The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity - September 4, 2011

The Church Season of Trinity
The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, One Year Series
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (September 4, 2011)

Readings:   
    Psalm 50:7-23
    Genesis 4:1-15
    Ephesians 2:1-10
    Luke 18:9-14

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

The text for today is as recorded in the Gospel Lesson from the 18th chapter of St. Luke, especially the following verse:

Luke 18:9-14 (NIV)

9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:

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

How we worship affects what we believe.  The reverse is also true.  What we believe affects how we worship. We can see this principle in the parable.  The pharisee prays from what is in his heart.  He is full of self-righteousness, so he prays a self-righteous prayer.  The tax collector is filled with repentance by the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, he prays a repentant prayer.

We can also see this posture of worship from experience.  If someone in their heart does not really believe that they are a poor, miserable sinner, then they will get tired of confessing these words in the liturgy.  If a person thinks that the love in their heart is the most important thing in worship, then they want to sing about how much they love Jesus.  If a person sings songs over and over about the love in their heart, then they will forget about repentance, or at best, repentance will become shallow, not heartfelt.

But if we keep ourselves in the historic Divine Service handed down to us by centuries of saints before us, then we will keep confessing these important Biblical truths.  We are wretched beggars who must cry out to God constantly, "Have mercy upon me, the sinner." But we should make sure that we do not confuse prayer with the means of grace.  In other words, a person is not forgiven because they pray for it.  Although God surely gives forgiveness in answer to the prayers of His saints, it is not the prayer itself that earns us forgiveness.  Jesus is not saying that the tax collector was forgiven because of the great fervor and sincerity and humility in his prayer.

We know this for certain because not everyone who is sorrowful over their sins and prays for it is forgiven.  Many pagans pray to the wrong god for forgiveness.  Many Americans suddenly decide to get religion and pray to God.  They may even name Jesus, yet not have faith in His sacrificial death.  Even sorrow over your sins is not enough.  Think about it, Judas was very sorrowful over his betrayal of the Jesus.  Yet he received no forgiveness, since he had no faith.  Without faith, there is neither true prayer before God nor is there forgiveness.

The prayers of both the pharisee and tax collector took place within the context of atonement from the true God.  In the Temple of God, there is no doubt to whom they were praying.  More than that, their prayers would take place at the time of the morning and evening sacrifices.  Those were the times that public, individual prayer was allowed in the Temple.  So there was before their eyes the true God's covenant, that is agreement of forgiveness through the shed blood of lambs and goats.

But in this Parable only one of them prayed out of sorrowful humility and awareness of the magnitude of his sins.  Only one of them looked upon God as the only possible Savior from the incredible weight of his overwhelming sins.

The other one believed that he is not that bad.  Sacrifice would only need to take care of a few small mistakes in his life.  Overall, he was a pretty good guy, or so he thought. But no one is a pretty good guy before God's Law. The tax collector saw things as they truly are.  We are very great sinners, each one of us.  We should see things as Saint Paul did, who said, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief."  In the words of the tax collector, we are "THE sinner," not just "A sinner".  There should not be a sinner greater than us in our eyes.  We should approach the throne of God with the awareness that we are most unworthy that He should listen to our prayers.

Yet He hears, nonetheless.  We beg Him, "Have mercy upon us," and He grants what we ask.  What we are asking for, along with the tax collector, involves more complicated church words like "propitiate" and "conciliate" and "expiate."  We are asking that God pay the price for the incredible weight of our overwhelming sins.  The only price that can satisfy God's anger against sin is the sacrifice of a pure, innocent Lamb.  There can be only one such Lamb.  Christ alone could be the propitiation for your sins.  He alone silences the wrath of God against the magnitude of your sins by shedding precious Blood and dying in perfect innocence.  Only He could atone for your sins by sprinkling His Blood upon you.

This He has done.  Therefore, the Father does not see your sins.  They are covered up by the Blood of the Lamb.  Because of the sacrifice upon the Cross, the Father has declared you righteous in His eyes. He has done it even today, as He delights to do it as often as He can.  He has declared you righteous in this Divine Service, and every Divine Service where the pure Gospel is proclaimed.  He has declared you innocent in your Baptism, in which you were Baptized into His sacrificial death.  In His Holy Supper, He also bids us eat the sacrifice of the Lamb, whose true Body and Blood are received by our mouths.

For Christ is the sacrifice.  Christ is the propitiation for your sins. He also is the true Temple.  He is the presence of the true God Jehovah, since He is the same Lord, one with His Father.  Where He is, there holy saints are gathered to worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth.  Therefore, you also are the Temple, since you are one with Christ, and He with you.  You dwell in Him, and He in you.  You are a holy building not made with human hands, one Church with all the saints on earth and in glory.

Christ could only be these things for you because He claimed for Himself the most humble place.  Even though He had no sin, He was willing to be numbered with us sinners.  More than that, He became sin itself, since He carried all sins upon His shoulders on Calvary.  He became THE sinner, taking the guilt of all and the punishment of all.  And by His wounds, you are healed.  In His suffering for your guilt, you are declared innocent.

Therefore, you are going home from this House of God justified today.  For to all whom He has given the gift of repentance, He has also declared righteous.  So depart in peace today, since your sins are forgiven you. Amen.

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The Tenth Sunday after Trinity - August 28, 2011

The Church Season of Trinity
The Tenth Sunday after Trinity, One Year Series
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (August 28, 2011)

Readings:   
    Psalm 92
    Jeremiah 7:1-11
    1 Corinthians 12:1-11

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

The text for today is as recorded in the New Testament Lesson from 19th chapter of St. Luke, especially the following verse:

Luke 19:41-48 (NIV)

41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” 45 Then he entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling. 46 “It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” 47 Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. 48 Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words.

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

Christ our Lord could see the destruction coming.  His heart was not unfeeling.  As He had lamented in sorrow when He brought the cataclysm upon Noah's world, so He wept over Jerusalem.  As the holy prophet Jeremiah had wept over Jerusalem, so the holiest prophet of all, Jesus Christ, shed tears at the oncoming bloodshed.

Christ shows us that He deeply regrets the sins of men and their punishment.  He takes no pleasure in the death of the godless, but that the godless convert from their evil ways and live.  He finds no joy in the damnation of those who reject His Word.  He would much rather give life and salvation. Here we see Christ's tears rebuke those who think that God desires the death of some, or that He keeps them from being saved.  Our Lord is not such a God who delights in the death of anyone.  He is not hardened and cold against the sins and impenitence of unbelievers.

On the contrary, He desires that we take warning from His tears, so that we might also repent.  He wants us to follow the example of the Ninevites who repented and were rescued from downfall and ruin. But so many of the Jews rejected God's will for them and resisted the Holy Spirit.  In the same way, so many people today have contradicted and blasphemed God's Word.  So many have rejected the Word, making themselves unworthy of it.  Therefore, as both temporal and eternal punishment fell on the Jews, so it will fall upon any of us who treat this Word with disdain.

For Christ was not only lamenting the physical, earthly misfortune of the Jews that would happen when the city was destroyed.  Much more, He saw the eternal punishment that would fall upon them.  In spite of His preaching and teaching, those who would not repent would have to face the visitation of His wrath.  For when Christ comes to men, He visits them with grace.  But if they will not receive it, He gives them instead His punishment.

So you must be diligent today to listen and heed this Word.  Today is also the visitation of Christ among you.  Here He is offering you His own deeds that give you the forgiveness of sins.  Here is grace and justification and eternal life.  Therefore, sincerely repent, rejecting your sins and life as worthless to earn salvation, and cling instead in trust to the precious work of Christ for you.  For the same tears of Christ should move you to repentance.

What terrible agonies the damned will experience when they realize that the Lord God so passionately called them to repentance and life, and how Christ worked mightily to earn their salvation - only to have them reject the precious gift!  The Lord keep you from that fate, as instead you seize Christ and His Cross as your only salvation.

No one naturally has the right kind of heart to repent.  As Christ said, "Now it is hidden from your eyes."  That is, the natural man does not receive the things of God.  The human heart is most crooked and deceitful, as in the time of Noah.  Our heart does not sympathize as it should with our neighbor.  Too many times, we do not see a brother's distress and mourn over his condition, as Christ did.  Too often, we also push away from ourselves the sacred Word, thinking that we have enough and need no more, as if we sinners could ever have too much.

So Christ comes riding into your hearts as He did into Jerusalem.  He comes in a humble way, in His Word.  He has snatched you from the jaws of sin and brought you to repentance and reconciliation with God.  For the Word gives you Christ Himself, and He is the only medicine for your sick souls.  He is the food for your starving spirit.

But if you reject this medicine and this food, how will you escape death?  He has sent down to you manna from heaven.  If you despise the Bread of Life, how will you escape His wrath?  The Lord will not treat kindly those who reject His mercy.  Therefore repent, since the kingdom of heaven is here.

Where repentance receives this Word, it is the sword of the Spirit that protects against the devil, the world, and the flesh.  For the Word gives Christ and Him crucified.  The Word sprinkles upon you the Blood of Atonement, shed for you.  If you are covered with the holy Blood, how can satan or anyone destroy you?

But where a soul refuses to repent, there the devil will build fortifications around him and besiege him with a vast army of sins to invade that soul, until it is utterly destroyed.  That person will think that he is safe upon the foundation of his good works.  Yet those works will be cast down, so that what was thought to be a strong wall will have not one stone left upon another. 

But for you, Christ has come.  He has visited you with His grace and His Spirit.  He has poured out His forgiveness upon you and soothed your soul with the medicine of salvation.  So God has done all things for you.  Nothing is left.  All is accomplished.  Rest secure in Him and in the sufferings and death of His Son for you. Amen.

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The Ninth Sunday after Trinity - August 21, 2011

The Church Season of Trinity

The Ninth Sunday after Trinity, One Year Series
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (August 21, 2011)

Readings:   
    Psalm 51:1-12
    2 Samuel 22:26-34
    1 Corinthians 10:6-13
    Luke 16:1-13

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

The text for today is as recorded in the New Testament Lesson from 16th chapter of St. Luke, especially the following verse:

Luke 16:1-13 (NIV)

1 Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’ 3 “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— 4 I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’ 5 “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 “‘Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied. “The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.’ 7 “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’ “‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied. “He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’ 8 “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. 10 “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? 13 “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

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

Christ our Lord speaks of the money and goods of this world as "unrighteous mammon."  We should not misunderstand what He is saying.  He does not mean that the physical blessings we have are somehow evil in themselves.  Even money itself is not the root of all evil.  Rather, it is love of money that is the root of all evil.  In themselves, each creation of God is a good gift from His loving hand. Yet Christ speaks of them as unrighteous mammon because they belong to this unrighteous world.  They are only temporary blessings, as opposed to the eternal blessings in the world to come.

Since they are temporary, do not get too attached to them.  Do not hold onto them.  Spend them freely and generously.  You are not owners, but only stewards of God's gifts, and must give account for your stewardship. So we rightly examine ourselves.  Are we giving generously, as God has generously given to us?  Or are we too often selfish and self-centered?  I do not only speak of giving to the Church, although that is indeed a command from God.  But in many other ways we are to think of our vocation and remember how God wants us to give of our substance to others.  If we are husbands, then our substance is to be for our wife; if a father, then for our children; as citizens; and so forth. This does not mean that we must never use the blessings we receive for our own pleasure, as if any enjoyment in life were sinful.  Certainly not.  Yet we must be certain first and foremost to take care of those for whom God has given us responsibility.  In fact, to use blessings also for our own care and enjoyment helps to keep us healthy and happy, and therefore more able to care for others.  We should not feel guilty for the responsible use of God's blessings to us, since it is His intention that we take joy from His good creation.

Of course, we should never think that we are giving our money or property in order to earn eternal blessings.  We know that Christ alone gives us our heavenly reward.  It is so easy to slip into this mind-set.  If a person gives generously, then we might say, "Surely they are going to heaven!" Yet that is not necessarily the case. If we forget this, then we may get confused by the words of Christ in our Gospel, "They will receive you into an everlasting home."  This cannot mean that our works of charity earn us a place in Paradise.  It also does not mean that we will win people into the kingdom by the persuasion of our charity.  Our works earn salvation for neither us nor for our neighbor. Yet our works done in Christ will follow us.  On the Last Day, witnesses will rise up to praise us for the deeds of sanctification that the Spirit produced in us.  In so doing, they will not really be praising us, but praising God who created these works in us.

As the story of the sheep and goats shows, these are works done by believers to Christ Himself.  So in truth, it is God through Christ who receives us into eternal dwellings.  It is not as though we must convince a jury picked from among our peers.  There is only one Judge, and He is only pleased with His Son.  So all who are in Christ will enter eternal glory. But as we examine our lives according to our sinful flesh, we find that we have failed to be as charitable and generous as we should.  Our hearts have sometimes been stingy, no matter how loving we try to be.  Although we hold the example of Christ before us, yet we fail to live up to His perfection.  Too often we give grudgingly or bitterly or with thought of reward.

In truth, we are not worthy of the mercy of the Father.  But that is what mercy is - love given to the unworthy. So we see the perfect Giver only in God.  He always spends generously.  He gave away His prized Treasure, which was His beloved, only-begotten Son.  Christ in turn spent Himself.  He gave His life away generously into death and has given to you more than could be imagined. He has canceled all your debts.  You owed to God an eternity of slavery because you could not pay back the debt for your sins.  Yet Christ has written down in God's book that you are free of all debt.  You are paid in full by the Blood of your Savior.

When we have failed to give freely, He gave with the freedom of pure grace.  His generosity has covered up the selfish fruits of our flesh.  His Blood has covered and erased our lack of charity. Now He has given eternal goods to you that are not bound by this temporary world of unrighteousness.  No, His blessings do not fade or rust.  He has given a new heaven and a new earth.  He has given physical blessings that you have not seen yet - perfect food and drink, perfect life and health and body, and a perfect home in which to enjoy His blessings.

You cannot even understand how great the blessings are you are to receive.  But consider this: that your reward was earned by the sufferings and death of Christ.  Since that price is infinite, then your reward is also of infinite value.  Therefore the glory of the resurrection that awaits you will far exceed all expectations. This Christ has earned for you, by the Father's free gift of mercy.  For this is the charity of God, that He has freely given to us poor beggars all that we could ever need, and far more.

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