Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 3

1 Peter 5:6-11  +  Luke 15:1-10

With all the…stuff…going on in the world, I’m so thankful we can come together here to focus on better things: the worship of God, not the worship of man; the word of God, not the word of man; the help of God, not the help of man. So let’s seek His help now and focus on the readings from today’s lectionary.

There is one natural state of mankind, one condition in which all people are born: lost. Lost and condemned. Lost and wretched. Lost and helpless. Part of that lostness involves impenitence, not being sorrowful over one’s sins against God and man, maybe not even acknowledging one’s sins against God and man. Being lost, being impenitent, means that a person is hostile to the true God, is already spiritually dead, and lives under God’s condemnation, and will most certainly perish eternally, if he or she remains lost.

There are two ways to be lost, two sides to impenitence, and we see both in today’s Gospel. First, we see the tax collectors (brazen thieves and traitors to their people!) and sinners (well-known, public scoundrels and sex workers). They’re lost. They’re impenitent. They indulge their sinful passions. They willfully participate in all kinds of sins, and they have no desire to stop. At least, not until they hear Jesus. These tax collectors and sinners in our Gospel were coming near to hear Jesus, and He was happy to have them come.

Second, we see the other lost group. In the Gospel they’re called Pharisees and scribes. These are the self-righteous people, often self-righteous religious people. They’re lost, too. They’re impenitent. They don’t believe God when He tells them that all have sinned and fall short of His glory. They don’t humble themselves before God, as Peter told us to do in today’s Epistle. Instead, they exalt themselves before God. They signal their own virtue far and wide and demonize those who don’t mimic their virtue. They don’t cry out for God’s mercy, they don’t appreciate His grace. In fact, they’re so arrogant and condescending that, when they see the tax collectors and sinners coming to Jesus, they get angry: The Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

Since we have two groups of lost people in our Gospel, it’s fitting that we also have two little parables, one for each group. The parables are similar in many ways and we wouldn’t want to press the distinction too far. But we might say that the parable of the lost sheep focuses on the lost tax collectors, while the parable of the lost coin focuses on the lost Pharisees. (And the parable that comes right after our Gospel, the parable of the lost son, deals with both.)

The tax collectors and sinners were like the one sheep out of a hundred that gets lost. It’s the nature of sheep to wander, to go astray, to get themselves into trouble, because while they’re out exploring and indulging their natural desires for food or water or just for wandering, they don’t give a thought to the reality that there are wolves out there, prowling around, looking for a lonely sheep to devour—not unlike the devil, who, Peter says, is like a roaring lion, prowling around looking for someone to devour. They don’t give a thought to their shepherd, whom they have left behind.

Now, it’s only one sheep out of a hundred, and finding it may be difficult for the shepherd or even dangerous. The loss seems rather insignificant. But what does the shepherd do? He leaves the 99 behind and goes searching for the one that was lost. He doesn’t care that he still has the 99. He cares about the one. And when he finds it, he hoists it up onto his shoulders and lovingly carries it back home, and then all he wants to do is celebrate with all his neighbors and friends. Rejoice with me! For I have found my sheep that was lost.

Such is the care and concern of God for every sinner who has gone astray, born in sin and pursuing sin gladly in their lives. He sent His Son Jesus into the world to suffer rejection, torture, and crucifixion as the all-atoning payment for their sins—for the sins of the world. And now the risen Lord Jesus sends out ministers in His Church to call sinners to repentance, to look for them and to find them with His Word, with His law and His Gospel. And the Holy Spirit works through the Law to bring them to see how lost they were, to change their attitude toward sin, so that they no longer love it, but come to hate it. And through the Gospel the same Holy Spirit leads them to flee in faith to Christ Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. And when they do, God and His angels and all the saints, in heaven and on earth, rejoice.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, were more like the one silver coin that the woman lost. Now, a sheep may be dirty and smelly and prone to wander. But a silver coin—a drachma in Greek—was worth a lot of money. And the woman who lost it didn’t have a hundred of them; she only had ten, so losing one was an even bigger deal than losing one sheep out of a hundred. And yet, for as much value as that coin may have, it’s absolutely worthless as long as it remains lost. It can’t purchase a single thing. It’s good for nothing.

But with the same care and concern as the shepherd had for his one lost sheep, the woman in the story lights a lamp and sweeps the house and searches until she finds her one lost coin. And with the same joy as the shepherd had over finding his lost sheep, she rejoices and calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me! For I have found the silver coin that I lost.

The Pharisees were outwardly good citizens, shiny and valuable, like the silver coin. But still lost, still impenitent, and therefore, useless before God. They trusted in themselves, not in God. They looked down on others, instead of loving them as God demands. They were generally mean and nasty people, because pride and arrogance always end up making a person mean and nasty. But God valued them just as much as He valued the tax collectors and sinners. He wanted to find them and to have them found just as much. The blood Jesus shed on the cross for the tax collectors was the same blood He shed for the Pharisees, and His joy when any of them repented was just as great.

Now, what does repentance look like for the tax collector and sinner? It looks like coming to hate their sin, all the ways that they have been rebelling against God’s Word. It looks like being afraid of the punishment they’ve earned from God. And then, it looks like trust in the Lord Jesus, who paid for those sins, and peace and comfort in the forgiveness of sins. And then, it looks like Baptism. And then, it looks like a life lived within God’s holy Church, a life of daily contrition and repentance, a life of prayer, a life of hearing and learning God’s Word and receiving the Holy Supper of Christ’s true body and blood, a life now devoted to fighting against one’s own sinful passions and desires, a life now devoted to loving God and to loving one’s neighbor.

What does repentance look life for the Pharisee? It looks like coming to see that, apart from faith in Christ, there is no one righteous. No one has virtue. It means realizing that you can give all the offerings you want, you can pray all you want, you can tear down as many statues as you want or change as many school names as you want or advocate for as many causes as you want. You’re still miserable and wretched. You’re still condemned by God. And you’re just as sinful as all the people you have come to despise. But then, repentance for the Pharisee looks the same as it did for the tax collector and sinner. It looks like trust in the Lord Jesus, who paid for those sins, and peace and comfort in the forgiveness of sins. And then, it looks like Baptism. And then, it looks like a life lived within God’s holy Church, a life of daily contrition and repentance, a life of prayer, a life of hearing and learning God’s Word and receiving Christ’s Holy Supper, a life now devoted to fighting against one’s own sinful passions and desires, a life now devoted to loving God and to loving one’s neighbor.

What a penitent life doesn’t look like is a return to the ninety-nine righteous persons who have no need of repentance. Jesus doesn’t pick you up, drop you off in His flock, and then leave you there safe and sound so that He can go look for someone else. You’re never safe and sound without Jesus, not for a day, not for a moment. There are no “righteous persons” who have no need of repentance in this life. And there is never a moment, thank God!, when Jesus walks away from those once-lost persons whom He has found.

No, repentance looks like riding on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd all the way home. It looks like a never-ending celebration with Him in His house—in His Church—as He rejoices over you now that you’ve been found, a celebration that continues forever after this short earthly life is over.

As Peter expressed in the Epistle, repentance also means you get to cast your cares upon the Lord, because He cares for you. It means being sober and diligent as you watch out daily for the many ways in which the devil tries to lead you back to impenitence. It means resisting him, and there’s hope in that, because it means the devil can be resisted. As a penitent child of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, you can stand against the devil. You don’t have to go along with him either into open sin or into self-righteousness. You don’t have to follow him into hatred or into despair. Peter reminds us that, for as much as we may feel alone in this world, suffering so many attacks from the devil, the world, and our flesh, we aren’t alone. It just feels that way. In reality, Peter says that the same sufferings are being brought upon your brothers in the world. But the God of all grace, who has called us to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, will restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen

Sermon for Trinity 2

1 John 3:13-18  +  Luke 14:16-24

Through the negative and the positive examples of the rich man and the poor man last week, the Holy Spirit guided us toward those two basic tenets of Christianity: faith and love. Today’s Epistle points especially to love once again, especially love “for our brothers.” But who are these brothers? Is it the “brotherhood” of all mankind, as we are all descended from one man and from one woman and are all united in one human race? Well, that brotherhood is real, and it’s important, but it’s not what St. John was referring to. No, the apostles in the New Testament and even Jesus Himself usually use the word “brothers” to refer to those who have been born again of water and the Spirit, to those who have been given the right to be called children of God, born into His family through faith in the One who became our human Brother—Jesus—in order to make us His spiritual brothers through adoption into God’s family, through Holy Baptism. St. John in the Epistle focuses on the love we Christians must show to one another as brothers in the same family, no matter which families we came from originally. The Gospel, on the other hand, focuses on how we have come together as a Christian family.

We have come together around a great supper to which God invited us all by grace. Today’s parable of the great supper is similar to another banquet parable Jesus told, recorded in Matthew 22, but that one emphasizes the things that went into God’s eternal election. Here the emphasis is on the grace of the invitation itself, and the tragic rejection of that grace by many. As with most of Jesus’ parables, it comes with both comfort and a warning. The comfort is in God’s gracious invitation to His supper, which goes out to all nations. The warning is in the refusal of many to come.

A certain man prepared a great supper. God has prepared a great supper, a friendly meal, a family meal around His own supper table. The supper is fellowship with God through Jesus the Christ. It’s peace with God, it’s reconciliation. When our race was plunged into sin by Adam and Eve, we were enemies of God, lost and condemned creatures. But He has given His Son into death for His enemies, so that we might be reconciled to Him through faith in the death of His Son as the atoning price that has been paid for all people of all nations. Christ was sent and the supper of reconciliation was prepared by grace alone, by God’s free, undeserved favor. No one deserved for God the Father to give His Son into death. It was His free gift to mankind, given for free, given because God loves to give free gifts to people who don’t deserve it.

The man invited many people to his supper. These many people were the Jews. Beginning with Abraham, then on to Isaac, then on to Jacob (that is, Israel), then on to all of Jacob’s descendants, the children of Israel. They were all told about this great supper God would prepare, about the Christ whom God would send to sacrifice Himself for their sins. As Paul wrote about the Jews in the book of Romans, To them belong the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship of God and the promises. To them were committed the oracles (or the sayings) of God.

For centuries, for nearly two millennia the children of Israel received those oracles and carried those oracles and preserved those oracles of God in the Old Testament Scriptures. They rebelled against the God who had told them about this supper He was preparing. They disregarded His commandments. They turned to false gods over and over again and to every form of wickedness and injustice imaginable. But the remnant, the leftover handful of believers, held onto God’s promise to prepare a supper for them, yet not only for them, but for the Gentiles, too.

Then the time finally came, when Christ was born of a woman, born under the Law to redeem those who were under the Law. The supper was ready. And John the Baptist went out to herald His arrival in Israel. Repent! John was sent out mainly to preach the Law, to expose the sins of the people of Israel to the people of Israel, so that they could realize how needy they were of the supper of reconciliation that God was about to provide. “You think you’re a good person? You’re not good enough. Repent! You know you’re bad? You aren’t wrong. But still there is hope! Repent!” Then Jesus came along and proclaimed the Gospel: The kingdom of God is at hand. Come to the supper! Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest! And so the Gospel was preached first to the Jews.

And you know how it went. The parable paints the sad picture for us even as it was happening. One after another, they all began to excuse themselves. “I bought some land, I bought some oxen, I just got married. I can’t come. Please excuse me.” It’s shocking, really. God had been preparing that supper—the giving of His own Son into the world to die for sinners—and had carried the people of Israel as a father, carried them on eagles’ wings. And now, as He offers them this free gift, they have better things to do. Most of the “good people” thought they were doing fine on their own. Most of the “bad people” wanted to keep being bad people.

The man who prepared the supper was angry, Jesus says. God was angry with the Jews who turned down His invitation and His supper. Now, there was also sadness in God when the Jews rejected His grace. We see that side of God as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. But there was not only sadness. There was also anger. Righteous anger. Controlled anger (not like the anger that takes people over and turns them into animals). But still anger, anger that caused Him to reject Israel and turn away from them, to “chop off those natural olive branches,” as Paul describes in Romans.

And yet they were chopped off only so that others could be brought in.

What does the master of the house say next to his servant, after becoming angry at the ones who refused to come to his supper? Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the city, and bring the poor, and the crippled, and the lame, and the blind in here. God was going to create a family, in spite of the rejection of the Jews, a family of believers that would not be made up of powerful people or prestigious people, but entirely of “poor and crippled” people, people who didn’t deserve the invitation, much less the supper itself. And that happened already with the prostitutes and tax collectors and public sinners whom Jesus called and they did repent. They did believe. They did receive the forgiveness of sins from Jesus. They did come to His supper of grace and became sons and daughters of God, even as they became true brothers and sisters of one another. The servant told his master, Lord, what you have commanded has been done.

And there is still room, the servant said. So the lord wanted more. Go out into the highways and hedges, and make them come in, so that my house may be filled. And so Jesus foretells what the next two thousand years (and counting) will be all about: sending His messengers out, to leave the confines of Israel and to take His invitation out into all the world, to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to keep all things that He has commanded them. The Gentiles—the pagans, the sexually immoral, the roughest people on the face of the earth—were to be invited to the supper, based not on their worthiness, but on God’s grace; based not on ethnicity, but on grace; based not on social or economic status, but on grace and they would come. Not all of them, but a good number. The Gentiles would be grafted into the olive tree as wild branches, made sons and daughters of God, made brothers and sisters of one another, no matter what their original tribe or race or culture may have been.

But as for the Jews who stubbornly resisted God’s Spirit and God’s grace, the verdict is pronounced at the end of the Gospel: For I say to you that none of those men who were invited will taste my supper. Now, if it’s just any fancy supper, that’s no big deal. You missed out on it. Oh well. Life goes on. But if you miss out on this supper, life does not go on. This is your one chance at life, eternal life, the life that is truly life, as Jesus once called it. This is your chance to be reconciled with God so that you have Him for a Father, so that you have Jesus for a Brother, so that you have Christians from around the world as your brothers and sisters instead of the alternative. The only alternative to having God as your Father, through faith in Christ, is having the devil as your father and hell as your eternal home.

So, as I said before, there is great comfort in this Gospel, because God’s grace extends to everyone in His gracious invitation, Come to My supper! Come to Jesus and be saved! But there is also a grave warning, which the writer to the Hebrews captured in chapter 3: Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ” Beware, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.

The Gospel invitation goes out in every generation, and every generation must hear. If you hear these words in this sermon and determine that you have better things to do than to come to God’s supper of reconciliation in Christ, if you think it’s boring or irrelevant or a waste of time, think again. Before it’s too late. God wants His home filled with guests, filled by grace. But there will come a time when the invitation is withdrawn, and the house will be full, but you won’t be in it, if you turn away.

So here. Here is the invitation once more. You get to hear it! Others? Already others do not. The invitation has gone out to all nations, but most are not here, or anywhere where the Gospel is still being preached. But you’re here. You heard the invitation and were baptized; you came to the supper. You heard the invitation and have come to church, with your brothers and sisters here; you keep coming to the supper. You know you need to keep hearing the invitation here in this world so that you can remain at the supper by faith. And you also know that you have been given an actual Supper—the Lord’s Supper—as a means of “grace,” as a means of God, in His favor, keeping you present at the Lord’s great supper of reconciliation in Christ, even as Christ makes Himself present right here in His Supper, for you. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 1

1 John 4:16-21  +  Luke 16:19-31

We began the Trinity season last week seeing that the only solution for the problems of mankind is found in the new birth into God’s kingdom that is worked by the blessed Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives new birth through water and the Word. He creates Christians. He creates new people, with new attitudes, thoughts, perspectives, and desires.

Now what? Today’s Gospel about the rich man and poor Lazarus is a fitting continuation to last week’s Gospel. How does the Spirit teach and guide the New Man to live? Very simply He emphasizes two things: faith and love. Both are taught positively in our Gospel through the example of Lazarus; and both are taught negatively in the example of the rich man. But it could have easily been the other way around. So no matter where you fall on the economic spectrum, learn the Gospel’s lesson today about faith and love in the rich and poor.

Consider first the faith of Lazarus. Now, we aren’t told much about Lazarus. The fact that we’re told his name at all (and not the rich man’s name) says something. This man mattered to God. Everyone “matters,” of course, and God knows everyone’s name. But this man’s name was special to God as a son’s name is precious to his father. His life mattered.

How can you tell that Lazarus’ life mattered to God? Not by looking at external things. There are two ways. First—and this is always the main way to know what God thinks and what God wills—you can tell that Lazarus’ life mattered because the Holy Scriptures said that it mattered, and God does not lie. Where do they say that his life mattered? Let’s focus on just one verse from Genesis 17, where God ratified His covenant with Abraham, sealed with the sign of circumcision, God said, And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. There’s a reason why Jesus says that Lazarus was carried by the angels to “Abraham’s bosom.” Because he was a son of Abraham, a Jew, living in Israel, circumcised on the eighth day like all baby boys in Israel. That brought him into the covenant God made with Abraham two millennia earlier, including all the promises God made to Abraham’s descendants to love them, to be their God, and to save them through faith in the coming Christ.

Second, you can tell that Lazarus mattered to God because of what happened to him after he died. That’s not something we can usually know about someone with this degree of certainty, but here Jesus reveals it. Lazarus was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. Not only had Lazarus been circumcised externally, but he also persevered in faith until the end, even through all the earthly trials and scarcity he had to endure. How do we know he held onto faith in God? Because it is by faith alone that anyone enters the kingdom of God. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. The righteous will live by faith, Scripture says. Faith united Lazarus to Christ, and whether or not Lazarus had heard about Jesus as the Christ, he clearly had faith in God’s promise to send the Christ as the One who would make atonement for the sins of all. Faith in Christ, the true Seed of Abraham, made Lazarus a spiritual descendant of Abraham, who had a faith like Abraham’s. Faith made Lazarus a precious, adopted child of God.

But you couldn’t tell that from Lazarus’ circumstances, could you? He was poor, and not just poor, but unemployed, with no money at all, a beggar, and a sick beggar on top of it, full of sores. And as we consider the fact that God never rescued him during his earthly life from that miserable lot in life, we learn an important lesson about God: He can care very much about a person, without giving that person a comfortable life on earth. We all live in a world that remains under His curse because of sin, which means there will always be inequality among people, there will always be suffering, there will always be death, and it isn’t necessarily the fault of anyone except for the devil, except for the common fault we all bear of being sinners, who must live out our earthly life in a world that has been justly cursed by God.

Now, Lazarus could have grown bitter about his miserable lot in life. He could have cursed God for it, could have blamed God for it, could have blamed the rich man for it or resented the rich man for it, could have tried to steal from the rich man or bring him harm. But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, even as he longed for a better life, longed to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table, he avoided or at least fought against the deadly sins of covetousness and bitterness and hatred. He persevered in faith toward God and in love toward his neighbor, the rich man.

And in the end, he died, as all people eventually die, both the rich and the poor, the hungry and the well-fed, the chronically ill and the generally healthy. All die. So did he. But then all the sorrow and suffering of this relatively short life was over, and the peace and love and comfort of Paradise began for Lazarus, where Abraham says that he is comforted. And that’s a comfort and joy and peace that never ends, where all the momentary sufferings here are replaced with everlasting happiness. As Paul wrote to the Romans, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

So much for the poor man’s faith and love and end result. Now let’s look at the unnamed rich man.

The rich man in the Gospel did not have faith. And that is also clearly shown in two ways. First, by where he ended up when he died, being tormented in the flames of hell. That is and will be the fate of everyone, rich or poor, who does not flee for refuge to the cross of Christ, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

But the rich man’s unbelief is also clear from his own words to Abraham, spoken from amidst the flames. What is his cry? Does he say, “O God, I trusted in you! Why am I suffering here?” No. He doesn’t even try to pray to God. He prays to Abraham, and not for forgiveness—it’s too late to pray for forgiveness after this life—but just for a little comfort from Lazarus, for a few drops of cool water to lessen the torment. And later, when he shows some concern for his brothers who are still on earth and Abraham says that Moses and the Prophets are all they need, he shows his disregard for the Word of God. “No, they won’t listen to those outdated, dull, irrelevant words. But if someone were to go to them from the dead, they would repent.” What a horrible belief! “The Word of God is worthless for saving sinners. Only impressive miracles will work!” Of course, Abraham upholds and praises the Word of God instead. If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, then they will not be persuaded, even if someone were to rise from the dead. And so the rich man’s lack of faith is exposed.

His lack of love during his earthly life also reveals his lack of faith. We have to be careful there, because we never know anyone’s complete story, or the motivations of their heart, or the reasons behind their actions. But here we’re safe to make that judgment because of all that’s revealed in the rest of the account. If the rich man had had faith, if he had known the love of God, he would not have thoroughly ignored the beggar who lay right there at his gate. While he lived luxuriously every day—not very different from how you and I live every day in America—He offered no comfort for Lazarus at all, his fellow countryman, his fellow Jew, his fellow church member, his neighbor in every sense of the word. Remember, your neighbor is the person “next to” you, the one whom God has placed in your path to help. That doesn’t include everyone on earth. You’re in no position to help everyone or even to care about everyone on earth in a meaningful way. The rich  man could not have been expected to help every poor beggar in Israel. But this one was unquestionably his neighbor. Yet he showed no concern for Lazarus whatsoever, not even having one of his servants carry the crumbs from his table out to the poor man at his gate. As John said in today’s Epistle, If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar. For whoever does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? You don’t have to passionately hate your brother in order to hate your brother. Failing to show love to him is a form of hating him, as God judges things.

Now, it could have easily gone differently for the rich man; he had God’s Word. He had the Spirit through the Word calling him to faith and then to love. But being well off and not having to face many earthly struggles led him away from God and away from caring about his neighbor, as being well off often does. In the same way, it could have gone differently for the poor man; he could have grown bitter about his circumstances and fallen away from faith and from love. That often happens, too, among people who face many earthly struggles.

So learn from these two men in our Gospel. Learn positively from the poor man; learn negatively from the rich man. Learn to hear Moses and the Prophets, and the Apostles, too. Learn to recognize where you have fallen short in faith or love and repent daily, no matter what your position in life. Learn to turn to Christ for forgiveness that is full and free. And then learn to watch out for the temptations that are common to the different stations in life, so that, whether rich or poor or somewhere in between, you may continue to look away from yourself, looking instead to Christ Jesus in faith, and looking toward your neighbor in love. Amen.