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Text: Luke 18:31-43
Date: Quinquagesima Sunday + 2/18/07

      On the Sunday before we enter into the holy season of Lent we hear one of our Lord’s predictions of what’s coming. He prepared and told his disciples numerous times what lay before him and before them. “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” We expect to hear these words because we know what’s coming. We’ve been there. We know the rest of the story.

     How different for the first disciples who, St. Luke emphasizes, “understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.” They didn’t think that what he was saying would literally come true. After all they had been through, every time Jesus’ enemies or critics tried to trip him up or trap him or even to do harm to him Jesus would stump them with his wisdom or just walk away unscathed. No one had been able to lay a hand on him. Maybe they thought he was speaking in a parable again. Yeah, that’s it, “The parable of the suffering servant”! For, even if “the Gentiles,” that is, the Roman occupiers would confront him, it would prove fruitless, maybe, as he said, for only “three days,” and then King Jesus would take over, mount his throne, expel the foreigners and set up his glorious kingdom. That’s how we would have written the script. But, we know he meant that he’d really be mocked and spit upon, flogged and killed. We know that his innocent suffering and death would be real and that his kingdom would be, as he said, “not of this world,” something to be “seen” and believed by faith. …Or do we even really know that?
Continue reading “The Cry of Faith”

Text: Luke 8:4-15
Date: Sexagesima + 2/11/07

     Jesus’ parable of the seed and the various types of soil in part answers the question of the mystery, “Why do not all people believe?” and “Why are not all people saved?” It answers in part why certain people reject the Christian Gospel as being irrelevant to their lives while others embrace it as the most essential thing that alone, more than anything else, gives meaning and purpose to their lives. For it treats of the spiritual battle between God’s universal, loving plan of salvation on the one hand and mankind’s slavery to sin on the other. In fact it is precisely because of mankind’s common spiritual blindness that Jesus spoke so much of the time in parables. For at once parables attract at least curiosity and gain our attention. Yet the key to understanding Jesus’ parables is a power or attitude beyond our own intellect or natural abilities. On the one hand the Bible delivers to us what we are to believe about God and about the world. On the other hand it is only when God gives and works this thing called faith in the heart that a person is enabled to believe. But this still doesn’t answer the question as to why some believe and others do not. For either God is a capricious god in the giving of His gifts, not willing, as the Bible says, for “all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4), or there is something else going on here. Continue reading “Who Has Ears to Hear?”

Text: Matthew 20:1-16
Date: Septua-superbowl-gesima + 2/4/07

     It is fundamental to the Christian gospel that a person, a sinner, is justified in God’s sight not by works of righteousness of our own invention but by God’s grace alone for the sake of faith in Jesus Christ alone. Every Sunday school child, every catechumen, every Christian knows this. This is, as we say in our Lutheran Confessions, the doctrine upon which the Church either stands or falls. Forget this central teaching or mess it up or dress it up with all sorts of supposed “improvements” or academic “insights” and you will have lost it. You’d think such a simple, fundamental doctrine would be easy to maintain as central to everything else that goes on in the church and the world. But there’s the rub, and there’s the challenge Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel with the parable of the workers in the vineyard: the fact that Christians, in this life, live in two kingdoms or realms at the same time, the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of heaven. It is one thing to clearly define the difference between these two kingdoms. It is another thing to resist confusing them. Continue reading “The Two Kingdoms”

Text: Matthew 17:1-9
Date: Transfiguration + 1/28/07

     When Jesus was transfigured before three of his disciples on the holy mountain they were aware that they were on holy ground, in a sacred space. When they heard the voice from the cloud, they fell on their faces and were terrified. That ought to be the first reaction any time sinners are confronted with the holy God. Recall Adam after the fall into sin hiding in the bushes when he heard the voice of God (Gen. 3:8), Moses hiding his face in fear before the burning bush (Ex. 3:6), Aaron and the people afraid to approach Moses when they saw his face shining after his conversation with God (Ex. 34:30), Isaiah’s cringing for fear in a corner of the temple when he saw God and heard the angel chorus (Is. 6:5), and Peter prostrating himself before Jesus after the miraculous catch of fish saying, “Depart from me [Lord], for I am a sinful man” [Luke 5:8]. This fear of God is good and right. It is the first word in Luther’s Small Catechism explaining the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods.” “What does this mean?” “We should fear…God above all things.” For without the fear of God, first, you cannot then proceed to the next words, namely, not only to fear but also to “love and trust in God above all things.” Continue reading “Rise, and Have No Fear”

Text: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
Date: St. Timothy + 1/24/07

     Blessed is everyone who may rightly be addressed as St. Paul here addresses Timothy, “But you, O man of God.” To be a “man of God,” a people of God, means to belong to God and to be separated from any and all other loyalties. Those things that vie for our loyalty, our love, that are apart from Christ we are to keep fleeing lest they entrap and enslave us, steal us away from faith in Christ. Furthermore, in our fleeing away from that which is against Christ, we are to flee towards, to pursue all those riches, the new righteousness that is in Christ Jesus our Lord: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness.
Continue reading “Keep The Commandment Unstained”

Text: Matthew 8:1-13
Date: Epiphany III + Life Sunday + 1/21/07

      For hundreds of years Christians all over the world have gathered on the third Sunday after the Epiphany and heard this Word from Matthew’s Gospel concerning the healing of the leper and of the centurion’s servant. Through this Word they have grown in their understanding of what true faith is. Only in our lifetime, however, and in this country, has this day gotten the additional significance marking the horribly muddled decision of the Supreme Court of our country, 34 years ago on January 22, 1973, declaring the barbaric practice of the abortion or murder of unborn human beings to be a legal if not morally acceptable practice. Think of that. Everyone 34 years old and younger are survivors, and have lived their entire lives so far having never known a time when abortion was illegal! For 34 years the church (at least in its Roman Catholic, some smaller, conservative Lutheran and protestant expressions) has continued to hold and proclaim faithfully God’s Word of life, rightfully protesting this flawed legal decision, working to bring the healing and wholeness of the Gospel especially to people who are either contemplating or have already committed this blatant sin against the Fifth Commandment. The ancient Word speaks to new situations as sin, death and the devil, the world and our sinful flesh continue to try to overwhelm us and steal us away from the Word of Life.

      This text is about the restoration of life and the miracle of faith. Continue reading “I Will”

Text: John 2:1-11
Date: Epiphany 2 + 1/14/07

     One of our homebound members, dear Gladys Cline, sorely misses attending the Divine Service here in her home church of Zion. When I visited with her last week she spoke a concern that I’ve heard many especially long-time Christians and members express, but she said it in an especially poignant way. She said, “But when I come to church I get tears in my eyes.” “Why?” I asked. She said, “Because there are so few people there on a Sunday anymore.” Many of our long-time members recall and have told me of the days—the “glory days”—when “the church was so full we had to set out extra chairs in the aisles,” when the membership of Zion Church was upwards of 2,000 members. The simple reason, I tell them, is that in today’s society people in general just do not see their need of Christ, of His Church or of their attending to hear the preaching of the Gospel, of prayer and worship, of receiving the sacraments. Continue reading “Do Whatever He Tells You”

Text: John 1:29-34
Date: Wednesday of Epiphany I + 1/10/07

      The beginning of blessed St. John’s Gospel is mystically arranged as a week of seven days in which is announced all the main themes of our Lord’s earthly ministry. After the majestic prologue announcing the Eternal Word becoming flesh and the brief introduction of John the Baptist, today’s Gospel begins with the words, “The next day.” If the first day of the week, Sunday, is St. John’s “Christmas,” celebrating the incarnation of the Son of God, “the next day,” Monday, marks the inauguration or ordination (if you will) of our Lord’s active earthly ministry at His baptism when He was about 30 years old. The account of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River is recorded in the synoptic Gospels, Matthew [3:16], Mark [1:10], and Luke [3:22]. Presuming that you are already familiar with those accounts, the Apostle and Evangelist John does not narrate the act of the baptism for you again but emphasizes the divine sign of revelation given to the Baptist by which he was to know that Jesus is the promised, one-and-only Messiah, namely, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” [John 1:33 (ESV)]. The Evangelist says the Baptist “saw” Jesus, “saw” the Spirit descending and remaining on Jesus, and bore witness, saying, “I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.” Our faith is firmly founded on the eye-witness testimony of the Baptist, the Apostles and the elders or pastors of the Church at Ephesus who had John include their words at the end of his Gospel, “This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true” [John 21:24].
Continue reading “This Is the Son of God”

Text: Luke 2:41-52
Date: Epiphany I + 1/7/07

      I suppose we could have gotten along quite well without hearing any details concerning the Christ Child’s formative years as he “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men,” the obedient Son of Mary in the household of Joseph the Carpenter. Yet for some reason, in his close evaluation and orderly account, St. Luke was moved by the Holy Spirit to include this little vignette between the time of His mother’s purification rite in the temple 40 days after He was born and the appearance of John the Baptist “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” when Jesus was about 30 years old—the little incident of the 12-year-old Boy Jesus in the temple. For we have all experienced those seemingly long and mostly happy, carefree years of growing up as a child, mastering the fundamentals of walking and eating and playing, personal hygiene, then how to relate appropriately to others, playmates, parents, the adult world; learning about the world around us and, of course, being schooled “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” [Eph. 6:4]. But this little incident serves, once again, to reveal, to enlighten and to remind us of our Lord’s singular and unique Person, His two natures, fully human and, at the same time, fully divine. The twist of the text is that even Mary needed to be reminded. Continue reading “Honor Your Father and Mother”