Homily for Pentecost 9A (Proper 15) - Matthew 15:21-28

            This Jesus seems so wrong – no matter how many times we hear today’s text, no matter that we know how the story ends.  After all, we hear this Jesus call unfaithful Peter to walk on water to Him.  We hear Jesus refuse to send the 5000 away, making miracle bread so the crowd can stay with Him.  We hear Jesus scold the Disciples because they got in the way of the little children coming to Jesus.  But today Jesus sounds so foreign, cold, and distant to this Canaanite mother who brings her little daughter to Jesus in prayer. 

            She is not asking for a nicer house, more money, or better friends.  Her daughter is in the clutches of Satan.  The pain of knowing your child hurts is one thing.  But can you even imagine how terrified you would be if a demon possessed your little girl?  So she prays, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon” (Matthew 15:22).  She looks to the One stronger than demons, the Son of God who comes to destroy the Devil’s work.  I ask you, was there ever a request so pure?  A more noble request than this?

            And all the more noble since this is a Canaanite confessing Jesus as the son of David, the Messiah.  King David fought battles against the Canaanites.  They were descendants of Cain, the son of Adam who murdered his brother.  Israelites and Canaanites had a mutual hatred.  Jewish people referred to them as filthy dogs.  We do not know what the Canaanites called the Israelites.

Some might think that she is simply at her wits’ end, that she has tried everything else and figures this is her daughter’s last chance.  She has heard others praise and honor this Jewish miracle worker, and works to butter Him up by repeating what they say.  But no, as Jesus tests her, we see that this woman has honest-to-God faith.  She is a better student than the Disciples as she recognizes the Son of God!  “But He did not answer her a word.”

            She prays without ceasing.  She will not give up.  The Disciples cannot take it anymore.  They beg Jesus, “Just give her what she wants so she will leave us alone.”  She is an embarrassment the way she cries out.  But, by an accident of birth, she is not an Israelite.  She has no standing, no claim to make on Jesus.  Jesus says this in one of the most brutal declarations He ever makes, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 

            She refuses to go home disappointed, angry and self-righteous over what one might take as an insult.  She is now more determined than ever.  As surprised as we are to the way Jesus acts in this text, no less surprising is how she responds.  The harsh, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” drives her to worship Him on her knees before the Lord.  She will not release her grip on His Word, not matter how foolish or hard it seems.  She trusts Jesus is good.  On her knees she begs, “Lord, help me!”

            And Jesus still does not give in.  “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  What do you think would happen if you called some strange woman a dog to her face?  It was no less an insult back then. 

            But, you know, if the all holy Lord calls us a dog, that is actually a compliment.  We deserve far worse.  He has every right to call us filthy no-good, dirty, double crossing cheats and swindlers and liars and murderers.  Damned sinners, every one of us.  We have earned that.  We have no right to approach God.  He owes us nothing but eternal destruction, torment in the presence of the demons.  Do not think that He is impressed by you and your intentions.  You have behaved disgracefully, as wickedly as I have.  God says, “I gave you everything, and yet you rebel, seeking love and help and hope from worthless idols.”

            What do you and I say to that?  We really have only three choices, but the end result is the same for two of them.  You can get depressed and give up on God, and walk away, angry at yourself.  Or you can walk away angry at God, denying that He is right.  In self-righteousness you can say, “Who does Jesus think he is?  I’m going to find a better god that suits my tastes and says what I want to hear.”  You can proudly proclaim, “I will show you God!  I’ll cut myself.  And in my temper tantrum, I’ll choose Hell over worshiping You.”  And if you do, you will join the demons sooner than you expect.

            That is the common way to respond to God’s harsh Truth of His Law.  But there is a better way, the way that causes the holy angels in Heaven to rejoice.  You can repent.  You can agree that God’s Law is right.  You can confess, “Yes, Lord, I am a dog.  I wish I were not this way, but I am guilty and ashamed.”  That sorrow is the first step of repentance.  The second is trust in God’s mercy.  Without the second half of faith, it is only sadness and despair, only self-pity and anger at yourself.  Therefore our holy confession continues, “Yes, I am a dog.  I have no merit or worthiness in me.  I have justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment.  But I believe that You are the Christ who has mercy upon us.  That You forgive.  That You are slow to anger and abound in steadfast love, therefore You will not cast me away from Your presence, nor take Your Holy Spirit from me.  I believe that through the death on the Cross, You will restore to me the joy of salvation.”

            That is not only how you respond to the Word of Christ, it is also how the Canaanite mother responded.  She throws herself upon His Word, even when it is harsh.  Like a bull-dog, she grabs on and will not let go.  “Yes Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  She knows God is exactly as Isaiah and Paul describe todau – a God who has mercy on all.  He brings even foreigners to His holy mountain.  His House is called a House of prayer for all peoples.  She knows Jesus is the Son of David who has not come for the righteous, but for sinners, to seek and save the lost.  With that faith she asks Him to save her daughter.

            And Jesus does.  Her daughter was healed instantly.  And this mother becomes a hero of the faith that the world has seldom seen.  That is what the Lord was up to, why He seems so strange to us in this text.  He was making an example out of the mother, a good one.  Our dear Lord Jesus is not willingly afflicting her, torturing or tempting her.  He was exercising her faith, strengthening her, teaching her to live by the Word of God and not by appearances.  In her suffering, Jesus draws her – and us – closer to Himself.  For in the end, Jesus does more than relent and give in to what she asks for.  Not only is her daughter saved, but she is given a lively faith that has been recorded as an inspiration for Christians everywhere.

              Demons still haunt our children and lead them away from the Lord.  Why do you think the chaos London is happening?  In part because the parents have swept their homes clean of God, and the demons have rushed in to make their homes.  Churches are empty and being used now as art galleries, restaurants, warehouses, or worse.  Better parenting and police action might help to make things better on earth, but in the end there is only one thing that will overcome the darkness we face – that is the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is stronger than the demons. 

            Last week at my Doxology conference, Dr. John Kleinig said that in Australia Christian parents and grandparents face the same problem as here – they feel guilty because they cannot get their kids to church.  They see their family members trusting the Devil’s lies that life is better apart from God, and these Christians want to know what to say.  Dr. Kleinig answers that we must not badger them.  He points to today’s text and says just like this mother carries in prayer her daughter to Jesus, so can we prayerfully bring our wandering and erring loved ones to Him.  As you pray for God to change their hearts, see yourself piggy-backing your loved one here to church, to the Lord’s Altar, and leave your loved one here in His presence.  From now on, if you would like me to specifically name your loved one among the lost, wandering and erring during the prayers of the Church, just let me know – even if you would just like me to use only part of their name, so others do not know.  But God will know. 

            You are not the only one who sorrows and struggles with this Cross.  Let us pray to the Son of David for our children with as much determination as this Canaanite mother.  Let us pray our “Lord, have mercy”s.  Trust as she did that Jesus will help and save.  For He does not ignore her, nor is He deaf to your prayers.  He came for sinners like you and me who could not stand on our own, who can do nothing to free ourselves from our sinful condition.  Jesus came to destroy the Devil’s work, to heal your wounds, bind your broken heart, and free you from Hell.  You now hear His word and He takes away your guilt, shame and regrets.  Receive His righteousness, holiness and innocence, especially as He invites you once again to come to His Table, to eat the Bread of His Body and the wine squeezed from His heart at the Cross.  Forgiven, renewed, sanctified and blessed, Jesus gives us far more than crumbs that fall from the table.  He gives us Himself.

            God grant each of you a bull-dog like grip on Jesus – faith like this Canaanite mother had – so that with your whole heart you firmly believe His Word and promises.  Amen.

August 8 - 1 Samuel 24

(under the rubric of "better late than never")

The honor and integrity of David has impressed me in this text from the first time I heard it in Sunday School.  This is not the way man apart from the Spirit works.  Revenge!  Yet if David had filled Saul's grave, there best be a grave dug for David too.  God protects not only our possible victim, but also ourselves, by saying to us, "Vengeance is mine.  I will repay."  Those seeking vengeance may kill another person's body, but in doing so, they do worse damage to their own soul.

Back to the text at hand - on Monday I saw Christ in this text for the first time, the King of Kings who has us dead to rights.  How often is He in our presence and acts without us being aware of it?  How often have we sought after the death of the Son of David - and His Father?  We have, like Saul, been jealous of Jesse's Son, felt He threatened our power and popularity.  And this despite that we have nothing to fear - for He is loyal to us.

And yet He spares our life!  More than just slicing off a corner of our garments, He removes from us all the fig leaves and filthy rags of our supposed righteous works.  But not so that we would be unclothed, but so that we would be clothed in the flesh of Christ, great David's greater Son.

To Him be all glory and honor, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.  Amen.

Homily for Pentecost 7A (Proper 13) - Matthew 14:13-21

        With the Lord there are no accidents.  He leaves nothing to chance.  Just think how doomed you would be if something could catch Him by surprise.  You get to the Judgment Seat and He says, “You know, I died to save you from all your sins I knew about.  But I NEVER expected you to sin the way you did on July 30, 2011!  So since I did not expect it, I did not pay for it.  Therefore, sadly, I am going to have to say you have to depart from Me.” 
          Rest assured, that terrible conversation will never happen, not with our all-knowing Lord and Savior.  Nothing surprises Him.  The Lord is in control.  Even during His earthly life, from the manger through the Cross to the Ascension, even when it seems as if everything is spinning out of control, Jesus is on top of it all.
          We need to learn this, especially after a week of things we cannot control – like debt ceilings and death.  The news of John the Baptist’s death had sent shockwaves throughout the region.  King Herod had arrested John and then ordered, “Off with his head!” because John dared to preach against his adultery.  When Jesus heard this, it caused Him to withdraw from the crowds who had listened to His parables. 
          I always thought it was to be by Himself.  And then, poor Jesus, His plans for quiet time get disrupted by thoughtless people who cannot let the Guy have a moment to Himself.  That just shows how much I need to learn that Jesus is in control at all times and never caught off guard.  The crowds following Him and demanding His attention were all according to His plan.  Jesus does not want them to go away because they are right where He wants them – so that He can do and speak and give the compassion His flock needed the most at the time of John’s death.
          The sheep who followed the voice of their good Shepherd are far less prepared.  They gave no thought to grabbing some bread and water for their journey – not even for the children.  No sippy cups or baggies of Cheerios.  They just came as they were – and Jesus knew that they would.
          As prepared for stuff as we like to be, as self-reliant and in control as we think we are, as ready for anything that we try and make ourselves – what happens when we are not?  When the unexpected disaster, disease or death catches us unprepared?  What happens when we are out in the wilderness, that desolate place, and the sun is going down, and we have no place to go?  What then?
          Then Jesus has compassion.  He does not lecture the people that they were dumb for not preparing.  No common sense wisdom talk about the value of planning ahead, which is probably what the Disciples had in mind.  Send the crowds away!  But not Jesus, the Good Shepherd.  He does not lead His flock into the wilderness unprepared.  He is prepared at all times to care for His sheep.  And this, His Disciples need to learn.
           We need to learn this too.  That when we are stuck in our wild and desolate places in our lives –feeling alone, forsaken, worried, vulnerable – that our Lord has not left us.  And more importantly, that we are not in that place by accident.  Our Shepherd has a plan for us precisely where we are at, in that unexpected place, to learn of Him and His care.  That we would not to rely upon ourselves, but on Him.  That we would trust that wherever our Shepherd leads us, it is good.  It is what we need.  For the Lord is still in control of it all, especially when it seems as if everything is going out of control.
          The Shepherd tells His sheep to recline and rest in the green pastures by the quiet waters, and He spreads a table before them.  Out here the troubles of John the Baptist are far behind.  The hustle and bustle of life becomes a distant memory.  Out here, worldly politics and power struggles do not interrupt the taste of Heaven that breaks into Earth.  It is just the Shepherd and His sheep.  And it was just five loaves and two fish.  Yet that is more than enough for the God who “opens His hands and satisfies the desires of every living thing” (Psalm 145:16) on a daily basis.  It is more than enough for the God who fed His people with manna for 40 years in the wilderness.  It is more than enough – 12 baskets of leftovers after everyone had their fill!
          When Matthew tells us the five thousand men, besides women and children, “were satisfied”, it means more than that they could not eat another bite.  They were filled not only with earthly food, but with the Bread of Life.  They were not sheep harassed and helpless.  They were at peace.  The flock at the feet of their Shepherd.  There was nowhere else they would rather be.
          Sometimes it takes the wilderness, the desolate places in our lives, to get us to understand that there is no better place to be than under Christ’s tender care.  Certainly we hear this – we hear it from this pulpit, we read it from the Word during devotions.  But do we ever really believe we are helpless until we have to face it?  Until we have tried and failed to get ourselves out of the mess we are in?  The hard truth that we try to deny is that we are just as weak and vulnerable and helpless when life goes well, when we are cozy in our beds, with full tummies and refrigerators.  How easy it is to fall back into self-confidence and self-reliance.  Looking to ourselves for what we need, instead of looking to our Shepherd.
          And so out to the wilderness, the desolate times and places the Shepherd leads us – as individuals, as a congregation.  Right where He wants us.  Not to punish, but to have compassion.  So that we can see we have nowhere else to go, and look to Him for all that we need.  To turn the wilderness into green pastures, and the desolate times into His hour of blessing.
          With the Lord there are no accidents.  Nothing surprises our all-knowing Savior.  Even when it seems as if everything is spinning out of control, Jesus is on top of it all.  The Lord is spinning everything for us and for our salvation.  As we heard last week, everything, even all that tribulation, distress, persecution and death stuff, along with the nicer things in life – everything is being worked by God for our advantage, weaved by God into a beautiful tapestry of good for those who love God.  When He humbles us, it is so that He may exalt us.  When He takes, it is so that He may give.  He kills to make alive.  He uproots to plant.  He tears down to build up.  To do all of this, God calls us to repent.  To repent of our pride, our desires for control, our feelings of self-sufficiency and self-satisfaction.  To repent of all that we are, for we are nothing without Christ. 
          And the Christ who leads us to this place of repentance does not send us away empty or leave us there to fill ourselves.  He has compassion.  He who will not leave His flock alone in the wilderness to fend for themselves, He goes alone to the desolation of the Cross.  Not caught by surprise, not out of control, but in control, willingly, speaking of His free sacrifice ahead of time.  For the purpose of taking our sin away from us, to give His life to pay for ours, so that we may not only avoid punishment, but also live – with sins forgiven and death defeated through the very same body and blood that feeds us in this life at this Table.  That we may live knowing we are never alone with the Good Shepherd leading us through it all.  That we may live not with bellies full here for a while, but live forever in Paradise, the Kingdom which has no end. 
          For one day Jesus will lead us through the valley of the shadow of our own death – and He will draw others out to the desolate place of your funeral, so that once they are away from the hustle and bustle of their everyday lives, Christ would feed them with His Word as He has fed you.  And even during your funeral, He will be with you, and you with Him.  This is the reason He came to our world, to come to you and go through death and into life for you, to bring you, His sheep, from death to life.  That you may be His own, and live under Him in His kingdom, in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.  So rest in this peace, knowing that the Lord has left nothing to chance.  Amen.

Homily for Pentecost 6A (Proper 12) - Romans 8:28-39

(With thanks to Rev. William Cwirla for the thoughts in this sermon)


        “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).  As we continue this summer’s journey through the book of Romans, we come to a text that is about everything and about nothing.  It is about nothing in all this world being able to separate the baptized believer from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.  Nothing, not even tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, nor sword.  Not even death.  And this text is about everything working out for good in Jesus.  Everything, even all that tribulation, distress, persecution and death stuff, along with the nicer things in life – everything is weaved by God into a beautiful tapestry of good for those who love God.  And nothing can separate us from His love.
          Do we actually believe this?  In the face of real troubles and distress and danger, do we as God’s baptized children trust that God will make everything wrong in our lives to be right in the end?  Do we actually live as though God has given a divine purpose and meaning to our sufferings? 
          If you have ever wanted to know why God allowed something to happen in life, I have good news and bad news for you.  The good news is that He gives the answer in Romans 8.  The bad news is that you are going to have to stay with me here, because we are going way beyond the simple Sunday School Bible stories of God making it all right in the end – we are heading into the deep waters of God’s wisdom and love.
          Paul writes that those whom God foreknew, He also destined in advance to be conformed to the beautiful image of His Son, in order that Christ would be the firstborn of many brothers (8:29).  What does it mean to be predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son?  It means that the Father looks at Jesus and sees in His Son perfected and glorified humanity.  In the beginning, God made man through His Son to reflect His Son’s image into the world. 
          Adam epically failed as he let temptation separate him from loving God and listening to His Word.  That sin drew us into all this tribulation, distress, danger and ultimately death in a Hell that was never intended for human beings, but prepared for the Devil and his demons.  Adam stopped reflecting Christ into the Creation.  Sin brings about God’s wrath, and He is plenty angry over it.  Your sin deserved damnation, and we must not think that we can talk our way out of this mess with some excuses and good deeds.
          Especially since the Father has already embraced our sinful humanity in this way – “He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all” (8:32).  Despite the world being filled with sinners like you and me, He gives His only begotten Son to die, so that whoever believes in Him, trusting in life through death and resurrection, you will not perish in Hell one bit, but will have eternity with God.  This is your destiny that God gives you in Christ, a destiny the Lord worked out before He began creating the world.
          It all happens in Christ who undid what Adam did.  In Christ you were foreknown by the Father.  Apart from Christ, the Lord at the gates of eternity says, “Depart from Me.  I do not know you.”  In Christ, even before you existed you were destined to be conformed to the image of Christ, who is the image of God.  That divine plan was worked out long before you had any say in it, the Holy Trinity's plan from all eternity to save the world in the death of God's eternal Son in our flesh.
          In Christ it is all a done deal.  You were called in Christ, baptized into His death and resurrection, having heard the good news of Jesus which has worked its good way with you.  And that good news is that you are justified.  The blood of the Son takes away your sin.  Therefore the judgment from God’s throne is that you are innocent.  All you can say to that not guilty verdict is “Amen.”  So be it.  Do not bother arguing, trying to excuse your sin.  You do not have a case.  Besides God has said that in Christ any need you have for justifying yourself is taken away.  If God says you are innocent, that settles it.  This very moment, as I speak, you stand before the all-holy Judge, who is a consuming fire.  You stand before Him spotless and blameless.  For you are clothed with the perfect life and death of Jesus.  That is what it means to be justified.
          Apostle Paul does not stop there with that blessing, so neither can we.  “Those whom [God] justified He also glorified” (8:30).  Note that all these verbs are done by God, and they are in the past tense, done deals.  He takes everything eternal out of your hands.  He foreknew, predestined, called, justified, glorified.  Even as you sit here with all your earthly distresses, you are now already seated in Christ at the right hand of the Father in glory as Ephesians 2 declares.  You are glorified in the glorified risen flesh of Jesus.  He embodied you in His perfect life, death and resurrection – and now He embodies you in His ascended glory.  As Paul says elsewhere, your life is hidden in Christ.  When Jesus appears again, then your glory will be seen by all (Colossians 3:1-4).  You see that all by faith.  But sight sees you in yourself, and it is not all that glorious.  In your self, you suffer, you sin, you die.  But in Christ you are glorified, pure, and holy.
          Because all the above is true, because you are foreknown, destined, called, justified and glorified in God’s beloved Son, what on earth can mess you up?  You are safe in Christ, wearing Him like a spiritual bullet-proof vest – or bodysuit, really.  If God is for us – and He is in Christ – then who can be against us?  If God gave us His own Son, how will He hold back on giving us the lesser things of everything else?  If we are justified by God, declared righteous with all charges laid on Jesus, who can condemn us?  Jesus was literally damned on the Cross in our place.  He who hung to death with our sins now lives to intercede with the Father for us.  He never lets the Father forget those nail-marks which He still bears.  And Jesus never lets us forget the wounds that earned our salvation either, as He gives us that gift in His Body and Blood.
          So who can condemn us?  Satan is left with no true charges to bring against us.  Who else can condemn us?  The world?  We ourselves?  Yes, it certainly happens that the human mind condemns us – but only because people get it in our heads that we are greater than God.  For when you say, “I cannot forgive myself” in reality you are trying to overrule God.  The Bible says not one word about forgiving yourself because that is not the way it works.  True and holy forgiveness always and only comes to you from others.  So repent.  God forgives you.  See yourself as God sees you in Christ, not as you see yourself.  Stop disagreeing with Him.
          “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (8:35).  Do you actually think it is possible to make Christ stop loving you?  Throw everything at His love – tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword.  Bad childhood.  Broken marriage.  Failure to be wholly devoted to God.  Sickness.  Think of anything – even death, devil, angels, earthly governments; the past, present and future.  High things, low things, any and every thing.  The Apostle tells us that in all these things we more than conquer – we literally “hyper-conquer”.  Not by ourselves.  But in Christ who loved us enough to conquer these things for us with His painful death.
          On this side of our graves, our victory can look an awful lot like defeat.  That is why Paul emphasizes the “in Christ” stuff so much.  It must be trusted and believed for Christ’s sake.  In this world, you must walk by faith in Him and not by sight.  For the victory Jesus gives looks like a Cross and a tomb.  No matter what other people say about the victorious Christian life bringing success for all the world to see, most of the time it looks nothing like that.  Paul describes it as being filled with failures, tribulations, distresses, persecutions, famines, nakedness, dangers and violence.  Paul makes sure we know that this is not just his idea, but that the OT people said it too.  Psalm 44 describes the godly life as facing death all day long.  The sheep following Good Shepherd Jesus are seen as sheep being led to the slaughter.  Hardly what the world would describe as victorious.
          Thus Paul emphasizes how important it is for us to be in, with, and under Christ.  For only there is your destiny, your justification, your glorification a done deal.  At your baptism, God put you into the safest place there is – the death and life of Jesus.  Only here is everything worked out for your good.  Only here can you say to your dying day: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Amen.

July 13 - Judges 13

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O LORD, how often we mistake Your holiness for our destruction, such as when we think Your commandments will harm us and sin will help us, or as when Manoah thought he was doomed to death for seeing You.  Grant us the faith of his wife, that we would always recognize the appearance of Your holiness is for our salvation.

Ineresting that the Angel of the Lord says His name is wonderful, since that name is also given in Isaiah 9, along with Counselor, Almighty, God, and so on.

So just who is this Angel of the Lord that speaks to Manoah and his wife?

The Bible reveals that the Angel of the Lord is perhaps someone different than you might at first think. He is not a created angel like Gabriel or any of the myriad others that God made in the beginning. This Angel is uncreated. That's why in many Bibles, the "A" for this Angel is capitalized. This is an eternal and divine Being. Angel literally means Messenger; we might even translate it as "Word," as in John 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." You see, this is the Messenger of the Lord, the Word of the Father, the 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity, equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Angel of the Lord is the Son of God, Jesus, before He was born among us and became man. Here the Son of God has come down to man to announce a miraculous birth through which God the Father would deliver His people, just as centuries later the Son of God Himself would be miraculously born to bring eternal deliverance to His people.

(from an Advent midweek sermon on Samson by Rev. Aaron Koch.  Scroll about halfway down.)

July 11 - Judges 7

heh.  I just told a brother on the phone last week that God would need to give me some of Gideon's fleece to convince me He wanted me to accept a call to Chicagoland.  The assigned reading for July 11 does not count.

Homily for Pentecost 4A (Proper 10) - Romans 8:12-17

(With thanks to Rev. William Cwirla for most of the thoughts expressed here.)


         The Apostle Paul works at completely changing the way we think in Romans 8 – which then will affect what we do.  For instance, chapter 8 starts off announcing the great news, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”  Just think how people would live their daily lives differently if they learned those words by heart.  For consider how often sin and death make people’s decisions for them.  Or how much worry is caused by doubts about what God thinks of you.
Yet here God says not to worry – see how much He loves you as His Spirit sets you free.  Christ’s umbrella of grace and forgiveness covers you, shields you from the Holy Law’s condemnation that your guilt deserves.  Though you are still a sinner, and though you will one day die of something, you are no longer captive to sin and death.  For God sent His Son to live as one of us, taking up your humanity so He could be the ultimate sin offering by taking your sin into His crucified flesh to free you from Hell.
This turn of events calls for us to change our way of thinking.  Paul explains in Romans 8:5.  “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.”  It is so natural for us to focus on our sinful desires.  Let your minds wander, and if God does not stop you, some evil thought will certainly pop up.  How embarrassed would you be if someone knew what goes through your head?  Especially here in church, or perhaps while reading the Scriptures.  We are not as devoted to Christ as we want others to think.  We can get caught up in conversations or movies or sports and lose track of time.  Yet when it comes to God’s Word, even the slightest thing distracts us.  Sin persuades us that the story of Christ for us is boring.
Why on earth do we do this?  We do not give the greater honor and devotion to the Lord because, as  Romans 8:7 puts it bluntly, our minds naturally are hostile to God.  By nature we sinners might appreciate this or that saying of God – as long as we can take it out of context, use it to our benefit and ignore the uncomfortable things God says that reveal our guilt.

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The sinful mind and heart is like that hard pavement Jesus describes in today’s Gospel parable of the seed in the soil.  God’s Word just bounces off the mind hostile to Him, and the Devil snatches the Word away like a bird gobbling up seeds.  Or else the mind goes along with the Word – but only until it gets a bit thorny to let the Word of Life tell me how things should go.  I love the things of this world.  And I do not appreciate the Bible’s call to sacrifice that love for the love of Christ.  Like the seed that fell among the rocks and the thorns, my faith is choked and dries up.  So whether God’s Word is received with joy for a short time or outright rejected, it does not much matter.  The end result is the same – a dead mind held captive to the sinful nature.  It cannot submit to God’s will because sin wants to be the Almighty director of all that happens.
No wonder that those who are captive to the sinful nature cannot please God.  Jesus said the same thing in John 15, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.”  He is the Vine, we are the branches.  Joined baptismally to Christ in faith, we are fruitful in His life.  If I sever myself from Jesus, I am as fruitless as the seeds on the hard pavement or the rocky, thorn-infested ground.
“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Romans 8:9).  And the Spirit does dwell in you and now in Brystol too because you are baptized.  She has a new identity – child of God.  That is the core of who you are.  Next time someone asks you who you are, think about telling them first off, “I am a child of God.”  And all those reasons that you are coming up with why you would never do that – that is the sinful mind hostile to God making itself known to you.  You might be many things in life – husband, mother, worker, student, retiree, neighbor, grandchild, citizen, pastor, parishioner.  And certainly you remain a sinner until your death.  Nevertheless, you are now to identify with the Spirit of Christ.  For you are changed, made new by God.  “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Now you think about things in a new way.  Which is what repentance literally means in Latin – to think again; or in Greek, repent is from the word for a changed mind; or in Hebrew it is “to be turned” – not that I turn myself, but that I am turned by God.  God turns your mind away from the sinful nature to our new nature in Christ; away from the old, dead you, toward the new you alive in Christ’s righteousness.  Let me explain.  A college friend last week showed me some photos from graduation.  I had forgotten what I looked like with facial hair and it took a while to stop staring at the picture.  Now, let’s say that instead of a beard, I had some ugly facial feature that was removed with surgery, resulting in some miraculous transformation.  How sick would it be for me to now sit and dwell upon how ugly I used to be?  I might have needed some time to get used to my new look in the mirror, but it would be wrong of me to go around as if I was still that ugly duckling.
Now let’s apply that to the Word of God in our lives.  We were born worse off than spiritual ugly ducklings, for we were damned to die as fallen children of Adam.  However, through no help from us, God in mercy rescues us from the junk heap and makes us His own.  For all the times we have closed our ears to His Word He sent His Son, but His own people did not receive Him.  The Devil snatched Him away as men grabbed Jesus to arrest Him and nail Him to the Cross.  For all the times we have let the worries and love of this world choke off our faith, Jesus wore a crown of thorns.  And then He was buried in the rocky ground of the stone cold tomb.  Then Jesus sprang up – but not like the seed that was planted in the rocky ground that withered, for Jesus lives never to die again.  He rescues us from this body of death and gives us life abundantly.  So now where should we fix our minds?  Should we sit and dwell on that old sinful nature that leads to death and hell?  Or on that new nature, that new you in Christ and whatever is good, noble and true in thanksgiving to God?  When you put it that way, it is not a tough decision.  It is just that in daily life we do not ordinarily put it that way and things get more interesting.
In today’s Epistle text, Paul spends no time telling us what to do, because doing stuff does not make us children of God.  He reminds us of who we are, who God has made us to be by grace.  He points our attention, our minds, to Christ where we find our true identity – and everything outside of Christ becomes empty and mostly not worthy of consideration.
“Brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh” messed up with sin.  That is what got us into trouble in the first place, bringing us nothing but misery and death.  Now our debt is to live according to the Spirit of Christ, to put to death the dirty deeds of sin.  Daily we must turn our minds away from sinfulness and again to the Christ who rescues us.
You are led by the Spirit and you are sons of God.  Plant that home, deep in your mind and heart.  You belong to God in Christ.  You have the Holy Spirit who frees your mind and breathes life into your body.  He is no spirit who enslaves you with fear, for He promises you will face no condemnation.  Nothing for you to fear in the end of days from God’s judgment.  Yes, we are to fear, love, and trust in God above all things.  But that fear is the right honor, respect and devotion that God deserves for having yanked us out of the jaws of sin and death.  There is no fear of punishment, wrath, and Hell that in the end would drive us away from loving God – for Christ has saved us from all that.
As a father gives good and necessary gifts for life to His Children, so He has given you His Spirit of adoption as sons.  Brystol will learn to call Kurt, “Daddy, Dad, Father” someday, and likewise we pray like little children, “Abba, Father.”  Perhaps Paul started thinking of the Lord’s Prayer while writing this.  Have you ever stopped to think about how strange it is to call God “Father”?  He is high and mighty, the Creator of all things, with so much to keep track of.  What gives us the right to speak to Him – especially on such familiar terms?  His Son Jesus gives us the right, teaches and tenderly invites us to pray this way, as a dear child would come to his or her dear Father in Heaven saying, “Pappa.  Daddy.  Abba.”  And the Father turns His ear and says to those around, “Did you hear that?  Those are my children!”

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And as His child, then you also are an heir of God and fellow heir with Christ.  The Baptismal service was filled with that word.  “Heirs” is an identity full of grace.  To be named an heir, you do not do a thing.
You receive and benefit from the death of another.  The death of Jesus has made the treasures of Heaven yours.  So now forgiveness is yours.  Eternal life yours.
Which helps us to see our troubles differently, giving us strength to endure them.  Today’s text concludes by saying we are called to suffer in this life with Christ.  But note that suffering is not on our own.  We are with Christ.  And this happens “in order that we may also be glorified with” Jesus on the day He appears to raise us.
So set your mind on these things as children of God, heirs of Heaven.  All thanks to Jesus.  Amen.

July 6 - Isaiah and Acts 13:10

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It's hard to limit what I'd want to say about this Evangelist... errr... well, you know what I mean.  The Responsory for the Evangelists is quite appropriate for today (and the Antiphon even quotes him - see TDP O-73).  It is little wonder that Isaiah appears so often in the Lectionaries - including this Sunday's inclusion of a personal favorite, Isaiah 55.  Recent Advents and Lents found me preaching on Isaiah 9 and 53, respectively.

Andrew Bartelt gave an excelent presentation on Isaiah today on Issues, etc.

Isaiah proclaims the Lord's work of making straight the ways that once were crooked.   It intrigues me that St. Paul in today's NT reading condemns the magician Elymus for undoing this.

Far be it from us, O LORD, that we should forsake You to serve other Gods, for You have brought us and our fathers out of the house of slavery, and have done the great sign of restoring Your servant, our Messiah, to the land of the living (Joshua 24:16-17, with an Isaiah 53 spin).

June 27 - Commemoration of Cyril of Alexandria

Cover via Amazon

I first became aware of Cyril... well, probably in Dr. Weinrich's Early Church class, but I guess I forgot him after the exam was over. While doing sermon prep in Year C about 4 years ago, I noticed that Cyril kept having these great quotes in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Luke. So I did some research and got a great bargain on his Lukan commentary. The way he pulls in the rest of Scripture when commenting on Luke's writings. WoW. Here's a few links:

Cyril's Commentary on Luke (though it doesn't have the cool icon art that my book does) and John

Commemoration of Cyril of Alexandria by Paul McCain

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by Aardvark Alley

Patristic QuoteS of the Day from William Weedon - who will be on Issues, etc this afternoon talking about this saint

And speaking of Issues, etc (which I still haven't won a Blog of the Week yet from them! Stiff competition) - here's what Rick Stuckwisch and Heath Curtis had to say.

2nd Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 8A) - Romans 7:1-13

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(HT - Rev. William Cwirla)

If anyone has ever confronted you with your sin and asked you why you did it, and you honestly could not give them a reason, Romans 7 is for you.
If you think that someday you will figure out how to follow Christ the right way and not be so sinful, Romans 7 is for you.
If you think sin is no problem for you and the Christian life is easy, then Romans 7 is for you.
If you think the Christian life is too hard and you have given up on ever getting into Heaven, then Romans 7 is for you.  In short, St. Paul wrote Romans 7 for every one of you and for me.
Actually, the Apostle wrote Romans 1-6 for us as well, and Romans 7 builds on the major points he made earlier.  Since Paul assumes you know them, so it would be good to read through Romans at home this week.  In short, Paul works like a lawyer, presenting evidence and arguments to make his case.  But unlike any ordinary lawyer, he switches off from prosecuting you for your sins to being your defense attorney.  In Romans 1, he begins his case presenting evidence against those who honoring false gods or no god at all – their false belief leads them to fill their lives with all manner of evil.  And right as Paul has you cheering him on for shooting down those proud sinners with both barrels of God’s Law – right then in Romans 2, the Apostle turns the shotgun of the Law at you!  Yes, you who look down on the evil people who are destroying our country – you practice the very same evil that you condemn (2:1) – the same greed, nastiness, strife, deceit, gossip, pride, the same disobedience and heartlessness.  You have no excuse for any of this!  Especially since you know that the Day of Wrath is coming, the Day God’s righteous judgment against sin is revealed.
When Paul gets you owning up to your sin and shame, he switches his tone from prosecuting to defending, as he writes, “23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3).
We get into God’s good graces not by our works, but as His gift in Christ.  We get forgiveness for the sins that shame us as His gift in Christ.  We get rescued from the Hell we deserve by grace, as His gift in Christ.  We do not even think of boasting that we are better than unbelievers – or anyone for that matter – because our eternal life is all God’s gift in Christ.
Paul knows how Sin wants you to think that now it does not matter how bad you live, since you will be going to Heaven no matter what.  But God forbid that we take God’s kindness for granted.  Paul reminds you of your Baptism in chapter 6 to begin the illustration that continues into our chapter 7 today – an illustration that uses death, of all things.  You died in Christ and were buried with Him in Baptism.  God declared you dead to His Law.  Sin no longer reigns over you.  Christ does.  “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).  You are as dead as dead Jesus hanging on His Cross when it comes to the Law.
Now Paul builds on that point with an illustration from marriage – a wife is bound to her husband, and husband to wife, “’Til death do us part.”  There is no mention of divorce here because he is talking about how God says life should go.  God tells married women they are not to go off and live with another man while the husband is alive.  But if her husband dies, the Lord says she is free from the Law of marriage, free to enter another marriage if she wants.
Paul says you are like that free widow.  Your baptismal death has set you free from the Law.  Free from your bondage of sin.  Free to belong to the God who raised Jesus from the dead.  Free to live a new life.  Free to bear fruit to God as branches joined to Christ the Vine.
Now there are two opposing forces in our lives – our flesh and the Holy Spirit.  Our flesh is filled with sin – but here the Apostle is not so much talking about all those dirty thoughts, words and deeds – like murder, theft, lying, and rebellion.  Paul is talking about our condition of sin.  Like a cancer, sin has invaded your body, taking over your cells, wreaking havoc so that your body is not able to do what you were made to do.  And just as the body cannot cure itself of cancer, neither can it cure itself of sin.
Some have thought education is the answer.  Evil people behave the awful ways that they do because they do not know any better.  Just teach them enough religion, and they will become better people.  Surprisingly, Paul says that learning God’s Laws can actually make a person worse.  When his teachers taught young Paul that commandment forbidding us to sinfully desire stuff that God says does not belong to you, then Paul not only knew “You shall not covet”, he also knew sin too.  It was about like a commandment saying, “You shall not yawn” – and the minute a person hears that, they cannot stop themselves from yawning.  Which might not be the best example for a preacher to use, but anyway, Paul could not stop himself from coveting – and this was a good young Jewish kid who did not know what coveting was 5 minutes ago.
In other words, that foreign invading cancer of Sin takes the opportunity of all those “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” and it deceives us to death.  We think we can keep the commandments.  Yet the harder we try, the worse it gets.  Either we deceive ourselves more into ignoring our sin and becoming proud about how happy we imagine God is with us, or else we see our sin and despair of God’s love.  So the end result is actually the opposite of what we might expect – spend time in the Bible and Sin becomes all the worse.  Not that the Bible makes us do all those evil things – God’s Law is holy and righteous and good.  But the sin that lives in us responds to it in very bad ways.  The more we learn the Scriptures the more sinful we become.  “Sinful beyond measure” is the way Paul says it.  So sinful, you despair of saving yourself, which is precisely the point.
Our text stops here, but Paul goes on to his next point which is what you will hear next Sunday, writing, “We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.”  Notice that he does not say, “I *was* unspiritual before I was a Christian and got straightened out,” but he says, “I am unspiritual.”  Do not be thinking St. Paul is any holier than you are, as if you just needed to figure out the secret to becoming a superChristian like him.  Do not think Paul has found the answer to the righteous life inside of him by getting all spiritual.  You will hear Paul say next week in the end of Romans 7 that nothing good lives naturally inside of him.
And you will hear Paul describe the war that goes on inside himself.  He sets his mind on doing the good, but he cannot get it done.  What he does is the evil he hates – and this is an Apostle of the Lord talking.
If you think it is easy being a Christian, guess again.  Never mind what the false preachers say about all your problems being fixed if you just give your heart over to Jesus and clean up your act.  Consider how Martin Luther once wrote that he was most troubled in his life when he had no troubles at all.  At those times he thought he had gotten so far off the righteous way that the Devil saw no reason to mess with him.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus lovingly warns us that where He brings His saving work, there will be a cross for His follower to carry.  And sadly many of you know situations our Lord describes - Christians with families divided for and against Jesus.  They daily have reason to ask themselves, “Am I doing this out of love for Christ, or am I loving this family member more than I love Jesus?  Am I more concerned about what they might say than what the Lord does say?” The temptation to seek peace at any and all costs is a strong one, especially among people you have to live with.  Jesus responds to this by saying, “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth,… but a sword.”  That sword of His Word cuts right through the heart of each and every one of us.  It literally means losing your life.  Dropping dead to your self in order to find your life in Christ.
         Jesus is the One who saves us from our sin-filled bodies and souls, for He is the One who gave His perfect and innocent body and spirit into death on a Cross.  He cleanses and renews us by baptizing us into His death and grave.
Therefore, Paul goes on to say in Romans 8, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."  That Judge Whom Paul spoke of in Romans 2, coming on the Day of wrath to reveal His judgment against sin, has already declared you to be innocent.  He has no condemnation for you, for all that sin of yours that should lead you to eternal shame.  "For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” as God has done by sending His Son to be the sacrificial offering for our sin.
Today we struggle.  With our flesh corrupted by sin we serve the Law of sin.  Yet with minds renewed by the Spirit, we serve the Law of God.  That is how it is – the life of Christ in a body of death.  And that helps us to learn to believe that our salvation from Hell into Heaven is not our doing, but must be by God’s grace, through faith, for Christ’s sake.  Amen.

June 24 - The Nativity of John - What Luther Says

 HT: Rev. Matt Harrison for this quote some of you may have read yesterday -




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no, not this Matt Harrison.

 

…And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! Jn. 1:36


Other prophets have also foretold how Christ would come and how He would free the world from sins. But neither Isaiah nor Jeremiah would have been able to say: This is the one whom you must accept. John is the only one whose voice was the first to announce Christ and whose fingers pointed to the person where the forgiveness of sins is actually to be found. No human being had ever had or seen fingers like those of John, with which he pointed to the Lamb of God. Therefore, when we are oppressed by sin, or terrified by the Devil or by Death, what we need to do is to look at the mouth and fingers of the preacher, who will give us the correct teaching and show us how to come to the forgiveness of our sins and how to make our peace with God. This is the joy that the whole world, not just Elizabeth and Zechariah, should have in John.

Image by Lil' Rhody Dan via Flickr

Martin Luther in Luther’s Breviary: A Meditation for Each Day of the Year (Wartburg Verlag 2007), p. 192

June 20 - John 18 (better late than never) + Trinity Sunday Sermon

The interactive workings of the mind, heart and Scripture is fascinating.
About like seed planted that suddenly appears above ground, 

as Someone once said...

Image by donielle via Flickr

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I've noticed a lot of movies and tv shows I watch explore the question, "Who are you?" - the most recent being Kung Fu Panda 2.  Though I had seen such movies as Star Wars deal with the question, I was not explicitly aware of it until Babylon 5.  The driving story arch across the first seasons had to do with two sets of aliens guiding and using humans and other alien races in their conflict with each other.  One asked "Who are you?"  The other asked, "What do you want?"  The results were disastrous (genocide) when the second question was answered before the first.

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This morning these thoughts all came together for me with the John 18 reading from Monday.  For Adam and Eve's forgetting they were God's creatures, for David's forgetting neglecting his duties as King when it came to Uriah and his wife,

for the way you forgot 

you are the child of God 

when pursuing what your sin wanted 

earlier today - 

turning a deaf ear to the Truth, 

and for every time in between,
Jesus remembers who He is as King under God when He speaks to Pilate (John 18:33-37) so that He would be our perfect substitute in the image of God and man.


Below is the sermon I preached for Trinity Sunday, which was influenced by my viewing of Kung Fu Panda 2, based on what the Sober Peasant preached some years back.

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Holy Trinity Sunday (and Father's Day)
Genesis 1
Image of God Restored


         America based its right to declare independence from England on the principle that all men are created equal – and yet many of the signers owned slaves.  When the Constitution was adopted years later, slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person.  Thanks be to God that those days have passed, yet today US laws still  see some people as more valuable than others – namely, too many see those in their mothers’ wombs as less than a person.  And who is considered more important – a sports star or a resident of a nursing home.  Even in our personal lives we make value judgments.  Is a person worth our time?  Our effort?  The request for money from a charity.  The friend who needs help – or the neighbor you don’t like.  And we decide that not all of these are equal.  Some are more worthwhile.
Today we are reminded that in the beginning, God created man and woman equal but different.  Both equally loved by God, but He puts them together differently with complimentary parts and roles.  Adam to be husband and then father of the whole race of humanity, and Eve to be wife and mother to all the living.  Created differently, but yet equally created in the image of God.  Blessed differently, but equally together and not apart.  “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).
But what does it mean that “God created man in His own image”?  No other creature or thing was created with this.  God deemed everything else good, but not even the angels were created in God’s image.  This honor was only given to humanity.  This image of God business means not that we looked like God does, but that we had His perfect righteousness.  We had His right knowledge of the way things were, the way we were, and the way He is.  We had true fear, true love, and true trust in God and in each other.  We cared for each other rightly and could receive that care.  We listened to one another and heard everything right as we said everything the right way.  And God shared with us His authority over the world He made.  Just think about Adam giving names to all the animals – or how still to this day people name their children and their pets.
Yet as you know, that perfection is long gone.  The image of God was lost at the Fall.  Even when God tells us precisely who He is in the Scriptures, we get Him wrong – let alone what type of false God people imagine when they live apart from the Bible.  Instead of a loving Father, God is often seen as a demanding and sometimes mean, or sometimes weak deity.  How could anyone love someone like that, or put our confidence in him, her, it, they, or whatever type of supreme beings you could come up with.  Often times those gods become a version of me, only much better.  And so my will becomes the gods’ will and I choose what lessons I want to learn – instead of having a loving Father who teaches me according to His will how I should go.  And not for His benefit, but for my good in the end.
Sin has broken Creation – just consider the storms that worked through here the past two mornings, and the far worse destruction in Joplin and Japan.  Yet even more tragic than that is how sin has torn us apart.  We are now different than what Adam and Eve were – and we judge and love and care for other people differently than we should.  From the moment Adam and Eve sinned, they became sinful, ashamed, and corrupt.  They had lost the glory and image of God and they became embarrassed by their nakedness.
Not wanting to be seen, they hid themselves from each other with fig leaves, and hid themselves from God with bushes.  Fig leaves and bushes are just as flimsy as the excuses we use and the other things we hide our sin and brokenness behind.  We want to keep others from knowing who we really are, so we put up masks so that people will think differently about us.  We find substitute images for the image of God that we lost.  So that you look holy, or brave, or kind, or at least not so damnable.  The Declaration of Independence is right in this – we are all equal – equally deserving of Hell.  Equally corrupt before the throne of the Almighty Judge – every person 100% sinful.  We might successfully fool some people into thinking better about us, but all our lies work about as poorly as fig leave and bushes when it comes to God.
Yet as you have heard, the God who originally created us in His image does not leave us fallen and broken.  For the God who creates is also the God who re-creates.  He – not us – is working to restore His image through Christ in our fallen and broken bodies and souls.  For we did not bring Jesus to us, but the Father sent His Son.  As the true and exact image of God the Father, Jesus shows us is a true man, unbroken by sin.  Jesus is the Righteous One who knows the Father, has complete confidence in His Father, and does His Father’s will at all times – not grudgingly, but willingly.
Jesus comes not primarily as an example to imitate, but to restore to us the holy image that we lost.  He took from us our sinful ways of dishonoring Our Father in Heaven – and, considering that today might have you thinking of your earthly fathers, Jesus also took from us all our guilt for breaking the Fourth Commandment, and all the others too.  Jesus claimed our broken image and the punishment and death we had earned for His own.  In return, as we heard last week, Jesus gave us His Spirit.  And through the Holy Spirit, the image of God is again given to us.  The Spirit of God who was present and active at Creation, hovering over the waters, is now present and active in you, re-creating you, making you new, re-shaping and conforming you to the image of God.  He flew down into you at the Baptismal waters of His Triune name.  The Father who sent His Son sends His Spirit now to you.  And the Holy Spirit now joins you to the Son who takes you to the Father.  To forgive us and bring us back to the place God gave us in the beginning.
You see, we celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday not simply to proclaim who our God is – the Three persons, and yet one God; each fully and equally God, none less valuable or important than the other; and yet not three Gods or Lords, and not three parts of God, but one God.  Although we certainly do that, Holy Trinity Sunday is first and foremost about who God is for us, what He has done and does and will do for us; and how the Triune God continues to apply Himself to His lost world for the life of the world – to restore His image in us.
And with that understanding, we might look at the Holy Gospel in a different light.  Not so much about what we do as the Church that baptizes and teaches and makes disciples; but rather what the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are doing through His Church.  Creating disciples, baptizing, teaching, feeding, forgiving, raising to new life – God doing His stuff in His ways through His Word, water, His body and blood.  Creating something valuable out of nothing.  Making us precious in His sight though we were worth less than nothing because of our sin.  He who spoke to create the World now speaks through our voices to create again disciples, Children of God in His image, conformed to the likeness of Christ.
        Thus we worship the Triune God not simply here, but daily in our lives by living out that image we have been given again.  Working against sin to love and care and judge and value others the way that God has been and is and will be for us.  Giving to those the world counts as the least.  Determined to see each life as worth our own.  Living as Christ in the world, the Righteous One who judged you and your eternal life to be worth His precious blood and innocent suffering and death.  He suffered the shame and nakedness of His Crucifixion – and then He rose from the dust of death to life, so that all who believe in Him would be raised to live with Him forever.
        As Christian Churches around the world today say, “Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity.  Let us give glory to Him for He has shown His mercy to us!”  Amen.

June 14 (not Pentecost Tuesday) - John 15

I was pruning a bush in our front yard a few weeks back, and I noticed a vine precious to me was clinging to this bush.  An observer might wonder why I didn't trim both bushes equally.
And so it is with our Christian life when the Father prunes us, and we wonder why He prunes here and not there, this part of my life and not that, me and not her...  Perhaps it is because a third person needs that bit not cut off for support.
If I prune as I think is best,

though I am barely a novice gardener,

and really do not know what I am doing

and do what I do for my own enjoyment of how it looks to me,

how much more does Our Father prune
as He knows is best?

For He is the omniscient Creator

who always works things together not for His good, but for the good of those who love Him.

The vine that is spoken of in this post - though when pruning was done, the flowers had already gone.  The bush to your left has a matching pair that you can just see to the right, which the clematis has attached itself to, and thus saved the bush from more pruning.

Pentecost - Luke 21:20-38 and Hymnody

Image by micmol  via Flickr

Apparently I was not the only one to see a beautiful connection between today's Feast and the readings assigned in TDP - so did the Hymnody editor (I assume that was Rev. Henry Gerike), as we sing from the Pentecost hymn "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord" for the Spirit to impart strength to our weakness as He prepares each heart.

O Christ, once we were a people whose hearts were weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the cares of this life.  We were doomed for the Day of Judgment to spring upon us like a trap.  But on this day in the Church we remember how You work to prepare us for that Day as You send forth Your Spirit - not only into the hearts of your preachers, but also into the hearts of Your hearers through Holy Baptism for the forgiveness of their sins.  We praise you for repeating in our lives this great miracle of faith, and now pray for our enemies and all who do not believe in You, so that they with us would "have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:36)

Tuesday in Easter 7 - Psalmody

Image by larry&flo via Flickr

Never ceases to amaze me how appropriate passages can be for the day.  Just before our pre-VBS staff meeting, I realized I didn't have a devotion ready!  So I quickly grabbed TDP.  Wow.  Psalm 111 went so well! Not just in speaking of studying and praising and remembering the Lord's deeds.  But also consider the reference to the work of His hands (v 7).  Ordinarily we might take this as Creation.  But when I read it 2 minutes before the meeting, my mind went immediately to the hands that were nailed to the Cross, that held fish to show He was not a ghost, that were shown to remove Thomas' disbelief, and hands that were raised in blessing upon the disciples when Christ ascended.  A question entered my head: "Is this stretching the meaning of the work of His hands?"  And yet, consider how redemption is the theme of the next sentence.

What do you think?