Advent 2 2019
Romans 15:4-13
December 8, 2019
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
Advent 2 2019
Romans 15:4-13
December 8, 2019
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
Thanksgiving 2019
Luke 17:11-19
November 28, 2019
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
Maybe his name was John. He lived in a village in Galilee near the border with Samaria in the northern part of present-day Israel. Everything was fine in his life – good family, good job, good friends. Until the day he spotted those strange spots on his skin. Very soon they did not hide anymore - and he did not want to hide them. Too big was the danger that he would also infect his wife and children with it. What that meant was clear: he had to leave his family, his village, live as a leper outside the village in a small colony with the other lepers. Alive, but almost considered dead, separate from everything giving happiness and joy to one in life.
But one day he hears with his nine leprosy buddies that Jesus came to the village where he once lived. Now, they couldn’t approach Him. But from a distance, he and the others could call out Jesus, for they had already heard that he had helped others. Maybe Jesus could help them too. "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"
And Jesus hears the cries of John, hear the cries of the other nine as well. Unusually, He does not say compassionate words, He does not pull off a healing show, but He responds to the calls of the ten with a very sober command: Go and show you the priests! Go to the hospital and they’ll confirm that you are no longer infectious!
That in itself would have been pretty unusual. Ten lepers are expected to march to the priests without any proof and to explain to them: A miracle has happened that God alone can accomplish. After all, the healing of a leper in Israel was just as difficult, even humanly impossible, as the raising of a dead person. But obviously, they take the word of Jesus seriously, marching off – and on the way they are healed!
So John goes to the priest to be sanctified, to be declared clean again, and he gives the right peace offering in the temple, shows how grateful he is to God for his healing. And then he goes home, goes to his wife and to his children, celebrate with them this incredible healing and thanks God for the new life which has now been given to him.
A nice, touching story with happy ending? Not exactly. Because not too far away from the village stands Jesus and asks a simple question: Where’s John? Why did not he come back to me? Yes, John has recovered - but he is not saved by it. Only one Samaritan from the circle of ten, turned to give thanks to Jesus, to give thanks to God in the flesh. That's what faith looks like, says Jesus, faith that saves.
Let's call her Mary. Mary has also gone through a lot in her life. As a child, she had experienced some bad abuse, she escaped, but still went through many hard years. But after everything, life turned out pretty good. She had her education, later a family, children and grandchildren, a good retirement. “Yes, I am grateful and thankful for my life,” she likes to say especially on Thanksgiving around the big meal. Only to whom she should actually be grateful, she can’t exactly say. Yeah, kind of the man upstairs, she means. But she has not had much contact with Him in her life, at least not since her confirmation. Yes, she goes on Christmas Eve she meets Him again every year, and sometimes on Easter; but otherwise her family responsibilities won’t give her much time. After all, one thing she knows is that she was actually a good person throughout her life. That should be enough. Happy ending? Not really…
Let's call him Joe. He was born into a Mormon family. They were really more Jack Mormons. He didn’t have a bad childhood, but it wasn’t great either. One day, shortly after he had graduated high school, he was approached by a friend who was a Christian. Now, for some time he had not really believed in God, especially after hearing his whole life of how good he was supposed to be and never being able to live up to the impossible standard. But he went with this friend to a church, and he liked it. It was nice, people didn’t seem judgmental, and what he heard was more positive than anything he had heard in his experience of “church.” For the first time, he heard a different message. He heard the Gospel, about the Jesus of the Bible. And so he started asking questions, and met with the pastor. Shortly after, he was baptized in the name of the Triune God, quite deliberately. And then everything went well. He was very enthusiastic for a while. He met a nice girl, he started going to college with some good prospects of a job. He felt he could finally make the future that he had always wanted. Little by little, he had no time for the church, of course. Things were different now. But, of course, he assured himself again and again, that he was grateful for how he had been helped there, he would never forget it. And of course, he would always think of Jesus and how grateful that God had helped him through a rough patch in his life.
Another happy ending? Not quite, and really, not at all. Even a Joe can behave just like a John and a Mary. He can forget who he actually ought to be thankful to, to whom he owes everything, what he now so thoughtlessly enjoys. And there Jesus stands and asks, “Where is John? Where’s Mary? Where’s Joe? Where are all the others I have turned to, who owe me their health, their lives, their future? Where are they? I bring healing for all, and don’t want any to be lost. So why do they receive My gifts and then just wander away? Yes, they may feel really good in their lives - but they are not saved. Only those who fall at my feet, who recognize God in me and thank God in me, will be saved.”
To the one Samaritan who returns, Jesus says, "Your faith has made you well.” But that’s not the best translation. It really says, "Your faith has saved you," that is how it is word for word. Faith is not a general feeling of gratitude to a higher being, or warm and fuzzies toward Jesus, but faith means quite concretely: to fall at Jesus’ feet, that He is God in the flesh, the One to whom thanks is given. To recognize and believe This faith that saves returns one to where Christ is to be found, and confesses that Jesus is God in the flesh, that we owe everything we have and are to Christ alone and continue to receive from His nailed pierced hands.
A Samaritan expresses this belief in Jesus Christ, not John, not Mary, not Joe. That should give us something to think about. It wasn’t the one who we would have expected to return and recognize Jesus, yet there he was. But it is God's way to build his kingdom in quite unexpected ways, with people we would not even count on. Likewise, we experience it today in our midst, as Jesus experienced it then.
You have all returned to Jesus here in worship today, not content with staying at home and dealing with all sorts of other things. You all fall before His feet, your Lord, soon to kneel at the feast of thanksgiving, the Eucharist, when He, your Savior, comes to you with His body and blood. Yes, there you receive healing from the leprosy of sin, a healing that saves for eternity. your salvation, your life - God be praised!
But when you go home, do not forget the story of that one grateful Samaritan. Let him remind you: It is no use to you if you are healthy, if you have a good job, if you have a family, if you are also a little bit religious and think of God from time to time. You will be saved only if you come to Jesus Christ and stay with Him, if you do not just think of Him, but find yourself where He is, where He waits for you, here at His altar-where the Word of God is proclaimed and He gives His body and blood for you. Remember: Jesus also asks for you. Where are you? Don’t you need Me anymore? Yes, yes we do. So today we give thanks to God, to Christ, for His healing and we come again to receive His mercy and His grace.
This sermon is modified and inspired by one written by Pr. Gottfried Marten on Trinity 14, September 6, 2015 at Evangelical Lutheran Trinity-Community Berlin-Steglitz
Advent 1 2019
Matthew 21:1-9
December 1, 2019
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
Jesus said, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to Me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them at once” (Matthew 21:2-3). This is our text.
It’s Palm Sunday. The pomp and circumstance with palm branches and shouts of joy are here. The temple is about to be cleansed. Betrayal is in the air. The cross is near, the sacrifice for sin is about to be made, and the tension is thick. Jesus is about to go to His death, to the grave, to the resurrection, and to the right hand of God in His ascension, with a few stops along the way to reveal Himself in His risen glory. The prophecy of Jeremiah 23 was being fulfilled, the days have come, when the righteous branch of David comes to His people. And as all of this is about to happen, the only thing that is missing is… a donkey.
Of all things! A donkey, really? But half of our Gospel reading from Matthew 21 is about how the Lord of heaven and earth needs a donkey! And this isn’t a new development, or a lack of planning by the Christ. He’s said He needed a donkey for a long time, since the time of Zechariah, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is He, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). So that Jerusalem, and you, would know that Jesus is the Messiah, God speaks through Zechariah, that we would look for the King, the Lord who is our righteousness, on a donkey.
The crowd understands. They praise God and shout out the words of the magnificent messianic Psalm 118, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” Hosanna, save us, Hosanna in the highest! Jesus is openly proclaimed as the promised Messiah as He comes in peace and humility, with life and salvation. Not a bad way to begin the church year.
The next time we hear “Hosanna” comes right after Jesus cleanses the temple and the children cry out this praise. And Jesus needs them. He needs these people to sing His praises. Not out of some narcissism or low self-esteem. But He needs them like He needs the donkey because this is how He declared His salvation will be spread. He puts His word into the mouths of His children. “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babes, You have prepared praise” (Matthew 21:16; Psalm 8:2). He opens their lips and their mouths declare His praise. Others hear and through hearing this word of Christ, believe, and through believing, the Lord who is righteousness gives His righteousness. And the kingdom of heaven grows.
But the Pharisees are not amused. Their livelihood is all wrapped up in earning righteousness and is has no place for a humble king handing it out to anyone and everyone. They don’t want salvation riding on a donkey, (they want it riding on their own ass), they want to ride in on their own two legs. They soon question His authority and right to do such things as heal and teach God’s Word. Rather than rejoicing with the crowds, the Pharisees seek to stir them up with shouts of “crucify Him, crucify Him.”
Today’s world isn’t amused either. You’re stuck in between Pharisees and crowds of another sort. There are those who insist that the way to God is by keeping all the rules, and doing all that you can do, a variety of which you’ll find in Idaho and Utah particularly. Elsewhere in the world you might find a variety so violent as to murder Christians who fail to comply to their law. And then there’s the other sort, you’re daily surrounded by a culture who aren’t going to submit to any law other than what feels good in their own eyes at any particular time. A culture who seek to justify itself by its own works, seeks to save the world by limiting pollution or taxes or social justice guilt trips and virtue signaling. Here too, there is intolerance and even violence against Christians who fail to comply to their law of same sex marriage, fluid gender identity, and murder of the unborn. And what all these have in common is they want the children to be silent, the children of God to be quiet, the faithful crowds to stop their cries of Hosanna, the Messiah to be without a donkey.
The truth is, as we begin Advent this year and look to the coming of Christ, Jesus needs you. He needs children to sing out Hosanna and carry palm branches in their hands and celebrate Jesus. And He needs them, and you, just like He needs the donkey. Because He says so. Because He has placed His Word in your ear, in your heart, and upon your lips to declare His praise, to proclaim His Word so that others might hear and believe in Jesus. It is more of a wonder than choosing a donkey that He chooses sinful and broken people to gather to Himself and carry the Word of God into the world. Lest your ego grow larger than a beast of burden, or think that Jesus can’t go anywhere without you, remember that He also says that even if these crowds were silent, the very stones would cry out (Luke 19:40). Wander away from the faith and from Christ, and He will find someone else, or something else, to declare His praise.
Rather than think in your own ability or importance, rejoice that the Lord prefers you to donkeys and rocks. Jesus didn’t become a donkey to save donkeys. He became a man to save you. He came to ride into Jerusalem to die upon the cross for you. He came to rise three days later in the defeat of death for you. He comes today for you in His Word that brings His salvation, His body and blood that brings His forgiveness and His life. And the days are coming, when He will come again, for you, to raise you and all the dead, to redeem all of creation on that great and glorious day of the Lord. Come quickly Lord Jesus. Amen.
Trinity 22 2019
Matthew 18:21-35
November 17, 2019
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
“How often” is not a safe question to ask Jesus. When asked the sort of questions that St. Peter asks of Jesus in today’s Gospel reading, “how often” typically becomes one of those questions where a limit is trying to be defined. In this case, Jesus had just finished speaking to His disciples of forgiving a brother. He had spoken of the power of forgiveness, that “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt 18:18). When St. Peter asked Him how often he should forgive his neighbor he is asking how often he should use these keys that Jesus had bestowed to the church. Is seven times enough? During this time in history, it was promoted that forgiving the same sin three times was enough. Seven times would have been extraordinarily generous. Yet Jesus answered him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”
To illustrate this point Jesus speaks the parable of the unforgiving servant. Jesus teaches in this parable that God forgives far more than you could ever deserve or even would be called upon to forgiven others. He concluded His parable with the summary that if we do not forgive our neighbor, our heavenly Father will deal with us the same way as the king deals with his servant. To ask how often should I forgive my brother is, in fact, to ask how often should I be forgiven. To the one who refuses to forgive, who limits forgiveness to what seems reasonable based on human understanding, who refuses to receive and share the mercy of God in Christ, that one will be delivered to pay off the debt of sin.
If you want to remain with the world and follow the world’s ways and the world’s standard of justice, then there you will stay. If you want to live in God’s kingdom, you must forgive. It is not optional for a Christian. The blessing of forgiveness is the defining gift of the Church. Nowhere and nothing else can offer this heavenly blessing. Make no mistake, forgiveness is not acceptance of sin. It is not saying that the sin doesn’t matter or that it is ok if it continues. Sin is never ok, and once confessed and forgiven it should stop. Call sin what it is: “evil” and “sinful” and “wrong”, and whenever there is repentance, exercise your God given right to forgive sins.
It’s not just that you are called to forgive, but to forgive for Christ’s sake and in His name. Your willingness, therefore, and even ability, to forgive a neighbor is grounded on Christ’s mercy. Are you struggling with the weight of sin? Repent, come to Christ and receive His forgiveness. Are you struggling with forgiving others? Repent, come to Christ and receive His forgiveness. The result of this is rather simple: Christ continues to forgive you when you sin, therefore you forgive those who sin against you as often as they sin. He has cancelled your debt that you may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness” (SC 2nd Article meaning).
At the heart of the matter is God’s declaration that your sins are forgiven, for Christ’s sake, freely by grace, and this is received through faith. The purpose of this is not forgetting or excusing sin, but to deliver a good conscience before God through the forgiveness of sins. Now, conscience is more than you think. In popular usage, it’s a person’s moral compass, his personal standard of right and wrong. The problem is that our conscience has lost its true north. It’s broken, sin infected, so it doesn’t work right. If there is no reference point for a moral truth, people will live their lives according to wherever their passions will lead. That was part of the problem with the unforgiving servant. That’s why God’s law as revelation of His good and gracious will is so important.
But that’s not really what Scripture means when it speaks about conscience. The word for the conscience in the New Testament is συνείδησις. From its root word, it means “to know together” or an awareness about something. In the Bible it typically references a soul’s perception before God. Conscience, then, is not as much a moral compass as it is a referee, or the ability to see yourself as God sees you.
When understood in this way, it’s easy to see how damaged our conscience can be. Every child of God struggles with this scarred conscience every day of life. The devil attacks the conscience with the accusation that you are unlovable, unforgivable, unredeemable. Indulgence of sin and damage from other’s sin scars the conscience so it can’t see himself as God sees him. The world tries to pull the wool over your eyes and pretend that sin doesn’t exist, that it isn’t evil or wrong, and therefore forgiveness is not really needed.
Forgiveness is not about making you feel better, nor making someone else feel better, or moving past something. It is about the conscience, about your standing before God and a right recognition of it. As a sinner, you stand guilty before a holy and righteous God. For Christ’s sake, you stand pure and blameless with His righteousness credited to you by faith alone. A superficial band aid won’t heal the wounds, nor the scars, from sin. It takes medicine much stronger, much more lasting. It takes blood. For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.
It is by the holy blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world that you are declared righteous in God’s sight. It is the holy blood that you receive in the Sacrament which is shed for the forgiveness of your sins. It is by the holy precious blood and Jesus innocent suffering and death that you are redeemed, that your sins are paid for, and carried them away. When people sin, there is forgiveness through faith in Christ. But when people are sinned against, there is also healing through faith in Christ. Jesus takes the guilt and shame upon Himself and into His body, and He forgives your sins and cleanses you from all unrighteousness.
A conscience healed by Christ’s forgiveness is now a conscience that can now see aright. It is a conscience captivated by the Word of God, by Christ and His declaration that you stand justified by grace alone for the sake of Christ alone, that you are pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:10-11). Amen.
Trinity 21 2019
Genesis 1
November 10, 2019
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
One of my favorite phrases in the Hebrew Old Testament: tohoo wabohoo תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ. It is the phrase right after God’s initial act of creation, that the earth was “without form and void… and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” God’s initial act of creation made “the stuff” of creation from nothing. However, this stuff was “without form and void” – it was tohoo wabohoo. It was disordered, but then He speaks and brings order to His creation so that it was declared to be good.
By His creative Word, God brought order to disorder. He speaks and it comes into being. He speaks His creation into being, separating the light from the darkness, the waters above from below, the land and the sea. And then God fills His creation with more good things, sun and moon and planets and stars, plants, and animals, each to reproduce after its own kind: a fish to beget a fish, not a dog; an apple tree to bear apples with apple seed, not pumpkins. Where there was disorder, tohoo wabohoo, God brings about an order, and He orders things in way that is good.
And then on the sixth day, God does something different. “Then God said, ‘Let us (a statement itself about the triune nature of God) make us man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’”
And so God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God creates man and woman, only two genders based on God’s created biological intent to compliment one another in marriage, blessed them, gave them the ordered life of being fruitful and multiplying, of having children, and taking care of God’s creation. It is in humanity alone in all of creation, that the image of God rests. Created in that image, Adam and Eve reflect the order of creation because they live holy lives and perfectly reflect God’s will. Even then, their righteousness, was from God, through faith/trust in Him. And it was not just good, but after God creates Adam and Eve, He sees all that He has made and it was very good.
But Adam and Eve didn’t feel like it was good enough. God surely must be holding back, for there was that one tree in the garden that they were not to eat from. And then it happened, the Fall into sin. The devil comes to Eve and tempted her with the thought that there was something better. That they could be more than created in God’s image. He offered the thought they could become like God, knowing good and evil, that only then will their eyes be opened. Before the Fall into sin, they did not know the difference between good and evil, for there was no sin, no evil. And their righteousness was from God, through faith, trust, in Him. When Adam took that fruit from Eve and ate, sin entered the world and brought disorder. It brought pain, anger, suffering, and death – all a result of sin, of rebellion against the holy will and intention of the Creator for His creation.
And that disorder is now the reality of the world in which we live. St. Paul notes in Romans 8 that even creation itself groans, subjected to futility, in bondage to corruption of sin imposed upon it. God’s creation now becomes a source of danger, of violence in storm, wind, and wave, of animals that now live as predator and prey. The big disaster isn’t human pollution or global warming or whatever else gets dreamed up. It is the effects of the Fall of sin that infects all of creation and brings disorder to what was declared good when God created.
But it’s not just out there, or back then, but it’s here (within me). Human nature has become completely corrupted, disordered, because of sin. A disordered heart and human nature leads to disordered living. We do not fear, love, and trust in God above all things. We have not loved God with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. Husbands and wives argue. Children are disobedient toward parents and other authorities. Parents irritated with children. Confusion over identity, what it means to be human, male and female as God created and intended. Terrorism, acts of violence, and more plague the world over and over again. Even the institution that God has given to maintain order – government authorities – can’t keep its own house in order.
And if that isn’t a depressing enough picture for you, in the end, the disordering effect of sin brings only thing: death. Sin always brings death. St. Paul explains it this way, again in Romans (5:12), “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…” Sin and death disorders what God has created, it undoes what God has created us to be.
There is no way for us back to Eden. There’s no way back of the tree of life. From Adam and Eve onward, the only way is to the tree of the cross. God sends His Son took humanity into Himself, without the corruption of sin, perfectly ordered, true God and true man, he came as the second Adam in order to restore order and the image of God in us. To do this, He had to deal with the main problem, with sin. St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus received the punishment and ultimate consequence of sin that we deserve – he died. Obedient unto death, and then three days later rose from the dead! He defeated death because He had dealt with sin on the cross. He defeated your death because He dealt with your sin on the cross.
New creation of God’s good order is being restored as the disorder of sin is being removed through forgiveness. Just like the first go around, God brings the goodness back into creation by means of the same creative Word. He declares you to be righteous, good, re-ordered back toward Him and His intent for the sake of Christ alone. In Christ, you are a new creation. The Holy Spirit who hovered over the face of the waters, hovers over the water in your baptism, so that by the Word the Spirit renews you. The Word and the Sacraments order your hearts again upon the right thing, the good thing, the good One.
This side of eternal glory and the new heavens and new earth, we still struggle, but we do in sure and certain hope of the consummation of the new creation in Christ. God’s order will be restored. In the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ He has acted to overcome tohoo wabohoo. Through the Means of Grace God has already made us a new creation now and we look forward to the Last Day when once again all things will be very good and there will be no more tohoo wabohoo. We live knowing that Jesus Christ will return in glory on the Last Day. When that happens He will give us a share in his resurrected and immortal body. He will restore creation and free it from the slavery of corruption. And we will rest with Christ, an eternal Sabbath, in the new heavens and the new earth. Come Lord Jesus. Amen.
This sermon was inspired by a sermon preached by Pr. Mark Surburg in 2013. http://surburg.blogspot.com/2013/10/sermon-for-twenty-first-sunday-after.html
Funeral Sermon for Bob Schaefer
Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:16-21
November 6, 2019
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID