Sermons

February 19, 2017                                                                Text:  Matthew 5:38-48

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

            I recently ran across an article from twenty years ago entitled “The Devil is One Radical Dude.”  Here is a portion:

            “…World Industries, a California skateboard manufacturer, includes an interesting brochure with the products it sends to customers. Titled ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ the enclosure urges buyers to sell their souls to hell, according to Religious Rights Watch. 

            “On the brochure, a smiling devil explains what happened in heaven when he was banished from God’s presence, in words that might appeal to the young, who probably are the principal users of skateboards.

            “First off,’ says the devil, ‘they set up a bunch of dumb rules, and then they imposed a really strict dress code.  I’ll wager people must be quite bored up there, but hey, that’s what they get for being good.’”

            Twenty years ago.  The mockery of Christianity has been a constant drum beat since then and the sounds just keep getting louder and louder.  The vulgarity of society just keeps growing.  Everyone wants to demonize and destroy anything that gets in the way of their pursuits.  As was discussed at my Pastor’s Conference this week, we all seem to be yelling at one another but is anything constructive coming from all the whining and hand wringing?

            I am asked by the Lord to stand up in front of you today and preach on Jesus’ words in our Gospel lesson on retaliation and loving our enemies.  Not an easy task in today’s culture.  But then God’s Word is not always easily digested.

“HARD TRUTHS ABOUT GETTING EVEN”

            So we get to the hard truths right away in this section of Matthew.  If someone slaps us we are to turn the other cheek.  If we are forced to go one mile we should go two.  We shouldn’t refuse the one who wants to borrow from us.

            Right away when you hear these words, many of you are thinking “But Pastor..”  Then come your questions.  “Do I just let others beat on me?  Do I let them destroy my family?  Should I support those who are lazy and steal?”  The commentator R.C.H. Lenski writes, “The law of love is not intended to throw open the floodgates to unrestrained cruelty and crime…Love is not to foster crime in others or to expose our loved ones to disaster and perhaps death…Christ never told me to restrain the murderer’s hand, not to check the thief and robber, not to oppose the tyrant, or by my gifts to foster dishonesty, and greed…”

            Remember, in this text we are dealing with retaliation.  This is not a demand for “non-resistance”, but pictures a disciples mastery over his heart.  This is not about defending oneself or loved ones.  This is about getting even.  We are to walk away from it because it fills the heart with hatred and anger.  Aren’t there a lot of things we should be walking away from in today’s society?

            Jesus then tells us another hard truth.  He wants us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you.  Was that your first thought when you heard Madonna and some of the other speakers at the women’s march?  When you watched the University of California being vandalized did you begin praying for those committing the destruction?  When I ask someone to stop using God’s name in vain at a ballgame and they assault with more profanities, these are not my first thoughts brothers and sisters?  What about you?  Hard truths, don’t we know it?

            Jesus wants us to love our enemies with agape love, the kind of love that God extended to us.  Love for the unlovable.  As Paul writes, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us…while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…” (Rom. 5:8, 10a)

            God took pity on us in spite of our separation from Him, and in some cases, hatred and denial of Him.  Here we are with anger at God for those times he doesn’t do what we think he should be doing.  But He loves us nonetheless.  He is always there to forgive and claim us as His own through Faith in Christ.

            That’s the kind of love we are to demonstrate to others.  Again, from Lenski:  “I can by the grace of Jesus Christ love them all, see what is wrong with them, desire and work to do them only good – to extend Christ’s love.”

            We can never accept the evil the world loves and pursues.  And we will always be looked upon as hateful by the world because we do not walk in its thinking and ways.  So be it.  But, regardless of what the world thinks and charges against us, we are to love them because “…God so loved the world…”

            There was a day when the great lawyer Daniel Webster was on his way home from the courts when he decided to stop by and see his daughter who was terminally ill.  As he entered the room, she looked up and said, “Father, why are you out on this cold day without your coat?”  Webster left the room and cried out, “Dying, yet she thinks of me!”

            That is what Jesus did on the Cross.  Dying, He was thinking of us; thinking of the whole world of humanity.  And we need to think about that.  Such are the hard truths about getting even.  God help us!

                                                                        Amen.

January 29, 2017                                                       Text:  1 Corinthians 1:26-31

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

We all appreciate being in the congregation when a baptism occurs, whether an adult or a baby.  When a baby is baptized we see the well-dressed adoring parents, the loving godparents and of course the child.  Our human eyesight can see the innocent face, the tenderness of infancy and the chubby cheeks.  But we do have a hard time seeing sin in that child.  Holy Scripture weighs in and reminds us that the child is carrying a terrible heredity, the sinfulness of his parents all the way back to Adam and Eve.  The child needs a new start, a new birth.  So we baptize and we see the difference God has made by bringing him or her into the church family.

Paul’s words to us today remind us that God chose us.  And therefore . . .

“WHAT A DIFFERENCE A SAVIOR MAKES!”

Nature tells us things are not how they used to be.  Disaster brings changes.  Tornadoes changed lives in the south recently.  Hurricanes can destroy whole towns; fires can take out thousand-year-old growth in days.  Once the ancient city of Pompeii was a thriving community.  The next it was overthrown and frozen in time by volcanic eruption.  Christ calmed the storm.  He is Lord over all things in nature.

Disease brings changes.  Cancer has ravaged athlete and weak, family member and friend, maybe even you.  Multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and cystic fibrosis have sapped life from young people.  Christ healed the sick.  He is Lord over all things pertaining to the body.

Decay brings changes.  Jesus reminded us that moth and rust consume our goods.  We are still buying Rust-Oleum and moth crystals and cedar chests.  Christ lives forever and changes not.  He will take you to live with Him in eternity.

Our lives tell us that we are not how we once were.  Adolescence is a time of change.  We move from being a child to becoming an adult.  We look at life differently, we understand our beliefs better and we want to know where we fit in.  This makes choosing good friends so important.  This is why our church equips young people with the solid foundation of confirmation teaching.  Girls no longer have cooties, driving a car is kinda fun, and we are given more responsibility.  Christ was young and died young.  Yet He brings ageless forgiveness.

Aches and pains are reminders of aging.  As teenagers we wanted to be older.  Now that we are older, we might wish we were a little younger.  Our social calendars have changed.  When you were single, you thought of marrying a doctor.  Now you see one every other week.  Christ, who is the Ancient of Days, will be with you in your old age and comfort you in death.

The difference that matters is the difference the Gospel brings.  Look at our text.  The Corinthians were far from desirable, as the world counts desirability.  Their education, influence, and birth status were not notable, yet God chose them.  Our education, influence, and birth status are not known worldwide, yet God has chosen us.

The Corinthians had their problems.  They had factions, public adultery, abuse of the Holy Spirit’s gifts, abuse of the Sacrament, and false doctrine.  How about us?  Do we have factions?  Adultery?  Wrong ideas about doctrine?  Do we neglect the sacrament?

No wonder God had to take matters into his own hands.  And so he came to earth, and he came to a cross.  He took our worldliness and our foolishness and low down rotten sins into his own hands as nails were driven in.  He took these into his feet and side.  God made Christ our redemption through His blood.  Each time we receive his body and blood, we proclaim this and are assured of his love for us.  You and I, the lowly and despised, were given Jesus’ forgiveness.  We are declared no longer guilty.  He became our wisdom, the way we perceive our world and ourselves.

Think of the difference between how you were and how you are in Christ.  If we measure our life in Christ by what great Christians we appear to be, we will concentrate on our appearance before others, and this will breed hypocrisy.  If we measure our life in Christ by the work he accomplished for us on the cross, our whole life becomes redefined by this single act of his.  We are released from the guilt of sin.  He calls this forgiveness. We are delivered from worry over our final end and from all worries between now and then. He calls this eternal life.  We still struggle with the flesh, but we do so not as hopeless people, but as the Lord’s people strengthened by our baptism into Christ.  We will be aware constantly that any effectiveness, any gifts, any way we touch the lives of others is none other than the effectiveness, gift, and touch of Jesus himself, who is using us according to his wisdom.

What a difference a Savior makes!                     Amen.

 

Jan. 22, 2017 – Sanctity of Human Life Sunday                  Text:  Ephesians 6:11-18

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

Her name is Maggie.  I know her as a casual acquaintance because I played basketball and went to the seminary with her husband.  We talked periodically in the course of our time passing each other in life.  Maggie went on to become a mercy outreach leader in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  In the spring of 2014 she was diagnosed with a stage-four brain tumor.

Brittany Maynard is 29 and has a stage-four brain tumor.  Her fear is that this tumor is “out of her control.”  Maynard moved her family to Oregon to have legal access to physician-assisted suicide.  She doesn’t see it as suicide, even though quite literally she will take her life.

You and I are Christians living surrounded by these two life scenarios.  Our world occupies the epicenter of man and monster, kill or be killed.  Our life inhabits the edges of death and hell itself, the gauntlet of sin and survival, live and let die.  You can sit on fences about politics.  You may fall silent about controversies.  But there remains rules, and no matter how far you run, you will not escape.  You cannot slip beyond the reaches of the long arm of the Lord God Almighty.  Where are you?

“HERE WE STAND”

Many people, like Brittany, who choose assisted-suicide, are uncomfortable with the term.  In America we always have to dress things up so people will wear the terms.  We add polka dots with “aid in dying” or lace accents as we call it “death with dignity.”  No matter what we call it is bad law because we never see where it leads.  Marilyn Golden, a senior policy analyst for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, warned that “assisted suicide is not progressive, in fact, it puts many vulnerable people at risk, and we have already seen examples of that where it is legal.”

We carry grief so heavy and guilt so haunting that we believe it freedom to end our own lives.  We haul fear so chilling and failure so choking that we tolerate terminating our sons and daughters and advocate euthanizing our fathers and mothers.  We drag underbellies so vulnerable and blind sides so exposed that we separate children from marriage.  We lug spines so stiffened and skin so hardened that we settle for human rights instead of insisting on heaven’s gifts.

Maggie knows there is no dignity in cancer or any other debilitating illness.  She has been poked, prodded, radiated, chemotherapied, and cut open so many times that she stopped worrying about being dignified.  She knows death is out of her hands.  What is intolerable to the assisted suicide advocate is not suffering or dying, but not having control over life and death.

Here we stand knowing we are not in control.  The Lord God created us male and female in His own image.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit made us each a little lower than the heavenly beings.  We should know better, but our lives have been left broken.  We have become both victims and culprits of violence against life.  We have grown compromised, conditioned by our culture of death.  We have gotten ourselves impaired, captive to sinful selfishness, whatever our shape or stage from fertilization to final breath, heartbeat, and brainwave.  Nobody comes holier or with more worth than the rest.  No life proves more dignified than another.  We arrive, exist, and expire as neighbors by nature and brothers and sisters by birth, whether we like it or not.  We all require armor, a Savior, deliverance, redemption.  We all crave compassion, forgiveness, mercy, grace.  Here we stand.

Brittany Maynard did end her life on November 1, 2014.  She struggled with this decision even wanting to postpone it because she had been having fun with friends and family.  Here is her quote, “Today is the day I have chosen to pass away.”  There is no sense of the Lord or faith in that.  The key word is “I.”  She felt she was alone.

Maggie sent a letter to Brittany and even posted the letter on You Tube.  She wanted her to know she wasn’t alone.  Maggie writes, “Death sucks.  And while this leads many to attempt to calm their fears by grasping for personal control over the situation, as a Christian with a Savior who loves me dearly and who has redeemed me from a dying world, I have a higher calling.  God wants me to be comfortable in my dependence upon Him and others, to live with Him in peace and comfort no matter what comes my way.  As for my cancer journey, circumstances out of my control are not the worst thing that can happen to me.  The worst thing would be losing faith, refusing to trust in God’s purpose in my life and trying to grab that control myself.”

We do not stand alone.  We never stand alone.  Another One stands in your place.  He has armor.  He brings armor, and He gives armor, because He is armor.  Jesus Christ is the armor of God, the whole armor of God, for you and for us all.  He shelters, sustains, protects and defends any who cannot defend themselves.  The Lord will fight for you, and you only have to be still.  Fear not, stand firm, and behold the salvation the Lord works for you today.

The bare shoulders of Jesus dress the impaired life with God’s wrath-satisfying righteous sacrifice.  His punctured heart captures our wrongs and redeems us.  His shed blood arms all who are vulnerable with God’s life-justifying Word like medicine that cradles them away from the devil and hell.  Because Jesus stands here, here we stand, every human being precious at every stage in every state, no matter what she’s done, no matter what he can’t do.  Jesus is why we stand, and we stand with Christ, with the many blessings of abundant and everlasting life.

We stand with you because of the Church’s ministry and brotherhood and not by culture’s impulses or bandwagons.  You stand claimed and positioned in this baptismal Sacrament, crowned and preserved through this Holy Communion.

Maggie died on September 25, 2015.  Before she died she told her daughters and us, “For Christians, our death is not the end.  Because our Savior Jesus Christ, selflessly endured an ugly death on the cross and was laid in a borrowed tomb (no “death with dignity” there), He truly understands our sorrows and feelings of helplessness.”

Here we stand in joy and not out of anger, in hope and not out of fear, because we stand to forgive and not compare, to save and not compete.  Here we stand to relieve and release, not to accuse.  Here we stand to listen, assist, embrace, and befriend, not attack.  Here we stand speaking truth and sharing love because we stand overcoming sin and selfishness, death, and the devil, and not against one another.  Here we stand firm but gentle, strong but humble, even after so long and before such odds.  Here we stand, Gospel-motivated voices, Lutherans For Life, because we can do no other.  God help us.

Amen.

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January 15, 2017                                                                   Text:  John 1:29-42

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

What are you looking at?  If one asks that question emphasizing the you, it is a challenge to the other person.  But ask the question this way:  “What are you looking at?’  Now the emphasis is different.  Now you are challenged, but not to a fight.  Someone wants to know what has captured your attention.  It might be a teacher or a parent or a child.  It might be the Lord.  Oh, yes.  Was it really so different a question when he asked the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?”

“What are you looking at?”  Someone who is searching might ask that question.  It might not be put exactly in those words, but that is the question they are asking.  “What are you looking at?”  Who, me?  Oh, I . . . .

“LOOK TO THE LAMB!”

Last week we saw John baptizing Jesus.  Today he continues the shift away from himself.  “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (v. 29)  Don’t look to John, look to Jesus.

Our world is filled with all kinds of things to look at.  Magazine covers and newspapers, you tube videos and snap chats, commercials and infomercials promising life, and wealth, and happiness.  In the end, these are all shallow and help us pass the time.  They do not lead to eternity.  The voice of John cried to us today, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

Come back today, people of God.  Come back from wherever your eyes have wandered.  Look to Jesus.  “I have seen and I have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” (v. 34)  Look to the Christ of the cross and the empty tomb.  Look to Jesus, who forgives and gives you real life.  Gaze on him.  People are watching.  Like John, our lives can say, “Look to the Lamb.”

Advertising executives will tell us we need to encounter information six or seven times before we begin to pay attention.  Think of “K-A-R-S, Car for Kids” or “The Most Interesting Man in the World.”  You know because you have seen it over and over again.  John brings the same message to the disciples, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”  John points them to the one he wants them to know about – Jesus.

Two of the disciples start to follow Jesus.  Jesus then poses a question, “What are you seeking?”  They were seekers.  It is not just some 21^st century concept.  These men were seeking spiritual meaning.  The world is hungering for the same thing, except they look in the wrong places.  They may look to themselves, they make look to life coaches, they may look to nature or politicians or religious charlatans.  We seek that which we know and have learned through the Holy Spirit.  We look to the Lamb.

The disciples have what we would call a timid response.  “Where are you staying?” ((v. 38)  Was this the real burning question that John’s twice-insistent “Behold” had created in them?  Aren’t we the same?  Are we always clear about what it is we are looking for?  Even in Christ?

Jesus likes to ask questions.  He likes to challenge us.  He likes to breathe faith into us, then draw it out of us.  We know the grace of our faith again and again but sometimes we say silly things like, “Where are you staying?”  What spiritual seekers are these!

As with us, Jesus does not reprimand these first disciples.  His grace thunders in their ears with, “Come and you will see.” (v. 39)  Christ draws them to himself with these simple words.  He did not say, “You dolts!  Couldn’t you seek something more substantial than that?”  What Jesus said then, he says again today in our hearing, “Come and you will see.”  Look to the Lamb!

Immediately the disciples’ lives took on the nature of proclamation.  Andrew did not wait for someone to say, “What are you looking at?”  He found his brother and proclaimed, “We have found the Messiah.”

The Lord brings this change about.  Jesus had really found them.  This is what happens to you and me through faith in Christ Jesus.  Look no farther.  Look to the Lamb.  God has marked you in Baptism with the indelible mark of one who is his child.  Believe it when He says He loves you.  Trust Him when He says He is with you always, to the end of the age.  Look to the Lamb today and tomorrow and every day.

This is what our world needs – the people of God living by looking to the Lamb.  This trusting gaze will show in our lives this week.  People will notice.  How many lives will be touched by those of us here today?  How many eyes will see evidence of something in us that causes them to wonder?  How many opportunities will we have in these next seven days to say, “Look to the Lamb!  Come, and you will see”?  God will use our heart’s gaze, our soul’s fixation on Jesus, to proclaim to the people in our lives, “Look to the Lamb!”

Amen.

January 8, 2017 – Baptism of our Lord                               Text:  Matthew 3:13-17

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

Imagine losing someone in a drowning…Imagine what the survivors of a tsunami faced…Imagine Bethany Hamilton, well on her way to a surfing championship, waking up in the hospital without an entire arm – after losing it to a shark attack…Imagine Noah and his family floating away in the ark while the world washed away…Imagine Moses and the Israelites passing through the Red Sea, then looking back to see the Egyptian army drowning in the raging water.

The people of the Middle East desert fear the sea, fear large bodies of water, or those river wadis that so quickly become deadly flash floods.  There is a reason for their fear.  Remember the great sea creature that Job calls Leviathan?  Remember Jonah being swallowed whole? And then Noah and his family.

So imagine the people of Israel going into the River Jordan.  “John…John, is it safe?”  Normally the Jordan is pretty shallow, shin-deep in some places.  But come the rainy season it can be a dangerous torrent of water and it is not safe.

It wasn’t raging at this time when John was baptizing, but . . .

“IS IT SAFE NOW TO GO BACK INTO THE WATER?”

Is it now safe?  Safe for whom?  Imagine Jesus going down into the water after so many people had their sins washed into it.  Is it safe?  No.  Not for Jesus.  What had been washed into those waters would cling to Jesus when he climbed that riverbank and remain on him for the rest of his ministry

He would have to suffer our consequences and our death.  That water would kill him as it once did the whole world.  Why?  Because if it did not, if He didn’t do this, then all righteousness would not be fulfilled.  God would not be pleased.  There would no longer be peace on earth and good will toward men.

Now again, imagine how many sins are, were, and will be washed into water until the end of time.  “Is it safe now, Jesus?  Will I drown?  Are you asleep?”  As the water rages and the winds toss us around, “Are you going to let us die?”  How many are asking this?  How many have?

The disciples asked this.  We may ask it.  We use this imagery with our problems.  “I’m drowning in debt.  I’m up to here with my responsibilities.  Life is coming at me like a tidal wave.”  We talk this way even as the Lord sends these promises.  “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Heb. 13:5)  “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” (Isa. 43:2)  Psalm 23 reminds us that the Lord leads us beside still waters.

Yes, but don’t I have still have to go under?  Won’t I be covered with water…won’t I…don’t I still have to die?”  “Yes,” Jesus says to all of that.

Though we still go under, though dirt is still poured over our bodies in the ground, Jesus will reach down and take us out.  Because he has already been down into the abyss, and come up.  Our death will be sleep, because he died our death.

You do and need to drown and die in your baptismal waters.  And making the sign of the cross, we are to drown and die daily in this life.  Yet, we, too, arise, because he is risen, is risen to newness of life.

All righteousness has been fulfilled, even ours.  The sins left behind – for Him – in the water to take to the cross.  Yes, in that same water that covered the earth, that covered Egypt’s mightiest and finest, that covered Jesus, that held so much power – the power of creation from the beginning – that water has now become the new power of re-creation.  That water washed away so much filth and disease and fear and death.

It is safe now…because the water has been cleansed.  It is safe now to go back into the water – and remain there.  Yes, Jesus went in and came out again.  Even though the sins of the whole world were also washed into the water.  They were lifted out; they left with Him; they were embedded in his pure and clean flesh, in that body that died and was buried.

For when he said it was finished, it was.  And all of that, the sin of the whole world, became lost – lost at sea…buried…covered by earth…entombed in rock…never to return.

Have you ever had a drowning experience?  If you have, it can be quite scary.  About 10 years ago you may remember it happened to me.  I was swimming to the diving platform at Comlara Park when my muscles tightened up.  I thought I was going under.  I still think of that day and the fear that came over me.  I will admit even though I am a good swimmer I have been a lot more hesitant around water.

You face fears in your life.  Jesus says to you and me today, “It is now safe to go back into the water.”  With the righteousness fulfilled by God the Son, God the Father is well pleased.  And looking at us – with what Christ has down in our life – The Father is well pleased with us.  A new man emerges daily and arises to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.  It is safe now to go back into the water…and remain there.  Safe forevermore.            Amen.