Matthew 22:1-14

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

The verse at the end of today’s Gospel is a difficult one to understand.  Our Lord says, “Many are called, but few are chosen.”  What does that mean?  To begin with, it clearly means that a relatively small number, only a minority of people are saved and enter into eternal life.  Jesus says the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount: “Enter by the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

One of the most difficult questions in theology is this: why are some saved and not others?  We were just discussing this in Bible class last Sunday.  If God’s grace is for everyone (and it is), and we’re saved by His choosing and His grace alone as Scripture teaches, why is it that only few end up entering into eternal life?  Some try to resolve this problem by saying flat out that God predestines some to heaven and He predestines others to hell.  But that would make God the reason that people are damned and separated from Him.  That’s clearly not Scriptural.  Others say that the reason a person goes to heaven or to hell is because of their choices.  Those who are saved made a decision for Jesus.  But that’s not right either.  Jesus says in John 15, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you.”  It’s His commitment to us that saves us, not the other way around.  The Bible teaches that if a person is saved, it’s entirely God’s working in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.  All glory and credit for the fact that you’re a Christian belongs to Him.  And if a person is condemned to hell, it’s entirely because of their working, their stubborn rebellion against God, their refusal to listen to His Word.  All the blame belongs to man.

Though this may be beyond our full comprehension, one thing is clear from Scripture: God has prepared salvation for all; “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him may not perish but have everlasting life.”  We see even in today’s Gospel that in the end the invitation basically goes out to everyone.  It is written, “those servants went out . . . and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good.”

Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who prepared a great feast in honor of the wedding of His Son.  Jesus Christ and His bride, the church, are to be joined in a holy and divine marriage, the only marriage that will last into eternity.  Earthly marriage vows are always made with the statement, “until death parts us.”  But not even death can separate Christ from His beloved church, His chosen people.

In fact it was by death that the “engagement” took place, you might say.  Only by the cross of Christ was this marriage made possible.  Jesus came to a world doomed to be destroyed; He came to people condemned to eternal death, and He rescued them.  He took the sins of all people on Himself, everything in us which causes hurt and lust and jealousy and death, and He overcame it all for us in His death and resurrection.  That act of limitless love is the reason for this wedding feast.  It is finished; it is done; it’s time to celebrate.  God says, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fatted cattle are killed, and all things are now ready.”

The Lord offers salvation to all mankind.  “The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy.  Go therefore to the highways and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.”  Those who were not worthy were the Jews who rejected Jesus as the Messiah.  Time and again our Lord and His disciples proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of God.  Many were called but few gladly received the Word and believed it.  Now the Gospel invitation continues to go out to the ends of the earth, even to far away Gentile lands like the United States.  The Gospel is able to save all who hear it, as Saint Paul says in Romans chapter one: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

God’s call to salvation is a serious and urgent call.  The king in Jesus’ parable sent the first delegation to invite the guests to come. He sent a second delegation, and made the invitation even more pressing.  “But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them.”  The king became furious and sent his troops to destroy those murderers and burn their city.  It wasn’t as if they hadn’t been warned.  It is written in Ezekiel, “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from evil his way and live.”  2 Peter says, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”  1 Timothy says, “God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

There is no way that God is the reason why those who refuse the call of grace are condemned. The reason lies in fallen human beings.  As it was in the Gospel, people still too often prefer the profits and pleasures and people of this world over the wedding feast.  Some even go so far as to show open hostility toward Christ and His servants.

There was one who showed an outward compliance to the call of grace, but he did not come to the feast rightly.  When the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment.  And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless.

These words, I think, are especially for us who are here at divine service today, and who might therefore be tempted to be proud of who we are spiritually.  The man without the wedding garment stands for all those who come before God not trusting in Christ but wearing the filthy rags of their own supposed righteousness.  Those who despise God and show their contempt for Him by clothing themselves in their own goodness will find themselves bounced into outer darkness forever, where there is only weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This is an entirely unnecessary outcome.  For God freely supplies the clothing.  He covers us with the perfection of His Son. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  God clothes us with Christ in our baptism.  He wraps us up in His righteousness.  Christ is our white wedding garment, his seamless and spotless robe is our covering.  Jesus’ death is yours.  Jesus’ life is yours.  His perfect keeping of the Law is yours.  God gives it all to you for free in Holy Baptism.  Better than any expensive clothing, we have the apparel of Christ. And we dare not come to the Lord’s feast dressed in anything less than that.  To do otherwise is to reject His rich grace and His kingly love.

So if someone is cast into the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, it is their own fault, not God’s fault.  They have rejected the call of grace.  On the other hand, those who are saved take no credit for their salvation.  Those invited and chosen were no better than the others were.  They were unfit to dine at the king’s table and needed a wedding garment.  They did nothing to help plan the banquet, much less to prepare the feast.  They did not invite themselves or make some conscious choice.  They were simply drawn in by the power of the invitation and the joy of what had been prepared for them.  There is no merit or worthiness that these guests could boast of.  That’s how it is in the kingdom of heaven.  It’s solely the mercy of the host that gives us our place at the table.

Those who are saved are saved by God’s grace alone, unassisted and unmerited by man.  It is written that even before the creation of the earth, God had planned the salvation of man.  Saint Paul proclaims in Ephesians 1: “God chose us in [Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.”

God is the prime mover who makes us alive in Christ, who gives hearts of faith by His Holy Spirit.  It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. That’s tremendously comforting news; for it means that our salvation is not founded on the shifting sands of our actions and our choices, but on the solid rock of His actions and His choosing of us, even before we could do anything.

“Many are called, but few are chosen.”  We are reminded by these words to be on guard that we do not resist God’s grace and frustrate His merciful designs.  Let us, rather, pay attention to the wedding feast by believing in and clinging to Christ and His Word, by heeding His invitation to come to the feast at the altar, the Supper of His body and blood.  The one who is worthy is the one who has faith in these words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  By that Word of grace, we then go out into the world to live as His children, loving and serving our neighbor wherever God puts us.  “Many are called, but few are chosen.”  Thanks be to God that He has chosen you to be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

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

Mark 2:1-12

Trinity 19

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

There is a strange thing that Jesus often did during His ministry.  On several occasions after performing a miracle, He would tell the people who saw it not to tell anyone else about it.  That’s not the main thing Jesus wanted to be known for.  There was something much more, much better even than multiplied loaves of bread or healed bodies.  Those things were signs of something greater that they would only be able to grasp fully after He had died and risen again.  The main thing about Jesus is the forgiveness of sins.

In today’s Gospel the paralytic’s friends bring him to Jesus.  And it says that when He sees their faith–not the faith of the paralytic–when He sees their faith, the friends, then He deals with the paralytic in mercy.  This is a little bit like Christians bringing an unbelieving friend to church and to Christ, or like parents bringing their baby to baptism.  By nature we are all spiritually paralyzed, unable to do anything to bring ourselves to the Lord.  We must be brought by someone else so that the Lord may do His forgiving and saving work on us.  

Remember that when dealing with your unbelieving friends or family.  You can put your faith to use for their good.  You may not literally be able to carry them to church. But you can confess your faith to them and invite them.  They’re paralyzed, and they need you to do that.  And they need your prayers.  The Scriptures say that the prayer of a righteous man avails much.  When you pray for your friends and your loved ones in the name of Jesus, the righteous Man, those prayers are heard.  Now, you cannot believe for someone else, just as the paralytic’s friends couldn’t believe for him.  If your children have turned from their baptism and wandered away from church, no matter how much you love them, that does not mean that they love God or that they are saved.  But the prayers of a righteous mother or father avail much as well.  So you keep on praying, you keep on waiting, you remind God of the promises He has made, you carry them on the stretcher of prayer to God, and you wait and see what He will do.

After all that the paralytic’s friends did in order to get him to Jesus, they had to be expecting and hoping for a healing.  But when Jesus sees their faith, He says to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Well, that seems a little anti-climactic.  What they wanted wasn’t forgiveness, but a healing; they wanted him to walk again.  They had just gone through all this trouble to get to Jesus, literally going through the roof, risking embarrassment, and maybe a bill for repairs, and this is all He does?  Well that’s a little bit of a let-down.  Jesus didn’t seem to live up to their expectations.

Why is it that we are so disappointed with the forgiveness of Jesus, as if it were nothing special?  Why are we not content with that, always wanting something different, something more exciting or interest-grabbing?  When I did my vicarage near downtown Las Vegas back in 1988-89, it was virtually a daily occurrence that people would come in off the street asking for money or food or gas.  Everyone had a story, some more believable than others.  It happens here, too, from time to time.  Though sometimes I can give them some food or other assistance, usually I tell them that we don’t have any money to give out.  The only thing we have to here is the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins.  That I can give them in abundance.  But they are rarely interested in that offer.  “No, I know all about forgiveness and stuff.  What I need is some cash.”

So it was, I think, with the paralytic and his friends here.  When Jesus says to him, “Your sins are forgiven,” you can almost feel his disappointment.  “OK, fine.  I’m still stuck here on this mat.”  There are some Christians who like to say that we shouldn’t always be talking about the forgiveness of sins.  There’s other more important stuff to be focusing on.  But they are wrong.  Everything about Christianity comes back to and is rooted in the forgiveness of sins.  If it is truly Christianity and not just generic spirituality and religious self-help, then it all is based in and comes from the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, everything.  It all comes back to this fundamental reality: that He does not hold our sins against us, that He loves us and accepts us, that we are forgiven.  

The truth is that the paralytic could have remained paralyzed and been OK, because his sins were forgiven.  He could have endured that kind of life, difficult as it was; he could have gone on, he could have waited for the time when he would walk again on the last day, because his sins were forgiven.  For his true sickness was cured; his deepest need was met.  The power of the curse was broken; his soul was healed; he was right with God forever.  From that comes the power to live with difficulty, the power to suffer, the power to submit and to believe that God is good, even in the dark times when it seems that He is absent or that He has taken His promise away.  

The story might well have ended there, were it not for the scribes questioning what Jesus was doing forgiving sins.  The reason that the paralytic gets healed doesn’t really seem to be so much for his good as it is to put those scribes in their place who say, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  They are shocked at Jesus’ behavior.  Why?  Because He is a man.  How can a man forgive sins?  Who does this Jesus think that He is?  Of course, He thinks that He is God, that He has authority in heaven and on earth, that what He says, is.  And that’s true.  Jesus is a man, but much more.  He is God in the flesh, who most certainly has the authority to forgive sins.  And He demonstrates that fact by healing the paralytic.

Jesus says, “Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say ‘Rise and walk.’”  Well in truth, this Gospel teaches that the easier thing to say is “rise and walk.”  If you say “rise and walk,” and it fails, it doesn’t happen, nobody’s mad, though you may look like a fool.  But if you say, “I forgive your sins,” then what happens?  They’re angry.  What is it that made them angry at our Lord in the Gospel?  It was not “rise and walk.”  It was rather when He exercised His real authority over death and the devil, when He forgave the man’s sins.  That made them angry, that caused them to get all up in arms.  So also today, there are those who bristle at the notion that a pastor would say, “I forgive you your sins,” even though it is done by the authority of Christ, or who think it is somehow medieval to practice private confession and absolution.  “Who does that guy think he is, hearing people’s confessions and forgiving their sins?”  Well hopefully, a pastor knows that he is the called and ordained servant of Jesus who put him there for that very purpose.

It is easier to say “rise and walk.”  The TV preachers, the spiritual charlatans do it all the time.  It’s easy to fake that, or on a legitimate level, to engage in medical health and healing enterprises, and no one gets upset.  Because those are the types of things we like to see the church doing.  Everyone likes to see the church engaged in human care, in works of mercy in the physical realm, because that fits.  No one’s ever bothered by that.  If you open up a soup kitchen or a food pantry, whether or not they like your doctrine, they like what you’re doing.  The world at some level recognizes and embraces good works.  They think that’s all the church should be about, fulfilling the Law of love, helping your neighbor, being nice.

However, what the people of this world do not like is a reminder that they are sinful and that they need Christ’s forgiveness or they’re going to hell.  That’s what will get people’s blood boiling.  The scribes certainly did not want to think in those terms.  They’d much rather rely on their own efforts and goodness than to be convicted of sin and to have to deal with the Jesus who pardons sin by the power of His bloody, paralyzing death for us.  Jesus did not take the easier way, but the way of the cross.  That’s the problem with those who think Christianity should be focused on something more than the forgiveness of sins.  The forgiveness of sins is everything. Everything comes back to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for us.

 So hear again Jesus’ words to you today: “Your sins are forgiven.”  That is no small thing.  For if the wages of sin is death, then the forgiveness of sins is life, life forever with God.  And in that there is the power for you to endure, to wait, to believe that whatever terrible things you may have to suffer, God still loves you.  You will have perfect health and wholeness in your soul, in your mind, in your body.  And you will walk–if not now, then you will walk on the Last Day, you will rise from the dead just as Jesus did in glory. Regarding the benefits of the Sacrament of the Altar, the Catechism puts it most simply when it says, “Where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.”

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

(With thanks to the Rev. David Petersen)

Luke 7:11-17

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

I’m sure you’ve heard people making reference to “COVID fatigue.”  People are weary of hearing about and thinking about the pandemic and case counts and extensions of mask orders and all the politics that surround these things.  Add to this the demonstrations and riots and conflict, plus all the usual challenges of life, and most everyone is tired of it all.  We look for things that can divert and distract us and give us an escape.  Our minds and consciences can only take so much.

And then you come to church, and what do you hear about?  Sin and death.  Well how is that helpful?  Can’t we talk about something else besides death, pastor?  We’d prefer something more along the lines of a spiritual pep talk to help us “be the best version of ourselves”–or whatever the current cliche is.  Of course, our real, primary focus here in church is not sin and death but forgiveness and life and resurrection.  That’s what is preached here every week, the good news of Christ.  But that good news isn’t something that you will treasure and cling to unless you honestly grasp how serious and real the bad news is.

We must admit that we naturally ignore the realities of sin and death.  We engage in all sorts of things that help us to pretend that the grave is not waiting for us.  And the Bible says in Hebrews 2 that this is a form of spiritual slavery for us, that the fear of death holds us all in bondage, whether in a conscious or unconscious way.  It’s what drives so much of what we do as we cling to life in this fallen world.  Living in fear and denial of death, we enslave ourselves to things that pass away.

I’m sure that the widow in today’s Gospel wanted to escape the realities of death, that she was worn down and weary of it all as she carried her only-begotten son to the grave.  It seemed as though death had won.  It had already taken her husband.  How was she supposed to carry on and survive now that her son was gone?  If it was possible for this grieving mother to switch places with her son, she certainly would have done so.  His body lay there cold and lifeless in the casket.  And she was helpless to do anything about it.

It is not our place to make trades or deals with God, like the bargaining that can so often go on at someone’s sickbed.  And you cannot absorb someone else’s cancer or go back in time and change seats with the person who died in that accident.  It seems unjust that the young would die when the old are ready to go and would gladly take their place.  But this is not in our power; it’s not our choice.  All life is fragile and temporary.

But remember, this isn’t the whole story, not even close.  Death is the devil’s chariot, and he is a charlatan.  He tries to delude us, just as he deceived our mother Eve, with things that seem to be true and real but aren’t–with forbidden fruit that seems pleasing to the eye, with religions and  philosophies that seem so much more reasonable and fairer than Christianity, to make it seem as if evil wins, because death always has its day.

But the truth of the matter is that things are not as they seem.  Death does not win.  For Jesus lives.  And man lives not by bread alone or solely by the latest pronouncements of doctors and scientists.  Man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Man lives by the Word of God made flesh, who died in the flesh on the cross, and rose again in the flesh from the tomb.  Man lives by the Word out of God’s mouth and into the waters stirred up in the church’s baptismal font.  Man lives by the Word out of the mouth of God and into your mouths under bread and wine.  That is how man lives, or man doesn’t live not at all, no matter how it might seem.

What we cannot do, Jesus has done. We cannot take the place of another.  But our Lord, Jesus Christ, can and did.  He was not invited to the funeral in Nain.  He did not even seem to know the young man.  Still, He rudely interrupted the procession.  He barged right in and touched the dead.  He broke the taboo.  Even today, we find it a bit uncomfortable for someone to touch a dead body, to touch the body in the casket.  In Jesus’ day that was even more the case; to do that would make you ceremonially unclean.  But Jesus did it anyway.  He broke the Law of Moses, and He paid the penalty for it.  For He who knew no sin became sin.  He was then unclean, and death was transferred, passed from the boy to our Lord.  Life passed from our Lord to the boy.  Jesus was infected; the boy was cleansed.  Life flowed to the boy and pulsed anew in his young veins.  And Jesus, the Lord and Giver of Life, traded places with him, fulfilling the wish and dream of his mother.  What she could not do, He did for her and for him.

Jesus spoke, and the boy arose.  “Young man, I say to you, arise!”  Some time later Pilate would sentence Jesus to the death He took away from this young man.  Jesus died because He touched our dead humanity and took that  mortality into Himself.

We sometimes forget that Joseph, the husband of Mary, had already died by the time Jesus began His ministry.  So there was yet another widow, the mother of Jesus, watching her Son die, holding His dead, bloody, nail-scarred body in her arms, just outside the city.  Yet this Son would not leave His widowed mother grieving.  She would see Him again alive when He left the grave behind, having put an end to the sting of death and the threats of the Law and the power of the devil.

But still, it might seem as though the resurrection in Nain was only temporary, simply a brief respite from death.  That famous boy from Nain is no longer with us, of course.  He died again.  It would seem as though death was merely delayed, that death always wins and always gets its prize.  Even if he lived on this earth another fifty or sixty years, death still came.  The flesh has long been off of his buried bones.  But again, that is only how it seems.

For when Nain’s famous son laid down in death for a second time, he was given back to his mother for the second time.  He had certainly buried his mother before he died the second time.  So when he died again, he was again given back to her in heaven, and this time, he was with her for good.  This time, he would never be taken away, never again separated from her or his father, or from Abraham and Moses and all of the saints who had gone on before them.  For they were all with their Lord.  And if the people in Nain were filled with joy and the fear of God at the resurrection on that day, you can imagine the joy in heaven when that boy saw his mother and his Savior again.

Death only seems to win and take its prize when it comes to the faithful.  But those who believe in Jesus never die.  They are ever alive in Him.  St. Paul says they fall asleep.  They are not dead.  Their souls go to heaven. Their bodies sleep in the grave awaiting the awakening, the resurrection on the Last Day.  For that’s how it was with Jesus.  When He was on the cross and died, it is written that Jesus gave up His spirit, His soul.  And His body went into the grave to wait for the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

So it is that all Christians die like Jesus.  We are not dead; we live.  For our God is the God of the living.  Our living souls go with Jesus to the Father, and our bodies go into the grave to wait for the resurrection at the final Easter.  Our souls will then be rejoined with our bodies, perfect and immortal and glorified.  And then we will live fully before God as we were created to live.  For Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, and the one who believes in Him will live again, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in Him will never die.

So remember, when we bring up death here in church, we’re not being negative.  Rather we bring it up so that we can make fun of our defeated enemy.  It’s sort of like me bringing up the Minnesota Vikings and how they’ve never won a Super Bowl.  We bring up death to taunt it, to mock it, to declare its defeat in Christ.  You see, as Christians we don’t live in denial of reality, enslaved by our fear of death.  Rather, we face it head on, just as Jesus did with this funeral procession.  For we know that in Him death is neutered and toothless and vanquished.  

So as the hymn says, “laugh to scorn the gloomy grave.”  Say to it, “We bury our dead only to mock you, not because they are dead, but because they live, because they are with Jesus, and their bodies sleep.  We bury our dead because they have been sanctified and sealed for the resurrection through the risen body and blood of Jesus given into their bodies in Holy Communion.  They go into you, O grave, only so that they might follow Jesus out of you and humiliate you and defeat you.”  Let us join in the Scriptural taunt, “‘O death, where is your victory? O Hades, where is your sting?’ . . . Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55,57).

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

(With thanks to the Rev. David Petersen)

Matthew 6:24-34

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

Death always seems to get the last word.  But if death really was ruling and reigning with ultimate power, then there would be no lilies of the field, no colorful birds, nothing beautiful left.  This world would be as barren as a lunar landscape.  However, God did not abandon us when we fell into sin.  In the good that He allows us to experience in this sin-cursed world, we see the signs of His mercy that rescues us from death.  Even though Adam and Eve had betrayed Him, He still loved them.  He walked in the garden after their sin, despite their rebellion and fear.  He came to them in bodily form, foreshadowing that He would take up our form permanently as a real man and pay our price, die our death, that He would stand between us and the devil and perform the duty in which Adam had failed.

So consider the lilies.  They still exist in our broken and fallen world.  They live alongside thorns and thistles that seek to choke them out, with insects, molds, and various diseases, trampled by children and dogs and eaten by deer and rabbits.  Consider the fragility of lilies in this violent world.  And consider also their beauty.

Though it is fleeting, the lilies have a glory from God.  They adorn the earth.  Not everything in this fallen creation is red in tooth and claw.  Not everything is suffering and sorrow.  Consider the lilies.  Consider also chocolate, laughter, music, and good books.  They are signs that God is still at work to free us, to deliver us.

Death does not reign; it is not king.  God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve.  He came where He was needed.  He walked also in the garden of Gethsemane, where He was betrayed again. They came with clubs and swords to take Him away.  They had their way with Him outside the city, in the place of the skull.  He gave Himself over to their evil desires.  Then it was finished.  He was laid to rest, like a kernel of wheat, like the bulb of a lily beneath the ground, in the garden of the dead.  And He rose on Easter morning, sprouting to life unconquerable and immortal, the Victor over death, back out of the grave, undoing what sin had done.  He gave his tomb back, as good as new. Death is not in charge.  The lilies come forth each spring in glory.  Death is dead.  For Jesus lives.

Therefore, since this is so: do not be anxious.  Jesus lives for you.  Jesus loves you.  You may now be suffering many things in this fallen life.  The devil tempts you to waste your energy and effort, to compound your sorrow with worry about various things.  The devil would have you worry about money and how you will pay your bills or how you will retire well.  He would have you be obsessed with fear of viruses and social unrest and political chaos.  He doesn’t want you to focus on the peace you have in Christ; he wants you rather to fret and be afraid of what might happen in this passing and unstable world.  He will fill the broadcast news with tragedies and crimes and disasters. He will fill your social media feed with distortions and propaganda and useless information.  He will try to wear you down, to overwhelm you with sadness, to bury you with the impossibility of it all.

But then Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about your life.”  Doing so only hurts yourself and those whom you love.  Jesus lives.  He will provide.  The lilies do not toil or spin.  The birds do not sow, reap, or gather.  Your Father takes care of them.  Your Father most certainly will take care of you.  He always has taken care of you, not because of your own merits, but because of His Fatherly goodness.  He causes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and He sends rain on the just and the unjust.  

Today certainly has its troubles.  There is no doubt of that.  The call not to worry is not a denial of the very real troubles that exist in your life.  The demands of school and work need to be dealt with.  That family member needs a phone call, your spouse needs an encouraging word.  Your country needs your prayers; your neighborhood needs your involvement.  But those needs are comparatively small,  nothing to be anxious about.  They are well within your talents and gifts.

You have been placed by the Lord precisely where you are. He has made you who you are. He has given you these particular duties, these particular children and spouses and co-workers and friends and even those who are over you in government.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.  Nothing is gained by obsessing about tomorrow or taking on yourself burdens that are not yours to bear, or giving way to envy, bitterness, or fear.  Sufficient for the day is its own troubles.  You are where He has placed you, like a lily in a field.  You simply are given to respond in your particular place, in your stations in life, as you are able.  Do not be anxious about today’s troubles, whether there is hope for our society and culture, whether your children will be OK, whether the climate is growing warmer or colder.  Do what you have been given to do, and ask for forgiveness for your failings. The Lord will provide. He has put you in place on purpose, deliberately, even if you yourself feel unworthy to the task or cannot understand all of His purposes.  Focus on today, not yesterday and not tomorrow.  Rest in the certainty that Jesus lives, that Jesus is providing, and will always provide. The lilies don’t know what they are doing either; they are just being lilies. That is sufficient.

Death does not reign; it is not king.  The lilies prove it.  They are not moved by the troubles of this fallen world.  They belong to the Lord.  He provides according to His promise.  He takes care of them.  And you are worth so much more to Him than they are.  You are worth more than lilies.  If He takes care of them, He will surely take care of you.  So let your heart be at rest. Let go of your anxiety. The Lord has claimed you in the waters of Holy Baptism.  He has sent His Son to die for you.  He is not going to quit on you.  He will provide. You do not need to attain some level of perfection in your life in order to get God to pay attention to you and care for you.  Your Father loved you and chose you as His own even before you were even conceived and born.  He will take care of you as surely as He takes care of the lilies.  In Jesus you are perfect right now.  And in Jesus you will be perfected in the resurrection of your bodies, reflecting the glory of God that is greater than Solomon, greater than the lilies, where there is no more sorrow or pain or death.

The grass of the field is thrown into the oven, the Gospel says.  But out of the oven, after the violence of reaping and thrashing, after the mixing and kneading and resting of the dough, after the refinery of fire, out of the oven comes bread for the day, food for the eater.  The Lord does provide.  He goes where He is needed, even to the hellishness of Calvary, for you.  He stopped death, conquering the grave.  Out of that oven tomb comes the Bread of Life for you, that you might partake of His Body and be one with Him.  He is needed here, by you today.  And so He comes to you.  This Jesus is the Living Bread from heaven, who comes to feed you with Himself, to clothe you with His righteousness, to calm your hearts, to give you peace.  Death does not reign.  Life reigns.  For Jesus lives.

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

(With thanks to the Rev. David Petersen)

Luke 10:25-37 (Trinity 13)

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

 Imagine you were living centuries ago, in medieval times.  If you were to ask the question, “What shall I do to inherit the royal crown and become king?” most people would probably think you were being silly or foolish.  After all, there’s nothing you could do to gain that inheritance.  You’d have to be a member of the royal family.  No matter how good you are, how sincere you are, how hard you work, you cannot inherit the crown unless you have the right bloodline.  It’s something you’re born into.  

Unless, of course, you were planning treason and rebellion.  For there actually is one thing you could do to inherit the kingdom: go to war.  Kick out or kill the old ruler and make yourself king (or queen).  The kingdom and the crown can only change hands like that by violence and force.

This is why the lawyer’s question to Jesus in today’s Gospel is also quite silly and foolish, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  There’s nothing he can do to inherit.  It’s who you are and who your family is that matters with an inheritance.  The lawyer’s question seems pious, but in reality it betrays a treasonous and unbelieving heart.  For the only way you can gain the kingdom of God by your own doing is to try to kick God off of His throne and take over yourself.  And that’s what every attempt at earning eternal life by your own goodness is–it’s making war against God.  It’s a coup attempt that tries to replace His grace with your own righteousness.  Such revolts against the King of kings will not succeed.  His kingdom only comes to you as a freely given inheritance.  It is bestowed by God the Father on His royally born children, all those who believe and are baptized into Christ His Son.

The lawyer clearly doesn’t get this.  So since the lawyer is stuck on what he must do, Jesus turns the question around and asks him, “What is written in the Law?’ The Law is where you go to find out what you should do.   And to his credit the lawyer answers well, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  That’s right. That’s true.  Love God; love one another. Simple and straightforward.

But then come these daunting words from Jesus, “Do this and you will live.”  That is a pretty unsettling statement.  For it implies, “Don’t do these commandments, and you will die.”  Will we really live eternally based on what we’ve done?  Do we who are obsessed with ourselves and our own dreams and self-preservation love God with every fiber of our being, always, above all things?  And do we love our neighbor selflessly, gladly, willingly, from the heart?  Or are we sometimes annoyed by their constant needs?  “Do this and you will live” is a dire threat.  The lawyer’s test has backfired.  He is dead, and he knows it.

 And so he does what lawyers often do.  He looks for a loophole. “And who is my neighbor?” he asks.  He still wants to argue his way out of damnation.  But he is not nearly as clever as he thinks. For every Sunday school student knows the answer to that question.  Who is my neighbor?  Everyone is your neighbor.  Every single person you come across.  You’re supposed to love all people as yourself.  There are no exceptions, no escape clauses, no one else to pass the blame onto.  The Law exposes you.  You have not fulfilled its demands.  You will not live.

Except, notice this: our Lord does not actually answer the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?”  We know the answer is everyone.  But Jesus uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to pose a new question, a very different question: “Who was neighbor to (the man)?”  The answer to that question is not everyone.  Everyone was not neighbor to the man in the ditch! Only One was. This points us to the Lord Jesus Himself.  He is the doer and the giver of inheritances.  He is the One who has mercy, who was neighbor to the man who fell among thieves. The Son of God did what the Law could not.

The priest and the Levite were powerless, bound by all the rules about not being clean if they touched blood or a dead person. They could not help, even though they should have.  But Jesus our Samaritan was full of mercy and compassion. He dirtied Himself with our fallen condition, coming in the likeness of sinful flesh.   He shared in our suffering and made our problems His own, to the point that He Himself would be beaten mercilessly and robbed of His clothing and left for dead on the cross.  He knew the cost to rescue us from sin and Satan, but He went down into the ditch of death anyway to make us clean.  He bound up our wounds in His own wounded flesh.  He poured on His own sacramental oil and wine.  He picked us up and carried our burdens.  He walked while we rode.  He paid for everything by His precious blood.  He sees to our ongoing care in the church while we heal.  And He is coming back.

Then Jesus says: “Go and do likewise.”  Now most people simply take that to mean that you should do like the Samaritan did.  And that is true; as Christians we are given to show forth the love of Christ and help our neighbor in need no matter who they are, especially within the stations of life where God has placed us.  But that’s not actually Jesus’ main point here.  Jesus’ main purpose is to move the lawyer and us away from trying to justify ourselves and thinking we can earn the inheritance.  For we heard in the Epistle, God gave His inheritance to Abraham not by the law but by promise.  Jesus is not just giving us a lesson in the Law here.  He is showing us Himself and how the kingdom of heaven comes to you by grace.

Jesus is teaching you to see yourself as the one beaten up on the side of the road, and to seek mercy from Him, the only One who can truly help you.  He has changed the question from what you must do to what He has done for you.  Who has been neighbor to you?  Who fulfilled the Law entirely for you?  Jesus Himself and Jesus alone.  That’s true mercy.  That’s the inheritance of heaven given by promise.

In the end the Kingdom of God does come to you through violence, the violence of the cross.  However, in His death the Lord is not toppled from His throne.  The devil thought He could take the crown by killing Christ.  Instead Satan himself was conquered, and the risen Jesus has opened the kingdom to all believers.  God the Father has adopted you as His own through baptism.  You are brothers and sisters of Jesus.  He has given you the crown of life.  You truly are heirs of heaven.

So remember how the mercy of God is revealed here in the changing of the question from “Who is my neighbor?” to “Who was neighbor to (the man)?”  The focus is not on us but on Jesus.  He has done what you and the Law could not.  He was moved by His own compassion to come and help you who had been robbed by sin and Satan and left for dead.  You have been rescued by Christ and cared for and raised up by Him.  He is the One who has truly loved you as Himself all the way to the end.  Who was neighbor to the one who fell among thieves?  The One who had mercy, the One who was crucified with thieves for you.

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

(With thanks to the Rev. David Petersen for some of the above)

Mark 7:31-37

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

What is it that makes you sigh and groan?  You sigh when you’re burdened and worn out by something, when you’re struggling to keep on going, when you’re frustrated and just tired of it all.  It might be a nagging physical problem you’re dealing with.  It might be a nagging conscience that won’t let you forget foolish things you’ve done or said.  And it might be a nagging situation that is outside of your control–a pandemic with no apparent end in sight, tragic violence and senseless destruction like what occurred in Kenosha this week, people in your life who mistreat you or let you down.  Sometimes it’s all a little too much, and you sigh; you groan.  Sighing is a fruit of the curse.

And all of creation is affected.  Romans 8 says that “all creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.”   The recent Gulf hurricane and its aftermath is a living picture of that.  The whole creation is weighed down and broken.  Creation itself sighs and groans in its bondage to decay after the fall.

As we look up to heaven and sigh, it is most comforting to see our Lord Jesus in the Gospel doing the very same thing.  He really is one with us in our troubles.  He shares our burdens.  He too, sighs and groans.  But His sighing is different from ours.  He knows your pain to be sure.  And He feels your weariness.  But there’s more to it than that.  He knows that there’s a cure.  For He has come to be the cure Himself.  His sighs, His sufferings are the very thing that take your sin and your burden away from you.  His sighs breathe His words and His Spirit and His life into you.

Jesus took this deaf-mute aside from the multitude, away from the familiarity and the security of his friends and the people he knew.  That had to have been a little unsettling for him. There was only Jesus now to rely on.  The deaf-mute’s attention, his trust was to be entirely focused on Him.  So it is with you.  When Jesus deals with you, he calls you to find your security not ultimately in familiar people or the things in this world, not in getting things back to “normal,” whatever that means, but only in Him.  It may be unnerving not to have your usual safety blankets and crutches, but when Jesus heals and saves you, He calls you to trust and to be devoted to Him entirely.

But then even more importantly, Jesus invites you to see that He is devoted to you entirely.  Jesus calls this deaf-mute aside from the crowds because this wasn’t for show; He wasn’t going to use Him as a prop for political purposes.  Jesus was completely there just for this man, one on one.  Likewise with you; when Jesus deals with you, you’re not just a generic face in the crowd.  He cares about you individually.  He comes to you and helps you as someone uniquely created by Him.  

Of course, that doesn’t mean the ministry of the Great Physician will always be comfortable.  After all, Jesus put His fingers right into the deaf man's ears.  He spit and touched the deaf man’s tongue.  Imagine the immediate unhinged response He would get for doing that today.  Jesus touched this man right where his body was broken with a healing touch.  And He said, “Ephphatha.” “Be opened.  Be released.”  Even apart from the sanitary aspect of this, there was something almost over the line in Jesus’ actions.  He was invading this man’s space and right in his face when He talked.  It was uncomfortably close.

The Lord can heal with just a Word; that’s how He sometimes did it.  Why then fingers in the ears, and spit and hands upon the tongue?  Well, for one thing, this is what his friends had prayed for.  Remember they had begged Jesus to put His hand on him.  That prayer was being answered very concretely.  Be careful what you pray for.  You may receive what you asked, but not in the way you expected.  It may not come in the comfortable, simple way you were hoping for but in the Lord’s way that puts you out of your comfort zone, that teaches you not to trust in your prayers or your friends’ prayers, but only in the Lord who answers your petitions.  He may be invading your personal space, but it’s for your good.

Jesus heals in this hands-on way, too, because this is the very purpose for which he came, to be the medic who touches our broken flesh with His pure life-giving flesh.  He sticks His fingers in our ears through the preaching of His Word.  In the Bible, the “finger of God” is a reference to the Holy Spirit.  Only by the power of God’s Spirit-filled Word can our natural spiritual deafness be turned to a listening ear which understands and believes the things of God.  The Epistle reading said, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  

Jesus also spits and touches our tongue in the Sacraments.  Isn’t baptism water and words from the mouth of God?  In baptism Jesus says His “Ephphatha” to you, releasing you from your bondage to death and unloosing your tongues to sing the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.  We pray in the Psalms, “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.”  Only when the Holy Spirit has opened our ears and freed our tongues can we truly worship Him rightly.  It is written, “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”

And of course, our Lord Christ touches your tongue very literally in Holy Communion, where He places His body and blood right into your mouths for your forgiveness.   To the world it is a rather strange thing, especially in these times, that you would come forward and partake of this supper.  But you do so at the Lord’s Word.  For this is the Lord’s concrete, earthy way of touching you and giving you eternal healing.  

When Jesus sighed, He looked up to heaven.  For He knew well that the divinely required cost of our healing is His sacrificial death.  He would sigh and groan and cry out and be spitefully spit upon for us on the cross.  And yet through that death Jesus is not defeated but victorious.  For in so doing He has broken the power of sin’s curse.  Jesus has overcome all that makes you sigh and groan in this fallen world through the cross.  You have the victory in Him.

God the Father showed the victory of Jesus’ sacrifice for you on the third day.  This time the Father said “Ephphatha” to the tomb, “be opened,” and He raised Jesus to life in glory.  In the same way, Jesus will speak His “Ephphatha” to your graves on the Last Day, and raise you from the dead with glorified bodies to live with him forever in righteousness and holiness.

This is the light at the end of all tunnels for the Christian. This is the promise that no matter how bad the sighing gets, there really is a better day ahead.  No matter how deaf God appears to the sounds of our cry, in Jesus Christ, He hears, and He will answer you, and restore you, and give you an eternal blessing.  In the resurrection there will be no more deafness or disease or trouble or violence any more.  As it is written in Isaiah 51, “Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”  The whole creation will rejoice with us as it, too, is released from its bondage.  We eagerly wait for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies.  Until then, the Spirit of Christ helps us in our weakness, aiding our prayers when we don’t know what to say, making intercession for us with groans too deep for words (Romans 8:26).

“In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book” (Isaiah 29:18).  Thanks be to God that He has caused the living melody of the Gospel to sound in our ears, that He has breathed His Spirit and life into us.  Even in the midst of all the uncertainties of your life, let your confession of faith be like that of the multitude in the Gospel,  “He has done all things well.  He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

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

Luke 18:9-14

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

All of us know how to play the comparison game.  You see or hear about another person, perhaps something they’ve done or achieved, things that are going on in their life.  And then you line yourself up next to them to see who’s doing better.  In your heart you usually come up with one of two conclusions: either you’re proud and satisfied with yourself, or you despair and are depressed about yourself.  The comparison game is not a good game to play, but our sinful nature can’t seem to avoid it.  For the old Adam is always obsessed with the self, and he wrongly judges himself in terms of others rather than in terms of God and His Word.

Pride can rear its ugly head in the comparison game even in something as simple as watching or scrolling through the news.  We see rioters and looters and vandals, we see the corrupt politician or the hypocritical celebrity or the sexually deviant person, and we think, “Thank God I’m not like those people.  I’m certainly doing better than they are.” 

But notice how that’s the way the Pharisee talks.  He mentions God; He even seems to thank God for His good works, but not really.  For notice how it says that the Pharisee prayed with himself.  That’s the only safe way to pray if you’re playing the comparison game–with yourself and by yourself.  The name of God is used by the Pharisee just once; the word I is used four times.  God is not really the focus here; He’s just window dressing for the main attraction, the pious Pharisee.

Now, the Pharisee here seems to be a little bit of a caricature that we can easily make fun of.  But be careful, for as soon as you start thinking, “Thank God I’m not a self-righteous snob like the Pharisee,” then you’ve become the Pharisee yourself.  Then you’re the one looking down on others.  You don’t like it when people act all holier than thou, but the fact that you’ve got to go and point that out shows that you really think you’re better than them.  And so you’re caught.

Repent.  Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.  He who exalts Himself will be humbled.  Turn away from religion which is all about you and your spiritual self-improvement.  The Gospel is not “God helps those who help themselves.”  That statement is not in the Bible.  Do not trust in yourself to become good before God; it cannot be done.

But at the same time, do not give way to despair, either.  For that is the other side of the same coin in the comparison game.  People who know they haven’t measured up, who have botched things, compare themselves to others and say, “Look at how I’ve messed things up and sinned.  My life is full of mistakes and failings and regrets.  Nothing seems to be the way it should be.  I don’t see any great future for me, especially with God.  It’s hopeless.”  

Those who succumb to spiritual despair are really engaging in the very same sin as the Pharisee, oddly enough.  Both pride and despair are obsessed with the self.  The proud person looks at himself and thinks he sees good.  The despairing person looks at himself and sees bad.  But both are engaging in the exact same spiritual activity–narcissism, mirror watching.  It’s all about me.  Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves.  Both the proud and the despairing person think that it’s all about them and their efforts and what they do.  For one this is happy, for the other it’s sad.  But they both believe the same thing, and they’re both wrong.  That’s why they both end up despising others, as Jesus said.  The proud person looks down on those he thinks to be inferior to him.  And the despairing person despises those who are above him, those who have supposedly held him down and kept him from being able to become the person he was supposed to be.

Let go of all that comparing and instead embrace grace.  “By grace you have been saved.”  God’s grace and mercy alone.  There is no comparison to that.  Nothing can compare to what is freely given to you in Jesus Christ.  The tax collector’s worship is the right kind of worship, that of humble reverence before the Lord.  It’s right because his faith is not in himself in any way but in the Lord’s sacrificial compassion.  It all depends on that.  He doesn’t presume that he has the right to draw near to God on his own merits.  He stands afar off with his face not even lifted up to the King of kings.  He beats his chest in sorrow as if to say, “What have I done?”  And his only plea is, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

That may not be the kind of worship that draws crowds and makes you feel all tingly, but it is the kind of worship that Jesus seeks and that He praises here.  For Jesus says that it’s the tax collector who goes down to his house justified, right with God.  The tax collector comes before God with no illusions that he has some great virtue that he can offer to God.  No, it all hangs on the belief that the Lord is a God of mercy who will not forsake even him, who will forgive him and raise him up, even though he doesn’t deserve it.

That’s why he came to the temple to pray.  This is where the sacrifices were made that God had appointed and where blood was shed to atone for sin.  When the tax collector prays “God be merciful to me . . .” the word he uses for mercy has to do with those sacrifices, all of which pointed forward to the coming sacrifice on Good Friday.  So as the tax collector offers this prayer, God is already answering it for him there in the animals being offered on the altar.  The tax collector trusted in God’s promise of sacrificial mercy, and he longed for the day when the Messiah would come and bring all of these things to their fulfillment.

Let us also then learn the lesson of the tax collector and take our place with him.  Let us come before the Lord with humble reverence, with sincere repentance and true faith.  For it is written, “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves such as have a contrite spirit.”  If you know the burden of your fallen nature, if you’ve made some poor choices in life, if this world at times just wearies you to death, then the Lord Jesus is for you.  Pray the same prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  And He is, and He will be, and His mercy endures forever.  For He has made the sacrifice for you in the temple of Christ’s body on the altar of the cross.  Through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, your sin has been fully atoned for.  You are released and forgiven.  You are released from all the religious score-keeping and comparison games that divide you from your neighbor.  You are free now simply to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”  Through Jesus you are reconciled to God, and in Him you are reconciled to each other.  It is written, “You who once were far off (as the tax collector stood far off) have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

Now you are given to lift up your eyes and see heaven opened through Jesus.  For He fulfilled His own words here, humbling Himself even to the point of death on a cross.  He didn’t say to His Father, “God, I thank You that I am not like other men”–even though He’s the One who actually could have said that.  Instead, He made Himself to be like us and shared in our death so that we would share in His life and His bodily resurrection.  God the Father has now exalted the risen Jesus to the highest place and given Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.  And that is what you do, even at this altar rail, as the Lord comes to you with His mercy.

Here, then, is the good news–all of you are given to go down to your houses today justified and righteous.  “It is by grace you have been saved through faith” in Christ, who is your righteousness.  This Gospel casts out both pride and despair.  For the Epistle said, this is “not of yourselves,” from within you, “it is the gift of God” from outside of you, “not of works, lest anyone should boast.”  If there’s going to be any boasting, let it be boasting in the Lord.  For even your good works are ones that He has prepared beforehand for you to walk in.  It’s all from Him.

You have been turned from children of wrath to baptized children of grace.  You are justified, right with God in Christ.  Therefore, humble yourselves before the Lord, that He may lift you up in due time.

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