Saint Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church
2525 E. 11th Street Indianapolis, IN
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Trinity 20

10/14/2018

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Isaiah 55:1-9; Ephesians 5:15-21; St Matthew 22:1-14
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

Why wouldn’t you go?  The King is throwing the wedding reception to end all receptions.  He is serving the choicest cuts of meat and the finest of wines.  Its a royal wedding to top all others, the Prince and His Bride will be married.  There will be a feast of rich food.  The King is throwing open the royal cellar.  Cups will be overflowing with the vintage normally drunk only in the palace.  It is the opportunity of a thousand lifetimes and you are an honored guest.  Why wouldn’t you go?  Who turns down a invitation like that?!

Some are rebels who hate the King.  Their allegiance is not to the King, but to another.  A would-be prince who has deceived them that he is the world’s true king.  These rebels embrace his ethic of kill or be killed, or survival of the fittest, of take what you can get and look out for yourself and maybe your family. 

But most of those who refuse the invitation have simply stopped believing that the King’s word means anything.  They don’t think the invitation really is for them.  They don’t think the King means them well.  Or maybe they no longer believe there even is a King.  He hasn’t been seen in a long, long while.  And others speak of the King’s name in anger when they stub their toes or get the credit card bill.  Why bother with a King who seems so insignificant?

And so they make light of the King’s invitation.  They don’t go because they think it’ll be better not to go.  There are more important things to do.  More exciting things to see.  They are simply too busy.  

Is there another reason not to go?  Yes.  One other.  You see, the invitation comes with an uncomfortable word on it: “Repent.”  The King’s servants have let it be known that He is not happy with the people’s greed and selfishness, with their lying and gossiping, with their failure to honor and respect their spouses and marriage, with their unwillingness to defend His little ones.  His invitation includes an amnesty; but going will mean facing and fessing up to the King’s Word.  It will mean coming out of the darkness into the light.  

And that will mean a destruction of idols, a change of mind from cherished beliefs and values.  It will mean admitting they were wrong, rejecting their past reasonings and experiences.  It will mean tearing down the worldly decorations in their hearts and making room for another occupant.  

So this King’s invitation doesn’t seem worth it.  After all, the Son for whom the marriage feast is being held, they see Him naked and hanging on a tree, in disgrace, shame, and humiliation.  Some King.  He can’t even protect His own Son!  
And the followers and friends of this King’s Son!  Well, they’re hated, mocked, and slandered, aren't they?  They’re poor and hungry and some are put to death like the King’s Son.  Who wants any part of that?

So they stay with their homes and businesses.  With their wives and mistresses.  That’s what they know.  That’s where they think they are safe.  They make was seems the sensible, practical choice.  

And they are destroyed.  Not just the rebels, but also the indifferent.  The King sent His troops and burned their city; not one stone was left atop another.  

Now, this is no mere story.  It is a parable.  Which means, dear ones, that you’re in it.  Parables are stories that tell us about something real, something that involves us.  And Jesus tells us what it’s about.  The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a King who gave a wedding feast for His Son.  The kingdom of heaven is not like a wedding feast.  The kingdom of heaven is like a King who gave a wedding feast.  The kingdom of heaven is like a Man.  

It is like the man who came shouting, Repent, the Kingdom of heaven is at hand and pointed to that self-same kingdom in the flesh and blood of another Man.  And that Man sent out the same invitation, proclaiming, “Repent and come in.  All is ready.”  

You see this is a story about heaven, about God’s invitation to you, which is a call to repentance and an offer of forgiveness.  The invitation happened when prophets like Isaiah were sent out by the Word of the Lord to preach to His people.  The invitation was sent again when John the Baptist proclaimed the coming Kingdom in the person of Jesus Christ.  The invitation went again out when Jesus sent His men as the Father sent Him.  The invitation still goes out when He sends His servants to you to read and proclaim His Word.  The invitation goes out when you invite someone to Divine Service, when you invite someone to Bible study or catechesis, when you confess the faith before your family, friends, and neighbors.  

But you don’t accept the invitation by showing up here, although you ought to.  You don’t accept the invitation by contributing a percentage of your income to the Church, although you ought to.  You don’t accept the invitation by loving your neighbor and obeying the Ten Commandments, although you ought to.  

Rather, when the King says to you, “Come to My Son’s wedding feast,” He is calling you to repentance.  When the King says to you, “Come to My Son’s wedding feast,” He is saying, “Turn away from the idols in which you trusted, the things that cannot save you, and turn away from your sins; come to Me.  All is forgiven.  I offer you not only mercy and amnesty and forgiveness.  I also offer you Life in My kingdom, not as slaves or subjects, but as My honored and beloved Bride, My own dear Church.  All that I have is yours.”  

But they made light of it.  Why?  Why would one not accept such an invitation?  Pride.  Pride is the only answer.  They reject and beat and kill the King’s servants because of pride.  
How about you?  How has pride manifested itself in your life?  What are you hanging on to, not letting go of, not letting the Lord’s Word have its way with you?  To what sins are you clinging, refusing to let go?  What foolishness takes the place of prayer, meditation on God’s Word, and the exercise of a godly life?  In what ways are you making light of the King’s invitation, neglecting the Lord’s Word read and preached?  It is written, How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? (Heb 2:3).  

Look carefully how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, writes St Paul.  Repentance is needed.  Those who neglected the King’s invitation were destroyed, as Jesus says, because they were not worthy.  How is this so?  Was not everyone invited?  Why then does He say some were not worthy?  

Because worthiness is not found in yourself.  Consider the prodigal son.  He confessed to his father that he was not worthy to be called his son.  Anyone who loves father or mother more than Jesus is not worthy of Him and whoever does not take up their cross and follow Jesus is not worthy of Him (Mt 10:37-38).  Even John the Baptist acknowledged that he was not worthy to do a slave’s job for Jesus - he was not worthy to loose His sandal strap.  

And this is your confession.  You are not worthy of the things for which you ask in prayer, nor do you deserve them.  You are not worthy, in and of yourself, to be a Christian, to receive Holy Communion, the forgiveness of sins, an invitation to the Kingdom.  You are not worthy to have eternal life.

Who then can be saved?!  What is worthiness?  Here the Small Catechism helps.  Question: “Who receives this Sacrament - the Foretaste of the Wedding Feast to Come of the Lamb in His Kingdom - worthily?  Answer: Fasting and bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training, but he is worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words, ‘Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’  But anyone who does not believe these words or doubts them is unworthy and unprepared, for the words ‘for you’ require all hearts to believe.”  

Worthiness, dear Christians, to come to the wedding feast consists in seeing that you are not worthy.  Worthiness is believing the King, who invites you not because of your goodness, but on account of His goodness and mercy.  

So in the parable the King sends out His servants to invite everyone they could find, both good and bad, for there is no distinction.  The invitation to the feast does not consist of anything in us; but comes only by the grace of the Host, by the kindness of the King, that anyone has entrance to the feast.

That means the invitation is for you.  If you are in the depths of despair, the invitation is for you.  If you are in agony over your sins, the invitation is for you.  If you know you are not worthy to attend, the invitation is for you.  If you are thirsting for relief, the King invites you, “Come to the waters.”  If you have no righteousness of your own, but hunger and thirst for righteousness, the King invites you, “Come and eat.”  If you see that you are a sinner, the King invites you, “Come and be forgiven.”  If you have been living as a rebel, the King invites you, “Come and be pardoned.”

And those who enter the wedding hall are clothed with the wedding garment, supplied by the grace of the King.  What is this wedding garment?  Holy Baptism.  As it is written, As many of you as were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ (Gal 3:27).  And this is not a garment to be worn once and then hidden away in a box in the attic.  It is to be taken out every day, it is the daily garment of the Christian; it is the clothing of Christ’s own righteousness, without which you are naked in your own filthy rags.  

Thus the man in today’s parable who rejects the wedding garment of the King.  He is rejecting his Baptism, turning away from the righteousness of Christ, seeking a righteousness of His own.  It is as if he said, “I am a good person.  I have a right to be here!” instead of saying, “I am a wretched person.  I am a sinner; I have no right to be at the feast, but the King is astonishingly gracious, and He has invited me here and given me clothes to wear that I could never afford.”  The man without the wedding garment rejected the graciousness of the invitation.  He was a sham Christian who despised the garment and so despised Christ.  He may have looked pious and good and wanted to be with the guests, but the wedding garment consists of faith in the heart, not outward appearances.  

The Christian faith and life is a continual, on-going, daily exercise of contrition and repentance, of receiving holy absolution and pardon and living in the full and free forgiveness of sins.  It is never complete this side of heaven, but those sins you still see in yourself the King doesn’t count against you as you remain and abide in His Word.  As you heard in the Epistle, Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.  Do not be foolish, that is, a fool, an unbeliever, one who constructs a house, built not on stone, but on sand.  When the judgment comes such a house falls.  

Yet the one built on the Rock of Christ and His Atonement, when the judgment comes, shall prevail.  For this is the will of the Lord: that you believe on the Son whom He has sent.  As our Lord Jesus says, Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved (Mk 16:16).  For indeed, Many are called, but few are chosen.  

Strive, my dear Christians, to enter by the narrow gate.  Make the best use of the time, because the days are evil.  And heed this day the King’s invitation: everything is ready, do not delay.   Do you know your sin and desperately seek to be free from it?  Then do not stay away.  “Come to the feast, all is ready.”  Do you have no money?  Nothing good to bring or offer?  Good.  Come, buy and eat without money and without price.  Here everything is free according to the good and gracious will of the Lord your God who invites you to the feast.  Here you are not only guests, but here, at His Table, at the wedding Feast of the King for His Son, you are His beloved Bride.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 
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Trinity 19

10/7/2018

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Genesis 28:10-17; Ephesians 4:22-28; St Matthew 9:1-8
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

Dear people loved by God, today you have set before you a beautiful and wonderful passage, a sedes doctrinae, a seat of divine doctrine, for the Fifth Chief Part of the Small Catechism, the Office of the Keys.  Which is that special authority which Christ has given to His Church on earth to forgive the sins of repentant sinners but to withhold forgiveness from the unrepentant as long as they do not repent.  This is the authority with God has given to men; generally to His whole Church, to all Christians, but also particularly to His called ministers who deal with you by His divine command.  Let us consider the context.

And getting into a boat, Jesus crossed over and came to His own city.  After the Sermon on the Mount Jesus traveled to Capernaum where He healed many.  He then went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee where He healed two men afflicted by demons in the country of the Gadarenes.  When the residents saw what He had done they begged Him to leave their region (8:29).  Getting into a boat Jesus crossed back over the Sea of Galilee and returned to His own city.

That the evangelist details that Jesus has His own city is of immense comfort to us.  This is not Bethlehem, where He was born.  Nor is it Nazareth, where He grew up.  His own city is Capernaum.  This is where Peter and Andrew fished.  Where Matthew was called from the tax booth.  Jesus’ own city is where His people dwell.  Not only Jerusalem, but Capernaum, Judea, Samaria, Indianapolis, Fishers, Noblesville, Nashville, Frankton, wherever you live, and to the ends of the earth.  As the Psalmist writes, You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel (Ps 22:3).  

The same Psalm continues, In You our fathers trusted; they trusted and You delivered them (Ps 22:4).  So perhaps they had witnesses Jesus’ miracles while He was previously in Capernaum; perhaps they had heard His teaching.  The trusted and behold, some people brought to Him a paralytic, lying on a bed.  And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Take heat, My son; your sins are forgiven.”  

Jesus saw their faith.  He is not using His divine omniscience here as He possibly does later when He knows the thoughts of the scribes.  Their faith was not silent, hidden away in their hearts.  It was visible in their deeds.  Perhaps they told their friend, “Jesus is in town, we are taking you to see Him.”  Maybe he asked them to do this good work.  Either way, they go to Jesus, for this is what faith does.  It is the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, as St Paul writes to the Christians in Ephesus.  

For we know that faith alone justifies.  But saving faith is never alone.  In his commentary on Romans, Luther wrote, “Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith.  And so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly.  It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises, it has already done them, and is always at the doing of them.  

Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times.  This confidence in God’s grace and knowledge of it makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all His creatures.  

And this is the work of the Holy Spirit in faith. Hence a man is ready and glad, without compulsion, to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, in love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace.

And thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate burning and shining from fire” (AE 25).  

And so Jesus sees their faith in action, active in love, and He said to the paralytic: Take heart, My son; your sins are forgiven.  Why not heal his paralysis?  Well, let me ask you this: How is your conscience?  Hmm?  You come before Jesus in repentance and trust; and what do you really need?  Heather bodies?  Lower blood pressure?  Better joints and limbs?  Sure!  There’s no denying that we are soul and body.  But what is most needful?

The campus studies are reading a book by Craig Parton called Religion on Trial: Cross Examining Religious Truth Claims.  The author, who is a trial lawyer in southern California, likes to poke fun at the west coast “religious,” by asking such ridiculous questions as, “Who needs a Savior who heals hemorrhoids?  What if Jesus went around Galilee and healed all the cases of hemorrhoids?  What would that prove?”  Palsied limbs aren’t the same, I know, but the point is still made.  

Pick up your bed and walk and we don’t know how many steps that man had.  Did he make it home? Was he run over by a chariot?  Even if he lived out all his days in perfect health, without the forgiveness of sins, it wouldn’t matter.  Everyone eventually ends up back on the death bed in front of Jesus.  What do you need?  You need life.  You need salvation.  You need the forgiveness of sins.  

For this is none other than the gate of heaven, the door of paradise.  The forgiveness of your sins unlocks, unbinds you from your troubled conscience, frees you from death’s grasp, and flings wide the gate of heaven for you.  This is no dream.  This is reality.  You can’t see it, like Jesus saying to the man, Rise and walk, that’s why its “easier,” to say, but its just as real, in fact I say its more real.  Its eternally real.  Doctors, nurses, orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists, etc they can all heal the body; make one palsied limbs work again.  Only the Divine Physician can restore your soul and guide in the path of righteousness for His name’s sake.  

And so Jesus speaks to the most desperate need of this immobile man.  He soothes his troubled conscience with His word of peace and forgiveness.  He calls this sinner “son” and in that the heart rejoices and to that word of absolution faith clings.

But some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.”  For only God can forgive sins.  This is true.  But God works through means.  He uses water and His Word to regenerate and renew by His Holy Spirit to create in you saving faith.  He uses bread and wine joined to His Word to distribute to you the true Body and Blood born of the Virgin Mary, crucified on the Tree, buried in the tomb, raised from the dead and ascended into heaven.  And He uses His powerful Word, spoken by His unworthy servants, to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. 

I visited our dear sister in Christ Donna, last week.  In the context of Divine Service I read and preached on this text.  At the end of the sermon she told me, “Pastor, you know, I know all that.  Everything you just said, I know it.  But I needed you to come and tell me again.”  Yes!  As she sits there dying, doctors unable to cure her and make her well, this is what she needs - the forgiveness of sins.  That is how our Lord operates in His kingdom on a non-stop basis.  Sending out His Word going forth from His Cross to the ends of the earth in the mouths of His Pastors and His Christians.  Outside of us.  For our good.  Bringing peace to our conscience.  

And so that you may know that Christ Jesus has this authority on earth and gives it to men, he healed the paralytic.  Rise, pick up your bed and go home.  And he rose and went home.  

And that’s actually the easier thing to say.  Everyone assumes its easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” because you can’t see it.  You don’t know if it really worked.  If Jesus said, “Rise and walk,” and the man didn’t actually get up and walk they would have known He was a fraud, a fake, a charlatan.  But its not easier to forgive sins.  

For Jesus to forgive sins.  For His Pastors to forgive your sins in His stead and by His command may sound easy.  Sure, anyone can say it.  Its easy.  Its free.  Its grace.  But its not cheap.  It came at a hefty price.  

In order to forgive your sins the Son of Man must take them into Himself.  He must swallow up and absorb every sin, every ill word, every cruel act, every vile thought, every hate, slander, and lie, every sexual immorality, every idolatry and greed and vice.  In order to forgive sins Jesus Christ must become a curse and Sin itself.  And He must pour out His life blood, drain every drop of the cup of suffering and woe, all the while remaining perfectly sinless Himself and forgiving those who sin against Him.  He must become a Worm and not a Man.  That’s not easy.  

But that is exactly what He did.  For without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sins (Heb 9:22). 

And behold, that sacred Blood fills the Cup again this day.  Here is the Blood of the Lamb that washes away all sin.  Here is the Blood which bespeaks you righteous.  The Blood of Jesus Christ, received by faith - just like the paralytic - which says, Take heart, My child, your sins are forgiven.  And where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.  For this is the Medicine of Immortality, the Antidote to death itself.  This is the Blood of the Word Made Flesh which shall say to you on the Last Day, as He stands over your grave, Rise, pick up your bed and go home.  

Dear Christians, what we learn in this text is that you have that reality now.  The forgiveness of sins spoken in the stead and by the command of Christ by your Pastor is the voice of the Lord to you.  It is the verdict of the Last Day slipping out ahead of time.  The forgiveness from the Pastor is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with you Himself.  Glorify God who has given such authority to men.  Give Him thanks and praise, for this authority is exercised for your benefit and given for your sake.

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

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St Michael and All Angels

9/30/2018

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Daniel 10:10-14; 12:1-3; Revelation 12:7-12; St Matthew 18:1-11
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen. 

The prophet Daniel and his people, the men of Judah and the children of Israel, had been languishing in captivity in Babylon for three score and ten years, the length of a man’s life, according to Moses in Psalm 90.  Daniel was himself perhaps twelve to fifteen years older than his captivity, having been hauled off by the cruel hand of Nebuchadnezzar when he was a youth.  

But Daniel knew the prophecies of Jeremiah from the previous generation.  How there were 70 years appointed by God for Judah’s exile in Babylon.  And that the time of the fulfillment was coming due (Jer 25:11-12; 29:10).  So Daniel prayed to God on behalf of the exiles; seeking Him with supplications made in fasting and sackcloth and ashes.  He confessed to God the unfaithfulness of Judah which had brought this long-lasting disaster upon her with words such as these, To You, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame because we have sinned against You (Dan 9:7-9).  

And Daniel implored the mercy of God upon the children of Israel in this way: O my God, incline your ear and hear.  Open your eyes and see our desolations . . . O Lord hear; O Lord, forgive.  O Lord, pay attention and act.  Delay not, for Your own sake, O my God, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name (Dan 9:18-19).  

This prayer of Daniel was answered by the visitation of the man Gabriel, who is really an angel, but is called by the prophet, the man Gabriel (Dan 9:21).  He carried to the prophet in swift flight, during the time of the evening sacrifice, the Word of the Lord.  The Word concerning 70 weeks of years in a hard-to-comprehend vision of the end; replete with mention of a murdered Messiah, an Anointed One who shall be cut off and shall have nothing (Dan 9:24-27).  

Not long after this Daniel entered again into a profound state of self-mortification, with fasting and fervent prayer for his people.  They had done their time of the full seventy years of exile.  And again, the man Gabriel, came to Daniel in order to impart a divine vision of the final conflict.  

But the glorious appearance of Gabriel was too much for the prophet and no strength was left in him.  He went white as a sheet and fainted into unconsciousness at the sound of his words.  

And behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees.  The touch of Gabriel revived Daniel.  And the messenger assured the prophet of God’s good will toward him and the children of Israel.

But even Gabriel, whose demeanor was that of a man most terrible, had to admit that it had taken him a full twenty-one days to reach Daniel’s side from the time that God had first heard his prayers.  Why was this swift flighted angel impeded for three full weeks?  Because the prince of the kingdom of Persia had withstood Gabriel, not wanting him to reach Daniel with the Word of the Lord concerning Daniel’s captive people.  But, behold, then came the first of the chief princes, Michael, to rescue mighty Gabriel from the double-teamed resistance by the kings of Persia so that his beleaguered angelic comrade might break on through to the prophet Daniel.  

What is here described in Daniel 10 is nothing less than an angelic conflict between supernatural spirit-patrons of nations.  Evil angels standing over Persia run interference on Gabriel as he seeks to reach Daniel, God’s prophet to the children of Israel now being held in Persian lands.  But it takes Michael, the angelic Prince of Daniel’s people, to thwart the angels over Persia and enable an out-gunned Gabriel to do his messengers duty (Dan 10:21).  

Now if Gabriel’s body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightening, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude, then what must that Michael, who is so much greater than Gabriel, be like?  It seems to be an almost almighty Michael who will take His stand over Daniel’s poor people to protect them during a time of tribulation, the likes of which has never been seen since the beginning of their nation.  

But every one of Daniel’s people, the children of Israel, whose names are found written in the book of truth (Dan 10:21), shall be delivered by this Michael and saved by the awesome Angel in bodily resurrection from the dead.  And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt.  And this who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.  That is, those like Daniel, the prophet and messenger of the Lord, who trust this promise of God and catechize others in it, shall shine like the angelic sons of God (Job 38:7).  

Daniel didn’t live to see the release of his people from exile and their restoration to Judah and Jerusalem by the decree of Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king of Babylon.  What he did see, however, during his long life was plenty of trouble.  Daniel saw, at a young age, Jerusalem surrender to Nebuchadnezzar and the rulers of her people get deported to Babylon in 606 BC.  Daniel was among them.  He saw himself made into a professional courtier and administrator for his Babylonian captor, probably at the cost of being made a eunuch.  

In 586 Daniel saw Judah fall completely to the ground and Nebuchadnezzar trashing the Temple and deporting everyone of any account.  He saw three of his friends thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to commit idolatry.  He saw the sacred vessels stolen from the Temple desecrated by a playboy king and his concubines on the night that Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians.  Daniel saw the grim interior of a den of lions due to the jealousy of the Persian satraps over whom he was promoted by their own leader!  

Throughout his long life Daniel saw stark and fearsome visions from the Lord that appalled and mystified him.  Yet in, with, and under all the trouble of the Babylonian captivity, Daniel saw the word of the Lord hold fast and stand firm.  But he saw this by faith, not by sight.  Daniel saw the hungry lions’ mouths stopped up for him by the Angel of God (Dan 6:22).  Daniel saw the inferno of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace quenched for his three friends by One strolling on the coals who was like the Son of God (Dan 3:25).  Daniel saw the very hand of God weigh Babylon in the balance, find her wanting, and judge her in just one hour (Dan 5:17-31).  And last and most important of all, Daniel heard from the Angel Gabriel that Michael, First of the chief princes, was Daniel’s Prince and the Prince of the children of Israel.  This Michael was He who had stood up to defend Daniel’s people before and would stand up for them again, according to theWord of the Lord.  

Michael stands up for his people, the children of God, in the terrible time of the End in our reading in Revelation 12.  Michael and his angels wage war in heaven against the dragon and his demonic horde.  The dragon cannot prevail, though, and there is no place left for him and his evil minions in heaven any longer.  And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world - he was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him.  

Now the verbs for deposing the devil and all his motley crew are in the passive voice.  The subject of these verbs is not specified.  Who is doing the throwing down?  Very often in Scripture this way of speaking, called the “theological passive,” is used to show that God is acting, without mentioning His name outright.  God is throwing down Satan and his demons by means of the Archangel Michael and Michael’s good angels.  This is made clear in Revelation 20 where we hear, Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended (20:1-3).  

How is it that Michael is able to do all of this to the dread Satan?  If its simply a matter of one created angel - the good archangel - going up against another create angel - the bad rebel - then it should be even money as to which angelic brawler will best the other.  The “smart money” would actually be on the devil, the master of a thousand arts who has no qualms about fighting dirty.  

There’s something deeper going on here, though.  The devil-binding angel of Revelation 20 has the key to the abyss and the great chain in his hand.  At the beginning of the Apocalypse, it is our Lord Jesus Christ who has the keys of Death and Hades (Rev 1:18); it is Christ who has the key of David so that He is the one who opens and no one can close and closes and no one can open (Rev 3:7) - not even the devil himself!  The angel coming down from heaven of Revelation 20, He who manhandles Satan and locks him up in the Abyss with the same short work of the Archangel Michael as he flings down the devil in Revelation 12, begins to look suspiciously like our Lord Christ Himself!
When Satan is flung from heaven in Revelation 12, a great voice declares, Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.  And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.  Interesting!  Scripture says that Michael and his angels have won their victory over Satan by means of the blood of the Lamb, by means of the Word of their testimony, by means of their not having loved their lives even unto death.  

This doesn’t sound like an aerial victory won by some high-flying ace archangel and his deathless brethren aloft high in heaven.  It sounds like a bloody victory won by the crucified Christ and His martyred Apostles right down here on earth!

And that is precisely where Christ Jesus, the Angel of the Lord who is Word of the Lord, the GodMan is when He speaks to the Twelve concerning greatness and repentance.  He is one earth, because Satan was thrown from heaven like lightening where he wanders to and fro seeking someone to devour, causing affliction and sorrow, pain and death.  Attempting to lead you into false believe, despair, and other great shame and vice.  

You are indeed attacked by these things, as was the prophet Daniel and the children of Israel held captive in Babylon.  But the Lord has heard your prayer and your plea for help.  He has sent His Michael to deliver you, the devil-trouncing Great One of heaven who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made Man.  A man most terrible, who loved not His life even unto death and conquers that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, by His blood, for He is the Lamb of God who bears away the sin of the world.  

Where Christ is there is His Church.  Where the Church is there is heaven, even on earth.  And where heaven is, Satan is not far away trying to weasel his way back in.  Thus does our Lord Jesus warn, Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!  Woe to the scribes and Pharisees, the hypocrites of our age, who hide themselves in a cloak of righteousness, yet inwardly are ravenous wolves, poisonous beasts who prey on little children, leading them astray into perversion and blasphemy, victims of the sexual exploitation of the workers of lawlessness masquerading as angels of light.  

By this, of course, I mean the pedophile priests and homosexual bishops of Rome, that great dragon.  They are hands and feet that have caused so much sin and destruction, shame and vice and ought to be cut off and thrown away.  They have caused many such children who believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ to sin!  Woe to them!  

But not only them.  Woe to us too who are puffed up with the pride of Lucifer, consider ourselves great ones, and rebel against the Chief Prince, YHWH Sabaoth, the Lord God of Hosts with smug arrogance.  Woe to us who have despaired of the swift promises of God and His mighty deliverance from our Babylon.  With fasting and sackcloth, we confess with Daniel, To You, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame because we have sinned against You.  

Amen, I say to you, unless you repent and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  

Receive, then, by faith He who comes to you in the Name of the Lord; the great Messenger of YHWH, your “Michael,” who is the Lord Jesus Christ of Revelation 12, for the heavenly angels are said to be His.  And the holy angels belong to God alone.  The name “Michael” means, “Who is like God?” The answer to the question embedded within this name lies hidden in Him whose name it is.  Of all the visible beings only the Lord Christ is like God, for only the Lord Christ is God among us!  He is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, but has come down to earth.

The angelic host conquered the dragon by the blood of the Lamb and by the Word of their martyrdom.  Thus do you also conquer the temptations of the Evil One by the Blood of the Lamb of God and the Word of His martyrdom.  For this is the battle which once ragged in heaven, but now continues for a time, times and half a time, here on earth.  For Satan and his unholy angels profane the name of God among us by heresy and immorality.  They blaspheme God in heaven.  

Yet, where the Church is, there is the Lord Christ, and wherever the Lord Christ is, there is heaven.  Thus do you endure the great wrath of the devil for a season.  

But do not be afraid, for he knows that his time is short.  

And to steal you for the fight our Lord Christ, the uncreated Angel of the Lord, sends you His flesh and blood messengers, the angels of the churches, your Pastors, who continue to prevail for you and with you by the Word of the Lord, swinging that double edged sword against all false doctrine, perverse living, and wrong practice as they fight against Satan and his angels.  They use the keys bestowed by Christ Himself to unbind you and loose you from your sins and free you from the devil’s captivity.  

And the blood of the Lamb which has conquered the devil and Satan is poured over your lips once more today, bestowing upon you the death-defying victory.  No more can he accuse you.  Fasten around his neck and the neck of your old Adam the millstone of the Law and drown him in the sea of your Baptism.  For you, O Christian, are greatly loved.  Fear not, you children of God, you whose names are written in the book of truth, you shall be delivered.  You shall arise from the dust, shake of your sinful nature and death itself, and walk into everlasting life, shining like the brightness of the angelic stars with the radiant righteousness of your great Michael, even our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.  

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

Portions of this sermon were adapted from a sermon preached by Rev Dr Stephen Wiest of blessed memory.
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Trinity 17

9/23/2018

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Proverbs 25:6-14; Ephesians 4:1-6; St Luke 14:1-11
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

Dear people loved by God, recall the narrative history of the creation of the heavens and the earth recorded by Moses in Genesis 1 and 2.  How is the start and finish of each literal, 24hour day signified?  There was evening and there was morning.  Day 1.  Day 2.  Day 3.  And so on.  For the Hebrew, from the time of creation, the day began the night before.  Thus the Sabbath, which is celebrated on Saturday, the seventh day, the day on which the Lord our God rested from all His work of creation, began after sundown on Friday.  

So it is that Jesus is partaking in the Sabbath evening Seder one Friday at the house of the ruler of the Pharisees.  He isn’t merely “dining,” as our English translation renders it.  He went to eat bread.  This is the way St Luke often speaks.  It is intentional.  It is a catechetical inclusion.  “To eat bread” refers back to the eating of unleavened bread at the first Passover in Egypt, the Lamb and its blood on the doorpost, the Angel of Death and the Exodus.  

But to eat bread also points forward to the fulfilling of all those Passovers and Old Testament feasts in the Sacrament of the Altar and the Feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end.  What our crucified and risen Lord Jesus does with two disciples on the road to Emmaus, He is already doing here around the table with the Pharisees.  As St Luke is at pains to point out and what the Six Chief Parts summarize, is that God has always worked in the same way since the beginning.  This is how He teaches.  This is how we learn.  

But rather than hearing His words as they broken bread together, rather than listen to Jesus’ catechesis, the Pharisees were watching Him carefully.  They are looking for a way to catch Him, ensnare Him, trap Him in some violation of the Sabbath.  How wicked their motives to be near Jesus, to use Him for their own ends and put themselves forward in the king’s presence.  May God in His mercy not allow us to use Jesus to our own ends!  Protect us, dear Father, from abusing Your compassion and charity and taking advantage of Your mercy while we boast and brag of our righteousness.     

Is it a trap, then?  Did they plant this poor fellow with dropsy?  Though our text does not indicate, make no mistake that those who use God to their own ends will not be concerned with using a fellow human being.  And often vice versa.

Whether it is a trap or not, Jesus will not remain silent and distant when a child of our heavenly Father, who is already ensnared by the devil in sickness and shame, is also being used as the bait and manipulative of self-righteous aggrandizers.  So He masterfully springs their trap, heals the man, sends him away, and, to top it all, manages to catch the Pharisees and lawyers in their own duplicity!  
For which one of them would not immediately retrieve a beast which has fallen into a pit on the Sabbath?!  Let alone a child?  This man with dropsy is a child of our Father in heaven and he had fallen into the waterless pit of illness, uncleanness, despair and sorrow.  Jesus, by His Word, with compassion and love, pulls him out.  It is as we heard on Thursday morning from the Gospel reading for the Feast of St Matthew, Jesus says to the Pharisees who grumble that He is eating with tax collectors and sinners, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Mt 9:13).  

Those who consider themselves righteous and wise before the Lord, who put themselves forward in the kings presence and assume the seats of honor, are like clouds and wind without rain.  All hot air and blowhards, but lacking the refreshing showers of mercy and compassion.  

Which brings us to the second half of our text.  Jesus who has been watched carefully by these Pharisees is doing a little people watching of His own.  He is an astute observer of human nature and knows what is in man; that is, He knows our tendency to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, our habit of seeking attention and collecting praise.  He knows we are narcissists at heart.  Such is the effect of Adam’s fall.  All his children are intolerably selfish.  We are like two-year olds demanding their toys.  We just get better at hiding as we get older or passing it off as virtue rather than vice.  

Jesus is about to deliver to them a lesson in end-times table etiquette; He will give them a word fitly spoken, like apples of gold in a setting of silver.  He will speak proverbially.  Well here is another fitting proverb: pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall (Prov 16:18).  It is pride that killed the cat, not curiosity.  It was pride that brought down Lucifer.  It was pride that blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of Adam and Eve.  It is in pride that those invited to the Sabbath Seder chose the places of honor.  

And it is pride that causes us to think highly of ourselves, to place ourselves above others, to take the seats of honor and to dismiss the humanity of those in front of us who need mercy.  This is what the disciples did in the Upper Room the night of Jesus’ betrayal.  They argued about which of them was the greatest (Lk 22:24-27)!  Before we pass judgment, consider, are we really any different?

Repentance is needed.  The Great Reversal - everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted - is a call to repentance, to turn away from our self-aggrandizement and boasting, to despair of our works and our accomplishments.  It is a call to be a completely different person in heart and mind.  To approach not only the throne of the Father, but also one another, in humility, as St Paul writes to the Ephesians.  

With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirt in the bond of peace.  

For the Great Reversal - the lowering of those self-exulted and the raising of the humble - is seen ultimately not in your actions and good works, but in the salvific action and the great work of our Lord Jesus Christ for our justification.  

As St Paul writes to the Philippians, Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:5-11).  

Consider this, beloved, it was at the final Passover in which Jesus, laying aside His outer garment, wrapped Himself in the apron, and washed the feet of the disciples.  He is the greatest at the Table, yet He took the place of the lowest servant.  For this is what our Lord has done and continues to do, always, since before the foundation of the world.  He serves in infinite love and mercy.  Even on the Sabbath!  

For it is at the same meal - the Last Supper, the Lord’s Supper - at which Jesus calls His disciples friends.  No longer servants, not just disciples, but friends.  

So does He also do for you!  He has pulled you up from the pit like a helpless ox.  He has pulled you up from the grave and has made you a son.  He has washed you, as He did the feet of the Twelve, when He cleansed you in body and soul in Holy Baptism.  And raising you up in Himself, by His Incarnation, by His death and resurrection and ascension, He exalts you in Himself and gives you a seat the heavenly banquet, saying, Friend, move up higher.  

Move up from the lowest place to the place of honor.  And not just any place of honor at a Sabbath Seder.  No.  The place of honor - where? - Jesus says, When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast.  Where is the place of honor at a wedding?  But at the head table of course! You, dear Christians, the one body and one Spirit of and in Christ, are His Church, His Bride, radiant and splendid, washed and sanctified, justified and set free, and you are given the seat of honor right next to our heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.  

For He not only loves you, He likes you too.  As He was not ashamed to take this man wth dropsy and heal him, so He is not ashamed of you.  He heals you of your sin and iniquities and gives you to partake of the feast.

For Christ Jesus is your true Sabbath.  He is your Rest and Hope and Life and Light.  He invites you to His Table, to partake with great honor, of His Body and Blood.  Not that you are worthy in yourself, nor trust in your righteous deeds, but you believe His word, Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.  That which you receive here in faith, namely the true Body and precious Blood of Christ, not only strengthens saving faith, but likewise engenders love and good works toward your neighbor in need, so that we hear and learn again from Jesus our Catechist, how to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called; that is, to delight in the Law of the Lord and mediate on it day and night, seeing just how blessed it is for the good of my neighbor.  

Indeed it is lawful and meet, right, and salutary, that our Lord Jesus heal us, again and again, on the Sabbath.  As He does here, when you are invited to His House to eat bread that is His Body and partake of the Cup of Salvation.  

For this is how He has always acted and how He shall likewise do at the last when He shall raise you up from your graves and seat you with Himself in the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which shall have no end.  

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

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Trinity 16

9/16/2018

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1 Kings 17:17-24; Ephesians 3:13-21; St Luke 7:11-17
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

Dear people loved by God, in today’s Gospel you have set before you a beautiful and magnificent battle.  A battle between good and evil.  Between sin and grace.  Between Satan and Christ.  It is truly a battle between life and death.  And as you shall sing in the great Easter hymn, “the victory remained with life, the reign of death was ended.” (LSB 458:4).

Soon after healing the centurion’s servant by a word; a word of power and authority, a life-giving, creative Word that does what it says, Christ Jesus went to a town called Nain, whose name means “beautiful meadow.”  But the sight that our Lord and we behold is not beautiful.  It is a common scene, to be sure, as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.  But the dead son of a widowed mother being carried out in funeral possession is not beautiful.  

It is an ominous procession; a parade of death.  The grime trophy of Satan’s power out front, the dead son.  Following in its train his widowed mother and with her a considerable crowd of mourners from the town.  They grieve with this poor woman who lost her husband, her family, and now her son.  In losing him she has lost her hope.  She goes to the cemetery once more, a place she know too well.  This time to bury her little boy and with her hope and love.  Her very life, it seems, has come to an end.

Though she is surrounded by a considerable crowd she is alone.  Frightfully and desperately alone.  You widows and mourners among us have experienced this kind of loneliness.  You have buried your other halves, your one-fleshments.  And in so doing you have buried a portion of yourself.  You grieve with these poor women from Zarephath and Nain.  Half of you is in the grave.  Not only your flesh, but also your heart; your love, your life.  You are not whole.  You are alone.  Frightfully and desperately alone.  

But you don’t have to lose a spouse or a child, dear Christians, to experience loneliness.  Perhaps you have not been given the gift of a Christian husband or wife.  You’re single and you pray for a godly marriage, though you don’t have it.  Your family and friends are married.  You have nieces and nephews, but no one to call your own.  This is a loneliness all its own.  

Or perhaps you are married, but have not been given the gift of children.  Barrenness or even difficulty conceiving is its own unique form of loneliness.  One to which the Church ought to respond in compassion and love, especially in our culture of abortion.  

You see, all of these - loneliness, loss, pain, suffering, sorrow - are symptoms of the greater enemy of death, that weapon and tool of the devil himself.  You can’t see him, but it is Satan who leads this somber procession out of Nain.  He paints the beautiful meadow gray and decaying just as he did Eden.  It is the devil who separates man from God and man from woman.  He drives a wedge of animosity and bitterness between husbands and wives, plants seeds of discontent among the single, and jealousy and anger with the barren.  Satan hates the godly marriage of one man and one woman, and the fruit of their union, children.  In death he took this widow’s husband.  Now her son.  And he dances at the front of this parade.

But to this procession of detain which we all follow in its train, the whole world held captive under its pall, dying from the moment of conception, making our long steady march to the grave, come the Lord of Life, Jesus Christ, the Son of God our Savior.  He encounters this parade of death and He stops death dead in its tracks!  Like Gandolf standing his ground against the Balrog, so death and Satan shall not pass Christ Jesus our Light and Life, wielding the divine sword of His Word.  

He beholds this lonely widow, this childless mother, grieving in her pain and misery and He has compassion on her.  You’ve heard this word before.  Compassion.  The Samaritan felt it for the man left bloodied and dying in the ditch.  The father felt it for his prodigal son returned home safe and sound.  Christ feels it for all the lost souls of men and women, His dear children, created to be in community with Him and one another, rent asunder by sin and death and Satan.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Compassion, love, is more than a feeling.  It moves one to action; to showing mercy.  The Samaritan gets off his horse and dresses the wounds of the dying man; places him on his own animal and takes him to the inn.  The father jumped off the porch and ran to meet his wayward son, throwing the coat over his shoulders, putting the signet ring on his finger and the shoes on his feet.  He kills the fattened calf and celebrates.  

Your Father in heaven looks down with compassion and sees you in misery and ruin, trapped in sin and death, captive to the devil and hell.  All alone, cut off from your neighbors, though surrounded by them, all of you marching in this deadly procession to destruction.  And He acts.  He sends His Son who likewise has compassion.  

Jesus comforts the grieving, childless widow.  Do not weep.  As it is written, Behold the dwelling place of God is with man.  He will dwell with them and they will be His people and God Himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Rev 21:3-4).  Then He came up and touched the bier and the bearers stood still.  

Life and death contend in this combat stupendous.  Christ Jesus touches the casket.  He defiles Himself with our death.  He acts in solidarity with us.  He doesn’t theatrically splay Himself on the boy as Elijah died with the widow’s son.  In fact He isn’t showy at all.  He speaks His Word, Young man, I say to you, arise.  And the little boy sits up and speaks and Jesus gives Him back to His mother.  She is no longer alone.  For the Gospel Word of Christ, which raises him from the death to life, does far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.  It also restores this poor into community and fellowship.  
But even more than solidarity with us, Jesus shall take the place of the young man on the funeral bier.  He shall take the place of all humanity.  He is the only Son of His widowed mother who is lead out of the valley of the shadow of death; taken outside the gate of Jerusalem to die.  He shall be abandoned by His disciples and friends, leave His mother and be forsaken by His father.  He was utterly and completely alone.  

For when Christ Jesus looked down with compassion on the poor souls of His creation, held in captivity to sin and death, He came.  He came as true Owner of all men’s souls and bodies.  He came to conquer Satan, to destroy his kingdom, to remove hi plunder, to free us from his dark power and to lead us through this valley under the cover of His reign of grace into His reign of eternally glory.  

But as it was for the widow, so it is for you.  This is not it.  Though you await the joyous resurrection of your loved ones on the Last Day, you already have now the promise of the resurrection and the foretaste of the Feast within the communion, that is, the fellowship of saints.  

For Christ Jesus has stopped your death dead in its tracks.  He has taken your place upon the Cross and in the grave and has given you His place within the water, under the Word and Spirit.  He raised you from your watery grave and placed you back into the arms of your parents.  Even more, He adopted you as an heir and has given you a true family in Himself.  Fellowship together with His Father and the Holy Spirit in the blessed Trinity, and the joy of life together in the community of saints within your true Mother, the Church.  

You are surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses, the saints in glory and the saints on earth, united in one head, Jesus Christ.  And being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  

Death’s power holds us still in thrall and bears us toward the tomb.  But He who by His powerful Word of truth and life raised the son of the widow at Nain, He who raised you from your watery grave in Baptism, raises you even now from your sin through repentance and forgiveness to live with Him in righteousness, innocence, and blessedness all the days of your life.  

He shall indeed, at the last, come to your graveside and with His Word, raise you from death to life and give you into the arms of your heavenly mother, the New Jerusalem, to sing with all the saints in glory.  

To Him be glory in the Church and in Jesus Christ, together + with the Holy Spirit, through all generations, forever and ever.  Amen.  
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Holy Cross Day

9/13/2018

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1 Corinthians 1:18-25; St John 12:20-33
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.  

The Festival of the Holy Cross originally commemorated what was considered the discovery of the original cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.  In the early fourth century AD, St Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, undertook an archaeological search for the cradle of Christianity within the city of Jerusalem.  That holy city had been destroyed and rebuilt countless times under the Roman Empire following its destruction in AD 70 as our Lord Jesus has prophesied.  

The presumed sites of our Lord’s crucifixion and burial were uncovered, dug out from the rubble of Jerusalem’s destruction and rebuilding.  Tradition says that three crosses were discovered in this process and one of the three was presumed to be the Cross on which Christ Jesus Himself had been crucified when it “self-identified” by effecting a miraculous healing.  

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was constructed on this archaeological site.  This building was dedicated on September 13, AD 335, but the Holy Cross was exposed for public veneration for the first time on the next day, September 14.  Tomorrow. 

Martin Luther wasn’t a huge fan of feasts and festivals dedicated to the Holy Cross.  He recognized in them a latent superstition akin to the relic trafficking he so long had opposed.  He once quipped that if all the alleged pieces of the “true cross” were gathered together it would construct a cross over fifty feet high and twenty feet wide!  Rather than fixating on the relics, better to direct your attention to the crucified and risen Lord Christ, whom St Paul says, “This is what we preach.  Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  The power and wisdom of God.”

Anecdotally I would like to add that I received my requisite years off purgatory when I mistakenly visited and beheld a relic of the true Cross while in High Cross Abbey in Ireland.  Curb your enthusiasm.  It was a piece of wood smaller than your Amazon Firestick encased in glass and ensconced in a cross mosaic on the side wall of a chapel.  There was no authenticating its providence, but the curator sure moved quickly when I tried to touch it.  So much for those years off purgatory.  

The truth is, we celebrate the Festival of Holy Cross Day not because of the Cross found by St Helena nor by bits of wood and relics scattered around the world claiming to be authentic or miraculous.  Holy Cross Day is celebrated because of the triumph and victory of our Lord upon the indisputably real Cross that once was planted on Golgotha.  

There, in love, the Father’s eternal Son and the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary emptied Himself of His life.  His blood stained that sacred crucifix and blotted out the sin of the world.  His death proved death’s destruction.  His Body hallowed the graves of all who die in Him when His divine life and love were finally and gloriously indigestible and Christ has raised from the dead never to die again. 

We celebrate Holy Cross Day because that Good Friday was the glorification of the saving Name of the Father as His Son was raised up  from the earth in order to draw all men to Himself.  We celebrate Holy Cross Day because the lifeless Body of the only begotten Son of God sanctified the wood of that Cross and made that instrument of death into the true Tree of Life.  We lift high the Cross because in it the love of God is proclaimed.

And this is how Holy Cross Day is rightly celebrated.  Not in pilgrimages or adorations.  But in the bold and fierce proclamation of Jesus Christ and Him crucified for the salvation of the world.  This preaching is madness and stupidity to a world enveloped by sin and blinded by a false and seductive beauty.  The bloody death of Christ Jesus has broken sin’s hold on the world and Satan’s grasp on you.  His gruesome, cruel death is, in fact, the most glorious and beautiful sight to behold.  This worldly foolishness is divine wisdom and in its preaching is the instrument of salvation to all who believe. 

When some Mormons visited my house they were appalled and offended by the crucifixes we have hanging in our home.  But I rejoice and boast with St Paul in the Cross of my Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified and me and I to the world, even as we pray while we vest with the pectoral crucifix (Gal 6:14). What did you just sing?  “Faithful cross, true sign of triumph, Be for all the noblest tree; None in foliage, none in blossom, None in fruit thine equal be; Symbol of the world’s redemption, For the weight that hung on thee!” (LSB 454:4).  

We celebrate the Festival of the Holy Cross and rejoice in the Crucifix of our Lord because we know by faith that God used and uses suffering to bring blessing; the way He worked and works so contrary to anything human reason could or would ever conceive.  

We celebrate the Festival of Holy Cross Day for by His Cross we are crucified, dead, and buried with Him in Holy Baptism and in daily repentance.  And from the same Cross we receive the absolution that “bespeaks us righteous,” by which we also rise with Christ unto newness of life.  The Cross is exulted in our lives by self-sacrificing love for our neighbor, as it is lifted up for us by the preaching of the Gospel, by which we are drawn to Christ in faith and through Him, our Great High Priest, brought into the Holy of Holies made without hands, to our Father in heaven.

It is under this banner and before our closing eyes that we behold the Cross in our dying day.  It shall shine through the gloom and point us to the skies.  Heaven’s morn shall break and earth vain shadows flee.  In life and in death, our holy crucified Lord shall abide with you. 

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Trinity 15

9/9/2018

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1 Kings 17:8-16; Galatians 5:25-6:10; St Matthew 6:24-34
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.  

Dear people loved by God, when our Lord Jesus Christ says, No one can serve two masters, that is not a challenge for you to respond, “Oh yeah, watch me.”  It is a called to repentance.  And a harsh one at that.  For remember the context of this text within St Matthew’s Gospel.  The Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus taking the place and fulfilling the role of Moses who went up on the mountain and came down with the two tablets of the Law, the Ten Commandments.  

This is Jesus taking that already sharp blade and filing it down to a razor’s edge to pierce between bone and sinew, joint and marrow.  To cut you to the quick; prick your heart and see that it still bleeds and is not calloused over by the love of another god, the covetousness of the world’s mammon.  For He is a jealous God.  He made you for Himself and He will not share you.  

But not only that, He knows that the end of those things that He calls mammon; that the chasing after those wonderful, beautiful First Article gifts and refashioning them as gods, only ends in one place: death.  As St Paul says to the Galatians, God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.  Or as he writes to the Romans: For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?  For the end of those things is death (Rm 6:20-21).  

St Augustine said it more positively: The Lord made us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him.  But the problem with restless hearts is that they settle upon illusory pleasure, creaturely comfort; living out of step with the Spirit and in opposition to Him and the Word.  Such a heart is consumed with the anxieties of what tomorrow may or may not bring.  Such a heart is concerned with the good gifts rather than the Giver. 

And because such material consumption, such worldly anxieties, fill our thoughts and hearts and can send us into such a tizzy that we risk losing sight of what truly matters, Jesus, our dear Brother, not only according to the flesh, but also in the Spirit, sees us caught in this transgression - for worry and anxiety are a sin - and He who is spiritual, calls us to restoration in a spirit of gentleness.  

After the severe Law of trying to serve two masters, hear how He speaks tenderly to you: Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  And when we hear it like that - life isn’t just about eating and dressing - we even laugh at how foolish we were.  

But He goes on: Look at the birds of the air.  I don’t know about you, but I can hardly read this text without thinking of the Monty Python skit.  I have the absurd English accents of the faux Israelites in my head.  (“What’s he on about the birds for?”)

But in a way, that is how Jesus is teaching us; in this childlike, almost comical, sort of style.  Look at means something like, “Consider,” or “pay close attention to,” to even “be a disciple of.”  Jesus is inviting us to pay close attention to the activity of birds, to hear the sermon they are preaching in their vocations.  In a childlike way He is inviting you to imagine a bird riding a tractor or running the combine, harvesting the grain into their bird-barns, and bringing the cows around.  Consider just how silly that is!  

Birds don’t do that and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  Indeed so!  For did the eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Logos, become a bird?  Did Jesus become a parakeet or a falcon?  No!  He became a Man.  In so doing He elevated that which was already the pinnacle of His creation.  

Moreover, even though Jesus died for birds and bugs and rocks and trees, for He died for all creation, birds, He says, are sold in the marketplace two for a penny!  Worthless.  But He purchased and won you with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.  That is your priceless value.  You are worth the sacred blood of the everlasting Son of the Father who died to set you free.  

Turn the page of your children’s book.  Consider the lilies of the field.  They don’t set up spinning wheels and looms.  They don’t weave or knit and make for themselves little lily dresses and sweaters.  Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?  Well, little faiths?  We think of that as an insult, but really its more of a term of endearment.  Not, “no faiths,” or “unbelievers.”  Little faiths.  Catechism faiths.  

For does He not clothe you? And give you shoes?  Hermann Sasse noted that Luther’s Small Catechism was the only catechism to mention shoes.  God doesn’t forget the smallest things.  He also gives you food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all that you have.  He richly and daily provides you with all that you need to support this body and life.  

And what about the other clothing?  Besides the jeans and shirts and Nikes.  Besides the suits and ties and dresses.  Will He not much more clothe you with the garment of Christ’s own righteousness?  Your baptismal robe that coves over all your sin and in which you stand before Him as a beloved child, asking Him with all the boldness and confidence of dear children petitioning their dear Father?  

In his Large Catechism, Luther wrote, “What a great and excellent thing Baptism is.  It delivers us from the devil’s jaws and makes us God’s won.  It suppresses and takes away sin and then daily strengthens the new man.  It is working and always continues working until we pass from this estate of misery to eternal glory.  For this reason let everyone value his Baptism as a daily dress in which he is to walk constantly.  Then he may ever be found in the faith and its fruit, so that he may suppress the old man and grow up in the new” (LC 6:83-84).  
And this, dear Christians, is what St Paul means when he writes to the Galatians, If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.  For the Holy Spirit, given you in Holy Baptism, by the Word, leads and guides you to all truth.  He would have you walk around in the good works God prepared in advance for you to do.  Like a son putting on his father’s shoes and walking around saying, “Look, I’m daddy.”  So too your baptismal righteousness dresses you up in Christ Jesus and you walk around doing good to everyone, especially those who are of the household of faith.

That is, to those who are brothers and sisters of yours in Christ Jesus, who call His Father and your Father, their Father.  Thus do you pray for and write to and visit the shut-in and homebound and sick listed in our bulletin.  You remember the children and catechumens in your prayers.  Do not grow weary of doing good, dear people.  

For what fear or worry do you have of tomorrow?  You know what lies beyond tomorrow and what lies beyond even the grave.  For you have the One who was cut down and thrown into the oven of the Father’s wrath.  You have the One who is greater than Solomon, yet made Himself nothing.  The One who gives the birds their nests and the foxes their holes, but for Him, He had no place to lay His head.  Beloved, you have the Lord Jesus Christ, who by His incarnation, death, and resurrection brought the Kingdom of God among you and to you and for you.  And by His sacrificial redemption, adds unto you all the other things as well.  

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentile pagans seek after these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  

Besides, beloved, why are you worried about such things, since you are clothed with Christ’s own righteousness.  You are given to eat His true Body and to drink His true Blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.  You are not Gentile pagans filling your bellies and garages with mammon.  You are the dear children of your heavenly Father who are gathered safely into His arms and given refuge and strength, hope and courage, to receive from His Fatherly hand all things according to His good and gracious will.  

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

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Christian Funeral: Mildred I. Allgood

9/5/2018

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Job 19:21-27; Revelation 7:9-17; St John 10:27-30
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

Phil, Bonnie, David, your beloved spouses and children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, of our dear sister in Christ Mildred, dear family in Christ from St Peter’s, grace, mercy and peace be unto from God our Father holds you in His hand and raised our Lord Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd, from the dead.  

It is common now to change the names of things to sterilize them. Funerals, for example are called “celebrations of life,” supposedly because it sounds nicer.  But we are not gathered here for a celebration of life.  Though there is, indeed, much to celebrate in the long life of grace that our Lord granted unto His dear child Mildred.  98 years.  Perhaps some of you learned the Fourth Commandment according to its older version as the first commandment with a promise: Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother that it may be well with thee and thou mayest livest long on the earth (Eph 6:2-3).  Our Lord, in His mercy, has fulfilled this promise, among others, to Mildred.

But we are not here to celebrate her life.  We are gathered here because this dear mother, grandmother and friend, has died.  She has departed this life in the faith.  This is her funeral.  And first and foremost the Christian funeral is a solemn service to the glory of God in Christ Jesus in thanksgiving for the life and blessed death of His ones in the faith.  It is written, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints (Ps 116:15).  And elsewhere, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them! (Rev 14:13).  

Mildred indeed is a saint in Christ who now rests in the eternal Sabbath which He has secured by His own innocent, suffering and death and glorious resurrection and ascension.  

That I call her a saint is not hyperbole.  It is not for her kindly disposition.  Nor her elderly frame.  It is not because she would say, “Thank you,” to every worker at Ashford Place after they helped her to the restroom, gave her medicine, turned down her bed, or as in my case, brought her the Lord’s Supper.  

Rather, I call her saint, and rightly so, because she is a holy one of Christ Jesus, declared so by faith alone in Him, who by grace alone has atoned for all her sins and has imputed to her His righteousness as a free gift.  You may think her a saint for the other reasons, but her Father in heaven beholds her as a saint on account of her faith in Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord.

Though to ask Mildred, she knew she was no saint.  

It is my practice, whenever I visit the sick, shut-in, or homebound, to bring them Holy Communion, that we have service.  For someone like Mildred, who grew up in the Lutheran church, the very words of the Divine Service were still fresh in her mind even when other things began to fade.  Such is the precious blessing of our Lord, the Good Shepherd, who says, My sheep hear My voice and I know them, and they follow Me.  In the liturgy the sheep hear the voice of their Good Shepherd.  Even when they forget others - family, friends - He knows them and they follow Him.  That is, they listen to His voice and believe His word and promise that He has laid down His life for them to give them a share in the life that never ends.  

Mildred knew this.  She heard His voice.  Even when her eyesight failed she would recite the words of the confession of sins from memory: “O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment.  But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, and I pray You of Your boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being.”  Then, even when her speech began to fail, I would confess the words aloud and then ask her, “Mildred, is this your confession?”  “Yes!”  

Yes was always her answer.  For she knew her sin.  98 years of life, especially in those last years when her physical abilities waned, 98 years, and then to lie in one’s bed waiting upon the Lord for a blessed end, 98 years is a long time, a lot of life, for the devil to bring to her memory past sins and throw them in her face as if she wasn’t forgiven.  As if the blood of Christ did not avail for her.  As if she needed to do something to earn her salvation.  

But no one understands justification by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone better than one who is dying.  Mildred knew that she was dying.  She prayed for it.  As is fitting for the saints in Christ.  But she knew it was a gift.  Death is a gift, given at the Lord’s time.  

A gift like the gift she received every time immediately after her confession of sins: “Mildred, Upon this your confession, I, by virtue of my office, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the grace of God unto you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  That, that, is the voice of her Good Shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ.  

And that is the promise that He kept unto her again and again, to never leave her or forsake her.  Our Lord Jesus made that promise to Mildred first in the waters of Holy Baptism, when she was clothed with the robe of Christ’s righteousness that covered all her sin.  That baptismal reality is symbolized today with the white funeral pall, marked with the Cross of Christ, covering her.  Just like that reality was symbolized the day she was baptized at the old St Peter’s Lutheran Church on Brookside and Jefferson.  Old because the “new” building is only 90 years old, whereas our dear Mildred, well, she’s a little older.  

Our Lord Jesus kept and reiterated that same promise to her again and again in the forgiveness of sins that I and all her pastors before me were privileged to speak to her.  

That same promise was presented to her as gift when set before her in bread and wine was our dear Lord’s Body and Blood, given and shed for her for the forgiveness of sins.  He prepared this table before her whether it was at St Peter’s or her apartment in Beech Grove or her bedside in Shelbyville.  Wherever she was, our Lord carried His promise to her in His Word and in His Sacraments for the full and free forgiveness of all her sins, leading her in the path of righteousness for His name’s sake.  

And because of these promises, grabbed by faith at an early age and never let go, Mildred believed and confessed with old Job, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.  My heart faints within me!

This is her confession!  

Until that Day, however; until the Day when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, Mildred has been given the white robe, washed clean in the blood of the Lamb, the palm branch has been placed into her hand, and she has been told to wait.  She has taken her place around the throne of the Lamb with the whole company of heaven singing the eternal liturgy, saying “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

But for today, in a moment, we shall place the body of our dear sister in Christ, the beloved lamb of our Lord Jesus, into God’s acre and wait the fulfillment of the promise of her resurrection unto eternal life.  

For Christ Jesus has died and been raised, never to die again.  His resurrection is the guarantee of the promise of her resurrection.  And she shall be raised, as old Job said, in her flesh.  Immortal.  Imperishable.  Perfected and without blemish.  For goodness and mercy have followed her all the days of her live, and she shall be raised, together with all the faithful, to dwell eternally before the throne of God; He will shelter them with His presence.  

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore, the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat.  For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water, and God - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit - will wipe away every tear from their eyes.  

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

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Trinity 14

9/2/2018

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Proverbs 4:10-23; Galatians 5:16-24; St Luke 17:11-19
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

Did you see Him as He entered the village?  Recognize Him from His last visit to Nain when He raised the widow’s little boy?  Maybe you overheard others going into and out of the village talking about the Man from Nazareth coming with His disciples; passing through on the way to Jerusalem.

Certainly you’ve heard of His unique willingness among the rabbis to trespass the barrier between the clean and the unclean; how He had allowed defiled women to wash His feet.  How He ate with tax collectors and outcasts.  How He’d actually touched the coffin of the boy from Nain!  Those stories get around.  Even His disciples don’t all the elaborate ceremonies of washing their hands after interacting with Gentiles in the market place before sitting down to eat.  They associate with the unclean and outcast too because they are with Him.  

Still.  You dare not approach Him.  Not you.  Everyone knows who you are.  You can’t hide your sin like others.  Your uncleanness is on the outside.  Everyone who sees you turns aside in horror.  As if that weren’t enough, you have to shout out, “Unclean, unclean” if anyone even comes near.  You have no one.  No home.  No coworkers. Just your companions.  Even your family stays away. 

So what have you got to loose?  You convince the others and you all start banging on your pots and pans.  You all lift up your voices to the One who is far from you.  Like everyone else - far from you.  But He’s different.  Maybe He’ll hear you.  Maybe He’ll listen.  Maybe He, unlike anyone else, will at least acknowledge you as a person and at least greet you.   

Do you recognize by now, dear Christian, that you are among the lepers?  A lonely little congregation of sinners, cast out from everywhere.  You can’t go to the Temple.  You can’t go home.  You can’t even walk the streets of the village, but have to stay outside the gates.  As you crave community and acceptance, you feel in your gut what Cain must have felt when God expelled them from the family, away from His presence, sent off to live apart from His provision, outside of His grace.  

This is what sin does.  These are its consequences: separation from God and from community; clean cut off from everyone.  Sin isolates and alienates.  It creates a self-loathing, but without repentance.  A hatred, but without contrition.  

These lepers are the inverse of the picture of Dorian Gray.  He could hide his sin, his licentiousness.  Squirrel it away in the back corner of his secret closet.  All the while maintaining a facade of purity and beauty while his portrait suffered the gruesome ravages of his trespasses.  But these lepers though wear their uncleanness and shame on the outside.  Their bodies riddled with lesions, plagued by infections and wounds, unaware even of the pain, on account of the deadening of their nerves.  

To be sure, we are pretty good at hiding our sins.  In this way, we are more like miserable Mr Gray.  Pretty on the outside.  Hideous within.  We can look like we have everything together, things are fine.  But hidden away in the dark recesses of our souls are the effects of our sins; the slow deformity of our humanity by our hidden faults.  

But then, in this same way, we are more like the lepers than we know.  You see, leprosy affected the nerves.  Prolonged bacterial infection caused nerve damage in the extremities so that as fingers and toes and noses were susceptible to injury and became infected, they slowly fell off as the body.  But one won’t feel it.  The disease had killed the pain receptors, deadened the nerves, so that as you lost part of yourself, you didn’t even know it was gone until one day you looked, and it wasn’t there. 

And this is what those secret sins, those hidden faults do to use.  We hide them from others, cover over them with the cloak of darkness and squirrel away those thoughts of guilt and shame.  Maybe, if they get really bad, we get prosthetic appendages.  Pornography has so deaden my soul from feeling real love that i’ll just fake what I think its supposed to be.  Depressed and alcohol have become so intertwined I can’t tell which is the problem anymore.  I have become my covetousness, my greed, my anger, my gossip, that I just figure, this is my personality, my character.  Just flaws I have to live with, not sins of which I need (or even want) to repent.  

Before we know it, we find ourselves standing with the lepers.  Our terrified conscience afraid to even approach Jesus for fear He will cast us away, or worse.  Laugh at us? Mock us? Tell us He didn’t come for the likes of us?  

Beloved, do not listen to your conscience at such times!  Have no ear for the Law when it throws your sin and transgressions in your face!  

Rather, listen to Jesus.  He has heard your prayer and your plea for mercy.  And He answers you immediately: Go and show yourselves to the priests.  This is delivery of the fulfillment of the Law from the mouth of the One who is the fulfillment of the Law.  He has His face set toward Jerusalem.  He goes to lay down His life; to be clean cut off from the mercy of the Father by enduring the pain and punishment of His wrath.  He has become your leprosy, taking your sin into Himself and so completely identifying with it that as you behold Christ crucified you must behold your sin nailed to the cursed tree.  

For He who walked by the Spirit, never gratifying the desires of His flesh, took into His very flesh the putrid stain, the vile disease of your leprous flesh and hearts.  He bore it all.  He became the adulterer, the thief, the gossip, the liar, the aggressor, the leper.  He is a worm and not a Man.  And men hid their faces from Him; made Him the outcast, shamed and despised.  He walked the village streets of Jerusalem, bearing your sin, and was thrown outside the gates to rot and die.  
But as the Psalm right before ours today says, The Stone that the builders rejected has become the Cornerstone.  This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes (Ps 118:22-23).  

An so with the ears of faith you are attentive to the Wisdom of Christ Jesus.  Grabbing hold of His promise you do not let them escape from your sight.  With trust you keep them within your heart.  For - what does it say? - they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.  Healing, restoration, to all their once leprous flesh.  

And so while the others run off to the priests and the Temple and offer the animal sacrifice, you - the Samaritan - return to your Great High Priest, the True Temple made without Hands, and offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving and render unto the Lord your God who is gracious and merciful to you, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  

Why are you the Samaritan?  Even though cleansed of leprosy he is still ethnically outcast.  Just like you.  Even if you manage to put away all your secret sins, to straighten up and get clean.  You are still not clean.  Your ethnicity, your heritage, the lineage of your first parents Adam and Eve, has infected all of their children.  

But this Jesus, who though on His way to Jerusalem, cuts through Samaria and Galilee - He comes to the land of the Gentiles - and has taken you, a foreigner and stranger, and adopted you as an heir and brother.  For He is the Second Adam, who by His faithful obedience has made a way back, not only for the Jews, but also for you Gentile Samaritans.  For all.  As it is written, 
Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,
“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,
    and sing to your name.”
And again it is said,
“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”
And again,
“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
    and let all the peoples extol him.”
And again Isaiah says,
“The root of Jesse will come,
    even he who arises to rule the Gentiles;
in him will the Gentiles hope.”
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Rm 15:8-13).  

In such hope, beloved, you turn back, that is, in repentance and faith you praise God with a loud voice and fall at the feet of Jesus in faithful worship, offering Him the sacrifice of thanksgiving.  

Where are the nine? He wonders, for He wants them here too.  
But He delights in you, His dear one.  He welcomes you back to Himself, into fellowship not only with Him and His Father with the Holy Spirit, but into the community of holy ones, the communion of saints, those in heaven and those on earth, gathered in life together around the throne of the Lamb forever singing His praise.  And to you He says, Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.  

And such saving faith is bound to bring forth fruit, walking in the way of the Spirit in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  For in calling out for mercy to Jesus your Master, in receiving His healing Word and then in returning to Him who is God in the flesh and giving Him thanks, you belong to Him and have crucified the flesh - your old sin and shame and leprosy - with its passions and desires.  And the new man, made clean in the blood of Christ, washed in the forgiveness of His Word, arises daily to live before Him in righteousness and purity, walking by the Spirit.  For you have been grafted into the Vine.

And behold, the fruit of He who is the Vine: His Body and Blood, offered to you here as your High Priest and true Temple, the even you Gentiles may draw near and partake.  For here, returning to Jesus in faith, your hearts are lifted up unto the Lord and kept with all vigilance, from it flowing the springs of life in He who is your life and salvation, your Wisdom and your Righteous Path, your Dwelling Place, your Shield and your God.

Your soul longs, yes faints for the courts of the Lord; your heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God (Ps 84:2).

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 
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Trinity 13

8/26/2018

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2 Chronicles 28:8-15; Galatians 3:15-22; St Luke 10:23-37
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.

To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail.  To a lawyer, everything is legal.  Presenting briefs, mounting evidence, establishing fact, winning arguments.  This is the legal profession.  And philosophically this approach can be helpful to testing the truth claims of Christianity.  Lawyers are in a unique setting in which reason and evidence rules the day; not emotion and subjectivity.  Lawyers deal with the precision and interpretation of words, their definitions and meanings, and the precise parameters of the law.  In some instances this is life and death stuff.  

Such is case here.  A lawyer asked Jesus, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? How am I saved?  This is the question.  The big question.  This is an eternally life or death question.  

Now this lawyer isn’t like your pal Harvey Specter or the other litigators from Suits.  This lawyer is well versed in the Torah, the Law of Moses.  We call him lawyer because he deals with the Law, not only the Ten Commandments, but all 613 Levitical commands concerning food and clothing, daily action and religious ceremony.  He deals with the Old Testament.  He could just as easily be called a theologian.  He concerns himself with the Word of God, with the things of God, with sin and grace, Law and Gospel, works and faith, life and death.  He is concerned not only with the truth of Holy Scripture, but with the salvation of his own soul.  

You probably don’t want to hear it, but he’s not that much different than you.  If you are concerned about the interpretation and application of God’s Word, than you are a theologian.  You don’t need seminary training, Biblical languages, a Ph.D. in Church History, you’re not called to be a Pastor, but you are a theologian.  You read and study not only what the Bible says, but also what it means.  This is not preparation for some big quiz, this is truly life and death.  How am I saved?  What must I do to inherit eternal life.  

Well, you ask a Law question of Jesus you get a socratic Law answer; that is, Jesus answers a question with a question.  And as we would expect, this guy answers correctly: You shall love the Lord your God with your all; and love your neighbor as yourself.  That’s an excellent summary of the Two Tables of the Law.  Its the answer I expect from the catechumens.  Its nearly word for word the answer Jesus gives in Mark 12. 

If there was a way to be saved by the Law this would be it.  Love God with your all, all of the time.  Love your neighbor as yourself, all of the time.  Keep the Law with everything you’ve got, always, for your entire life, and you’ll be saved.  The problem is you can’t.  You know you can’t.  But that doesn’t stop us from trying.  

We are all lawyers at heart.  We all argue and attempt to justify ourselves, our actions, our motives.  We try to give reasons and evidence for what we have done, even when we stand guilty, condemned by our own conscience and before God’s court.  But the Law cannot save; it cannot bequeath the inheritance of eternal life.  For if inheritance comes by the Law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise (Gal 3:18).  

To shake us out of trying to justify ourselves by the deeds of the Law Jesus must take the Law and this lawyer and flip them on their ear.  By the natural opinion of our flesh, by the default theology of our old Adam, we keep asking, Who is my neighbor? because we desire to justify ourselves by our works.  To hold ourselves up above others, like the Pharisee over the tax collector from the parable two weeks ago.  

And like the statement given by our Lord at the end of that parable: Everyone who exults himself will be humbled, but the One who humbles Himself will be exalted, so too here, Jesus shifts the question to narrow the answer.  The answer to, Who is my neighbor? is, as you were taught in Sunday school, everyone.  Everyone the Lord puts in front of you and near to you in your daily vocations.  Are you a husband?  Then your neighbor is your wife.  Are you a mother?  Then your neighbors are your children.  Are you a worker? Your neighbors are your coworkers, boss, and customers.  Are you a widow? You still have neighbors - friends, family, literal neighbors.  Everyone.

But thats not the question Jesus asks at the end of the parable.  Rather, Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?  The answer is not everyone.  But the One.  The One who showed him mercy.  And that’s the right answer.  To his credit, the lawyer got it right.  But Jesus’ response to him, You go and do likewise is not meant to through him back on the Law and salvation by works.  Rather, it is along the lines of Jesus statement, Go and learn what this means,”I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Mt 9:13).

You see, dear Christian, you are not the Samaritan in this parable.  Neither are you the priest or the Levite.  You are the man who fell among robbers, stripped and beaten and left half dead.  For the Law and your conscience have attacked and pummeled you.  You have been stripped of all your good works, which are but filthy rags anyway before God.  You are battered ad bruised in heart and mind over the things you have done and the things you have left undone.  The only reason you’re half dead and not all dead is solely by the grace of God in Christ Jesus who has used His Law to bring you to such desperation and need.  But perhaps even this is too kind, for St Paul writes, You were once dead in the trespass and sins in which you once walked (Eph 2:1).  

So as you lie there, being passed over by the Priest and Levite who represent the ineffectual helpers and all the law orientated advice of pop Christianity - do better, try harder, pick yourself up - when all hope seems lost along comes a Samaritan coming to where you are, coming down to meet you in the ditch, covered in blood and dying, He has compassion.  

He is moved with pity; a deep visceral, guttural mercy that moves Him to action.  He dismounts His animal, stoops down into the gutter to tend to your wounds, pouring on the healing oil of His mercy and the wine of His loving kindness.  He lifts you up, sets you on His own animal, and brings you to the inn, caring for you.  He sets the innkeeper in charge of your recovery, but will Himself be back the day after tomorrow, leaving two days worth of money to cover the cost.  

Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?  Which of these three kept the Law perfectly, inwardly and outwardly?  How do you How are you saved?  Who is the Samaritan?  

The answer to all these questions is the same.  It is not everyone, but the One who showed him mercy.  It is the One telling the parable: our Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the sum and substance of Holy Scripture, the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets, who keeps the Law in perfect obedience, actively and passively.  

He is the Samaritan, One who is not encumbered by the accusations of the Law, but is free to help.  He showed tremendous mercy and compassion upon you, when He stooped down from on high, dismounted His throne, setting aside His honor and glory, and took the form of a lowly and despised Servant.  He got down into the gutter with you; climbed not only into your flesh and blood, but also your grave.  (And by His death He sanctified all graves, even as He has for our dear sister Millie, who fell asleep in Christ.)

And in an allegorical way, Christ Jesus is not only the Samaritan, but also the Man.  He is beset upon by the devil and death.  Beaten and bloodied, not half dead, but completely, totally, utterly killed.  But on the day after tomorrow, having paid the complete sum, the total ransom, the Father raised Him from the dead, back to life, never to die again.  

This is the promise made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: the Seed who has come and removed the power of death and the devil, who has silenced the accusations of the Law, and has enacted the New Covenant in His Blood, to be put forward as a propitiation for sins.  

Beloved, He has brought you to the Inn of His Church and gives the inn keeper, His pastors, the Oil of His Absolution and the Wine of His Gospel to be poured out generously upon you for the full and free forgiveness of all of your sins.  How are you saved?  In the promise by faith in Jesus Christ given to those who believe.  In Him you have a clean conscience and a renewed spirit.   The joy of His salvation is restored to you and you are upheld with His Spirit by His Word.  

Why then the Law?  Well, the Law always accuses, but it doesn’t only accuse.  Unlike the lawyer who tries to trick Him, Jesus puts the Law in its proper place: first to kill your attempts at self-justification.  For only the Gospel of the full and free forgiveness of sins in the shed blood of Jesus Christ can and has accomplished your salvation.  As it is written, In Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19).  

But then secondly, the Law comes back around as a guide.  Having been set free from the condemnation of the Law, out from under it in the One who joined you under the Law you are now set to walk around in the Law, living in faith toward God, but in love and good works toward your neighbor.  

You go and do likewise is the exhortation of the Law, motivated by the Gospel.  It is a call to be merciful as your Father is merciful.  To freely forgive as you have been and received free forgiveness.  So that you, like the men of Israel, do not take captive your relatives, not just your blood, those who share your humanity, those for whom Christ died, but instead use the spoil our Lord has graciously bestowed upon you to cloth those in need, to provide food and drink to them, to bring them the Inn-City of Jericho, under the restful shade of the Palm Tree of Christ’s crucifixion.  

Blessed are your eyes and your ears through the preached Word of His Law and Gospel, for you have the fullness of the Desire of the Nations.  You have the Christ promised to prophets and kings.  You have the promised Offspring of Abraham, who is not only the end and fulfillment of the Law, but the One who has done the Law fully for you in order that you may live.  And behold, you have the New Covenant, ratified and sealed in the Blood of Jesus Christ.  What is written in the Words of Institution, how do you hear them?  Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.  Believe this and you shall live.   

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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