. But on those days, remember these two things. First, our Good Fridays’, no matter how painful, long or severe are never punitive – that is, Jesus doesn’t lead us into them to make us pay for our sins – that could never happen (Psalm 49:7-8). Jesus already paid for our sins on his Good Friday (John 19:30). Second, our Good Fridays – again, like Jesus’ – have a purpose – they lead from death to life. Your Good Fridays, your losses, illnesses, and sadness aren’t the point, the goal, the end of the story. Easter, resurrection and the never-ending joy of heaven are – and that’s where your Good Shepherd is leading you! And that’s why the Holy Spirit leads you back here week after week. It’s not to provide some quick and easy answer – or some complicated and burdensome program or process to solve whatever temporary issue or problem you’re facing at the moment – it’s to follow the voice of your Good Shepherd – in Word and Sacrament – as he leads you through the wolf-infested wilderness of this world to the house of the LORD forever. And it doesn’t get any better than that.

In the phrase I am the Good Shepherd, the Greek word translated “good” is not the ordinary Greek word for good. While this word sometimes hints toward external beauty (Luke 21:5), its basic meaning is “useful” or “just right for a given task” (see Mark 9:50; 1 Timothy 4:6; Matthew 5:16). While Jesus’ shepherding ways may not always seem “good” to us – he’s just right for sheep like us who love to wander. Yes, sometimes he whacks us upside the head with his rod or leads us places we’d rather not go, but he’s always there to soothe our wounds with his mercy, our guilt with his forgiveness, our weakness with his strength. He does whatever it takes to bring us through the wilderness of this world to the house of the LORD forever (Psalm 23:6). Yes, Jesus is a “Good” Shepherd – the very best – better than anything we could have imagined or hoped for. Amen.

John 20:19-31 - Gain Confidence from Doubting Thomas - April 11, 2021

Do these words sound familiar to you? If not, they should. This same text serves as the Gospel lesson for the second Sunday of Easter in each year of our three year lectionary. And each year, the temptation is to turn this Sunday into a day to beat up on Thomas. He’s an easy target, isn’t he? He was an apostle who had spent three years with Jesus – and yet he didn’t believe. Even seeing wasn’t enough for him – he insisted on touching Jesus in order to believe in the resurrection. It’s tempting to kick poor Thomas while he’s down. Well, today, we’re not going to do that. Today we’re going to try to see Thomas as he really is so that we can see ourselves as Jesus sees us.

Over the centuries, the phrase “doubting Thomas” has become as common and ubiquitous as the phrase “social distancing” is today. But that’s giving Thomas credit he doesn’t deserve. Thomas wasn’t “doubting.” He wasn’t just on the fence about Jesus’ resurrection. He doesn’t say, “I doubt Jesus rose from the dead,” or “I’m not sold on the fact that he appeared to you last week.” No, Thomas says I will never believe. The original Greek is actually even stronger. It’s a double negative – a big no-no in English, but perfectly acceptable in Greek. “There ain’t no way I will believe that you have seen the risen Lord.”

Thomas isn’t a doubter. By his own admission, he’s an unbeliever. There’s a big difference between doubters and unbelievers. Doubters can still be members of the Church; unbelievers stand outside of it. Doubters litter the pages of Scripture. Moses doubted that he was capable to lead Israel (Exodus 3:11-4:17); Elijah doubted that there were any other believers left in Israel (1 Kings 19:9-18); Peter doubted that he could survive the wind and waves of the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 14:22-33). But Thomas had unbelief – and that placed him outside of the Church. The text confirms this: after eight days, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Thomas isn’t counted as one of Jesus’ disciples at this point. To seal this sad truth, Jesus didn’t literally say do not continue to doubt – he says, “do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

What’s more, his fellow disciples had been trying to convince him that [they had] seen the Lord for seven days now. How hardened an unbeliever do you have to be to reject the eye-witness testimony of your best friends for an entire week? They were telling Thomas that they had seen the holes in his hands and feet and side (Luke 24:39); that he had eaten food in front of them (Luke 24:43); that he had breathed the Holy Spirit onto them and gave them the authority to forgive or not forgive sins (John 20:22-23). But Thomas remained obstinate in his unbelief. He would not believe unless I see the nail marks in his hands, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into his side. Curious desires aside – I mean, who, other than a medical professional, wants to touch someone else’s scarred body – Thomas wasn’t just bold in his unbelief, he was militant in it.

Again, I’m not putting Thomas in this light just to kick him while he’s down from the safe distance of 2000 years. I just want you to have an accurate picture of him. He was not only an unbeliever, he was a militant evangelist of unbelief.

What makes this situation all the stranger is that if you page back just a few chapters in John’s Gospel, you see a very different portrait of Thomas. In John 11, when word came to Jesus that his friend Lazarus had died and Jesus decided to go back to Judea to help, the disciples urged him to reconsider: Rabbi, recently the Jews were trying to stone you. And you are going back there again? (John 11:8) The disciples were understandably worried; they were scared. But what about Thomas? He says let’s go too, so that we may die with him (John 11:16). That’s not doubt we see in Thomas there; that’s devotion; that’s bravery and loyalty.

There’s one more thing that makes Thomas’ case especially tragic. When Thomas bravely suggests that they should all go to die with Jesus, John mentions for the first time that Thomas was known as the Twin (John 11:16). Here’s the strange part: despite calling Thomas the Twin at least three times (John 11:16; 20:24; 21:2), John never identifies this twin. A few heretics in the early church suggested that Thomas was Jesus’ biological twin. But we know that can’t be true, because that would mean that Thomas was also God in human flesh. So what are we to make of this? I can’t prove this with a chapter and verse but it’s quite possible that this is Thomas’ nickname. Just as Jesus called Peter the rock (Matthew 16:17-18) and James and John the Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17), so it’s definitely possible that the other disciples called Thomas the Twin because he was determined to go wherever Jesus went, even to death.

If you’re willing to grant that bit of speculation on my part, then here’s the picture we have: you’re as close as twins with Jesus; you’ve proven that you’re a brave man, you’ve sworn with the other disciples that you’d rather die than deny or abandon Jesus (Mark 14:31) – but when the rubber hit the road in Gethsemane, you ran away like a coward. You were too afraid to follow Jesus to the Temple courtroom like Peter and John did, and, unlike John, you couldn’t even bring yourself to stand by Jesus as he suffered and died on the cross. It’s been over a week since all this happened. This has been a miserable week for you. Guilt and shame and self-loathing smother you. You can’t stand yourself. And, to add insult to injury, all week long your fellow disciples can’t stop talking about how they’ve seen the risen Lord. But you haven’t seen him. And, you think, maybe that was on purpose. Maybe Jesus didn’t show himself to you because you abandoned him when he needed you the most. Maybe Jesus was trying to tell you that you’re beyond his love; barred from his forgiveness for your disloyalty. We all know what that’s like, don’t we? To imagine yourself beyond Jesus’ love? That’s why Thomas is one of God’s greatest gifts to us – because in Thomas not only are we looking in a mirror, but, more importantly, we see how Jesus sees him and us.

Let’s zoom out a bit to see how this event fits into the big picture. All of human history up to this point has been the story of God keeping his promise to Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15), to stomp out the reign of sin, death, and the devil once and for all. And he did this on Good Friday by stomping down the foot of his justice on his only Son, Jesus.  

Because God so loved the world (John 3:16), he delivered his only-begotten Son into the world through the womb of the virgin Mary. God placed all of the requirements that he had placed on humanity – and that humanity had been utterly unable to obey – on him (Galatians 4:4). And then, after he had lived a perfect life under God’s Law, his Father put him to death without mercy on a cross. What all of our guilt, our shame, our self-loathing, our striving and trying and crying could never do – Jesus did by dying on the cross. And, because he did, because he paid for the sins of the world with his blood, God raised his perfect Son from the grave to life (Acts 2:24). One man died in place of the world. His resurrection proves that the sins of the world have been paid for in full. I want to be sure that you see the world-wide nature of this. The whole world could now be told that their sins had been wiped away and forgiven (1 John 2:2); that death and the devil had been defeated forever. And yet Jesus puts the entire world, the mission of his church on hold…for what, for who? For unbelieving Thomas.

Stick with me here. Remember last week? The angel told the women to tell his disciples: he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you (Mark 16:7). Do you remember what happened there in Galilee? Jesus commissioned his disciples to go and gather disciples from all nations by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and by teaching them to keep all of the instructions I have given you (Matthew 28:19-20). And yet, what do the disciples do? They stall, they delay for more than a week! Do the math. There are only 40 days between Easter and Jesus’ ascension into heaven. During this time Jesus taught his disciples everything they needed to know in order to carry out their mission to the world. And yet, Jesus gave up a week of his teaching time for the sake of one guy: Thomas.

It may seem strange at first, but this is a pretty familiar storyline, isn’t it? Books have been written, movies have been made, awards are given out every year to the teachers, the coaches, the mentors who single out the difficult child, who bear with their bad attitude, who make extra time for him – to reach him and prepare him for a successful life in this world.

Don’t forget, this is not “doubting” but “unbelieving” Thomas. He’s not just struggling, he’s as good as damned because of his unbelief. In today’s church, “outreach” is all the rage. Well, Thomas was beyond reach; his friends had tried and failed. But in that place where no man, no disciple, no friend could reach him – sunk in the depths of despair – Jesus did. Step by step Jesus gives into Thomas’ unbelieving demands. He invites him to push his finger into the nail holes that had streamed the blood which covered his sins; he welcomes him to press his hand into the wound in his side which poured out the water that forgives and the blood that nourishes. (Whether Thomas actually reached out and touched Jesus is immaterial, in the end.) And from the mouth of a formerly militant unbeliever, the church’s mission is advanced and her confession is solidified. Whereas the other disciples had only called Jesus Lord (John 20:20), Thomas confesses Jesus as [his] Lord and his God. With just his Word, Jesus saved Thomas from the depths of despair and unbelief and brought him to the joy and confidence of faith!

Gain confidence from Thomas today. Be confident that Jesus sees you and loves you just as much as he loved Thomas. Be confident that when you are struggling with sin and guilt and shame and doubt – even unbelief – that Jesus hasn’t abandoned you, that he still loves you. Be confident that Jesus is still willing to put the whole world on hold just for you. Be confident that Jesus can reach right through to the deepest depths of guilt, despair, unbelief, and doubt that you have fallen into even if no one else can. Above all, be confident that he uses his Word to do this. Be confident that these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Be confident that you don’t need to see Jesus’ hands and side – because Jesus put the world on hold and showed himself to you personally in Baptism; because Jesus was thinking about you when he commanded me to absolve you of your sins (John 20:22-23); because Jesus comes to you here on this altar with his true flesh and blood to assure you of your forgiveness, life and salvation. Be confident that no matter how far you’ve fallen, you haven’t fallen beyond Jesus love. Be confident that Jesus was talking about you when he told Thomas blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. See yourself in Thomas today – but even more than that, see how much Jesus loved him – and loves you!

Where would we be if Jesus didn’t come to us through these objective means day after day and week after week? We would have no lasting confidence, no lasting joy, no lasting certainty concerning his victory over our sins, death, or the devil. Like Thomas we would be locked up in a prison of our own guilt and shame and unbelief. Jesus knows that. Jesus sees you. And he loves and cares about you more than you could ever realize. That’s why he’s given us the means of grace. Don’t doubt, but be confident that Jesus has put the world on hold for you, too – to come to you in the Word of Absolution, the water of Baptism, the bread and wine of Communion. Doubt is not a virtue – and unbelief certainly is sin – but because Jesus appeared to dispel Thomas’ unbelief, we gain the confidence to say with conviction seven days after Easter: My Lord and my God, because unbelieving, doubting Thomas proves that Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

Mark 16:1-8 - Do Not Be Alarmed! - April 4, 2021

I don’t know about you, but I’m about sick and tired of this modern culture and climate of alarmism. When did we all become such sniveling cowards? Oh, I know, when everyone – from politicians to the media to so-called “experts – starting telling us that fear is the new #1 virtue. Be afraid that one mask isn’t enough – so put on two or three more. Be afraid that each new virus variant might be more deadly than the last. Be afraid to go to work and school and travel. Be afraid to visit your grandparents and grandchildren. Be afraid that our economy is floating on the top of a bubble that’s about to pop. Be afraid that our nation is so divided politically and racially and morally that it may never heal. Enough! It’s Easter. And the command of the angel to those three women on that first Easter morning is also the Lord’s command to us this Easter morning: Do not be alarmed!

Why not? Well, let’s start at the end. Mark tells us that after the angel spoke to the women, they went out and hurried away from the tomb, trembling and perplexed. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. That’s a rather strange reaction, isn’t it? These women were privileged to be the very first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, his empty tomb – and they run away trembling and afraid? Why? Why weren’t they dancing and shouting to each other: “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” I suppose, if we take a step back, we can understand their fear. They’d woken up early in the morning with the goal of giving their Lord a proper burial. The biggest question on their minds is who will roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb for us? But then, when they get to the tomb, the stone is already rolled away. That’s not right! And there’s a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. That’s not right, either! Jesus’ body is gone! That’s really not right! Imagine if you were heading to a cemetery to put flowers on a loved one’s grave and when you get there the grave has been dug up, some guy is sitting nearby and when you look into the casket, it’s empty. You’d be alarmed too! You’d be convinced that something is not right here – because you know exactly what those women knew: dead people don’t rise to life.

But the fact is that this dead guy did. Did you notice how transparent and straightforward the angel was? He didn’t try to spin it or sugarcoat it at all. He just tells it as it is: you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. In a culture flooded with fake news, isn’t it nice to get the straight facts? At this point I could cite the many eyewitness testimonies preserved for us in the Bible as validation of the resurrection (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11), but today, I’m not going to do that. These are the inspired words of the Holy Spirit, they can stand on their own. The angel said that the same Jesus who was nailed to a tree and died has risen and he invited them to see the empty place where his body had been laid. Those are the facts, you can take them or leave them.

I suppose the question today shouldn’t be “why were the women alarmed” – but why are we still alarmed? Oh, we may blame our alarm on the uncertainty of our times – that we don’t know if these vaccines will work, when or if we’ll ever be able to burn these masks, when or if life will ever go back to normal. But if we’re honest – and here in God’s house we should be – those aren’t the real reasons for our alarm. The reason for our alarm is that even though we’ve been baptized, even though we’ve been absolved, even though we’ve received Jesus’ true body and blood we live like our sins aren’t forgiven. They prowl our consciences; they haunt our thoughts; they disrupt our sleep. The people we’ve hurt, disappointed and wronged are always in front of us (or maybe sitting right next to us). We know the kind of people God expects us to be and yet are not. Oh, sure, we know the facts. We know that Jesus has paid for our sins, that sin and the devil have been defeated, that God is satisfied and heaven is open. But it’s one thing to know the facts – it’s another to live them. I’m sure I’m not the only one who knows that Jesus has reestablished peace between God and sinners (Romans 5:1) – but often struggles to let that truth soak in and live in that confidence. And if ever there were reason for alarm – this is it! If being uncertain about where you stand with God isn’t cause for alarm, then nothing is!

So why do we, who just minutes ago fearlessly shouted “He is risen, indeed!” still act alarmed and perplexed and afraid like those women? Paul tells us why: if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15:17). There it is. That’s our problem. Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. He’s still lying, cold and dead and decaying in that tomb. He isn’t really the Son of God; he didn’t really live a perfect life in our place; he didn’t really pay for our sins (1 John 2:2); and, therefore, we’re still in our sins and when we die, we’re going to hell forever. Is that putting it too bluntly? No! Because if your conscience and your memory and the devil can still cause you alarm over your sins – then, for all intents and purposes, that’s what you believe.

So what should you do when your conscience terrorizes you, when your memories haunt you, when you feel like a slave to your sins? You go back to the facts: He has risen! He is not here. This fact means that you are forgiven – whether you feel it or not. Jesus left that tomb empty – not a sin in sight. And here I want you to think big. Don’t just think about the biggest, blackest, most shameful sin you’ve ever committed – the ones you can’t forget. Don’t just think about the biggest, blackest, most evil villains who have ever lived: Judas and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, Stalin and Hitler and Osama bin Laden. No, think about the people you will see this afternoon as you gather around your Easter ham or Easter bunny – who reject the Gospel and refuse to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection at church and yet have the gall to wish you a “happy Easter.” What about them? Are their sins forgiven?

Well, what does Easter say? C.F.W. Walther once said that “Easter is the absolution which has been spoken by God himself to all men, all sinners, in a word, to all the world.” (Romans 3:23-25; 4:25) There is not a sin that has or will ever be committed that wasn’t hung on Jesus. Jesus suffered and paid for them all. If that weren’t true, he’d still be in the grave. If his suffering and death weren’t enough to pay for the sins of the world, death would still hold him as it does all damned sinners. But Jesus isn’t in that grave! He’s not here! He’s risen! Let that fact place a muzzle on Satan and silence the siren of your conscience! Let that serve as fodder for your conversation later with those people who don’t think they need or want Easter. (I’ll even give you the ice-breaker: “You know, pastor talked about you in his sermon today.” That should get their attention, right?)

Let me show you how completely you have been forgiven. Look at our text. Jesus had told his followers several times that he would go to Jerusalem, be handed over to the his Jewish enemies, be handed over by them to the Gentiles, be convicted and tortured and crucified – but that three days later he would rise again (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34), but they didn’t believe him. But look at how forgiven they are: The angel doesn’t offer one word of rebuke to these women. No, “Oh, you of little faith!” On top of that, the angel doesn’t tell the women to go and scold his unbelieving disciples – and especially that miserable denier Peter – but just the opposite: go, tell his disciples and Peter that Jesus is risen and therefore his sins are forgiven! Did you catch that? He still calls those deserting and denying sinners his disciples. So silence the alarm! Jesus still calls denying and deserting sinners like us his disciples!

Do you know the only sin Jesus rebuked his disciples for after his resurrection? Not for deserting him. Not for denying him. Not for their secret sins of lust, greed, pride or worry. No, the only sin the risen Jesus rebuked the disciples for was for doubting, for not believing the witnesses of his resurrection (Mark 16:14). Jesus rebuked them for still allowing their consciences to be troubled, for thinking that God was still angry, that heaven wasn’t open. If there is anything I must rebuke you for today, it’s not the sinful things you’ve said, thought, or done – it’s for doubting that those sins have been buried in the tomb and fully and freely forgiven for Jesus’ sake!

But maybe it’s not your sins that are setting off alarm bells but the wages of sin: death (Romans 6:23). Well, I have good news for you, too – Jesus has kicked death’s teeth in – death can’t harm you anymore. That’s the fact. But we have the same problem with death that we do with sin, don’t we? We often live as if the facts weren’t true. Instead, we live as if the poem entitled “The Dash” were true. The premise of the poem is that the little dash between the date of your birth and your death on your headstone is all that there is to life – and that you had better be careful how you spend that dash. It’s a trendy poem to have read at non-Christian funerals. It’s sick and, well, satanic. [1] But isn’t that how we often live? We talk about believers who have died in the past tense. She was a good cook. He had a good sense of humor. She was a great mother. The little dash of their life has been ended by the date chiseled behind it. Rather than seeing the graves of Christians as mere pit stops, as resting places, we view them as permanent.

If that’s true – and if we live as if that’s true – then, as Paul said, we are the most pitiful people of all (1 Corinthians 15:19) – because we have placed our hope in a myth. If that’s true then the alarm bells of death that are sounding from the so-called experts, from our doctors, from our smart watches, from our own creaking and groaning bodies aren’t ringing nearly loudly enough. If our hope in Jesus ends at the grave, then you’d better find all the masks and vaccines you possibly can; then it would be much better to not waste one second believing in him at all!

But did the grave that seems so permanent to us seem so to Jesus? Did Easter end with a sealed tomb? Nope, an open and empty one. Jesus rose. Good Friday wasn’t the end. The women thought so. They went there to – metaphorically speaking – chisel in the date of his death and set the headstone so that they would have a place to come and visit in the future. But their unbelief didn’t stop Jesus – and neither does ours. Just because death seems so permanent, so lasting, so final to us – doesn’t mean it is for Jesus or for those who died in faith. He rose, and Paul tells us that Jesus is just the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20). Jesus is the first, but not the last; he’s the first of many. Death is nothing more than a nap, a sleep from which all who believe will awaken. Easter silences the alarm bells of death because Easter means that death has been defeated, swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54)!

That’s a lot to swallow, isn’t it? (And not just because you just ate a big Easter breakfast!) It’d sure be a lot easier to swallow and believe if we could just go to Galilee and see Jesus in the flesh like the disciples, right? No, it wouldn’t! Galilee is a long way away and flights are expensive – and, what’s more, we have something even better. Jesus comes so that we can see him here. We see him at work in the water of Baptism where he takes children and adults in his arms and enfolds them in his forgiveness and adopts them into his Father’s family (Galatians 4:4-5). We see and hear him when his called servants declare that our sins are forgiven week after week after week (John 20:22-23). We see and taste him when we receive his true body and blood in Holy Communion (Matthew 26:27-28). Those women ran away from the tomb afraid because they hadn’t yet seen Jesus. We have seen Jesus, right where he promised to be – in the means of grace, the Gospel in Word and Sacrament (Matthew 18:20) – so there’s no reason for alarm here.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of this alarmist climate and culture. I’m sick and tired of being told to be afraid of everything from social upheaval to global warming to one of you breathing on me. Thank God it’s Easter. Easter silences all those alarms with the assurance that because Christ is risen, you are forgiven, death is defeated, and you need go no further than here to God’s house to see him. You know how satisfying it is to roll over and slap your alarm clock to shut it off? Or how good it feels to shut off the news when every “breaking news” alert seems to announce another reason to be deathly afraid? It’s even more satisfying for us to be here today to stare sin, death, the alarmist world, and the devil himself in the eye and shout (shout with me): Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! (Do you hear that? That’s no reason for alarm!) Amen.

[1] https://thedashpoem.com/

Hebrews 12:18-24 - Significant Blood - April 2, 2021

Is blood significant? Children think so. The slightest scratch or scrape, a single drop of blood demands a Band-Aid or ice and probably a hug. Doctors think so. Even though they make you fill out page after page of health history, they clearly learn far more accurate information about your health from the vials of blood they draw from your arm. Is blood significant? God thinks so. After Cain killed his brother Abel, God confronted Cain and said what have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the soil (Genesis 4:10). God considers blood to be significant – and not just Abel’s either. In Genesis, God declared: whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for God made man in his own image (Genesis 9:6). And, while God thinks blood is significant enough to force Cain to become a nomad and institute capital punishment – that is, he considers blood to be significant enough that he demands blood to satisfy his justice, the Bible tells us that he also considers blood to be significant enough to deliver his mercy. Tonight we are gathered around Calvary’s cross, down which the blood of God’s only Son slowly drips, drop by drop – significant blood, to be sure. But what does this blood, the blood of Jesus, signify? God’s justice or his mercy? Tonight, the author of Hebrews will guide us to see and understand the significance of Jesus’ blood.

First Lesson                                                                                                                                                                                 Hebrews 12:18-22a

He writes: you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to burning fire, to darkness, to gloom, to a raging storm, to the sound of a trumpet, and to a voice that spoke. Those who heard the voice asked that not one more word be added, because they could not endure what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.” The sight was so terrifying that even Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.” It probably goes without saying that this mountain is Mt. Sinai, the place where God laid out the standards of his justice, his 10 Commandments. On Mt. Sinai God established that disobedience to his will demanded a significant payment: the blood of the offender (Leviticus 16; Romans 6:23; Hebrews 3:16-19). If that doesn’t strike terror into your heart, too, then you might want to check if you still have a pulse.

On Good Friday, we have come to a mountain – but, thank God, not that mountain, not Mt. Sinai. As the writer of Hebrews says, instead, you have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God. Mt. Zion was the location of the temple in Jerusalem. Unlike Mt. Sinai, which was off-limits to both man and animals, Mt. Zion was accessible to God’s people. It was where God heard the prayers and accepted the offerings of his people and offered them his forgiveness and grace. It was where God accepted the blood of bulls and lambs and goats as sacrifices for the sins of the people (Hebrews 9:11-18). Is that God’s justice or mercy? Yes! God didn’t change his demand for blood to pay for sin – his standard of justice stood firm. But God accepted the blood of animals instead of, in place of, the blood of the sinful people – that’s his mercy. But you might say, “A lot of good that does us. We can’t go to the temple (because today it’s nothing more than rubble under an Islamic mosque), and we don’t slaughter bulls or lambs or goats in worship.” That’s right. And we don’t have to because we have something better. Here in this gathering of God’s people he reaches out through Word, through water and bread and wine to apply the sacrificial blood of the Lamb of God to sinners like us! We go back to Mt. Calvary tonight to see God execute his divine justice on his own Son. But we also come here tonight to receive the mercy Jesus purchased with his own, significant, substitutionary blood.

Hymn 128                                                                                                                                                                       Not All the Blood of Beasts

Second Lesson                                                                                                                                                                                  Hebrews 12:22b

You have come to Mount Zion…to the heavenly Jerusalem; to tens of thousands of angels in joyful assembly;

For over a year now we’ve been separated from each other. Sure, we’ve been allowed by the state supreme court to once again gather for worship. But we’re still separated – by masks, by social distancing, by the alleged fear that even if you’re perfectly healthy you can kill me with your breath. Separation of any kind is the result of sin. God kicked Adam and Eve out of his presence in Eden because of their sin (Genesis 3:23-24). He separated mankind by confusing their languages at the Tower of Babel because of their pride (Genesis 11:1-9). He separated his chosen people from their homes in the Promised Land to exile in Babylon due to their idolatry and rebellion (2 Chronicles 36:15-21). Most significantly, God determined that the wages of sin will be death now, the separation of the body and the soul (Ecclesiastes 12:7), and eternally, separating sinners from himself forever in hell. This separation we are experiencing now pales in comparison to the eternal separation from God we deserve.

But because we have not come to Mt. Sinai tonight but to Mt. Zion – this separation from God and from each other is not permanent. Because on a Friday 2000 years ago just outside of Mt. Zion, Jesus, the holy Son of God, was separated from his Father’s love on a cross, we will never be separated from God’s love in this life (Romans 8:38-39). Because by his death Jesus tore down the curtain of sin that separated us from God (Mark 15:38), we will not be separated from God’s presence eternally. In fact, while we may still be separated from each other by masks and distance and fear – when we come here to God’s house, the author of Hebrews says that we are united in intimate fellowship with tens of thousands of angels in joyful assembly. In our worship, heaven and earth intersect and we, as citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem (Philippians 3:20), stand with the saints of old and the angels to sing here on the earth the hymns of heaven, like Glory to God in the highest (CW p. 16), Holy, holy, holy (CW p. 22), and O Christ, Lamb of God (CW p. 23).  These hymns were composed in heaven for us to sing with the choirs of heaven here on earth. We may still be separated from each other here and now, but even here and now we are united with tens of thousands of angels in heaven singing the praise of the Lamb (Revelation 7:10) who has won our salvation with his significant blood.

Hymn 114                                                                                                                                                Christ, the Life of All the Living (st. 1-4)

Third Lesson                                                                                                                                                                                     Hebrews 12:23a

You have come to Mount Zion…to the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven;

As we all know, we’re not just separated from others because of viruses and mandates, we’re separated from others – even other Christians – here on earth because of false doctrine. These divisions are the work of the devil and result in untold pain and sadness in many hearts, many homes, and many churches. And while these doctrinal and denominational divisions are sad, they are necessary. Paul says that there also have to be factions among you so that those who are approved may become evident among you (1 Corinthians 11:19). But because of Jesus, the separation we see and feel from other believers is only temporary. In God’s eyes there is only one Church (Ephesians 4:4-5), and this Church consists of everyone whose name has been written in the book of life in heaven (Revelation 20:12). Is your name written there? Yes! When you were baptized, God wrote your name in that book – adding it to the names of the countless saints who came before and will come after you (Galatians 3:26-27). Whereas bloodshed in this world usually separates people and families and nations – the blood Jesus shed on the cross breaks down barriers and unites believers of all peoples, races, tribes, languages, and nations, because the blood of Jesus… [God’s] Son, cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).

Hymn 114                                                                                                                                                Christ, the Life of All the Living (st. 5-7)

Fourth Lesson                                                                                                                                                                                   Hebrews 12:23b

You have come to Mount Zion…to God, who is the judge of all;

Well…that doesn’t sound good. Did you know that? Did you know that tonight, of your own free will, you have come to stand trial before God, the judge of all? And you’re not alone. The people in the homes just a stone’s throw from those doors, your own family and friends who have decided that there is somewhere more important to be on Good Friday than worshiping before the bloody cross of Christ are also standing before the Judge of all today and will stand before him on the Last Day. On that Day, his judgment will be perfect and his verdict will be final (John 5:30). On that day there will be only two options: guilty or innocent; and only two sentences: eternity in heaven or in hell. How does Jesus’ blood play into this? Well, I’ll let you in on the little secret we call the Gospel – when God judged Jesus on Calvary’s cross 2000 years ago, he also judged the world – including you and me (John 12:31). God declared his verdict: he declared Jesus guilty…and, he declared you…not guilty. Jesus’ blood served the dual purpose of satisfying God’s justice and providing his mercy to us. Because of Jesus’ blood, God has judged you innocent, has acquitted you, has forgiven your sins. That’s why you can come here and look forward to Judgment Day without fear – because God has already judged you in Christ; and the verdict that he has printed in the indelible blood of his Son is: not guilty.

Hymn 127                                                                                                                                                 Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted (st. 1, 4)

Fifth Lesson                                                                                                                                                                                       Hebrews 12:23c

You have come to Mount Zion…to the spirits of righteous people who have been made perfect;

What does that mean? Your initial reaction may be to think that this sounds either very creepy or very Catholic. Well, it’s neither. In the previous chapter of Hebrews, chapter 11 – the so-called hall of fame of faith – there is a list of the believers who have gone before us, beginning with…Abel. We do not pray to or worship these saints, nor do we trust in them for salvation. However, with the very first Lutherans we confess: “Our churches teach that the history of the saints may be set before us so that we may follow the example of their faith and good works, according to our calling” (AC XXI: 1). Through their faith in [Jesus’] blood (Romans 3:25), the believers who have gone before us have left us a rich legacy. It’s not so much that we should imitate how they lived – for they, too, were sinners – but rather, what they believed and how God in his grace provided for them, especially in troubling times – in times of persecution, pandemic and upheaval. As Lutherans, we may be tempted take this blessing for granted, we may grow bored with the catechisms and the creeds and the liturgy – but we shouldn’t. Because when we come here for worship we are not just standing on the shoulders of our believing predecessors, we are drawing from the same bottomless well of God’s grace they drew from, the water of life that springs from the blood Jesus shed on Calvary’s cross.

Hymn 117                                                                                                                                                                     O Dearest Jesus (st. 1-2, 5-7)

Sixth Lesson                                                                                                                                                                                      Hebrews 12:24a

You have come to Mount Zion…to Jesus, the mediator of a new testament;

When people think they have been wrongly fired, wrongly injured in an accident, or wrongly accused of a crime, they often run to a lawyer who can argue their case on their behalf. We have something even better; we have Jesus. Jesus is not only our defense attorney – he’s our substitute, he’s the one who has taken our sin upon himself and has given us his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). On Calvary he pushed us out of the way of God’s wrath, pled guilty to our sin and endured our punishment, and now he stands before God’s judgment seat equipped with the perfect and only argument that can be presented on our behalf. He presents the new testament written in his blood (Matthew 26:28), a testament that, unlike the testament made on Mt. Sinai, is unilateral - one sided; a testament in which God swears I will forgive [your] guilt and I will remember [your] wickedness no more (Jeremiah 31:34).

Hymn 138                                                                                                                                                                              Oh, Perfect Life of Love

Seventh Lesson                                                                                                                                                                                 Hebrews 12:24b

You have come to Mount Zion…to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better message than the blood of Abel.

Blood is significant. Blood speaks. Abel’s blood screamed from the dust of the earth to the throne of God in heaven for vengeance. Thank God that the blood that drips down Calvary’s cross speaks a better message. What is that message? Well, what’s the opposite of vengeance? Forgiveness! Jesus’ blood cried out for forgiveness from the cross (Luke 23:34). And what’s more, the author of Hebrews says that Jesus’ blood speaks – present tense. Which means that the blood of Jesus didn’t just speak on Good Friday – it still speaks today. Through your Baptism, his blood still speaks to you, telling you that he has cleansed you so that you stand spotless and sinless in the sight of God (Ephesians 5:25-27). It speaks to you in the words of absolution – urging you to lay your sins on Jesus and then saying: come now, and let us reason together, says the LORD. Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they will be like wool (Isaiah 1:18; Revelation 7:14). It speaks to you whenever you receive it in the Lord’s Supper – that blood transfusion of immortality, that vaccine against eternal death. Jesus’ blood is still significant. Jesus blood still speaks. It speaks a better message than the blood of Abel. His blood doesn’t cry out for vengeance but for forgiveness; not for the punishment of the guilty but for the justification of the ungodly (Romans 4:5); not for death but for never-ending life. Your blood may tell your doctor many things about you and your health; but your blood, significant as it is, can’t do what Jesus’ blood does. Jesus’ blood, the blood he shed on the cross tells you that you have been saved forever from sin, death and the devil. It doesn’t get more significant than that. Amen.

Hymn 139                                                                                                                                                                         Jesus, in Your Dying Woes

The Burial of Our Lord

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathaea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews. Joseph of Arimathaea, a prominent member of the council, was a good and righteous man. He had not agreed with their plan and action. He was looking forward to the kingdom of God. He boldly went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Pilate was surprised that Jesus was already dead. He summoned the centurion and asked him if Jesus had been dead for a long time. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he granted the body to Joseph. Joseph bought a linen cloth, came, and took Jesus’ body away. Nicodemus, who earlier had come to Jesus at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-two pounds.

They took Jesus’ body and bound it with linen strips along with the spices, in accord with Jewish burial customs.

There was a garden at the place where Jesus was crucified. And in the garden was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. So they laid Jesus there, because it was the Jewish Preparation Day, and the tomb was near. Joseph took the body and laid it in his own new tomb that he had cut in the rock. He rolled a large stone over the tomb’s entrance and left.

The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed after Joseph, and they observed the tomb and how Jesus’ body was laid there. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were watching where the body was laid. 56Then they returned and prepared spices and perfumes. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

On the next day, which was the day after the Preparation Day, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered in the presence of Pilate and said, “Sir, we remembered what that deceiver said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give a command that the tomb be made secure until the third day. Otherwise his disciples might steal his body and tell the people, ‘He is risen from the dead.’ And this last deception will be worse than the first.”

Pilate said to them, “You have a guard. Go, make it as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and posting a guard.

Hymn 137                                                                                                                                                                                          Oh, Darkest Woe