“The day is surely drawing near” declares our Hymn of the Day (LSB 508). For the last two Sundays of the Church Year our attention is drawn to that day, the Day of Judgment.
A review of the books most recently published by Evangelist Billy Graham reveals a Christian man (who recently celebrated his 97th birthday) thinking more and more about the Last Day, the Day of Judgment and of human existence beyond the grave. Listen to the titles. “Angels” (1995), “Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well” (2011), “The Heaven Answer Book” (2012), “The Reason for My Hope: Salvation” (2013), and his most recent work and possibly his last, “Where I Am: Heaven, Eternity, and Our Life Beyond” (2015). Today we heard Jesus predicting the Last Day saying, “Be on your guard…. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Mk 13:9, 13). The teaching that there will be a Last Day of Judgment is not only a New Testament one. We heard the prophet Daniel say of those who have died awakening, “some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever” (Dan 12:2-3). So today we listen and learn and grow wise in the faith, as we say in the creed, the faith that “looks for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” How shall we confront our own last day, our death to this world and entrance into eternal life with God? Continue reading “Those Who Are Wise Shall Shine”
Text: Mark 12:38-44
Date: Pentecost XXIV (Proper 27) + 11/8/15
As the closing chapters of the Church Year pass us by we are told not yet about the last days before the judgment but again of the last days of our Lord’s earthly ministry. Today it is Tuesday of the Great and Holy Week, only three days before Jesus’ ultimate goal. He has been confronted by His enemies while He finishes teaching in the Jerusalem temple. Today He warns everyone against the unfaithful scribes and teachers of the Law. Then He has us notice the contrast between the rich folks putting in large sums of money in the offering box and a poor widow’s measly offering of only two small copper coins. I suppose the temptation weighs heavy for a pastor to preach a stewardship sermon on this text. It is after all budget planning time for the next year. And there are a couple of themes related to good stewardship principles. But this is Tuesday of Holy Week. And there is much more here of much more importance. Continue reading “At the End of the Day”
Text: Revelation 7
Date: All Saints’ Day + 11/1/15
With the arrival of All Saints’ Day we approach the closing chapters of the church year, of our annual task and mission of proclaiming the whole Gospel of salvation and eternal life from beginning to end. It began with the call to be ready in repentance. It ends with the promised blessed hope of heaven. It centers in Jesus Christ. It’s all about Jesus. The Creed outlines everything from the creation to the one sacrifice that opens the door of heaven, to our entrance into the kingdom, born anew through the womb of the baptismal font, filled with faith by the Holy Spirit through Word and Sacrament, kept safe all our days in the ark of the holy Christian Church. Today we are given a vision of it all. All people who are being saved together with those who have gone before us with the sign of faith are transformed from sinners into saints, the unholy become the holy ones, holy, that is set apart from the world of sin and death, set apart for the eternal life God originally intended for all people. Continue reading “At Last the March Shall End”
Text: John 8:31-36
Date: Reformation Day (Observed) + 10/25/15
When a person accurately identifies something, explains or describes something so perfectly we may say, “He nailed it!” On this festival day we remember that blessed and gifted “angel” or messenger of the eternal gospel (Rev 14:6), Martin Luther (1483-1546); the one our American Martin Luther King, Jr. was named after. The first Luther was baptized on St. Martin of Tours Day, November 11 giving him his first name, Martin. But though we remember the priest and monk, the man and reformer of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church in the early 16th century in Germany, we do not dwell on the person of Martin Luther but on the message he uncovered in a Church whose voice had been muffled and ears stopped by so many manmade rules, practices, fantasies and heresies. Continue reading “Nailed It!”
Text: Mark 10:17-22
Date: Pentecost XX + Proper 23 + 10/11/15
Today’s Gospel is about God’s love for the whole world of sinners and His desire that all should come to a knowledge of the truth and be saved (1 Tim 2:4). That truth is the necessity of understanding the difference between the idea that a person can be saved by works of the law on the one hand and salvation by God’s grace, by repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ on the other. Continue reading “He Loved Him.”
Text: Mark 10:2-16
Date: Pentecost XIX + Proper 22 + 10/4/15
When asked to explain how the real body and blood of the Lord Jesus become present in the bread and wine of the sacrament of the altar, the Roman Catholic Church relies on the philosophical reasoning called Transubstantiation. That is, since one thing cannot be two different things at once, the bread and wine on the altar cease to exist except for what’s called their “accidents,” and the elements are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Maybe it is because of some lingering doubt that you hear it popularly referred to as “the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ.” Continue reading “Male and Female. Therefore….”
Text: Mark 9:38-50
Date: Pentecost XVIII + Proper 21b + 09/27/15
“A young man ran and told Moses, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.’ And Joshua the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth, said, ‘My lord Moses, stop them.’ But Moses said to him… ‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets.’” Continue reading “The Right Credentials”
Text: Mark 9:30-37
Date: Pentecost XVII + Proper 20 + 9/20/15
Today’s Gospel may seem, at first, to be a bit disjointed. The first part is another of our Lord’s passion predictions and the second part a lesson on humility. But if we are here to be proclaiming Jesus Christ, it is all about Him. Today’s Old Testament reading hints at the passion part with the prophetic words, “I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” Then today’s Epistle from St. James seems to point at the second half of today’s Gospel when it says, “‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” If we are here only to encourage a lesson in ethical behavior of a so-called Christian life, that’s easy enough. But if we are here to preach and proclaim Jesus Christ for the life of the world that is quite another though related matter.
Last week we left Jesus going through the foreign, Gentile territory. Today we follow Him through Galilee when they came to Capernaum, His home town. This group of followers had witnessed some amazing things at the hands of Jesus. Mark told us how Jesus healed a deaf man, fed four thousand people in a desolate place, and healed a blind man. As these were all very public events more and more people began to follow Him. Now it appears what people were thinking about this great rabbi from Capernaum. And as with any popular celebrity people jockey for positions to be seen or acknowledged as closer or more favored by Him than others, sort of a first century “selfie.” “Well, I knew Him ever since” this or that great work.
Now He comes to His house and asks His twelve chosen disciples, “What were you discussing on the way?” As if He didn’t know! But they knew He knew. And He knew that they knew that He knew. So….they kept silent. They knew how petty was their argument as to who is greatest among them. And this wouldn’t be the last time they would stumble into this sin (Luke 22:24). So Jesus takes one of the children in the house (they knew Him and so were completely at ease). He first stood him in the middle of the floor and then taking him into his arms said, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
At first we are to consider others, especially children to be His favored, so much so that we are to treat and protect and love them as if they are Him. At first the child represents Him. But let the child represent us, you and me and all mankind being received and gathered by Jesus, the truly humble one, into His kingdom of salvation.
To become a Christian the heart and center of it all is faith in the atoning death and resurrection of Christ. According to the small catechism we lay the groundwork for the faith with the Ten Commandments, the Word of our Creator with whom we then begin in the Creed. The life of faith is then taught by the Spirit through the Lord’s Prayer and the means of grace, the sacraments. In the center of it all, the crux of the matter is this: the Son of God, incarnate of the virgin Mary, crucified, risen again and ascended to His heavenly throne. So Jesus taught his disciples privately, personally, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him.” Notice that since He is to be the greatest, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, He first is humble, last of all and servant of all. He calls Himself “the Son of Man.” Only faith calls Him the Son of God. Here He uses the word “kill” twice. a word almost more shocking than the word “crucify.” What? Are they going to behead Him? Torture Him? Justify Him by the sword? Since we know the story so well it is hard for us if not impossible to imagine how those first disciples “processed” this strange, horrible prediction. “They can’t really kill Him,” they must have thought. “He’s more powerful than anyone! He’s the greatest!” And if He’s the greatest then we His followers must be right in line of greatness. And so it goes.
If it was impossible to believe that He really meant He really was going to die then how doubly impossible for them to understand what this “after three days he will rise” means. Sure, we all believe, as did the disciple Martha when she said of the promise for Lazarus her brother, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (Jn 11:24). What she didn’t yet know, and what never entered the mind of these disciples, was as Jesus said to Martha, “I AM the resurrection” (Jn 11:25). Resurrection is not only an event reserved for the Last Day. It already happened to a young girl, to a man the only son of a widow, to Lazarus at the hand of Jesus. Resurrection is the power through which by His death Christ conquered death and the devil. Alleluia! Jesus is risen! When one has faith in Jesus it is as if one has already died with Him and is raised to newness of life, already now. We live in the faith and hope of the Last Day which will be but the first day of eternal life in the resurrection of all flesh.
True greatness is found in the humiliation and exaltation of the cross of Christ, both for Him and for us. When we make the sign of the cross over ourselves it is a confession of the faith that gladly takes the last place in the sure and certain hope of winning the prize as the apostle Paul put it (1 Cor 9:24). That prize is the imperishable wreath when this perishable body puts on the imperishable.
“For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’
‘O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:53-57).
“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (James 4:10).
Text: Mark 9:14-29
Date: Pentecost XVI + Proper 19 + 9/13/15
Today’s dramatic Gospel is again all about faith or the lack of it. It’s about the fight of faith against, as we heard in last Sunday’s Epistle, “against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:11-12). Many have denied the demonic explaining away the experience of the young boy in today’s Gospel as merely the medical condition of epilepsy. But the father of this son says clearly that the problem is not with the boy but with “a spirit that makes him mute,” that “seizes him, throws him down.” Furthermore St. Mark claims that it was not the boy but rather “when the spirit saw [Jesus], immediately it convulsed the boy.” We will draw comparisons to our present evil days in a moment. Continue reading “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”
Text: Mark 7:31-37
Date: Pentecost XV + Proper 18 + 9/6/15
It’s great to be popular. Students especially in high school know and rally around those they perceive as the most popular fellow student. Among Christians there is a certain satisfaction when you see people drawn to a particular church where there is the most popular preacher or organist. Today St. Mark closes off this major section of his Gospel at the height of Jesus’ popularity. But there is a problem even a danger in being popular. For usually popularity is gained for only the most surface of reasons but which lack depth and therefore real significance. The most popular student can be lured into the same sins or difficulties as anyone else. Everyone who surfs the television channels has run across Joel Osteen whose positive thinking message seems very popular indeed. Yet mere positive thinking cannot deliver you from the depths of fear, worry, sin or death. And now at the height of Jesus’ popularity, after he restores hearing and clear speech to a man once deaf, “Jesus charged them to tell no one.” It’s not the first time we’ve heard this command to secrecy. Continue reading “Every Tongue Tuned to Praise”
