The King of the Jews.  So read the sign that was posted above the head of Jesus as He hung upon the cross.  All four Gospels record these words written on the sign, so apparently it is something that we ought to note. During a crucifixion, it was common to post the victim’s crime so that whoever saw it would be warned.  Here, Pilate stated Jesus’ title as a way to mock the Jews, brought these charges to Pilate.  Whenever you see a crucifix with the letters “INRI” this is what it means. It’s the Latin acronym for Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

There He hung, the King of the Jews, dying upon the cross, mocked by His own.  The rulers scoffed at Him. They did not deny that He saved and raised others, but reasoned that if He will not save Himself, He is not the Messiah. A king that didn’t save Himself isn’t much of king. 

Even one of the two criminals Jesus hung between recognized this.  He railed against Jesus saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” It’s not that this criminal was any greater of a sinner than anyone else.  Yet how he treated and received Christ determined his eternal destiny in hell.  He mocked and insulted the Son of God.  He even asked Christ to save him, yet not as a repentant and faithful heart begging its Savior for salvation.  No, this criminal could not see that Christ was even in that moment purchasing a kingdom with His death.  If he hoped for anything, the criminal hoped for a display of power by Christ, if He really was the Christ, to get down from the Cross and take the criminals with Him. 

How often this cry has gone up in the world, rolling off the tongues of countless people who find themselves in trouble.  They cry out to Jesus, not in faith, but in anger and frustration, in rebellion because of their own sinfulness.  What kind of God are you, anyway, that you would let people suffer?! What kind of king is crowned with thorns, bleeds, and dies? If you can’t save yourself, you can’t save anyone else either! For all extensive purposes, this Jesus is a loser.  Not even His own people accepted Him.  St. John wrote that “He came to His own and His own people did not receive Him.”  

But then St. John goes on, “But to those who did receive Him, who believe in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:11-12). These verses describe perfectly the two criminals. Both were bad people. Both were sinners.  Both were dying because of their sin.  One rejects that Jesus is the Christ, the other believes. One bore the punishment for his sin. The other saw his own sin in light of the King who hung dying next to him.  He feared God, since he knew that he was rightly under condemnation.  He did not consider his own crucifixion to be unjust, since he had committed sinful deeds.  Yet the criminal also saw in Christ the only innocent Man, who deserved no punishment.  He saw that Christ was dying in fulfillment of Scripture to usher in the kingdom of God.  So the man humbly begs, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom!” (23:42).

And He does.  Jesus responds with words of pure joy: “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise!” (Luke 23:43). Paradise, a fulfillment of the garden of Eden, and the crucified criminal will be there with Jesus that very day, for he believes that the crucified Jesus is King, even over a dying sinner like himself. We hear an absolution in His words to the repentant criminal.  There is the promise of eternal life.  There is the assurance that Christ does not see the criminal's sins, which are surely great.  Instead, He opens for Him the gates of heaven through His gracious Word.

So upon the Cross, Jesus spoke these words to indicate the purpose of His sacrifice: To restore God’s people to paradise by His death and to usher in His kingdom to all who believe in Him.  In the SC, Luther explains the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer by saying, “The kingdom of God comes by itself without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may come to us also.  And how does God’s kingdom come? God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.”

This is the purpose of the Divine Service, this is why the Spirit gathers us over and over again in this place – to deliver the kingdom of God to us. We hear those same words of absolution, receive the same forgiveness, inherit the same paradise today.  The kingdom of God exists wherever and whenever the king is ruling by means of His gospel. This is why we litter our churches with crosses, the instrument and sign of death.

At the Cross, we meet the end of Days in the death of the Christ of God, the Chosen One. Yet we need not feel the terrors of the last Day.  We may be a little afraid at first when we don’t know what is happening.  But when we straighten up and lift up our heads on that last Day and behold the risen Christ in all His glory.  Then we will remember that we are His, united with Him by virtue of our Baptism, and that He is our gracious King who has come to save us.

This crucified and resurrected Christ is the Judge who determines who shall enter His Paradise, as ridiculous as that seems to those who scoff at the Son of God.  Whether we are sinners or not is not the issue to Christ.  It is whether we have faith in His promises, a faith that receives and holds on to the merits of Christ.

Today, Jesus invites you to join the criminal on the cross and confess your sin in repentant faith.  To confess, to look to Jesus in faith, to rebuke those who reject Him, to suffer and die with Christ and be raised to eternal life with Him on the Last Day.  Jesus serves you with the promise of paradise through the proclamation that your sins are forgiven in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the gates of His kingdom are open to you today.  When our last hour comes, Jesus will have the same words for all who believe in Him that He had for the criminal, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Amen

Luke 21:5-28

Raise Your Heads

Twenty Sixth Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 28C

November 13, 2016

Matthew 5:1-12

Blessed are the Saints

All Saints’ Day (Observed)

November 6, 2016

I can’t tell you who to vote for.  I can tell you that as a Christian, you have the duty to vote according to your conscience, which as a Christian is captive only to the Word of God.  In short, we’re to do our best to elect those who most closely administer their duties according to the God’s will – to maintain peace and order, to promote good and punish evil.  And we recognize that God is one who defines what those are. We don’t need to try to seek out God’s will in that as if it were something secret. He’s already given it to us in His Law, which is nothing else that the Creator’s will for His creation.  For that we look to the Ten Commandments, particularly the Second Table regarding the love toward our neighbor.

In the midst of such troubled times, there are some things which are certain.  Whoever is elected, we will still have our poor and needy among us (Matthew 26:11). In all likelihood these will be pretty much the same people, the same problems, and the same needs.  And the answer will be the same no matter what – Jesus Christ crucified for the salvation of the world. That is the eternal Gospel proclaimed from age to age.  What has lasting significance is not who our country elects as President, but a much more important election.  The election of God’s saints which comes through the blessedness received by faith in Christ.  And that is what All Saints' Day is all about--God's election. And God's election is first and foremost all about His Son.

Jesus is the One who comes in the name of the Lord to make us blessed along with all the saints who have gone before us. He is the Christ, the elected, the anointed, One of God to whom you have been joined as a member of His body the holy, the sanctified, Christian Church. Thus you have been joined by virtue of your baptism with the elect of every nation, and every generation, who are one with Christ. So in order to be blessed, you must be with Christ, for again, He is the blessed One. This is why and what we sing in the antiphon of our All Saints' Introit from Revelation 7:14b "These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”  You are among these. That is what the Divine Service of Word & Sacrament is all about--declaring and making you one of those who white washed in the red blood of the Lamb. And thus, making you one of the blessed with Christ Jesus, the Son of God who is His Blessed One.

So, blessed are you, for this is what it means to be a saint. That you are blessed, holy, set apart by and for God.  God is proclaiming to you in our Gospel reading today that you are among those who are blessed. Sacred paradox of the kingdom of heaven. The power of the Beatitudes which Jesus preaches lie in the reversal of human values. They see the present in light of the future.  “Blessedness” moves beyond emotion to a state of being, beyond a temporal world, one that is not swayed by what happens to someone in the moment, but is instead characteristic of a person’s identity. The “poor in spirit” are not necessarily all that happy about their present state of affairs; but they are blessed in knowing that they are loved by God and their destiny is the “kingdom of heaven.” Those who mourn could hardly be considered happy; but they are blessed in knowing that as children of the God who has triumphed over death, they can truly find comfort. The “meek” are usually the ones who get trampled in the stampede of life; but they are blessed in knowing that the Lord of the universe humbled himself, taking the form of servant, even to the point of death on a cross so that they could inherit the earth. Those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” sound rather needy—and they are; but acknowledging that, and they know the Righteous One will satisfy them with all they need in this life and into the next. The “merciful” usually get taken advantage of, rarely leading to happiness; but the merciful know God has had mercy on us by forgiving sins. “The pure in heart” are considered either naïve or too innocent to ever get very far in life; but they know the One who has called them by name is always purifies all unrighteousness.  “Peacemakers” may be applauded for a time, but worldly peace never lasts; but the peacemakers know the One brings an eternal peace that passes all understanding.  And finally, it is doubtful that “those who are persecuted for righteousness’s sake, those who are reviled and have all kinds of evil spoken against them falsely because of Christ” are ever really happy; but they are blessed in the knowledge that they follow a great line of prophets and apostles who understood their identity in the One who was martyred for them.

In this eternal election, the only vote that counts belongs to God, and in His declaration of the blessed.  That comes only through faith in the Gospel.  All the while, we are reminded why God calls us to put not our trust in princes. Psalm 146 states, “³ Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. ⁴ When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. ⁵ Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God…”  Regardless of our outcome on Tuesday, as those who have been declared a saint through faith you in Christ, you are elected to a high and holy position. For your election is secure and it is finished and it is blessed into eternity.

He’d been it the controversy for almost 4 years.  On April 17, 1521 Luther was told that they were waiting, and he was called to give an account of himself at the Diet of Wurms, a council convened and overseen by the Holy Roman Emperor in the German city of Worms.   The Holy Roman Emperor, German princes, theologians, city officials, pastors all waiting to hear from Luther. They brought him over to the building next door and he was told that they would hear him at 4:00pm.  The time came and he was ushered into the room.  There before him was a pile of 25 books that he had written. One of these was his writing called The Freedom of a Christian. In there, he wrote to the same issue that we hear Jesus speak in the Gospel reading for today from John 8: that of our freedom in Christ. He wrote therein one of his most famous quotes, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”^[1]

John Eck, the main proponent, pointed to these books and asked Luther if he was ready to admit that he wrote these books and that they contain heresy.  With nervousness, he answered.  “Yes, they are mine.” He could not speak to the heresy though, and asked for specifics.  Later, he asked for more time, he was granted a day.  We still have the very notes he scribbled that night in preparation for the next day.  And then the time came.  He was questioned again about the heresy and he was asked to give only one answer, only one word, “Recant.”  To take it all back, to deny what he has written.  The first day, he was very nervous, but this day, he stood confident.  The discussion went on, several times Luther was urged to shut up and simply say the word, “I recant.”  Finally, it came down to the end. What Luther said next took a hand in shaping the rest of history.  Knowing he could be executed, what he spoke next he said in both German and Latin, so that all who overheard had no doubt what he said, “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils alone, for they have contradicted each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.  God help me. Amen.”

To the frustration of his opponents, he quickly left and was taken outside. Thousands were waiting, and he held up his hands and cried out, “I’m through! I’m through!”  Pretty much from that moment on, he had a death sentence upon him.  Luther refused to recant, refused to take back, the confession that Christ and His Word are the foundation upon which we stand. That the conscience is free from external coercion by anything but the Word of God. That Word is God’s truth, and that this word of truth sets free. Free from sin. Free from death. Free from the devil.  Freely given and freely received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. 

But this freedom comes only from the Son of God who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man.  There is only one way to be a Christian.  There is only way to have freedom of the Gospel.  To abide in the Word. The written and proclaimed Word of God, the incarnate Word of God. To abide in the Word made flesh is the life of faith, it is abundant life flowing from Him to us, and through us to our neighbor. We find our freedom in faith. Or rather, it finds us. This is how we are made free. “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (8:36).

Let us not fall into the trap of the Jews who did not want to recognize their sinfulness. Your sin enslaves you.  It throws the shackles of death upon you. The world, and even sometimes we, are like the Jews are too blind and too stupid even to realize it.  Since the fall, all people are sinners and enslaved to sin, bound to self-centeredness, doomed to death, and blind to their slavery.

And let us also not fall into the trap of the Medieval Church, the idea that a sinner must do something in order make satisfaction and remove the sin before God.  That the sinner must set himself free by means of acts of penance, by good works and fasting, by paying money to try to earn God’s favor. 

The Jesus has died on the cross to forgive your sins and the sins of the world. By faith, and faith alone, your sins are covered by Christ’s blood.  No matter how terrified your conscience. No matter how guilt ridden and ashamed. No matter how dark and twisted your thoughts may be, Christ has set you free.  St. Paul writes the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  Through faith in Christ, you are forgiven, and your conscience is captive to the word of God. “I must listen to the Gospel. It tells me, not what I must do, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for me.” Luther

Your knees may knock’s like Luther on that first day during his trial at the Diet of Worms. But your foundation of Christ will not move and will not fail. And you will stand before the world to be called to confess the truth that sets free, who is Christ our Lord.  And you will be called to recant.  Already, the world calls for us to recant, to take it all back. You believe Jesus is the Son of God and the only way to heaven, recant. You believe that God created man and woman and that marriage is a reflection of Christ’s relationship to the Church and cannot be changed.  You say that life begins at conception and goes until natural death, that abortion and euthanasia are murder of the weakest among us, recant.  You say evolution is a myth, bad science, and irrational but that God created the world by means of His Word of truth, recant.  You say that God has given His Church the keys of the kingdom of God, the authority to proclaim and speak the Word of God as the royal priesthood unto the forgiveness of sins, recant. Recant.  Accommodate. Recant.

We can no longer simply sit by and watch. As Christians, we must stand before our culture and say, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant. God help me. Amen. I will not change my beliefs. I will not give up Sunday mornings for worship. I will not let my children be indoctrinated by a world that does not know Jesus.” The world acts as if it knows how to say and do everything better than God Himself. It treats God like the student, and the world wants to be the master. Instead, we teach our children, in our homes, in our school, in our church, what God has done for them in Christ, and then we teach them how to be missionaries and Christian apologists to their world.

And we will confess, and we will do it joyfully. We will confess by abiding in the Word of Christ, by living out our marriages in a Christian manner, by preserving and protecting life at all stages, by speaking the truth in love.  And the world will hate us because of it.  It will not like it and it will not accept it.  It will seek to belittle God’s church, to shame God’s people, and we will suffer with joy and shout it all the louder – The righteousness of God is received through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

And we will say, recant sin. You have been forgiven, sin.  You did your worst to the Son of God and He sets His people free by His death and resurrection. In Christ, you are enslaved, sin.  You are the prisoner. Recant devil. I am free of your snares. You are condemned and have no power over me. Recant death. For Christ is risen. And we will stand in the grave, never to die again.  With Luther, with all the saints in glory, with the prophets and apostles of old, we are captive to the Word of God, the truth that sets free. God help us. Amen. 

* Based in part off of Matthew Harrison’s sermon preached on July 9, 2016 at the LCMS Synodical Convention

Luke 18:1-8

Do Not Lose Heart

Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 24C

October 16, 2016

Surprise! Either people love them or they hate them, but everyone feels some way about surprises.  Some enjoy the feeling of being shocked and surprised, the feeling of the heart skipping a beat or jumping up. Others hate the feeling, hate the shock, hate the fuss.  Same event, two very different feelings about it.

This dynamic is similar to what we encounter when Philip and Nathaniel respectively see and hear of Jesus for the first time. Through His only Son, God revealed His greatest surprise for a world in darkness: Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, has come from above to dispel the darkness. Yet we have two entirely different reactions to this news.

After calling Andrew and his brother, Simon Peter, Jesus found Philip and called him to be His disciple too. “Follow me!” After spending time with Jesus, Philip learned the basics about this man from Galilee and shared the good news about Him with Nathanael. We sense excitement in Philip’s words: “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph!” Philip speaks as if he had found an invaluable treasure and he must tell everyone about it. He receives the news with a joyful heart. Philip sees Jesus through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, the eyes of faith. He has literally seen the Light!

What about Nathanael? Through the mouth of Philip, Nathanael hears of Jesus for the first time. But his reaction is entirely different from Philip’s. We see no excitement upon Nathanael’s hearing of the good news, but rather a sense of suspicion about the Galilean Jesus: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael’s is not a joyful attitude, but a guarded posture. He receives the news with a cautious disposition at best, and a doubtful one at worst. Unlike Philip, Nathanael sees Jesus through the eyes of the flesh, somewhere in that spectrum between disbelief and unbelief. He is literally in the dark! The Light has yet to overcome it.

The question remains: Can anything good come out of Nazareth in Galilee? The odds seem to be against Galilee. The northern province of Galilee is a land too close to unclean Gentiles and too far from holy Jerusalem in the southern province of Judea. No self-respecting Judean Israelite would look for the Son of God, the King of Israel, in such an unexpected place as Galilee of the Gentiles. Unlike their counterparts in Judea, Galilean Jews speak with strange accents and are known for a less than clean record on following prescribed Jewish laws. Why look for God’s power and wisdom in Galilee? It makes no sense! Is not the great city of Jerusalem the real center of kingly power and rabbinic wisdom? Are not God’s holy temple and priests in the holy city? Are not the learned Pharisees and scribes there, too? In short, are not the clean, pure, and righteous Israelites to be found in Jerusalem? Can God truly work out His salvation from an unlikely place such as Nazareth in Galilee, and among such unlikely folks as Galileans?

God surprises us. We often look for power and wisdom in the wrong place, in the best we humans have to offer, in our holiness, purity, and righteousness. Yet it is in Jesus of Nazareth, the unassuming man from Galilee, that we are called to see the power and the wisdom of God at work in our lives. We are called to fix our eyes not on ourselves, but on Jesus. Not on our holiness, but on Jesus’ holiness. We are reminded that we are not the light. Jesus is the Light of the World.

To the surprised and perplexed, to the cautious and guarded, to those in disbelief or doubt and seeking answers, Jesus appears and invites them to Himself: “Come and see.” God surprises us again and again, inviting us to see with the eyes of the Holy Spirit what mighty deeds He can do in the most unlikely places and among the most unlikely characters. He calls us once again to see the Light, wherever He shines, even in Galilee and among Galileans! When we ask ourselves, like Nathanael, “Can anything good come out of here?” Jesus gently sends us a Philip who invites us on His behalf to “come and see” that the Lord can do great things in and out of lowly Galilee. Through Philip, we are called anew to “come and see” that the love of God in Christ Jesus knows no ethnic, racial, linguistic, tribal, or geographic boundaries.  And by the grace of God, He even uses people just like you to invite others to come and see the Lord.

What would our church look like if we did this?  What would happen if all of you here today were to invite just one person this week to come and see what the Lord is doing?  You believe that Jesus is the Christ and that is good.  Don’t keep it to yourself.

What is the church but a beautiful fellowship of Galileans? A marginal people called out of darkness into the light of the Son. A people once dead raised to new life through faith in God’s Son. Through strangers in our midst, God reminds us that the Church is a bunch of strangers in a foreign land. We are in the world, but not of the world. To the world, we are complete strangers, speaking with a strange accent and walking to a strange beat. We speak the ancient language of Holy Scripture. We initiate people into the Church by sprinkling them with water at our fonts. We eat the body and drink the blood of God’s Son at our altars. Our pastors forgive us our sins. We even love our enemies. And we sing the tunes of strange-sounding hymns, canticles, and songs to worship our Galilean Lord and God. How odd! How surprising! We, too, are strange Galileans.

On this LWML Sunday, we rejoice in Jesus’ calling and invitation to come and see once again what He has graciously done in our lives, His great deeds of salvation on behalf of Galileans like us. Today, we also receive with great thanksgiving and awesome wonder Jesus’ surprising invitation to come and see what He can do and is indeed doing even among strange Galilean neighbors in our midst to extend His kingdom throughout the world. We also ask the Lord Jesus to open our eyes to His surprising opportunities for partnership with brothers and sisters in Christ from different ethnic and language groups in the United State s and abroad, so that together we might invite even more neighbors to meet Jesus, the man from Galilee, our Light and Life.

Can anything good really come out of Nazareth in Galilee? Yes indeed. Jesus, God’s greatest gift to us, has surprisingly come out of lowly Galilee for us and for our salvation. Can God work out His salvation in lowly places and among strangers today? Yes indeed. “Come and see!” Amen.