Christ the King Sunday (C)–Sermon

Christ the King Sunday-Sermon

11/24/13-Year C

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

There always is with the rise of any king a handsome cost that must be paid in order for any would be royal to achieve a throne.  Though we don’t necessarily have a king in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave: we do have our own democratic head, the President, who without the title of a monarch still enjoys some of the same benefits as a king.  And as we are all very well aware the ascendancy to that seat of power on Pennsylvania Avenue comes at the expenses of a rather handsome price. The 2012 Presidential election itself cost an impressive combined $2.23 billion dollars.  The most spent on any presidential election to date.  And the loser spent more than the incumbent!  An impressive $1.13 billion to be nothing more than a forgotten footnote in the annals of American History.  

Looking back to the kings of history, the Caesars of Rome: Augusts, Julius, Claudius;  the Holy Roman Emperors: Charles, Louis, Maximilian, or the Kings of England, France and Spain, their ascendancies to their various thrones came usually at an even steeper price than money.  The death of a prior emperor or king, either by natural cause or not, provided the opening for battle and war to be waged for a throne.  From the common soldiers to the valiant knight they each bore the true cost of the throne: giving life and limb for King and Queen.  They spilled their blood so that another might rise to power.  The seat of kingship is almost always gained by the sacrifice, not of the would-be monarch, but by others beneath them.  It is always someone else who has to foot the bill.  It is others who give their blood; the peasants or the people who usually carry the steep cost of regality.  Neither Mitt nor Barak personally spent over $1 Billion, but rather the people who endorsed and supported them did.  People always bear the true cost in order for a person to hear the masses chant, “Long live the king”.  

And as we stand at Christ the King Sunday, we hear too of another cost paid this morning.  Yet we see in our Lord a completely different notion of kingship.  For the first time in human history we see a king not dependent upon wealth or military might.  There is no cost that the disciples must bear in order for Jesus to be King.  Peter, James, and John do not need to fill the war chest with their own treasures to mount a political campaign, although having Matthew on your side would have no doubt helped.  Nor are they to pick up the sword and storm the castles.  Indeed, when Peter attempts such an act of force with his sword play, Jesus not only rebukes him, but undoes the sting of Peter’s blade with the divine sword of His word; mending his captor’s ear to head.  Jesus, unlike any other king in history, needs nothing and no one to be King.  For He already is and has been king, the very King of all kings, since the beginning of time.  As St. Paul writes, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.  For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him.” (Col 1:15-16). 

Not His mocking coronation with the crown of thorns, nor His enthronement upon His wooden cross makes Jesus king.  His death upon the cross, His blood spilt and body broken does not win Him divine Kingship or an eternal seat of power.  Those He had since the very beginning of time; way before the first Christmas and it is that claim of divine kingship, which leads Jesus to be nailed to the cross.  There ironically proclaimed by those who would not believe Him, as “King of the Jews.”  Though they do not believe Him, their claim is none the less true.  This is the great reversal, the great irony of their mocks and derision. Though they mock Him, He nonetheless is King.  He weathers the worst the world can do to Him and rather than call upon His band of disciples or the rank of angels, Jesus Himself pays the kingly cost.  

That cost not paid to purchase royalty, but rather to purchase His people, His subjects,  You and I.  The cost Jesus bears is not for Himself.  It is not for His sake, but it is for the sake of His people.  The cost this King bears alone is for us.  To purchase us not with gold and silver or the things that rust and decay, but by His most holy precious and innocent blood.  Upon the Cross Jesus’ sacrifice wins Him a people.  A true and everlasting kingdom filled with those brought out from under the cruel oppression of another king.  A wicked and a most wretched king, a liar and murder.  On the cross our Lord Jesus steals us away from the the kingdom of sin and death.  On the cross our Lord and King is victorious, crushing the plans of the evil one who had long kept God’s people in true bondage.  In His death and most gloriously in His resurrection, He out smarts the devil, opening the gates of hell and proclaiming the good news of salvation to all.  The Cross isn’t about the King, it is about you, ransoming and winning you as sons and daughters to the true and everlasting Kingdom of God  of light and peace.   Again as the Apostle writes, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.”  (1Cor 6:19b-20a).  We were bought with a price out from Satan’s grasp, out from under sin’s wage of death.  We were pursued and purchased by the Almighty and everliving God who loves us so much that he give His own last full measure of devotion.  You are the object of that kingly ransom, of which no one other than Christ could bear the cost.  For our King does not allow anyone else to pay the tab, as earthly kings are want to do, but He completely covers the cost of all in Himself.  In His very body and blood is the expense of our redemption.  

This is what we Christians proclaim not only on this Christ the King Sunday, but on every Sunday.  For as often as we of this bread and drink from this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death, the Lord’s kingship, until He comes again.  Our salvation, our eternal life, won on Calvary and made present by our Lord’s Word.  At His table we receive it again and again by faith.  Here the cross is made ours in bread and wine and here the price of our sin is again and again met and covered by our Lord’s rich and kingly expense.  Christ has done everything.  Won us for eternal life; life with Him in the glory and splendor of His kingdom.  We have been forgiven.  We are set free.  Long live the King!  

In the face of this eternal Kingship of Jesus Christ over all humanity, over the entire cosmos, we see only two honest responses that can ever be given.  St. Luke depicts them quite well for us in the two thieves crucified along side of our Lord that we heard about this morning.  First we must take good note to realize that both of the men are still thieves.  Both have broken the commandments of God and the laws of men.  Both have rightly deserved their place along side the right and left of Christ at the place called Skull.  And one follows the voice of the world around him, the voice of the king of this world, the mocks of the High priest, the ridicule of the guards, and the empty taunts of Pilate.  In him, the King of the Jews is met by blasphemy, by laughing at His innocent suffering, and dismissing His Kingship.  “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”  Such a thief, like the rest of His mockers, is met by the temporal and eternal silence of God.  Notice Jesus says nothing to him.  There is no rebuke.  There is only and forever silence as he succumbs to the wounds of his own crucifixion. 

And then there is the other thief condemned upon the cross.  The one which garners our Lord’s attention and response.  It is the humble prayer of the “good thief”, if you pardon the oxymoron.  From his lips pass not one word of judgment or condemnation, no mock or humiliating word.  But in that moment of agony, He perceives the true reality of what is taking place.  That in Jesus’ death, He IS saving them.  The thief sees our Lord as he truly is; an innocent man dying for the sins of the world, for the glory and splendor of a new and everlasting kingdom.  A kingdom in which this poor wretched thief hopes against all hope to be remembered.  And He speaks to the King from that hope a word of remembrance of his life.  Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.  This prayer of the thief is the prayer of the Church.  It is the prayer of every repentant thief, that is every Christian, who seeks the redemption of Christ.  It is the very prayer of salvation to which our Lord gladly and willingly responds, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”  And as the thief who went before us 2000 years ago,  today we are.   When our own bodies succumb to the wounds of our affliction our Lord again will speak His powerful life giving word into us, “Today, You are with me in Paradise.”

Paradise is ours and heaven stands before us each and every day.  God’s new life has begun in us, while we await its consummation at the last, when our King will come in glory with clouds descending.  Therefore as sons and daughters of the Kingdom, brothers and sisters of the King, we give thanks.  For our Lord asks nothing from us, but that love and devotion that is rightly His.  And even that is given in a gracious thanksgiving for His saving work.  That is what this day of Christ the King is truly about.  That is what this Consecration Sunday is truly about.  Freely giving and offering to our Lord and King the glory and praise that He is due from our hearts.  It is nothing more than chanting with our time, our talents, and our possessions, “Long live the King!”    

Amen.  

Pentecost 26C-Sermon

Twenty-Sixth Sunday after the Pentecost-Sermon

11/17/13- YEAR C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

From 1935 to 1982, the DuPont company attached to their varied products a phrase which probably some of you are familiar with and some not so much.  Their tag line was, “Better Things for Better living...Through Chemistry.”  Their competitors liked the promised hope in those words so much that they condensed the saying to the now much more familiar slogan, “Better living through Chemistry.” It was in its day a product of the hopes and dreams for advancement and the future through the achievement of man.  And to think of the advancement that that first generation had seen and experienced, their optimism was certainly understandable.  They had witnessed the transition from equine transportation to mechanical horse power.  They had fought and been victorious in the Great War that was to end all wars, while ironically standing on the verge of the next one.  Even in the midst of the Great Depression, there was still a budding optimism and hope in the advancements of technology and thus better living.  

Thinking through my Grandfather’s life and all that he had witnessed to even what I have seen in the years of my own life, one cannot help but be impressed and awestruck.  And what great achievements will my own kids see? It is humbling to realize that my kids are growing up in a world that has never been without the iPhone and iPad.  Thanks be to God!  How on earth—until their advent—did parents keeping their little ones occupied while mom and dad decompress at the end of the day or waiting at the doctors?  Thinking about what will be coming in their lifetimes is no less impressive, with Google Glass, and advancements in Artificial Intelligence as we approach the Singularity, according to Ray Kurzweil; that moment when machines surpass the ability of the human brain.  Growing up in the 90's, we just knew it as the day Skynet became active.  Look indeed upon these noble stones and offerings of our creation, our work and achievement!  They are indeed very very impressive!  We encounter a world now that is living longer and to the claims of many, better through chemistry.  

Yet progress itself has been the hope and hobgoblin of countless generations.  From the tower of Babel to the Pax Romana, all has fallen well short of its hoped for end.  The achievements of mankind always and forever are limited by the nature of mankind.  We are the product of creation, a fallen creation, one that is limited by the disease of sin.  The world is not a vacuum in which progress and invention can grow and leap, without the crushing weight of gravity to hinder it.  Humanity, the world, and even time itself is not neutral.  But rather it is moving toward its natural end, the end of all things of this world, death.  The reality of the fall has placed the world and all creation on the trajectory of mortality.  An ending that will end in an encounter and confrontation with the Immortal One.  In that encounter, even the great stones of the Temple or technological prowess of the iPad, will fall away like the house of cards that they are made of.  

The Temple will give way to Rome.  Rome will give way to the Turk and the rising of independent Kingdoms. Nation will continue to rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.  Products will give way to newer and newer updates, fighting the ever advancement of newer viruses to take them down.  All that we build, whether they are made of recyclable material or not, will at the last...at the end...fall away.  Our achievements and advancements will give way to the wages of sin.  Our own flesh will fall to that almighty Word of Law spoken to Adam. I know that’s a hard thing to say to college students, who feel already invincible, but trust me at some point the hair starts to go and the knees start to ache and you realize that this flesh is starting break down.  I think that starts to happen shortly after the arrival of children or when you enter the ministry.  I’m not quite sure which was the true root cause, but take a look!  This is what you have to look forward to!  

 This world, this reality, is what Our Lord depicts for us this morning.  Though speaking directly about the upcoming fall of Jerusalem, his words bespeak a more somber message about the world.  Like Jericho of old, the walls of the world will come a tumblin down.  Into that darkness, like sheep in the midst of wolves, Jesus tells them that is their moment to witness and to be his disciples.  They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake.  This....THIS will be your opportunity to bear witness.  It is in the face of the reality of the fallen world, this death, that our Lord says is the very moment and time of their testimony, their martyrdom.  It is so, because it is the very time in which the Church will live as it moves across time and space.  A cursory view of the news shows the continual reality of wars and of rumors of wars before us.  Kingdom against Kingdom.  Political Party against Political Party.  Natural disasters continuing to reap havoc upon land and people.  It is in the face of it all that the Church and her faithful live and bear witness.  

Knowing the truth about this end of all things, then how are we to go forward?  How do we bear witness as our Lord asks of His disciples?  The words of Dr. Doberstein to a class on Pastoral Theology at Mount Airy Seminary, put it simply and profoundly.  Professor Doberstein told his class: “Put a crucifix in the hand of the dying and preach the resurrection.” Put a crucifix in the hand of the dying and preach the Resurrection.   Such as St. John Chrysostom did, “A virgin, a tree, and a death were the symbols of our defeat.  The virgin was Eve; she had not yet known man; the tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the death was Adam’s penalty.  But behold again a virgin and a tree and a death, those symbols of defeat, become the symbols of his victory.  For in the place of Eve there is Mary, in place of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree of the Cross; in place of the death of Adam the death of Christ.  Do you see Satan defeated by the very things through which he had conquered?  At the foot of the tree the devil overcame Adam; at the foot of the tree Christ vanquished the devil.”  

Though this world and all that it is in it will pass away, it is not abandoned.  Though it and we are fallen, we are not forsaken to that finality and mortality.  For Christ came to undue death, to break the the bonds of the evil one, to crush hell underfoot and to give life, sweet joyous everlasting life to the world.   In the midst of death, in the city and people that would kill him and be overthrown, our Lord Jesus entered to give and bestow His endless life to that very city and people.  And bursting forth from the grave, our Lord dresses us with His glory and immortality, covering up our sinful flesh with his everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, now by faith.   That is the reality which we celebrate each week as we gather around the altar and table of our Lord.  Here as bread is broken and wine poured, death is being undone as our sin is met by the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Here the crucifixion stands before us as His death is proclaimed, Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  The good news of our salvation is that singular message that the disciples are not only to receive in Word and Sacrament, but also to proclaim to a dying world.   

As a mission congregation of the NALC, but more importantly of the Church Militant, the church catholic, it is your great joy to witness this hope and joy to the world around you.  To place a crucifix in the hand of the campus and Santa Barbara and to proclaim to them the glorious joy of the Resurrection.  And that time is now.  More often than not we think that we need to wait until the opportune time presents itself, but the reality is there is no such thing.  For every time is the right moment.  Every second that passes is space in which the glory of Christ can be shared and extended.  Every breath breathed is a perfect opportunity to repent of sin and to give praise to Jesus Christ and share His love to another.  To shine His divine light into the darkness of the world.  And you are already doing it.  As you gather for worship, confessing sins, hearing the word of absolution and enjoying the peace of God.  For God is at work in you, bring His eternal life to you and strengthening you to bear His death and resurrection in your own lives.  Here eternal life is ours and heaven now stands before us as we gather round the throne of the spotless Lamb in the Holy Supper.  Here we are already united with the saints and angels at this very moment in worship and adoration of God, Father, Son, and Holy spirit, singing the angelic hymn.  In the presence of this most wonderful and joyous encounter with the Lord of heaven and earth, there is no greater sight than this.  The sight of which no iPad, no feat of human will or strength can compare.  Here in the grace, mercy, and love of Jesus Christ outpoured is true better living.    

Amen.       

Pentecost 25C-Sermon

Twenty-Fifth Sunday after the Pentecost- Sermon

11/7/13- Year C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

58.  35.  7.  These numbers or roughly about these numbers, studies show are the way in which we communicate to one another.  I know I have shared these figures with the Leadership Team and some who attended one of my classes, so those who’ve heard this before bear with me for a moment.  There is no single way in which we communicate to one another.  Communication is always layered and filled.  There is no such thing as flat communication.  It is multivalent in that depending upon time of day, previous night’s sleeping posture, and the like will affect how something spoken is received.  And communication studies tend to show that break down in the following way: 58% of all communication is Body Language (corporal), 35% is tone (tonal), and only the remaining 7% of communication is the actual words used (verbal).  Whether we realize it or not, even when we’re not speaking we are actually saying quite a lot.  

It is in reality a small unnoticed gift of God that we communicate through these various mediums and at the proportion that we do.  If for no other reason than for parents to have the ability, through perception to know whether or not their kid is telling the truth.  Such as when I ask Justin to brush his teeth and he responds, “Yes!”.  Now if we only had flat communication, I would by necessity have to believe him.  Yet when his answer is accompanied by a grin sticking out of the corner of his mouth, wandering eyes that can’t seem to focus on me, and a choked down giggle; I have good reason to believe he is trying to sneak one past me.  Just as I used to do with my mom and like Justin failed miserably at.  

These cues help us, though not perfectly, discern the true intent of the speaker who happens to be talking with us.  By the way they shift their bodies we can tell their nerves.  Raising a voice, depending on the tone, can be either an exclamation or a curse. And all of it matters little to what actual words are being said.  But this is not to say words do not matter.  For we Christians are all about words and the Divine Word, Jesus Christ.  We have a book chalk full of them as we hear from this and every Sunday; gathering around the Word and Sacrament.  Turning to our Gospel lesson this morning we see an encounter between our Lord, the Word made flesh, and the Sadducees.  The Sadducees were the social elite of the day and a faction of Jewish life and piety.  They held only to the Pentateuch, the Torah, the Law, the books of Moses, or as we more commonly know them today the first five books of the Bible (Gen-Deut).  Their focus was centered around the temple and many sadducees functioned as priests.  And as Luke narrates for us, they denied the resurrection and the existence of the holy angels.  Both of which Jesus, the Pharisees, and today now the Church affirm.  

They come, these sadducees, to our Lord seeking from him an answer to their riddle. “Teacher,” they begin, a verbal form of respect in 1st Century Judaism.  Perhaps done to feign the sincerity of their inquiry.  Just as congressman today address their opposite party candidates, “as the distinguished gentleman from California,” when in reality they mean, “that jerk over there.” Yet all their flattery does not work.  Though their body language, tone, and even their words may all be working together to produce an image of sincere piety, they forget with whom they are speaking.  For our Lord, unlike we humans, does not need the added forms of communication in discerning his inquires intent.  He simply can perceive and look into the human heart.  That place from which come all those things that our Lord describes, “evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander” all of those that break the Law of God.  The sadducees approach Jesus, not with the curiosity of faith, but with the tone of ridicule, deceit, and entrapment. Standing in the presence of the Messiah of Israel—the One of whom Moses himself promised and foretold—they seek to deceive him by the prowess of their wit and intellect.  

Yet God will not be mocked. Jesus does not play along with their deception, but pushes back with cutting words of truth. Words that slice through their charades, while getting a dig in or two as well.  Mentioning both the resurrection and angels in his reply to overturn their teaching.  No matter the sincerity of the sadducees belief, it doesn’t make it any more true in the sight of God.  Because it is built upon a false premise, they believe in a god of the dead and not the One true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Though the text itself doesn’t say it specifically, it seems to me not a very far leap to say that the sadducees not only live and believe in a god of the dead, but rather in a dead god. One who acquiesces (at least in their mind) to their beliefs and actions.  Yet that is not Jesus and that is not the true God of Israel. For He is God of the living, the God of those who have been born in Spirit and truth through the waters of Baptism and clothed with the resurrection.  Sons and daughters of the resurrection by the work of God and the gift of faith.  

We, my brothers and sisters, are those sons and daughters of the resurrection which our Lord speaks today.  Having been washed in the sacred waters of the font, fed and nourished at the holy table, and given by the grace of the Holy Spirit faith in Jesus Christ our Lord, we come today not to placate or appease a god of the dead or a dead god.  But we come in faith, in humility to encounter the God of Israel of Old, the Living God, the God of the living.  We come now to receive a foretaste of our resurrection life with Him forever.  For our eternal life begins here and now. It is ours by faith, where we are clothed with the mercy, grace, and righteousness of Jesus Christ.  Our sins are forgiven and by the power of the Word and Holy Sacraments through the work of the Holy Spirit.  Today, this very day, you and I stand as sons and daughters of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  By sins forgiven, life and salvation are made to reign in us.  We are given the fruits of the Spirit, and the gifts of the kingdom.  By grace we are made alive, so that we may join with all those who live in Him and who live to Him.   

Having been made alive by the Lord we now live to and in service of the Lord.  We are blessed by so much and so many gifts, that we now live to use those for the sake of the least among us.  We are given joy, peace, and patience by God, so that we might share that resurrected joy, peace, and patience with others: at church and at work and even at home.  We are given the gifts of the kingdom so that we live the kingdom here and now in this place and wherever we go—from the soccer pitch, to the classroom, to the bar, to high tea, to work or the beach—we go in the name of the Lord.  Proclaiming the Kingdom of Jesus Christ and what He has done.  For Christ has redeemed our whole person so that all our hearts, bodies, minds and strength may fear, love, and serve the Lord.  As sons and daughters of the resurrection, given everything we need, let us go forth in joy from this place.  Let that resurrected light shine, that you have been given, by your kindness, your peace, your joy, and your faith.  For our God is truly a God of the living and you are alive in and with God.  As the apostle Paul writes, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”  Therefore let us, 58, 35 and 7 proclaim to the world or at the very least to Westminster what God has done for us in Jesus Christ our Lord.  

Amen.   

All Saints Sunday-Semron

All Saints Sunday—Sermon
11/3/13—Year C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

There is a blessing going through the civic rituals of childhood.  Yes we know all about the importance of education that takes place in the class room, all those i’s dotted, knowing what the capital of Iowa is, and learning to share toys, crayons, and friends.  But there is also a whole other set of life lessons that are taught outside of the walls of the school.  Those learned at the expense of soccer and for the purpose of today’s sermon little league mothers everywhere.  Where else can one learn how properly to take being hit by a flying baseball than at little league?  Thanks to Tom Hanks we all know that there is no crying in baseball, but say that to someone who’s just been hit by one.  It takes a lot of little league scars to make that a reality.  On the diamond, one learns the skills of hand-eye coordination trying to connect bat with ball or with that hot grounder down the third base-line.  On the diamond, one learns to develop the proper disposition to winning in life and also how to lose with grace.  On the diamond, one learns many skills that are needed for daily life as adults.  Because even though we’ve hung up our cleats and lost our gloves to the past, we know there is no end to life’s baseballs being hit at us every day.

Of course the other thing that one learns, on the diamond, and on the football field, the soccer pitch, the basketball court and others, is spoken from the lips of little league coaches everywhere, “There is no I, in Team.”  Buried in the intentions of all those coaches, whether the kids themselves grasp it or not, is the reality that the game isn’t about one person.  Looking at professional sports today it looks like some need to go back to little league and relearn that little life lesson.  Baseball, football, soccer, basketball and the rest are not reduced to the skills of a solitary individual.  Even though some players may think so, at the end of the day it’s not about you (singlar). It’s not even about me.  It’s about we.  A life lesson that not only applies to the world, but to us today who gather in these walls.  It is after all, ALL Saints‘ Sunday.

There is much in modern incarnations of various sorts protestantism that have done what much of our little league coaches urged against, reducing the reality of faith down to an individualism, a Me-and-Jesus only sort of relationship.  Much of what passes for Christian music and theology today is riddled and laced with this individualism which is foreign to the Scriptures.  Personal faith is indeed vital and necessary, but it never comes at the expense of separation from others.  That notion is a rather anti-biblical model of the Christian faith and gravely in err.  For as I have been known to say, there is no such thing as a Lone-Ranger Christian.  For the Holy Spirit did not fall only upon one of the apostles.  Nor did Christ call ONLY Peter or ONLY John to follow Him.  He called the other 10 as well.

Going back even further into the Scriptures, our Lord raised up individual prophets certainly, but their work was always to call Israel (the whole people of God) to repent and turn back to God.  Certainly He raised up Moses, but  not to lead only himself or his brother, but again Israel (His entire people) out of Egypt into the freedom of the promised Land.  Before that He made His covenant with Abraham and His wife with the blessing not of a solitary decedent, but a nation.  The only real biblical encounter of a me-God relationship takes place in the Garden with Adam.  But we know how long that lasts in the garden, right women?  We can’t find our socks by ourselves, we never would have made it long alone if God had not given man, a beloved helper. We see rather quickly how God’s work has always been creating and forging a community, from the Family to ancient Israel and now in these last 2000 years, the Church.  That One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic body that we confess being a part of each and every week.

This Christian Church, this Communion of Saints of which our Lord Jesus promises not even the gates of hell cannot prevail against is indeed what we commemorate, celebrate, and give thanks to God for this All Saints’ Sunday.  We give thanks and praise to God that in His goodness and mercy we do not have to walk this life alone, that we do not have to walk the life of faith alone.  But rather through the gift of Holy Baptism we are united across the dimensions of time and space to fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus.  That even here and now we do not walk as individuals, but through the gift of the Holy Spirit we are united together as a Body.  Where together we can bear each others burdens and feel the stings of life’s baseballs hurled at us together.  Where we can share each others joys, pray for one another, and enjoy the splendor of God’s mercy together.  On this Festival Day, we confess and rejoice in that little truth of little league; it’s not about I or Me, but thanks be to God it is about Him and His work PRO NOBIS.  FOR US.  In Jesus Christ bonds are forged and united that not even sin or death can destroy, because they are forged and made by His own body and blood, His death and resurrection.  They are eternal and filled with the power and strength of heaven.  

It is that reality which we participate in each and every Sunday as we gather around the Table and Altar of our Lord.  In the Holy Sacrament heaven and earth unite around the Body and Blood of Christ.  Saints and angels sing together as our Lord enters into our midst to give us the true Bread of Life, His flesh and blood.  It is what we proclaim and confess architecturally as we gather only on one side of the table.  If it this was a normal dinner at our home we would never seat people on only one side of the table, but at Holy Communion we do.  Why is that?  Because though we cannot see them, we believe that the other side of the table is occupied by the saints and angels who have gone before us.  Indeed at the Meal, the vision of Revelation and that of Hebrews is lived, experienced, and proclaimed.  For united around Jesus Christ the Pure and Spotless Lamb of God, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, we living saints, made clean by Water and the Word who continue to labor in our earthly pilgrimage and those Saints who have received their reward and who now leap, sing and shout for joy in heaven.  In Christ we are forever united to one another and to the whole of heaven.  

It is most fitting then that we have this feast day, this reminder to each of us today as we part our physical company with the Vietnamese community that has blessed and enriched us here at Reformation by the witness of their own faith.  It is not a unity in physical buildings that makes us the Church, the body of Christ, but it is that faith.  The faith of the Church the faith into which we are baptized and forgiven by God.  Jesus Christ is the source of our fellowship and our unity.  And that bond which we only saw visibly start about 4 years ago, began longer ago than that. And that bond does not end today, it only changes for the time being.  For in Christ we are still brother and sister.  In Him even though we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper in different places, we are still united in the One meal, the One body and blood of Christ.  Though we will hear the Word of God proclaimed in different places, we are still united in the same proclamation of the One Church of Christ, together with all the saints, angels, and archangels, the good news of Jesus Christ and the glory of His Kingdom.  We are forever and always united in the One hope that is ours of eternal life and victory over the grave in the glory, beauty, and splendor of Jesus Christ.  For Him and for all of you, for Bishop Tran and the Vietnamese community, today we together say, “Thanks be to God!!”  

Amen.

Reformation Sunday-Sermon

Reformation Sunday–Sermon
10/27/13- Year C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

We’ve gathered today surrounded in the sea of red, adorned with the anthems and hymns of Luther and the reformers on this festival of ours Reformation Sunday.  It is our yearly observance of ours heritage stretching all the way back to the 1500’s.  Though we observe it today, Reformation Day itself is marked on October 31, on All Hallow’s Eve or the Eve of All Saint’s Day (which is Nov 1), because it was then that Luther penned and posted his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences; that document that we more commonly know as the 95-Theses.  Written to debate the soundness of the preaching and selling of indulgences.  Those golden tickets like from Willy Wonka land, that once the coin in the coffer rang, its named participant from purgatory sprang. It was that act which sparked a movement of Reform in the Church’s life, something Luther himself never envisioned 496 years ago as he put ink to paper.    

What began as movement to reform the Church catholic led unfortunately to separation and schism, from which Lutheranism began to be formed and defined.  The basic tenants of our faith put down in tracts that spread from Luther’s Small and Large Catechism’s to Melachthon’s Augsuburg Confession and its apology a year later.  Those early Lutherans or as they called themselves, evangelicals, continued to shape and form our confession and teaching what it is we believe as Christians.  From the first Martin (Luther that is) to the 2nd Martin (Martin Chemnitz) our heritage of the faith grew and was bound together in the Concordia (Book of Concord) in 1580.  And yet setting about on a new trajectory was never intended by Luther, for he saw that there was indeed only one church, as we confess in the Creed each week.  It was reconnecting with that one Church that Luther himself wanted to achieve.  He, like his contemporary scholars, were humanists with the battle cry “Ad fontes”—back to the sources.  The church of Luther’s day had erred, it has adopted teachings and practices which obscured the very source of the Church’s life, Jesus Christ.  In the selling of indulgences for forgiveness, in the requirement of works for forgiveness (and not faith), in withholding the communion chalice from the laity, each of these piece by piece obscured the goodness, mercy, and simplicity of Jesus.  For the sake of the Church’s health and the health of her people, Luther sought to call the church back to her sources: to Christ, His Word, and His Sacraments.

It is that Word, the Word Made Flesh, the Word of the Holy Scriptures and the Visible Word of the sacraments that makes the Church the Church.  And it is that confession which makes us Lutheran.  Not Jello, nor various congealed salads.  Not hot dishes, nor casseroles.  Nor even singing A Mighty Fortress to the best of our ability and in perfect harmony.  These are the trappings that have come to be a part of our culture, but they are not the foundations of our identity and confession as Christians.  Certainly they are not the things for which Luther stuck his neck on the line.  Being so far removed from that time its no surprise that we come to a sterile notion of the Reformation.  Caught in the trappings we sometimes fail to realize that some early Lutherans were martyred for our confession of faith.  They died for what, we modern day Lutherans have often failed to keep before our own eyes: the Word of God in the flesh, in the printed page, and in the sacrament given. That blessed and holy Word of whom our Lutheran Confessions continually point us to: Jesus Christ.

It is this clear and simple proclamation of Jesus Christ and his mercy that was the true Reformation, because it was the preaching of the apostles, of the early church and for most of the Church’s entire life until the middle ages.  This we believe is the true work of the Holy Spirit that swept through during the Reformation and why we all wear His color, red, today.  To return to the Church that simple and clear proclamation of the Gospel.  That we all are born into sin, so deeply has sin taken root in our nature that without God we can do nothing but die and receive the punishment for our flesh.  That no one escapes this world without that forcefully clear word of Law’s spoken in our bodies, death. Dead in the flesh and dead eternally, but there comes One who has undone death.  Who conquered death by His own death.  Who comes to speak an even more powerful word on our lives, more powerful than the shouts of Sin.  Who on roman wood pierced by roman steel offered up the perfect sacrifice of obedience to the Father.  Who by the testimony of His blood, spirit, and water has mediated a new covenant between us and God.  One of forgiveness, mercy, and grace in His name and through His death and resurrection.  One that brings heaven to us earthly mortals as He now sits at the right hand, the powerful hand of God.  This Jesus Christ has done making God’s Kingdom an earthly reality. That in Him and through Him we have access to God as our dear heavenly father and no longer as enemies under the curse of sin.  This He has done not only for us, but for the entire world.  Christ is gift, pure simple and most importantly FREE gift of God’s grace and salvation for all.  For in Christ, God has grabbed hold of our lives, laid claim to our identities, and promises never ever to let us go.

In Christ the world is set free from sin, death, and the devil and made free for God.  It hears the words of St. John’s gospel this morning and momentarily is gladdened by them, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”  Yet often does that same world and how often do we in the daily reality of our lives, interpret those words to mean that we are indeed free, free from God. Sin creeps back into our lives as it is whispered all around us by the tempts of the world and of the flesh.  Sure Jesus is nice and forgives and blah blah blah, but I’m going back to my old life of sin and my old ways, and really want nothing to do with God and especially His Word.  The world today is even madder today than it once was, if we can believe it, because it no longer acknowledges any truth to be objectively True.  The sky is blue...maybe for you it is, but not for me.  Yet what our Lord speaks of truth is not an idea to be grasped or wrestled with.  It is not an ideal or academic theorem.  It is a person.  Truth is a man, a God-man.  Truth is Jesus Himself, who has proclaimed to us, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  The only freedom we truly have is found hidden in the life and word of Jesus Christ.  The Son makes us free not so that we can run back to the world, but so that in Him we may run to the Father. For in Christ, God has ran to us His children with arms outstretched.    

We know this to be true, because forgiveness and the giving of grace is not a one-time event.  God’s forgiveness does not come with an best use by date, nor is it a punch card with only certain amount of punches on it.  But it is a continual daily outpouring of grace, forgiveness, and love.  It is for this reason that He has given to us and blessed us with the Holy Scriptures, prayer, the sacraments, absolution, and the Church.  So that His Gospel might be spoken into our lives each and every day.  All this God has done—in the words of the Catechism—so “that I may be his own, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead and lives and rules eternally.”  This is our confession of faith, this is what we Lutherans are truly all about.  The goodness and graciousness of God in Jesus Christ and the gift of salvation that is ours by faith.  Therefore Lutherans let us dwell and drink deeply from the treasures of our heritage.  Our hymnody, for it is by far the best in the world.  Our confessions and catechisms, indeed I would say let us spend this next year dedicated to learning and knowing our catechism. But of all let us dwell richly in the Word of God, Jesus Christ, who brings heaven and our salvation to us each Sunday through the Scriptures and the Sacraments.  

Amen.

Pentecost 22C-Sermon

Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost–Sermon

10/20/13–Year C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

There is nothing and no one that God cannot and will not use to speaking the truth about His nature and to reveal His Word for our lives.  We hear the voice of the Lord in holy Scripture appearing in and through the most random of places and people.  We hear it in the burning bush, that unconsumed shrubbery calling Moses to take the role of leading Israel out of exile. We hear it in Balaam’s donkey, a biblical character that  Luther himself identified with.  We hear it in the cloud and through the prophets of Old. We hear it in the voice of our Lord Jesus himself and we also hear it through those less than likely characters. Such as that donkey, or other less than likely characters we’ve come to hear from Luke–an unjust steward, a Samaritan, and the heathen, pagan judge who happens to be a jerk on top of it.  

There is a saying about the old broken clock, that you are likely all familiar with.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  That which is not working, useless, lifeless with its dead battery or unwound spring, manages only by the grace of God that keeps the earth spinning get’s the time right.  And that is exactly what our Lord pictures for us this morning.  This unrighteous judge, who cares little or nothing for actual justice. Who sees himself beholden to no law, divine nor human.  Who would rather be on the back 9 of the local country club than listen to the needs and pleas of this pesky annoying old widow.  She is a nuisance, an insignificant little fly that buzzes and buzzes around his head in her uninspiring repetitive demand: Give me justice….give me justice...give me justice.  Knowing there is only two such responses to being trapped in a room with such an annoying little fly—pull out the fly swatter or open the door and let it out—the unrighteous jerk of a justice relents, he opens the door to her cries, gives her that which she seeks and lets her return home in peace. The broken judge, gets it right. 

For Jesus in the parable this morning, if this wicked person will relent to the pleas of one beneath him, how much more will the Holy Almighty and Merciful Lord listen to the pleas of his children!  The God who created and sustains all things and who through the scriptures declares His love for Israel, His love for us, how much more will he listen, hear, and answer our prayers. Our Lord through the example of this judge who begrudgingly listens to the widow bespeaks of the greater and holy Judge who lovingly listens to us.  And in that He spurs us on toward a life a continual life of prayer to God.  The Catechism puts this so simply and eloquently in Part 3, “What is meant by “our Father who art in heaven?”  With these words God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.  With all boldness and confidence we are to approach our Lord with every and any request that we may have.  We may speak to Him in prayer in thankfulness, love and devotion and we may with the same boldness cry out to Him in lament, anguish, and anger.  

I am often left dumbfounded with those who believe that we can never be angry with God. They must have missed that part about Israel grumbling in the wilderness or Moses contending with God about those same stiff-necked people.  They must have missed the entire book of Lamentations or the psalms of that same refrain of lament.  They must have missed the exile and the prayers to return.  They’ve missed the witness of the psalmists and prophets crying out for His deliverance and justice to come.  “How long, O Lord! Rend the heavens and come down!”  They must have missed the shoulders which carried wooded cross, endured beating, spitting, and mocking carrying the weight of the sins of the world upon himself.  Those broad shoulders which endured so much certainly has room upon them to take up our own laments, cries, anger, and grief as well.  Indeed if we learn anything from the parable this morning it is precisely that, for what is it that the widow is crying out for?  Justice against her adversary–a lament in the fashion of the psalms.  Our Lord is pushing us into that relationship, that daily and continual relationship that is founded in and around prayer.  True prayer which includes the whole of our lives; our joys, our thanksgivings, our requests, and even our laments.  It is this type of relationship that our Lord wants us to acknowledge and build around the life of prayer for this is type of God whom we have: One who listens and One who speaks. 

It is in this relationship of listening and speaking that we as parents begin to build our own relationship to our children. Indeed every relationship we have is built around such communication and like our relationship with God it is strengthened or weakened by communication.  And God is the first speaker.  It was a Word from God which created all that we see.  It was a Word spoken that created you and I.  It was His Word that claimed you as His son and daughter in the waters of Baptism.  It is His Word that sustains you through bread and wine as they bring to us the body and blood of the Son. It is His Word that is proclaimed and sung in the Church that is for us and for our salvation.  Indeed at every turn we see God speaking to us, communicating with us, opening himself to a relationship with us.  For God knows that the more we talk to a person the closer we are likely to be with that person, the less we talk with him or her the further away that person becomes.  Same it is with God.  The more devout we are in prayer, in crying out to God, the closer He may seem to us.  The less we keep to prayer the more distant and foreign He may seem to us.  Though He is always but a word away.  For the gracious Father always stands with open arms waiting again and again to gather his children and listen to them, because He loves them.  Because He loves us.  

Having the God who listens to our prayers and yes even desires our prayers as he teaches us how to pray, perhaps another analogy might be even better than the widow this morning.  As some of you likely know Jordan turned three yesterday and living with a child that age gives rise to some good sermon fodder as you can imagine. Such as a child’s unceasing pleas for their mother’s, and its usually always mom’s, attention.  Mom, mom, mom, mom..mom...mom...MOM!  Is that persistence of faith not how our prayer life should look, Abba….Abba...Abba…Abba. Almighty Father, Merciful Father, Heavenly Father. Here at Reformation we are blessed with prayers and opportunities for prayer.  The prayer team meets Monday mornings about 10Am to pray.  Lately I’ve been offering Matins on Wednesday morning at 9. We had a healing service on Friday night where we offered more prayers, and don’t worry if you weren’t there we prayed for you too!  We gather this Sunday again to offer our prayers.  The parish is filled with moments and opportunities to pray and our lives should be as well. Unceasingly as the apostle Paul writes, or at least as the Catechism directs, morning and evening make the sign of the holy cross, say the Creed and pray the Lord’s prayer, and offer other prayers. Because this is the sign of faith that our Lord Jesus has given to us, through the offering of His own prayers and Himself to the Father. For it is always in His name that we can truly pray. 

Amen.    

Pentecost 21 C-Sermon

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost–Sermon

10/13/13–Year C   

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Ten little monkeys; jumping on the bed; one fell off and bumped his head; the mama called the doctor; and the doctor said; no more monkey’s jumping on the bed.  Nine little monkeys; jumping on the bed; one fell off and bumped his head; the mama called the doctor; and the doctor said; no more monkey’s jumping on the bed. Eight….well I think I could probably stop now singing the children’s song now, though I do confess it is quite catchy.  These adorable cute bounding monkeys who one right after the next continue in succession to do what the one before had done.  They follow along in the pattern, which my hunch is designed to either help kids with counting backwards OR to warn them of the dangers of such frivolity, as a bump on the head not only hurts, but warrants a call to the doctor.  Such is the natural behavior of monkeys, I suppose, swinging from tree limbs, eating bananas, jumping around with hoots and hollers, not listening to nor understanding basic english commands. Thus failing to learn from what they had witnessed, from 10 to 0. They all bump their heads.  

Put in contrast to our Gospel lesson then it seems Jesus is doing rather well with the one, the one Samaritan, who breaks the mold and pattern, who turns back toward the Master who showed mercy. As you likely know being a leper was a terrible disease.  Though the biblical word covers a multitude of fleshy ailments, its outcome and result was the same; he or she was an outcast.  One removed from the community.  One who was ostracized and could not work.  In their desperate state, which affected not only the body, but the soul as well, led them to cry out in succession; “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”  A prayer and cry of the tormented and afflicted.  Kyrie Eleison.  Christe Eleison.  Kyrie Eleison.  Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.  

Ten lepers, about their stature I do not know, cry out to the Lord for mercy and ten lepers are healed.  The goodness of God and the healing power of His Word has covered and cleansed them all.  The Word from Jesus removed that which kept them from the community and healed the pain and discomfort that such a disease would have caused. He acted in the very nature of God whom the prophets declare is, “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”  These 10 lepers are now clean, but yet they are not all made well.  St. Luke in his normal fashion of pointing to the Samaritans and Gentiles as models for Christians, speak of only one who is truly made well by that same faith.  The Samaritan turning back to Christ in love, devotion, worship, and thanksgiving, Jesus says to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”  Or rather, “your faith has saved you.”    

In the story this morning we have here the full picture of what it is that we confess about our God.  Of Him who sent His beloved Son into the world to save the world.  Jesus Christ defeated sin, death and the power of the devil.  Through his work upon the cross, the shedding of His blood, His rest in the tomb and rising to victory, Christ has healed all by wining our redemption through the forgiveness of our sins.  The whole world, that creation of God which cries out in labor pains, has received the foretaste of its salvation.  Forgiveness, grace, and the healing of God won on Calvary is for all.  There is nothing left, we confess, to do for our salvation.  The Father has already done it all in His Son.  God’s mercy and healing is truly universal given to all and yet not all are made well.  Though Christ has healed all, not all are saved.  The only difference between those who are and those who are not is simply pausing to take a look, to see that they are in fact healed.  It is the gift of faith, given for eyes to see and ears to hear.  For the life and salvation given to all is like the old analogy of the million dollar check in everyone’s wallet.  Yes you have it, but until you take it to the bank it does you no good.  Christ has given us a kingdom which is unshakable, which is so glorious and so wondrous, filled with his love and compassion, yet it too does us no good if it is not apprehended by faith.  If our hearts and minds are not turned back to Christ the author and perfecter of faith itself. 

We cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Christ Jesus or come to Him, but with God all things are possible.  For where His Word is proclaimed it creates that which it speaks, by the power of the Holy Spirit.  For His Word is living and active and it does not return to our Lord empty.  It is for this reason that we are here, that we turn back, each week in love and thanksgiving to God.  For here we lepers are continually made well by Christ.  Here salvation is sung, proclaimed, and given as Dr. James Nestingen formerly of Luther Sem, is quoted as saying, “In the liturgy the Word of God is poured over us, on our heads, in our eyes, through our ears, and down our mouths. Permeating our lives.”  Here we are flooded by God’s Word which not only heals us, but saves us.  In the word of absolution and sacrament received, faith itself is created and given to us.  Yet outside of the presence of Christ in the proclamation of the Word and reception of the Sacrament faith quickly dries up, because at heart the Old Adam in us is like those nine other lepers yearning to keep walking back to our old lives.  The Old Adam in us is like those 10 little obstinate monkeys, wanting to so much to ignore the voice of the doctor and keep going our own way.  Yet God causes us to turn back to Him in faith.  Falling on our faces at the feet of Jesus and that is something that neither you and I could do on our own, but only by the gift of faith, which stirs in us thanks and praise for all that He has done.   

And it is precisely this, this chief act of thanksgiving, eucharistia in the Greek, from which we get the word Eucharist, that describes the heart and soul of gathering together for worship each week.  We come to this place, turning back to Christ, like the Samaritan to give thanks to God.  Thus there is so much thanksgiving that we sing/speak in the liturgy of the Meal, the place where Christ himself comes in body and blood to meet us and give us our salvation, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.  It is right to give Him thanks and praise.  It is indeed right and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks.”  Our worship is lived and done in the spirit and joy of thanksgiving to God and it is not confined to this Lord’s Day, but rather permeates and fills our lives and our time each day, each week. Therefore let us with hearts raised unceasingly give thanks that the doctor, the Great Physician, has spoken to us His Word, broken the pattern of our sinful lives, refrained our chaotic jumping, answered our pleas for mercy, and healed our bruised heads, hearts, and lives.        Amen.  

Pentecost 20 C- Sermon

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost–Sermon

10/06/13–Year C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

There are certain things that for us Christians it is sometimes dangerous to pray for.  I know that seems contrary to everything that we’ve been told, because we can indeed take everything and anything to our Lord in prayer.  I’m sure we’ve even sung that a time or two with specific burdens in our heart that we do indeed take to our Friend Jesus, who promises to listen and to answer.  However that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be mindful of what it is actually we are praying for.  What do we intend with our prayers?  For instance and what I would call the classic example of one of these types of prayers is the prayers for patience.  Normally the prayer for patience takes the form of the joke, “Lord grant me patience, AND GIVE IT TO ME NOW!!”  Yet I have found it in my own life that that prayer is rarely effective.  I cannot recall after such a prayer that I have ever been flooded with an outpouring of patience in the midst of a situation and trials.  What more than likely happens is that after prayers for patience, God likes to give me more opportunities to practice my own ability to be patient.  

Patience I imagine is not unlike the request from the apostles to our Lord which we overhear this morning, “INCREASE OUR FAITH!”  In the context of this morning’s gospel lesson, we hear this in what almost may be a boast.  Increase our faith, Lord, so that we may be even better than we already our.  There is a not so subtle arrogance that the disciples have been known to bandy about from time to time.  Is this akin to James and John begging of the Lord, let me sit at your right and your left when you come into your kingdom!  Does it resonate with Peter’s ability to at the most opportune time to sick foot in mouth and swallow.  But is it a cry of arrogance?  Is it a request to be even just a bit more holy or have a smidgin more faith than the other disciples?  INCREASE OUR FAITH, Lord Jesus.  Well to answer that we must back up and put this request from the disciples, complete with exclamation point, in its Gospel context.  

Preceding our reading this morning we hear from St. Luke, And Jesus said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come!  It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of his little ones to sin. Pay attention to yourselves!  If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, “I repent’, you must forgive him.”  The apostles said to the Lord, “INCREASE OUR FAITH!”  

It’s not a boast, a brag or a demand, but rather a cry and plead for mercy and strength!  Seven times forgive.  Once is easy, twice is annoying, three times aggravating, but seven?  According to the nature of the flesh such a request, such a command from our Lord can only bring the disciples to the ultimate conclusion that they lack what is needed to heed their Lord’s words.  A little dose of faith can handle offering a word of forgiveness for a minor offense, but what is needed for great and repeated ones?  That will require much more.  It will take the faith of a Mustard Seed.  One to uproot the knotted and tangled web of roots buried deep below the earth and be planted in the sea.  That entangled mess of the past and present, which without faith is so easy to keep under the cover of the darkness of the ground. But with faith brings out and exposes to the light.  It will take the faith that can move mountains or rather our stony rock-hard hearts calcified in bitterness, animosity, pain, resentment and an unwillingness to forgive, especially when we think we’re right.  The disciples know this to be true and that is why they petition the Lord, because they know only such faith can come from him.  Knowing ourselves do we not share that same lament, cry, and prayer,  “Lord increase our faith!”

If we take our Lord’s words seriously, which we as Christians should be in the habit of doing, then it is exactly faith that we will need. For what is it to forgive, but to lay down one’s life one’s claim of righteousness for the sake of a repentant friend, brother, or even enemy.  It will likely mean that forgiveness comes in the shape of our own forgiveness, the cross. The death to our selfishness for the upbuilding and betterment of the body of Christ, the Church, and for our fellow brothers and sisters. And that takes faith, supernatural faith, faith that can only come from where the disciples themselves seek it: from the Lord.  For in human wisdom and strength there is only weakness and failing, but in the Lord, from whom flows our own life-giving grace, mercy and forgiveness we receive our faith.  True, abiding, and everlasting faith given to us by the Holy Spirit through the means of His grace.  Saving faith which casts off sin and grasps the promises of Christ to us, My body given for you. My blood shed for you.  My life, death, and resurrection for you.  In this gospel lesson today the disciples as well as you and I play out the words of the catechism, “by my own reason or strength I can not believe.”  By myself and of my own self I have no faith, therefore Lord, increase it.  Give to me, give to us such faith as that of a pickling spice.   

After the disciples petition then of course St. Luke goes on to describe how at that very moment they were all filled with a double dose of faith, and rainbows and unicorns appeared in the sky and they all felt warm and fuzzy.  No?  No, indeed.  Peter would still deny.  Judas would still betray.  James and John would still be arrogant.  And when the shepherd is stricken, the sheep will scatter.  Though the download of the ability to forgive seven times, or seven times seven, or seventy times seven, would have been easy and convenient, it would not have been real.  For it is in the midst of trial that we learn patience as St. Paul tells us in Romans.  And it is in the need of forgiveness that our Lord teaches us and gives us faith to forgive.  It is there that the true work of our Lord is being done in us and in those times when an increase of faith is given.  Because such forgiveness offered, if it be true forgiveness, is born from the breath and power of God.  For the forgiveness we proclaim and share is not ours, it’s God’s.  And as we know with man nothing is possible, but with God everything is possible, because where His Word of grace is proclaimed the power of God is set loose among us to remove deeply rooted trees, obstinate mountains, and baptize them in the sea—in the water of life where you and I return time and again to be replanted and replenished in the true faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.   

Amen.       

St. Michael and All Angels- Semron

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost- Sermon

9/22/13- Year C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Oh no.  I can see it in the nervous shifting of seats and the crinkling of bulletins.  I can hear it in the uncomfortable coughs breaking through the midst of momentary silence.  I can feel it is as I labor a little heavier to breathe in the last milliliters of oxygen as you all are holding in your gasps.  Waiting.  Wondering.  Fearing.  Another.  Sermon.  About.  Money.  Especially after last week’s wonderful message to us from Pastor Wendel.  Well you can all let go your held breath and relax. Though the topic is primed and ready and Jesus has set us up for a little batting practice to hit a home run or two on stewardship.  Jesus himself in the gospel has left us with the perfect punchline for such a sermon, “You cannot serve both God and Money.”  You can almost hear the wood collecting with the ball (KNOCK) as pastor drives in the bases loaded grand slam on stewardship.  And no I have not been watching baseball much this year, my cubs were mathematically eliminated sometime back in May as were my Twins also, if I’m not mistaken.  But I did just recently watch Field of Dreams, so I apologize for the baseball imagery today.  

Though Money is set up for us and aligns with the parable of the dishonest manager, did any of you perhaps sense or catch up on something else repeated and refrained throughout our lesson this morning?  It struck me more this year than it did the last time it came up in the lectionary, perhaps because of our meetings last week with Pr. Wendel.  Though the dishonest manager is praised for his shrewdness, Jesus spends  more time talking about its opposite: trust and honesty.  Whoever can be trusted with very little can be trusted with much.  If you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches.  And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?  It seems at least for me today, our Lord hits us disciples hard on the issue and reality of trust.  And it is trust of which I think we need to speak today or rather our Lord needs to speak to us today.  

Having learned the hard way way trust is something that is a priceless commodity of our human lives.  It is woven into the very fabric of creation, and yet almost as quickly undone in creation.  The Lord created the heavens and the earth a place of trust as everything our first parents would have needed to thrive and survive were given to them in creation.  Trust spoken as clay formed. Trust made in the depth of sleep and rib removed.  Trust seen in the face of a beautiful and perfect helper. Trust lived in the communion of one another and one another with God.  And all that trust undone in a whisper, a violation, and a fruit eaten.  What took a good two chapters of Genesis to describe, all fell apart in a few verses.  Trust broken between man and wife, between man and creation, between God and man.  We were made and created for lives of trust and honesty or shall we use the more churchly word, “faith” and yet how quickly we find ourselves naked, vulnerable, defenseless in the presence of faithlessness, trust broken.    

During my days in seminary, and this might come as a to surprise you but we’re not all perfect in seminary either. It may sound like a place filled with holiness and piety, but it is in all reality a place where fellow sinners are living out their own salvation with fear and trembling. I had what I thought was a good friend. We hung out together.  We smoked our pipe’s and cigars together whislt talking theology. Sharing cold Lutheran beverages as well.  I don’t even remember what caused our friendship to end, but all I remember was that because of something I said or did, she no longer talked with me.  I was persona non grata.  What two years together had built up was gone in a flash. Needless to say the silence of a friend only fueled my own anger and personal hurt. I dreaded seeing her in the dorms and on campus and especially at worship.  Of course only God would do this...the chapel at LTSS has its communion rail circling all away around the altar. And at communion people walk up the center aisle and then kneel around the altar.  Her and I had been sitting at opposite sides of the chapel, so we could naturally avoid one another.  That is until it came time for communion. Not only did we go up for communion at the same time, and not only were we at the same table together, but the way the spaces opened up, we knelt side by side in pain with hands extended and palms open. Both waiting to receive the same bread of life. We both wanted to pull away from each other, but there in that moment God brought us quite literally together, to heal.  In that act on that day Luther’s final words rang so deeply and profoundly true to me, “we are beggars: this is true.”          

We all are beggars, penitents kneeling, waiting, wanting to be healed from whatever and whoever has broken our trust.  And wanting to be forgiven for when we ourselves have broken another’s. WE are all beggars around this altar as we come to one and all to receive the same Lord Jesus, the same bread of Life, of the One God who has come in order to give back to creation trust, to give faith. In bread broken and wine poured God does what he has continued to do from the beginning redeem, restore, and renew His creation. To be the one God that we alone worship and adore, not money or mammon, and not ourselves or our hurts. To draw us all together, when we would rather avoid or pull ourselves apart, into one communion in His life.  At the table of our Lord, we are made by Christ and the Spirit to trust in God alone, to look to Him alone, and to expect Him to give us only good things. Because He does and He is good.  He alone gives us every good thing and by Him we are delivered from all evil. He does this all to recreate our trust.  Our trust in Him and by God’s grace and forgiveness restore and renew our trust in one another.  So that here and now we can learn to have trust in the little things, so that we may be trusted with much.  That we might be found worthy of the earthly things and be entrusted with the true riches of the Kingdom, peace, joy, love, forgiveness, grace and mercy, as individuals and also as a parish. For that is the true life of the Kingdom here and now and in the Kingdom for which we all desperately wait for to come. Gathered around the throne of God with one voice singing Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory  Hosanna in the highest!    

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning is  now and ever shall be world without end.  Amen.  

Pentecost 18 C–Sermon

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost- Sermon
9/22/13- Year C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Oh no.  I can see it in the nervous shifting of seats and the crinkling of bulletins.  I can hear it in the uncomfortable coughs breaking through the midst of momentary silence.  I can feel it is as I labor a little heavier to breathe in the last milliliters of oxygen as you all are holding in your gasps.  Waiting.  Wondering.  Fearing.  Another.  Sermon.  About.  Money.  Especially after last week’s wonderful message to us from Pastor Wendel.  Well you can all let go your held breath and relax. Though the topic is primed and ready and Jesus has set us up for a little batting practice to hit a home run or two on stewardship.  Jesus himself in the gospel has left us with the perfect punchline for such a sermon, “You cannot serve both God and Money.”  You can almost hear the wood collecting with the ball (KNOCK) as pastor drives in the bases loaded grand slam on stewardship.  And no I have not been watching baseball much this year, my cubs were mathematically eliminated sometime back in May as were my Twins also, if I’m not mistaken.  But I did just recently watch Field of Dreams, so I apologize for the baseball imagery today.

Though Money is set up for us and aligns with the parable of the dishonest manager, did any of you perhaps sense or catch up on something else repeated and refrained throughout our lesson this morning?  It struck me more this year than it did the last time it came up in the lectionary, perhaps because of our meetings last week with Pr. Wendel.  Though the dishonest manager is praised for his shrewdness, Jesus spends  more time talking about its opposite: trust and honesty.  Whoever can be trusted with very little can be trusted with much.  If you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches.  And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?  It seems at least for me today, our Lord hits us disciples hard on the issue and reality of trust.  And it is trust of which I think we need to speak today or rather our Lord needs to speak to us today.

Having learned the hard way way trust is something that is a priceless commodity of our human lives.  It is woven into the very fabric of creation, and yet almost as quickly undone in creation.  The Lord created the heavens and the earth a place of trust as everything our first parents would have needed to thrive and survive were given to them in creation.  Trust spoken as clay formed. Trust made in the depth of sleep and rib removed.  Trust seen in the face of a beautiful and perfect helper. Trust lived in the communion of one another and one another with God.  And all that trust undone in a whisper, a violation, and a fruit eaten.  What took a good two chapters of Genesis to describe, all fell apart in a few verses.  Trust broken between man and wife, between man and creation, between God and man.  We were made and created for lives of trust and honesty or shall we use the more churchly word, “faith” and yet how quickly we find ourselves naked, vulnerable, defenseless in the presence of faithlessness, trust broken.  
During my days in seminary, and this might come as a to surprise you but we’re not all perfect in seminary either. It may sound like a place filled with holiness and piety, but it is in all reality a place where fellow sinners are living out their own salvation with fear and trembling. I had what I thought was a good friend. We hung out together.  We smoked our pipe’s and cigars together whislt talking theology. Sharing cold Lutheran beverages as well.  I don’t even remember what caused our friendship to end, but all I remember was that because of something I said or did, she no longer talked with me.  I was persona non grata.  What two years together had built up was gone in a flash. Needless to say the silence of a friend only fueled my own anger and personal hurt. I dreaded seeing her in the dorms and on campus and especially at worship.  Of course only God would do this...the chapel at LTSS has its communion rail circling all away around the altar. And at communion people walk up the center aisle and then kneel around the altar.  Her and I had been sitting at opposite sides of the chapel, so we could naturally avoid one another.  That is until it came time for communion. Not only did we go up for communion at the same time, and not only were we at the same table together, but the way the spaces opened up, we knelt side by side in pain with hands extended and palms open. Both waiting to receive the same bread of life. We both wanted to pull away from each other, but there in that moment God brought us quite literally together, to heal.  In that act on that day Luther’s final words rang so deeply and profoundly true to me, “we are beggars: this is true.”        

We all are beggars, penitents kneeling, waiting, wanting to be healed from whatever and whoever has broken our trust.  And wanting to be forgiven for when we ourselves have broken another’s. WE are all beggars around this altar as we come to one and all to receive the same Lord Jesus, the same bread of Life, of the One God who has come in order to give back to creation trust, to give faith. In bread broken and wine poured God does what he has continued to do from the beginning redeem, restore, and renew His creation. To be the one God that we alone worship and adore, not money or mammon, and not ourselves or our hurts. To draw us all together, when we would rather avoid or pull ourselves apart, into one communion in His life.  At the table of our Lord, we are made by Christ and the Spirit to trust in God alone, to look to Him alone, and to expect Him to give us only good things. Because He does and He is good.  He alone gives us every good thing and by Him we are delivered from all evil. He does this all to recreate our trust.  Our trust in Him and by God’s grace and forgiveness restore and renew our trust in one another.  So that here and now we can learn to have trust in the little things, so that we may be trusted with much.  That we might be found worthy of the earthly things and be entrusted with the true riches of the Kingdom, peace, joy, love, forgiveness, grace and mercy, as individuals and also as a parish. For that is the true life of the Kingdom here and now and in the Kingdom for which we all desperately wait for to come. Gathered around the throne of God with one voice singing Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory  Hosanna in the highest!  

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning is  now and ever shall be world without end.  Amen.

Pentecost 16–C

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost- Sermon
9/8/13- Year C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the Lectionary is an amazing and beautiful thing, through whom the Holy Spirit works His work of speaking the truth of Jesus to us. More often than not on a given Sunday it speaks to the world and to our lives in ways that its creators could never foresee. We stand on the verge of an attack with Syria. One where there is no clear side to take. No clear reason and no united front by the world. And in churches who use the Revised Common Lectionary all around this nation, from Presbyterian to Methodist, Roman Catholic and even us Lutherans, the word of the Lord is being read in all of them, Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty-thousand. And hopefully in those churches all around our nation, we are united in their prayers for just that to sit down truly and count the cost. The cost of human life. The cost of our soldiers. And the true cost of our action might look like.  

Our Gospel lesson speaks to the world this morning and its current situation, but it also speaks directly to us as well. Doesn’t it?  Leaky roof.  Check.  Unfinished holes in the ceiling.  Check.  Incomplete chancel, from what I here there was supposed to be an altar rail here for kneeling.  Check.  Bare concrete floor Narthex. Check.  Missing baseboards.  Check.  I could go on, but you likely could add more yourself than I could ever name.  Everywhere we turn in this building, this tower of ours, we see unfinished and incomplete work.  I’m at least fortunate though that we have a solid foundation upon which this building was built. On top of all the incomplete work in this building that would make any teacher shutter at her students paper, the cost of the building itself become an overbearing weight that is tied around our necks. A yoke which we placed upon ourselves, once gladly and freely, now has us at least weekly or even daily living out the words of our Lord’s parable.  We question in our hearts and minds did we truly and rightly “consider the cost.”  Did we lay a foundation, which we can not complete? Did we bite off more than we can chew?  In its unfinished status are we being mocked?  Being laughed at by our enemy and the enemy of God.  

  But this is only a building.  It is mere concrete and wood, steel and glass.  Pieces laid out in a structural arrangement to house something that is more sacred, more holy, more priceless: the Church of God.  Though our Lord mentions speaks of buildings, it is only an illustration and to speak to the deeper and greater construction: discipleship and the upbuilding of the the Church, His body in the world. It is speaking to discipleship and the fellowship of the Body that our Lord directs His question laden in the parables, have we truly considered the cost? Have we considered carefully exactly what our Lord seeks from us? To pick up our cross and follow after Him. Which to bear the cross is not a catch phrase nor is it talking about your bunions, an unruly child, or whatever mild inconvenience you happen to be suffering at a particular moment in time.  The cross, as we should all know by now, is symbolic of something much more costly, it is our death.
If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.  Notice how these are all people of relationship and fellowship.  They are, at least for this illustration of our Lord, the people most dear to us, our friends our family.  In this Jesus calls those who would bear His name, Christians, truly not to hate in the way we think, but to hold Him higher than everyone we love, even ourselves. If we love our selves more, He tells us then we can not follow Him.  If we love our sin, more than His holiness, we cannot follow.  If we love our way more than Christ’s Way, we cannot follow.  If we love our family or our clicks, above His body, His family, then we cannot follow.  If we love our past wounds, our pain, or grudges more than Christ’s word to forgive and be reconciled to our brothers and sisters, then we have not considered the true cost of what it takes to build this Church. If we hoard Christ’s mercy and forgiveness for ourselves and do not forgive one another, then this building left unfinished will be an everlasting mirror to ourselves: His work left unfinished in us.  BTW Anyone happen to notice who isn’t included in Jesus list of people we are to “hate”, who our wills would want on that list? Anyone? Our enemies. Jesus calls us to love them.

You may be surprised to know this, well because I was a bit surprised, that Luther never included in his German Mass a brief order for confession and forgiveness.  It actually comes to us from Philip Melanchthon, which is another story. Luther never included it in his revision of the mass, for Him he was always pushing for people to go to  private confession and absolution before their pastors. There to confess actual sin which troubled actual souls as opposed to a generic confession of sinfulness.  For Luther, he saw the clear balm of absolution in the Mass, not tied with a brief Order, but rather in the sharing of the Peace. In his Formula Missae of 1523 Luther writes, “[The peace of the Lord be with you always, followed by its response]...is a public absolution of sins of the communicants, the true voice of the gospel announcing remission of sins, and therefore the one and most worthy preparation for the Lord’s Table, if faith holds to these words as coming from the mouth of Christ himself.” And true faith does hold them so, they are the Words of Christ and before coming up to the altar to receive His Body and Blood we receive His word which creates what it speaks, true abiding peace.

His peace is given to us and before we dare approach His altar, we share His peace with one another, with our friends, but more importantly with our supposed enemies. Here in this seemingly small liturgical exchange is lived out, what Luther calls the mutual consolation of the brethren. A means of God’s grace in which we are the actors of His powerful work, of healing, forgiving one another, and uniting us together under His holy banner.  There in the receiving and sharing of Christ’s peace the Church is continually built to be what it truly is to be: the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ. We receive His peace, share His peace, and then come with joy to receive His life given and shed for us in bread and wine.  In the depth of His forgiveness and forgiving one another our true salvation and the joy of paradise is lived and encountered here and now.  Therefore in a few moments, my brothers and sisters, let us take all the time we need to truly share the peace of Christ with one another, keeping at bay the taunts and laughs of our true enemy, the Evil One, and continue being built by the Holy Spirit into the Church of God.  Amen.

Pentecost 13 C–Sermon

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost–Sermon
8/18/13- Year C

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

In peace, let us pray to the Lord.

For the peace from above and for our salvation, let us pray to the Lord.

For the peace of the whole world for the wellbeing of the Church of God and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord.

Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth.

The Peace of the Lord be with you always.

Lamb of God you take away the sin of the world, grant us peace.

The Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.

Go in peace, serve the Lord.

If there is one common thread that runs throughout the whole of the divine liturgy each Sunday, apart from Christ it is the petition, receiving, and offering of peace.  In the Kyrie we begin by praying for peace for our selves, our community, our congregation, and the entire world. Having been fed and nourished at the table and received the Word proclaimed we depart in what?  In peace.  We do so because the kingdom of peace is what our Lord establishes. Though Christmas has been a few months ago we could probably recall Handel’s For Unto Us a Child is Born, taken from Isaiah 9:6.  For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Christmas came and now we have peace, that is the great claim of our Christian faith. We are at peace, through Christ who by His death and resurrection has made us one with God and one with each other.  Atonement is the theological word for this, but it is not as much of a five dollar word as it seems. It was a creation of 16th century English child’s level words “at”+ “one” + ment (unity). Through Christ we are at one unity with the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit and by baptism we are united to each other. And the Church is a mere reflection of the that everlasting Kingdom of Peace, where God will dwell with his people and wipe away every tear.

 So what happened?  Has Jesus forgotten the song of the angels and shepherds that accompanied His birth some 33 years ago?  Did He wake up on the wrong side of the mat that first century morning? Or like St. Paul is he suffering a thorn in the flesh?  How do we confess and praise this King of Peace, who himself confessed to His disciples, Do you think I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. Not only a division between the disciples and the world, but a division in the very foundation of human life, the family. Three against two and two against three.  Jesus’ words sound counter intuitive to what we claim to know about this King of peace. They are harsh and they are mixed with anger, perhaps even rage about the reality that he is witnessing. The crowds fail to see their salvation staring them in the face, and at times even His own disciples don’t seem to get it. We see here a passage from our Lord that might even scare us. We don’t like angry Jesus. We like Jesus meek and mild. He’s much tamer that way and fits in the box we’ve made for Him better. We want him to be nice, because nice is of course the highest of virtues.

 C.S. Lewis captures quite well the tension that is present at hearing this text in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Lucy and Susan are speaking to Mr. & Ms. Beaver and they are telling them about Aslan the King of the Wood, the great lion.  Susan surprised that the King of Narnia is a lion asks, “Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”  “That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking they’re either braver than most or just silly.”  “Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.  “Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.  He’s the King, I tell you.”  Our life with Christ is not always safe, but it is always good.

We look to the world and see the danger that is so very present for those who believe and trust in this King of Peace. From the Coptic Christians in Egypt who fear for their very lives just to go to worship and whose churches are continually being destroyed by Islamic extremists. To Christians in China and Vietnam who live under the daily threat of government oppression and force. There are places in this world where those under the banner of Christ have not seen civil peace in quite some time, where the division of three-against-two is a daily reality. His baptism has been completed in His death and resurrection and the fire that He longed to be kindled at Pentecost has been let loose on the world through the Holy Spirit. The faith Jesus longed to stir in the hearts of those who first heard Him speak has now spread to the ends of the earth. And His baptism and His fire has been kindled in us. Because of that we too will feel the division of which our Lord speaks.      

For Christ is not indifferent to our lives, to how we think, act, and feel. He does not blindly go along with our desires. He is not nice, for niceties sake.  But He is good and He has laid claim to our lives.  As St. Paul reminds us we are not our own for we were bought with a price.  A price, as St. Peter reminds us, not of gold or silver, but the precious blood of Christ. That is the Truth and reality of which we now live and gather together to confess and proclaim to the whole world. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead to the glory of God the Father. The prince of Peace has come and it is no one other than Jesus, Son of God, Son of Man. There is no other name or false god or political institution or self-creating spirituality that can save and redeem. Only Christ. And that confession will always cause strife and division not only with the pantheism of the world, but even in our own lives. For His truth and His Word are always shaping and forming us to live more and more into His life and less into ours. The old Adam killed, so that the new man may live, shaped and molded by the cross. Actually calling us to love, forgive, and show mercy to others just as He has shown us.    

In the face of this division of our flesh and spirit and discomfort though our Lord has promised to us, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.  Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.  For the Peace of Christ is not the absence of conflict though we pray mightily for that day and for us, but for now it is His abiding presence in the midst of it and through it. It is the joy of knowing that we are God’s and that He is with us in the Valley of the Shadow of death. That is the promise and peace which the Cross truly gives to us. That peace is what the church continues to pray for.  It is that peace which we receive at the table and extend to one another in Christ’s name.  And it is that peace in which we are sent out into the world to serve the Lord, for though Jesus is not safe. He is now and eternally good.  

Amen.