Luke 18:1-17
Trinity 11

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

    If you want to understand a particular passage or story in Scripture, it is often very helpful to look at what comes before it and what comes after it–the context in which it is given.  After all, the evangelists didn’t just write these things down randomly but under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; there is meaning to how it is all put together.  And so in today’s Gospel reading, which centers on the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, I also included the parable of the persistent widow which precedes it and the blessing of the little children which follows it.  For they all fit together in what they teach and proclaim.

    There are two particular things that all three sections of today’s Gospel have in common.  The first is that a just judgment is rendered; and the second is that those who receive this favorable judgment bring nothing to the table to merit it or earn it; they are all totally reliant on the favor of the judge.  

    In the first parable, the judge himself is unrighteous.  He doesn’t care about people or his responsibility to God.  He simply likes the power of his position and what he can get out of it for himself through bribes or by earning favors.  So when a poor widow comes to him, who has nothing to bargain with, who doesn’t even have a son or brother or any other man willing to stand up for her, the judge is apathetic and dismissive of her.  But the widow doesn’t give up.  She keeps looking to the judge to do his job.  And even though he is unrighteous, yet because she keeps on bothering him with her pleas, he finally acts on her behalf just to get rid of her.  The widow is delivered from her adversary.  She receives justice.

    The point of the parable is clear: if an unrighteous judge can be motivated to do what is right through persistent pleading, how much more will the Lord, the righteous Judge, listen to your prayers and pleading and do what is good and right for His chosen, elect people?  Your adversary, the devil, was defeated in the wilderness and his power crushed under the Lord’s bloody heel on the cross.  So when you pray to the Father, “Deliver us from evil,” you can have absolute confidence and faith that you will be delivered from the evil one.  God will give you justice, the very righteousness of Christ.  Go ahead, then, and keep on bothering Him with your prayers.  He is a righteous judge who loves to hear you and is already moved to help you even before you pray, because of His grace.  He’s not annoyed by you.  Don’t lose heart.

    That is what then leads in to and sets up the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.  Jesus had concluded the first parable by saying, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?”  Now in this parable He more fully answers the question of what Christian faith truly is and what His justice is truly like.  The way that you pray reveals your faith and whether it’s the kind that the Son of Man is looking for.

    Two men went up into the temple to pray, with two very different kinds of faith.  Both of them are looking for a judgment from God, a favorable ruling from the heavenly court.  The Pharisee trusted in himself that he was righteous.  His prayer laid out what he thought was convincing evidence.  He fasted, he tithed, he lived an outwardly more godly life than most other people, especially folks like the tax collector.  It seemed obvious to him that the Judge would rule in His favor.  

    It’s interesting that the Pharisee is described as praying by himself.  Trusting in your own righteousness tends to isolate you like that and cut you off from others.  It doesn’t lend itself well to worshiping as part of a group.  You almost have to be by yourself since you’re comparing yourself to others and distinguishing yourself from them.  I sometimes wonder if that’s one of the reasons why people don’t come to church.  “The church is just full of hypocrites and bigots anyway.  I’m thankful I’m not like them.  I can be a good person on my own without church.”  Sometimes the non-church-goer can be the most pharisaical of all.

    But of course, Jesus’ parable is directed particularly at us.  Aren’t we also tempted to trust in our own merits and good living as at least part of the reason why God should accept us?  Aren’t we also tempted to think that God favors us because of our devotional practices, or because we give a hefty offering like we should, or because we’re not like those weird people pushing drag queen story hours?  We, too, can have an improperly exalted view of ourselves.  Let us repent of that and instead follow the words of Scripture, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).

    That was certainly the approach of the tax collector in the Gospel.  He stood far off not out of a sense of pride but of unworthiness.  He wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to God, like children might stare at the ground when they know they’re guilty.  He beats his chest because he hates what he has done and knows that he deserves to be convicted.  There’s no evidence he can present to exonerate himself.  And yet He hasn’t given up hope.  He appeals to the mercy of the court, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  He stakes everything not on himself and his goodness but on God and His compassion.  The tax collector’s faith is not directed within but outward to the Lord.  He rests His case on the Lord’s grace and mercy.

    And this is not just some generic mercy, either.  The word the tax collector uses has to do with the sacrifices God instituted to atone for sin; it has to do with God’s wrath being turned away through the shedding of that blood.  In other words, when the tax collector asks for mercy, he’s not just saying, “Hey, let me off the hook, please.”  He’s saying “Let the sacrifice offered to you by Your priests here in Your holy temple be applied to me.  Let it be a sufficient offering to turn away your righteous anger against my sin and to atone for it.  I trust in your sacrificial mercy, and I put all my hope in Your promise of forgiveness.”  

    Just like the widow, the tax collector has nothing to use to bargain with God, His judge.  Yet he doesn’t give up.  He clings to the Lord’s mercy.  He stakes everything on that, and He receives a favorable judgment.  It’s not the full-of-pride Pharisee but the disreputable tax collector who goes down to His house justified, judged righteous.

    And this is how it is also for you who know that you have no self-justifying case to make in heaven’s courtroom, who humble yourselves before the Lord, who repent and believe in Christ.  “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” is also your prayer, asking that the Lord’s sacrifice be applied to you, too.  For on the altar of the cross, Christ our Great High Priest shed His own blood to atone for your sins and the sins of the whole world.  All of the temple sacrifices were pointing forward to that once-for-all event on Good Friday where your prayers were answered.  God’s wrath is turned away from you; He is merciful to you, a sinner, in Jesus.  And His mercy endures forever.  You are released and entirely forgiven.  Just as the blood of Abel the shepherd covered the ground, so the holy blood of Jesus the Good Shepherd covers you who are made of dust.  By it you are justified, judged righteous, reconciled to God.  As it is written, “You all, who once were far off (as the tax collector stood far off) have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13).  Now you can draw near to the altar.  Now you can lift up your eyes and lift up your hearts to see that blood and that body of Christ, given and shed for you, applied to you and received by you for the forgiveness of sins.  That’s the sort of worship that brings us together into a godly unity and fellowship.

    And finally, lest anyone think that their humility or their faith or their perseverance is a good work of their own that earns God’s favor, we have the third part of today’s Gospel.  The Lord also renders a just judgment here.  He rebukes the adults who think only certain people are qualified to come into Christ’s presence, and He sides with the babies who have no meritorious qualifications at all.  They don’t bring anything to the table, except maybe a wet diaper; they are utterly dependent.  They are the ones who are blessed by Jesus!  They are the ones judged fit for the kingdom of God.  For they are the perfect picture of what faith is: being completely dependent on God, relying on Him for everything.  It’s not that you have to be old enough and have achieved certain spiritual qualifications to get into God’s kingdom.  It’s that you have to be young enough, with nothing but the capacity to be given to.  For “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

    The tax collector was like an infant before God and was blessed.  So it is that we are called to return to our baptism daily, to die to ourselves–to our sins and to our merits–and to rise to a new life in Christ.  Through faith in Him we, too, are blessed.

    It all fits together: the poor widow, the sinful tax collector, the helpless infant, and empty-handed you–all in the same situation before God; all completely dependent on the mercy of the Judge.  And you are judged righteous in Christ.  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

Art work, "Two Men Went Up to Pray" by Edward Riojas. Used with permission.  Prints can be purchased here.

Jeremiah 8:4-12; Romans 9:30 - 10:4; Luke 19:41-48
Trinity 10

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past week, you’ve heard some things about the Olympic Games currently going on in Paris.  There have been some great moments and good competition.  And there have been some controversial things, too–mockery of Jesus and the Lord’s Supper (and yes, they acknowledged it was a depiction of the Lord's Supper), bizarre and sexually suggestive pagan themes, men pretending to be women, both in the opening ceremony and (if you believe the reported xy chromosome test) even in competition.  And while it gets tiresome after a while to pay attention to all this foolishness (hey, the unbelieving world is acting crazy again; what’s new?), it’s also not something we should just dismiss and be apathetic about either if we care about bearing witness to the truth.

    I bring this up because there is a verse in today’s Old Testament reading that sounds exactly like what the prophet Jeremiah would say if he were preaching about today’s pop cultural elite and the ruling political class and wishy-washy progressive church leaders.  Jeremiah asks, “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination?  No!  They were not at all ashamed, nor did they know how to blush.”  One of the signs of unrepentance and acceptance of sin is that a person loses all sense of shame and embarrassment.  Instead of blushing at one’s foolish behavior or rebellious words and saying “What have I done?” they just shrug their shoulders and say, “Meh, whatever.  I’m just embracing who I am.”  

    This is how it had become even for God’s people, the people of Israel.  They had become so accustomed to the various abominations of their day and the pagan practices in the surrounding culture that they were no longer able to be embarrassed.  They had no sense of shame over their false dealings and their covetous hearts and their sacrilegious deeds, which even the clergy were taking part in.  Even when a prophet like Jeremiah would call them to account, nothing could make them blush.

    There’s a warning in that for us.  We, too, can become so accustomed to the pagan practices of our surrounding culture that we begin to compromise what is good and right and true and beautiful.  We grow weary of swimming against the constant flow of godlessness and begin to go along with it–the self-focused worldly philosophy, the HR training at your job that contradicts God’s Word, the godless approach to dating and sexuality and marriage, the approving of the love of mammon, the acceptance of all spiritualities as being valid.  It’s difficult having to be the one constantly saying “no” to all that and to keep speaking the truth in love.  In fact, saying “no” to the cultural orthodoxy and “yes” to God’s Word is the one thing the world will try make you feel shame about.  Let us all repent of where we have succumbed to that pressure.

    However, let us also be on guard against the opposite error as well.  For when we see the corrupt and degenerate state of things in this world, we can be tempted to become prideful and stake our hope on our own moral efforts and our own upright behavior.  We can begin to place our confidence in the fact that we ourselves haven’t succumbed to the ways of the world, or at least that we’ve turned our lives around now.  We can begin to think that our works and our good living is what keeps us close to God and wins His favor.  And such a false belief is just as bad as society’s corruption.

    St. Paul spoke of that in the Epistle.  He said that the Jews of his day did have a zeal and a passion for God; they were very religious.  But rather than receiving the righteousness God gives in Christ as a free gift, they thought they could produce their own righteousness through the works of the law.  And that’s actually just another form of idolatry, trusting in yourself, making a god out of your own spirituality.  Self-righteousness is no better than sinful immorality.  When you think about it, those who are self-righteous can’t blush either.  For they think they have no real sins to be embarrassed about, nothing to be ashamed of.

    Let us remember, then, that it is not enough to have religious conviction or spiritual passion as the Jews did.  For too often that zeal and passion are man-centered rather than God-centered, focusing on my works and my life and my walk rather than on Christ’s works and Christ’s life and Christ’s walk to the cross for us.  Our fervor should especially be directed toward the life-giving teaching of the Gospel and not simply to the deadly requirements of the Law.  

    St. Paul says in the Epistle, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”  Did you hear that?  Christ is the end, the fulfillment, the goal of the law.  That doesn’t mean that you are free to disobey the commandments.  But it does mean that the entire law is meant to point you to Jesus, and show you your need for Him who has saved you from the Law’s judgment.  That’s why shame is an important and necessary thing.  For without regret and shame over sin, there is nothing to drive you to the cross, to create in you a desire for cleansing and mercy and forgiveness.  The Law says, “Shame on you” so that you might despair of your own righteousness and seek the righteousness of Christ alone, freely given to you in the Gospel.  

    All of the moral demands of the law have been satisfied and kept completely by Christ for you.  All of the old ceremonial regulations pertaining to the Sabbath and circumcision and sacrifices find their fulfillment in Christ, the perfect sacrifice, who was cut off for your sins and raised again to give you life and rest.  

    Christ came to take your shame away by taking your sin away.  It is written in Hebrews, “For the joy that was set before Him,” Jesus “endured the cross, despising its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  All that He did because He loves you.  He was shamed and humiliated more than anyone as He faced God’s wrath and paid sin’s penalty at Golgotha.  And then He rose triumphantly, so that His victory over sin and shame might be yours as well.  Now the Epistle proclaims to you that “everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.”

    I’m sure that all of us could be truly humiliated and shamed and embarrassed if something about us was made publicly known and revealed to the world.  All of us have reason to blush.  Rejoice, then, that even though all of those things are revealed in the eyes of God, He has chosen by His grace to cover your shame, just as Adam and Eve were covered and clothed by God after the sin in the garden.  Your shame was swallowed up in the wounds of Jesus.  In Him your dignity is restored so that you need not cower before God, but you can stand tall and unashamed as His dear children, clothed in the white robe of Christ.

    Jesus weeps and cries over those who do not know their shame, who think they have nothing to blush about before God, who see no need for a Savior.  He weeps over Jerusalem out of love.  It’s bad enough that their unbelief would result in the destruction of the city by the Romans within a generation.  But He weeps especially over their rejection of Him, that they do not want to have the life and mercy He brings.  God Himself was visiting them in the flesh.  But they did not know the things that made for their peace.

    Let us learn from this so that we may recognize the time of our visitation by God.  It has come upon us in Jesus; and it is coming upon you right now, even in this very moment.  This is the hour in which Christ Himself is coming to you in the words of His saving Gospel now sounding in your ears.  Penitently acknowledge your shame, and then take courage and believe firmly and gladly in Christ.  Don’t assume that you’ll have forever to repent.  It is written, “Behold now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”  Don’t let this time of your visitation pass you by.  Believe in what the Lord has done to redeem you from your sin, how He has suffered your shame on the cross and taken it away forever.  Take refuge in Him and His words; seek His righteousness.

    For our Lord has cleansed the temple.  When Jesus drove out the moneychangers in righteous anger and purified the temple as a house of prayer, that was a sign of what He was about to do at Calvary.  For there on the cross Jesus Himself experienced the righteous anger of God against the world’s sin and drove it out in the temple of His own body.  Jesus made Himself unclean in your place.  He took all of the greed and the self-righteousness and the shame of every sin that you’ve done or that has been done to you, and He made it His own dirty mess.  By His holy suffering and death He took it away from you and cleansed you forever.  Jesus had said of His body, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  He is now bodily raised in glory and honor, the new and eternal dwelling place of God for you.  You have entered into the temple of Christ through baptism, and so His glory and His honor are yours.

    Jesus says, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!”  Brothers and sisters in Christ, here are the things that make for your peace with God, the body and blood of Christ, offered up for you for the forgiveness of your sins, for your peace, for your rest.  You are those who are not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.  Call upon God, and He will hear your voice.  Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you.  For He has redeemed your soul in peace from the battle that was against you.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Trinity 9
Luke 16:1-13

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    People usually don’t like it when pastors talk about money.  But Jesus Himself puts that topic front and center in today’s Gospel, and so it’s important that we address it.  Jesus speaks of mammon–money, property, possessions–the stuff that keeps many folks awake at night and busy during the day.  But of course, the real focus of the Gospel is not merely money, but faith, what you trust in and cling to, where your heart is.  Is it with God or with something else?  What is it that you fear, love, and trust in above all things?  Luther says it well in the Large Catechism:

    “Many a person thinks he has God and everything he needs when he has money and property; in them he trusts and of them he boasts . . . and on them fixes his whole heart.  Mammon is the most common idol on earth.  He who has money and property feels secure, happy, fearless, as if he were sitting in the midst of paradise.  On the other hand, he who has nothing doubts and despairs as if he never heard of God. There are very few who are cheerful, who do not fret and complain, if they do not have mammon.  This desire for wealth clings to our nature all the way to the grave.”

    “All the way to the grave” reminds us that the love of mammon is something our old Adam will struggle with until we die.  We will love and trust in almost anything that promises health, happiness, meaning, security.  We learn at an early age that money means power, the power to acquire things we want, the power to hire, to influence others to do what we want.  From our first allowance to our first paycheck we learn that money is a means by which we can fulfill our desires and needs.  The world in its foolishness thinks that the Bible has it exactly backwards.  They would say, “Not the love of money but the lack of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”  However, Jesus says, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

    In the Scriptures, the rich don’t seem to fare very well from the eternal perspective.  Mammon becomes a snare and a stumbling block.  For instance, when a rich young ruler came to Jesus asking,“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus told him to sell his possessions and give to the poor.  And the rich man went away sad, because he had great possessions.  Jesus knew that mammon was this man’s idol, and the man couldn’t let go of it.  Which raises the question for us:  What is it that you wouldn’t give up if Jesus asked you to?  What is it that you can’t let go of?  Whatever or whoever it is, there’s your idol.

    The problem is not money itself or possessions themselves; it is the misuse and corruption of God’s good gifts.  It isn’t riches but trusting in riches that God judges.  “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”

    Jesus tells a parable of a crooked money manager who was wasting his master’s possessions. Charges were brought. The man was called in to give an account of his stewardship, get the bookkeeping in order, and hit the unemployment line.  So what does he do?  Before he’s officially let go, he quickly calls in the man’s debtors and starts discounting loans on the fly.  He knocks off fifty percent here, twenty percent there, collecting what he can at a deep discount.  In other words, he’s cashing in on his master’s good name and reputation.  It’s a clever move.  The master is cornered. If he refuses the deals which the steward has negotiated, he looks bad.  If he takes the deals, this sly money manager looks good and has a lot of friends.  The master knew shrewdness when he saw it, and he praised the manager for it.

    It seems odd, doesn’t it, that Jesus makes a wasteful manager the hero of the parable, this steward who stakes everything on the forgiving of debt.  But then again, it really makes perfect sense, doesn’t it.  For that is what Jesus is all about, isn’t He?  It’s only when the steward is confronted with the truth of his sin, when he doesn’t have anything else to cling to but the mercy of the master, that he really gets to work. He stakes everything on the belief that his boss will honor the taking away of debt, and that’s what frees him and secures his future.  That faith is what Jesus praises.

    When we have nothing to lose, when we are dead to the things of this world, that’s when we are truly free and really ready to get to work.  When we believe that the Father honors His Son’s death and takes away the debt of our sin, that’s when we’re truly enlivened to be about the work of God’s kingdom.  When we’re confident that He receives us into His household and that nothing in all creation can separate us from His love in Christ, that’s what creates true faithfulness in us, especially when it comes to the use of our money.

    Remember that Jesus Himself was accused of being a bad steward, of wasting the Father’s goods on tax collectors and sinners.  He allowed Himself to be called to account before the Sanhedrin and then Pontius Pilate.  He stood in your place and made sure that your debts were not just reduced by cancelled entirely.  At Calvary He took responsibility for you and paid what you owed in its totality.  Instead of your messed up ledger, He has inscribed your name in the Book of Life.  And you know that because He has given Himself to you–His Holy Spirit in baptism, His body and blood in Holy Communion.  The oil and wheat of the sacraments are your true treasure.  Through them you receive a righteousness that is not your own but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.  That is what gives you an eternal home with the Lord and with His holy ones.

    Living in that confidence, we learn to hold our wealth not in a closed fist but in the open hand of faith.  Now to be sure, the old Adam is still with us and hanging around our neck.  The mere talk of giving money away causes us to tense up and reach protectively for our wallets.  God has to pry wealth out of the old Adam’s fingers–whether by taxes, inflation, theft, bills, finally by literally killing us.  “You can’t take it with you.”  You could say that giving offerings to the Lord and charity to the poor is a Christian exercise in killing the old Adam with his death grip on money.

    You can’t serve two masters.  Divided loyalty is no loyalty at all.  The old Adam in us will choose Mammon over the Lord every day of the week, including Sundays.  You can test this by asking what your natural inclination is when Mammon and the Lord make competing claims on you–between sports and divine service, or family and divine service, or work and divine service.  Our desire for money or pleasure or whatever our idol may be needs to be drowned and die along will all the other lusts and evil desires of the old Adam.  If we were left to our own devices, we’d all be like the rich young ruler who turned his back on Jesus when he heard that he needed to radically downsize and come die and rise with Jesus. The way of salvation is narrow, as we heard last week.  It’s not like the airlines where you get to bring along some luggage and a carry-on in the overhead compartment.  None of that fits through the narrow door of death and resurrection.

    Thankfully, the truth of the Gospel is that you are no longer defined by your old Adam.  For you were washed.  You were justified, sanctified, and glorified in Christ.  You are baptized.  The old is drowned, the new has risen.  The new you in Christ is free under His reign.  You have nothing to lose.  The kingdom of God is yours.  You don’t have to cling to mammon because you have everything in Christ.  The things you have are a gift from God to you, placed into the empty hand of faith.  The new you in Christ is not a slave to Money but a master of it.  You can order it around.  You can tell it, “go help that person in need” or “go support the ministry of the Gospel.”  The new you in Christ gives freely, joyfully, cheerfully–not out of coercion or for gain, but out of freedom in love.

    To be “faithful in the unrighteous Mammon,” then, is simply to handle your money and possessions trusting in our good and gracious God.  He has given all He has in His Son Jesus in order to save us from our bondage to sin, to death, to the Law and to anything that would enslave us.  Romans 8 says, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”

    To be faithful in unrighteous Mammon means that we are free to use our money and possessions to show forth the goodness and mercy of God for our neighbors, to share our goods and pour our wine with a generous hand.  And so it needs to be said that such faithfulness begins with the offering plate–which is not simply about supporting our congregation’s budget but about giving thanks to our giver God, not only with words but with wealth, the 10% tithe Scripture speaks of.  How marvelous it would be if there was an overflow beyond the budget by which mission work could be further supported and the ministry of the Gospel could grow!  When the old Adam’s death grip on money is loosened, life and freedom from slavery is the result.

    You are servants of God, disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, members of His royal priesthood of the baptized.  Your master is Christ who saved you by His dying and rising, by His word of forgiveness and reconciliation.  Money can never do that.  Money can’t truly bring love or joy or peace.  Money can’t wash away your sins or give you a free and clear conscience before God.  Money can’t make those twinges of guilt go away or reconcile your past.  Money can’t raise you from the grave and heal your death.  Money is a terrible taskmaster that will drive you to your grave even as you cling to it.

    But now Christ your Master says to you, “Come to me, and I will give you rest. Be anxious about nothing.  I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.  Your sins are forgiven.  Cast all your cares on Me; for I care for you.  Peace be with you.  The old has passed away; the new has come.  Because I live, you will live also.”

    So make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.  Money is not your master; it is a means to an end.  Fellowship with God and His people is the ultimate end, and Christ is your master.  Only in Him is there true freedom–freedom to enjoy, to take risks, to give generously, to live openly.  Colossians 3 says that you have already died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  And the nice thing about being dead is that you have nothing to lose.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to the Rev. William Cwirla)

1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Trinity 5

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    St. Paul writes in today’s Epistle, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.”  He also says that preaching Christ crucified is a stumbling block.  But why is that?  What is it about the cross of Christ that causes fallen human beings to mock and reject it?

    Two reasons:  First of all, the cross presupposes human sinfulness–not just that we have a few flaws and imperfections, but that there is a syndrome so serious, a corruption so deep in us that we are at a loss to do anything to overcome it.  All our greatest wisdom, all our greatest efforts don’t solve the problem.  Only the sacrifice of the Son of God Himself can remedy the situation.  Only His death provides the necessary cure.  

    And that’s not something that we want to accept.  “You mean I can’t contribute anything toward my redemption?  I’m spiritually blind, dead, and an enemy of God by nature?  That’s not very uplifting or encouraging.  That doesn’t build up my self-esteem.  I don’t accept that.  I’m basically a good person.  It’s not like I murdered somebody or something.  I don’t really need a Savior, just a God who can help me to get through tough times and give me spiritual advice so I can do better in life.  This poor, miserable sinner stuff is a little over the top.”

    That’s what your old Adam believes deep down.  He rejects the message of the cross because he rejects the need for real repentance and real forgiveness.  In fact, it is the way of sinful man to justify and even embrace sin as simply part of who we are.  The world says that it’s all about self-expression and self-fulfillment.  “Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re wrong or sinful.  Your only sin is not to embrace your own beauty, your inner god or goddess.”  I’m hearing that language more and more, especially the goddess stuff for the ladies.  The world teaches you to look for the answers within and to follow your heart.  But then Jesus comes along and actually has the gall to say this, “From within, out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23)

    No, the wisdom of the world is not the wisdom of God.  Worldly “wisdom” absurdly produces evolutionary theories which pose a creation without a Creator, which acknowledges that the matter in the universe, time and space had a beginning but then says that there’s no one who actually started and made it.  Worldly “wisdom” tries to assert that a same-sex union, which by definition cannot produce life, is somehow equal to that of the union of a man and a woman which can create life and forms the God-given basis of the family.  Worldly “wisdom” trumpets the rights of women and then turns right around and says that unborn females, little girls in the womb, can have their lives snuffed out at will, all while calling abortion “women’s health care.”  It’s just plain foolishness, and it’s evil.

    The message of the cross calls us all to acknowledge that such foolishness and evil exists within us, even if our old Adam manifests it differently.  The word of the cross calls us all to repent, to be crucified with Christ, so that our old self may be put to death with Him, and so that we may be raised with Him to new and eternal life.  Let us return to the Lord, our faithful Groom, who loves the Church in spite of herself, who enfolds her with Himself to heal her and restore her and forgive her, who robes her in His own righteousness.  He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love for us. Let us embrace the foolishness and the weakness of the cross as the very wisdom and power of God to save us.  

    If the world mocks our teaching on sin, how much more foolish is it to the world that we believe in a crucified God?  That’s the second reason why the message of the cross is a stumbling block.  What sort of a God submits to humiliation and cruel torture at the hands of His enemies?  A real God, we think, would just assert His power and show everyone who’s boss.  Why would the church want to emphasize what looks like His worst moment?  And yet it is written, “We preach Christ crucified.”  That’s what saves us, not just that we have a God who is all-powerful–and He certainly is–but that He uses that power to be gracious and merciful and compassionate toward us in Jesus.  That’s why we have a crucifix over our altar and not an empty cross, because we believe according to His Word that precisely there in that humiliating death, Jesus was victorious over our sin; He was conquering death and the devil.  He was being the perfect Man, the perfect husband, laying down His life for you the Church, His holy Bride.

    Don’t forget or become numb to what the cross is; it’s an instrument of the death penalty.  Just consider how strange it would be if some more contemporary instruments of the death penalty were the symbol of our faith.  What if we had over the altar an electric chair or a hangman’s noose or a lethal injection needle?  That would seem crazy, like we were some cult.  The cross is no different from those other means of capital punishment.  In fact, it’s even more inglorious and disgraceful to be crucified.  The Scriptures themselves say, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”  And yet in that is the good news, for Galatians 3 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse, having become a curse for us.”  All that we deserved because of our sin Jesus took in our place, whether the sin we struggle against is sexual immorality or self-righteousness or greed or impatient anger or all of the above.  Jesus became a curse for you.  And so in Him you are forgiven, released, blessed children of God.  The cross may not be “reasonable” or logical or scientific, but it is the wisdom of God.

    Greeks look for worldly wisdom, Paul says.  And that’s the approach that a lot of people have; if what you’re saying about the Christian faith doesn’t make sense to them and their way of thinking, if it’s not scientifically explainable, then they’ll reject it.  But there are other who are very open to religion and spirituality and the supernatural.  And so Paul also says, “Jews request a sign.”  Signs, too, are the way we think God should operate with us.  Mysterious occurrences, miracles, something where we can see God’s glory.  That’s what seems spiritual, that we’re drawn to–religion where we can feel the power of God through mystical experiences.  A lot of your friends and family are drawn to spirituality like that.  But then there’s the cross.  That wasn’t a draw to people–the disciples fled from Him and left Him alone.  He was one from whom people hid their faces.  There He was, the ultimate loser on the cross–no glorious signs at all.  And yet in that weakness God displayed His greatest strength, the strength of His sacrificial love, love that wins by losing, that defeats death by dying.  Because Christ was a loser on the cross, you have lost all your sin and all your guilt.  

    When it comes to signs, remember where God was with Elijah.  He wasn’t in the wind or the earthquake or the fire.  He was in the still, small voice.  So it is for us today.  Paul says, “It pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”  God is there for you in the still, small voice of the absolution and the sermon.  The weak and foolish death of Jesus, the foolish and unimpressive preaching of the cross–that’s how God has chosen to save you.  Since the world in its self-important pride could not know God through its own wisdom and philosophy, God chose to put to shame the proud by using what seems foolish to them as the means of redemption–a crucified and seemingly defeated God, ordinary words in preaching and water and bread and wine.  That is where God’s glory and power and wisdom are hidden to rescue you and bestow on you His mercy.  

    God chooses what is lowly and even despised to bring to nothing the wise and the strong of this world, so that no one may boast in His presence.  And that includes us, too.  Remember what the Epistle says, “For you see your calling brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.”  That’s describing you.  God’s people are not necessarily the smartest in the world’s eyes or the strongest or the most elite.  Look at us; we’re not particularly a group of movers and shakers and big shots, nobody special to the world.  But that is precisely the way of the cross; it’s not about us, it’s about Jesus and what He has done for us and how we are special and treasured by Him.  It’s not what we are in ourselves but what we are in Him that counts.

    That’s why Paul concludes, “You are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.’”  It’s all there for you in Jesus as a gift.  By ourselves we were spiritually ignorant, so He became our wisdom.  We were guilty, so He became our righteousness.  We were impure, so He became our holiness.  We could not redeem ourselves, so He became our redemption.  Everything that pertains to our being saved, all of it is to be found in Christ.  Therefore, when you are baptized into Him, all of those things of His become your own.  Trusting in Christ, you are now wise unto salvation, right with God, set apart and holy, redeemed by His blood.  Jesus is all in all for you.  And so when we boast, we boast only in the Lord.  For everything flows from Him.

    And if we are going to “boast” of ourselves, then Paul says in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, let us boast of our weaknesses.  For when we boast of our own weaknesses, then we are really boasting of our need for the saving power of God that has been freely given us in the Gospel of Christ.  It’s sort of the opposite of evolution; it’s the survival of the weakest.  We who are weak before God survive through the hidden wisdom of the cross and so are made strong in Jesus.

    This Gospel will always seem foolish and even offensive to the world, even more so in this age of increasing hostility to the church.  But so be it.  “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.  But to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Luke 15:1-3,11-32
Trinity 3

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Jesus wasn’t acting the way a respectable rabbi should.  Here He was, consorting with tax collectors and “sinners” and people of bad reputation.  They were drawn by Jesus’ words–His stern message of repentance and His comforting message of forgiveness.  Many were brought to saving faith through Jesus’ words.  He even shared meals with these people, a sign of closeness and fellowship and joy.

    But the Pharisees and scribes complained, “This Man receives sinners and eats with them.”  If Jesus were really sent from above, they reasoned, He would understand what sort of folks these are and wouldn’t dirty Himself with their company.  And so they slandered Jesus saying, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Luke 7:34)  

    In their slander, of course, there was a grain of truth.  Jesus is the truest and best friend of sinners.  But in this sense: He came not to ignore sin or condone sin but to take away sin and save sinners.  And in order to do that He was willing to dirty Himself with our uncleanness that we might be cleansed from the muck and the mire of our fallen condition and be restored to the family of God.

    The Pharisees had no clue what Jesus was doing, no understanding of His Father’s mercy.  And so He tells a parable:  A certain man had two sons.  The younger son wanted to have his inheritance right away–basically wishing that his father were dead!  And since it didn’t seem that was going to happen any time soon, and the son wanted to get on with his life, he demands his share of the inheritance now.  

    The boy’s father is unusually gracious. He had every right to punish his son for this rebellion and this insult. But instead he grants his wish.  It must have broken the father’s heart to do that, just as it breaks God’s heart when we turn away from Him and act like we wish He were dead and out of the picture so we can do what we want–when we neglect his Word, when we don’t take our place at His table.  But sons are not slaves.  They are free to go, free even to reject their father and family.

    So the younger son left on an adventure in a far-away country. And like many folks with too much money and time and not enough responsibility, he wasted all of it on prodigal, excessive living.  He was having a good time, living it up.  But then the money ran out, and so did his friends.

    Penniless and alone, the young man found himself in the middle of a famine.  And so he hired on with a citizen of that country, a surrogate father of sorts, who put him to work slopping the hogs.  That’s where sin always leaves us.  It promises fun and power and pleasure.  But after a short time it leaves us far worse off than when we started–broken and empty-hearted down with the swine.

    When the pig feed began to look appetizing, the young man finally came to his senses.  He repented.  He realized what he had lost by leaving his father.  Even his father’s servants were doing better than him.  He was sorry for what he did.

    He prepares his confession: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  And then, just in case, he works out a little deal: “Treat me like a servant, a hired hand.”  It seemed like a perfect plan.  His father could save face and he would at least have some bread in his belly.

    But things didn’t go exactly according to His plan.  For the Father had been watching for him every day.  And when the Father saw him, he didn’t wait for the son to come to him.  In great compassion, He ran down the road to his son, embraced him and kissed him.  It must have been some sight, seeing this honorable man scurrying to welcome his son back, even before the son could say a word.

    Finally, the son manages to break free of his father’s embrace long enough to say his little speech.  But the father is already ordering his servants to get a fine robe and a ring and sandals for his boy.  Kill the fatted calf, pour the wine, let the party begin.  The son didn’t even get to bring up his deal about being a hired hand.

    Which serves to make an important point: God doesn’t receive us back and forgive us based on our apology and how sorry we are.  The father embraced his son before the son could say or do anything!  It’s all about God’s love toward us in Christ.  It’s all based on His undeserved grace and kindness toward us.  God rejoices over the sinner who returns home and desires forgiveness.  And so do the angels, the Father’s servants.  God’s passion is to save us.  While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Through Christ He continues to seek and to save the lost.
    
    The truth is that, when it comes right down to it, Jesus is the real prodigal son in this parable. It says here that the father gave to the younger son of his livelihood.  Literally, it says he gave to him of his “substance.”  Don’t we confess in the Creed that Jesus is of one substance with the Father?  Then the Son of the Father goes to a far country.  Which is to say, for us and for our salvation the Son descends to earth and becomes man.  Here He blows His wealth and His substance consorting with tax collectors and sinners and the likes of us.  He is prodigal and wonderfully excessive in the way He dishes out His mercy toward us.  He loses it all for you, dying in your place as if He were the rebellious son, the whore, the self-righteous Pharisee, the glutton and the drunkard, to win your forgiveness.  Then Jesus arises and returns to His Father, who exalts Him to His right hand, and gives Him the name that is above every name, rejoicing that He who was dead is alive again, that He who was lost for a time to the grave has been found triumphant over sin, death, and the devil.  

    Once you were dead and lost in sin and rebellion.  But God raised you to life in His Son Jesus.  He gives you the robe of Jesus’ righteousness at the font and puts His family ring on your finger.  He sets the banquet table of His supper to celebrate the return of his rebel children. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over 99 supposedly righteous ones who don’t see a need for repentance.

    The older brother thought he was righteous. He was out in the field, dutifully doing his work.  He heard the music and the dancing.  A servant brought him the news. “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has received him safe and sound.” But the older brother was angry, and refused to go in to the party.

    So his father came out to him, just as he had come out to meet his younger son on the road.  This too is the grace of God.  He always comes out to meet his children.  He pleads with the older son.  “Come and celebrate.  Your brother has come home.  He was lost, but now is found.”

    But the older son won’t rejoice.  And before you think him to be inconceivably rude, consider a real life prodigal in the early church, the Apostle Paul.  He had people thrown into prison for being Christian and was involved with and approved the murder of Stephen.  If Paul had been involved in the imprisonment or the death of a member of your family, would you rejoice to have him join you at the communion rail?  What the Pharisees couldn’t see was that Jesus wasn’t about the approval of sin but the life-changing forgiveness of sin.

    The older son’s legalism robbed him of his joy.  He is the obedient son, the perfect son, always doing what his father wanted, not out of love, but out of responsibility.  “Look, all these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command.”  He’s been working so hard all these years trying to earn his father’s love and secure a place in the family.  And when he realizes that his father deals in grace instead of works, he comes unglued.  “All that I've done for you, and you never threw a party for me and my friends.  But when this son of yours came, who wasted your living with prostitutes, you throw a big party.  And now you expect me to come?”  The older son was as lost as the younger one, despising both his father and his brother.

    The father remains gracious as ever, just as God is still gracious with us. “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But it was fitting to make merry and be glad; for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost; and is found.”

    A man had two sons.  Both were lost sinners.  One broke the law by disobeying its commands.  The other broke the law by obeying its commands for the wrong reasons. Both break their father’s heart.  Both receive the same fatherly kindness, acceptance, and love.  Both were in need of repentance, a change of heart and mind, to confess their sin against their father, to receive his mercy.

    One son repented.  He confessed his sin against God and his father, and received his father’s undeserved kindness.  And the other?  Well, Jesus deliberately leaves the parable open-ended.  Will the older son repent?  Will he rejoice in the repentance of his brother?  The former Pharisee, the Apostle Paul did.  Will we?  Very often we are more like the older brother than the younger, aren’t we?

    If we try to define our relationship with God by our good living, we will be like the older brother.  We will become resentful and legalistic.  If we try to earn our way into God’s favor, as if God would somehow owe us, we will wind up hating God and resenting His mercy.  We will despise our brother and miss out on the party.

    Only as we repent can we rejoice in the repentance of another.  Only as we see ourselves as lost sinners can we rejoice that Jesus welcomes penitent sinners to His table.  Only as we experience the Father’s embrace in our own lives, can we rejoice in His mercy to those around us.

    “Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed His blood for me,” and for you, and for all people, without exception.  It’s all a gift, unearned, undeserved, given out of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

    Therefore, brothers and sisters of Christ, turn away from your sin; turn back to the Father.  It doesn’t matter whether you are the prodigal son or the obedient son, the prostitute or the Pharisee.  We all are in need of repentance.  Trust in God’s mercy alone.  Know that because of Christ’s sacrifice, the Father will receive you with open arms.  Though you were lost and dead, you are now found and alive in Christ the risen one.  You are sons and daughters of the Father, heirs with Jesus of His forgiveness and life.  Come in to the party of the penitent.  Rejoice that what the Pharisees said of Jesus is still true, “This Man receives sinners and eats with them.”

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to William Cwirla)

Luke 14:15-24
Trinity 2

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Last Sunday, we heard about a rich man who would not invite a poor man to his feast. Today’s Gospel tells us about God the Father, the true Rich Man, who lavishes His richness on us poor sinners by inviting us to His feast.  “Come, for all things are now ready,” He says.  The only way someone stays poor in this scenario is if they decline the Lord’s generosity.  And truly, how impoverished people make themselves if they reject the Lord’s feast in favor of the things of this world!  Today’s Gospel is a warning against taking God for granted, subordinating Him to other priorities.

    God the Father sends out the invitation to the banquet of salvation.  It is the heavenly meal of forgiveness and life which Christ His Son purchased by His death for sin and by His victory over the grave on Easter.  God has sent out His Holy Spirit to invite many through the preaching of the Gospel to come to the feast.  All things have been prepared by God; there is no cost or strings attached.  Jesus has won redemption fully and completely.  The Holy Spirit comes purely by grace to draw people to the divine banquet.  Those invited may freely dine on the finest of fare which God has to offer.

    “But,” it is written, “they all with one accord began to make excuses.”  They all had other things they thought were more important than this invitation.  Being with the Giver of the feast and sharing in the joy of His meal was low on the priority list.  Maybe another time.  

    The Lord’s Servant says, “Come, for all things are now ready,” but you say, “I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.”  This person is caught up in his property and does not believe that in Christ the meek shall inherit the earth.  He seeks to gain the world and in the process forfeits his soul.  He sees the value of land but does not desire the priceless land of the new creation.  He elects to go and see his newly purchased property, almost like a burial plot, showing his destiny to return to the ground in death. We dare never treasure what we have paid for above that which God has purchased and freely given in Christ.

    The Lord’s Servant says, “Come, for all things are now ready,” but you say, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.”  How easy it is to put your work before the Lord’s work!  This is why the Lord gave a day of rest – both for you to have time to recuperate, but also for you to see that your work must stop and God’s work begin.  Whenever we think we can do without the banquet of Jesus serving us His Words and Sacraments, we are by definition trusting in our own works, the works of the Law encapsulated in the five books of Moses.  The temptation for us is to value our efforts at good living over and above the grace of Christ.  Rather than trusting in those five yoke of oxen, those 5 books of the Law, we should listen instead to Jesus who said, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

    The Lord’s Servant says, “Come, for all things are now ready,” but you say, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” Do you see how this last rebel doesn’t even bother to ask to be excused? He just assumes that he can place his priorities ahead of God’s priorities.  Beware, then, of making even family your idol.  Family is a great gift from God, but it becomes a curse when the gift is exalted over the Giver.  This man desires union with his wife more than union with God. He should have brought his wife to the Lord’s Feast instead!

    Here’s the thing: to come to the Feast almost always means setting aside something else the world deems to be more valuable. So what is most valuable to you?  Are you willing to set it aside for the sake of Christ?  That’s what the Holy Spirit is calling you to do.  The Christian religion is not a means to reaching some other greater worldly objective.  It’s not just a tool to teach the kids some morals or help you through the hard times so that you can then get on to with the real business of life. What we’re doing here is your life.  

    Too often we think of church as just one sliver of the pie, but the biggest pieces, our biggest goals are having a comfortable life, being healthier, enjoying our families, having pleasurable and fun experiences, retiring well.  Church then becomes just one little part of the big formula.  But Jesus is not merely a coach trying to help you attain some important goal.  He Himself is the goal.  Communion and fellowship with God is what we seek for its own sake.  There is no higher goal than that for our lives.  That’s the whole pie.  The banquet is everything.  Don’t let your other plans and goals get in the way of that.  The excuses the people in the Gospel make show that they are so caught up in their supposed “real lives” that they miss out on the only thing that matters, the only thing that is actually real.  And they miss out not because God wants to punish and damn people, but because they keep on turning away from Him, keep on going back to their property, work, and family, and so miss out on the gifts God wants to give.  They actually ask to be excused from God's presence, and so finally they are permanently excused from God’s presence forever, where there is only wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Let us all take this to heart and repent.

    For the wonderfully good news in today’s Gospel is that the Lord’s desire is to have a full house for His feast.  That is the overwhelming message here–the incredible love, the deep desire to bring His fallen people back to Himself.  You are the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.  You are nothing but a beggar before God, like Lazarus last week.  But see how God treats His beggars!  Not like that other rich man, but as One more benevolent than we can fathom.  He invites the maimed, and makes them whole again.  He invites the lame, and teaches them to walk in His ways.  He invites the blind, and makes them see by the light of His Word.  All by forgiveness. The feast is the Supper of the Lord, His death for your life, His suffering for your rescue.

    Our Lord Jesus offered up His body on the cross to be “roasted” in the fire of judgment at Calvary.  Jesus offers Himself now to the whole world as heavenly food that we might receive His saving gifts and be nourished by them.  This holy food is served up and offered wherever the gospel is preached.  When you believe the gospel, you partake of Christ, and this nourishes and strengthens your soul.  It tastes of forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and blessedness.  When you are surrounded by death, sin, disease, hard times, let this be your hunger and thirst.  Especially those who are under great affliction are the ones who find this food so delightful.  When terrified and fearful hearts and consciences hear in the gospel that Christ suffered and died for their sins, that He allowed himself to be prepared and served up as food for all hungry and thirsty souls–when you believe this and take it to heart, then your distressed conscience is comforted and your troubled soul is revived.

    You poor beggars have God Himself as your Rich Man, and He compels you to come in.  It’s His heart’s desire to have you with Himself.  So stop making excuses.  Stop trying to serve two masters. No longer make yourself poor by chasing after the world’s riches.  See how He even begs you to receive His gifts! “Come, for all things are now ready,” and even your silly excuses are now forgiven in the Body and Blood of Jesus.

    The Spirit’s call goes out to you again this day.  Jesus says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day.”  The banquet table is laid before you.  Partake of this holy, life-giving food.  Believe in Christ and be saved.  Receive the foretaste of the feast to come, the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which will have no end.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to Christopher Esget)

Luke 16:19-31
Trinity 1

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    If you lived at the time of the rich man and Lazarus, if you were there with them before they died, which of those two would you have described as being blessed by God?  And which of the two would you have described as being cursed by God?  Clearly, the rich man is the one who looked blessed, didn’t he.  Life was good for him.  He had great clothes, he ate whatever he wanted.  He probably was one who was looked up to as a successful man, a pillar of the community, one whose business fueled the local economy and provided jobs.  The fact that he didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the bum outside his gate would not have been particularly unusual.  By all appearances it would have seemed that God was with the rich man.  

    On the other hand, Lazarus clearly looked cursed, didn’t he.  He had no money and had to beg.  His clothes were in tatters.  His health was terrible.  In fact it was so bad that he had open sores that the street dogs would come up and lick to taste the blood.  How disgusting is that? He was the one you would have avoided when you walked down the street.  By all appearances it seemed that God was ignoring him, too, that God had forsaken and forgotten him.

    But then both of these men die.  Death peels away the thin veneer of their earthly lives and their earthly circumstances to reveal the truth of the matter.  And it turns out that the one who looked blessed was in fact cursed.  The rich man ends up in hell.  And the one who appeared to be cursed turns out to be the one who was blessed.  Lazarus is in heaven.  

    I believe that there is a comforting truth that we can learn from that and from Lazarus.  If life isn’t going all that great for you–if you’ve got some health problems or family problems or work problems or whatever, if things just seem to be turned against you in life, that’s not a sign that God doesn’t care for you, and you shouldn’t take it that way.  And of course, the reverse is true, too.  If life is just wonderful for you–you feel good and have a plenty of money and people respect you and everything’s pretty much going your way, that doesn’t mean everything’s great in your relationship with God, either.  Don’t judge God’s attitude toward you based on your outward circumstances in life and by your experiences, be they good or bad.  We see from the rich man and Lazarus that doing that can be terribly misleading.  It is written that we walk by faith in God’s Word and not by sight or experience or feeling.  God’s Word endures forever.  Our earthly circumstances change and will eventually be done away with and gone forever.

    So beware of those who tell you that if you just follow certain Biblical principles for living and lead a truly Christian life that God will grant you all these earthly blessings and that you’ll have a wonderful marriage and better health and more wealth.  If you are really committed to Christ, then you’ll have a happier and more successful life.  Tell that to Lazarus.  See, because what is the implication then if your life is hard and full of suffering?  That you’re not a real Christian?  That you don’t truly have faith, or at least not enough faith?  That’s exactly the kind of thing that the devil loves to use to drive you to despair and to drive you away from Christ.  Better to stick with Jesus who said, “Whoever would come after me, let him deny himself and take up the cross and follow me. . . He who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

    So, did Lazarus go to heaven because he was poor and miserable?  No, for again, it’s not based on your outward circumstances one way or the other, just as the rich man didn’t go to hell because of his wealth.  After all, Abraham was a pretty wealthy man in his day, and the Gospel says here that he’s in heaven.  

    The real difference between the rich man and Lazarus is not in what they owned, but in what owned them, what had a hold of their hearts.  The one thing that the rich man didn’t possess was faith in the one true God.  The rich man didn’t rely on and trust in God.  He didn’t think he needed to; he was doing great all on his own.  He trusted in himself and his own abilities, in his prestige and power and money.  That’s where his heart was.  He lived independently of the Lord in his life, and so he got to live independently of the Lord in his death.  That’s what hell ultimately is, not only the fire, which is bad enough, but especially the separation from God and anything that is good, the utter emptiness of being forever abandoned.  God does not wish for anyone to go to hell.  But if someone insists on living without God and the preaching of His life-giving Word, He’ll give them what they want for all eternity.

    Lazarus, on the other hand, knew full well that relying on himself was foolishness.  He knew what a maggot sack he was.  He was driven to look outside of Himself to trust in the Lord for help and relief and rescue.  “Lazarus” literally means “God is My Help.”  It’s a different form of the name “Eliezer.”  Against all the evidence of his life to the contrary, Lazarus still believed that the Lord was good and merciful and that He would help and comfort and save him.  Through His Word the Lord possessed Lazarus’ heart.  Lazarus heard the Scriptures, and he believed in the Christ whom they spoke of.  

    In this way Lazarus showed himself to be a true son of father Abraham.  For we learn from the Old Testament reading that when the childless, aging Abraham heard the promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, it is written, “Abraham believed the Lord, and the Lord accounted it to him for righteousness.”  In the same way, Lazarus and all of you are declared righteous before God through faith in His Word.

    That’s really the point of the final exchange between Abraham and the rich man–it’s all about faith in God’s Word.  The rich man, you recall, had the idea of sending Lazarus back from the dead to his brothers to warn them so that they’ll repent.  Sounds like a decent idea on the surface.  But Abraham replies, “They have Moses and the Prophets (the Old Testament Scriptures); let your brothers listen to them.  For if they won’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, they won’t be persuaded even if someone were to rise from the dead.”  Special signs and miraculous occurrences don’t convert anybody.  It might impress them for a while and get them jazzed up.  But that fades eventually.  After all, remember what happened when the children of Israel were in Egypt?  They saw the plagues that God caused; they saw the parting of the Red Sea; they saw the fearful presence of God on Mt. Sinai.  But were they faithful?  No, not long afterwards they returned to their stiff-necked, unbelieving ways.  The lasting power of God to save us is not in signs but in His Spirit-given Word.  It is written that saving faith comes not by anything that we see, but by hearing that Word and that preaching of Christ.

    Now it may well be that Lazarus was indeed raised from the dead, that this is the same Lazarus who was the brother of Mary and Martha, whom Jesus called forth from the tomb.  And what happened in that case?  Well, many people did come out to Jesus, but not only for His sake but also, the Scriptures say, to see Lazarus, to get a glimpse of this dead guy raised back to life–you don’t get to see that every day.  However, the chief priests, instead of having a change of heart, were moved by all of this to get rid of Jesus.  Not many days later the crowds were chanting for Jesus’ death, and He was crucified.  So whether it was Lazarus’ resurrection or Jesus’ resurrection, the rich religious leaders were not moved to faith by such a miracle.

    “Let them hear Moses and the Prophets.”  After Jesus’ resurrection, when He was walking with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke 24 says that, “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”  Listening to Moses and the Prophets and all the Scriptures saves us because they’re all about Jesus the Savior.  They teach us in every part of how He suffered for our sins and how He rose again to deliver us from all evil.

    In fact, even this very story of Lazarus teaches us of Jesus.  Just consider how much Lazarus pictures Christ for us.  In order to rescue us Jesus put Himself at the mercy of the rich and powerful of His day, the chief priests and the leaders of the people.  Jesus was treated by them as if He were a low-life bum so that He might take away the judgment of God from us on the cross.  In Psalm 22 Jesus says of those who beat and crucified Him, “Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.”  These dogs “licked” Jesus wounds, so to speak, by their mocking of Him.  Yet the blood that flowed from those holy wounds bought our forgiveness and cleansed us from our sin.  Isaiah said, “Surely he took up our sicknesses and carried our sorrows . . .  And by His wounds we are healed.”   "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree).”  That is why it is written, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who though He was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, so that you, through His poverty, might become rich.”  And now, like Lazarus, Jesus has risen and ascended to the bosom of the Father in heaven.  Though He appeared to be defeated, He is vindicated and reigns over all things for you, that you also might be brought to the comfort of His side in heaven.  

    So don’t judge your life by how you feel or what you see.  Judge it by what God’s Word says–that though you are a sinner, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  Judge it by your baptism, where God put His holy name on you with the water and claimed you as His own, an action which He won’t change or go back on.  Judge it by the Lord’s Supper, in which He feeds you His own body and blood, that you may be filled with His forgiveness and life.  Take your place with Lazarus in humble penitence and firm faith.  Say with Him, “God is My Helper; I trust in His Word; the Lord Jesus is the One who saves me.”

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠