Trinity 18 2018

Matthew 22:34-46

September 30, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

“If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”  That’s an old saying, and maybe one that even the Sadducees and the Pharisees knew about, for it sure seems like this is how they lived.  Trying to trick Jesus, the Pharisees had just asked Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. He didn’t fall into their trap, and His answer to render unto Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is God’s stumped them. Then the Sadducees have a go at it next and asked whose wife would a widow seven times over be in the resurrection, which they didn’t even believe in.   He astonished them with his teaching and with His rebuke that they don’t know the Scripture nor the power of God.

And so now the Pharisees try again, this time asking Jesus which is the greatest commandment in the Law. God had given many laws to His people: moral laws, ceremonial laws, civil laws. And the Pharisees had added to these as well. And so a lawyer, one versed in these laws as a profession, which of all of these was the most important. These are no innocent questions.  All of this takes place sometime between Palm Sunday and Wednesday of Holy Week.  They were close, very close, to being able to accuse Jesus and have evidence that He is a blasphemer, that He is one who is allowing people to think of Him as, to worship Him as, God. To a Jew, there was no greater offense than this. Their Creed, their basic statement of faith boiled down to what is called the “Great Shema”, from Deuteronomy 6, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One.”

Knowing this of course, it is not an accident that Jesus’ answers this trick question by completing that very same verse and the following one from Deuteronomy, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  All the commandments, in particular the 10 Commandments are summarized by these two: love God, and love your neighbor.

Jesus doesn’t stop there. And Jesus doesn’t ask them a trick question.  “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is He?” The better question aren’t the ones that we ask Jesus, but the ones that Jesus asks us. Who is the Christ? Now that’s the real question.  They answer correctly, “The Son of David.”  And so Jesus is.  Fully man, in the lineage of King David Himself.  But they don’t answer fully, nor do they believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. It is because Jesus is the Christ, the Son of David and the Son of God, that He can perform all the miracles that He did. It is because Jesus is the Christ, the Son of David and the Son of God, that David calls Him Lord.  It is because Jesus is the Christ, the Son of David and the Son of God, that He is the Lord whom they should love with all their heart and soul and mind. 

They don’t want to believe that Jesus is God.  But they can’t prove otherwise either.  No one can accuse Jesus of sin. His miracles were undeniable. His teaching was consistent with the Law, with Moses, with the Prophets, with the entire Old Testament.  Just a day or two earlier He was acclaimed by the palm waving crowds that He is the One who comes in the name of the Lord, the One who comes to save His people.  He speaks with the authority that only God has.

But soon they came up with a new plan, a plan to see if this Jesus would bleed like a man.  And He does.  And as He bled out of the nail holes in His hands and feet, from the scourging on His back and the crown of thorns upon His head, they mock Him, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself! If you are the Son of God, comes down from the cross…. He saved others; He cannot save Himself… He trusts in God; let God deliver Him now, if He desires Him. For He said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (Matthew 27:40, 42a, 43).

Talk about blasphemy.  On the cross, as the Son of David and the Son of God hung dying, they pit Jesus’ divinity against His love and His mercy. It is there on the cross that Jesus lives out what love actually is, and fulfills the greatest commandment in the Law: His love of God the Father in submitting to death upon the cross, and His love for His neighbor, for all people, by dying for them.  For as Jesus says in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

It is necessary for Jesus, true God and true man, to suffer in this way. It is the act of purest love: the love of God toward humanity.  This is how the Lord sets His heart in love on the world, in that He sends His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. This is how God loves even the Pharisees who mock and murder, the Sadducees who ridicule and rebuke, you and I who all too often lack to show the love that has been shown to us.

Repent. For you do not love the Lord with all your heart nor all your soul nor all your strength. You do not love your neighbor as you ought. You try, for sure, but your sin still clings to your mortal flesh in this life. As baptized children of God, your sinful will has been regenerated, a new man in Christ has been born, the Holy Spirit dwells in you to lead and guide you in all truth according to the Word of Christ. You have received the grace of God that was given you in Jesus Christ, you have been enriched in Him in all speech and knowledge. Do not harden your heart like those of long ago, and like many still do today.  But let us be like that centurion who stood at the foot of the cross, and when seeing all that took place, proclaim, “Truly this was the Son of God!” And let us believe and confess with all the saints of God that Jesus the Christ has been raised from the dead, and out of His perfect love, has overcome the sharpness of death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers (Te Deum).

The sum of the commandments is love, a love rooted in Christ’s action resulting in your deliverance from sin, a love that fulfills all God’s commandments.  As you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, love Jesus, the Lord your God, with all our heart, soul, and mind; and love your neighbor, who is beloved by Jesus, one for whom Jesus died, as Jesus has loved you. God is faithful

Trinity 17 2018

Luke 14:1-11; Ephesians 4:1-6

September 23, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

Luke 7:11-17

Trinity 16

September 16, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

The woman’s situation was desperate. She was a widow, and now her son had died. Her future was uncertain. And so, understandably, she wept. We don’t know why or how he died.  We do know that this grieving woman and her only son were surrounded by a crowd as he was being carried out of town to be buried when they came across another crowd. This crowd was gathered around the only Son of God, who too would die and be carried outside of town to be buried. 

As these two crowds converge, the Lord Jesus sees this grieving mother and has compassion on her. There is no mention of anyone’s faith here. The grieving and widowed mother does not run to Jesus for help. Neither the disciples nor the crowds petition Jesus to do something. The dead boy does not ask for healing. This is important. Jesus acts not because He is asked, but because of His compassion for this woman. And so first He tells her to stop weeping.  It’s not that He was rebuking her for shedding her tears for her dead son, but that there was no more need for crying. For death could not hold her only son.

And so Jesus touches the funeral bier. Normally, this would have made a person ceremonially unclean. Yet instead of being defiled, Jesus cleans and heals. The power of cleanliness and life is in Him. Jesus speaks, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the son of the widow rises.

And isn’t that just the way that Jesus works. Jesus speaks, and the dead rise. In Luke’s Gospel this is all very important. Raising of the dead is the only prophetic miracle that Jesus had not yet performed. The raising of the dead is the miracle which demonstrates Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophetic hope and that with Him the kingdom of God has come. Jesus is greater than Elijah who restored the life of a widow’s son in our Old Testament reading.

And the result is faith. Those who witnessed this miracle glorified God. The crowds recognize and confess the visitation of God. God has visited His people because they see the signs of God’s activity in Jesus.  “A great prophet has arisen among us.” The crowd says.  “Arisen,” which comes from the same word that Jesus used to call the dead man to life. This resurrection foreshadows two others in the Gospel of Luke: first, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, and more importantly, Jesus’ own resurrection.

By these resurrections, Jesus is teaching them, and us, who He is.  If Jesus is only a teacher and miracle worker, then He has come to lessen human suffering. This is the Jesus that the world wants: the social justice warrior, the anti-establishment revolutionary, the radical rabbi.

But we who have heard and have believed the Word of God, understand that Jesus must also suffer rejection, and even death. We know what kind of prophet this Jesus truly is: a teacher, a miracle worker, and the One who will suffer on behalf of the world and die upon the cross. We know of Easter, that death cannot keep the only Son of God. St. Paul writes in Romans 6:9, “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again: death no longer has dominion over Him.”  We know that God will do for us Christians what He has done for Christ. He pulled Christ out from the closed and sealed grave in an instant. As Christ spoke to this dead man and commanded Him to rise, so too will we be commanded to rise from our graves, rise to life eternal with Him.

This miracle gives special comfort to all who mourn. The dead are not beyond the voice of Christ. It doesn’t matter how long death has held a person, nor the age or time of death, for all will hear His voice. He calls not just into His presence, but in the presence of one another. He will restore the dead to the living, and the living to the dead. He will wipe away all tears in the final consummation of compassion and pity.  Christ’s compassion and love, as taught in the Epistle is far more abundant that all we ask or think, and the power at work within us will give life to our mortal bodies through His Holy Spirit, who dwells in us.

Matthew 6:24-34

Trinity 15

Seeking the Kingdom

September 9, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

“Work, work, work. I have so much work to do today that I must spend the first three hours in prayer.”  I was reminded of that quote from Martin Luther a couple of weeks ago when talking to one of the teachers at our school.  School has begun. Teachers and students getting into the groove. Sports are back in full swing. Hunting season is here for the next few months. And then there’s the all the normal family stuff. Cooking and cleaning, housework and yardwork. As a husband, I learned a lesson very early on in marriage: the honey do list is never ending. There’s always more to do.  Work, work, work.

And how easy it is to let this work, whatever may it may, wear us down, wear us out, worried, and warried.  You know what this feels like, I don’t have the explain it in great detail.  But it is at these times, which come all too often into the lives of God’s people, that we need to be reminded of our Lord’s words in our Gospel reading for today. What we heard was just a small part of Jesus’ sermon on the mount.  In the immediate section, Jesus warned about laying up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal...” He concludes by saying, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The heart will dwell on what a person treasures the most.  And now today, we listen to Jesus’ words to the same effect, that we ought not be anxious, ought not worry, about those very earthly things but that we treasure the kingdom of God and the righteousness of Christ above all things. 

And this is nothing new for the people of God.  My favorite Psalm, and one of my favorite passages in the Scripture is Psalm 27. The first verse was my Confirmation verse, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” And then I often sign letters or emails with verse 4, “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek in His temple.”

“One thing” There is a singleness of mind, of heart, of will.  It is the best answer to distracting fears: to gaze upon and to seek the Lord.  It is a preoccupation with God’s person, with His presence. It is the essence or worship, of discipleship. For if we seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness, that is, set all this before all other things, and seek other things for the sake of these, we ought not to be anxious when we lack.  This is why St. Paul can later say in his first letter to the church in Corinth, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

External choices reveal internal spiritual condition. It is of no good to try to convince the heart is not set a right when attention is focused on earthly things that will rot and fail.  Prioritizing anything else above the hearing and studying of God’s Word is sin. The biblical model is that Christ comes first, then family, then everything else.  I often hear that people don’t have the time to do devotions, to read the Bible, to come to Church. To be blunt, that is false and you need to repent whenever that becomes your attitude.  The Lord has given you the time, 24 hours of each day, to thank and praise, serve and obey Him.  The issue isn’t one of having enough time. The real issue is what do you spend your time on?  Work, work, work. I have so much work to do today, that I must spend my first three hours in prayer.

Rather than seeking the things of this world, the accumulation of our stuff, devoting our life to health, wealth, and happiness, we should intentionally and deliberately seek the things that are above (Col 3:1), that is, seek the kingdom of God, the saving deeds and righteousness of God which has come down to earth in Jesus. Make use of the Word and Sacraments, the gifts that He has given His people, both where He may be found and where He finds us. It is in the Word and Sacraments that Christ seeks you, that Christ brings His kingdom to you, that Christ delivers His righteous to you. All received by faith in Him.  And then entrust your daily life to His care. You are of far more value, far more worth, than the birds of the air or the flowers in the field.  The 5^th and 6^th grade class at our school ought to know this, and know it well, because they see it every day.  “God doesn’t love us because of our worth, we are of worth because God loves us.” – Luther

If you ever doubt that, or wonder, or worry if it is true, look here to the cross. Upon the cross, God shows us what love truly is, what it truly looks like, by the death of His Son. It is at the cross that your sins are forgiven. It is at the cross that your life is won. It is at the cross that God shows you your worth. It is at the cross where we see that kingdom of God does not guarantee worldly success.  It does not mean that you will never feel anxious, or depressed, or unworthy, or scared, or in want. Each new day brings with it trouble of its own. But it is at the cross where your unrighteousness is atoned for and where the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus is displayed.

The primary response to Jesus’ teaching is to turn and believe again that the heart of the Christian is founded upon Christ, upon the life and the identity that He gives. This is where a believer’s heart is fixed. The goodness of God, the beauty of the cross, the truth of His Word. When the heart is fixed on Christ and His promises and His word, then priorities change and our freedom to choose what really matters, what eternally matters, is evidence of our faith in Jesus.

We love God because God is the highest good, and the love of Him is the greatest good that we can do. We were created for the sake of the God, therefore it is fitting to give Him the best that we have, which is our love. Your love will find all you desire from the Lord God. Do you love riches? God is the richest of all. Do you love power? God is all powerful. Do you love beauty? God is the most beautiful? Do you love pleasure? God is the greatest pleasure. In this One who is Good, everything is good. Our souls will not have rest until we cling to God in love, for Christ is the center our desires, our love, our life.

Trinity 14 2018

Luke 17:11-19

September 2, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

Last week’s Gospel reading we heard of the Good Samaritan while this Sunday shows us the thankful Samaritan.

St. Luke tells us that this miracle takes place when the Lord is travelling to Jerusalem. This is the last journey to Jerusalem that Jesus would make; it was to offer Himself as the Lamb for the slaughter and the sacrifice. On this journey, Luke tell us that He was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.  This was not the direct route, nor the shortest by any means. He was meandering His way along, with a desire to help and heal all who were oppressed by sin, death, and the devil. As He entered a village, He was met by lepers. According to God’s command, lepers were to avoid other people, cover their upper lip, wear torn clothing and cry out “unclean, unclean” (Leviticus 13:45-46).  Because of their sickness, they cry out to Jesus, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Since they approach Him prayerfully, He comes to their aid.

These lepers give us a picture of all humanity, which has been infected with the leprosy of sin. It is a disease that spreads, wreaking havoc in its wake. It cannot be healed by human means, but if someone is to be healed their flesh must be renewed, just as if he is to be delivered from sin, he must be renewed by the Holy Spirit. The knowledge our sin and our need is the first step in knowing our Savior. We must recognize that we are totally unworthy of Christ’s help and are distant and far separated from God. And cry to Him for mercy, in the faith and certainty that He hears and He answers.

God’s mercy is for the unworthy.  Jesus isn’t about breaking down social barriers, or about welcoming the outcast, or challenging societal views on the needy or gender roles or sexual orientation. Jesus isn’t about migrants and refugees and border control. Jesus is the about the forgiveness of sins, about dying upon the cross to restore the brokenness of the world.  Jesus is about taking the disease of sin upon Himself so that those who believe in Him might rise and go their way being made well again, saved, healed, whole.  True health, true faith, true life.

Jesus speaks to the lepers and they are healed.  It is simply by His Word that He brings this healing, this restoration. The Lord communicates the forgiveness of our sins in this way, by His Word.  It is the Word, combined with the water, that makes the baptism. It is the Word, added to the bread and wine, that makes it the Holy Eucharist. It is the Word spoken by God’s people to forgive and retain sins.

After all this, it is sad that only one of the ten returns to Jesus to give Him thanks.  This is same Greek word used by Jesus during His last supper as He took the bread and then the wine. Eucharist. This single Samaritan had acquired peace for His soul, while the other had only regained physical health, which would be of little help to them on the day of their death.  This Samaritan brought forth the fruit of the Spirit, as St. Paul talks about in the Epistle.  The other nine gratified the desires of the flesh.  It is a sad reality that one often begins in the spirit but ends in the flesh, who receive the grace of the Lord and yet walk away from Him with little to no thought afterward.  How often this happens! Many Israelites were led out of Egypt, yet only a few entered the Promised Land. How many Christians have been started out in a good way, healed of their sickness only to go on their merry way with little to no thought of God or Christ or His Church ever again?

What happens after cleansing is just as important as what happens before. When we have been cleansed, purified, declared righteous for the sake of Christ, gratitude sends us back to Him over and over again. The restoration from deadly sin is followed by fellowship with Christ, and those once blessed must return.  Arron and Amanda, that means that you too have a responsibility to bring Archer back to Jesus again and again in eucharist, in thanksgiving.  David and Debbie, as sponsors, you are to encourage them to do this. And Zion, as their family in Christ, you are to pray with them and for them, help them in their raising their son in the Christian faith, just as you all have that responsibility for one another.

We learn here in our Gospel reading that we are to continuously give thanks to Christ for His acts of mercy and charity. Sunday is a day when we return to the Lord’s presence to thank and praise Him, a day of thanksgiving for the grace of Holy Baptism. Sunday is a commemoration of Easter, the day of resurrection, a day to receive renewal again of our baptismal grace, a day when the Holy Eucharist is received as a continuation and deliverance of that same grace delivered in baptism.

Listen to this prayer, called the Proper Preface, that is said right before Communion, “It is truly good, right, and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to You, holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who, out of love for His fallen creation, humbled Himself by taking on the form of a servant, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Risen from the dead, He has freed us from eternal death and given us life everlasting…” The Lord has freed us, healed us, from our leprous sin, and so we give thanks by receiving His Eucharist, His sacrifice, His body and blood. We kneel to receive and give thanks, and then at His command we rise.

Jesus commends the faith of the Samaritan who alone gives thanks for his healing. He tells the thankful Samaritan, “Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well.” It is Jesus who sends us on our way, the way of the cross, with His healing, with His blessing, and with His Word.

Trinity 10 2018

Luke 19:41-48

A House of Prayer

August 5, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

Trinity 9 2018

Luke 16:1-13

Faithful with Little, Faithful with Much

July 29, 2018

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

Today in our Gospel reading we hear of the parable of a rich man who had a manager.   The man in the parable is the manager over the rich man’s possessions.  The manager does not own the property and wealth that he is supervising.  Instead, it all belongs to the rich man.  The manager has the responsibility for supervising how it is used.  He is to see to it that the rich man’s property and wealth are managed in ways that cause them to increase for the rich man.  The manager has a duty to both his master and to those who are under him. 

It is interesting to note that the word “manager”, which can also be translated as “steward” is the same word that St. Paul applies to those who serve God in his Church.  Nick Whitney, listen up, because this is going to apply to you. The apostle writes, “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:1-2).  He says of those who may become pastors, “For an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach” (Titus 1:7).

While not everyone is called into the Office of the Holy Ministry as a steward of the mysteries of God, every Christian is in fact a steward of God.  We are God’s stewards because God created us, and then through Holy Baptism he recreated us.  In the Small Catechism’s explanation of the First Article of the Creed, we confess, “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.”  God made us, and so we belong to him. We may talk about “our body” but the fact remains that if God does not continue to take care of our body it cannot live.  Our body, mind and all that it can do is a gift from God, but it never ceases to belong to God.  It is a gift that God puts into our management.

All things we have come from His hands, and He has given us all things (1 Chronicles 30:16). Christ does not deal out all thing equally. To one He gives much, to another little, but it all come from Him, even the smallest things. If God has given us more than what is necessary for this body and life, we should not think that these things belong solely to us, but that we have merely been placed over them as stewards. And if we feel that God has given us less, we need to remember that God gives as He sees fit and as we need, not always as we want.

Since we are managers of the Lord’s creation, we must not think that these earthly things are to be used at our pleasure and according to our own purposes. We should use things for the spread of the Word of God, for the preservation of churches and church schools, for support of our leaders and helping those in need, for that is what the Lord has put before us.

When it turns out that the manager in today’s parable had not been doing what he had been tasked to do, he is told to turn in the books because he can no longer serve as manager. He squandered all that he had been given and a day of accounting had come.  His unfaithfulness does not remain hidden when the dishonest manager squanders the goods in his care. He has wasted his master’s goods and not earned the love of those under his authority.

The Lord pays close attention to the way that we handle His creation and His gifts to us. As a faithful friend, the Lord lets us know far in advance that we must give an account one day. It should come as no surprise, and not without warning.  In Luke 12:48, we hear, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.”

The parable of the dishonest manager shows the responsibility for our high calling as the people of God, as recipients of God’s grace and favor found in Christ.  The Epistle illustrates the same. It shows how the history of the Jews serve as a warning for us today. A chosen people who rejected God’s grace in Christ, and in turn became a rejected people. A people who trusted too much in their genealogy and sense of entitlement rather than in the promised Messiah. Christians too must beware of the dangers of security based in our efforts or work or lineage, or of despair, in thinking that God could not, would not, love or forgive you.

As God is our Creator,  He also recreates us as we are born again of water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism (John 3:5).  He gives the gift of faith and joins us to the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:12).  God gives us the first fruits of the Holy Spirit – the guarantee that we will share in the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:23).  He provides the 0assurance that when Christ returns in glory on the Last Day He “will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).   He promises the day when our bodies will never again die (1 Corinthians 15:50-55) and the world itself will be very good once again (Romans 8:18-21).

This identity as a new creation in Christ shapes our management of all we have.  In the parable Jesus brings up the shrewdness of the world and we see how the sons of this world are. At times they are almost consumed by their efforts for worldly gain. Where do we find equal zeal and work on the part of Christians for those things of eternal value.

The zeal of the world in their earthly plans ought to be an example to us in our striving toward something better, something greater: our eternal goal. We may imitate the wisdom of this world in their shrewdness, but greater in that our works are carried out in faith in Christ and in service toward our neighbor. All too often though the world uses its wisdom in a greater way than we do. Jesus says is plain and clear, “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” Since we are managers, then let us show our faithfulness to God and to man. Let our love and our confession of faith in Christ be so real and beyond a doubt that the world cannot help but notice Christ as work within us. So let us manage the Lord’s gifts as He has equipped us to do. Let us give thanks to the giver of all good gifts, the One who sustains our life and has prepared an eternal inheritance for those whom He calls His own.