Category: Easter

Text: John 17:1-11
Date: Easter VII + 5/4/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

I’m always fascinated by this Sunday between the celebration of our Lord’s Ascension and the Day of Pentecost. For these are the ten days that the first disciples waited in Jerusalem as the Lord commanded them, telling them to “wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, ‘you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’” (Acts 1:4-5). For today we see the infant Church in almost our exact situation. For as of today, look at where we’ve been since those first days of Advent and Christmas. We have traced and retold almost the entire story of the Gospel, that is, the earthly ministry of Jesus, beginning with His incarnation and birth, then in the Epiphany season a brief glimpse of His teaching, preaching and healing ministry, then the forty days in Lent were a sort of catechism instruction preparing us not only to hear and to celebrate but to participate in the most central event of the Gospel, the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ during Holy Week. Since that joyous Easter Day we recall the 40 days of our risen Lord appearing to his disciples and, this last Thursday, His glorious Ascension into heaven. We have retold almost the entire story of the Gospel. Almost! There’s just this one more thing. So today we join the first disciples and wait. It’s like everyone lined up at the starting line of the Church’s mission: “On your mark…get set….” We’re just waiting for the starting gun to fire, the green light, the bell to ring and the starting gates to fly open, the command to “Go!”

When you think about it, that’s sort of our feeling as the Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word. You’ve been through what may feel like a number of beginnings as a congregation, each one with its own dramatic twists and turns, some advances, some setbacks, but you still feel like you’re only at the starting line; “Get ready, get set….” All we want is a clear signal to “Go,” to get moving forward. Continue reading “Get Ready…Get Set…”

Text: John 14:15-21
Date: Easter VI + 4/27/06
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

With minds opened by our Lord Jesus Christ risen from the dead to understand the Scriptures and everything He has said and commanded, we continue to recall His words on that night when He was betrayed, that Holy Passover Thursday when He washed His disciples feet, predicted His betrayal and denials, and comforted our hearts with His words. He said, “Let not your hearts be troubled” and told us of His going away to the cross and now to the Father to prepare a place for us, and that he would come back to take us to Himself, “that where I am you may be also.”

Don’t miss the significance of that promise. For this is the meaning of the title “Immanuel,” God with us, and of our Lord’s entire mission. He came to this earth, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, to be “God with us,” to draw us to Himself and to His Father, to heal the breach of sin that separated us from God and from each other. He was Immanuel, God with us, all the way up to the cross where only He could go for us. Yet, having endured the shame of the cross where He died as the vicarious atonement, the one sin-offering that takes away the sin of the world, He came back from the grave; God with us again. As He would go to prepare a place for us and to rule the whole universe for the sake of His Church, He promised to return as God with us to take us to be with Him in the new, eternal mansions of the new, eternal creation. Yet even now, after He has ascended and before His promised return He does not leave us alone, but sends His Holy Spirit, with and in Whom He has also promised us, “I am with you always to the close of the age;” Immanuel, God with us, and God for us.

In this time of waiting, this time of “in-betweenity,” between His leaving us visibly and His promised visible return, He helps us to live as His new creation, disciples who carry and live and proclaim the Good News, the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all the world. In that living and proclaiming, we remember these words He spoke to us, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Continue reading “The Loving Commandment”

We Follow and Rejoice

Text: John 10:1-10
Date: Easter IV + 4/13/08

As when a shepherd calls his sheep,
They know and heed his voice;
So when You call Your fam’ly, Lord,
We follow and rejoice.

Once when Jesus was in Jerusalem during the feast of tabernacles he spoke of himself using the two metaphors, “I am the good shepherd” and “I am the door of the sheep.” St. John tells us, “This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them” (10:6). Now, on the other side of Good Friday and Easter, the Lord opens the minds of his disciples to understand the Scriptures, to believe the Gospel and to live in its light. Now, as our living Lord, risen from the dead, we see what he meant when he said that “he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep,” how he entered by the door in order to become the door, and where he leads his sheep. He entered through the door of the Scriptures as the promised Messiah of Israel to lead His sheep out of the temple of the Old Covenant to the green pastures of the New Testament in His blood (Lk. 22:20).

Psalm 23 in the Old Testament has been a favorite psalm and has provided much comfort especially at Christian funerals. It speaks of the Lord as a shepherd leading his sheep, his people, out into the open green pastures, beside quiet waters on paths of righteousness. It speaks of the life of faith in this world where sin still collects its wages as a journey that involves a short walk down hill through the valley of the shadow of death. Yet the sheep fear no evil because the shepherd is there, his rod shooing away threatening wolves and his staff there to drag us back from the precipice of any danger. Then there is the strange yet beautiful image of the Lord himself preparing a feast out there in the wilderness. After all of this, however, the destination of the flock in Psalm 23 is found when the shepherd leads them back to the temple—“and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Psalm 23 is about God’s care and protection of and provision for his people, and how their true home is where He is and promises to be, namely, in the Jerusalem temple.

Now, however, when the true and chief Shepherd of souls comes on the scene, while the comforting images are the same, the only difference is where He now leads His flock. Continue reading “We Follow and Rejoice”

     Our Easter celebration continues. For the last 43 days we have rejoiced that the “little while” of our Lord’s departure by way of the cruel cross and the cold tomb ended in the bright warmth of His bodily resurrection on but only the third day. And we have rejoiced in his eleven recorded appearances to the first disciples for some forty days thereafter. But now He has ascended into heaven. He has returned to the Father. And it is starting to get rather lonely again. Oh, don’t get me wrong. For we, with the first disciples, remember His words, His promise that He would send the Holy Spirit and in this way He would be with us forever. He said it on that last Holy Thursday night, remember? “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me” [John 15:26]. He said it just before He ascended, remember? He told us not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for “the promise of the Father” which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now…. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses” [Acts 1:4-5, 8]. This Sunday we once again imitate the actual passage of time of the Biblical event as we gather on this day between our Lord’s Ascension last Thursday and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit ten days later, next Sunday on the Day of Pentecost. This gives us an opportunity to understand what has happened to us thus far and to be prepared for what will happen to us in the future; to understand the identity of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and His purpose, what He does.

      In our short Gospel text Jesus speaks of two things: first, the Holy Spirit, and then the opposition and even persecution experienced by Christians who confess and preach the gospel to the world. It is God Himself, the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, Who leads us to an ever-deepening knowledge of the Gospel truth and gives us the divine strength needed to enable us to undergo trials and persecutions on behalf of the kingdom. Continue reading “Help from Falling Away”

Because of a "glitch" the mp3 recording is only almost nearly complete. Apologies for that!

Text: Mark 16:14-20
Date: The Ascension of Our Lord + 5/17/07

     For forty days after his resurrection our Lord Jesus Christ appeared to his disciples a total of at least eleven times recorded for us in the New Testament. He appeared and disappeared, appeared and disappeared to teach us that he is with us whether or not we can see him. On this, the fortieth day of Easter, our Lord appeared to his disciples one last time. This time, however, he didn’t just disappear. He bodily ascended upwards into the sky until a cloud hid him from their sight. This action meant that he would no longer be appearing to his disciples in visible, bodily form because we no longer need him to do that. We have their eyewitness testimony and the Holy Spirit by Whom Christ lives in each of his disciples. We have heard the account of his ascension this year from both St. Luke and St. Mark. Tonight I would like to draw your attention to just two details of the significance of the Ascension of Our Lord for us and for all Christians. First that the Ascension is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophesy from Psalm 68:18 where David writes, “You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train.” Second is the commission of Our Lord, as St. Mark has it, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation,” with the promise, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Continue reading “Go Into All the World”

Text: John 16:23-33
Date: Easter VI + 5/13/07

     “Rogate!” “Ask ye.” In the historic lectionary today’s Gospel is especially devoted to prayer as we hear our Lord Jesus Christ say to his disciples “whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you,” “for the Father himself loves you” (vs. 23, 27). These words are for Christians, that is, for those who have heard the call of the Gospel and, having drawn near to the Lord in His Church, have come to the repentance of their sin, received Holy Baptism and instruction in the faith and have publicly confessed the faith. Even so, like the first disciples to whom He first spoke these words, so for us, there is still so much more for us to learn, to know and to believe about our Lord and about ourselves as His new creation. Like so many of us, I became a Christian before I ever knew what was happening to me, being baptized as an infant. It was only later, actually in my teen years, that the Word of the Gospel (how shall I say it?) caught my attention as not only important but as the most important thing that alone promised to give meaning and purpose to my life, the answer to the biggest questions of life. All this is to say that there are two things that must be addressed in every sermon and in all the Church’s ministry. The first is the constant call to repentance and faith, the conversion of sinners into believers, as the prophet Isaiah says it today, “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near” (Is. 55:6). The second is then the struggle of the confession and living of that faith as we take up our cross and follow Jesus.
Continue reading “I Have Overcome the World”

Text: John 16:5-15
Date: Easter V +5/6/07

     Every Sunday in the Prayer of the Church we pray that Almighty God would “inspire continually the holy catholic Church with the Spirit of truth,” and would grant “that all who confess [His] holy Name, may agree in the truth of [His] holy Word.” We pray that first petition because Jesus promised that He would send the Spirit of truth. We pray that second petition because there are those who confess the Name but do not agree in the truth. Even as we confess that we “believe” in the things that we cannot see, so do we continually pray for things such as agreement in God’s truth, the existence of which are not always evident or are continually threatened by the divisions of ignorance, false teaching or unbelief. Pontius Pilate was only the most famous one to utter with contemptible unbelief and mockery the universal question, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Unlike at the founding of our nation all the way up until about 50 years ago, when God and specifically the Judeo-Christian religion were part of the very fabric of the public square and discourse, that fabric has been quickly deteriorating under the wear and tear of secularism and the tyranny of relativism to the point that most people today believe there is no such thing as objective truth applicable to everyone, there is no one true “church” on earth, and there is no such thing as “right” or “wrong.” In such a world the words of our Lord we hear today ring hollow, and our Easter proclamation of the resurrection of Christ is pretty much ignored and considered as but the remnant of an out-of-touch tradition—nothing to get too excited about any more.

     The ministry of the Holy Spirit of Christ, according to our text, consists in these three main themes, to “convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment.” It’s been the main theme of the truth from the beginning, these three important items that underlie everything else—the cause of all suffering and death, the only true hope that exists, and the reality of the spiritual warfare that is behind every war and conflict, every crime, every hatred, every division and every unkind word: the devil, “the ruler of this world.”
Continue reading “The Spirit Will Guide You into All Truth”

Text: John 16:16-22
Date: Easter IV + 4/29/07

      During our midweek, Wednesday Lenten services this year we sat (and stood) with the first disciples in the Upper Room of Maundy Thursday and heard all the words of Jesus He spoke that night in which He was betrayed, recorded for us in five chapters of Saint John’s Gospel, chapters 13-17. If you were not with us during those weeks of Holy Lent you should know that now, like the first disciples, we can say, we’ve heard these words before, this text from John 16. Now in the joy and glow of Easter we, with those first disciples, recall those words and begin, only now, to understand what we formerly didn’t understand, to comprehend the depth of what He said to us then before it all happened—before His betrayal, suffering, cruel death and burial. Then, we didn’t understand what He meant when He said, “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me." Now, after His resurrection from only three days in a tomb, we see how little that “little while” was and, more than that, how it is that He said our sorrow has been turned into joy. What’s at issue here, however, is more than that initial experience of the first disciples. For the resurrection and ascension of Christ and this promise before us today is to give us patience and lift us out of all our “little whiles” of suffering or mourning, of fear and frustration, to an inner and real joy, as our Lord says, that no one will be able to take away. These words of our risen Lord mean to give us hope today in the face of any and all trials we may be enduring because the promise is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” [Romans 8:18]. Continue reading “The Promise of "The Little While"”

Text: John 16:16-22
Date: Easter IV + 4/29/07

      During our midweek, Wednesday Lenten services this year we sat (and stood) with the first disciples in the Upper Room of Maundy Thursday and heard all the words of Jesus He spoke that night in which He was betrayed, recorded for us in five chapters of Saint John’s Gospel, chapters 13-17. If you were not with us during those weeks of Holy Lent you should know that now, like the first disciples, we can say, we’ve heard these words before, this text from John 16. Now in the joy and glow of Easter we, with those first disciples, recall those words and begin, only now, to understand what we formerly didn’t understand, to comprehend the depth of what He said to us then before it all happened—before His betrayal, suffering, cruel death and burial. Then, we didn’t understand what He meant when He said, “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me." Now, after His resurrection from only three days in a tomb, we see how little that “little while” was and, more than that, how it is that He said our sorrow has been turned into joy. What’s at issue here, however, is more than that initial experience of the first disciples. For the resurrection and ascension of Christ and this promise before us today is to give us patience and lift us out of all our “little whiles” of suffering or mourning, of fear and frustration, to an inner and real joy, as our Lord says, that no one will be able to take away. These words of our risen Lord mean to give us hope today in the face of any and all trials we may be enduring because the promise is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” [Romans 8:18]. Continue reading “The Promise of "The Little While"”