September 17, 2023         Text:  Matthew 18:21-35

Dear Friends in Christ,

A young Nazi officer, dying in a Polish concentration camp hospital, asked a nurse to bring a Jew to him from the camp.  He wanted to confess his horrible misdeeds and receive forgiveness.  Then he thought he could die in peace.  The Jew she brought was Simon Wiesenthal, who survived the Holocaust and became well known for promoting knowledge about it.  At the bedside of the soldier, he listened to the confession.  The soldier told how several hundred Jews were herded into a house in a Russian village.  Cans of gasoline were put into the house, and then it was set afire with grenades.  The soldiers were ordered to shoot anyone who tried to escape.  The dying soldier confessed in great anguish how a father with his clothes on fire, holding a baby, jumped out of a second story window.  “We shoot” he says “I shall never forget it – it haunts me.  Please forgive me and let me die in peace.”

Wiesenthal later wrote, “I stood up and looked in his direction, at his folded hands.  At last I made up my mind and without a word left the room.”  Later some rabbis confirmed his action when they wrote, “Whoever is merciful to the cruel will end up being indifferent to the innocent…Let the SS man die unforgiven.  Let him go to hell.”

Have you ever been hurt so bad that you wanted someone to go to hell?  Have you withheld forgiveness because of pettiness or hatred?  How far does the Lord want us to take forgiveness?  He is going to answer that in our text.  Let’s take a look at how we can . . . 

“FAST FORWARD TO FORGIVE”

We live in age of quick reaction.  With our remote control or mouse, we can fast forward to about anything.  We expect things to be quick.  In today’s parable Jesus asks us, as it were, to not fast forward to forgive but to rewind.  If we rewind it allows us to recall what Jesus has said and done for us.  We can slow down the fast pace of our emotions, helping us, instead of becoming enraged, to forgive others as God has forgiven us.

Peter poses the question to Jesus, and it gives Jesus a chance to tell a parable.  Note in these verses from Matthew all of the accounting language, which makes sense since Matthew was a tax collector.  On to the parable.

A king needs to settle debts and a servant is brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.  A talent was a monetary unit worth about 20 years wages to a laborer.  Times that by ten thousand . . . and well there is no way the servant can pay it back.  Then the master really hits him in the gut.  He gets his family involved.  They should be sold, and a payment should be made.  The servant is in an impossible situation.

What situation have you been in where you saw no way out?  Job loss, your investments tanked, a mortgage couldn’t be met.  When we discussed this text at our Pastor’s Conference this week one Pastor told the story of a farm wife in his congregation who lost the family farm because of online gambling.  It can happen that quick.

The only thing the servant could do was hit his knees and ask for patience.  Amazingly, the master had unbelievable compassion.  He released him and forgave the debt.  Now we are going to see if the servant lived by the adage, “do unto others as they have done unto you.”

He fails.  He finds a servant who owes him much less – a denarius – a day’s wage and he begins to choke him.  He has no compassion.  His master is shocked at his behavior and calls him a “wicked servant.”  He failed to have mercy as he had been given mercy.

What about you and I?  Do we ever fail to have mercy?  Do we fall short in our forgiveness?  Where do you see yourself in the parable?

If you have ever had a financial debt forgiven, it is a great relief, but it pales in comparison with what Jesus did for us.  His gift is completely beyond what we could hope or dream.  Paul writes, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Col. 3:13)

Keep the rewind button handy so that you may recall all that God has done for you.  In the perfect life, atoning death, and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has totally forgiven you.  We should then take the forgiveness given to us by the Lord and fast forward our forgiveness to others.  

When we are slow to forgive there can be more conflict and bitterness.  Unforgiven sin leaves a stained heart and soul.  Is there a grudge you still hang on to after many years?  Let it go and forgive as you have been forgiven.  Christ has had the utmost compassion on us.  His forgiveness is total and complete.  I like this saying, “Don’t bury the hatchet with the handle up for future use.”

When God reigns in our hearts and the Holy Spirit does His work, God’s people forgive just as they have been forgiven.

Amen.    

September 3, 2023         Text:  Various Scriptures

Dear Friends in Christ,

The days are long gone of the Walther League dates and many times marriage, bowling alleys in the basement of the church and life revolving around the parish.  We still like our coffee and doughnuts, parking right next to each other in a huge parking lot and sitting in the back pews.  Like the Israelites, we Lutherans are a peculiar people.

The ELCA is an example of a husk hiding the absence of the corn.  But the fast-growing Lutheran Church in Tanzania has its own customs as a conservative, liturgical church.

What holds are identity together?  Scripture, The Lutheran Confessions, The Lutheran Study Bible, and our hymnal which we identify by color – we are now maroon, but before that blue, and before that red.  On this Christian Education Sunday let’s delve into the challenges and blessings of . . . 

“OUR LUTHERAN IDENTITY”

What challenges our Lutheran identity?  Paganism.  Look at just the change in marriage the last 10 years.  Myself and many other Pastors saw this train coming a long time ago.  Warnings went unheeded.  White flags were raised before shots were fired.  Our children and certainly grandchildren think gay marriage has always been around.  We now deny male and female.  Tolerance has turned to conformity.  The pagans have claimed victory.  Mark Tushnet of Harvard Law has said, “The culture wars are over.”  Referencing the defeat of Nazi Germany, he rejects accommodation and says boldly, “You lost, live with it.”

Why are the pagans so vindictive?  One argument is with no heaven, what’s the point of all this.  Rational secularists would be open to new ideas.  In a world of common sense, Christians would be odd, not evil.

On this earth where the universe is the new god, the high priests of this religion would like your soul.  Imperial Rome had many gods.  The peoples were required to only burn incense to Caesar.  If they didn’t, they might not find the goods they needed to live, because the markets were authorized by the leadership.  While pledging loyalty to Caesar’s earthly rule, the Christian had a higher allegiance, they would obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).

Christians are a threat to the status quo.  If children have a God-given right to life, free love dies out.  Why are the pagans so against a Christ and a Bible they don’t believe in?  If you don’t think something is real, why put your energy into destroying it?  Why push back against bakers and florists and the tax-exempt status of churches?  When the time comes, will we be ready for an answer?  Will we keep our Lutheran identity – here I stand.

Our Lutheran identity is a Christian identity.  We pray for the Coptic Christians martyred in Libya, the Chinese Christians having their lives monitored, the evangelical baker or florist who won’t participate in a gay wedding, the Catholic nuns fighting federal mandates.  They inspire us.  Our lives are not yet on the line, but could it be our career or pension.  The Thessalonians were not dragged into court, but they did face social opposition.  Paul encourages them to “not be shaken by these distresses.” (1 Thess. 3:3) 

History is our first encouragement.  Times have been worse, and the church always comes out stronger on the other end.  The Lord can use these times to make the faith grow.  

Another encouragement is the family.  Mark writes, “Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother, sister, and mother.” (Mark 3:35)  The earthly family is temporary, the heavenly family is eternal.  Genealogy must give way to our birth into the family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Matt. 29:19)  The earthly family does matter and this is where Christian Education comes in.  Boys and girls need mom and dad.  Divorce has divided parents, kids, in-laws, grandparents.  

When a child is at harmony with God-fearing parents, he or she may live long in the land that the Lord gives.  For the people of the exodus, that land was Israel, the temple, the place of God’s dwelling.  And for us it is the church, the new and everlasting place of promise.  The Lord Himself reaffirmed the sanctity of life by residing in Mary’s womb.  He reaffirms male and female and defines marriage as a lifelong union. (Mark 10:9)  He blessed a marriage at Cana.  Family does matter – faith and family together.  In Tanzania, the family prospers along with the church.

That is still another encouragement.  While our pews shrink, in other parts of the world the Christian Church is exploding in numbers.  These are the faithful who want to worship the Christ of the Bible.  They want to hear the message of forgiveness and reconciliation.  They want to know of the hope they have as they await eternal life in heaven.  They hold to the tenets of Scripture because of the love of Jesus that has been written on their hearts.

We look to these things because the cross of Jesus means something.  I am not distressed.  I have never seen more people, and especially young people wearing crosses than in the last 10 years.  Do you ever notice the cross in your daily life?  That shape is everywhere.  God did it for a reason.  It is in the wooden telephone pole, it is in the plus sign, it is in the markings of products and goods.  It hangs in homes and public places and with churches every few blocks in the United States we see it on most churches.  What a blessing and inspiration.  Is that how you look at the world? 

I leave you with this last bit of hope that God provides.  Many will say the homosexual community has hijacked the rainbow.  How do they know about the rainbow?  Because the first place a rainbow was ever mentioned was where – in the Bible!  Ironic, isn’t it?  

Maybe we can’t go back to fifteen bean salad at the church potluck and a hundred kids at VBS.  We keep pressing forward in our Lutheran identity, our Christian identity because the Lord is doing the lifting and directing the path.  Created in God’s image, redeemed in Christ’s blood.

Amen.