Month: May 2008

Text: Matthew 7:15-29
Date: Pentecost 3 (Proper 4) + 6/1/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

Shine in our hearts, O Spirit, precious light;
Teach us Jesus Christ to know aright
That we may abide in the Lord who bought us,
Till to our true home He has brought us. Lord, have mercy! [LSB 768:4]

Since the fall of Adam, all human beings are conceived and born in sin, that is, without fear of God, without trust in God, and full of evil lust and inclination (AC II). Because of this spiritual disability, this complete deadness toward God, the Bible rightly diagnoses that human beings cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before God through anything we think we might do to merit or deserve His favor. It’s just not in us! The good news, of course, is that forgiveness, salvation, spiritual rehabilitation and life has, nevertheless, been provided by God totally and completely as a gift as a result and for the sake of Jesus Christ. He came down from heaven, taking on our human flesh and blood of His mother, the blessed virgin Mary, and lived and died and rose again from the dead and ascended back into heaven not just to show us the way, not as some illustration or example for us to imitate, but actually to merit and win forgiveness of sin and salvation for the whole world. Now it is only through faith, when we believe that Christ has suffered for us, that for his sake our sin is forgiven and righteousness and eternal life are given to us (AC IV). But how do we gain this faith? How do we come to believe? And how can we continue to believe? Again, it is God Himself who gives and works the gift and miracle of faith. And He does this invisible work through very visible, identifiable means.

“In order to obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, (that is,) giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means (instruments or channels), he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel.” The Word and Sacraments are like a funnel where all the benefits of Christ’s life and his cross have been poured in the one end and flow through the centuries to be poured into your ears and eyes, your mouth and mind. In this way the Holy Spirit produces faith in your heart. And the “Gospel” is this: “that we have a gracious God, not through our merit but through Christ’s merit, when we so believe.” In other words, do you hope and wish to believe and to be saved? Then be where the Holy Spirit promises to give, create and strengthen the gift of faith, namely, where the Gospel is preached and taught to you, among the community of God’s people who have been born anew through Holy Baptism, who teach all things whatsoever Christ has commanded, who baptize others and who regularly proclaim the Lord’s death in His Holy Supper as He commanded. This is the essence of what the Church is all about. Continue reading “Teach Us Jesus Christ to Know Aright”

Text: Matthew 6:24-34
Date: Pentecost 2 (Proper 3) + 5/25/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

My Dad was a down-to-earth guy. He grew up on a Norwegian farm in North Dakota in the first decades of the 1900s. He learned Luther’s Small Catechism in Norwegian. As a young man in the early days of automobiles he left the farm for the big city of Minneapolis to work as an auto mechanic eventually working in a machine shop. I recently referred to him (without mentioning his name) in my writing for CPH’s “Creative Worship” for this Sunday. One of his favorite phrases was “Worry don’t help nuthin.” He repeated those words often almost as a creed or a motto especially whenever he faced puzzling circumstances or troubles. It was almost as if he were trying to talk himself into believing that “Worry don’t help nuthin” because he was an experienced worrywart.

He had a sister who was a kind of Christian missionary. I later figured out she was of a sect simply called “Two by Twos” which was basically against any organized religious body, denomination or organization. It was based on Jesus’ sending out of the seventy(-two) in Luke chapter 10, “two by two” with the instruction, “Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals…whatever house you enter…remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages” (Luke 10:1-8). Her creed or motto, often repeated, was, “God will provide.” Now, it’s not that my Dad didn’t believe that “God will provide,” it was just that Aunt Helga would visit occasionally, carrying little money, few essential pieces of clothing and would remain in our house for a time, eating and drinking what we provided and then leaving again. She believed she was following God’s will. Dad called her a “leech!” defined in the dictionary as, “a person who clings to another for personal gain, especially without giving anything in return, and usually with the implication or effect of exhausting the other’s resources; a parasite.” In his own simple way he was identifying in her what it means to “tempt the Lord” by taking one of His promises and applying it way beyond its intended purpose or sense.

Today we begin the long, green season of Sundays after Pentecost (after Trinity) with the most pastoral section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It is intended for His Christian followers as they live the life of faith in this world. And it basically boils down to those two things my Dad believed: “Worry don’t help nuthin” and “God will provide.” Continue reading “Calm Faith”

Text: John 7:37-39
Date: The Day of Pentecost + 5/11/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

Every year I always take a bit of pride on “Super Bowl Sunday”…of never mentioning it during the entire service! On the contrary, however, every year I always take a bit of extra care to acknowledge the national remembrance of “Mother’s Day,” and especially this year when Mother’s Day coincides with the Day of Pentecost. I mean, we really can live without a “Super Bowl Sunday.” But none of us can live at all without, or ought to ignore the vocation of motherhood. In the Bible, of course, it goes all the way back to the first woman when the first man “called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20). Likewise, the history of salvation begins with the promise that the Savior would come from “her offspring” (Gen. 3:15). Though the promise of salvation is traced through the fathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), and the Savior would be “of the house and lineage of David,” many women are also named in the genealogy of the Christ. Finally, of course, the promise found its fulfillment when a man named Joseph was asked by God to step aside as the angel said to his wife, Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Lk. 1:35).

On this day, the Day of Pentecost, we acknowledge the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” to be the Mother through whom all are to receive eternal life through the new birth from above, conceived and born anew in the womb of Holy Baptism, the Church which is the Bride of Christ. Now, just as none of us would be here or have life without our mothers, so, as Martin Luther says it in his Large Catechism, “Neither you nor I could ever know anything about Christ, or believe in him and receive him as Lord, unless these were offered to us and bestowed on our hearts through the preaching of the gospel by the Holy Spirit.” God has “a unique community in the world, which is the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God, which the Holy Spirit reveals and proclaims, through which he illuminates and inflames hearts so that they grasp and accept it, cling to it, and persevere in it” (Kolb-Wengert, LC Creed:38, 42, p. 436). Continue reading “Rivers of Living Water”