Saint Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church
2525 E. 11th Street Indianapolis, IN
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Judica

3/29/2020

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Genesis 22:1-14; Hebrews 9:11-15; St John 8:(42-45)46-59
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen. 

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” You know that’s true. Some of you kids, now that you won’t be, actually want to go back to school. Some of your adults, who are usually just fine on your own, could use a little social interaction now. And just look around you. You notice, you palpably feel the absence of your brothers and sisters in Christ during this difficult time. They feel it too. They miss you. They miss Church, the Holy People of God gathered around His Holy Things. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

The Church knows this is true, too. And so, during Lent, the Church takes things away. Makes them absent for a little while. And that can be quit jarring. School. Work. Less cars on the interstate. Empty shelves at the grocery store. The absence of your brothers and sisters in Christ. These can be quite jarring. 

It was jarring today as we veiled the crucifixes before the Collect. The Church takes away a full view of Jesus and His Cross. We veil the crucifixes, just as a widow might put on a funeral veil. And that’s because in today’s Gospel, Jesus, the Church’s Husband, the Heavenly Bridegroom, is being verbally attacked and threatened with death by His enemies. Soon He will be dead. 

But today too we takes away the Gloria Patri. For the next two weeks we won’t say or sing, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.” That’s jarring too. That Divine Name revealed by the crucified and risen Jesus Himself. That Name that was placed upon you in Baptism. That Name that saves you. Today, that Name is also taken off our lips. 

But that’s not all. Already stripped from the liturgy has been the Gloria in Excelsis, the song the angels sang at Christ’s birth. And before that, the Alleluias were taken away. Some of you during Lent have even taken money out of your wallet and given it away, to teach you that you can be rich, even without money. Some of your removed things from your regular diet, as you teach yourself that we do not live by bread alone. What a strange thing to take away in a culture that can never have enough. But the Church is not called to fit in. 

But perhaps most jarring is the Gospel reading itself. Where Jesus take Himself away. His enemies are on the warpath. He’s speaking the truth to those who don’t want to hear the truth. And that will mean blood. They are calling Jesus demon possessed and insulting Him. Jesus declares that He is the God who always was. The same I AM who called to Moses from the Burning Bush. The I AM who ordered Abraham to slay his son then intervened to stop him and provided a ram as a substitute. He is the I AM who existed from before the foundation of the world. But they are dishonoring Him. And they pick up stones to kill Him. So He takes Himself away. He slips out. He hides Himself. 
This is quite jarring because its not what we’re used to. The direction of Jesus in the Gospel is almost always the opposite. He doesn’t usually go away from man, but comes to him. Jesus comes toward man. He came to reveal God’s love to man. He came to seek and save the lost. He came to do His Father’s will. He came into the world to save sinners. He came in His birth. He came to John the Baptizer at the Jordan. He came to do battle with Satan in the wilderness. He went out of His way to come to the Canaanite Woman to help her and heal her daughter. He came to teach, to heal, to cast out demons. He’ll come to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He’ll come to celebrate the final Passover. He will come to the Garden to be arrest, to Pilate’s hall to be condemned, to the Golgotha to be crucified. 

But today, He does the opposite. Today Jesus takes Himself away. Today Jesus hides. Jarring. 

In the Scriptures its usually guilty and fearful man who does the hiding. It’s fearful Adam who hid himself from the presence of God, tried to hide his shame with fig leaves, and then tried to hide his guilt and sin behind lame excuses. It’s disobedient Jonah who hid himself in a boat trying to flee the presence of God. The psalmist fearfully asks, Where shall I go from Your Spirit, O Lord? Or where shall I flee from Your presence (Ps 139:7)?

We try to do that too. In fear and guilt and shame, we try to cover up our messes, hide from our mistakes, hide behind excuses and lies to get away with our sins. Like the Pharisees in today’s Gospel we have not kept Jesus’ Word, not abided in it for living and for life. We’ve honored God with our lips while our hearts are far from Him. We’ve done things that Jesus’ hates, but insist that deep down, we’re still a “good person.” We should taste death, eternal death. It would be perfectly just for Jesus to come at us with stones. 

But then we are gathered to the Divine Service this morning and we hear something that is even more jarring. Something which has not been taken away, not only on Judica Sunday, but never. We hear the Gospel. We hear God’s Word of forgiveness. The very heart and center of the Christian Church who doesn’t fit into this world. We hear about Jesus and what He did when He came into the world. 

He kept the Father’s Word because we haven’t. He honored God both with His lips and with His heart. His didn’t deserve to taste death, but He did, for everyone, so that you might not die eternally. He honored God with every fiber of His being so that you might get credit for it. 

So while many good things are being taken away today, the Best Thing, the Holy Thing, is not. That best thing is a Person. It is Jesus, the I AM in the flesh, who does not go away this morning in disappointment, or come at you with stones, but He comes to your ears with His Word of forgiveness. He comes to your lips with Bread that is His Body and a life that cannot die. 

For Jesus did not hide from His enemies in order to stay away from them forever. He hid as One who knew exactly what He was doing. He hid for awhile because it was not yet His hour. Or, as Abraham would have put it, He hid because His day had not yet come. Abraham looked down the generation and rejoiced to see that Day - the Day of Jesus life, His death, His resurrection and its benefits won for sinners. 

Abraham saw that day and was glad. And he saw it in part, on that mountain, Mt Moriah, where the Lord God bid him go and slaughter his son, his only son, whom he loved. You might think that drama doesn’t get any better than a man being asked to sacrifice his son, see him lifting the knife, and then, at the last minute, being told to stop and instead pull out a substitute which God provided in a nearby thicket. What a day that was. To Abraham it was like a day of resurrection. He got his son back, safe and sound. 

But it did get better for Abraham and for us. Centuries later God would instruct Abraham’s descendant, King David, to purchase a threshing floor on that same mountain as the place where his son would build Him a Temple, that great place of sacrifice. Where priests would enter the Holy Place with the blood of goats and bulls on behalf of the people. 

And then, even better, a thousand years later God the Father would march His own Son, whom He loved, up that same mountain, lay Him down on the Cross, and lift the knife. And this time there would be no angel to tell Him to stop. There would be no substitute ram in the thicket. It would be the obedient Son of God no longer hiding, but in plain view, being judged, condemned and crucified for what we have been and done. The Day that He would taste eternal death for everyone. The Day that Jesus Christ, our High Priest of the good things that have come, enters once for all into the holy places through His own flesh, offering Himself without blemish to God.

And then, what drama, He rose from the dead to bring you forgiveness and life, to purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. 

He is not hiding His mercy this morning. He comes to His broken and guilty children with fatherly mercy. Just like He found Adam hiding and came to him in mercy. He has found you and clothes you with the Garment of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Just like He found Jonah in hiding and came to him in mercy. So has He found you and brought you to the Ship of His Church, safe through the storms and peril by being swallowed up in the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. Jarring. 

Absence may make the heart grow fonder. But hearing again and again of the presence of God’s holy flesh on the Cross as our Substitute makes the heart grow with joy and thanksgiving. 

He has sent out the Light and Truth of His Word and Spirit and they lead you and bring you to His holy hill, to His dwelling. Then you will go to the Altar of God, to God your exceeding joy. For here, the presence of God’s holy flesh now placed on your tongues makes the heart grow bigger, stronger in faith, more forgiving, more kind, more merciful, and more desirous to come to your neighbor, to reach out in love for those are absent from you this day. To love as you have been loved with a love unknown. 
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Laetare

3/22/2020

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Exodus 16:2-21; Galatians 4:21-31; St John 6:1-15
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

The manna was supposed to be a test. Israel was God’s flock, the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. He led them into the wilderness like a shepherd to test them. To see it they would trust Him for their daily bread in that helpless situation. Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My Word or not.

They were told to scoop something off the ground and eat it. Would you have done that? They were being asked to eat something that had no label, no name. Would you have done that? There was a ban on eating leftovers, which meant they had to trust God every morning for their daily bread. No hoarding. Could you do that? It was a test for God’s people, for His sheep. 

They did not pass. They ended up testing Him. Psalm 78 tells us the tragic story. They tested His patience. They tested His love. They hated that bread. They did not trust their Shepherd. They spoke against Him. They did not have a faithful spirit. They flattered Him with their lips, but they despised His ways. They forgot what He had done at the Red Sea. After the Red Sea they even asked, “Can God prepare a table for us out here in the wilderness, in the presence of our enemies?” 

It made God furious. He may have given them manna, but He did it with a clenched jaw. With smoke coming from His nostrils. It was a test for God’s flock, to see if they would have faith. They didn’t.

And so, in the days of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, He did it again. He had done signs, like Moses had in Egypt. He healed the sick, turned water to wine, catechized Nicodemus concerning the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness. Now Jesus leads His disciples across the sea, out into the wilderness and up a mountain, like Moses, in order to test them. He said to Philip, “From where are we to buy bread that these people may eat?” He said this to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do. 

But Philip failed. He had no faith that Jesus could feed the 5,000. Andrew points out the boy with five loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many? He had forgotten about Cana. Did they catch on when Jesus told them to have the people lie down in the green grass? Were their hearts strengthened when He blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to His disciples and told them to set them before the people? 

Can’t you just picture it? Andrew and his brother, Simon Peter, are in the crowd handing out bread. At first they're a little stingy with it. A little piece here, a small bite there. But every time they go back to the basket, its full. No matter how much they give away, Jesus keeps multiplying it! How long does it take until they starting handing out whole loaves? When did they say to themselves, The Lord will provide? You would have thought that from the beginning their faith would have been strong and their hearts calm and confident. But just as Israel, they failed the test too. 

What about you? The Lord is your Shepherd. And He has, from time to time, led you into seemingly hopeless situations to see if you would trust Him. He has put your faith to the test, even while He knows what He will do. But like Israel, like Philip, like so many, how often have we failed. 

We’ve lived as if we are in control of our lives. That’s not faith. 

We’ve been paralyzed by our fretting. That’s not faith. 

We’ve craved that which would hurt us. We’ve forgotten how He brought us through the Red Sea of our Baptism, out from death to life. That’s not faith. 

How often have we offended God by thinking, “Can He prepare a table before me out in this wilderness, in the presence of my enemies?

Repentance is needed, dear Christians. We have failed God’s test of faith. But He knows what He will do. The Israelites kept putting God to the test and yet, He kept being their Shepherd. He kept feeding them manna. Kept raining bread from heaven for them. The disciples put Jesus to the test, but He kept being their Shepherd. No only did He provide food for the 5,000, as much as they wanted, He even provided green grass for them. He is their Good Shepherd who gives them to lie down in green pastures. He gives them rest. For wherever Jesus is, there is refreshment. Wherever Jesus is, there is His Spirit. Wherever Jesus is, there is the green grass of the Garden of Eden and true rest. 

Rejoice, dear ones, with the Psalmist who says, I was glad them they said to me, “Let us go to the House of the Lord. Why? Because your Shepherd is here. You are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Here is your green grass and refreshment. What is His answer when He exposes the littleness of your faith? It is as it was for Philip and Andrew, He does not rebuke your ignorance or get angry with you. He simply does what a Shepherd does. He gives you to recline around this Pulpit where He bestows to you His comforting words and promises. He bids you recline around this Altar to be fed with Real Food that satisfies in the deepest way. 

You receive here from Mount Zion the abundance of His mercy because He received on Mount Calvary the fullness of the Father’s wrath. For you get to lie down in comfort because your Shepherd first lay down in agony upon the Cross to be crucified for the sins of His flock. And then He lied down died in a tomb with no human way out. A hopeless situation if there every was one. 

But God is the Hope of the hopeless and He raised your Shepherd from the dead. 

The crowd that followed Him got it so wrong. They saw Him as the Prophet like Moses, to be sure, but they wanted to take Him by force and make Him King. They thought He was the goose that laid the golden egg. A never ending supply of bread and fish! Healing for our illnesses! That sounds pretty good right now. 

But He already was the King. And there would be no force needed for Him to give away His Kingdom. For it is His Father’s good pleasure to do so. To give you His Kingdom. 

And that’s precisely what He gives you here. Not just enough for today, like with the Israelites, but an abundance, like the bread and fish. Did you notice that from those five loaves and two fish which feed 5,000 men plus women and children, there were twelve baskets left over? The fragments are gathered so that none may perish, Jesus says. He has in mind the future of the Church. The food Jesus gives remains so that it is available for future believers who may also partake in the feeding which Jesus gives. 

The earliest Christians understood this. In fact, they used this language and imagery in a prayer before the Holy Eucharist. “Just as this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and then was gathered together and became one, so may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Your Kingdom; for Yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever” (Didache 9:4). 

So it is for you here today who have come up to the House of the Lord. Rejoice and be glad! For you are gathered as many grains baked into the one loaf, even as you receive the one bread that is Jesus’ Body given for you. Here He speaks His Word, gives thanks, and simple bread becomes the Feast of Salvation. Here, from the Pastor’s hand you receive forgiveness in place of God’s anger. Here Jesus’ distributes the true Bread from Heaven which He gives for the Life of the world and saints are refreshed and renewed, little-faith disciples become brave and courageous confessors. Straying sheep are gathered and made faithful. 

But it does not end here. The leftovers are gathered so that none may perish. Dear Christians, you have many at this time who are not gathered with you here, but are scattered to their own homes. Some are afraid. Others cautious. But all need the wholesome loaves of Christ’s Word; to hear the Voice of their Good Shepherd and receive His comfort and rest. Carry it to them. You who have received an abundance of the Lord’s mercy and life, bring it to those in need. Even if only by phone. These are your vocations, your crosses during this present time. 

And do not fear, brethren, for like Isaac, you are children of promise; children of the free woman, your heavenly Jerusalem, in whom you have life. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds His people. 

In the Name of the Father + and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Midweek Oculi

3/18/2020

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Genesis 41:9-16; 25-44; St Luke 22:52-71
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

Two years. That’s how long Joseph was in prison. Two years. That’s how long the chief cup bearer, having been returned to his position, had forgotten to put Joseph forward. Now he remembered because Pharaoh was once again troubled and angry. This new crisis caused him to reflect on a previous one. A young Hebrew was there in prison with us. He interpreted our dreams to us and as he interpreted to us, so it came about.

So it was with Peter as well. As our Lord Jesus had prophesied, so it came about. I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know Me (Lk 22:34). But like the cup bearer, Peter forgot. The Word of the Lord is expedient for a time, but is often neglected in the moments of the greatest necessity. Time and necessity, these are often our masters. And so, as Joseph is finally released from prison, our Lord Jesus Christ is taken into custody. Each one goes only according to the will of the Lord our God.  

Pharaoh’s heart was suspended between hope and fear. He, nor his magicians, nor wise men, could conjecture whether the dreams portended peace or war, goodness or doom.

Perhaps you, dear Christian, are suffering the same disturbance. You cannot make sense of the information being blasted at you. You feel like you are living in a dream, some surreal circumstance unlike ever before.

In Egypt’s time of crisis our Lord raised up Joseph, this beggar, this pauper, from the dung and prison to make him sit with princes, as the Palmist sings (113:7-8). He bestows the gift of interpretation not on a nobleman in Pharaoh’s court, but to an exile, a condemned outcast. So does our Lord, who hides His ways from the wise and understanding, and reveals them to children, to babes, remind you tonight, as the disciples all flee as Jesus is taken captive: The hour is coming, indeed has come, Jesus says, when you will be scattered, each to his own home and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with Me. I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world (Jn 16:32-33).

Do not loose heart, dear Christians. Learn from Joseph. For while he was imprisoned, isolated, cut off, and neglected, he meditated on the Word of the Lord day and night. He invoked God with a fervent faith. For faith is not idle, especially when tested by trial and fire, but is exercised by the Word and by prayer (AE 7:143). This is how Joseph endured his various trials. Over twenty years of being away from his family, sold into slavery in a foreign land, falsely accused, imprisoned, raised up to high command. Through it all he did nothing without prayer to God, especially when called upon to interpret the king’s dream. It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.
So also with our Lord Jesus. His ministry is constantly punctuated with prayer. After He’s baptized (Lk 3:21). On the mountain after feeding the 5,000 (Mt 14:23). Before He preaches the Beatitudes (Lk 6:12). After healing the multitude at Peter’s mother-in-law’s house (Mk 1:35). Of course at Gethsemane. In fact, His bestowal and catechesis of the Our Father is in the context of His own prayer. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place and when He finished one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk 11:1). Thus does He command and teach, exhort and even give you the words to be fervent in prayer. To pray at all times and in all places. To intercede for the sick and the dying, for the government and those in authority, for the Church and her Ministers, for the needs of all. This is how you endure, dear Christians. Not panic, but prayer.

And fervently clinging to the Word of the Lord, even as Joseph did with Pharaoh’s dream. Yes, his dream was the Word of the Lord, even before Moses recorded it for us in Genesis. For God has revealed to Pharaoh what He is about to do. God announces this to him. This is prophecy. And Joseph, by God’s Spirit and grace, follows it with the interpretation which is also the Word of God, which alone is sure and certain.

Reason could not comprehend this. The magicians and wise men couldn’t figure it out. Just as today there are those who imagine that they understand Scripture when they twist and contort it, making it say something it doesn’t. Fanatics and enthusiasts who claim God has revealed new information to them. No! But after Joseph, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, by God’s grace, offers the proper interpretation - the seven good cows are seven years and the seven good ears are seven years; the dreams are one. There will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt, but after them will arise seven years of famine - then it appears to be so clear and plain that it seems that anyone could have understood it.

But both of these, the dream and its meaning, are the Word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit who alone illumines hearts and minds and who, in love and mercy, reveals His work and will. We will understand more of this later.  

For now, though, Joseph, in setting forth the knowledge of the true God, the Maker of heaven and earth, he is raised up to be the bishop of all of Egypt. He instructed the king, the princes, the priests, the whole people. For he not only wisely interpreted the dream, in exceeding wisdom he also advised what should be done on account of it; how they should make use of the blessing the Lord is giving them so that they can be of service to their people and to their neighbors in the years of famine that are to follow. Luther boldly interprets that here “Pharaoh becomes a Christian; instructed in the Word of faith and true piety, just as other Gentiles were saved without circumcision” (AE 7:164).

Dear Christians, is it any different for us? Have we not, like Joseph, been blessed with the revelation of God’s Word and the clear and true explanation and proclamation of His will and work? Do we not have the abundance of His Gospel, the full and free forgiveness of sins in the blood of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Baptism, the Keys, prayer, and the Sacrament of the Altar? Are we not in a severe famine of the Word? When the people of God are destroyed by lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6)?

To truly understand and believe this we must learn that the goodness, mercy, and power of God cannot be grasped by speculation, but can only be taught by the Holy Spirit in the school of experience. God hides Himself under the form of the worst devil. See how He dealt with Joseph those many years. See how He deals with His own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. At that evil hour, under the power of darkness, He is seized and led away to a mock trial. His dearest followers deny and reject Him. He is beaten, blasphemed, tortured and crucified.

But the Father raised Him up. Not after two years, but after three days, for He could not forget His Son. Now, in Jesus Christ, a balm and healing in His holy wounds you find, every hour that you are feeling pains of body and of mind. Should some evil thought within tempt your treacherous heart to sin, He shows the peril and from sining keeps you from its first beginning (LSB 421:1).

Just endure and wait for the Lord, beloved. Hold fast. Be content with His Word, just as Joseph was. Isolated, alone, cut off, businesses closing, companies shutting down, schools locking up, you have the one thing that remains: the Word of the Lord endures forever.

“But how shall I be steadfast when there is so much trouble? What if I get sick? What if my family gets sick?” Cling to the Word and rejoice this way, “I am baptized. I believe in Christ, the Son of God. Come devil and death it does not matter. There will be no danger from plague, death, or hell, for the Lord sustains me with His hand as long as I have His Word. This is how I learn what the good and acceptable and perfect will of God is (Rom 12:2)” (AE 7:177) as St Paul writes to the Romans.

But what does he say immediately before? Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, by the renewal of your mind (Rm 12:2). And how are you transformed and renewed in your mind? By daily drowning the old Adam with its sins and evil desires and daily arising and emerging in the new man to live before God in righteousness and purity. That is, through confession and mortification of your flesh. This is how it was for Joseph. First he was in prison before God liberated and exalted him.

So for you. It is as you sang in the first hymn, “Lord, to You I make confession; I have sinned and gone astray” (LSB 608:1). And as you prayed in the Introit psalm: How long, O Lord? Consider and answer me. Trust in His steadfast love. Rejoice with your whole heart in His salvation. For He deals bountifully with you. Come, bow the knee and receive the food of plenty. Not seven years, but the Food of Eternity, the Medicine of Immortality, the Eucharist of Christ’s own Body and Blood. Here is sustenance for your journey. Here is nourishment for your soul and body.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Oculi

3/15/2020

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Exodus 8:16-24; Ephesians 5:1-9; St Luke 11:14-28
Profession of Faith Danny and Anne Strauser

In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

This is the finger of God. That’s what Pharaoh’s magicians said. They didn’t say it after the first plague, when God turned all the water in Egypt into blood. They didn’t say it after the second plague, when God filled their bedrooms with frogs. But after the third plague, when gnats adhered themselves to man and beast, they couldn’t help but say it, This is the finger of God. The Finger of Judgment. The Finger that pressed down on their deities and dwarfed their might. The Finger that meant doom for Pharaoh and his country.

Then God struck again. The forth plague was flies. Swarms of big flies on all the Egyptians. Swarms of flies ruining the land. It was doom and judgment for the Egyptians, mockery of their gods. But not for those Hebrew slaves. They shared in the first three plagues, but not in the fourth and following ones. Ruinous flies over all the Egyptians, yes. But on the Hebrews in the land of Goshen, no. No flies, no doom, no judgment. The Lord God set His people apart. He made a division between them and the Egyptians.

The next time we hear the term Finger of God in the Scriptures is the finger of God etching out the Ten Commandments and giving them to Moses (Ex 31:18). The Finger of God carving out what the lives of His people were to look like. They were to love God above all things, but instead, they considered Him a nuisance. They were to love and serve those around them, but they considered even their family a bother. The Finger of God would not mean doom even for them.

And that good, right, and salutary Law of God still preaches doom to hard hearts. Hearts like ours. We are called to fear, love, and trust in God above all things, but we don’t. Our own national “plague” is evidence of that. Do we fear God above all things? Or do we fear interaction with other people and Coronavirus? Do we love God above all things? Or do we love that Walgreens still has Clorox wipes? Do we trust Him above all things? Or do we trust in hand sanitizer and latex gloves?

God’s good Law that He etched out with His finger was supposed to be a description of us, His people, to fear and love Him above all things and love our neighbors as ourselves. Instead it is like a finger in our face, accusing us, showing us that we are naturally sinful, dead and doomed. Like it was for the Hebrews living in Goshen, who were afflicted with the first three plague, so it is for us Christians living here and around the world, this is an opportunity to repent. Whether it is God’s judgment or His mercy, the Christian life of faith and love is always marked by repentance.

In the Old Testament the Finger of God was an expression that meant doom and judgment. Yet despite our lawbreaking, our lack of fear, love, and trust in God above all things, doom will not strike you. And the reason is because there came a time in history when the Finger of God was not only an expression. The Finger of God could actually be seen. The ten fingers of God could actually be seen attached to the palm of a Man. The Man Jesus who had all the power of God in those fingers. He could have flicked away the disobedient the way you flick away a bothersome gnat. He could have justly wrapped those fingers around our throats, shaken us, and said, “Why do you oppose Me and My ways?” He could have pointed that finger at us as one deserving God’s anger.

Instead, He pointed His finger at Himself and said, “I’m the guilty One.” He let others wags their fingers in His face, falsely accusing Him. Saying He was in league with the Devil. Others who pointed their fingers at Him and said, “There’s that Lawbreaker. Crucify Him.” “There’s the Man we hate, condemn Him.” And He let them. He set aside the power of those incarnate fingers of God and wrapped them around the beam of a Cross as He bore the Law’s punishment, a punishment He didn’t deserve.

In today’s Gospel we see the power of those Fingers. He’s driving out the Strong Man, Satan. For Christ Jesus is the Stronger One. This Lent Jesus comes battling Satan. Face to face in the wilderness. In the demonic possession of a Canaanite woman’s daughter. Now in the mute man. Satan is real. And he loves to deceive us and mislead us into false belief and despair. He rejoices over epidemics and national emergencies. He cheers over things that take away our true fear, love, and trust in God.

But the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil (1 Jn 3:8). He comes casting out demons because He came to help man by striking and overcoming Satan and his kingdom. He came to cast away your sins. To drive them far out of God’s presence, never to be remembered. That’s what drove Him to the Cross. Drove Him to fulfill what His own fingers wrote on Mt Sinai because you haven’t.

The Ten Commandments which accuse and condemn us, actually describe Jesus perfectly. Here is perfect love. A love that fears His Father and loves Him entirely, trusting Him in every circumstance. Here’s a love that loves His neighbor completely. So completely that He has His powerful, holy fingers stretched out so that His hands can be nailed through as the worst plague ever known to man - your sin - attacked His holy flesh.

There at the Crucifix God was making a division between Jesus and the rest of the world. He was declared the Sinner so that the world might be absolved and declared righteous. The sins of the world covered Him like gnats on skin. Your disobedience, sexual immorality, impurity and covetousness, all attacked Him like a swarm of flies that can’t be shooed away. And then He was struck down. The way the firstborn of Egypt were struck down in the tenth and final plague.

But He was also the Firstborn of the dead, raised, so that He could show the fingers and hands that were the source of man’s victory over death and the grave.

My eyes are ever toward the Lord for He will pluck my feet out of the net, you sang in the introit. When your eyes are toward the Lord of your life and God of your salvation, that means your looking at His fingers, fingers that the Lord Jesus has set apart. His own, which are raised in holy prayer for you. And the fingers of your Pastor, whom He has sent in His stead and by His command. Fingers that poured water over you in the strong name of the Trinity and baptized you and darkness became Light.

Fingers that are held up as a sign of the Office which he holds by Christ’s command to forgive all your sins, to drive away the demon snares of sin, the vice that gives temptation power, and the natural lusts that war within.

Fingers that carry the Body and Blood of Christ to you that bestow His forgiveness and life. Even now, especially now, in the face of fear over mortal illness, we must never think of the Sacrament as something harmful from which we had better flee, but as a pure, wholesome, comforting remedy that grants salvation and comfort. It is the Medicine of Immortality. It will cure you and give you life both in soul and body. For where the soul has recovered, the body is also relieved. There is no poison in the cup which your Divine Physician gives.

See the finger of your Pastor which directs you away from dwelling on your sinful heart, or frustrated emotions, to the heart of your merciful Savior, Jesus Christ, and His favor toward you. He lived for you. Died for you. Was raised for you. He still stands against any swarms of demons or unclean spirits or hostile foes that might try to reclaim you.

He is raised to be with His Church forever. Raised to set His Church apart, just as He once did for the land of Goshen that she may be a Light to the nations, a people fervent in prayer for the sick and all those in need, carrying out our Christian duty toward our neighbors, even while you preserve your own life as a gift of God. Doing everything possible to counteract death and illness by medicine, avoiding places and persons infected, but at all times living with a fervent spirit and joyful hope that no doom, no judgment, no wrath shall befall you who flee for refuge in Christ Jesus.

In the Name of the Father + and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
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Midweek Reminiscere

3/11/2020

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Genesis 39:1-21; St Luke 22:31-51
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

God tempts no one. But what did you sing tonight? The Lord tests the righteous (Ps 11:5). It is the Lord who commands Abraham to offer his son, his only son whom he loved, as a whole burnt offering. It is the Lord who suggests Job to the Adversary and allows him to be afflicted. It is the Lord who gives Paul his thorn in the flesh, his messenger of Satan sent to harass him. It is the Lord who allows Satan to sift Peter and the Twelve like wheat. It is the Lord  who sends Joseph down to Egypt. God tempts no one. The Lord tests the righteous (Ps 11:5).  

So it appears as though Joseph was sold three times. First by his brothers to the Midianites. Then to the Ishmaelites. Finally to Potiphar. The Lord was with him and he became a successful man. This may correspond to our Lord Jesus who was handed over first by His brethren, His own people to Pilate, then Pilate handed Him over to Herod and finally He was handed over to the Cross. But the Lord was with Him. For the Lord tests the righteous.

What’s more, these men, though they suffered such agony, continued to entrust themselves to the will of the Father. You catechumens, learn here from Joseph. All Christians, head his example. His instruction and catechesis in the Christian faith turned out extraordinarily well! Jacob loved his son and favored Joseph above his brothers. Partly because he was the son of Rachel, his beloved wife, but also, perhaps, because in him we see the working of the Holy Spirit to such a great extent.

He listened to and retained the catechesis of his father. For even while he was a youth, a teenager, he is hounded by the worst misfortunes and tempted mightily, but he is not overcome. Like the Canaanite woman from Sunday, great is his faith! Great his modesty, chastity and patience! The prophet Jeremiah writes, It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth (Lam 3:26-27). And so Joseph waits patiently for the Lord. His heart was strong and of good courage. He waited for the Lord (Ps 27:4). The same Lord who tests the righteous.

And while he waited for the goodness and loving kindness of God his Savior to appear, Joseph confessed his hope and trust. He not only prayed for himself and his master, but undoubtably taught his fellow slaves. He catechized them to call on the name of the Lord in true worship, to repent of their sins. No doubt he converted some of them to true faith in the Lord God.

Is this not, again, like our Lord Christ? While His disciples bicker over earthly greatness, His own soul sorrowful even to death, He tenderly catechizes Peter and prays for him. When you repent, Simon, strengthen your brethren. Be of good courage and comfort others with the comfort with which you yourself are comforted. Are not all Christians called to do the same? St Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Cor 1:3-4).

Yet Joseph and Jesus receive little comfort at this time. Joseph found favor in the sight of Potiphar. He was made overseer over all that he had and the blessing of the Lord was on all the Egyptian’s possessions because of Joseph. Truly it was no different for Christ Jesus. He had the favor and blessing of His Father and all that was put into His hand prospered. Not in the same earthly manner as Joseph, of course, yet nevertheless, He is successful; which is to say, He is faithful.

Beloved, it is no different for the Church. Commenting on Joseph’s narrative, Luther wrote, “One must note carefully that God blesses the ungodly for the sake of the Church. For if the world were without the Church and the Gospel were not taught and learned, the world would have perished long ago” (AE 7:62).

Yet you look around and see the world, our own country, going to ruin and villainy. The wicked bend the bow; they have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart (Ps 11:2) Is it, perhaps, because the Church conceals the Word of Christ? Hides it away in shame and fear, unidentifiable from the worldly and ungodly? Joseph fled sexual temptation. He would not even go near Potiphar’s wife. Adultery was a great sin against God. We however, chase headlong into it.

We flirt with the Devil with every lustful glance. We put ourselves in harms way every time we visit those websites. In this way Satan is sifting us like wheat, but Jesus continues to pray for us that our faith may not fail. You heard the exhortation of St Paul in Sunday’s epistle to the Thessalonians, For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immortality. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness (1 Thess 4:3, 7).

For it is true, as you are taught to pray, God tempts no one. He is faithful and provides the way of escape. He does as He did for Jacob in Sunday’s Old Testament text. He wrestles with you. Grapples with your faith to strengthen it, that you may be able to endure. Hold fast to His Word of promise. Pray that you may not enter into temptation.

God tempts no one, but He does test the righteous. “He lets Joseph be a slave for so many years and finally, as a reward for his servitude, lets him be cast into prison in utter disgrace. This is how God rewards the saintliest people! The ones who do the most good. Those who are the very blessing of the world get a disgraceful reward like this” (AE 7:62). Does not Jesus preach and catechize, Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on My account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Mt 5:11-12)?

These are hard lessons, dear Christians. Hard lessons. Taught only by the Holy Spirit in the school of experience. But you have before you two wonderful examples. Joseph, our brother in the faith, and our Lord Jesus Christ. The truth is that while Joseph was poor and needy, falsely shut-up in prison, our Lord did not abandon him.

Moses writes, the Lord was with Joseph. This does not mean that He merely remembered Joseph with fondness and had pity on him. Rather He was with him. He sent His angels to keep watch over him that the evil foe may have no power over him. He had the Word of Christ, the promise and hope. And where His Word is, there is Christ, to strengthen and uphold, to comfort and encourage. Truly, even though Joseph was in prison, hidden away from everyone, he was the greatest treasure in all of Egypt, and the means by which God was to save the nation and His people.

So it is with our Lord Jesus Christ, too. Even as He grew in favor with both God and man, His Father handed Him over to the crowd. It was His will to crush Him for our iniquities. To pour out the full cup of His wrath upon His beloved Son, for in this way, He tests the Righteous One. The Scripture is fulfilled: He was numbered with the transgressors. Though He kept the Law perfectly, was pure and holy according to the Sixth Commandment, and all the Commandments, He was sifted like wheat, stripped of His garment, and struck with the sword as the Father’s anger was kindled against Him. “Man forfeited his life and is acquitted; God is committed” (LSB 439:5).

But the Lord was with Him and showed Him steadfast love and raised Him from the dead, never to die again. He has come to you and touched your ears that you may hear and believe. His blessing is upon you. His steadfast love surrounds you. You have favor in His sight. You do not even need to be concerned about the food you eat, for He feeds you.

For as it was for Joseph in prison, so it is for you, His Church. He is with you. Though unseen and unappreciated by the world, here is the greatest Treasure on earth: the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins, life and salvation.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Reminiscere

3/8/2020

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Genesis 32:22-32; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-7; St Matthew 15:21-28
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

She had many strikes against her. She was a Canaanite woman and Canaanites were enemies of the Israelites. She lived in Jericho and God was about to flatten the walls of the city and burn it down for its wickedness. And to top it all off, she had a bad history with men. She slept with men who weren’t her husband. We know her from the book of Joshua as the prostitute Rahab.

But Rahab, this unlikely woman, ends up an example of great faith (cf Heb 11:29-31). She had heard about how God rescued the Israelites out of Egypt, how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before them and what they did to the two kings of the Amorites (Josh 2:10). She confessed the Lord God of Israel to be the true God. She feared, loved, and trusted in Him. And her faith was no mere lip service. She showed forth her faith with bold deeds. When Israelites spies, Joshua and Caleb, came into her city to check out the enemy, Rahab put her life on the line and hid the spies on her roof so they wouldn’t be caught.

Perhaps even more impressive, though, was the boldness of her prayers. She knew that she and her family were about to die at the hand of the invading Israelites. So she took the initiative and badly interceded for herself and them. She knew she was a “Gentile dog,” yet she cried out for mercy and asked to be spared from death and saved alive (Josh 2:13). And she was spared. She and her family made their safe exodus before the walls came tumbling down.

Today’s Gospel takes place more than a thousand years later, but its as though faithful Rahab showed up again. There is no indication that woman is a prostitute like Rahab was. But she was a Canaanite like Rahab. She was bold like Rahab. And she loved her family like Rahab. Where she lived there were no walls about to come tumbling down, but her life was crashing in all around her. Her daughter was severely oppressed by a demon.

And like that Old Testament Yeshua, Jesus went out of His was to enter the Gentile region where she lived. And like Rahab, she heard about Jesus and confessed Him to be the Messiah by calling Him Son of David and cried out to Him for mercy. But Jesus did not answer her a word. We might have quit asking. But she didn’t.

The disciples tried to shoo her away the way you’d shoo away a dog. We probably would have quit asking at that point. But she didn’t.

She even overheard Jesus tell His disciples that He was sent only for the lost sheep of the House of Israel, not Canaanites like her. We would have quit praying. But she didn’t.

Then in sheer desperation, grappling with our Lord, she throws her body in front of Jesus pleading for help. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber (Ps 121:2b-3a). It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. We would have been offended. We would have given up. We would have walked away in bitter, angry tears. But she wasn’t. She doesn’t. She grabs hold of that word and confesses it, Yes Lord, I am a dog. I know I’m not of the house of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You say I’m a dog. I am. A poor, miserable, Gentile dog. Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.

At this our Lord marvels and says, O woman, great is your faith! And her faith was great, because the object of her faith was great. Her faith was great because her prayers showed that she thought God’s mercy in Christ Jesus was great. Her faith was great because she didn't rely on what she felt, what she heard in her heart, what she experienced in herself or what she saw in others. Her faith was great because she relied on God’s Word and His promises which are great. And on His great reputation for great mercy. The LORD is your keeper. He will keep your life.

Two bold women show us this morning what faith looks like. Faith prays with boldness and persistence, with confidence that the Father cares. Faith recalls to the Lord His mercy and steadfast love which have been from of old, as you sang in the Introit. But what these two women show us most of all is just how small our faith is. How little we trust the Father. How tiny is our expectation that God means only good for us, despite what we experience and feel.

The truth is the devil has an easy time distracting us from praying. We get discouraged. Our weak flesh torments and tortures us, drawing hearts and minds away from Christ and His Word and promises. We take offense too easily. We give up too quickly. We forget that our loved ones desperately need our prayers. Our faith is too timid. So this morning it takes a bold prostitute and a bold nameless woman to put our faith to shame and show us how to truly pray.

And it is good, right and salutary to see and emulate such examples of the Christian faith and life. But what we need more is mercy for our lack of faith, our lack of prayer, and our doubt and despair of God’s goodness and mercy.

And that is exactly what you receive this morning! The God who sent Joshua into the region of Canaan, who sent Jesus into the region of Tyre and Sidon, has sent Jesus into your region. This region of Indianpolis, filled with demons that seek to devour you and your loved ones, to mislead you and deceive you into false belief, shame and vice. This same Jesus who came from a region called heaven into this region called earth to rescue you from that region called hell has died for you, defeating the devil for you.  

Those women may have been bold, but Jesus was even bolder. We filled His cup of suffering with our sins. And He boldly asked the Father to let the cup pass from Him. But the Father didn’t answer Him a word. Perhaps Jesus should have quit praying. But He didn’t. And if its not right to throw the children’s bread to the dogs, it certainly isn’t right to throw the Bread of Life to the dogs - Gentile dogs who would surround Him and mock Him and crucify Him for sins He didn’t commit.

Yet that is what His Father desired for Him for your sake. Perhaps He should have quit praying to the Father. But He didn’t. Perhaps He should have prayed to the Father for Him to send twelve legions of angels to spare Him. But He didn’t. So that He could spare you.

Perhaps He should have stopped praying when His lungs were crushed and He could barely breathe and it looked as though the devil had won. But He didn’t. But so that you might win and receive the victory He prayed for you, Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit (Lk 23:46)! He then rose on the Third Day, ascended into heaven, and still hasn’t quite praying. He still today intercedes for His Church at the Father’s Right Hand. As it is written, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him since He always lives to make intercession for them (Heb 7:25).

And for you poor Gentiles, the same Spirit which Christ committed to the Father raised Him from the dead and is poured out on you in your Baptism. The Spirit who drowned your demons and raised up a new man to live before God by faith, in righteousness and purity forever. He is the same Spirit who teaches you to be bold and confident in your prayers, to wrestle with God and His great promises, to endure evil with patience and to always expect good things from God, even when your experience and feelings tell you otherwise.

This is how you walk and please God, just as you are doing, in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. And to never, ever be tempted to think that your prayers are worthless. Your family, your friends, your enemies, your church family need them. And through them, by striving and wrestling, our Lord Jesus strengthens your faith and forms and fashions you into a theologian.

Beloved, that same Spirit allows you to draw near to the Lord’s Table with confidence. Knowing that you are receiving more than crumbs here this morning that did not fall from heaven by mistake, but purposely directed into your mouth to forgive your sins, enliven your love, and strengthens a faith that places you into the ranks of Rahab and the Canaanite Woman, unlikely examples of great faith. For like them, your faith is great for your Savior is great.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Midweek Invocabit

3/4/2020

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Genesis 37:12-36; St Luke 22:14-30
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

You might say he’s a dreamer. And you wouldn’t be the only one. As the apple of their father’s eye, Joseph’s brothers hated him. When he was given a robe of many colors as a token of Jacob’s affections, they could not speak peacefully to him. He was a boy among the sons of Israel when the brunt of their anger fell on him. Playing favorites with one’s children can be disastrous. Jacob ought to have known.

But relating his dreams to his family didn’t help either. Not only were his brother’s sheaves bowing down to him, but so were the sun and moon, his father and mother. And so they hated him even more and were jealous of him. Those who love virtue will be envied and hated by the wicked. And Joseph did little to avoid arrogance and cultivate humility.

So when they identified this dreamer from afar by his technicolor coat, Joseph’s brothers conspired against him. Seething with jealousy and hatred, they viciously plotted cold blooded murder.

It is, beloved, not unlike our Lord Jesus Christ, the Favored and Beloved Son of His Father, who was sent from above to walk the fields of this earth, to seek and save the lost. He sought out His brothers and among them He gathered Twelve to Himself. Twelve to correspond and fulfill the number of the sons of Jacob, the Tribes of Israel. St John writes, He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him (Jn 1:11). In the Sundays of Pre-Lent you yourselves heard how the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and be handed over to the chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day rise.

And so they conspire against Him. Cold blooded murder. When the hour came and He reclined at Table with His apostles, already Satan had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray Him. None could Him out of their hands. This is the Father’s will.

Reuben already lived with the shame and guilt of incest with his father’s wife. It would cost him the birthright. Thanks be to God that his conscience did not allow him to cover up Joseph’s murder as well. But his attempts to appease his own timid conscience were unfruitful. They always are. Dear Christians, do not try to settle and quiet your own guilty conscience through works. They will not give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain.

But the Lord is a Shield about you. Your Glory and the Lifter of your head. Cry aloud to Him. He answers from His holy Hill. That is, from His the holy hill of Golgotha and the Cross alone which is your glory and your life. Here at this Altar and in His holy Absolution, His blood bespeaks you righteous and removes the curse through His bleeding love.

But calloused hearts do not acknowledge and receive such love and therefore are unable to show it. They took Joseph, stripped him of his robe and threw him into a waterless pit. Their wicked work done, they sat down to eat, deaf to his cries for help and pleas for mercy.

Again, not unlike our Lord Christ. We see in Joseph a type of the One who is to come. A foreshadowing of our Lord’s suffering and passion. His own betrayal and rejection. There He sat at Table with the Twelve, His soul sorrowful to death, instituting His last will and testament, the New Covenant in His Blood. And they argue about who is the greatest among them! They were deaf to His words.

Is it any different with us? How often have we sat idly by while our brother, our sister, in sorrow aches? Turned a deaf ear to pleas for mercy? Or just a deaf ear to one who only needed a listening ear? We may not have sold our Lord, our Joseph, into slavery, handed Him over for the price of a slave like Judah or Judas, but our hands are far from clean. Like the sons of Jacob who listened to their brother, we have listened to the voice of those who deny our Lord, betray Him, slander Him, and hurt His reputation. We have argued over prestige and power and refused to stoop into the pit to lift out a neighbor in need.

Repentance is needed. The family drama of Joseph and his brothers is our own. We have not sought virtue and humility, but instead have chased after our own dreams. Repent.

But do not despair. For into this family drama, into this disfunction and strife, our Lord Christ Himself comes. Into a family were He was rejected and denied by His brothers and sisters. Stripped of the robe of His own righteousness and dipped into the blood of your own sins. This is the answer to the question of the hymn, “Whence come these sorrows, whence this mortal anguish? It is my sins for which Thou, Lord, must languish” (LSB 439:3).

But do not pity Him, dear Christians. For He goes willingly. He willingly dips His hand in the bowl with the one who would betray Him. He allows Himself to be handed over for the price of a slave. He fulfills His Father’s will when He’s given over to death and Satan, that wicked Pharaoh and fierce animal, to be devoured.

He does it for you. He is your true Joseph, your King and Lord and Benefactor. He is the Greatest among you, but He serves. He came to give His life as a ransom for many. He gives His Body for you. He pours out His blood for you. Once for all upon the Cross and now here, upon the Altar, where His Crucifix is laid sideways and you are given to recline at Table with Him to eat and to drink in His Kingdom.

This is His last will and testament. The sign and seal of His love for you. The sure and certain hope that He comes to you not in vengeance or anger, but in mercy, to forgive, renew, and strengthen you with His Word and Spirit. You may have betrayed Him, denied Him, doubted Him, but He answers you here from His Holy Hill. From His Altar. His Mt Zion with salvation and blessing. As on the night on which He was betrayed, Jesus still has table fellowship with sinners. He is the Greatest among you, but He is still here as One who serves.

By these - through His Word, in His Supper, at His Table in the liturgy - does He sustain you in your trials. He is with you, even as He was with Joseph to fulfill His plan and the dreams He had revealed, as we will be reminded in the coming weeks.

For now, beloved, rejoice in the comfort that He has gathered you here, as a Shepherd gathers His flock, in this Shechem. Recall that Shechem is between between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerazim, that place were Joshua gathered the congregation of Israel to hear the reading of the Word of the Lord upon entering the Promised Land.

So it is that our Good Shepherd and new testament Joshua, our Lord Jesus Christ, gathers you here between the mountain of your Holy Baptism and the Mountain of His Sacrament, to this Shechem, to hear again the reading and proclamation of His holy Word by which His Kingdom comes in order that He might raise those who fall and to strengthen those who stand; and to comfort and help the weakhearted and the distressed.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Invocabit

3/1/2020

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Genesis 3:1-21; 2 Corinthians 6:1-10; St Matthew 6:1-10
Holy Baptism of Teri, Maralise, Kristiane Smith
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

There was a bunch of seed on the ground. A bird wanted to eat it, but he didn’t realize it was a trap. A fowler had set up a net underneath the seed and so that poor bird was enclosed in that net and was soon roasted and eaten. There was a worm in the water and so a fish swam to eat it. He didn’t realize that the worm was a trap. He was being deceived by the fisherman. And soon that fish was fried and ready for dinner.

Temptation is to man what a trap is to an animal. It offers something good, but its true intent is to trap you and kill you, to roast and devour you down. What is harmful is presented as helpful. What is evil is presented as good.

Psalm 91 one, which you sang this morning and the Deceiver misquoted to Jesus, speaks of your Adversary as a fowler laying snares (Ps 91:3). It goes like this: Did God actually say? A friendly, innocent, reasonable sounding sort of question posed to Eve. This invitation to doubt God was certainly asked in a gentlemanly sort of way, for the devil masquerades as a gentleman. But she didn’t realize that the words he laid out for her were a trap. And that she and her husband and all of mankind were the prey and soon to be tangled up in the snare of eternal doom.

And what the Infernal Fowler did to Adam and Eve, he would later do to the children of Israel, whom God called “His Firstborn Son” (Ex 4:22; Hos 11:1). And it doesn’t take much of an imagination to consider the questions that brought them to ruin during their 40 years in the wilderness. “If God meant good for you, why aren’t you eating like you did in Egypt?” And they fell for it. They grumbled and complained against the God that saved them. There’s no food and we loathe this worthless food (Nu 21:5).

“If God is so good, why is your life so hard and bad?” And they fell for it, ensnared in the fowler’s net, turning on the God who rescued them from slavery. “If you’re God’s firstborn Son why do all the other nations seem to be having a better time with more impressive gods?” And they bit on that worm too. Going after false prophets and idols. All traps. And they fell for them. Only a few of them made it to the Promised Land. It is written somewhere, Those who formerly received the good news failed to enter His rest because of disobedience (Heb 4:6).

The old evil foe has done the same to you. You who are baptized and named sons of God. For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized in Christ have been clothed with Christ (Gal 3:26-27). And like Adam from the dirt, Israel from the Red Sea, Jesus from the Jordan, you come from your baptism and the Deceiver is hot on your heals in this wilderness, trying to lead you into false belief, despair, great shame and vice. He’s the practitioner of a thousand arts, master of one. His chief aim is always the same. He attacks the certainty of our Lord’s Word and your true identity.

“If you really are God’s Child, why are you so alone and feel so unloved?” “If you really are God’s son, why are your thoughts filled with such lurid things and your actions with such wickedness?” “If you really are God’s daughter, why is your life filled with so much heartache and sadness, like all the things St Paul mentions in the Epistle?”

It’s all a trap. Beware, dear Christians. Keep watch on yourselves, St Paul tells the Galatians, let you too be tempted (Gal 6:1). Keep watch over one another, too. Today Teri, Maralise, and Kristiane join you. Beware the temptations that entice you. They are like seed on the ground, a worm on a hook, cheese on the mousetrap. All laid by the Evil One who is ready to pounce.

And your worry, your anxiety, your faithless fearing and faithless fretting, your guilty conscience and restless heart all show that you’ve taken the bait. The Infernal Fowler always gets his prey.

Until this day. When not a gullible one, but the Valiant One was driven out into the wilderness and fasted for forty days and forty nights. He was hungry and ripe for a trap or for some ensnaring language. But He was no easy mark like Adam and Eve, like Israel, or like us.

Satan gets his net ready. If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread. He goes right after the Word of the Lord. The Word the Father spoke only 41 days early to His beloved Son at His baptism in the Jordan River. Jesus had those words in His mind and in His heart all those long, hungry, forlorn days.”Do you really think God wouldn’t want His own Son to eat? Go ahead, You can do it. You’re starving. Feed Yourself.”

But Christ’s response is lighting quick: It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” He will not fall into the net.

Then to the Temple where the worm is on the hook. If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. And the Devil misquotes Scripture. This is a warning for us. Satan knows the Bible. He’s a master at wrongly dividing and applying Law and Gospel. He tries to use your own defensive weapon against you. Walking the baptismal way marked with the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, you are sure prey for the Fowler. Armed with the mighty Sword of God’s Word you must know it better than your Adversary. Not only in head knowledge, but heart. Through prayer and meditation, fasting and temptation.

The first temptation was for Jesus to prove Himself to Satan. The second is for God to prove Himself to you. But our Lord won’t budge. Again it is written, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Now smooth, enticing words are said as the Devil takes Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. All these I will give to You, if You will fall down and worship me. He promises Jesus a shortcut to glory. He offers Him glory in this life.  The easy way out. Do not make light of the effrontery of the Devil’s third temptation, mocking as though no one would consider bowing down to actually worship Satan. Do we not do this very thing overtime we willfully sin? Just a little indulgence with a plan to repent later? Our Lutheran Confessions warn us not to willfully turn away from the Word, grieve and embitter the Holy Spirit, involve ourselves in the world’s filth and so redecorate our hearts as homes for the devil (FC SD XI 42).

But not Jesus. Those smooth, oil words just run off His ears. He only has ears for the Father’s Word and will. His plan to rescue man. And that plan is for God’s Son, His only Son, whom He loves, to suffer pain and die on the Cross, to be buried and raised and then ascend to glory. This was not the endgame. The wilderness was not the final battle. It was a trap. Be gone Satan! For it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.”

The Son will come out of this desert to the barrenness of Golgotha. Where Adam and Israel and you have succumb to temptation and have failed, He will succeed. As the Second Adam, the true Israel, all humanity in One.

And the Father needs no trickery to get His beloved Son to the Cross. That’s exactly where He wants to go. He is like a bird who willingly goes to His death. Who has His arms stretched out like pinions - you sang it in the Tract, wings - pierced so that they can take in and remove your sins and then rise again to cover you with His mercy.

He is like a fish who is not the least bit tricked by worms, but let’s Himself be hooked to the Cross and devoured by the grave, so that He might rise again and that the grave have no power over you.

He is the One Man who can listen to all of Satan’s sweet nothings and never take the bait. Instead, He died and is raised on the Third Day leaving the skull of the Deceiver crushes so that your head might be baptized and wrapped up, covered and sheltered in His Divine Love. He treads down that Prowling Lion for you. Tramples the Serpent underfoot. And delivers you from the snare of the Fowler. He has done so today for Teri, Maralise, and Kristiane. He has done so for all of you baptized into His Name.

So come and eat. This is no trick. This is no trap. For Jesus speaks no lies. He offers you something good that is good. Something helpful that is helpful. It is not only written, but He says to you today, This bread is My Body, eat it for the forgiveness of your sins. This wine is My Blood, drink it for your salvation. My Words are Spirit and Life. Hear them and let them make you wise. I am your Dwelling Place and Mighty Fortress. I am beside you on the plain. Take they your life, goods, fame, child and wife, you still have Me. I have beat down Satan under your feet.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Ash Wednesday

2/26/2020

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Joel 2:12-19; 2 Peter 1:2-11; St Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

If walkers, hearing aids, wrinkled skin, grey hair, surgeries and cancer screenings aren’t enough of a reminder of the sever nature of our sins, then maybe this mark of dust, this mark of death and mortality on our foreheads and on the foreheads of our children will do the trick.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Those were the words of judgment that the Lord God spoke to Adam in the Garden after he turned from God’s Word. And it was just as God said it would be: the day you eat of it, you will die.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. God never intended there to be such stark words of judgment spoken to the pinnacle of His creation. The one He had so lovingly formed out of the dirt. The picture given in Genesis is of a master craftsman at work, loving shaping a work of art the way a potter does. And then God blows into his nostrils the breathe of life and this lifeless piece of pottery becomes a living soul. The Septuagint translates it as “God blew on his face.” And then He blew some more, when He said, Be fruitful, multiply, have dominion. God wanted more of these creatures of dust made in His image.

But today its blackened foreheads and words of judgment. We are called today to remember what we have destroyed by our sins. We are told to remember because we easily forget. We forget what sin is. We forget what sin does. Sin is more than an occasional misstep. More than an occasional wrong choice. Sin is rebellion against God. Sin is a deep corruption that darkens and infects every part of us, body and soul. Sin is so deep that we are often able to keep it from surfacing too obviously or publicly. We hide it in our thoughts, in our minds.

But obvious or not, sin shuts heaven to us. Sin will cause us to return to the dust. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

So remember on this night what you have done to bring about your own death. Remember how you have lived as though God does not matter and as though you matter most. Remember how you have not honored His name as your should, how your worship and prayers have faltered. Remember how you have not let His love have its way with you, and so your love for others has failed. Remember those whom you have hurt and those whom you have failed to help. Remember that your thoughts and desires have been soiled with sin.

Remember. And repent of it. Abandon sin. Turn from such ungodliness.

And then listen to something more important that your remembering. Hear God’s remembering. His remembering His holy promises to you. Remember that He has promised to be gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Remember that He relents over disaster.

Say what you will about the prophet Jonah, about how he ran the other way when God called him to preach to the pagan city of Nineveh. But he certainly had faith in God’s Word. He knew that God would keep His promise to be merciful. That His Word would do what it says and the people would repent and God would relent. And that’s what upset him! He didn’t want those pagans to be spared.

And when Jonah finally ended up in that great city, by God ordaining a fish to spit him out there, the prophet went into the city and preached a one-sentence sermon: Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown (Jonah 3:4). The people of Nineveh believed the prophet. They repented and turned to the true God with fasting and prayer, covering themselves in sackcloth and ashes, saying God may turn and relent and turn from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish (Jonah 3:9). And He did! For He is slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness.

And that merciful God is your God. The God who formed the man of dust is the same One who remembers that you are dust. But He also does something about it. He took on dust when He took on human flesh so that He might draw into His Body all the deadly poison of your sin and remember them no more.

This He did you for by the mystery of His holy incarnation, by His holy nativity, by His baptism, fasting, and temptation, by His agony and bloody sweat, by His Cross and passion, by His precious death and burial; by His glorious resurrection and ascension. And by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, Who is now being breathed on you.

Just as He breathed on Adam and he became a living being, now the Lord God breathes on your face through the Absolution and the preaching of His Gospel. He breathes His life-breathing breath that you might be renewed and the image of His Son be restored in you. This is the God who raises the poor out of the dust to live forever in His kingdom, to serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness.

And this God has been gracious to you. Jonah’s name means “dove.” So in a sense, God was sending His dove to proclaim peace to Nineveh. For you God has done even better. Christ has sent you the better Dove, the Holy Spirit. And He has gathered you here tonight to breathe on your face His life-giving Word. His preaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins raises the dead. It creates faith in those who were enemies. It brings life to the dying. This preaching opens up heaven. This preaching raises those who repent and believe they have a gracious God who forgives iniquity and remembers their sins no more.

So come back to this Altar. You did not come here tonight to here words of judgment at this altar and leave. Come and hear some wonderful one-sentence sermons that restore you: Take, eat; the Body of Christ, given for you. Take, drink; the Blood of Christ, shed for you. Given and shed that men of dust might live eternally.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Quinquagesima

2/23/2020

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1 Samuel 16:1-13; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; St Luke 18:31-43
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

“Jesus” is the way you say His name from the Greek. But if you said it like a Hebrew it would be more like “Ye-shua.” Joshua. You’ve heard that name before in the Bible. He was the man appointed to succeed Moses and led the people of Israel over the Jordan River into the Promised Land. He fought the Battle of Jericho where the enemies of God lived behind thick fortified walls.

But the Lord said to Joshua, “Go get it. The city of Jericho is yours.” Joshua faithfully drew near to Jericho to devote to destruction. To destroy. To kill. They marched around the city, blew the trumpets and shouts and the walls came tumbling down. Then they devoted to destruction every living thing and then burned the city to the ground.

But Joshua wasn’t done yet. Joshua stood in the midst of the smoke and ruins of the city and pronounced a curse. Cursed before the Lord be the man who rise up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates (Josh 6:26). It was not to be rebuilt. The ruins of Jericho were to be a perpetual sign of God’s displeasure with those who did not believe in the true God.

But about 500 years later, under King Ahab, a proud man named Hiel did just that. And sure enough, he laid its foundation at the cots of his firstborn son, and its gates at the cost of his youngest son (1 Ki 16:34). Jericho was rebuilt on the sacrifice of a proud man’s own children.

I know we call our country “America the Beautiful.” But really its just a really big Jericho. A Cursed City, breaking down under the wrath of it own sin and idolatry. Most people don’t believe in the true God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Vile behavior that would have caused previous generations to blush is, in our day tolerated, affirmed, celebrated. The false god of money is still king here. People worship their work. Live their lives for themselves.

Almost a million unborn children are sacrificed every year. But how many more are spiritually sacrificed? Kids who are programmed by parents to get good grades, go to a good college, find a good job, have a nice wedding, a nice house, have nice kids and a nice dog, but end up in hell, never having been taught, never catechized as to what is truly important - knowing the God who is good and merciful, our dear Father and His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. That’s our culture.

And its in us too. You don’t just live in it. Your part of it and it of you. More than you know. The curse is in us too. We feel the curse everyday in our pains, in our loneliness, our guilt, our shame, our fears. Wherever we may live we are residents of Jericho, USA.

Yet today a new Joshua faithfully draws near to Jericho. The old one came to curse, the new draws near to bless. The old Joshua came to destroy, Jesus comes to heal. Not to go around the city, but to go through it. To rescue people from the ruins of their earthly civilization and bring them into His own heavenly kingdom.

To do this meant that He would have to bear the curse. He would have to, in fact, become the Curse. So He goes right through the Cursed City to Jerusalem so that He could do it. He walked among the ruins we have made of this earth. Our sins wrecked His body. The curse of the Law bloodied Him and tore Him apart.

Yet there, lifted up, towering o’er the wrecks of time, He didn’t curse us. He absorbed out sin in His flesh. Made it His own. Became the Curse and then absolved us when He said, Father, forgive them, from the cursed Tree. See Jesus hanging on the Cross, the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world. This is the greatest love. Love Incarnate. The crucifix is God’s permanent display of His favor toward man.

What mercy! The curse removed from us at the cost of God’s Firstborn Son. At the cost of His Firstborn Son, His innocent blood is the foundation and gate of a new city, the Church.

This is why Jesus goes through Jericho to Jerusalem. We would certainly understand if He would go quickly. We would certainly understand if He didn’t have time for all the beggars on the street. We would certainly understand if Jesus, with the burden of all our sin on His back, would bypass a few beggars this time. Head down, don’t make eye contact, just keep walking. That’s certainly what the disciples were thinking.

A beggar cried out for mercy, Kyrie eleison, and was told to be quiet.

The sad thing is we can identify. People have begged, people have declared need and asked us for help. Other have wanted from us just an ear to listen. But our first instinct is to pass over. Head down. Eyes forward. Just keeping going. We pass over human need all the time. Like Samuel we look on the appearance and do not see as God sees. One for whom His Son bled and died. A fellow beggar, like us, in need of mercy. We lack the love of which St Paul writes. Who are we?

Yet with the crucifixion on His mind, Jesus doesn’t pass by. In fact, He stood still. Not to stop and lecture the disciples. He stands still to have mercy. He can’t resist cries for mercy because He is the Father’s mercy in the flesh. His first instinct is always to have mercy. Even for some blind beggar. He stood still and called for the beggar to be brought to Him. And when he comes, Jesus doesn’t treat him with suspicion, but with dignity and respect. He knows he can’t see, so He gets on his level and gives him something for the ears: What do you want me to do for you? Lord, let me recover my sight. And He heals him!

People loved by God, Jesus has heard your cries too. The scene in Jericho is played out every Sunday in this Divine Service. Beggars like us come before Jesus crying for mercy. Kyrie eleison. And He doesn’t turn away, but hears you. Didn’t He treat you the same way He treated that blind beggar when you were baptized? He stood still. Had you brought to Him and asked you, a blind beggar, “Do you wish to be baptized?” “Yes,” came the response. And He baptized you!

Again this morning you cried out for mercy in the confession. He doesn’t just keep walking, but has His minister stand in His stead and by His command and absolve you.

You cried out again in the liturgy and He hears. The Pastor doesn’t pass you by, but stands and imparts to you the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, life and salvation.

Being able to see in the Scriptures doesn’t have to do with reading the eye chart. It has to do with faith in Christ Jesus. It has to do with understanding and believing. People loved by God, you have been given this faith as a free gift by the working of the Holy Spirit through the Word.

In the Old Testament Joshua wasn’t asking questions of sinners. He was cursing them. But our Joshua has opened your eyes to see just how deep and rich and great God’s love is for you. He has opened your eyes and your mind to say, “I see. I know now. It was my sin, my selfishness, my behavior, my guilt that caused Him to be delivered over to the Gentiles, mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon, flogged and killed. And it was for me that He rose from the dead so that I might no longer be in my sins. I see.” This is the same sight He wishes to bestow on all poor, miserable beggars such as yourself. Luther said, “Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.” Well, the feast is here.

That blind man followed Jesus to Jerusalem, glorifying God. Let us do the same. Let us accompany Jesus to Jerusalem this Lent. To do as St Thomas said, That we may die with Him. He leads. We follow with eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts grateful for His mercy. For Jesus shows us a better way. He leads you here. Up to the Altar where He is for you with His very Body and Blood. Even in your trials, in your pain and when your world comes crashing down like the walls of Jericho, He is here for you.

Come dear beggars. Come in your weakness. For here He stands and says, “See, I am your Rock, your Refuge, your Strong Fortress, your Salvation, your Redemption, your Life, your Leader who leads you to the New Jerusalem, the blessed city where there is no curse, and where My Blood has prepared a place for you.”

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
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    Pr. Seth A Mierow

    Lutheran. Confessional. Liturgical. Sacramental. By Grace.  Kyrie Eleison!

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