Reformation Day (Observed)

Reformation Day (Observed)

October 30, 2022

Sola Scriptura: 500^th Anniversary of Luther’s German Translation of the New Testament

Text: John 8:31-36

            “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32; ESV). 

            In 2017, we celebrated the 500^th Anniversary of the Reformation, dating its beginning to Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg.  But really, when you get right down to it, it will be the 500^th Anniversary of the Reformation in one way or another for the rest of our lifetimes.  Last year, we celebrated the 500^th Anniversary of Luther’s famous “Here I Stand” speech at the Diet of Worms, and his subsequent “kidnapping” by his own prince’s secret agents, to hide him away at the Warburg Castle as Junker George.  And we heard that, while he was there, though he was very lonely and sad and frustrated, he was also quite busy.  Praying.  Thinking.  Writing.  And translating.

            This year, we celebrate the 500^th Anniversary of the publication Luther’s September Testament, his translation of the New Testament into German.  Now, we should not underestimate the importance of this milestone.  Remember, at this time in history, very few people actually read the Bible for themselves.  For one, Bibles were expensive.  That is why the Bible was chained to the desk in the library.  It wasn’t because the Pope didn’t want people reading the Bible.  It was because the Bible was an expensive volume, and they didn’t want people to steal it.  But it was also only allowed to be printed and read in Latin.  The Latin Vulgate was the only version of the Scriptures authorized by the Roman Church.  So, for most people, their exposure to the Bible was only at Church, during the Mass, where they heard the readings in Latin, a language the uneducated (which was most people) couldn’t understand.  If the people had a decent priest, they may get some preaching in their own language, and perhaps they knew some of the Bible stories.  But Bibles in the vernacular (the language of the people) were strictly forbidden by the Roman Church.

            So, when Luther translated the Scriptures into German, it was a watershed moment.  It blew the doors wide open for vernacular translations.  This is particularly pertinent for us in terms of the English translations we use.  The influence of Luther’s German Bible on the 1611 Authorized Version translated under King James, for example, is incalculable.  The translators leaned heavily on Luther as a translation tool.  And think about this: The translation we use in our worship and in The Lutheran Study Bible, the English Standard Version, is a descendent of the King James translation.  And even versions that are not from that branch of the translational family tree, such the NIV, or the NASB, or whatever you use, are nevertheless the beneficiaries of the great tradition of translations that came before, including our own Dr. Luther’s Die Heilige Schrift, his Bible.  So, that you can pick up a Bible anytime you want (as I pray you often do), and read it in your own language, and understand what it says…  And, for that matter, that we read it here in Church in your own language… That is not a gift to be taken for granted!  Thanks be to God, who has given you, and all Christians, this tremendous gift, largely through the efforts of His servant, Dr. Martin Luther.

            Now, as heirs of the Reformation legacy, we believe and confess the great solas of the Christian faith: Sola gratia (grace alone), sola fide (faith alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), and even the famed subscript that great Lutheran musician, Johann Sebastian Bach, inscribed at the end of his every composition, S. D. G., Sole Deo Gloria (to God alone be the glory).  But we know that there is yet one more sola in the list, and without this sola, we wouldn’t know, and therefore wouldn’t believe or confess, any of the rest.  And that is sola Scriptura (Scripture alone).  It is from God’s revelation of Himself in Holy Scripture that we come to know Him as the gracious God who saves us from our sins, by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, into our flesh, to suffer and die on the cross, and be raised again from the dead in our flesh, to give us forgiveness and eternal life.  It is through the Scriptures, and the preaching of the Scriptures, and in the Sacraments (which are Scripture in action), that God grants us His Holy Spirit, who gives us saving faith in this same Jesus Christ.  By the Scriptures, God tears our eyes away from our own focus on the self, and our own idols, and our own glory (that is, He brings us to repentance), and directs our sight to His glory in saving us and bringing us into His Kingdom (that is, he gives us faith in His Son).  When we confess sola Scriptura, what we are saying is that our whole doctrine, all that pertains to our Christian faith and life, is ruled and normed by Holy Scripture.  Not by human reason.  Not by sacred tradition.  Not by human will, personality, or emotion.  We certainly use all of these things, but we must only use them in service to Scripture, and never to overrule Scripture. 

            So, for example, I may not understand something in Scripture, whether it be because the thing itself is mysterious and not meant for my comprehension, but rather, for my faithful reception and adoration (here we may think of the teaching on the Trinity, or how the Lord’s body and blood can truly be present for us to really eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper).  Or, be it because of my own ignorance, which is a lot more common than we’d like to admit.  We don’t know everything.  We actually are not the divine arbiters of what is, or is not, reasonable.  The temptation is, “I don’t understand the Trinity, so I reject the whole teaching”…  Or, “All the people who taught me science, all the people I consider to be educated and intelligent, say the world was created by random chance in evolution, so I reject the Bible’s account of Creation”… Well, what am I saying about myself when I make those judgment calls?  “I’m God, and God is not God (not mine, anyway!),” that’s what I’m saying.  It’s idolatry.  And that is what we say about ourselves any time we reject what God’s Word says.  We don’t like what Scripture says about marriage and sexuality.  “We’ve evolved,” we say.  “The world has changed,” we say.  So we reject Scripture, which is to say, we reject God.  We don’t like what Scripture says about the sanctity of human life, from conception to natural death.  “There are lives not worth living,” we say.  “There are lives we don’t want, that inconvenience us, that burden us.  There is no inherent right to life,” we say.  So we reject Scripture.  We reject God.  Repent.  We must all repent.  We do not stand above the Bible, as a judge of what is right or wrong in it, reasonable or unreasonable, culturally acceptable or ripe for rejection.  The Bible stands above us.  The Bible molds and shapes us.  The Bible judges us, and preaches to us our only hope in the Day of Judgment, which is Christ crucified.   

            Holy Scripture is God’s inspired and inerrant Word.  We confess the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture, which is to say, behind every human author of Scripture across the centuries, there is one divine Author, the Holy Spirit.  Every word of it is from Him.  St. Peter writes, “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).  St. Paul writes to Timothy, “All Scripture is breathed out by God,” literally “exhaled” from God, His very breath, breathed into (the meaning of the word inspired) the human author, “and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).  To be sure, the Scriptures do have human authors, and their personalities and writing styles and cultural contexts come out in their writing, but that doesn’t change the fact that behind them, there is the Holy Spirit.  You can think of the Scriptures as mirroring the Person of our Lord Jesus, in that they have two natures, divine and human.  God is the Author.  And human beings are the authors.  But the human authors serve as God’s instruments to carry out the writing.    

            And so, because the Scriptures are God’s Word, we confess that they are inerrant.  Which means we can trust them.  God does not lie.  God does not make mistakes.  Thus, inerrancy.  By which we don’t mean that there aren’t scribal errors in transmission or variants in the text, but these are all very minor, and none of them affect our doctrine or salvation.  Translational errors can and do occur, so we must be aware of those, but we are inheritors of any number of very fine translations, which, in spite of their various strengths and weaknesses, give us God’s pure Word.  What a gift.  What grace.  Jesus spoke of the Old Testament as God’s own Word.  He tells us that the Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35).  Jesus, Himself, is the Word of God made flesh (John 1:1, 14), and so every Word that proceeds from His mouth (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4) is God’s own Word.  And He gives His Apostles to preach and write down His Word.  “Whoever receives you,” He says to the Twelve as He sends them out to preach, “receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (Matt. 10:40).  We receive them as we receive their writings.  The Church, the Household of God, is built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, St. Paul writes (Eph. 2:20), which is to say, the Old and New Testaments, Christ Jesus Himself being the Cornerstone, in whom the whole thing is held together and grows into the Holy Temple of God (vv. 20-21).

            But we must not fail to understand the overarching purpose of Holy Scripture, why it is we take such great comfort in knowing the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, and their inerrancy.  It is not because the Bible is a book of morals, or wisdom for life (though, to be sure, these are in the Scriptures).  It’s overarching purpose is to reveal Christ as our only Savior from sin, death, and the devil.  It is to give us Christ.  Holy Scripture, as God’s own Word, is powerful, with all the power of God.  It is God’s speech.  And when He speaks, it is done.  It reveals God’s Holy Law, to bring us to a knowledge of our sins, so that we repent of our sins, and it reveals God’s Holy Gospel, to show us Christ, the Savior, and to actually bestow on us Christ’s salvation, the forgiveness of sins, eternal life.  The Gospel is, as Paul says, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16).  Luther says that the Scriptures are the manger in which Christ is laid, in which we may always find our dear Savior.  He is on every page, and in every Word.  He is there for us, to save us, and give us life.  When you pick up a Bible (as I pray you often do, daily, continually) to read it in personal and family devotions, and when you hear the Scriptures read and proclaimed here at Church, Christ is delivering Himself and His gifts to you.  His Spirit.  His life.  His love.  His righteousness.  His forgiveness.  His consolation.  His divine counsel and aid.  His wisdom.  His peace.  His healing and wholeness.  A restored relationship to His Father, who is your Father, who loves you, and makes you His own Child.  In short, He gives you His very Kingdom, and all that belongs to it.

            And Luther put it in the language of his dear German people, and in their hands by printing it (with a little help from Gutenberg’s invention and the printers who produced affordable copies).  And this led to others putting the Scriptures into the languages of their own dear people, and into their hands, so that, for the last 500 years, the Holy Bible has become the best-selling book of all time.  And well it should be.  For it is the Word of life.  It is the Word of God. 

            There is the old story, possibly apocryphal, about Luther in the Wartburg, throwing his inkwell at the devil.  Now, we can be sure that the devil pestered him plenty as he went about his work in the old castle.  And people said that, well into the last century, you could still see the ink stain on the wall (though it turns out that the stain had been “touched up” a bit for the sake of the tourists, to make it more visible).  But the real throwing of ink at the devil, to which Luther did refer in his lifetime, was his translation of Holy Scripture.  When the devil pesters you, throw the inkwell at him.  Run to your Bible.  Read the Word.  Hear the Word.  That is the Sword of the Spirit to fend off the evil one, and it gives you the shield of faith to extinguish his flaming darts (Eph. 6:16-17).  Hear the Scriptures.  Pray the Scriptures.  Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures.   And on this day, thank God for lonely, sad, frustrated Dr. Luther, locked up in the Wartburg with His Greek New Testament, who put pen to paper, that we may read God’s Word.

            Many other significant things happened in 1522, not least of which were Luther’s Invocavit sermons.  But that story will have to wait for another time.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.        

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25C)

October 23, 2022

Text: Luke 18:9-17

            Last week, Jesus told us a parable to the effect that we ought always to pray and not lose heart.  This morning, Jesus teaches us how to approach God in prayer.  In other words, what should be our disposition toward God in our prayers, our posture?  And on what basis should we pray?  To answer these questions, Jesus paints a picture for us by means of another parable, and He makes His point by way of contrast.

            On the one hand, there is the Pharisee.  Now, we think of him as the villain in the parable, and we’re right, but we have to understand just how shocking this is to the original audience.  The Pharisee is the model practitioner of Jewish piety and religion.  Like someone we would look up to as a pious and respectable Christian.  In other words, the audience agrees with the Pharisee’s assessment of himself.  But Jesus wonders why a man who has it so completely all together, as the Pharisee claims he does, would even bother to pray in the first place.  He stands there in the Temple, apart from all the rest, and prays thusly: He thanks God… for himself.  He thanks God that he is not a poor, miserable sinner, that he is not like extortioners, or the generally unrighteous hoi polloi, or adulterers, or even like (as he casts a sidelong glance toward the man in the back) this dirty, rotten, traitorous, greedy, good-for-nothing tax collector.  Whereupon the Pharisee undertakes to list his own spiritual resume for God, essentially telling God all the reasons He (God) should be thankful for him (the Pharisee)!  “I fast twice a week” (Luke 18:12; ESV).  Now, the only required day of fasting in the Scriptures is the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, but the Pharisees, ever the overachievers, fasted every Thursday (because Moses was traditionally thought to have ascended Mt. Sinai on a Thursday) and Monday (because Moses was traditionally thought to have descended Mt. Sinai on a Monday).  “I give tithes of all that I get” (v. 12).  Not just the profit I make, but also the things I buy… you know, just in case the guy I bought the things from didn’t make his tithe.  And if he did, You get twice as much, God!  Thanks to me!  Aren’t you lucky to have me around.  The Pharisee doesn’t pray because he needs mercy and help from God.  He prays because he thinks God needs him!  He is essentially ungrateful and self-centered, self-obsessed.  And there is something else we must not fail to observe about this posture in prayer.  The Pharisee doesn’t pray God’s mercy for the needs of others, either.  No, no.  He despises others.  Self-righteousness, self-justification, always leads to contempt for others, and ungratefulness to God for anything other than the self, and what comes from the self.

            But then there is the tax collector.  We think of him as the hero in the story, and I suppose in some sense that is true, although not in the way that we usually think of heroes.  His heroism is not based on anything intrinsic to himself, but in his utter lack of intrinsic heroism.  He stands far off.  He will not even assume the traditional Jewish prayer posture, hands outstretched, eyes lifted to heaven.  No, his eyes are cast down, and his hands beat his breast in a gesture of sorrow and repentance, and he prays, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (v. 13), literally, “God, be propitiated toward me, THE sinner!”  He prays, not on the basis of any worthiness within himself.  He does not even consider himself worthy to be in God’s Temple, in the presence of those he undoubtedly thinks are more righteous and pious than himself, like this Pharisee.  He demands nothing.  He makes no claims for himself, other than his own sin and wretchedness.  But he needs God.  He needs mercy.  He needs propitiation, a sacrifice of atonement for his sins that only God can provide.  It is on that basis that he prays.  And it is for that reason, because he does not justify himself, but looks to God alone for justification and all mercy, that this despised tax collector goes home justified, declared righteous by God.  And, on the other hand, this fine, upstanding, respectable, pious Pharisee, does not.  He goes home still in his sins.  “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled”… by God!  And that is what we see in the Pharisee… “but the one who humbles himself will be exalted”… by God!  And that is what we see in the tax collector.

            In is not unlike the contrast between Cain and Abel in our Old Testament reading (Gen. 4:1-15).  What is going on there?  Remember that in the previous chapter of Genesis, after Adam and Eve had fallen into sin, the ground was cursed because of them (Gen. 3:17).  When Cain brings “the fruit of the ground” as an offering before the LORD (4:3), he is saying to the LORD, in effect, I am working within the curse.  Look at my works.  Look what I have brought forth in spite of Creation’s handicaps.  I am doing better than my parents.  It is not unlike Adam and Eve’s fig leaves… a futile attempt to manage sin and cover it over with our own efforts. 

            On the other hand, what does Abel present as an offering?  The firstborn of his flock and their fat portions (v. 4).  And in this way, he is reflecting on the way God covered over his parents’ nakedness, their sin and shame.  With garments of skins the LORD clothed them (3:21).  Abel is asking the LORD to do the same for him.  To cover him with the sacrifice of atonement.  He is confessing that he cannot overcome the curse of sin by his own works.  He must be covered by the LORD. 

            And where does each sacrifice lead?  Cain’s self-righteous sacrifice leads him to hold his brother in contempt, such that he lures his brother out into the field to murder him.  And still, he would justify himself over against God: “am I my brother’s keeper?” (4:9).  But Abel’s sacrifice… though it does not shield him from suffering and death… because it relies on God alone, and on His propitiation and mercy, leads to his very blood crying out from the ground.  That is, though dead, he still speaks.  Which is to say, he lives!  God covers his sin and shame.  God rescues him from the curse.  God rescues him, even in death!  And, of course, this is not by the blood of the lambs and goats Abel offered, but by the blood of the Sacrifice to which these point: The Lamb of God who takes away Abel’s sin, and the sin of the whole world, our Lord Jesus Christ. 

            And all of this teaches us how to pray.  We should not come before God as the Pharisee does, thanking God for the gift that we are to Him and to all humanity, and that we are not like others, especially those other people in the pews whom we know to be sinners, whose specks we can see perfectly well through the logs we refuse to acknowledge protruding out of our own eyes.  We should not brag to God about what great things we can do for Him.  Nor should we be like Cain, parading before God the various ways that we’ve worked around the curse, presenting the work of our own hands, our own righteousness, our self-justification.  These things lead only to contempt for the neighbor and ungratefulness to God.  And ultimately, they lead to eternal death. 

            Instead, we should be like this tax collector, which is to say, repentant and humble.  We should know our own sin and unworthiness, and confess them before God, “I, a poor, miserable sinner.”  We should plead simply and humbly for His merciful propitiation.  And we should expect to receive it, not for our own sakes, but for Jesus’ sake, and because our Father in heaven is good, and loves us, and wants us to be His own.  We should be like Abel, asking God to cover us with the skin of His Sacrifice, asking Him to cover us with Christ and His righteousness, His death on the cross, His resurrection, His forgiveness, life, and salvation.

            Which is to say, we should be like infants, baptized into Christ.  When Jesus says, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:16), Luke specifies that the children being brought to Him are infants (v. 15), βρέφη in Greek, a word that could even refer to babies in utero, like little John the Baptist, who leapt in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice, pregnant as she was with our little unborn Lord (1:41).  Helpless infants make the very best Christians.  Whether we are baptized as adults, or as little babes in arms, we should all be little babes in the faith of Jesus Christ.  Even the most upstanding and respectable Christian, one who demands our admiration and imitation, should approach God in this way.  Which is not to say we don’t mature in the faith, and in our understanding of God’s Word, and in our Christian life.  But it is to say, as Jesus does this morning, “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (18:17).  That is, as one who relies totally and completely on God’s merciful propitiation.  As one who is utterly helpless apart from God.  As one who expects all things needful, and every good and perfect gift, from Him alone.  Like a helpless infant, who expects all good things from Mom.  As a little child, who believes every word Dad says.  As the little ones who implicitly trust their parents to supply their every need, and rely on them for protection and guidance.  Not because they, the helpless little babes, are worthy of such help.  But because it is the nature of a parent to cover, and care for, and clean, and nourish, and shelter their beloved sons and daughters.  So God does for us, for Jesus’ sake.  And that is why we pray.  And that is our posture before our Father in heaven as we make our petitions.  Confession.  Humility.  And total reliance on His merciful propitiation.  One of my favorite prayers is the simple and ancient Jesus Prayer, based largely on the words of the tax collector: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  That is the humble prayer our Lord always loves to hear.

            And God answers.  He gives mercy.  He gives Jesus.  And when we pray, and when we live, in reliance upon Jesus alone, we go to our house having been justified by God.  And, far from holding our neighbors in contempt (a grievous sin for which we must repent), we pray for them, as fellow sinners in need of God’s same propitious mercy.  And, far from thanking God for ourselves and the gift that we are to God and to the world, we thank Him for His gracious, undeserved gifts to us, which He lavishes upon us for Jesus’ sake. 

            We ought always to pray and not lose heart, not because we trust in ourselves that we are righteous, but because we trust that Jesus Christ is righteous, and in mercy, He gives us His righteousness as a gift.  We are covered in the skin of His Sacrifice.  The curse is coming to an end.  By the offering of Jesus Christ, God’s first-born and the very best of the flock, God is making all things new.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.           

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24C)

October 16, 2022

Text: Luke 18:1-8

            You hurt.  And you pray, and you pray, day and night.  And it seems like God is ignoring you.  Can He hear you?  Does He even care?  You are sick.  Or a loved one is sick.  Your marriage is hurting.  A beloved child is wandering a destructive path, rejecting your advice, rejecting your love, rejecting you, rejecting God.  Your spouse has died, leaving you to struggle with loneliness and grief.  You are anxious about your job.  You are anxious about providing for your family, for yourself.  Inflation.  Lack of resources.  A nation of 24/7 alarmism, and us-against-them-ism.  Whatever your pain.  Whatever your worries.  Whatever it is that keeps you up at night.  The evil onslaughts of the devil, the pandemonium of a world hell-bent of self-destruction, your own rebellious heart of sinful flesh.  Night and day, you pray, and you pray.  And… all too often, nothing.  Seems like, anyway.  What will You do, God?  When will You do it, God?  How long, O Lord, how long?  “Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1; ESV). 

            This morning, Jesus tells you a parable to the effect that you “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).  In this story, the widow stands in for you, for the elect (v. 7), for Jesus’ disciples, for His Church.  She cries out to the judge, day and night.  She pesters him, privately and publicly.  She keeps on coming to him, presenting her petition, “Give me justice against my adversary” (v. 3), or, we could render it, Justify me against my anti-justifier.  Do you see what Jesus is doing here?  On the face of it, this story is about a woman who is pleading for legal help against an oppressor.  But by careful use of language, you may read this, quite literally, as your plea to God for justification against the very devil, your anti-justifier, and by extension, all that is evil, all the things that hurt you, or deceive you, or mislead you into false belief, or despair, and other great shame and vice.  This story is about you praying the Lord’s Prayer, and the Kyrie, and the Psalms, and the other great prayers and hymns of the Church, and the pleadings and sighs and groans of your own mind and heart.

            The judge in the parable, well… who is he?  In this case, he is not exactly a figure for God.  Remember, he is unjust.  That is, unrighteous.  He doesn’t care about justice.  He doesn’t care about the widow, or the poor, or the fatherless, or the oppressed.  He fears neither God, nor man.  All he cares about is his prestige, and his own honor and reputation in the community.  In other words, he’s a politician.  And the only reason he finally gives this poor widow a hearing is so that she will not “beat me down,” literally, “beat me black and blue,” “by her continual coming” (v. 5); that is, make me look bad in front of my constituents.  After all, I want them to think that I fear God, and respect them, and care about widows and justice and babies and kittens and all that sort of thing.

            Well, that is not a picture of God.  This is actually a comparison of opposites.  Jesus’ point is, if even this unrighteous judge eventually relents and grants justice to this persistent, helpless widow, surely God, who is Justice in Himself, and the Justification of all who believe in His Son, Jesus Christ… surely He will give justice… justification… to His elect who cry out to Him day and night (v. 7).  It is unreasonable, and unfair, to expect that God will fail to provide for His people, what even this unrighteous judge provides for the widow.

            But there is another reason Jesus uses the figure of the unrighteous judge in His story.  It is true that in our finite flesh and concrete experience, as circumstances appear to our limited bodily senses… it seems like God is an unrighteous Judge, who doesn’t care about us, and isn’t particularly interested in hearing our petitions, or helping us, never mind justifying us, against our enemies.  I mean, we pray and we pray, and what?  Nothing.  Seems like.  Still sadness.  Still anxiety.  Still all the troubles in the world, and in the country, and in my life, and in my relationships.  “Truly, you are a God who hides himself,” Isaiah says (Is. 45:15).  “O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived,” complains Jeremiah (Jer. 20:7); “you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed.  I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me.”  In any number of Psalms, King David and others cry out, “How long, O LORD?”  Will You forget me forever (Ps. 13:1)?  Why do You look on while my enemies afflict me?  How long until You rescue me from their destruction (35:17)?  Will You be angry forever?  Will Your jealousy burn like fire (79:5)?  Will You hide yourself forever?  How long will Your wrath burn (89:46)?  Like the disciples in the storm-tossed boat, we cry, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38).  Why are you sleeping while the sea swallows us whole?  Like Job, we lament, “For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me” (Job 6:4).

            What is He doing?  Why can’t things just be easier?  We cry to God for help, and bam, He delivers a miracle, and we both go on our merry way?  Well, it sounds nice, but if God worked that way, like a miraculous vending machine, just plug your prayer into the little slot, what kind of relationship do you think we would have with Him?  How long do you think we selfish sinners would continue to depend on Him in any real way, other than when the really bad stuff happens?  Most of the world already lives that way, calling upon God when things get really bad, but otherwise living as though He doesn’t exist.  They depend on themselves and their own pantheon of false gods to get them through.  God sends you crosses and suffering to bring you to the end of all that.  He sends you crosses and suffering to drive you to Himself in faith and in prayer, as though He is all you have left, because He is all you have left, and all you’ve really ever had.  And He is the only One who can help you and save you.  Suffering is not a sadistic exercise for God’s enjoyment.  It is a concrete preaching of the Law that rips away your idols.  It leaves you naked, bleeding, dying, and dead.  That He may resurrect you!  And He alone can do it.  For He is the risen One.  He was crucified, but now He is risen from the dead.

            And so, like Job, in the very midst of the pain and sorrow, even as your prayers seemingly go unheard and unanswered, you confess, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (19:25-27).  You cry out and lament to God, precisely because you know this.  In spite of all appearances.  In spite of your fleshly knowledge and experience.  The Holy Spirit has given you to know and believe this.  By the Scriptures.  By the preaching of the Gospel.  In Baptism and Supper.  Jesus died for you, to redeem you from sin, death, and the devil.  From all that hurts you and oppresses you.  He died, to redeem you from hell itself.  And He is risen from the dead.  Your Redeemer lives!  And that is your justification against your anti-justifier and all his hellish horde.  And one day, after your skin has been thus destroyed, after you’ve decomposed and returned to the dust from whence you came… the Risen One will raise you.  And you shall see Him for yourself, and your eyes shall behold Him, and not another.  And that will be the final revelation and realization of the verdict from on high: You are justified.  And your adversary, your anti-justifier, can go to hell, with every evil thing that deigned to rob you of your faith and life in Jesus Christ.

            And that is the point of the parable.  Keep praying.  Keep hoping.  Real hope that places all confidence in Jesus Christ who is risen from the dead.  Trust the Promise.  Do not lose heart.  For things are not as they appear.  God does love you.  He does hear your prayers.  And He does answer.  He delivers you.  He justifies you.  And that, speedily, Jesus says.  Well, you have to deal with at least three things with regard to that word.  First of all, God’s perspective on time is quite different than yours.  To Him, “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).  In comparison with eternity, a thousand years are a drop in the ocean, never mind the few years of your life.  So it seems like forever, from your perspective, before God acts, but from His perspective (which is the true and unskewed perspective), His answer is immediate.  Second, you know well and good that God’s timing is not your timing, and God’s ways are not your ways.  His timing and ways are so much better than yours.  And third, just as important, but perhaps most comforting: God already has provided your justification against your anti-justifier, and all his works, and all his ways.  His answer is Christ.  And, in fact, that is true in the past, in the present, and in the future.  Christ died for your redemption on the cross, and He has been raised for your justification.  That is accomplished fact, what objectively happened in the past.  And now, presently, He comes to you, in the flesh, in His Word, and in His Sacraments.  He baptizes you into Himself.  He absolves you of your sins.  And He feeds you with His true body and blood, given and shed for your forgiveness, risen and living for your life and salvation.  He consoles you by the means, and gives you His Holy Spirit, and faith, and peace, and joy, in the sure confidence that God is for you against all your enemies.  And in the future, at a time known only to God, Jesus will come again visibly, to deliver you finally and fully from all your oppressors.  He will raise you and all the dead, and what will He do then?  He will judge.  And that, justly.  The unrighteous judge, and all who would not fear God and who trampled on widows, the persecutors of the Church, sickness and pain, death and demons, and the anti-justifier-in-chief, Satan, will be cast eternally into the Lake of Fire.  But you, and all whose sins have been washed away by the blood of Jesus… You, and all who are baptized and believe in the Son of God who became flesh to be the Sacrifice of atonement for your sins… You, who know that your Redeemer lives, and so cry out to Him day and night for justification… You will be given a home and place in the New Creation, the new heavens and the new earth, in your risen and, for the first time, whole and healthy body.  With your loved ones who died in Christ, in their risen and, for the first time, whole and healthy bodies.  To live with Jesus forever.  With your Father.  With His Spirit.  In fact, God will take away all your pain, once and for all.  He will wipe every tear from your eye (Rev. 7:17; 21:4).  That you may see clearly, with your own risen eyeballs, your Redeemer, who lives, standing upon the earth.

            When that future answer comes to pass… When “the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (v. 8).  It’s a rhetorical question.  He will.  He will find you, whom He has preserved by His Word and Spirit.  He will find you… hurting, but praying!  Crying out, lamenting, but commending all things to God.  He will find you waiting.  Trusting.  Hoping.  Sometimes patiently.  Sometimes not so patiently.  But not losing heart.  Persistently making your petitions before our Father, who art in heaven.  Because you know Christ is risen.  So it is only a matter of time.  God will deliver you.  Speedily.  How long, O Lord, how long?  Soon, My child.  Soon.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.   

 

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23C)

October 9, 2022

Text: Luke 17:11-19

            Ten lepers cried out to the Lord for mercy, and ten lepers received what they asked of the One who is Mercy Incarnate, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  Ten are cleansed.  And undoubtedly, ten are thankful.  This is the Holy Gospel appointed for the National Day of Thanksgiving.  And too often, on that day, this text is preached as a moralistic call to “remember to say thanks.”  Like your mother, who never failed to admonish you, whenever you received a gift, “And what do you say?”  Your mother was right.  You should remember to say “thank you” to God and to others who do good things for you.  But the point of our Holy Gospel this morning is much more profound than anything you’ll read in Emily Post’s book on etiquette.  It is first of all, about the mercy of God in Christ Jesus for all people, for Jews and Samaritans (and even those beyond the confines of Israel), for the suffering and destitute, for the unclean and untouchable, for sinners, for you, and even for me.  It is, secondly, about the nature and essence of this Man, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David, the Son of God, who is God’s merciful answer to sinful humanity.  And it is, thirdly, about the Christian life, which, yes, is a life marked by thanksgiving and praise.  It is a life that falls down before the feet of Jesus and confesses Him as true God and Savior.  It is a life of receiving His gracious gifts.  Then it rises and goes on its Way, the Way of Jesus, the Way of discipleship.  That is a life lived in saving faith in Christ Jesus. 

            All ten were cleansed.  The mercy of Jesus Christ is for all.  No one is surprised that the Jews are cleansed, and presumably the other nine are Jews.  At Jesus’ command, they march off to the priests, as Moses commands cleansed lepers to do in the Torah (as you well know from your careful reading of skin disease casuistry in Leviticus 13).  And it’s what Jesus said they should do.  And I’ll bet that as they walk away, their flesh suddenly clean and smooth as newborn babes, they are praising the God of Abraham, laughing and leaping for joy!  So it is not a matter that they forgot to say thank you.

            What is amazing, though, is that Jesus also responds in mercy to the prayer of this Samaritan.  Yes, a Samaritan!  The Jews hated the Samaritans even more than they hated the pagan Gentiles.  And the feeling was mutual (although, interesting that they had no problem hanging out together when they are all despised lepers).  The Samaritans were a heretical group descended from the remnants of the Northern Tribes who survived the Assyrian deportation, who intermarried with pagan peoples.  The Jews did not consider them a part of Israel.  But Jesus, the Jew, comes not just for Jews, but even for this Samaritan.  And if He has come for this Samaritan, He has even come for pagan Gentiles, to save them, and bring them into the fold of Israel. 

            Jesus is God’s answer to that historic hatred.  He stretches His arms out upon the cross, to gather to Himself those who are near, and those who are far away, thus making of the two one body, the Body of Christ.  “For he himself is our peace,” St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, “who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2:14; ESV). 

            So Jesus comes for those whose bodies are diseased and broken by the curse of living in this fallen world.  Jesus is God’s answer to our suffering.  “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” the Prophet Isaiah consoles (Is. 53:4), and Peter, echoing the Prophet from his same sermon, preaches, “By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24; cf. Is. 53:5). 

            He comes for those whose guilt and shame isolates them.  Jesus is God’s answer to the defilement and sin that excludes us from His people… “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace” (Is. 53:5).  He was “delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).  He “is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). 

            He does this, not only for some, the Jews, the Israelites, the “Good Christian folk.”  He does this for all.  “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).  “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” (John 1:29).  And, as a result, whoever believes this has exactly what the Words say: the forgiveness of sins.  “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.  He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). 

            And that brings us to the second point.  Who is this Man, Jesus of Nazareth, who hears the prayer of the lepers in their misery, and in mercy, cleanses them, and makes them whole?  Who is this Man, who invades the space of those who must shout, “Unclean, unclean,” and stay far away from the rest of the human race?  The Samaritan recognizes what the other nine do not.  Jesus said, “Go show yourselves to the priests” (Luke 17:14).  And the Samaritan goes, not to the sons of Zadok in charge of the Temple, not to any Levite or son of Aaron, but returns to Jesus.  He recognizes that Jesus is the true High Priest who offers the Sacrifice of Atonement for the sins of all people.  He turns back to Jesus (and that is the definition of repentance!), praising God with a loud voice, and he falls at the feet of Jesus.  Do you see what he is saying?  To turn back to God is to turn back to Jesus.  To praise God is to praise Jesus.  To fall before God is to fall before Jesus.  Jesus is God.  The Samaritan, of all people, understands it.  This Man is to be worshipped.  This Man is our life and salvation, our only cleansing from leprosy, our only cleansing from sin and death.  Jesus confirms his confession.  “Were not ten cleansed?  Where are the nine?  Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” (v. 17; emphasis added).

            And that brings us to the third point.  The Christian life is a life of continual returning to Jesus in utter dependence on His mercy.  It is the life of faith marked by thanksgiving and praise.  Having received all of this mercy from God in Christ Jesus, the forgiveness of sins, healing and wholeness, eternal life and salvation, there is nothing left to do but give thanks.  Thank God.  Thank Jesus.  And then rise and walk in the Way that Jesus goes.  Which is to say, follow Him.  Be His disciple. 

            Jesus says to the Samaritan, “Rise and go your way…” (v. 19).  The command to rise is the same word as that used for Jesus’ resurrection.  So what we are witnessing in our text is nothing short of a resurrection from the dead!  Jesus is giving the Samaritan life.  It is a life known now only to faith, and that is to say, it is hidden under this flesh, which even for the Samaritan, will eventually perish and rot away once again.  But it is a life hidden in Christ, who died for the Samaritan and for all, and who is now risen from the dead.  And on that blessed Day when Jesus comes again, what is hidden now, will be revealed to all.  That is, the Samaritan, and you, will rise from the dead.  Bodily.  Clean.  Whole.  So, “go your way,” says Jesus.  Which is to say, go the way of those who have been raised from the dead, as I have now raised you.  You can live now as one who is confident that death can no longer harm you.  Walk in faith.  Walk in My train.  Through every cross and all suffering.  Through death itself.  Walk boldly.  Walk joyfully.  Be not downcast.  Lift up your head.  You are following Me.  And My way leads through the cross, to the empty tomb!  I AM the resurrection and the life (John 11:25).  When you follow Me, that is where you end up.  “Rise and go your way.”  It is no accident that the early Church was first known as “the Way” (cf. Acts 9:2).

            To go your way, then, dear Christian, is to walk as one who has been raised by Jesus to new life.  And you have been.  In Baptism, you died with Christ (you got your death over with at the font!), and you have been raised with Him, even now, as Paul says in Romans 6, to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4).  It is to walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7), knowing that your life is now hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).  It is to know that, whatever crosses or afflictions you suffer here and now, Christ has redeemed you from sin and all uncleanness, from death and every affliction, by His cross and death, and He is now risen from the dead, lives for you, and reigns over all things for you.  This faith, as Jesus says to the Samaritan, has not only “made you well” (Luke 17:19), as we have it translated in our ESV (and it is a fine translation of the word, with all the overtones of the Hebrew word, Shalom, peace, wellness, wholeness, of body, mind, and spirit)… but perhaps we could translate it most pointedly and literally, “your faith has saved you.”  This text preaches salvation through faith.  Your faith in Christ saves you.  Sola fide.  Faith alone. 

            Faith saves you from the historic hatreds and petty grievances that divide you from your neighbor.  Faith saves you from sin and every uncleanness of body and soul that alienates you from communion with God and with man.  Faith saves you from every affliction, from death and from its every symptom.  Faith saves you from your own sinful flesh, and from hell itself.  Faith saves you because it receives God’s answer to all of these.  That is, faith receives Jesus.  To say that faith saves you is to say that Jesus saves you.  What He does for the Samaritan in our text, He does here and now for you.  He cleanses you.  He forgives you.  He reconciles you.  He speaks you well, whole, and righteous.  He raises you from death to go His way.

            Ten lepers cried out to the Lord for mercy, and ten lepers received what they asked of the one who is Mercy Incarnate, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  And so you.  So now return to Jesus.  Repent of your sins.  Extol Him with a loud voice, confessing the Creed and singing the hymns with gusto.  Fall at His beautiful, pierced feet, and give thanks.  Eucharist, the text says.  And you know what else that word has come to mean for us.  Receive yet more mercy.  The Supper.  His body.  His blood.  Given and shed for you.  Fall before Him here, to receive that.  Then rise with Jesus’ resurrection life in you, and go live it.  “Depart in peace.”  That is the way to thank God.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.                

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22C)

October 2, 2022

Text: Luke 17:1-10

            “Increase our faith!” (Luke 17:5; ESV).  It is the anxious prayer of the Apostles.  And what brings this prayer to their lips?  It is what Jesus has said just before.  “Temptations to sin”… the Greek word is σκάνδαλα, scandals, literally “stumbling blocks,” the things that trip up your neighbor so that he may fall into apostasy, so that he may fall away from the faith… “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come!” (v. 1).  Watch out that it not be you!  For if it is you, it would have been better if you had died a tragic and horrendous death before you had the opportunity (it reminds us of something our Lord said about Judas, doesn’t it?  It would be better for that man if he had never been born!).  It would be better to have a great millstone, a stone wheel for grinding grain, hung about your neck, and be cast into the sea, than that you should cause one of these little ones, be it a child, or simply another child of God, to sin.  This is the Law in all its fulness, isn’t it?  You have to watch out, always, for this danger, Jesus says.  Pay attention to yourselves.  That is, to your own person, yes, but also to one another.  If you see a brother or sister in Christ sinning, heading toward mortal danger, in peril of falling away from the faith, or causing one of these little ones to fall from the faith, you have to come to the rescue.  Rebuke him.  As hard as it is.  As politically incorrect as it may be.  And, of course, that doesn’t mean saying mean things to him.  It means coming to him in love, and with God’s clear Word, to show him his sin, to show him the danger, so that he repents.  And when he repents, forgive him.  In the Name of Jesus.  With Christ’s own forgiveness.  Forgive him, and restore him. 

            Ah, but there is more!  His sin may be against you, personally.  And his sin may be habitual.  He may sin against you seven times in a day, and come to you seven times in repentance, “Again, so sorry for that!” (and here we have the Shu Ke illustration, don’t we?...)  Who can imagine putting up with that?  Do you put up with that kind of thing?  But your forgiveness must be inexhaustible.  As Jesus’ forgiveness is inexhaustible for you.  Because your brother or sister Christian is counting on it.  And your refusal to forgive may be a stumbling block to them (not to mention you!).  And if it is… woe!

            So… “Increase our faith.”  The Apostles recognize the impossibility of the order.  They want to do it.  Because they love Jesus, and they know He is right.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is oh so weak.  This is a rare pre-Pentecost moment of clarity for the Twelve.  “If we’re gonna even begin to do this, Lord, we’re gonna need more spirit, more faith.”  Even cocksure Peter sees the problem. 

            What is Jesus’ answer to the prayer?  Well, first of all, He shows us that faith is not measured by quantity or size.  See, “If you had faith”… and actually, the Greek says “If you have faith,” and the implication is, “you do!”… If you have faith “like a grain of mustard seed,” one of the tiniest things of which the disciples could conceive (Jesus could probably say to us, “like an atom”), “you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you” (v. 6).  Well, big help, Jesus!  I mean, have you tried this lately?  Have you tested this promise?  My wife is re-planting bulbs right now.  It’d be a lot easier if she could just… Maybe she doesn’t have mustard-seed-sized faith?  But Jesus actually says you do have it, so that can’t be it. 

            This is the problem with the whole “You-must-not-have-enough-faith-if-God-doesn’t-do-what-you-want” crowd.  They are false teachers!  Don’t believe them!  It’s a scandal.  They cause you to stumble, as all false teachers do.  Jesus says you do have faith like a mustard seed.  The issue is, you shouldn’t be trying to size it up, and the point is precisely that you should not think that your faith is insufficient. 

            But, with regard to the promise, a couple of things.  First, you have to ask if it is God’s will for the mulberry to be transplanted in the sea, or if a miraculous bulb relocation (as opposed to the normal order of things) will really benefit His Kingdom. 

            Second, you have to remember that this promise about the mulberry is given specifically to the Apostles, and not to you.  The Apostles were given to do a lot of things you and I aren’t given to do, so that their preaching would be confirmed by God’s signs and wonders.  And anyway, though they had the promise, as far as I know there are no examples of apostolic mulberry removal in the Scriptures.  So they get that there is something greater going on here.  And that is the overarching promise that their faith… and yes, yours, too… regardless of quantity or size, is sufficient to do even greater things than move mulberry trees.  It is sufficient to do such humanly impossible things as guard against temptations, rescue neighbors from apostasy, and forgive sins, even when those sins are personal and habitual.  And the reason that faith is sufficient is not because you are such a strong and steadfast believer in Christ, as though your faith were your own work.  The reason for that sufficiency is that such faith is the gift of God to you in Christ Jesus.  To say that faith is sufficient, is to say that Christ is sufficient.  If you have faith, you have Christ.  If you have big faith, or little faith, you have all of Christ.  And you do have faith, because Christ has given it to you.  Because Christ gives you Himself. 

            And that is, finally, the answer Jesus gives to His Apostles.  He gives the Apostles, and He gives you, Himself.  Which is to say, He first does for us what He is telling us to do for one another.  And He illustrates this by means of a parable.

            Imagine, He says, if a servant came in from the sheep-pen or the wheatfield, stinking and filthy, and the master said to the servant, “Take a load off!  Recline at my table!  I’ve prepared a scrumptious supper for you, and I myself will serve as your waiter.”  Ridiculous!  We all know it.  That’s not how things work.  Quite the opposite.  The servant waits on the master.  Then the servant gets his supper.  And, for that matter, he can wait on his own table.  He certainly shouldn’t expect the master to do it.  That’s how it should work in the Kingdom of God, as far as we’re concerned.  And we’re right when we say, even if we’ve done all that is commanded, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty” (v. 10).  That is quite true, and, in fact, it’s an optimistic overstatement.  We must confess, we often don’t do our duty. 

            But look at how things work in the Kingdom of God.  In the Kingdom of God, the Master does say to the stinking, filthy servant, “Take a load off!  Recline at My Table!  I’ve prepared a Feast for you!  Not because you are worthy, or have even done your duty, but because I am worthy, and I have done your duty.  And now I Myself will serve as your Waiter, and feed you the Bread of Life that is My Body, and the Wine of Joy that is My Blood.”  In other words, Jesus’ answer to the prayer, “Increase our faith,” is the completely backwards, contrary to all human reason and instinct, unmerited, undeserved, gratuitous, blood-bought, but freely bestowed grace of God in Christ, His Son.  It is the preaching of the Gospel.  It is the giving of Himself in His Sacrament.  And that is His answer to your prayer today.

            The Gospel creates faith.  The Gospel bestows the Holy Spirit.  It is the preaching that all your sins are forgiven in the cross of Christ.  Your scandalous behavior.  Your stumbles and falls.  Your sleepy inability or unwillingness to pay attention to yourself, and to your Christian brothers and sisters, to rebuke, to bring to repentance, to forgive.  The Gospel is the preaching that Christ took all your sins into Himself.  Your sins were hung around His neck like a millstone, and in your place, He was cast into the abyss of death and hell.  The Gospel is the preaching that Christ Jesus is risen from the dead, victorious over death and hell, and He is now your righteousness and your life, so that you will never be cast out, and you will never die.  It is the preaching that Christ is with you, and will never forsake you.  You are baptized into Christ.  And there is a place for you here, in His House, and at His Table.  Gospel-created, divinely bestowed faith grasps that all of this is for you, from a God who is for you, a God who loves you, and who has rescued you from stumbling, from falling away, rebuked you by His good Word of Law, brought you to repentance.  And though you sin against Him daily, and exponentially more than seven times in a day, He forgives you every time, ever and always, on account of Christ, who died for your sins.

            So now, you go do the same.  See, it is what the Lord gives you here, in Word and Sacrament, that you then give to others.  You don’t have to rely on yourself to do the things He tells you at the beginning of our Gospel.  You don’t forgive with your own forgiveness.  You don’t rebuke and rescue your neighbor, bring to repentance and save from stumbling by any aptitude or capacity you inherently possess.  You can only give what you have, what you’ve been given by God.  You have Christ.  And so you give Christ.  It is Christ’s Word that you speak.  It is Christ’s forgiveness you bestow.  This is faith doing what faith does.  Being a Christian, which is to say, a little Christ, to your neighbor.  To have faith is to have Christ.  To do the works of faith is to do the works of Christ.  It is Christ working in you to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).

            We know the task is impossible if it depends on us.  It is as impossible as commanding a mulberry tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea.  But all things are possible with God.  “Increase our faith,” we pray, and the Lord Jesus bids us come at once and recline at His Table, where He gives us to eat and drink Him.  That is His answer.  For in giving us Himself, our faith is sufficient for all things.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.