Author: Al

Text: Matthew 11:25-30
Date: Pentecost VIII (Proper 9) + 7/6/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

When our Lord Jesus Christ spoke these most comforting, inviting, empowering Gospel words, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” He was speaking, frankly, out of a bit of exasperation. We could call chapter 11 of Matthew’s Gospel “the great doubt chapter,” beginning with John the Baptist in prison sending his disciples to ask Jesus whether He really is the Messiah or if they should look for someone else. Whether it was the Baptist himself or only his disciples who doubted, Jesus invited faith as He pointed to His works and said, “blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” Then as they returned to John, Jesus turned to the crowds around Him and quizzed them as to their faith and opinions and doubts. He pointed out how people generally had things quite upside down, saying, “for John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard.’” Then it was as if His blood pressure had reached its limit as “He began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.” “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum…if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”

It was at that moment, and with that intense emotion, that the Lord of life, mercy and grace said a prayer; but a prayer that transformed into a gracious invitation. At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.” What things? Well, think about it. First John the Baptist’s disciples were doubting, then there is a more general confusion among the people, and there is resistance to hear, to repent and to believe. “These things” are everything that has to do with the Gospel of salvation. And that they are variously hidden or revealed says that the way of this salvation is by faith. And furthermore that this thing called faith is a gift of God worked through His Word. Continue reading “Check, Please”

Text: Matthew 10:24-33
Date: Pentecost VI (Proper 7) + 6/22/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

As the Good News of the Gospel was being fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, from beginning to end the story is punctuated with the comforting words, “Do not be afraid.” These were the words of the angel to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, and to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Likewise when the angel appeared to the women at the empty tomb after Jesus’ death he said, “Do not be afraid.” Throughout Jesus active ministry he calmed his disciples’ fears with these words as he revealed God’s plan of salvation in him as well as what it means for them.

In the tenth chapter of Matthew, Jesus told his disciples that he was sending them out “as sheep among wolves” describing and predicting the opposition they would encounter because of the Word and the faith they were sent to proclaim. Rather than being a fearful thing, however, he repeated those same, comforting words, “have no fear,” “do not fear,” “fear not.” Today we ask, of what are you afraid? If we can discover that all fear ultimately is rooted in our separation from God, our sin and fear of punishment for sin, then we can discover also that the key to overcoming fear is reconciliation with God by God’s own gift of faith. The Faith that Overcomes all Fear is the faith created and strengthened in the believer by God through his Word. Continue reading “Faith that Overcomes All Fear”

Text: Matthew 9:35—10:8
Date: Pentecost V (Proper 6) + 6/15/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

In this “information age” we hear a lot these days about identity theft. You certainly have seen or heard the ads by a man named Todd Davis who boldly blabs his social security number (457-55-5462) to illustrate his confidence in the service of his company, Lifelock, which claims to guarantee the protection of your name and personal information from being stolen. Now, of course, this has to do with your legal and financial records and not the real essence of your identity which includes everything from your physical appearance, your genealogy, to your personality, interests, abilities, talents and vocation. Each person is a unique creation of God and it is the combination of all those traits and characteristics that determine not only what you do but who you are. And though a certain few traits, talents and abilities may have a major influence on what you do with and in your life, there is at the same time an amazing variety and freedom to pursue a wide range of occupations, vocations and avocations especially suited to your particular life, interests and identity.

For the Christian the question is, what is God’s will for your life? What and who has God made you to be?

As I was growing up the one most obvious interest, talent and ability I had was music. It included a wide variety of musical instruments, but all based on the foundation of years of piano lessons and an ability to hear, imitate and improvise. By high school that’s “who” I was, “the musician.” You can imagine, then, my incredulity and skepticism when the Kuder career planning test came back with “musician” in the number two slot. Number one for me, according to the test, was “funeral director” or “mortician!” Well, God wasn’t finished with me by a long shot and, as things worked out, “Lutheran pastor” is certainly related to the task of helping people to deal with death and dying.

A favorite illustration is about the young Christian man who determined that he wanted to be a missionary in France. After all his preparation and studies in theology and the French language he ended up an effective missionary in Quebec Canada! In other words he had the right idea and preparation, just a different place as it worked out.

The Word before us today is about the identity of God’s people in the world and what that identity means for their role, their purpose and mission in the world. [And let me say that these texts happen before us appropriately the Sunday of the week of our meeting with our Michigan District President, Mission executive and circuit counselor this Wednesday]. This Word hinges on the mystery of how God has chosen to bring salvation to people by means of transmitting His Word through people He has set apart to be, as He said through Moses, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” In the New Testament this same phrase is used by the Apostle Peter when he writes, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). Your identity as “a royal priesthood” and “a holy nation” directly translates, then, into your mission as representatives of the kingdom or rule of God in the world and the work of a “priesthood,” that is, intercessors or communicators between God and the world. Continue reading “Identity and Mission”

Text: Matthew 9:9-13
Date: Pentecost 4 + 6/8/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

So, are you on the outside looking in, or the inside looking out?

There was an outside and an inside in today’s Gospel. Inside was Jesus with a few of His disciples and His newly-called apostle, Matthew the tax collector and all his friends, fellow tax collectors; sinners, you know, “those people” that no self-respecting member of the community would acknowledge much less hang around with. Outside were some others of Jesus’ disciples. (I don’t know what they were doing out there, but anyway…). A contingent of Pharisees approached, peeping in the windows. “Why,” they asked the disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” They were offended, you see. And the outside disciples knew it. They knew the rules. To sit at table and share a meal is an expression of fellowship, of friendship, of acceptance and even identification with your fellow diners. But here! Tax collectors? Sinners? The disciples didn’t know what to say. Apparently the windows were open because Jesus heard them and came outside.

“Those who are well,” He said to them, “have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Well, that’s obvious…isn’t it? Allowing, for the moment, that the Pharisees were right in calling tax collectors and sinners “sickos,” Jesus was asking who, after all, needed mercy, healing and help more than these? “Go and learn what this means.” And He quoted the prophet Hosea, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” Time after time God’s mercy appears to break through the rules because the goal of the rules, in God’s sight, is love and deliverance. In fact, time after time you can already see the shadow of the cross as it is only as the Messiah, the Christ and Savior, dirties Himself, identifies with sinners to take their sin and separation and death upon Himself that anyone can be saved. “I came,” He said, “not to call the righteous, but sinners.” And with that—did the Pharisees perceive the little “dig”? All are sinners. “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). What the Pharisees couldn’t see is that they were just as much in need of mercy and forgiveness as any sinner.

The world, of course, has everything backwards. I’ve often made the observation that when the world sees you entering the door to the church on Sunday morning, they look at you and think, “My, what good people they are!” But if you’re like me you know that we are not here because we are so good but precisely because we are so bad and in need of forgiveness, mercy, life and salvation. This is the simple reason church membership has been dropping in recent years, people just don’t see their need of it. Continue reading “Mercy Inside Out”

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”