Christ-Centered Worship: God’s Grace in Action | Ash Wednesday Sermon 2025

Joel 2:12-16

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord,
    “return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
    and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
    and he relents over disaster.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
    and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
    for the Lord your God?

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
    consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
    gather the people.
Consecrate the congregation;
    assemble the elders;
gather the children,
    even nursing infants.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
    and the bride her chamber.

Amen, Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, tonight, we are gathered here this Ash Wednesday to think about the the season upcoming and the life of our church. And you may have noticed that the sermon titled today is titled our values, Christ centered worship. And today begins a series that talks about the values that we as a congregation have selected to guide our next several years as we think about and plan for what's in our future, and it's pretty great. I think that one of those is Christ centered worship, because it matches up really well for me to be able to preach on it on Ash Wednesday. That's really why you selected it to make my sermon writing easier, right? Well, perhaps not. We have a number of core values that we've selected, some that are active in our congregation, some that we hope to include in our congregation in the in the future. The active core values are the ones that we see at work in our congregation, and those are Christ centered worship, Christian catechesis, or that is like Bible study and learning about the scriptures and the sanctity of life. We also have three values that we want to include in our congregation called aspirational values. The first is outreach, the next one is evangelism, and the final one is human care. It's pretty nice that we have six Wednesdays in Lent, one for each of them, so we are going to look at each of these and see how they play out in the life of the church and what they might help us do as a congregation. And tonight, we're focusing on Christ centered worship as we gather here in this place to hear the word of Christ and to receive His grace. So what I thought I'd do tonight is offer up a short definition for Christ centered worship that can help guide the sermon today. And there are three parts. God gives His grace to his gathered people who respond with prayer and praise. God gives His grace to his gathered people who respond in prayer and praise. So let's start with each piece. The first one is God gives His grace. And it leads me to think of a question about the heart of theology of worship. Who is the one who is acting in worship? When a congregation gathers together, we come into a place and we gather to hear the word or sing or whatever it is, who is the one doing the action? Is it mostly the you, or is it mostly God? This is influenced by our English word worship, which comes from a different background than the Lutheran theology of worship, if you look it up, which, of course, I did, you get a definition the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity. So the English word actually assumes, when you do worship, it's you guys who are doing the work. It is a feeling of adoration or reverence for a deity. But that is not how Lutherans view worship. We believe that God is the one who is doing the work when we gather together in this place, and the point for us is to come here and receive from Him the gifts he wants to give. And Ash Wednesday is the perfect day to think about that, because it helps to remind us we really need a lot from him. You all came forward and received the cross on your forehead, and I said to you, from dust, you have come to dust. You shall return. It is a reminder that our sin all the way back from the garden. Garden of Eden leads to death, no matter whether you are 101 or like the newborn infants who received the cross tonight, it's a reminder that each of us needs to be rescued from death. Each of us needs the salvation of God, which is why St Paul tells us to be reconciled to Him. Why Joel says, return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and he relents over disaster. We believe that worship is here not because God needs something from us, but because we need something from him. God doesn't need our prayers. He is fine all on his own. God doesn't need our praises. He is not a vain Tiktok star. God doesn't need our offerings. He doesn't need our singing. He doesn't need anything from us at all. The beautiful thing about our God is that He wants to give us a gift. That's why He sent Jesus. That's why this whole season of Lent leads up to the cross, where he dies for us and rises for us to get eternal life, because God wants to give us a gift, the forgiveness of sins, rescue from death and the devil and eternal salvation. And this is why our worship is designed around the ways that God promises to give us those gifts which we call the means of grace through the words proclaimed to you and the sacraments we receive through the forgiveness of sins in the absolution God has given us in this church the most amazing gifts he could give anyone and everything about our worship is designed to deliver them to you, because God is a giver of gifts. God wants you to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. God wants you to receive His grace and be filled with His love, and that is what worship is all about. That is what we receive when we gather here in this place. God is the one at work. God is giving us His grace, which is why the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has called what we do the divine service, rather than calling it worship, because God is coming here to serve us. So God is the one who is active giving His grace, and he does it to his gathered people. This is sometimes a thing that we forget about the divine service, is that it's all about us coming together and how important that piece is. The overlooked piece of the divine service is that it's meant to be a communal experience, not because God likes a happy family or something like that, but because the people next to you need you. We need each other. When we gather together and receive Holy Communion, we're bound together in Christ's Body and Blood, in the unity that we have in Him, and we can express that unity simply by seeing each other in church. I don't know about you, but when I see you in church, it makes me happy, and I feel better about our congregation and about our life, and I get more excited to be here when you are here. And I bet the people you sit next to, if you're missing, they go. I wonder where that person is, what's been, what's been going on with them. I feel a little sadder without them, right? We underestimate how important it is to be encouraging one another through our attendance in the divine service. Because maybe you don't feel like you need to be here on Sunday or maybe a Wednesday night. You.

But sometimes your neighbor needs you to be here. Sometimes the person who normally sits next to you needs a smiling face to encourage you to sing and joy and love. Sometimes they need someone to talk to someone to listen to someone to maybe hold a baby in the back you This is one of the things that we do as we gather together, because we are not Christians all by ourselves. We're a congregation, a community, a family in God, bound together in Christ's body. We need each other, and when God brings us together in this place, he uses us to encourage each other. This is one of the great things about what we do here in worship. So part one is God is the one at work. God gives us His grace to his gathered people who respond with prayer and praise. So once God has gathered us together and given us this grace, we then respond with the prayer and praise that we have in our liturgy. And what I like about the way we do that is that we respond to God using his word. So God gives us these amazing gifts. He delivers the word written in the Holy Scriptures as we read them. We get to hear this sermon, and then what do we do? We sing about him and the stuff he's already done, and God gives us the language to form our prayer and praises. And then at a certain point, we're going to stand up and tell each other and God everything he's done for us in the Nicene Creed. And what we do is God speaks to us, and then we say back to him the amazing things he does. And over and over again in our worship, God gives us something, and we reply, rejoicing in the grace that He has given us, telling each other about the beauty of what God does and giving thanks for him, and then responding by asking him to do all the things that he has promised. This is the other half of worship. God comes down to us to give us His grace, and then he even fills our mouths with prayer and praise, with the words that he very much gives us. This is the magic of what happens when we come together in worship. Christ centered worship is what happens when God gives His grace to his gathered people who then respond in prayer and praise, and it's the joy and center of our life together in Jesus name Amen.

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The Transfiguration: Why This Glorious Moment Changes Everything

Luke 9:28-36

Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

And Peace be to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, at the age of 78 and after one and a half years of my seminary studies at Fort Wayne, I often find myself thinking about how God has shown his glory in my life, having been on Earth for many years and married to my dear wife, Kay for 56 years, raising her two children and experiencing the joys and trials of life, I have come to see God's hand in both the extraordinary and the ordinary, I confess, as I am getting older and after my head injury a few years ago, I struggle with my memory.

This is a reminder to me that God works through every resource he provides when our human frailties make it hard to remember, even to remember all the blessings He has given us. Have you ever wished you could see God's power at work in your life? Maybe you've prayed for a sign, a direction, perhaps a miracle, a booming voice from heaven, or a vision of God's glory. Wouldn't that be incredible? Throughout history, people have desired to see God's power shown in a visible way.

In today's Gospel reading, we consider one of these moments when Christ's divine nature, nature was revealed before the eyes of his three disciples. The transfiguration was not just a simple dramatic event, but a moment that pointed to Jesus, true mission, his suffering, death and resurrection. This is the bedrock of our faith, the assurance that Christ is indeed the fulfillment of God's promises. Jesus took Peter, James and John up on a mountain, as he often did, looking for solitude to pray. In this moment, the disciples may have thought that this was another time for prayer. However, Jesus appearance changed. His face shown. His clothing became dazzling white. I wonder if this was a gradual change or a sudden flash.

He then joined. It was joined by Moses and Elijah. I suppose the disciples were completely blown away. I know I would have been the presence of Moses and Elijah with Jesus is important. Moses represents the law given at Mount Sinai, and Elijah represents the prophets. Jesus is fulfillment of both the law and the prophets. Their discussion they had was about Jesus departure. In Greek, the word is Exodus, a term that connects to God's great act of deliverance in the Old Testament. Just as Moses led Israel out of Egypt during the Exodus, Jesus was preparing to accomplish the ultimate deliverance through his suffering, death and resurrection, His Exodus would lead his people out of sin and death into eternal life. This event was a confirmation that Jesus is the promised Savior.

But did the disciples understand what they were seeing? Peter, always eager to act, suggested building three shelters, one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah. His intention may have been sincere, but he did not understand what was going on. Peter's response connects to the Jewish festival of Tabernacles, a time when Israelites would dwell in temporary shelters to remember God's provision. Us in the past, Peter may have been thinking of the promised messianic kingdom, wanting to prolong the divine moment rather than accept Jesus impending suffering. But Jesus purpose was not to remain in divine radiance on the mountain. He was preparing to walk the path toward the cross, to suffer, to die and to His resurrection. Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah about this coming sacrifice for our sins. A cloud covered them, And God's voice spoke, saying, This is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him.

Peter, James and John were overwhelmed and fearful when they witnessed Jesus glory and heard the voice of God, Matthew, chapter 17, verses six and seven, says, quote, When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified, but Jesus came and touched them. Get up, he said, Don't be afraid. The glory of Christ isn't just in this dazzling moment, it's in his mission, His suffering, His death and resurrection, and that's what changes everything for us. Just as at Jesus baptism, where God declared his son, the father affirms Jesus mission.

This commanded, command is clear. We are called not only merely to observe Jesus, but to listen to him, to heed His words, trust in his mission, and do what he says. For many of us, at first, Lutheran faith has been a lifelong journey. At my age, I can look back and see how the years have shaped my faith. There have been moments of sorrow, moments of worry, times of happiness, assurance and quite quiet perseverance for the very young among us, those who are being brought to church by faithful parents and grandparents, the knowledge received in worship Bible class and Sunday School is the foundation upon which they can build a life of faith.

What does listening to Jesus look like? That means actively engaging in His Word, praying daily, applying his teachings to our relationships, decisions and struggles. It means trusting Him, even when life feels ordinary and uneventful, we are not called to chase after dramatic experiences, but to listen to Christ daily in his word to trust in Him and to remain steadfast in faith, even in the ordinary days of life when the vision on the mountain ended, Moses and Elijah were gone, and only Jesus remain. The law and prophets have prepared the way, but now our focus is on Jesus. Only Jesus alone is a foundation of our faith, and we are sustained by His abiding presence. We do not require miraculous signs to confirm our faith. We have Jesus His Word and His promises through baptism, we have been brought into His family through Holy Communion. We are nourished by his body and blood, through His Word, we are strengthened to persist in faith. As we grow older, our faith deepens, not in excitement, but in trust.

Our hope is not temporary joys, but the promise. Sense of eternal life. The transfiguration gives us a glimpse of that future, the glory that awaits us in Christ. In summary, the transform configuration was not simply a moment of brilliance, what a confirmation of who Christ is and what he came to accomplish. It points us beyond this life to the promise of resurrection and eternal life. For those who have walked with Christ for decades, this is our anchor. As I look back on my 56 years of marriage decay, raising our children, I can see how Christ's faithfulness has been my rock, no matter our age, whether five or 95 the command remains the same. Listen to Jesus, trust Him, follow Him. Even when life is not dazzling, even when we are uncertain, the voice from the cloud still speaks. This is my son. Listen to Him. Jesus. Gospel message is one of love redemption and the call to follow him wholeheartedly. May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding guard our hearts and minds in Christ. Jesus, amen.

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Love Your Enemies: Four Stories of Jesus' Love In Action

Luke 6:27-38

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ amen. Today we are looking at one of the more famous pieces of Jesus' sermons, similar to the one recorded in Matthew, but this one in Luke where Jesus says some difficult things. He says, Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you, to the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also and from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic, either. He continues with difficult sayings about being generous and loving to everybody, but especially to the people who hate us. And I thought today, rather than going out and giving you examples of what you should do and talking about these things and explaining them, these words are relatively straightforward in their meaning, instead, what I would do is tell you four stories about God's love in action, where someone loved their enemies and what happened. So I've got four stories I'm going to tell you today. The first is the most important one, where Jesus himself loved his enemies. Then we're going to talk about Joseph and then Polycarp and finally, one from our era, Reverend Henry geragh key. So let's get started with the most important person who loved his enemies, our Savior, Jesus Christ, because Jesus really is someone who loved his enemies, because his whole life was about that he came down to love people who had turned away from him. That's all of us from the very beginning, Adam and Eve became enemies of God by their sin, and so Jesus left his throne to become one of us.

We think about the cross as the great sacrifice of Jesus, but can you imagine what it would be like to go from being solely spiritual and all powerful and like having no pain or discomfort in any way, to being a baby and your diaper gets full and you can't do anything about it. And your God. His whole life was like that, being one of us and not using his almighty power to make his life just a little bit easier. He didn't turn the stones into bread when he was hungry. He didn't feed his disciples by doing miracles. He only did that with the crowds. It doesn't record laying hands on himself when he got a cold. He only did that for others. Jesus came down not to be a judge, but to be a servant and to live amongst us and take on our pains and hurts and problems, and then at the end, he loved us by going to the cross, and what a way of love that is, so we could even forget about all the miracles and all the healings and the feeding of the 5000s and the rescuing the disciples from the storm and casting out demons, and all the stuff he did to Help people just the cross alone, what a way to love the entire world, to die on the cross for our sins, and to establish a way to be connected to our Father in heaven that we could gain Eternal life. What a way Jesus loved us when he gave his body and his blood to the disciples, who only moments later, would betray Him and abandon him and claim that they never even knew him, what a love he had for them. He.

And then he sat in front of the priests and the soldiers at the Sanhedrin who told him he was a blasphemer who lied about him, and he did nothing, no lightning from heaven, no fireballs. He or when he was before Pontius Pilate, and they accused him of being an armed rebel against the Caesar, and he refused to defend himself, all it would have taken was saying, No, I didn't do that. And Pilate would have let him off, but he didn't. He allowed them to beat him with him, put the crown of thorns on his head and nail Him to the cross. And when the people teased him, he told them, do you not know that I could call 12 legions of angels to come down, and yet he didn't. In fact, he prayed for them. He said, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. And then there's a thief right next to him, someone who, moments earlier, had just made fun of him, and he the thief, turns him and says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he doesn't sneer. He says, today you will be with Me in Paradise. What great love, what great mercy, and he did it for you.

St Paul tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. You were once his enemy. You were once about to be judged, but he came to die, to forgive your sins and mine. Christ is the great one who loved his enemies, who prayed for those who persecuted, who who gave up his whole life in a way that we could never pay him back. Isn't that an amazing kind of love that Christ gives to us when we were once enemies of him, set to be judged and cast into hell forever? He died for you to give you the love that you need, so that when he returns, you will be raised from the dead to live forever with him as a brother and sister, to inherit the great glory that He now has with His resurrected body. How amazing is Christ's love for his enemies and some of those Pharisees who judged him and and hated him and teased him and insulted him became Christians after Pentecost, brothers and sisters with us. How many times has that happened that God's love has gone out to enemies and made them one with us, just as it came to you and to me. Jesus is the one who loved his enemies and showed us the power of that love going to people who don't expect it.

Our Old Testament story, the story of Joseph, shows a foreshadowing of that love, too, the love that Joseph showed his enemies, his brothers. Is an amazing kind of love, too. Only the love of Christ can do something like that. You may know the Joseph story. You may not, but it's pretty cool. Joseph, one of 12 brothers, was the favorite of his father, and so the other brothers decided that they wanted to teach him a lesson, and they did it in a pretty dramatic way.

They beat him up, threw him down a well, and sold him as a slave. That makes a civil any sibling rivalry we know of now to seem like nothing. Then they took his bloody coat and brought it back to their father and said, Joseph is dead. If that weren't bad enough, Joseph ends up working in Egypt, where he is falsely accused. Rape, then he goes to jail, and he's in the deep, dark dungeons of Pharaoh. And I can imagine our prison system is not awesome, but you can imagine that Pharaoh's was much, much worse. There he is stuck in prison, and God grants him the gift of being able to interpret dreams, and that gift then pulls him out of prison and makes him second in command in Egypt.

I don't know about you, but as I was being trundled off to Egypt, I would be thinking about my brothers a lot. As I was sitting in chains in a wet dungeon, I would probably be thinking about my brothers a lot, and when they finally came in front of me, and I am wearing Pharaoh's regalia, in charge of all of Egypt, and they stepped in front of me, I might remember all of that thinking that I had done, but not Joseph.

How crazy is that? How crazy is it that when they step foot in front of him, he remembers that he is not the judge, only God is, and he sees that God has used him to preserve Abraham's family, to keep the promise he made to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, that he would be with that family, so that during the seven years of famine, Jacob and his kids would be provided for, so that they too could Then leave for the promised land and take it over in the book of Exodus and what follows. And so Joseph forgives the brothers. He loves them with only the kind of love that can be there for people connected with Jesus, Christ and Joseph becomes a beautiful foreshadowing of the love that we receive in Christ, and he helps us to see the way that love functions when we live it up, when we forgive the people who hurt us, just as we have been forgiven in Christ.

Another great show of the love we can See in Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp was alive in the first and second century. It said that he was a disciple of the apostle John, and he was killed when he was 86 years old. Pretty old guy in the ancient world. We're not exactly sure what date that was. People suggest somewhere around 156 ad or 162 AD. The story goes that the people get all excited about the Christians. They hated us because we wouldn't worship the false gods of the Roman Empire, and what they really wanted us to do was to offer up a little bit of incense on the altar to the Caesar and say a simple phrase, Caesar is Lord, but we know that Jesus is Lord and the false gods, we cannot worship them. And so they called us atheists, and they would get all excited, because we did not worship the gods that protected the Roman Empire. And every once in a while, that would break out into a riot or a persecution, and that what was, what was going on with Polycarp.

And so the martyrdom of Polycarp records this it says the Mounted Police and horsemen set out armed with their usual weapons, as though chasing after an armed rebel and closing in on him. Late in the evening, they found him in bed in an upstairs room in a small cottage, and though he still could have escaped from there to another place, he refused, saying, may God's will be done. So when he heard that they had arrived, he went and talked with them, while those who were present marveled at his age and his. Composure and wondered why there was so much eagerness for the arrest of an old man like him. Then he immediately ordered that a table be set for them to eat and drink as much as they wished in that hour, and he asked them to grant him an hour or so that he might pray undisturbed. When they consented, he stood and prayed so full of the grace of God that for two hours he was unable to stop speaking. Those who heard Him were amazed, and many regretted that they had come after such a godly old man.

Now that's not what I would do if someone broke into my house with sword and shield and spear and said, Come with me, old man. Would you set up a table and be like, Oh, eat, eat, eat like an Eastern European grandmother, right? You haven't had enough food. There's more wine, if I can go get some if you want. What kind of crazy love is that for the soldiers that are going to drag him off to be killed in the arena? It's the kind of love that would make a soldier wonder what's going on here, the kind of love that would make a soldier think I shouldn't be doing this. This is a good man.

and as St Paul says, he burning coals on their head, and maybe even the kind of love that might plant a seed or so to wonder what makes this guy different from the ones who would fight, what kind of love is That that would make them marvel at this generosity. How many wondered at the grace of God seen in Polycarp when he loved his enemies? How many seeds were planted for the growth of the church through this man's love for his enemies?

The last story I want to tell is the story of Henry Gerecke. He's relatively famous. You may know him, but you may not also, because he's not really famous. Henry geragh was a pastor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and a chaplain in the military during World War Two. He was chosen because, like many of our pastors, he could speak German, and so they sent him to Nuremberg during the trials. Now, those you've heard of where all the Nazi war criminals were gathered together to be tried, many of them executed. These men were bad, right? We all know how bad they are. They were responsible for the deaths of millions of people, civilians, massacred, holocausts committed the Can you imagine what it be like for Pastor Gerecke going into that prison, not only did he know the statistics and the war crimes and all the things that were in the News, as a military chaplain, he would have known individuals who were killed because of these, men, friends, compatriots, people from his home, church, nearly everybody knew someone who had died in World War Two. Can you imagine walking into that prison and wondering whether their evil would just sort of ooze off of them onto you?

If anyone deserved judgment, if anyone deserved to be outside of God's love, it was these men, if anyone could be called an enemy, it was these men. And the amazing thing is that despite his reservations and his disgust, he ministered to them faithfully, he showed them God's love. Because the amazing thing about God's love is that no one is outside of it. Every enemy can become a friend in Christ, even. Those guys, and through his work, several of them ended up taking communion, receiving absolution before they were executed. And Henry Gerecke will get up on the last day and see the Nazi war criminals rise with him as brothers in Christ. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you, to the one who strikes you on the cheek. Offer the other also and from the one who takes away your cloak. Do not withhold your tunic, either in Jesus name Amen. You. Amen.

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Are You #Blessed? Jesus Says Something Shocking!

Luke 6:17-26

And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.

And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

“Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.

“Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, Amen, today we are looking at the Gospel of Luke, and it's a little different than the message that Jesus well, that we're used to from him. Each year, we read the Sermon on the Mount come from the Gospel of Matthew and we get the Beatitudes. We read that usually on All Saints Day, and this one's, well, it's a little different. Sometimes I wonder how many times Jesus preached the same sermons as he went from place to place? Did he have a stump speech that he used on a regular basis? So you've got the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and then in a different place, Luke records this one. Maybe even the disciples would hear him begin with the Blessed are you who are poor, and they go this one again. I've heard this about 50 times, but it gets a little different about halfway through, when he starts to say this, but woe to you who are rich, maybe at this moment they go, what? And I think it maybe does the same thing for us. Jesus gives assignment blessing to things that we don't usually associate with, blessing and woe to things we don't usually associate with. Woe. Blessing is for the the poor, the hungry, those who weep and the persecuted. Woe is for the rich, the full, those who laugh and people with good reputation, doesn't that seem a little backwards? I think this raises a question, according to Jesus, what is blessing? And I'd like to suggest a definition. Blessing is the gift of eternal life by grace, through faith, on account of Christ. And this changes the way we see blessing, different from the rest of the world. How does the world define blessing, it's actually pretty easy. All you do is go onto Instagram and search Hashtag blessed, and you will see lots of things. You'll see giant kitchens with Instagram influencers standing in the middle. You will see mansions, cars, family gathered all around you, laughing, enjoying themselves, vacations to cool parts of the world. That's what we call blessing, and we thank God for the blessings that He gives us when he gives us these things, but Jesus calls those woes Woe to you who are rich, Woe to you who are full, Woe to you who laugh now. And the crazy thing about this is that would apply to each one of us, because compared to every Israel citizen in Jesus's day, we're a whole lot richer, fuller and happier. Jesus is defining blessing, I think, based not on our external circumstances, but based on his presence and the gift of eternal life, and these woes and blessings are there to blow up the concepts of blessing in the hearers of Jesus's day, the same way they do it for us, because they would have heard this and said, Wait a second, Jesus, the Old Testament says the opposite. If you go to Deuteronomy and the blessings and the curses about the covenant, Moses tells them that if Israel follows the covenant, their vineyards will be full. They will have lots of children. They will have bread and money and everything will be great. And he tells them, if they break the covenant and worship other gods, their vineyards will be empty, their ovens empty, and everything will be terrible. And. Now that applied to the nation as a whole, but in Jesus's day, they applied it to individuals. So rich people were seen as having the blessing of God. Happy people were seen as having the blessing of God. But the poor, the sick, the infirm, they were under God's curse. Jesus is defining blessing differently. He wants us to see that it is about the gift of life that He gives us, and not about our external circumstance, and if you look at the Old Testament, you can see how that plays out in a number of different ways, especially when you look at the blessing that God gives for the persecuted, where he says, blessing are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man, rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold your reward is great in heaven, for so their fathers did to the prophets. Let's take a look at some of those great prophets, how they had blessing of God despite terrible circumstances. Think about David, one of the greatest and most glorious kings of the Old Testament. His life was terrible. A lot of the time when Saul was King, David never knew whether he was on the good side or about to have a spear thrown at him. In fact, there were times when David had to run away and flee, hide out from Saul, who would chase him with armies. He would hide in caves in the wilderness. One time it was so bad, he pretended to be crazy and let snot and drool roll down all over his face so he could get away from Saul. That doesn't sound Hashtag blessed, does it? But he still had the promise of God. He still had a promise that God was with him. Let's think about the prophet Elijah. At one point, he was the last prophet of God in all of Israel, because the rest of them had been killed off by the king and queen. He was so upset, so depressed, that he went out into the wilderness all by himself and prayed for God to kill him. Hashtag, blessed. But he had God's grace. He had God's promise with him. God was with him the whole time, and it had nothing to do with what they were saying about him, what they were trying to do to him. God was with him. Let's think about Joseph, son of Jacob. His brothers came out and sold him as a slave. He went off to Egypt and served there, where he was falsely accused and thrown in jail. What a great life. Nobody would look at him and say he was blessed, but God was still with him. God protected him. He had the promise of life in the New Testament. We've got some of them too. Stephen, the very first martyr of the Christian church. He was blessed. He stood in front of the apostle Paul and was stoned to death, and he looked up into heaven and said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. All of these people suffered pain and hurt and loss and terrible things, and yet they are blessed. And what this reminds us is that our external circumstances, whatever is going on in your life, they are not symbols about your blessing. Whether you are rich or poor, healthy or sick, persecuted or a good reputation, these things do not define your blessings. We receive the gift of eternal life by grace, through faith, on account of Christ.

And the great thing is, is if you are going through something like those prophets, if you are in the midst of the poverty Jesus is talking about, or the woe, or the pain, or. Or the hurt, or whatever it is, God has given you a sign and seal that you are blessed. We call it Holy Communion. That's what our Book of Concord. It defines the sacraments as a signs and seals of a good conscience before God, and we gather here to receive them, because when you have them and you take them in, it is God saying, I choose you. No matter what's going on out there. I bless you. I love you. I save you. I And we're daily attacked by the temptations of the world to try to define our blessing as coming to us through something else. We are daily attacked when we say, my good fortune is the reason God is blessing me. That's how I know I'm good, or when terrible things happen, that's how I know I am blessed. But the only way to know that you are blessed is when God comes to you by His grace, and here you get an external sign, something put in your hand and put in your mouth, so you know you are blessed no matter what. But I think the best example of the blessing that you can have despite your circumstances is Jesus himself. He was hungry, out in the wilderness, tempted by Satan. He wept as he was being tortured. He was hated when people told all sorts of false things about him. At his trial, they accused him over and over and over again and lied about the evils they said he had done. He was whipped and beaten and tortured, and they nailed Him to a cross. And anybody who looked up at the guy nailed to a cross and naked, they wouldn't have said, Wow, that guy's blessed, but he was, he's the son of God, and God proved the blessing that he gives each and every one of us when he raised Jesus from the dead and he ascended into heaven to reign over All things. See, that's a blessing that we have in Christ, the external circumstances don't matter in Christ, what matters is the gift of grace given to you, and no pain or hurt or loss can ever take that away. In Jesus name amen.

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How To Be Confident Reaching Out: Confident Castors or Fearful Fishermen

Luke 5:1-11

On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, today's story is a familiar one. It's one of the ones that they often do in Sunday school, right? It's because it's so dramatic. You get the disciples and the boat and right after Jesus is done teaching, they do this miraculous catch of fish, and then we get that line that we all know, I will make you fishers of men, though that's from a different gospel. In this one, it says, Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men, fortunately, not with a hook right now, Jesus does this with Peter, James and John, three of his first disciples later to be called apostles and the first leaders and pastors of the church. And every year, you will often get a sermon that is all about the church's job to go out and catch people. We go out as with the gospel, with the Word of God, to share the message of Jesus Christ, and to gather people into his church. And today, you're going to get one of those again, but this time, what I would like to do today is be encouraging and help you take the pressure off, because the job of catching fish or catching men in this story is not Peters, James or John, but Jesus's he's the one who does it. And I think many of us, when we talk about outreach or evangelism, we feel a lot of pressure. The pastor stands up in front of you and says, it is your job to go out and share the gospel and bring people into the church. They'll say things like, Go and make disciples of all nations, and you gotta do it. And I bet you feel some pressure because of that. You get worried about it. You think to yourself, I need to do this right, or else the people in my life will not follow Jesus. You think things like, what if I mess it up? What if I don't know the right words to say? What if my church just isn't the perfect church to invite them to, maybe they will. They will come in contact with me, and it will be so bad They'll never believe in Jesus again, and it will be all my fault. Ever felt that way? I bet you have, because sometimes preachers make it sound like it's all on you. So today I'd like to ask, what does it take to be a fearful fisherman or a confident caster like that fearful fisherman or confident caster. The fearful fishermen think that the work of evangelism and outreach is all on us. The Confident caster believes in the promise that Jesus does the work, that he's the one who grows the church and gathers people into the faith. And there are three areas where this is important. So we're going to get started with the first question, Who is the one we depend on to get this work done, who does the work for the fearful fishermen? We say it is all on me. In our story, we see Peter and James and John and their workers. They go out and they fish all night. They tell Jesus, and they catch nothing. These people are doing their business. This is not going out on a Sunday afternoon saying I'm going to go fish and cast my rod out. Haven't been fishing in months, but I'm going to just so go see what happens. Maybe bring a book, and if I catch a fish, that's nice. They've been doing this. This is their business. They know what they're doing, and they go out and they catch nothing. All of their hard work, all of their skill, all of their effort, doesn't mean anything. You. But as soon as Jesus says his word, the nets are filled, so much so that the boats start to sink, not just one, but two, and the reaction of the fearful fishermen is, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man. See, Peter knows that he's in the presence of Christ, and what does he worry about? He worries about himself. He says, I'm not good enough to be around you. I'm not good enough for this leave me, or your judgment will come down on me. And I think this is sometimes what we think about when we are brought into into the world of evangelism, we think about ourselves. I'm not good enough. I might mess it up. I'm not like the pastor. He knows the whole Bible, right? He can quote every single verse no matter what you ask him a question. He's got it all down. He should be the one who's doing it. I can't do it. And then, you know what? The pastor thinks, I can't do it. I just don't know enough like I can't go into every situation, especially here, where there are all of these people who speak different languages and different backgrounds, and there's Muslims and all sorts of different things I've never dealt with before. I might get it wrong. I might not say it right. I might not have the right thing for the right moment that will get that person. We feel we fear failure. We become fearful fishermen, but we are confident casters when we realize that it's not about us. We're actually not the ones doing the work Jesus is in our story. The thing that changes the empty nets to the full nets is not Peter's skill or his ability. It's Christ's word. Peter says, Master, we have toiled all night and took nothing but at your word, I will let down the net. The thing that changes everything is the command that Jesus gives the message of His Word. Jesus speaks and the nets are filled. It has nothing to do with Peter, nothing to do with his skill, nothing to do with his holiness or his planning or his activity or saying the right words over the waters or anything like that. It is only what Jesus does His power and His Word, and even when Peter says, Get away. I'm not good enough for this. Jesus, you're the Lord and I'm a sinful man. Jesus kind of ignores that. He doesn't go to Peter and say, Peter, you're better than you think. Just be confident, go out there and do it right. He doesn't say, you're a great speaker, Peter. I see it in you. You know, all we need is a little training, three years of of Jesus school, and you're going to be an amazing evangelist. He says, Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men. That's it. Just don't be afraid. And why can Peter be a confident pastor, because he's not doing the work. The Word of Christ is what gathers guides and leads the church. It's the same thing that brings you here, the working of the Holy Spirit. Through the word of Christ, you don't come here because your pastor is perfect. You don't come here because your church is perfect. You come here because the word of God goes to you and fills you with the Holy Spirit, which means we can take a breath, right? What a relief. It's not about you. It's not your perfection or your skill. Jesus does the work the Holy Spirit works through His word to bring people to the Gospel. And when we speak God's word, no matter how skilled. Fully or not, the results are not on you. The results. That's Jesus' job, and he promises always to work through the power of His word, no matter what the second question. I'd like to look at is the question, how do we gather? First, we said, who does the work? Now we're going to talk about how, for the fearful fishermen, we focus on ourselves and on their church. We say programs are the things that bring people in. That is we have to be so shiny and perfect and wonderful that when there is a program, everybody's going to love it so much that they will want to come back the disciples were good at their jobs, Peter, James and John. They made their living catching fish, and yet, when Jesus went out to go preach, they had caught nothing all night long. That's when you catch fish, not in the middle of the day after Jesus has been teaching all day long, they'd done the human skill thing. They were at the top of their game, but with all their strategies, all their know how it failed and many churches we think, like to think that it is all on our program. If we don't have the most amazing whatever, people will not come. If our youth group isn't the most amazing youth group in the area, no way. If we don't have the best food at our soup and suppers, we do actually have great food, but if it's not the best, nobody's going to come. If our programming isn't just outstanding and amazing. Simply, everyone will look at us and be like, there is nothing good here, kind of what we think right? And what that means is we end up doing nothing. We sit and think, if I can't do it exactly right, maybe I won't try it all, and then we're afraid of experimenting, afraid of failing. But that's thinking about us as the ones who do the work. Confident casters realize that God's word is what changes hearts and not our program, our efforts and plans, everything that we do is all about getting the message of the gospel into the ears of anybody who needs to hear it. And as long as the word is at work, God is doing his thing as long as the gospel is being spoken to people who need to hear it, Christ is at work in their hearts. And then it's not on us, it's on him, because that was the difference. The word went out, and then the nets became full. They enclosed a large number of fish, so much, so much that two boats began to sink. Now we can't take this, this this miracle, and say every time we speak the word of God, someone's going to fall down on their knees and be like, Yay, Jesus. We know it's not that's not how it works. But we know it wasn't about the skill of the fishermen or the most amazing marketing plan that caught the fish. It was about Christ. So we don't need to compete with the rest of the world. We don't need to compete with the Super Bowl. We don't need to compete with the church down the street. What we're doing is sharing the Word of God, and as long as that is going out, it means God is working through us. But I think even more importantly, what it means is that we have the freedom to try something that might crash and burn, and if it does, that's okay. You. We don't have to worry about failure, because really, the one who succeeds is Christ. We can get out and just do stuff, because Christ, through His word, is the one who gathers people. Think about it, when Peter tossed the net into the water and caught the miraculous fish. Was it? Because the net was amazing? Did he add sparkles to it? Make the best net ever, like neon lights, all that stuff? Nope. It was the same net he threw in and caught nothing. Was it the boat that was extra special? I mean, did he glam it up? Maybe put some nice speakers on it, get the bass thumping? And that's what got the fish in. Of course, not what really got it going. It was at your word I will throw in the next. We trust in Christ and we know that His Word works. The third question I'd like to ask is, what do we call people to when we are fearful fishermen or confident casters? What are we asking them to do? Fearful fishermen again, focus on ourselves. We say, join our organization, because we have an amazing org chart, and our vision statement is out of this world. Hey, we might have a great org chart. We might have an interesting mission statement, which we are working on, but that's not what we call them to. When Jesus came to Peter, he didn't ask him to join a vision or a mission. He said, Follow me, and that's what they did. Fearful fishermen focus in on making sure that we are worth joining. And sometimes what that means is, when a church is growing, then all of a sudden, the congregation thinks we have the special sauce even better than that, secret sauce on the Big Mac, way better than that. And if everybody just did it like us, every church would grow everywhere and they think it's all about how they plan and work and do but even worse, even more difficult, is when the congregation that isn't growing, that's maybe struggling a little bit, and they think it must be because we're not good enough. We're just not doing the right program. We're just not doing the right thing, all we need to do is find that one simple trick that you see on every article, clickbait article on the internet, that one simple trick to switch our congregation into a good one, and then people will Join and a church that focuses on institutional growth, a church that focuses on our organization, is a church that's calling peoples to something other than the gospel, other than to Christ. Confident casters say not join us. They say, follow Jesus. This is what Jesus does with Peter. He says, Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men. And what do they do? They don't go off to school, they say. And when they had brought their boat to land, they left everything and followed him. We in the church call people follow Christ. That is always our goal, and the power of that means that it can be better than our organization, because there will always be flaws. The power of Christ means that it's more than our plans and our purpose and our mission statement and all of these things. It's focusing on following our Savior, because we're not building our empire. We're building the kingdom of Christ by His power. And our goal is not to grow the offering or to build up the number our attendance number, but to create faithful Christians through the word of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit for the rest of their lives. I'm going to close out with a bit of a story we've been. Doing a number of new things that we've been trying in our congregation. And I think one of the ones that is most like what we're doing, what I've been talking about, is what Kathleen has been doing in the park lately. You go into your bulletin, you can see afternoon blast. What she's been doing is she's been going out to a couple of different parks and basically doing like a Sunday School in the park. It's pretty cool, I think. And she goes out there and anybody who's around, she invites them over to hear the Word of God. And what happens every time, sorry, we can't we're Muslims. She goes, Okay, that's fine. And she goes over and plays games. And they're like, ooh, games. Now, if we were worried about it, and we were, we were fearful fishermen, we might say, Oh, they're Muslims. They're not they're never going to listen. They're never going to we, we're going to go try something else. But because we trust the word of God, does it. They come on over, they play the games, and she reads them a story about Jesus, and then we let him do the work. We don't need to see immediate results. We don't need to see children falling on their knees and saying, now I'm a Christian. We trust the Holy Spirit, which means this amazing outreach that she is doing, and the volunteers who are working with her, we can just trust that the word is doing its thing, and we can keep at it. And as the numbers grow which they are in the afternoon blast, we can think the word of God is doing its work, because it's not about us, about our power. It's about Christ, and that is the difference between being fearful fishermen and confident casters. Fearful fishermen think it's all on us. Confident casters think Jesus does the way in His name. Amen.

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Dedicated and Consecrated for Ministry: Jeremiah 1

Jeremiah 1:4-

Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” But the Lord said to me,

“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”

Good morning, Grace, mercy and peace. Be to you, from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Today we'll see God, God called Jeremiah For His divine purpose, to be a prophet. The closest thing we have today is the office of a pastor. I feel a whole lot like Jeremiah right now, and I think reflecting on Jeremiah's experience being called, and my own experience preparing to be a pastor can help us better understand the pastoral office. In Jeremiah, we read in verses four and five, we learn of God's call quote before I formed you in the womb, I knew you God intimately. Knew Jeremiah before he was born and before he called him to be a prophet. There's a big difference between my personal experience of aspiring to be a pastor, and Jeremiah's direct personal verbal call from God. God specifically chose him before he was even born, seeing him, setting him apart for his own purposes, Jeremiah received a direct and undeniable command from God. My journey toward pastoral ministry has been a process of discernment, prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit's guidance. In my journey, I have felt the weight of this discernment, experiencing times of doubt and hesitation, much like Jeremiah, the pastoral office is not about personal ability or achievement, But about God's faithfulness and equipping those he calls. The process of evaluating a pastoral call involves many years of theological education, training and formal approval, ensuring those who serve are equipped for the task. There is no quote call to the office of the ministry until the person received call documents from a congregation. Jeremiah is afraid and has excuses and says, quote, I do not know how to speak. I am only a youth. Jeremiah was worried that he was too young and could not speak well. I have had similar thoughts even today, as I stand here, I'm too old, whether it be better just to go back to retirement, whether I didn't have to study hours each day, only God will get me through this. God says, Don't be afraid, for I am with you. I can't learn and remember like I could 2520 years ago, my call of recall of Scripture and theology is low, slow. I can't speak or think like Pastor huenk or other pastors, they can quote any scripture, book, chapter and verse from the entire Bible, then immediately worked this into a discussion. Only God will get me through this. God says, Don't be afraid, for I am with you. I have struggled with God for years about becoming a pastor. For more than a year in 2020, and 2021, every three weeks I would want to apply to the seminary. Three weeks later I would say, No way. I can't do that. I don't want to. Wouldn't have been better, unless uncertain. Have got if God had said to me, Roland, you will be a pastor in September, I will have a theological interview. This is where three seminary professors question you and determine if you are qualified to become a pastor. Only God. Will get me through this. God says, Don't be afraid, for I am with you. It's reassuring thought knowing that I am not relying solely on my own strength. God is at work to carry us all through his what we need to do. There's comfort in knowing that we are part of something bigger, the church, and we don't carry everything alone. I keep telling myself, if anything is going to happen, God must be the one who does it. Think of Moses, who said to God, I'm too old, I can't talk. Don't make me do it. But who was with him? God. Moses, hesitation in Exodus three and four demonstrated human frailty and fear. He claimed he is, quote, slow of speech and tongue, and ask God to send someone else. God reassures Moses, saying, I will be with you. God's presence is a key to success in any calling. Martin Luther wrote a lengthy prayer for pastors to pray in the sacristy before giving the sermon. It starts off with acknowledging unworthiness to be a pastor. Quote, oh Lord God, Dear Father in heaven, I am indeed unworthy of the office and ministry in which I am to make known your glory and to nurture and serve this congregation. God gives assurance and helps Jeremiah. The Lord touched Jeremiah's mouth, giving him divine help and equipping him to do the work. God gives him the word, I would love it if God wrote my sermons. Jeremiah gets visions, not me. God may not give me visions. That doesn't mean he is silent or distant in my preaching, preparation, God's guidance often, often comes through prayer, meditation and study. It is not to be a dramatic and receiving direct vision, but the process of wrestling with scriptures, seeking wisdom and allowing the spirit to shape our understanding in its own form is its own form of divine inspiration. God works through His Word, whether there is a good sermon or a terrible sermon. In conclusion, there is a difference between Jeremiah's divine calling as a prophet and the personal discernment process aspiring to the pastoral ministry. Unlike Jeremiah, who received a direct and verbal call from God before birth, my journey has been marked by prayer, discernment, reliance on the Holy Spirit. The Pastoral office is not about personal achievement, but about God's faithfulness and equipping those he calls. Becoming a pastor involves extensive theological education, training and formal approval with no official call to the ministry until one receives call documents from a congregation, I talked about self doubt and struggle with feeling feeling unqualified for personal ministry, Pastor, pastoral ministry, comparing myself to Jeremiah and Moses, who felt inadequate also, I find reassurance in God's promises to be with me. I know that reliance on God is needed instead of personal strength. I recognize that success in ministry comes from God's work alone. God equipped Jeremiah with divine help by touching his mouth and giving him his word while I don't receive visions like Jeremiah, God is not silent or distant in my sermon preparation, i.

Instead, God's guidance to me comes through prayer, study and meditation. Ultimately, God works through His Word, regardless of whether a sermon is good or bad. Be encouraged. God does not call you and me to take on task and then leave us to struggle alone. He walks with us, strengthening us, and provides for us, just as God was with Jeremiah Moses and countless others who have gone before us, he has purpose for your life, whether in your family, workplace, church or community, God has uniquely placed you to be his hands and feet. Lean on Him, trust in His promises and meet and move forward in faith. Take time this week to reflect on whether God is calling you to step out in trust. Pray for his guidance, knowing that he who calls you is faithful and will equip you for every good work. First Thessalonians, five verse 24 says, He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it, just as God was with Jeremiah Moses and countless others who have gone before. He has a purpose for our lives. You and I need to lean on Him, trust in His promises and move forward in faith. May the peace of God, which passes all human understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ, Jesus, amen.

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The Rejected Prophet: Jesus in Nazareth

Luke 4:16-30

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?” And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘“Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’” And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, amen. Today, Jesus is going home, at least where he was brought up. I think everyone who was raised in a hometown and has a home high school has the experience of going back and being weirded out. If you've gone back for a five year, 10 year, 40 year reunion, it seems weird, right? You see the same people, but they're all different. You see the same halls, but they're not what you remember, and everything just feels a little off, not because it's actually different, though many places, they build all the cool stuff after you leave, but you're different. You have a memory of the place that doesn't fit anymore. And so Jesus goes back to his hometown of Nazareth, as it says, where he had brought up, been brought up, and he does what is normal for him. He goes to the synagogue. And then he gets to stand up and read. He reads a passage from Isaiah. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. What an amazing proclamation of grace. Jesus has come to proclaim good news to everyone who is oppressed, but you're going to can imagine what it would be like to see the son of a congregation stand up and say that this is just a normal reading, like reading from Nehemiah about the temple and the law being read like reading from First Corinthians, chapter 12. So Jesus rolls up the scroll, and he sits down, and we get something kind of interesting, Luke says, And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Now I want you to imagine what that would be like. A reader from the pews comes forward, gets up, does the reading, goes back into the congregation, and the pastor doesn't get up to speak. They just sort of turn and they look at him, and they go, we're waiting. I wonder how long the pause was. He waited as all the eyes were sitting there, and Jesus is maybe he is a looking at the ceiling, whittling his thumbs, and he looks up and goes, what were they waiting for? Well, it was normal for important guests to sometimes talk about the reading, so maybe that's what they were waiting for. But their reaction doesn't seem to be that way. It seems like they had heard about what Jesus was doing, miracles and power, though Luke doesn't actually record that right before this passage, he says, And Jesus returned, and the power of the Spirit to Galilee and a report About him went out through all the surrounding country, and he taught in their synagogues being glorified by all I think perhaps there is an assumption that the report includes not just his sermons, but mostly it's about all the healings he was doing. And we see the healings start after this, but there's an expectation. Hey, Jesus, our sick are lined up outside. Are you going to get started hospital? Jesus needs to get moving now.

But then he doesn't do any of that. He has a message, and he began to say to them today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, and that's it. Now we know how cool that is. This. Is the promise. Jesus says everything in the Old Testament is now coming true. And if they had understood that, How amazing would that be? The hope of Abraham, when he first got the vision from God, get up and go to the land I will show you, is now coming true. The hope of Isaac and Jacob Moses, the judges, Saul, Samuel, David Solomon, the prophet, Elijah and Elisha, everyone in the history of the Old Testament, Jesus is saying, Now is the time. How cool, but they couldn't know it because they didn't know what he would do next. They couldn't know because they didn't know that he would go to Jerusalem, be rejected, suffer and die and rise from the dead to pave the way through death to give us eternal life. This is the beginning of this journey, and so all they get is speech today. This Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing and they go, what now? Here comes the confusing part in the story, as it says, And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And the next sentence says, and they said, Is not this Joseph's son. And those two sentences seem contradictory, don't they like they're all going, Wow, these are amazing words. They're so gracious and awesome, and we love it. And then they go, and they said, You we saw him grow up. I helped change his diapers. Who does he think he is? So I decided to take a look at the words behind this, and you can choose to translate this in a couple of ways. One way is like this. There's a whole lot of options, but what you can translate it positively, whereas like and they marveled about and everybody said great things, but you can also translate it negatively, which would be something like this, and everybody was talking about him, and they were stunned at the words about grace he was speaking, which seems to make a little more sense, the word that they use for Marvel could also be were astonished by or were stunned by, and the word that they use for spoke well of him, could also be talked about him. And I think that's likely to be the case. Jesus says this, and then they did what a congregation sometimes does when there's news, they all started to whisper and they go, who does this guy think he is? Is not this Joseph's son. So the first time I went back to my home congregation to preach. It was an interesting experience. My pastor taught me as I was growing up, he had went into surgery, and so I was coming back for Christmas. I'm a seminary student who's never preached more than one sermon in a row without like, four weeks to write, and I get Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Sunday. It was awesome. So I come in, I'm filling in for the pastor for for holidays. I preach my sermon, and everybody loves it. Why? Because I was the I was the kid coming back, and they're just like, oh, we remember you. Isn't it so great? Let's see how you grew up. Of course, then I go out into the congregation, and they do the thing. They say, Oh, it's so great to see you preaching a sermon. I remember when you used to sit in the front row and then you would fall asleep in the middle of the sermon every single Sunday. Thanks for bringing that up. I love it, yeah, yeah. And then my Sunday School teacher came up and said, I remember when you used to run around my Sunday school class. Nobody could control you. You were such a fidgeter. Oh yeah, thanks for bringing that up too. I really that's a great memory. And I think that the key is they loved it, because I was there just once, preaching, just a couple of times, and then I was going to leave. But could you imagine what it would be like if I had to give them a hard word of God's law, and all of a sudden they're saying you used to fall asleep every single Sunday, and now you're talking like that, I changed your diaper while your mom was playing the organ. And now you're talking like that. It's kind of what Jesus is going through, right? Who do you think you are? You've been doing miracles everywhere else, and now you're going to come here and not do anything. You're just going to say You're the Messiah. So what he says is, truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. This is the heart of the story. Luke is setting Jesus up to be the rejected prophet. That's the image of Jesus that is central to what the story that Luke tells is that this message of the gospel proclaiming the grace of God to everyone, to the lowly, the broken, the outsider, to the widow and Zarephath and Naaman, the foreigner. This is the message that will get him rejected, the people, they didn't care about what he had to say. They wanted miracles, just like he did at Capernaum, but the mission was not about those things. It was simple, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. He came to preach the gospel to them, just as He sends it to us that we are free from sin and death, that by His death and resurrection, none of these conditions matter anymore, because he will raise us from the dead on the last day to live forever with Him. This is the message that is rejected. We see Jesus, the prophet, in Luke 13, reminding us of this, where he says, Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. Jesus was not rejected for his miracles. He was rejected for his message. And when he goes to Jerusalem, he follows the path of the prophets who were before him, the many, many, many prophets who came to the capital city of the people of God and were rejected or killed by the people there. And he did it for us, so that we could be saved. And his father vindicated him as the great announcer of God's grace by raising Him from the dead for you and for me to continue to proclaim this message to the whole world, the grace of God is here. It now is the time of the year of the Lord's favor for you because of Jesus, and I think that is the rejection that still continues today. Because when people look at the church, what they want is not God's grace or His mercy, resurrection from the dead, forgiveness of sins. They want results. They want things that matter to them. They want power, might action good things. They want us to be what they expect, rather

than what Jesus delivered, that the primary purpose of His teaching was to announce the kingdom of God is here, resurrection is coming, and that he leads us into eternal life. And that should be enough, shouldn't it? Because. Wow, that's cool, but people want more. People think the church should primarily be a place of charity, that our job should mostly be feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, and doing all of those sorts of things. And those are good things, but they're nothing. When the church abandons the announcement of God's grace for the forgiveness of sins, that's a real job, isn't it, proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ to the world. There's lots of people who could do good things, but we have the gospel that saves other people say the church should be a place of miracles, that when God's people gather together, we should receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues and and our bodies should be healed. And God has prepared an amazing gift of prosperity for you. And it's just like the people of Nazareth who say the church did miracles in Jesus's day, it should be doing miracles. Now we have the gospel, the greatest miracle of all. How could you not want that? How could you turn from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to focus on speaking in tongues? Who cares healing the body, just to die, who cares not when we have the resurrection? People look at the church, and they see us as a political entity. The church's job is to create a moral people so that we can have a moral nation and succeed in our politics. My Church has never been about that. We're not here to push some sort of conservative agenda for our political policy. We're about the resurrection. We're about Jesus, Christ His death on the cross for us. We're here to take sinners and give them eternal life. But the world doesn't want a prophet. They don't want the announcement of God's grace. They want results that matter to them, but we know better. We do not want to reject the most precious gift that the church has, the announcement of God's grace, this amazing gift of salvation that Jesus has given us when he says the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now is that time? Now is the time for that message, and that is who we are. We follow the rejected prophet who announces God's grace to all of us in His Name, Amen.

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The Wedding at Cana: The New Age Is Here!

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. The story that we're looking at today is the story of the wedding at Cana. It is, I think, one of the strangest stories in all of the gospel lessons. If you look at Matthew, Mark, Luke and the rest of John, it doesn't seem to fit the pattern of the kinds of stories that we see with Jesus. There is no one to heal. Nearly every other miracle is about something, saving somebody, maybe there's casting out a demon, healing someone who is sick, even when Jesus walks on water or calms the storm or feeds 5000 people, he's solving this huge problem. Nothing like that. It's mostly saving somebody from a little embarrassment of having run out of wine. We're also at a wedding, which is a little weird. Jesus gets invited to a lot of dinners, and those dinners, especially in the Gospel of Luke always involve a Pharisee or somebody else that Jesus is teaching talking to. And that happens a lot, but we don't get anything like that. There's no dialog about what Jesus is saying. He's not teaching them about the kingdom of God. There are no parables. There is no confrontation. We actually don't get to see anything about the wedding at all. It's just the setting for this thing. And then, of course, we get turning water into wine, which drives the teetotalers crazy. Jesus takes water and makes it into wine. That's a little weird. But there's also the interaction between his mother, and we look at that and we she's like, Hey, Jesus, there's no wine. And then walks away. And he makes the obvious question, like, what am I supposed to do about that? I'm just a guest here. She goes to the servants and says, yeah, just whatever. He says, do it. It's like there's this unspoken thing. She knows what's going to happen, and she just sort of like, says, Hey, Jesus, you can take care of this, right? All of it is really not well explained. And then it ends with the sign where it says this the first of his signs Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested His glory, and his disciples believed in him. But even the sign, the miracle the water turned into wine, is only known to the disciples and the servants. Nobody else knows the master of the feast. He gets the wine, and he's like, Why have you been saving this until now? This is really tasty, and that's all he's got. What a weird story the thing that does make sense is the idea that this is a sign, and I think we can all see power of Christ at work changing water to wine. I've had a guest show up unexpectedly, and wish that I could do that, but there's more going on here. There's a reason John decided to show this story about a wedding and wine and not tell a story of a miracle or a healing or something like all of the other gospels as the first miracle, the one that shows the disciples who Jesus is. The symbols of weddings and a miraculous supply of wine are commonly used throughout the Old and New Testament. If you look at especially in the book of Isaiah, there are a couple of places where we see the miraculous sign of wine being given as a symbol of the new age of the Messiah God's power. And rain have come, and one of them comes from my favorite funeral verse in Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 25 where it reads, on this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wine, of rich food, full of marrow, of aged wine, well refined. And He will swallow up on this mountain, the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever, the provision of God's Almighty and Eternal Kingdom that Isaiah promises looking forward to the resurrection of the dead includes a festival and a feast filled with not just regular wine, but the best wine, so good that he has to say it twice, well aged wine and then again of aged wine. Well refined, I'm in that sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? Isaiah 55 has something similar, where it says, Come everyone who thirsts come to the waters and he who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk Without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourself in rich food. Again, this amazing provision of food and wine and goodness in the ultimate kingdom of God. Amos talks about this as well. In Amos chapter nine, when he says, I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. This idea of vineyards and wine and the provision of God was part of his entire gift of the promised land that they could go there and have their fruit and be filled and satisfied. And now the amazing gift of wine comes through a miracle out of the purification jars of the Jewish people comes this overflowing gift of wine, so amazing and so great that nobody knows where it comes from. The new age of the Messiah is here the gift of God, this power of God in the New Kingdom that everybody was looking forward to in the Old Testament, John announces it is here, through Jesus Christ, there's an overflowing of The gift of grace, six stone jars filled with 20 or 30 gallons of wine. That's a party, and the party extends to us with the overflowing grace of God. But John isn't finished. The idea of a wedding is symbolic, too, throughout the Old Testament and in many places, God sees the relationship between Israel and him as a wedding, as a wife and a husband. Prophets were sometimes told to marry prostitutes as a symbol of the challenged relationship between Israel and God. And we see in Isaiah, Our reading today, God promising that no longer will she be divorced and desolate, as it says, You shall no more be termed forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed desolate, for you shall be called My delight is in her, and your land married. For the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your god rejoice in you. And in this wedding, we see the beginning of the celebration. Of the marriage feast of Christ coming to his people.

John knows this because he writes about it in Revelation as well. He points to the day when their marriage feast of the Lamb is the thing that we celebrate. Revelation 19 hallelujah for the Lord, our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exalt and give Him the glory. For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted to to her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure and in Revelation, chapter 21 and I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And a few verses later, God will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Our gospel reading is announcing the beginning of the New Age. The bridegroom has come to the bride. Christ has come to establish His church, and there is a celebration, and the grace of God is coming to make this bride no longer stained by sin, no longer desolate and alone, but the blood of Christ will wash her clean and give her a beautiful garment. This messianic age is being announced by John, but the grace of God is here. The kingdom of God has come in Christ, and that is the message for us today. The Messianic age is here. Christ established it when he walked on this earth, and the overflowing grace of God is here for you, just as the wine poured out without end, just as the groom came to the wedding, Christ comes to us with his overflowing grace and His Peace, and we can see it in no better place than the gift, where Christ gives us a special gift in wine upon the altar when we eat his body and drink his blood. The wine of the wedding feast is given to us so that Christ can be not just in heaven, but in us, among us, inside us, to cleanse us and give us eternal life. This is the marriage feast of the Lamb, as he comes to us to give us his overflowing and overpowering grace. And John tells us this story, to do the same thing that he did for the disciples, to believe it, to say, Jesus has come. The New Age is here. The Messiah has established His kingdom. Believe in Him, and it was just for the disciples, not for the crowd who came to celebrate, who got the wine at the feast. The disciples and the servants were the ones who knew, and it is we who believe too. John has announced it for all of us who have heard the word of God and know about his grace, this age is here. Our Savior has come and has established a new kingdom on this earth to fill us with His grace forevermore, in Jesus. Name, Amen. Amen.

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Baptism of Jesus: News That Matters

Luke 3:15-22

As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people. But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison.

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Mercy and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, amen.

I don't know about you, but I feel like I am constantly overwhelmed with news. Do you ever feel that way? There is always news coming in, especially since my hip seems to be connected to all the news of the world through my phone. Of course,

it seems like there is just a stream of things that well, actually, most of the time they don't really matter.

Lots of the news I get doesn't matter.

Many of the things that I see are variations of this headline. Can you believe what blank politician says about blank I am so outraged.

I don't know what I can do with that. Think it's mostly designed to get me mad at nothing

until I get mad about that thing, a different thing tomorrow.

Just recently, we heard that the Assad regime fell in Syria. And you know how I reacted to that one? I

didn't know they were still fighting.

It's news that really doesn't matter to me.

There's all sorts of news like that, right? You hear about it, you might think, Oh, this is interesting. You might think, Oh, this is shocking. You might even think it's kind of like political, politics or a little bit like football. Find out whether your team is winning, how many points they have scored, but it doesn't actually affect you.

Doesn't change your life. Much at all.

There is news that matters, though. Right now we have a lot of news in California that matters to a lot of people,

even for us, the fires that are going on in LA, I bet they're affecting people you know and love.

They're certainly affecting our sister churches that are being in the path of these terrible fires, or we have members of those sister churches that have lost homes. If you're interested in updates, the Pacific Southwest District sends out an email regularly that lets everybody know who is affected and how

that is the kind of news that matters to us, leads us to prayer, leads us to care for the people that we love.

But even for that kind of news, for the people who live far away, if you live in Maine,

mostly it's just a thing on the news that you go, I should pray for those people.

Other news matters a great deal.

When you get news that I've been hired for a new job that matters a lot.

That means that you are going to do things a little differently. The next day, you'll show up at a different time and a different place,

different duties.

Here's another big one that matters when the wife walks up to her husband and says

it says, pregnant,

that is news that matters, your life is going to change, and you will change with it.

There is news that matters, a news that does not. News that matters is news that we have to react to that will change our lives and make things different.

Our gospel reading today is all about news that matters, news that matters to all of creation.

John the Baptist went to the Jordan River and proclaimed that there was news the Messiah was coming.

He says, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie, He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

John's message was simple, the Messiah is on his way, the Mighty One, the powerful one, he comes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

Big news for the people, but

it wasn't just that.

He said His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

There is a sorting going on.

The Messiah comes with a winnowing fork. Do you know what a winnowing fork is? It's like a it's like a rake. It's a big fork. And what you do is you take the wheat and you throw it up into the air, and the wheat berries are heavier than the chaff, and so you toss it up into the air, and the chaff floats off in the wind, and the good stuff stays it falls right down.

Winnowing is sorting between the stuff you don't eat and the stuff you do,

between the good

and the bad. Now, the Messiah didn't come to sort things that you could grind into flour to bake bread and things that you couldn't.

He came to sort and judge the earth between the people who are gathered into eternal life and those who go into unquenchable fire.

He came

to bring judgment and salvation. What

I think is really funny after that message is what Luke says about him. It says so with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people.

That's not what I would say if I looked at that thing that he just said, right, His winnowing fork is in His hand, and he will clear His threshing floor to gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff, he will burn with unquenchable fire. Good news.

Fact you take that, he says something very similar as well.

He says the ax is already at the root of the tree, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Good news,

it really is, though, we get stuck on the burning we get stuck on the cutting down.

But if you're the wheat, this is great.

God is going to gather his people all together into eternal life, and

he's going to do it through Jesus.

Now the people of John's day, when they saw Jesus get baptized and there was the voice, they didn't know what it would mean. They didn't know that Jesus would come and die. They didn't know he would be placed in a tomb and rise from the dead. They had no idea that the salvation of God would be so crazy and amazing,

but they did know

that it required a change,

that the news of the Messiah should lead them to repentance, and

that's why They all came out to the Jordan River, the news of Jesus mattered,

and so they repented, and they asked John, what should we do?

He said,

The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.

When tax collectors came to him, he told them what they should do, don't collect any more than you are required to.

When soldiers came, he said, Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay.

Now these don't seem all that radical to us, because we're kind of used to that idea, but they were radical for Jesus's day,

tax collectors. That's just what you did. You took more money than you were supposed to. That's how you got rich. That's why you became a tax collector

Roman soldiers.

They were there because they were the conquerors. They were the mighty ones. They were in charge over those lowly, conquered peoples. Why in the world would you treat them nicely? You were the strong ones. There

was no reason to be good, to treat them fair,

but the news of Jesus Christ mattered.

It changed how they were supposed to live their lives, from the rules of the world to the rules of Christ's kingdom,

following a Savior who would die for them.

We're in a bit of a different position.

We look back at the news of this Messiah, the Son of God, who is baptized in the Jordan River, and we know the whole story in.

We know that Jesus was the one that the father said, This is my beloved son with him, I am well pleased.

We know everything that he did,

that he would live and die and rise to give us eternal life. And we know all of this and have been living together in the Christian faith, many of us for a very long time. In fact, some of you sitting in the pews today have been Christians longer than I've been alive, and have heard this story and heard the message of John the baptism more times than I have.

And you know you are here because you believe in the Savior and want to live this life,

and this winnowing fork that Jesus has is to bring us eternal life,

to sort the world from those who will be destroyed and those who will be who will live forever with Christ,

we trust that he has come to save us.

What that also does

is it drives us to be different from the world,

just as the soldiers who came to the river to repent, the same with the tax collectors, the same with everybody. The news of Jesus, the Messiah, constantly drives us to be different from the world,

not to follow their rules. But the gospel of Jesus Christ,

we who live in Him, we have to ask, What shall we do?

And Jesus provides us. He says to us, we must be different. That is the whole point of Romans chapter six, when it says, We were buried, therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

You see, we are no longer enslaved to sin.

We are no longer like the world. Christ has come and died for us and chose us and made us different,

which means

we must live that way.

We must act as those who repent and turn from the ways of the world.

And that's the hard part. We

are kind. Constantly learning,

constantly growing, constantly striving to follow the image of Christ, our Savior, which means we're sometimes going to learn new things or be challenged. We're sometimes going to forget the things that we have learned

and have to repent again, and

that is one of the hardest things of the Christian life

to always be saying, What must I do? What can I learn? How can I grow? How do I turn from the voices of the world that want me to follow them,

because we have news that matters. Messiah has come. He is here. He has saved us, and he's coming back again. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and

we want to be with the wheat. We

want to follow Him,

REPENT and be with our Savior,

he's coming. It's news that matters

in Jesus. Name Amen.

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Power and God's Kingdom: Sermon for Epiphany, 2025

Matthew 2:1-12

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:

“‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler

who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. Tonight, we're looking at the story of the wise men, the story of these Magi, sometimes called kings, whatever they are traveling all the way to Israel to worship the newborn king. They saw a star, and they want to figure out where he is. Sometimes we assume they know more than they do, because they go to the wrong place first. They must not have updated their GPS like back when it would turn people into the river, and they would do whatever the phone told them to do. They end up in Jerusalem. They end up seeing Herod, the king, and this story of these Magi and who they visit helps us to see a contrast between two important kings who are in the story there is one King Herod and one King Jesus, and they show us important things about the Kingdom of God. They show us the different approaches to power and how the Christian church is supposed to work. Herod, obviously, is the bad example of the power at work in the world, and Jesus the Good example. And what I'd like to do today is contrast the two, the way Herod, the king, tries to affect the world, how he lives in it, compared to the way Jesus, the King, comes into the world and affects it. So let's start by taking a look at Herod. There are several Herods in the Bible. This one is Herod, the Great, the father of the other Herods that you might run into. Herod the Great was the king of all of the region propped up by the Romans. He had been chosen by multiple emperors and people to remain as King there, showing that he was quite the political guy. He knew what he was doing. And so when the wise men show up, they come to town looking for where the king is. They say, the we saw the star. We know there's a king born. And so where do they go? Well, where would you go if you are going to say, ha, ha. The president's wife is about to have a child. Where should I go? You would say, Washington, DC. Right. So the wise men, they go to Jerusalem and they come up to Herod's palace. They get there, they're long trained. There are many people who are with them, this caravan from the east, and they go to where Herod is. You might not know much about Herod, but he was a guy who liked showy things. He went about doing all sorts of architecture projects that are still famous today. The one that was most recognizable in Jerusalem was he actually built the temple that was there, remodeled it and made it so much more glorious. He knew what it looked like and how to act as if you had power, and that's what Jerusalem was for the king of the region. Jerusalem was the place where you showed off your power. He had a palace, he had soldiers, he had priests at his back. And call when the when the wise men said, Where is the king? Herod summoned all the people who were nearby, scribes and priests, to find out where it would be, because he didn't know. We do the same thing today. The White House is the symbol of the president, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, lives on Downing Street. Buckingham Palace is still really impressive, and we use these things to project the importance and power of. The people who live there, they're not there just to be nice and cool, but to say this person is really, really important. You should do what they tell you, Herod is projecting this kind of power and majesty into the world.

He didn't just project his power through image. He used it a great deal. Herod was famous for killing his rivals, including members of his family. He's the kind of guy you wanted as a dad, right? Nearly every one of his rivals throughout his career was murdered somehow, including his beloved wife and a couple of their children. But even more famous is what he does after this story in the Gospel of Matthew, when the wise men do not come back and Herod figures it out. He sends his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill off every male child under two years old. That is how the world projects power. That is how they influence things when there is a threat to eliminate it, when there is a problem, you point a spear at it. And you might think this guy sounds like a terrible kind of villain. He killed his family. He killed all those poor little children in Bethlehem. He was really normal for the ancient world. This is what you did to stay in power. In those days, you killed, you murdered. And power is still expressed in similar ways, maybe not with spear and sword, but with law. The world still tries to force people to do what they want by power and might. We still have criminals locked up. We still fight wars. The only difference between now and then is we have a little bit more technology so we can do it with a joystick from across the world.

This kind of power is typical, but you have to ask, what is the lasting impact of King Herod? Herod was mighty and powerful, the king of a small nation. He had all of these people. He would do whatever they wanted. He could kill and eliminate. And you know what he did? He died, and then he was gone. And his mighty kingdom, this thing that he built up that he could pass on to his children disappeared as soon as he was gone. Sure, Herod built a number of interesting architectural things. There are cities that still exist because of him. But you know what? We talk about him more now because of Jesus than we do because of what he has done. Herod would actually just be a footnote in obscure histories about the Roman Empire if it weren't that he was ruling in a town just a little bit farther away from where Jesus was born. And so many groups and organizations and governments and empires have faded just like that, haven't they, these places that thought that they could build and establish something that was eternal by the power of a spear, a sword or a gun, they have all faded. Where is the great Persian Empire? It's gone. Where is Rome gone? Where are all the mighty empires of the world? They've crumbled and turned to dust. Even today, states are breaking apart and splitting and getting smaller and smaller. Everything built on this kind of power disappears. Herod is a perfect example of the way of violence and might and power that is obvious and confrontation.

Jesus is different. Herod was in this. A palace in the city of Jerusalem. But where was Jesus in Bethlehem? Listen to what the prophecy says, and you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Bethlehem was not a great town, not a mighty place. It was a small city outside of Jerusalem. The only thing that made it special in the history of Israel that was well, a king was born there. At one time, King David, Jesus was not in a in a palace, but a house, a house that was likely at one time so full they didn't get to stay in the guest room, but had to sleep with the animals next to the manger. They spent up to two years there as a poor and lowly family. Real power doesn't need a palace. It doesn't need all the trappings. Real power came from a child being the Son of God, a savior born into the world who is going to be the true king over all of creation, not just of this little kingdom where Herod was, but over all the earth.

Jesus expressed his power differently too. He didn't need sword or spear, but just his word. He healed the sick, he cast out demons. He calmed the storm by saying, Peace be still. Isn't that power isn't that might. Can you imagine how cool that would be. But the amazing thing about what Jesus does you think about all of his miracles, all of the works that he did, all of the great and mighty deeds, not a single one made his own life easier. He did it because sick people needed healing. He called them the storm because the disciples were terrified. He cast out demons because they were oppressing the people and he didn't conquer anyone. He didn't destroy the cross as he was being dragged to it. He didn't send the angels that he could have called upon to scatter all his accusers. He used his power for other people. And you might think, Well, okay, maybe he used his power to get himself famous, right? If I were to run around casting out demons and healing the sick and walking on water, people would be like, well, that dude's cool. But Jesus even told them not to talk about the people he healed, especially in the Gospel of Mark, he says, don't tell anyone, because his miracles weren't for his fame or his ease or to create a mighty army, but because he has power and love to serve. But the most amazing way that Jesus expressed his power is the most radical. He died on a cross and rose from the dead. How crazy is that to express the power of God by being nailed to an instrument of torture. Jesus, the Messiah, king of the world, died a rebellious slave's death, and it's how he saved all of humanity that was the most scandalous thing about Jesus, when they were spreading the news to the pagan world, the king died like a lowly slave. Gave up his life instead of conquering like Herod gave his up his life for you, instead of destroying you, like Herod might have, and it's still scandalous today, when the church talks about sacrifice, that the power of God would not show itself in amazing miracles and. In wisdom or politics or power or great PR machines, the symbol of the church is still a dead man on a cross and the word of God that tells his story, it's still the spoken word of God that shares the message about the death and resurrection of Jesus, Christ for the forgiveness sins and your own resurrection, we still use only the power of the Word of God.

And it's amazing what Christ has done, isn't it? Herod didn't even last a couple of years past Jesus's birth, His kingdom fell apart. The Roman Empire disappeared. But who is still here? The Kingdom of Christ. They tried to kill us. They tried to get rid of us all the ways that they knew how they put us in the arena. They chopped up our heads, they nailed us to crosses, they they burned us and boiled us with oil. They did all sorts of awful things. And you know what it did? It made us stronger, because the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn't come with spears or swords or guns, but by the death and resurrection of the Savior who guides us through death into eternal life. See the power at work in Christ. This is what lasts. It changes hearts. It moves people. It makes us one with God, and leads us into eternity. All those other things disappear. This child, Jesus, where the wise men come to visit him. He shows us the true power of God, not the way the world. Does it like Herod by force and prestige. Jesus does it in humility, by the power of His Word, through His death and resurrection in His name. Amen. Please stand and.

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Chosen, Redeemed, and Sealed: Sermon for January 5th, 2025

Ephesians 1:3-14

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, Amen, today, we think about the incredible truth of being first chosen, second, redeemed and third, sealed in Christ, these three words sum up God's eternal plan of salvation and reveal the wonderful love For us all. They assure us of our identity and inheritance in Christ and calls us to live lives of praise to God. Let us think about the three truths, these truths, as we look at what it means to be chosen, redeemed and sealed by God, we will study each of these words and see what it means to us. Let us first begin with the word and concept of being chosen by God, to be chosen means to be selected or set apart for a specific purpose in biblical times, this meant to be chosen to receive an inheritance, which meant for the person to be included in a family, so they had an inheritance of the family. Promises Paul writes in Ephesians one verse four, he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. This choice was not random but deliberate, rooted in God's love and purpose. Again, he chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in his sight, Paul tells us in verse five, in love, He predestined us for adoption to himself as Sons through Jesus Christ, in Roman culture, adoption was a legal act that granted the adopted individual all the rights and privileges of a natural born child, this included inherent inheritance into the family. Adoption by God makes us part of God's eternal family and recipients of his promises. This inheritance is imperishable, unfading and secure, as it says in First Peter one, verse four, being chosen transforms our lives in three ways. First, we are now part of God's family, his sons and daughters. Second, we are part of God's eternal plan. And third, this promise provides us with identity and purpose, being chosen leads to a promised inheritance of eternal life with God. This adoption unites all believers and brothers and sisters in Christ, breaking down barriers of race, gender and social status, as it says in Galatians three verse 28 our promised inheritance encourages us in our trials, reminding us of the eternal glory that awaits us. The prodigal son story in Luke 15 verses 11 through 32 is a good illustration of this truth. The Father, representing God, reaffirms God's grace and a son's identity as a member of the family Upon his return. In verse 24 of Luke 15, it says, quote, this son of mine was dead and is alive again. End, quote, God chooses us to belong to his family, not because of our worth, our worthiness, but because of his love for us. Now, let us look at the concept to be redeemed. To redeem is to buy back or deliver from bondage, often at great cost. Trust. What does it mean to be redeemed by God? In Christ, redemption is the act of freeing us from the power and penalty of sin. Paul proclaims in Ephesians, one, verse seven. Quote in Him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. End, quote, redemption came at the cost of Christ's own life. His blood was shed to pay for the price of our sins, liberating us from sins grip and restoring our relationship with God. Redemption is the act of Christ shedding His blood to pay the price for our sins. What is life like when we are redeemed, we have freedom and forgiveness. Our past sins are forgiven. We are no longer defined by them. We are free to live as a child of God. We have reconciliation and peace. Redemption restores our broken relationship with God, bringing us peace and confidence in His grace, the prodigal son came. Prodigal Son redemption came at a cost to the Father. Remember that he had great wealth, and he divided his wealth between the two sons, one to the prodigal son who left, to the other to the son who stayed. So he was left with no money or wealth. The Father welcomed the prodigal son back, restoring his position and dignity in the family with the robe, the ring and the sandals, like Christ sacrificed for our sins, He redeemed us with His blood and restored our relationship with God to be sealed is a mark of or guarantee of something assuring its authenticity and security. What does it mean to be sealed by God? In Christ, the Holy Spirit seals us as God's own. Paul declares in verse 13, quote, you were sealed with a promised Holy Spirit, who is a guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. The Holy Spirit is God's mark of ownership and his promise to protect and preserve us until we take possession of it on the day of redemption, the last day, the impact and application their lives in our lives of being sealed are One. The Holy Spirit assures us of our salvation and sustains our faith. Two, we are protected and preserved by God until the day of redemption. And three, we live confidently knowing that we are eternally secure in Christ in Second Corinthians, chapter one, verses 21 to 22 it says, quote, he anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come. The Holy Spirit sustains our faith and assures us of our salvation. You are protected and preserved by God until the day you inherit eternal life. Knowing you are sealed by the Spirit gives you courage and joy to live confidently in Christ. The ring given to the prodigal son signifies ownership, security and a sealed restoration, restored inheritance. It is a seal of his position in the family. The Holy Spirit is our seal, guaranteeing our eternal inheritance in Christ.

Include, in conclusion, in Christ, we are one chosen, set apart to be, to be beloved child of God. Two redeemed and. Freed from our sin through Christ's sacrifice, and three sealed marked by the Holy Spirit as God's own, secure in our salvation. These three truths form the foundation of our identity and our inheritance to eternal life with Jesus. As a result of this, we have a desire to respond by one, living in assurance of our identity in Christ. Two, praising God for his incredible grace, and three, sharing his hope and truth with others, inviting them to experience the joy of being chosen, redeemed and sealed in Christ, may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ, Jesus, amen.

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Depart in Peace: Sermon for December 29th, 2024

Luke 2:22-32

And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,

“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,

according to your word;

for my eyes have seen your salvation

that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

a light for revelation to the Gentiles,

and for glory to your people Israel.”

And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

Amen, Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, there is a great deal going on in our gospel reading today, all sorts of cool things that I wish I could talk about. All of them. We start out with a section about Mary and Joseph fulfilling the law of Moses. They offer up this sacrifice that reveals their poverty, as we read in the Old Testament, reading, you were supposed to sacrifice a lamb, but if you were poor, you could do some pigeons or two turtle doves. And it shows how important the choice of Mary and Joseph was in our salvation story, that they would be faithful to the law while Jesus was an infant. But we're not talking about that today, we could talk about Anna and the amazing prophetess who was in the temple as as a widow most of her life and celebrates the Son of God coming to the temple. But I'm not going to talk about that either. I know. I know disappointing. Today I want to talk about Simeon and about the song that he sings, the gospel of Luke. Has a lot of songs. In fact, the songs that Lutherans sing, we sing three from the Gospel of Luke. One of them is the Benedictus, named after the first word in the Latin This is sung by John the Baptist father, and it begins with, Blessed be the Lord or Benedictus. The other one is Mary's song, which comes right before this. We know it as the Magnificat. And it starts with that word in Latin, meaning, magnify My soul magnifies the Lord. And today we get Simeon in the temple, and he sings one of the three great songs from the Gospel of Luke The Nunc dimitti, which means, now, dismiss. Now you or as it's translated, Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace. This is a fascinating song. Simeon is in the temple. Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit has been upon him, and he's received a promise that he would see the Christ before he dies. Then there's this amazing moment when Mary and Joseph are carrying this tiny baby into the temple and Simeon sees the child and knows. And I wonder how that happened. Maybe it was like in the video games, when you've got a glow on the objective, it's like in you can see it way in the distance, and you go up and you press triangle to pick it up. Was it like that? Well, there's no controller, of course. Was there a little glow around Jesus in Simeon eyes? We couldn't possibly know, but it's one of those questions. Simeon runs up, he sees the child, pulls it out of Mary's hands. Little weird, right? And then sings this song and blesses God. He sings, Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for Glory to your people. Israel. He says, Lord, now I can die in peace. Your promise has been fulfilled. My eyes, not just my eyes, my hands have touched your salvation. Simeon, now knows promise is kept. He can die in peace. He's seen the promise, the great promise, of all of the Old Testament. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob Moses, David Solomon, everybody else, all of the prophets, wish they could be here for this moment.

Where children were taught to pray. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray, my Lord my soul to keep If I should die before I wake. I pray, the Lord my soul to take good one for four year olds, right? But this is, this is the idea here, is that as you, as you're getting ready for bed, it's a moment to think on your mortality. And so they sing this song, Lord, now You let your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, that you prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. It's a song that we sing as trust, as we think about our future, as we think about what may happen next every time we go to bed, we realize maybe we won't wake up, but we've seen the salvation of God in Christ, who came and died for us and entered into the tomb so that We could rise on the last day with him. One of the other times we sing this song is right after Holy Communion. We don't do this here in our in first Lutheran, but if you look in our hymnals, it's in every single service. This was an edition that the Lutheran church added to the Western tradition of the liturgy. We would sing right after taking communion, you'd return to your seats. The pastor would say, please stand, and we'd sing, Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. And it transports us into this moment too, where we are like Simeon in the temple, and we have just taken Christ ourselves, his we ate his body, we drank his blood, and we go, yes, now I have seen your salvation, not just seen, but ate and drank it, Which means I have peace with God, I have life that lasts forever, not a child in my hands, but a savior in my body, who is united with Me that I can live with him. Our tradition. We first communion happens right after confirmation. We have our students, you know, 12, 1314, years old. They go through two years of preparation. They read the Bible with their pastor, and they look at the Small Catechism. We do all sorts of training. And then they come and they take Holy Communion for the first time, 1314, ish years old. And what an interesting time to think now, I can die in peace. We don't think about that for 14 year olds, do we? Now, I can die in peace because I have seen your salvation. And so the song then becomes a rehearsal for the rest of our lives, as we take in Christ's Body and Blood every single week we receive it, and we say, Now I can die in peace, because the peace of God has entered into me. Eternal life is there for me.

What a way of saying, God, I trust God, you have saved. The last time we sing this song is at a funeral service right at the end, just before we do the benediction, the pastor says, I am the resurrection and the life. Says the Lord, He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and he who lives and believes in me will never die. The congregation says, Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation. Nation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. It's a pretty intense moment, but what it recalls is that when a faithful Christian dies, they are not gone forever. God has dismissed them into the new life of Christ in peace. It reminds us of every moment they came forward and take, take, took Christ's Body and Blood, every moment the salvation of God was delivered to them, and that now they have gone to be with Christ forever. It reminds us that we are all bound together in that body of Christ, that this is not the last moment, but a moment that means that they will be forever with Him, and whether that person is 40 or 100 we say the same thing, you can dismiss your servant in peace because we have seen the salvation of Christ and have a sure and certain promise that the One who has died will rise again and it reminds us that every moment we come back to this place, and we come forward and take Christ's Body and Blood, we are bound together with that person too, as it says in our liturgy, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we come together and are brought together with with Christ in his mystical body, so that you see just a little bit of your lost loved in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion. And then singing with this church, we say, Lord, now You let your servant departed. Simeon song has become a part of our worship tradition for a great reason. When we see the salvation of Christ, we know we can be dismissed in peace, whether it is when we go to bed or when we're 14 and we take his body and blood for the first time, or on that last ritual when we say goodbye to a lost loved one, we know that when we see The salvation of Christ, we can go in peace, in Jesus, name Amen.

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Pondering Christ: Sermon for Christmas Day, 2024

Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, we are in the middle of the Christmas celebration. If you came last night, you got to see all the candles and all of the singing. We ended with the traditional Silent Night. And now today, we are in the middle of our Christmas Day celebration. I love how we get to extend this celebration, not just for a single day or even two, but we have Christmas for 12 whole days, all the way up until we celebrate Epiphany on January 6, which means we get to hear all sorts of versions of the Christmas story and the things that happen. Last night, we read about the angels and the shepherds and we saw Jesus in the manger. This morning, we read about the Word made flesh that dwelt among us. But today I'd like to focus once again, on the story from Luke and something that it says there. So Luke, chapter two, starting at verse 16, says, So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger when they had seen him. They spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them, But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart, the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen which were just as they had been told.

The Christmas story is an amazing story. We get to hear the versions of it many times throughout our Christmas preparation and during this season, but they're limited to just a couple of places. Actually, Matthew has a very short snippet of the Christmas story. Basically. It says, When she had given birth, the rest happens. It's like, Thank you, Matthew, we wish we could have some more detail, please. Luke gives us the most detailed account, the one that we read over and over. The kids memorized it when they did those old plays with the in those days. Caesar Augustus, Mark skips it entirely. He just starts with the baptism of Jesus, and we're off to the races. And John, well, he starts with the creation of the world, and then skips to the skips to John the Baptist. And yet we ponder these stories every year. In the Luke story, Gabriel comes to Mary, tells her that she's going to have a child. When Mary begins to show she races off to Elizabeth, who recognizes the baby immediately, because child in her womb leaps and is filled with the Holy Spirit. Then Mary travels to Bethlehem with Joseph, likely not in the way that we see in our in the movies. It's probably not that Mary is on the donkey and she's like, Oh, hurry up, Joseph. He's where he's almost here. That makes for some good drama, but they would have been smarter than that. I we see the story, though, when we read about the angels and the shepherds and Jesus and all of that from the Bible's perspective, I want you to imagine for a second being in Mary and Joseph's shoes, after all the angels and all of that happens. It happens early on, and then you get six months or so of nothing. They get to Bethlehem, it's crowded. They're staying in the house, probably on the lower level with the animals. And then she has the baby, and you're like, whoo, it's all done. And suddenly a bunch of shepherds barge into your house and they're like, Where's the baby? Can you imagine? Mary's like, Oh, let me hold him. She. Birds show up, and they've got this weird message. A bunch of angels showed up and told us where he was and that he'd be wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger, and he's the savior. And she goes, Are you sure you didn't eat some of the funny grass with the sheep? That's of course, not how Mary responds. She hears the message everybody is wondering about the Savior, Christ, the Lord born in Bethlehem to save the world. And she treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. Luke doesn't write this just because he wants to say, Isn't Mary neat? See, he's got a plan for his gospel. He wants all of us to do exactly what Mary was doing to treasure up these things in our heart. He wants us to ponder and think not just about the Christmas story, but about the story of Jesus throughout his whole life. In fact, he tells us that's why he wrote this gospel right away in the very first chapter in verse three, he writes, it seemed good to me, also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that You have been taught. So Luke wrote the wrote this gospel so we could ponder these stories, treasure them up in our hearts and have them with us our whole lives. He wants us to hear and learn and read and ponder and treasure the stories of Jesus Christ every day, every moment, because He is our Savior, the Word made flesh, who came to dwell among us to deliver the grace and peace of God. Of course, it's not just that story, is it? Story of Jesus's birth, the manger, the shepherds. Right now we're beginning a journey with Christ, a journey that we take every year as he grows, as he begins his ministry, as he continues to serve, and eventually it leads us to the season of Lent, where he dies on a cross, rises from the dead and ascends into heaven. This powerful and amazing story of Jesus is the story of grace going out into all the world, and we read it every single year, because they are a treasure to be pondered, to think about. These stories are for us to help us, to guide us and lead us in faithful following of Jesus Christ. But as we ponder these stories, there can be a challenge to each one of us reading them and hearing them over and over again. And pastors feel this challenge right about this time of year, because we say, Okay, I have been preaching on this story of Mary and the shepherds and the angels on the passages of John every single Christmas for the last 20 years. How do we say something new and some of you have been at this a little longer than 20 years. Some of you have been hearing pastors preach on these stories, hearing them spoken and read. And the temptation might be, I've gotten everything out of it. I've heard this over and over and over again, but these stories are for us to be treasured and remembered. It's not because they are a thing that we we learn, we know the facts and then we move on, but because they are a central part of our life, to see a Savior who would leave a heavenly throne and come amongst us to live among the muck of human life.

For you and you know the facts that. It. But the thing is, about what do you do with them?

What do they mean for your life? How do they change every moment, every action, everything that you might do, that's what we need to ponder and learn is that Christ is not just a story with a plot, but a God who is present among you now through his word to drive you into faithfulness. I think there's another temptation though, as we ponder Christ, as we look at God's Holy Word, we look at it and we think, wow, I missed those days when it was new. I've been working with some people who it is actually new for them. We've had some baptisms, people who came to me, one of our our newest members, showed up one Sunday morning and said, so

I started with Genesis. And you go, okay, that's new, isn't it?

And when you're reading this stuff for the first time, or really into it for the first time, it's really cool, you get really excited. You're like, amazing. I've never learned this before. Isn't the grace of God outstanding? I can't believe all the cool things that are written down. Do you? Do you really understand what Paul is saying? And I'm like, Yeah, I've read it before, but by year 80 of that, you don't have that moment. Do you the AHA of reading something new, the moment where you go, wow, I am learning something amazing and different. Sometimes we chase them. I've seen teachers online that are really trying to do that if you watch Instagram reels, about every other Instagram reel that talks about the Bible is trying to chase that amazing aha moment where someone breaks down the Greek word or shows a pattern in the Bible that maybe you've never heard, and all the hosts on the show go, wow. And you know what it is, it's a bunch of crap every single time, because what you're chasing is a high a moment, the AHA, I had a member bring me a video from a former church Once it was talking about the story of when Jesus had his feet anointed and that were washed with the woman's tears. This was a a woman who came from a sinful background, and she was washing Jesus His feet with the tears. And the Pharisees looked at him and said, if, if he was really a prophet, He would know that that woman is a sinner, and this teacher was chasing that aha moment. He said, You know what? People of those days, they would have these tear jars, and the tear jars, they would cry into it, and they would store up the tears of generation after generation. And that must be what she had done. Isn't it amazing about the grace of God, the generations of pain and hurt were poured out on his feet? Sounds cool, doesn't it? Nowhere in the Bible, no indication that there are tear jars or anything like that. And in fact, that distracts us from what Jesus is actually doing. This sinful woman was forgiven and welcomed by Christ, who cares about the generations before her. This woman needed love and grace, and Christ welcomed her against the wishes of the men who are trying to reject her. And the reason I bring this up is because the stories of the Bible, they don't change, which is actually really good. They mean the same thing every time you read them over and over and over again. What changes is not the scriptures, but you because every year, you approach God's word from a slightly different place with slightly different needs you approach with with new problems, new victories, new hopes, new prayers, new new life. Situations and what what we need is not for the scripture to give us an aha moment, but an AHA application.

This new thing in my. Life. The baby Jesus now speaks to that this new hurt in my life, the grace of Jesus Christ heals

this new problem that I need to solve. The service of Jesus Christ drives me to serve as he did. We don't need to search for a new thing. We take the old thing and apply it in our life. So it's okay. Bible never changes. It's okay if the book of Romans says the same thing it said last year and the year before and the year before that. It's okay if we sing glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth the same way we do every year. Because when we ponder Christ, treasure up his stories in our hearts. They mean new things in action, in application, in salvation for you, they drive us towards new problems and give us new solutions, where the grace of Christ can be new for you in that moment. And so that's why we do this story. Every year. We start with the manger, we end with the ascension, and we ponder and treasure up the stories that Jesus gives us, because we need to hear them in every new situation, in every new moment of our lives, so that the grace of Christ can live in us in each of these situations. How wonderful and beautiful, this majestic story of Jesus, Christ is the story that doesn't change, but becomes new for us as our lives are different. And so we ponder, just as Mary does when we treasure up all these things and ponder them in our hearts, the grace of Christ drives us a new each day in Jesus, name Amen.

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This Really Happened: Christmas Eve 2024

Luke 2:1-7

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, amen. Christmas is pretty wonderful, isn't it? We have a song. It's the most wonderful time of the year for that very reason. Of course, we decorate our homes in ways that sometimes we don't even my house this year, we got our tree up just in time for Christmas, which is a little unusual for us, given the way things work. Christmas is filled with decorations and excitement and parties and all of that, and we have lots of stories that we tell and retell during this time of year. I grew up with the claymation stories. You probably remember them, the ones with reindeer and the glowing nose. That was a great one. I think it had an island of misfit toys, we learned some good lessons from that. One, all about welcoming others and enjoying the differences. I remember one about Frosty the Snowman. I think there was a hat that was magic. Another claymation special. We've got lots of tales that we tell. Sometimes we watch them over and over on our TVs, and we learn great lessons about them. It wouldn't be a Christmas if I didn't mention National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and the power of family to come together even when your tree burns down lots of stories and legends. Many of these might as well start with that classic thing that we begin the legends or fables that we know once upon a time. It's because they have a status that gives us this almost eternal story that never really has a time or a place or even better, we started them a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. These stories teach us good things, and often we say that they're about things like the spirit of Christmas, spirit of generosity or joy, or some sort of generic Christmas sentiment. And sometimes I think the stories that we read in here can take on the air of legend, fable or myth, when we gather together with our candles, with the lights on the Christmas tree, as we do every year, and we rehearse the story of Jesus' birth, sometimes it seems like, well, maybe it starts the same way, once upon a time, or Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. And it's kind of amazing. The stories too. They're fantastical. They're out there. You look at the stories that we hear, an angel shows up in a virgin's bedroom in a little town of Nazareth and says, Hey, lady, you're going to have a baby. And she goes, Great. That's weird. That's strange. That's out there, isn't it. The shepherds are out in a field keeping watch over their flocks. By night, they don't get a text message, angels appear in the sky, the whole Heavenly Host singing Gloria enig shall sees deo

and then wise men from the East, they see a star. I see stars every night. I don't travel 1000 miles by foot. They see a star. And they walk likely from Persia all the way to Jerusalem, and then they end up in Bethlehem, and they give expensive gifts to a kid sitting next to a donkey. These stories are a little fantastical, a little out there, a little weird, and sometimes, sometimes I think we treat them like those stories. We tell the legends, the fairy tales, the once upon a time, and we look at the story of Jesus, God becoming a human being, and we start to think this story is really a. About the spirit of Christmas. It's a story to teach us something about, I don't know, maybe about family or generosity, or that generically, we like peace, and that's sort of what it's all about. But one of the readings that we read tonight tells us that this is not a legend or a fairy tale or something that starts a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Our reading from Luke tells us exactly when this story happened, and it's really important. It says, In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Now you never thought your pastor would preach about that, right? It's almost a throwaway line. Sure we've got this guy, Caesar Augustus, most of us remember him from our history classes, but Quirinius, what is going on here? Luke doesn't mention these people by accident. He mentions important and famous rulers from the region to let us know something very simple, this really happened. It is not made up. It is not set in a far away place. Once upon a time, it happened during real times and in a real place. And we know Caesar Augustus was the emperor of Rome who created the Roman Empire, as most of us think about it, and he reigned from 27 BC until he died in 14 ad not just in the Bible. We all know about this guy. We also know from the Bible that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod, the great who ruled until he died in about four BC and Quirinius, famous governor of Syria, one of the most important ones, who actually annexed Judea into his territory and had one of the most important censuses of the time that everybody would have known about. Luke is telling us this really happened. You may have noticed that I said Herod died in four BC, and shouldn't Jesus be in the ad? Now we actually screwed that up in our dating what it means is Jesus was probably born somewhere between six BC and four BC, and it helps us to see this is not a myth, a legend or a fairy tale. It is not a thing that is there to give us a lesson about the good life or help us to learn something about the spirit of the season. Jesus is actually God becoming a human being, God who was sent by his father to join with us, to free us from the curse of sin, so that we can live forever with Him. And it's not only that. The rest of the story really happened too. This same Jesus grew up. He went out to Galilee, where he taught to the crowds. He healed the sick, he cast out demons, he walked on water, he calmed the storm, he fed 5000 people with just a few loaves of bread and fish. He forgave sinners and brought together people who needed the love and grace of God, and then he climbed up a mountain where the father looked at him and said, This is my son whom I love. Listen to Him, and from that mountain, he walked a path straight to the city of Jerusalem, where he knew he would be rejected by the chief priests and the elders, betrayed by one of his disciples, put on a trial for things that he did not do, convicted, arrested, beaten, killed, die on a cross and be placed in a tomb, and then on the third day, Rod and then his disciples would see him, not just the 12 that we know, but St Paul tells us that over 500 people saw. Him after His resurrection. It's not a fairy tale. It's not a story, not a once upon a time, it really happened. Jesus rose and died and rose for you so that you can live forever. Now, if this is a fairy tale, you can come to here, you can sit down, you can sing the songs and learn a nice lesson and then forget about it. You can exit, go about your day and have it mean nothing to you for the rest of your life. It can be just like the claymation movies of my youth. You put them on because it gives you that hit of nostalgia. You get to go, Oh, I remember what it was like to be unwrapping the presents under the tree while they're talking about the Island of Misfit Toys. And it has no claim on our lives we watch those stories because they're nice and they're fictional, and they just make us feel warm. That's not what this story is. It's not a hit of nostalgia. It's not a remember when I was young, or aren't these nice songs that we get to sing every year. God became man and lived and died for you. He did it truly. He did it in actuality. He did it on this earth, in a city in in Israel, we call Jerusalem, at a moment in time and in history. If this story is true, if this really happened, nothing else is more important. If this story is true, if God became man and died for you, nothing matters more, because he came so that you can live forever, so that when you face your death, you know that you will rise with him, so that when he returns on the clouds with power and might, you will rise and greet him with joy. That is why this church exists, why we gather here every single Sunday, not to tell a story about a thing that gives us nice lessons, but to remember that there was a man, Jesus Christ, who lived and died for you. We read about his birth, we read about his ministry, about His life, His death, His resurrection, and we do it every single year because it's the most important event in all human history. And sometimes we come here on Christmas Eve, and this is our annual, or semi annual trip to church to get that nostalgia hit, to say hi to grandma and thank her, because she's really nice and we're here for her, but it's your moment to remember that this really matters. Jesus really came and died for you, and it's more important than anything else. Luke wants us to know this happened. Jesus was born, and he wants you to remember it every day in Jesus, name amen.

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Guarding the Peace of God Philippians 4:4-7 Sermon for December 15th, 2024

Philippians 4:4-7

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Grace, mercy and peace. Be to you from God the Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We have a I have a different title and a different sermon than Pastor huenenk was going to have. My title is guarding peace of Christ. Today we meditate on the beautiful and comforting promise found in Philippians, chapter four, verse seven, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ, Jesus, what is peace for many? It's the absence of conflict or the presence of tranquility. But the peace of God, offered through Christ is something far greater. It's a peace that goes beyond circumstances and human comprehension. It guards our hearts and minds. In this promise, we find assurance that God's peace is enduring, securing us in His love and grace. Let's look at the three aspects of the peace of Christ. First, it is beyond understanding. Second, it guards our hearts and minds, and third, it secures us in Him, God's peace is beyond understanding. Paul describes God's peace as surpassing all understanding. This means it defies human logic and reasoning. It is a mystery to us. The world's peace is often based on circumstances. It may depend on the lack of conflict, on financial stability, on being liked, or on personal success. Yet the peace of God transcends these earthly foundations. The disciples experienced this peace when Jesus spoke to them in John 14 verse 27 he said, Peace I leave with you my peace. I give to you, not as a world gives it, I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Even as Jesus prepared for his suffering and death, he assured them as a piece rooted in his divine authority and eternal victory, the disciples displayed courage when they were beaten, jailed and martyred. Acts five, verse 40, says, they called the Apostles in and had them flogged. Acts 12, verse five says so Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. Acts seven, verse 59 says while they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. This peace is not a vague concept, but it is lived, a lived reality for God's people. Consider, consider the prophet Isaiah, words, you keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in You. Isaiah, 26 verse three, trust in God's promises anchors us amid chaos and confusion, allowing his peace to reign in our hearts. Number two, God's peace guards our hearts and minds. Paul's imagery of a guard illustrates the protective power of God's peace. In the ancient world, guards were stationed to protect cities from external threats. Today, when we see a guard, we may think of safety and security similarly God's peace. Stands watch, stands guard over our hearts and minds, shielding us from anxiety, fear and despair. The need for this guarding peace is evident in our daily lives and struggles we face the pressures of work, relationships, health concerns and spiritual battles. The enemy seeks to sow doubt and fear, but God's peace is a fortress that cannot be breached, as Martin Luther reminds us in his hymn, a mighty fortress is our God. God's protection is unshakable. Verse one says, a mighty fortress is our God, a mighty shield and weapon. He helps us free from every need that hath us now or taken. An inspiring example is Horatio Spafford, who wrote to him, it is well with my soul in 1873 due to business delays, Spafford sent his wife and daughters ahead of him on a trip to England. He expected to follow them in a few days, the family's ship was struck by another ship and sank, and only his wife survived after losing his children in this tragic shipwreck, Spafford found solith in God's peace. Despite his grief, he penned the words, when peace like a river attendeth my way. It is well with my soul, his trust in God's guarding peace gave him strength in the face of unimaginable loss, place our worries in God's hands through prayer and trusting in His sovereignty, as Peter encourages us in first, Peter Five, Verse seven cast all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you. Third, God's peace secures us in Christ, the final phrase of Philippians four, verse seven highlights the source of this peace. It is found in Christ. Jesus, apart from him, true and lasting peace is unattainable through His life, death and resurrection. Jesus reconciled us to God, removing the barrier of sin and granting us peace with our Creator. Paul beautifully articulates the truth in Romans, five, one, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This peace is not a temporary reprieve, but an eternal promise. It secures us in our identity as God's esteemed children and assures us of our heavenly inheritance. We have practical steps to embrace God's peace. First, Rejoice in the Lord. Philippians four, verse four, Rejoice in the Lord. Always again I say rejoice. Cultivate a heart of gratitude and praise for the goodness for all things large and small. Number two, pray with thanksgiving. Philippians four, verse six, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. Bring your concerns to God, trusting in His provision and care. Number three, meditate on God's word. Philippians four, verse eight, finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. I fill your mind with his word, focusing on what is true, honorable and pure.

And fourth, abide in Christ, John 15, verse four, Abide in Me and I in you. And the branch cannot bear fruit as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you, unless you abide in Me, remain connected to him through worship, scripture, reading, the sacraments, fellowship with other believers. In conclusion, the guarding peace of God is a treasure that goes beyond all our understanding. It protects us from the turmoil of life, anchors us in the promise of God, and secures us in the unchanging love of Christ. This peace is not dependent on our circumstances, but on the unshakable foundation of God's grace. As we think about Philippians four, verse seven, let the truth sink into our hearts and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, Lord, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ, Jesus, may this peace sustain you in every trial and fill you with hope as you trust in your Savior. This hope is a promise we can count on and have confidence through Jesus Christ, let us pray, Heavenly Father, thank You for the peace that only you can give during life's challenges, remind us of your faithfulness and love, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and teach us to rest in your promises. May we live as people of peace, reflecting your light in the world in Jesus. Name, Amen.

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What Do Lutherans Think About The Virgin Mary? Luke 1:39-56 Sermon for December 22nd, 2024 (Copy)

Luke 1:39-56

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
    For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
    and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
    to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.

We are on the final Sunday before Christmas. In just a few days, we will be having our Christmas Eve service with the Silent Night and the candles and all of that stuff, Christmas Day with all of the hoopla of the big celebration. I bet many of you have been turning your radios to the all Christmas channel. Do they have one of those here? I figured they I don't listen to the radio, so I, you know, I don't do that, but they had one in Chicago, so I figured there'd be one here. You've probably heard all of the Christmas songs that are getting us ready for the season. We have a number that we might hear that are focused on the story that we're looking at in the Gospel reading, stories that talk about the Virgin Mary and songs that deal with her, one of the popular ones, the song Mary, did you know you've probably heard that. One, it's a frequent song in our choir concert. Two, it asks, Mary, did you know that your son would do all of these amazing things like walk on water or raise the dead? And my Lutheran pastor brothers always like to remind us that, yes, she did know the angel told her right hear songs like Silent Night with round young virgin mother and child. You might hear Ave Maria or the angel Gabriel from heaven came. I heard on on a Wednesday night last week, Mary's song, breath of heaven, another one we might hear. But today we actually get Mary's song, which we call the Magnificat, from the Latin which is where we get My soul magnifies, or Magnificat. Today we get to see a story where Mary comes to Elizabeth, and Mary gets some amazing things said about her. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, says, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb? Also. Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. And then Mary, filled with the Spirit, says, For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed. And I look at some of these things and I say, maybe it's time to address Mary and her role in this whole thing, maybe it's time to ask an important question for us Lutherans, what do we do with Mary? We ask this question largely because Lutherans sometimes break out in hives when we mention this virgin Mary outside of the Christmas season, because we love her when she is holding the baby, as long as she kind of fades into the background. And this is especially true for those of you who've come from the Catholic church into the Lutheran church, we might say, Don't talk about her that sounds kind of Catholic, but I think we Lutherans can give the Virgin Mary some of the greatest titles and honors that the church has given her throughout these years, and use her as an example of the amazing grace that God gives us by His graces. Choice of this poor and lowly girl, Mary chosen to be the mother of God. And we can do that because the very guy who started the Reformation, Martin Luther, did the same. And he did so because the Bible does it right. You look at this Gospel of Luke and Elizabeth, who is filled with the Spirit, says that she is blessed above all women. He calls her the Mother of God, who would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. And so Mary is an integral part of our salvation, because. She gave birth to Jesus. She is truly the Mother of God. Luther even called her the queen of heaven. But what makes her in this position? How can she illustrate the goodness that God gives us. I think that is the important part, the thing that separates us from the Catholic thing that sometimes we get, like, a little itchy when we talk about her, it's because Mary is a perfect example of God's gracious choice, that God chooses her the same way he chooses us for salvation. So Elizabeth says, Blessed are you among women, and Mary herself says, all generations will call me blessed, and we go, why is this? She says, For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. And I think this is a fascinating way of praising it the humble estate. What does that mean? What it means is Mary was lowly, not just humble in her heart, like we talk about humility, but she was actually one of the lowliest people on planet Earth. How do we know this? Well, she was from nowheresville in Israel by the town of Nazareth. Her hometown was even more rural than my hometown out in the middle of Wisconsin, and I know something about being rural. My town where I grew up in, was the big town in the area, with 2000 whole people who that's big we had a stop light and everything. And if you drive down the big highway just a little farther away, you get to places where you blink and you miss the town. That's where Mary was from, Nazareth. John tells us that Jesus from Nazareth was so doubtful that the first apostles didn't believe the Savior could come from there. What a Podunk, hillbilly hick town did Mary come from? We also know that Mary was poor, about as broke as broke can be. We know that because later in the Gospel of Luke, she and Joseph bring a sacrifice to the Temple of two two doves, which was only allowable if you couldn't afford the actual sacrifice you were supposed to give of a lamb. She and Joseph were very poor, unable to afford good things. She is of low estate. Her low estate included being a virgin, because virgins don't have babies, just in case you didn't know. But most of all, her low estate was because she was just like us, a regular human being, sinful and normal. God could have chosen any number of virgins all over the area of Israel. He could have chosen any of the virgins who were who were engaged to someone from the house and lineage of David. He could have chosen any number of women who would receive the message from the angel with faith and say, let it be to me according to your will, as Mary did. He could have chosen 1000s among them. But what does God do? Well, he needs to choose one because God needed one mother, one womb, to be the mother of God to produce the Savior and Martin Luther, in his commentary on the Magnificat, says this about Mary.

He says, note that she does not say men shall speak all manner of good of her, praise her virtues, exalt her virginity, or who her humility, or sing of. What she has done, but for this one thing alone, that God regarded her will men call her blessed because God chose her, not because she was extra specially virtuous or good or holy, because that is what God does. He chooses people and gives them His grace. And we see this all over the Bible. Think about Abraham, the very first person chosen by God to begin the salvation story of Israel. And if you look at only our Sunday School stories, you would think he's just this amazing guy, always faithful, always good. But then you read the Bible and realize he was a jerk who tried to sell his wife twice in think about Moses, one of the greatest figures of the Old Testament. Sunday School stories tell us he is this powerful figure, Charlton Heston, going to the Pharaoh and saying, Let my people who go but that is only if you ignore the beginning of the story where Moses, as a young man, murders someone, and instead of facing justice, flees into the wilderness to hide For 40 years, and then when God chooses him, reveals himself in the burning bush. Moses says, anybody but me, don't send me. But God still chooses him. There's a guy named Gideon who's a whole lot like that. Gideon was chosen to lead the armies of God, and he ended up killing 10s of 1000s of Midianites. You know how he was chosen, not in the front of a recruiting campaign to rid the oppressor. He was hiding in a well threshing grain below visibility so nobody would see him and hunt him down. The angel says to him, hail, mighty warrior, and he must have gone who, perhaps another great example is Saint Paul, one who wrote more books of the Bible than anyone else. When he was chosen. Was it because of his goodness or his virtue, or his amazing gifts to the church, or the power of his his awesomeness? He was chosen and the first words that were spoken to him is, why are you persecuting me? The Bible is filled with stories of God lifting up the worst and the most broken and the terrible and the lowly. Perhaps an even better example that fits with Mary is King David. David was a faithful man chosen to be king by God, but I bet there are a bunch of faithful men that God could have chosen to raise up to be a king, men who would have been much like David, men who could have served and followed as as one with God's own heart, like David is described, and even he Given all these gifts brought to be a king, made ruler over Israel, ended up showing that he was a sinner like us. God chose him because God is a God who chooses by His grace and makes decisions of his own accord. And he chose Mary, a young woman, a sinner from the middle of nowhere, to be the mother of God. And the only reason we can call her the queen of heaven, the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God, the Holy Theotokos, if you want to go back to the Greek, is because God decided that who he would use. That's a perfect image for God's choice for us, isn't it? God chooses you, not because you. Any kind of virtue. God chooses you not because you come from the most amazing city, the finest city in all of the United States. God chooses you not because you are fighting against your sin or because you have money or power or goodness, God chooses you by His grace, through His Son, Jesus Christ, and He gives you this amazing gift. Because that is how God's work. God works. So we worked with Abraham, Moses, Gideon, David St Paul, it's how he worked with Mary, and it's how he works with us. Luther writes again about the Magnificat. He says, oh, Blessed Virgin Mother of God, who was nothing and despised, yet God, in His grace regarded you and made such great things in you that you were worthy of none of them, but the rich and abundant grace of God was given to you far above any merit of yours. Hail to you. Blessed are you from thenceforth and forever to finding such a God? And isn't that true for us? We are blessed because we have such a God who would give this gift of blessing to Mary and to us, who would gather us into the son Jesus Christ to give us eternal life and bless us only because of his goodness, only because of His grace, only because he loves you so much to save you by his son. And this is the amazing thing about the Blessed Virgin Mary, we can hold her in the highest esteem, give her all of these great honors and talk about her without falling into the error of holding her as greater and better than us, because she herself did not again. Luther writes, she finds herself the Mother of God, exalted above all mortals, and remains so simple and so calm and counts not any poor serving maid beneath her. She is still poor and lonely. Only God's choice, his grace, made her the Mother of God. It is true for us, only God's grace makes us blessed, only God's grace lifts us up from our lowly estate of sinners and makes us heirs in God's kingdom. And the titles and honors that we give to Mary, are examples of that, not distractions from it, but examples of the amazing grace that God gives to human beings, that we might be called his children, that we might be chosen by him in Jesus name Amen.

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What Kind of Church Do You Want? Luke 3:1-20 Sermon for December 8th, 2024

Luke 3:1-20

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled,

and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and the crooked shall become straight,

and the rough places shall become level ways,

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?” And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people. But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison.

Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. We read these words about John the Baptist, or words similar to them just about every year during this time in Advent, and every time I read them, I am struck by how hardcore he

is. Right. What does he say? He goes, You brood of vipers,

Merry Christmas, who fleeed you from the wrath, who told you to flee from the wrath to come. Right? It goes. It's perfect. Right next to the tree, we've got the candles. The garland is up. The banners beautiful. It just makes you want to sing. It's the most wonderful time of the year. You Earth, right? Yeah, His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear the threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. Welcome to Advent. That's one of the things that makes our pre Christmas celebration different from the rest of the world, is that during this time, we focus on repentance, on discipline, on the words that John says to prepare the way of the Lord sometimes means to look at the harshness of God's law, to drive us to repentance so the gospel can be open. And I look at the words of John and what he says, how he speaks. And even though I'm used to it, it still shocks me every year and today, I actually kind of want to think a little big picture about what John is doing, rather than looking particularly at all the different things he says, you know, the words of judgment, calling, people, snakes, all of these things. I want to ask. What is John doing, actually? Perhaps the better question is, what kind of church do we want, considering the way John approached ministry, what kind of church do you want? One of the models for church has always reflected the way cultures work, if you look back into the the Roman Empire, they structured their church around the Roman imperial system. And so you went from the patriarchs, and it was very hierarchical, and you had like priests who were in charge, and they told you everything. What about us? I think, in America, we are an economic people. We're a commercial nation, which means that our churches often are tempted by thinking about ourselves as a shop like Target or WalMart, your local laundromat, your local car dealer, we sometimes think about ourselves primarily in the numbers, The people in the pews, the money coming in. We think about ourselves as if we are almost selling spiritual services. And I want to think about comparing that to what a church is supposed to and ask that very simple question, what kind of church do you want? Do you want it us to be a shop, or do you want us to be a congregation with the Ministry of the gospel? Now, before I dive into that, I'm not asking this because I want to say that you guys think we should be a shock. I know that's not true. We're here just simply reflecting on this question, because it is often pretty tempting to go in that direction, because, well, sometimes it's easier and sometimes you. It means not offending it. So let's ask that question, do we want to be a shop or a church? The difference in them comes down to a number of different things. The message of a church that is a shop selling spiritual services would be very different from the message that John the Baptist said. Can you imagine him, the Prophet in his camel skin? He's got his sack lunch filled like a little honey and some grasshoppers. And he comes into the marketing meeting. He's sitting down with the PR guys, and he says, Okay, guys, here's what I want to say. Let's let's test this. You brood of vipers and the PR guys go, you know, John, we love you. You're amazing. You've got this powerful message. But nobody likes that. Can't you be more positive? Like the rest of the world really just wants to hear something joyful this time of year. Isn't that what a a shop would do when they send out their message? Like even the Christmas season isn't really about celebrating Christmas, if you're a target, it's about selling stuff. The Christmas sale, 25% off Black Friday. Get your gifts now. And when a church approaches this similarly, the message becomes about attracting clients and not about the spiritual welfare of the people who hear it. We soften it. We we take God's law and we make it manageable, doable. We would never speak about things like judgment or the Devil or the work he does, it would be about becoming better people, about something that you can do to make your life good and right before God, we're not a shock though. We want to be like John the Baptist. Why is John so harsh? Why does John come down with the full power of God's law? Because that's the only way to get to the gospel without i a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto you all my sins and iniquities. That's what the old one said, right or pulled that one up, most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature, sinful and unclean. Without that, you don't get to the message of the gospel, the beauty of the forgiveness of sin, without hearing that I am a sinner in need of God's grace, you don't get the power of God. You get something less, someone who's selling something to you, hoping that you will come in the door, make our attendance numbers go up, and put your offering in the offering plate. The difference between a church and a shop is also different in our relationship, not just to the message, but to you who are sitting in the seats. If we see ourselves primarily as selling something. You are all customers, clients that we have to please. Now you might like that right? If you say the customer is always right, that's what they do out in the world, that would mean that we just do what is necessary to please you. And I know you, many of you know that I run a photography business on the side, just a little something to make sure I can keep buying my own gear right. And whenever a client is upset, I do whatever I can to make them happy. I refund money. I take extra photos. No big deal because I want them to come back. But that's not what a church does. You see, I only give photos if they pay me, right? That's how business works. We only care if you have something to give me, so then I give you something. Is that how you want the church to work with you? Do you want the church to primarily be concerned about your money and your volunteering? And your attendance numbers, and not about your soul, not about your life. You see, we're not like that. You are not clients. You are the body of Christ. And if a fingernail gets bruised, we care if some a part of us gets sick, we care, not just because your attendance numbers,

because Jesus died for you, and we are bound together in Christ's Body and Blood, and we love you because of him, and you love each other because of him. You're not clients. We are members, one of another. And I think the greatest way that I see this in action is when I interact with homebound members. You know that's part of the work that the church does, right? People who can't get out pastors go out and visit them, and we bring them holy communion, and you will net you will not guess the number of times people are shocked when I tell them that's what I do. Most people don't have pastors that do that. I had no idea. I thought that was just what we did. It's not how it works out there. That's because we care. We in the Lutheran church, this is just what we do, because we care about the people, even if their bank account is love, even if they're sad and depressed at home, we care. And so when you can't come to church, church comes to you, and even our own members say, Pastor, I know you're so busy. And then I tell them, This is literally what you pay me for, right? You don't want to be a client. You want to be part of the body. And the last thing that makes us different is the way we see the role of Pastor. If we are a shop like a target, the pastor would be the shopkeeper, the one who's in charge of making sure that we are selling spiritual servants, services to the clients. Keep the customers happy, make sure they get what they expect and will always come here, so that they will continue to put their money in the offering plate, so that we can boost attendance and church numbers. But most importantly, would also mean that a pastor would have focused most of his time on the high value clients, right? Because you want to get the most bang for your buck, you want to make sure that the people who are contributing the most spend the most time. Here are the ones who get the most love and care. You also would give less time to lower value clients. And I even feel uncomfortable saying that out loud, right? That feels weird to me, because that's we all know. That's not how the body of Christ should work. And it also means that when something's going wrong, a shopkeeper wouldn't say anything about if someone is hurt, tempted, going astray, the shopkeeper would not follow John's example and bring it up. See, what does John do when, when he has people come to Him, when the soldiers ask, What should we do? You're perfect, just the way you are. No. He says, Don't extort anyone. When the tax collectors come, they say, What should we do? He says, give me that money you extorted. No, of course not. Don't extort money. Because he's called to bring the guidance of God's word to him. We don't have a shopkeeper. We call our pastors pastor, which means Shepherd, right? We have a flock with a shepherd, and the pastor is the shepherd underneath the one good shepherd, Christ our Savior and the shepherd metaphor makes me think about Psalm 23 right? We talk about it goes, The Lord is my shepherd. And in Psalm. 23 there's this really neat passage. It goes, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort right? A couple of years ago, an African pastor came to a conference, and he brought the rod, and the staff that they use when they're shepherding the rod was this big, bulbous club. It was, it was huge. It was like a this big, and it had a big, giant thing on there, and it was rounded into a point. And he said, the rod, that's what we use when the lion comes for the sheep. It was that point, big, heavy, whack. Sometimes pastors do that when a member, sad or hurt, guilty alone, we use the power of the gospel to defeat Satan's word. We bring them Christ to comfort them with the power of the resurrection when they've lost a loved one. We bring the forgiveness of sins when their heart is broken and they need help. But then he also held up the other one, and this was a little a little reed with a hook on the end, and he said, we use this when a sheep starts to wander off. Was just a little hook. Wasn't going to hurt somebody. You just tap em on the side if they're going off the path of righteousness, and if they're really far away, you kind of grab em with that hook thing and pull em back because the shepherd cares about the sheep, wants to make sure they're safe. And sometimes it means defending them from the attacks of Satan, and sometimes it means defending them from themselves with with God's word. And I think that's what we all want. With a pastor, it's not someone who will think of you as a resource to be extracted,

but someone who is a shepherd, a guy who cares.

And I'll tell you, it's a lot easier to be a shopkeeper. You get to do? You get to tell people what they want to hear. You get to offer them whatever they need. You don't offer them the things they don't like. It's a lot easier on a pastor's heart, but it's not what's best. You see John the Baptist didn't go out to be a shopkeeper. He didn't go out to tell people what they wanted to hear. He called them a brood of vipers. He called them to repentance. And the amazing thing about this is that in the end, Luke says that it is the good news of God, because it's what led them to repentance and the baptism of the forgiveness of sins. I think this is also what we want in our church, to hear the fullness of God's law so that we can get to the gospel, not someone who sees you as a client or a congregation that sees you as an offering plate, but someone who cares about your eternal welfare and your destination in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Blessed is The King Who Comes In The Name Of The Lord: Sermon for December 1st, 2024

Luke 19:28-40

And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’” So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, we are in the beginning of the Church year during the season of Advent, Advent. So everything is about the coming of our King, Jesus Christ. We're preparing for his birth and for his return on the last day, which means we get a reading that we are used to reading during Lent, right? I bet you saw the reading from Luke And you thought, wait a second, didn't we skip ahead? Isn't this the end of the story and not the beginning? Shouldn't we be reading about Mary and the angel or Zechariah in the temple? Why Palm Sunday today? Well, Advent is all about the arrival of Jesus Christ. It's about the coming of the King. And why not celebrate the entrance of the King into his holy city on the beginning of the time that we talk about the entrance of the King into our lives. And so we see Jesus coming into Jerusalem just as He comes to us with shouts of Thanksgiving. And so we celebrate His coming that first time, his coming to us now and his future return, and we use the words just like the people did then, words that the church has sung for 2000 years. They go something like, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. That's what the crowd was doing on the day that Jesus was coming into Jerusalem. Luke records this as he was drawing near, already, on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. They used this word, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Other gospels also recall the words Hosanna in the highest probably remember them. We shout that while we wave the palm branches. In a few months, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Now, what were the mighty works that the people had seen that they were celebrating the coming King? You know the Gospels Well, we hear about the miracles in the Gospel of Luke just before this, Jesus healed a blind man who saw him on his way to Jerusalem and cried out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. On Thanksgiving Eve, we read the story about how Jesus healed 10 lepers and only one returned to give thanks. Before that, we see a woman on the Sabbath day who is hunched over and unable to stand up, and Jesus heals her, she can straighten her back. But perhaps the biggest one that happens before this story is found in Luke chapter seven, where Jesus comes to a town called Nain, it reads, as he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her, and when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said to her, Do not weep. Then he came up and touched the buyer, and the bearers stood still, and he said, Young man, I say to you, arise. And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying A great prophet has arisen among us, and God has visited his people in. And this report about Him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country. That sounds like a pretty cool miracle, doesn't it? The dead man sat up. What kind of great work could it be? But it wasn't just the miracles. Jesus was the kind of guy who taught sinners and ate with them, much to the chagrin of the Pharisees. He forgave people. That is why the crowds gathered together as Jesus rode in on a donkey, and why they crowd out, cried out, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. But the funny thing is, is they hadn't seen anything yet. They didn't know what Jesus was about to do, the amazing miracle that would be accomplished when he would go to the cross. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord? In the earliest days, the church sang that song. We actually have it coming up in our liturgy today, called the Sanctus. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord Hosanna in the highest we don't know when that song began. We don't have records of the first time it was sung in the church. We do for most of the liturgy, but not that one goes perhaps all the way back to the very beginning, maybe even the apostles sang it about the same time that we do. In fact, it could be that each of the Gospels records this song because that's what they sang. Altogether Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. You see, they were remembering the greatest work that Jesus had done, the work that came after this story, the work that we all know very well that after he entered into into Jerusalem, he was arrested on Monday, Thursday, he was brought before the High Priest and put on trial and falsely accused by false witnesses who said all sorts of lies about him. He was beaten by them and the guards, and then he was taken to Pontius Pilate, where He was whipped and beaten again and had a crown of thorns placed on his head, and he was finally nailed to a cross, an innocent man, where he died. He was taken down and placed in a tomb, and a stone rolled over the entryway, and three days later, when the angel rode the stone back, they discovered the tomb was empty, that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, the greatest and mightiest work of all. What better work could teach us to sing Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord Hosanna in the highest the church has sung this song all the way back into the earliest of days. It was one of the ways that Jesus encouraged the church when they remembered his great works under the persecutions of the early Roman Empire, the worst of which was done by the Emperor Diocletian. It's pretty amazing to me that the worst persecution happened right before Christianity was legalized, because the next emperor Constantine made it legal. Diocletian was a pretty bad man. He hated us. His big program was to get the bishops and the pastors to give up their holy books, The Holy Scriptures, so they could be burned. And if we refused, the pastors and bishops would be hamstrung. What that means is they would cut the hamstring of one leg and the Achilles of the other. Pretty awesome, right? Sounds great. When the Council of Nicea happened after Diocletian was gone, the most respected names were the ones who couldn't walk to the front to talk, but had to be carried because they stood firm, firm in the Savior.

A firm in the promises and the great glory of the miracle that he did when he died and rose from the dead, encouraged by the great and mighty work of our Savior to remain faithful. And this is why, even through all that difficulty, they still saying the words, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Because they knew the power and the promise of what Christ has done, they praised their god for the great works that they did among them, encouraging and sustaining them through the worst of it all, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord? We too sing that song. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord? Because we have no shortage of wonderful promises and great works that God has done among us too. We certainly remember that great death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but just as much we remember how that has sustained us and kept us as we come forward and receive His Body and Blood, we remember all the times that he has sustained us through the worst. He's forgiven our sins, comforted us when we mourn, strengthened us in loss, encouraged us to persevere through difficult times and temptation. When I got here, I did the thing that pastors do, rummaged through storage units, because sometimes you just gotta figure out what's there and know what's going on. And I found something cool. Wasn't terribly long ago, maybe about a year ago. I found a box of old VHS tapes. They had library slips. I guess you used to be able to check out these VHS. And there were about 11 of them, and we got some really cool stuff in there. One you can see on our YouTube channel. It's a documentary of the building of mackenson, you know, the preschool building. It's about 50 minutes long, pretty cool. We have a concert and an Advent service. So that's unlisted for copyright reasons, but the one that makes me think about this passage today is one called a message to the troops of Desert Storm, which we put together in the 1990s you don't have to raise your hand if you were here. Don't worry. What it is. It's about 20 minutes of recording of our congregation encouraging our members who had to leave and go overseas, reminding them that not only is Christ with them, but their community was too. And it's fun. I watched most of it, you get to see like individual families wishing them well. Our choir sings a song, pretty fun. But this is more than just a a group of people offering good wishes. What it is, is a sign that Christ's Body and Blood have bound us together as a people, because if you look around, most of us don't have a ton in common. Do we? We don't didn't grow up in the same neighborhoods. We're not bound by family, but we are bound by Jesus Christ, as we come together with his body and his blood, and this is the reason we are bound to each other and encourage each other, why we put together that message back then, and why we do it today now too, as we gather together Around Christ in his body and his blood to receive Him and encourage one another. It's not because we're the greatest people of all, but because Christ has unified us in Him to encourage one another, to support one another and to see the amazing works of salvation delivered every single Sunday. And just as Christ preserved his church through the emperors and the persecutions, he continues to do so today through his body and blood. And this is the great. Work that we see among us, the amazing power of Jesus Christ, and why the church still sings when He comes to us with His body and His blood. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, because we praise our great king for the mighty works that he has done among us? Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. What a great song that is, because we're looking forward to a day when we get to sing it one final time. Right? The season of Advent is mostly about getting ready for Christmas, right? You're probably pulling out your your manger scenes, getting the shepherds out and the roof, the little manger with the hay, Mary and Joseph and all that stuff. You might even be decorating your home, getting ready for all of that, but we're also getting ready for the last day, not the day when Jesus came lowly and meek, but the day when he comes with power and might we're getting ready for the day when we sing that song one last time, when we can look up into heaven and sing, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, and we will see the final mighty work of our Savior and King, as he calls all of us out of the ground, every human being who has ever lived and gathers us before his judgment throne to give us eternal life. But better than riding in on a donkey, better than palm branches being waved on high, our Savior will come finally with power and might and give us the life that we have been waiting for. Finally give the fullness of the salvation that He delivers every single Sunday here, on that day, we will cry out one last time Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, Peace in heaven and glory in the highest, in Jesus name Amen. Amen.

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Remaining Faithful In Prosperity: Sermon for Thanksgiving

Deuteronomy 8:1-10

“The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. Happy Thanksgiving Eve. I'm sure many of you have spent some time, if you're already doing the cooking this morning, making sure that dishes and preparation are all in order if you're cooked turkey is not cooked already, because sometimes that's how you do it, right? We are getting ready to celebrate a day of Thanksgiving, and Our Old Testament reading is about a day when Israel was giving thanks for all the goodness that God had given them. Deuteronomy is our reading, and it is a speech that Moses gave the people of God at the end of a long period of difficulty they had been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years as a punishment for their disobedience. God had brought them to the promised land, and the generation said, Thank you God for doing miracles all the way in Egypt, all the way through our trip to the promised land. But we don't think you're strong enough to defeat our enemies. And so God put them in the wilderness until that generation had died off. Now they are back, getting ready to cross over into the promised land, and Moses is looking ahead at the joy they will have in this beautiful, beautiful land. So first, he recalls the goodness of God in the wilderness, he says, And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor your fathers know that you might know that bread man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these 40 years, he recalls the goodness of God in the wilderness, that despite their complaining, which they did a lot. God still fed them. He gave them water from rocks. He fed them with meat from the sky and bread that showed up right outside their their home. They didn't even have to send for Amazon. But Moses knows Israel, and he knows that very shortly, they are going to head into the promised land and faced the most difficult challenge in their history. This is what he says, For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of Brooks, of water, of fountains and springs flowing in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing. This is the big danger for Israel, the most dangerous thing of all for them was not wandering in the wilderness, where they had to depend on God every single day, knowing that only the Word of God would feed them. The most dangerous thing they could face was prosperity they would enter into the promised land, and the trees would produce good fruit. The ground would grow their food. They would enter into homes that they didn't build, but God had provided them with conquering. And he worried that they would look around and see these things and forget God. In fact, that's exactly what Moses says in the next section. Right after this, he says verse 11, take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart will be lifted up and you forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the Great and terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your father did not know that he might humble you, to test you to do you good in the end, beware lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this. Well, we spend a lot of time in the Christian church talking about the comfort that God gives us in difficult circumstances. We talk about Christ being a rock that we can cling to in the storms of life. We talk about him being someone who can comfort us when we mourn, someone who can promise eternal treasures, when our bank account doesn't have a whole lot in it, someone who can be with us and forgive us, when we feel guilty, but what about When we're feeling prosper, when we sit around a table that has a giant turkey on it, the biggest bird you've ever seen, and the family is gathered around, and they're all the dishes so many that if you had a scoop of everything, You wouldn't be able to eat everything. How do we deal with prosperity? How do we deal with the good times? Because I think those are sometimes more dangerous and more difficult to stay faithful in than the bad times. Cuz when things are bad, you know you need God. You need the rock to cling to. You need a Christ who died for you to promise eternal life, to comfort you when you mourn. But sometimes, like Israel, we can say, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this well, and you forget the Lord your God and your prosperity turns you away. That is exactly what happened to Israel, isn't it. They got into the promised land. They forgot all about God and everything from the end of Deuteronomy all the way up to Jesus. Is a description of how badly that went. Fortunately, we don't have to work like that. We have a Savior, Jesus, who came to guide us through prosperity and difficulty. And what we're going to do today is ask a very simple question, how do we remain faithful and thankful in a time of prosperity and learn from the mistakes of ancient Israel? I think the first thing we need to think about is to remember that everything we have comes from God. Today, on this day of Thanksgiving, it's actually a day when we set aside to say thank you, God for all the good gifts. It's while it's a national holiday, we have gathered here in preparation for it, to take that time and say, God, all good things come from you, and that is key to understanding how to manage prosperity faithfully, to not forget God. In the Large Catechism, Luther contrasts two characters from the Bible about managing the gifts that God had given them well, the first one was King Saul and the second, King David. Both were alike in that King Saul and King David were chosen by God to be kings and given a wonderful promise. If you are faithful, your kingdom will last. Saul, unfortunately, even though he had been given this amazing promise and made king over all of God's people to guide them in their faithfulness, he very quickly grew unfaithful. He turned to his own wisdom, disobeyed God's commands, and his management of all the gifts that God had given them, ended up turning him away, until finally, at the very end, he turns not to God for guidance, but to a witch to ask the spirit of Samuel to guide him. David, on the other hand, was different. He didn't let the promises of God and the gifts

turn him from faithful. David grew up in poverty. He grew up being chased by King Saul, who wanted to kill him every single day, running through the wilderness, hiding in caves, he knew that he could only survive by God's power. And then when he finally made it to be the king, he grew in wealth and power, and even when he committed some pretty terrible sins, he repented and turned to God, knowing that all of it came from him. And because of this, God gave him a promise that his son would be on the throne of Israel forever, a promise we see in Jesus Christ, in these two figures help us to see that faithful management and Thanksgiving of prosperity is about seeing these gifts not as something that we earned or we trust In, but as things that God has given us things that are not supposed to be ours by right, but blessings that God has meted out, and we must always remember to be thankful for him, because he is the source. Whether these gifts are the prosperity that we feel in our daily lives, or the gifts of salvation that we have in Jesus, it is all from God. And I think the best way, the best habit that many of us have to live this out every single day is that a simple thing we do before our meals is to say thank you. To say thank you to God just a short prayer. And even if you do that, that prayer that we sometimes do, like do you do? Come Lord Jesus, be our guest and let thy gifts to us be blessed, like 15 seconds, right? Or Luthers prayer, Lord God, Heavenly Father, bless us in these your gifts we receive from your bountiful goodness through Jesus Christ, our Lord, it takes no time, but it's just a few seconds of saying thank you to God, then you get to devour the turkey, right? But it is. It is this good gift that we have from God. Think the other thing we can do is remind ourselves that all things remain God's when he gives them to us. When I was a youth pastor, I stumbled across a video that was supposed to be about tithing. The video was kind of clever. What they did is they they started with a pot, and then there was a table, and each table, the table had place settings. And at each place setting was a label where a person sat, and so the first, the first label was housing. They take a big chunk, plop it on his plate, have a little they pass the pie down to the next one, and maybe it was food, little chef's hat, you know, that sort of thing. Take a plop, put it on the place, take the pie, pass it down to the next one. And they all took various things. It was, you know, fashion and whatever, the kinds of things that you would need. And you get all the way down to the end, and the pie gets shrinking smaller and smaller and smaller until you get to the like the video games budget. And the guy looks next to next to him, and there's a gentleman, and his name is God, and he looks at the pie, and he looks at God, and he cuts a big chunk out of it, leaving just the teeny weenies sliver. Plops it on his plate, and he's about to hand it over to to the to God, and the guy next to him goes, dude, he brought the pie and. It's clever, right? But there's a problem with this video, because what it does is it's supposed to tell you leave a peace for God, right? Not a little peace, a big peace. But the problem with this is that all of that was God's how we use it in our in our housing and our our clothing and providing for our needs, and how we use it for friends and family and taking care of people. Every piece of our life belongs to God when people try to make it about giving back a portion to God, as if he doesn't own it all. They're missing the point. Every moment, every part of our life, every good gift that God gives us, in health and prosperity or in not it all belongs to God, Saint Paul in Romans, chapter 12 says that we are to be living sacrifices. A living sacrifice means that we offer up everything that we are because it belongs to him anyway, and we do that in the in the view of the amazing mercy of God, who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, not to be a living sacrifice, but to sacrifice himself on the cross and then rise from the dead. And when we remember that God owns everything, we see all of the things, the joys, the happiness, the goodness and the wealth of life simply as a tool that God has given us to take care of others. Martin Luther writes about that in the Large Catechism. He says, Let us then learn well the first commandment that we may say, how God will not tolerate presumption nor trust in any other object, and how he requires nothing higher of us than the confidence from the heart for everything good, so that we may proceed right and straightforward and use all the blessings which God gives. No farther than a shoemaker uses his needle all and thread for work and then lays them aside. Or, as a traveler, uses an inn, food and his bed only for temporary necessity. Each one in his station according to God's order, without allowing any of these things to be our Lord or idol, all of it is just a tool for our stewardship of God's thing. And when we just see these things as that, we can remember that the one who gives them is really behind it all, who offered His Son to die for us. And I think the final thing that helps us to remain faithful in prosperity is to remember that all these things eventually pass away as we know this life is temporary, but the goodness and gifts that God has given us will eventually fade, whether it is just they disappear because of life's difficulties, or we die and go to heaven to be with Christ, we must always remember the goodness of God's eternal gift, Jesus, Christ and His salvation. This is really the key to understanding our place in prosperity. Is because if you do not know yourself as a creature whom God sent His Son to die for the Creator, for the creation, we cannot truly understand what it means to be thankful and faithful in prosperity. We end up seeing ourselves as the one in charge and God simply as provider. But when we come to hear his word, He guides us and leads us when we receive His sacraments. He focuses us on the gift of life that is to come. We can look around and see everything around us as a temporary thing, like a hotel room that you use when you go on vacation for a tool to take care of the people around us today. It's the word in sacrament that give us something that lasts forever, and we can be thankful for God's goodness and His gifts, both in the temporal things that we have every day, but especially for the goodness. And peace and salvation He provides us through Jesus Christ, we keep these things in mind, whether in poverty or prosperity, sadness or joy, we can remain thankful and grateful to a God who loves us in Jesus name Amen.

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Living With The End In Mind: Sermon for November 24th, 2024

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14

“As I looked,

thrones were placed,
    and the Ancient of Days took his seat;
his clothing was white as snow,
    and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames;
    its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued
    and came out from before him;
a thousand thousands served him,
    and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;
the court sat in judgment,
    and the books were opened.

“I saw in the night visions,

and behold, with the clouds of heaven
    there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
    and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
    and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
    should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
    which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
    that shall not be destroyed.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, we are at the close of the Church year, and every year when we do that, we look at the end times. We talk about Jesus's predictions of the return we read from the Book of Revelation. We talk about the signs of His coming. We look forward to the day of the resurrection and the Kingdom that Christ will bring forever and ever. Last week, we asked the question, what will happen on that day? And I did my best to put through the what the Scripture says about the timeline and the things of the Day of Judgment.

And so today, we're not going to go through all of the events and what the Scripture teaches about it. Instead, we're going to ask a question, what does that mean for us now? What does it mean to live now with the end in mind, Christ is coming. His kingdom is secure. What do we do today? Well, the first thing is we look forward to the amazing power of that eternal kingdom.

Daniel. Daniel gives us a wonderful description of the kingdom of Christ on the day of His return. It tells us that He will come and take his seat, and it says a stream of fire issued and came out from before him. 1000 1000s served him, and 10,000 times 10,000 stood before him. The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened. Then it skips a bunch of stuff, and our reading continues and says, And behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a Son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Daniel gives us an amazing image of Jesus, the Son of God and His Kingdom. It is an eternal kingdom that will never pass away, where all peoples will serve him. I'm not very good at math because I'm a humanities major, but I think 1000 1000s sounds like a lot, maybe 10,000 times 10,000 he doesn't actually mean a number in particular, but it is all peoples. Jesus, Christ return will bring about a kingdom that is almighty, all powerful and eternal, and a kingdom that will not pass away, one that shall never be destroyed.

How do we live with that in mind? I think the first thing we need to realize is that we are citizens of that kingdom. Now this is not just a kingdom that is for the future, but one that is present through Christ. Now, even though it may be hidden, the apostle John writes in his first letter in the third chapter, he says, Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as he is. Pure. So we have this vision of this amazing Eternal Kingdom, and we look forward to hope with the day that it will be fully revealed.

But you have it now in Christ, it is not something to wait. Christ's kingdom is here on Earth, wherever his people are gathered. We aren't waiting for the for it to come. It is here, but hidden. You. We are citizens of that kingdom now God's children, and we partake of it when the spirit comes to us through these word and Sacraments, our King Jesus reigns on his throne. Now we don't have to wait for that Kingdom to be established. Our task now is to remember it beneath the hiddenness of a fallen world. We have a King Who reigns forever our Savior, Jesus, Christ,

first, Peter, chapter one helps us to remember that he writes, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, according to His great mercy, he has caused us to be born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power, are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

You have this inheritance, you have this gift now, but we are waiting for it to be fully revealed in all its perfection and glory for that day when the Ancient of Days takes his seat and the Son of Man returns with on the clouds with power and glory and is given this eternal dominion. So our job is to remember beneath the hidden, fallenness of this world, the kingdom of Christ is established now, and we are citizens of it, which means we do not need to fear the things that threaten us or seem to even threaten that kingdom. We live in a particularly nervous age, don't we?

We look around and everybody's worried about something, and I think it's easy to see why all the bad things of the world live on a rectangle made of glass in your pocket, right? All the sadness, all the pain, all the hurt, all the hyperbole that our favorite people online say come straight to us with a beep and a notification. So we're all pretty nervous. And I don't know if you know, but we just had an election recently too, and some people are worried we are deluged with depressing, terrible, sad news, some of it true, some of it false, but all of it makes us nervous. That little rectangle in your pocket delivers you all the wars and rumors of wars, the news of famines, earthquakes and all the other stuff that Jesus said would be delivered to us. Perhaps the disciples couldn't imagine a communication network like what we have, but it is still there.

We worry about things like Ukraine, Israel, China, cultural norms and all the stuff that makes the retired people in the room say kids these days, and it gets us worked up and afraid. And sometimes, when people are afraid, they lose sight of the kingdom that is coming, the kingdom we live in now, and turn and try to fix things themselves, or trust in things that seem to be able to say, I can take care of this problem. Trust in Me, human being, but we have a promise that the Son of Man will return on the clouds with power and might and whatever happens now, whether it's on the other side of the world or in your backyard, Christ will make all things new. It doesn't matter how bad the world is or what will happen to you. It doesn't matter if the bad news shows up in your phone or in the doctor's office.

Christ will make all things new. His kingdom is an everlasting. Dominion which shall not pass away. His kingdom is one that shall not be destroyed. We can trust in that. It also means that we need not cling to the things that our hearts desire and we think will give us the joy and the happiness we want right now that are contrary to Christ's desires. Our elders have been working through the Large Catechism, and it's really neat to see their reaction to it. One of the elders has been walking around telling everybody, oh, this is so great. I can't believe this guy wrote this in the 1500s it's like he's talking about now. We were reading through the appendix to the first commandment in the Large Catechism, and Martin Luther writes this. He says, For to you, it is a question either of eternal blessing, happiness and salvation, or of eternal wrath, misery and woe. What more would you have or desire than that? He so kindly promises to be yours with every blessing and to protect and help you in all need. But alas, here is the failure that the world believes nothing of this, nor regards it as God word God's word, because it sees that those who trust in God and not Mammon suffer care and want, and the devil opposes and resists them that they have neither money, favor nor honor, and besides, can scarcely support life. Well. On the other hand, those who serve Mammon have power, favor, honor, possessions and every comfort in the eyes of this world. For this reason, these words must be grasped as being directed against such appearances, and we must consider that they do not lie or deceive, but must come true. We look out at a world that trusts in all of the desires that our hearts put against us, but we know that they pale in comparison to the amazing Kingdom that Christ will deliver. What could possibly be better than living in this eternal kingdom of power and might and glory forever and ever and ever, with the Son of God on the throne, in a dominion that will never pass away, a kingdom that shall never be destroyed. Martin Luther helps to remind us that these things will disappear. Whatever we set our heart on, they are nothing compared to the glory of that eternal Kingdom when Jesus returns, which means, of course, we have to set aside the desires that we chase after, learn to use the gifts that God gives us for His glory and His Kingdom, and often live in a discipline we dislike, but it's worth it. Jesus is coming. He's coming with power and glory to judge the living and the dead, and we are in Christ, citizens of his kingdom now will be revealed for the children of God, we are to live with Him forever in Jesus, name, amen.

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