Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 5

Jeremiah 16:14-21  +  1 Peter 3:8-15  +  Luke 5:1-11

Since it’s part of today’s Gospel, let’s talk a little bit about vocation this morning. It’s a very practical doctrine that the Lutheran Church has always emphasized as the thing that defines the Christian life on earth. What are you here for? What are you supposed to do? How are you to serve God? How are you to serve your neighbor? The answers to those questions are all to be found, at least in general, in a person’s various vocations.

A vocation is literally a “calling,” the roles you’ve been given to play in this life. Father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, hearer of God’s Word, preacher of God’s Word, student, teacher, subject, citizen, ruler, neighbor, employer, employee, and every godly occupation that exists for the good of society. These are all vocations. A person will have several of them all at once, and they will change throughout a person’s life.

Today in our Gospel we encounter three of Jesus’ early disciples dutifully fulfilling their vocation as fishermen. In addition to the ordinary usefulness of their vocation—providing food for their community, a glorious, God-pleasing thing—Jesus found another use for their vocation in today’s Gospel. They had spent the night working hard at their task (without anything to show for it, either). They were on the shore, mending their nets—a menial task, but an important one that was faithful to their vocation. Then along comes Jesus, who meets them in the course of carrying out their vocation and turns it into a tool, an opportunity for extending His kingdom. The point in today’s Gospel is that God uses Christians in their vocations, not only to preserve and to prosper society, but also to spread His Gospel. Vocation is the boat from which the Gospel-net is let down.

Peter, James and John already knew Jesus. They had already become part-time disciples of Jesus, Christians, if you will. They had been called by the Gospel to believe in Jesus, placing them at once in the vocation of hearers of the Word, as all of us are, too.

As we said, they already had the vocation of fisherman. How did they come by that vocation? There was no miraculous sign telling them as children that they should become fishermen someday. It happened “naturally,” so to speak. They grew up near the Sea of Galilee. Zebedee, the father of James and John was a fisherman. Simon Peter’s father was likely also a fisherman. So it wasn’t a natural career choice for them. And yet God was behind the scenes, governing things. He had a plan for these men and their vocation that they couldn’t have known anything about until Jesus came along.

As He found them on shore, mending their nets, He got into Simon’s boat and asked him to put out a little bit from shore. And there Jesus stood in Peter’s boat, preaching to the crowds along the shoreline, teaching them about God, about their sin and God’s free favor, calling them by the Gospel to believe. At this point, the fishermen, too, were simple hearers of the Word; they weren’t the ones doing the preaching. They simply offered their vocation to Jesus, to use as He pleased. Their boat became His pulpit.

But when He finished preaching to the crowds, He wasn’t done using their vocation yet. He had more lessons for them, and also for us.

He said to Simon, Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

Now, according to their vocation, they knew that this didn’t make any sense. This wasn’t the time for fishing, especially after a whole night of catching nothing. And yet Peter was willing to have his vocation guided by Jesus. So they let down their nets, and you know what happened. They caught a lot of fish, so many that two fishing boats started to sink for their weight.

Simon knew, according to his vocation, that this was no ordinary catch. Jesus had guided the fish through the water and the boat through the sea and the fish into the net for this miraculous catch of fish, teaching them their first lesson out on the water: Jesus is the Lord of creation. He rules over the earth and guides and governs the events of history to carry out His own good purposes.

And that knowledge brought Simon Peter to his knees in terror. You might think it would be “cool” to stand in front of Jesus and watch Him perform a miracle like this, but Simon, who was there to see it, knew better. He fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” Now, Simon wasn’t a murderer or a drunkard or a thief. And if he compared himself to other people, he would be counted as a good and decent man. But when he compared himself to the Lord of creation, standing there in his boat, he knew the truth, as the Psalm declares: If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Answer: no one. Our track record of iniquities, sins, is long. It includes the selfish deeds, the harsh words, the self-centered thoughts. It includes laziness and being slow to carry out the responsibilities of your many vocations, because those vocations were given to you by God to serve Him and your neighbor tirelessly, not to serve your own desires and cravings. So Simon was right to acknowledge his sinfulness before God’s holy Law. He can’t stand before the Lord of creation, if he’s being judged by his deeds.

But the second lesson Jesus taught out there on the water was all-important. Instead of departing from Simon, as Simon begged Him to do, Jesus revealed His grace: Do not be afraid. That’s a lesson in God’s mercy toward sinners. He promises mercy and forgiveness, not because we’re worthy of it, but because of Jesus’ worthiness, Jesus’ life, Jesus’ suffering and death. The same Gospel that Jesus had proclaimed in general to the crowds on the shore He now applied personally to Simon, right there in the boat.

And then a final lesson was taught that day: From now on you will catch men. That was a special call Jesus gave to Peter, James and John. When they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all and followed Him. In other words, Jesus had called them at this point to leave behind their vocation as fishermen in order to become fishermen of another kind, “fishers” or “catchers of men.” This was the call into the Office of the Holy Ministry, the vocation of preacher, which, in certain ways, is like the vocation of fisherman.

The preacher, at Jesus’ bidding, goes out into the world and lets down the net of the Gospel. He doesn’t set out bait for people. He doesn’t lure them in. He doesn’t try to sell salvation to them. He simply lets down the net, the promise: God is gracious for Christ’s sake. God offers forgiveness to sinners and a new life and an eternal inheritance, freely, because of Jesus. Believe the good news! And Jesus, working through His Holy Spirit, gathers men from all nations into that net, not an impressive number in each place, but when added up, through time and across the globe, it’s an enormous catch.

Those who hold the vocation of preacher—a divine call given at one time directly by God, and now, given through the call of the Church, even as our seminary graduate, Josiah, has now been called through the Church to serve the saints in Richmond, Missouri—those who hold this vocation are called to leave other jobs behind, although some of us, like St. Paul himself, also continue part-time in other jobs in order to help support themselves, in order to be less of a financial burden on the saints to whom they preach.

But there is a lesson here that applies to all: The kingdom of Christ is filled with people by the preaching of the Gospel, and each Christian has a part in that, according to his or her vocation.

Some are called to preach, but most are not. All are called to be hearers of the Word. And the hearers of the Word are called to support the preachers of the Word. That’s part of your vocation, to support preachers with your weekly attendance and with your regular offerings. And in the process, you yourselves are being served by God through the Means of Grace.

Not only that, but, as Peter writes in today’s Epistle, All of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this. That unity of mind, that compassion, that love and tenderheartedness and courtesy are things we are all called on to practice in every vocation we have. And God will use those works of love to serve His kingdom.

What else does Peter say to all Christians? Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.

No matter what your vocation is, you are called to sanctify or to set aside the Lord God in your hearts, and to be ready to give a defense of the faith. Parents do that with their children, and sometimes, children with their parents. Students do that with friends, and sometimes with teachers. Workers do that with coworkers, and sometimes with their employers. Neighbors do that with neighbors. Citizens with citizens, passing on the promise of the Gospel, inviting others to come and hear Jesus, to come and get to know Jesus through the preacher whom Jesus has sent.

In all these things, in all these ways, God gives His people opportunities to become His instruments for spreading His Gospel, for extending His kingdom. Your vocations are the boat from which the Gospel-nets are let down. May God grant you wisdom and understanding to see the opportunities He has placed all around you to spread the Gospel of Christ, and may He grant you courage and strength to use all your vocations in the service of His kingdom. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 3

1 Peter 5:6-11  +  Luke 15:1-10

How do you see yourself in relation to God? Worthy? Unworthy? Loved? Unloved? In favor? Out of favor? Somewhere in between? How you see yourself will also have an effect on how you see other people in their relation to God. But I would suggest to you that the more important question is, how does God see you? And, how does God see the people around you? What is God’s perspective?

That’s what Jesus reveals to us in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees saw themselves as high up there on God’s list of favorites, and they saw the tax collectors and sinners who were coming to Jesus to hear Him as being permanently erased from God’s list of favorites. So Jesus reveals to us the sinner from God’s perspective.

It says that all the tax collectors (at that time, notorious liars, thieves and cheaters of their fellow Jews) and the sinners (well-known prostitutes, adulterers, and otherwise immoral people) drew near to Jesus. Why? To hear Him. To hear Him say what? What was His message to them? That’s an important question. Was He telling them, “It’s all right to cheat and steal and have sex outside of marriage”? “It doesn’t matter”? “God accepts you just as you are”? No. Jesus acknowledged their sinfulness and their lostness. But He likely didn’t dwell on it for all that long, because they knew that part well enough already. These were Israelites, after all. They knew the Ten Commandments. What’s more, John the Baptist recently had done his job of pointing out the sinfulness of everyone in Israel, including the tax collectors and the sinners. Not only that, but Jewish society at that time was very clear about these things. Open, public sins like prostitution, adultery and fornication were recognized as evil things, and cheating and stealing from your neighbor were understood to be inexcusable wrongs. These tax collectors and sinners weren’t pretending to be righteous or justified in their lifestyles. They knew they had ruined things with God.

But then along comes Jesus, claiming to have been sent from God, announcing a message from God, showing the sinner from God’s perspective: God isn’t done with you. God still loves you. In fact, God loves all men. He wants all men to be saved. He wants all to be brought to repentance. He doesn’t expect you to earn His favor. In fact, He forbids you to try. No, God is willing to forgive you, to forgive everyone, freely, by grace, and I, Jesus, the Son of God, am the one for whose sake God the Father is willing to do it. That’s the message the tax collectors and the sinners were hearing from Jesus.

And after all that, all the Pharisees and scribes could do was to sneer at Jesus in disgust, This man receives sinners and eats with them! From their perspective, the sinners didn’t deserve to be forgiven. From their perspective, God should rejoice to be rid of them, and Jesus should spend His time with the worthy, praising them for how worthy they were, telling them how they, above other men, had indeed earned God’s favor.

So Jesus tells three parables (two of which we heard in our Gospel today) explaining lost things from God’s perspective. How does God see the sinner?

He knows and cares about each and every one. God sees the sinner as one of His sheep that has gone astray, that has left the flock and the pastures and the protection of its shepherd. It doesn’t matter how big or little, how public or private the sin is. As Isaiah says, All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way.

Hmm. “All we like sheep have gone astray.” “Each one.” That’s what God’s Word says. So in reality, there aren’t 99 “righteous” sheep who haven’t gone astray, who don’t need to repent. Everyone’s a sinner. Everyone needs to repent. The 99 in Jesus parable simply represent those who think they’re righteous, who think they’ve earned God’s favor, who think they don’t need to repent. Such were the Pharisees and scribes in our Gospel.

So what does the shepherd do? He leaves the 99 and goes after the one sinner, the sheep that has gone astray. And he doesn’t just go after him. Always keep Isaiah’s prophecy in view. It continues, we have turned, every one, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him—on the Christ! —the iniquity of us all. Not included in this parable but always in view in the Scriptures is the fact that Jesus didn’t just go looking for us all. He gave His life for us all. He bore the sins of us all and suffered for them all. The journey this Shepherd took to find His sheep wasn’t just difficult. It was deadly, as He knew it would be. But it was the only way to buy the sheep back from its wanderings, and it’s the only message that will bring the sheep to repentance. Your God cared about you, His sinful, rebellious sheep, enough to lay down His life for you. And now He sends out His Gospel to find you, to preach repentance and the remission of sins through faith in Christ Jesus.

And when He finds His sheep with the Gospel, when His sheep repents and believes the good news, He is like the shepherd who hefted the sheep onto his shoulders and rejoiced as he returned home and celebrated with all his friends and neighbors the success of his mission, the return of the one sheep to his fold. That’s how God sees the sinner. That’s God’s perspective.

The parable of the lost coin is similar to that of the lost sheep. It emphasizes the fact that there is value to the sinner in God’s eyes, and just as much value in the one who has gone lost as in those who haven’t (although all have, as we’ve already seen). The one silver coin that was lost is worth no more and no less than each of the other nine coins, whereas the Pharisees thought of themselves as far more valuable in God’s sight than the tax collectors and sinners. No, says Jesus. No one can earn a place of value in God’s sight. Everyone has already been assigned an equal value by God Himself. So when God finds a lost sinner and brings him or her to repentance, He sees all the effort He spent in searching as being worth it. He rejoices to get His coin back.

We should say a word here about what repentance is, if God is so joyful over the one sinner who repents. It’s neatly summarized for you on the back of your service folder today from our Augsburg Confession: Now, strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is, terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven. It comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror. Then good works are bound to follow, which are the fruit of repentance.

This is what God seeks in each and every human being. He sends out His terror-striking Word to all those who deny their sinfulness, like the Pharisees in our Gospel, and to all those who are indifferent or unconcerned about their sinfulness, so that both kinds of sinner are brought to shudder before God’s judgment seat. He also sends out His comforting Gospel of His willingness to forgive sins freely for Christ’s sake through faith to all those who are shuddering in terror. And when His Word has accomplished this goal, He forgives and justifies the believer and welcomes him and her into His home, where there is rejoicing every day over the one sinner who repents, even me, even you.

It’s not that we all stray from God’s house or go lost every time we sin; there are many sins that we commit in ignorance or in weakness that do not extinguish faith or drive out the Holy Spirit. But can you imagine a day going by in which you can honestly say, “I’m more worthy of God’s favor than those sinners over there. Today I need no repentance”? God forbid that you ever fall into such blindness and into such pride! See yourself from God’s perspective. Always sinful and undeserving of His favor and eternal life. And yet always desired by Him, always precious to Him, and daily urged by Him to live in contrition and repentance, recognizing and mourning your sins, and at the same time trusting in His gracious promise to forgive you freely for Christ’s sake, into whom you have been baptized. And then struggling against sin and striving, with God’s help, to sin no more.

This is what God wants for you. This is what God wants for everyone. And this is why God calls people not only to be baptized, but to join themselves to a Christian congregation where they can keep coming to Jesus, as the tax collectors and sinners did, to hear His Word and His instruction, to receive His absolution, and also to receive regularly the seal and pledge of His mercy and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Christ’s very body and blood.

From God’s perspective, all of you here were worth seeking and finding and bringing to repentance, and all of you, as you repent and as you live daily in repentance, are a cause of great joy and celebration in heaven. Now live your lives from God’s perspective, not your own, and see both yourselves and your neighbor as God sees you: as sinners with whom our God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—yearns to spend eternity, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 1

1 John 4:16-21  +  Luke 16:19-31

You see a rich man enjoying life. You see a poor man so sick and poor that he can’t work; he has to beg for his every meal. What does reason tell you about these two men? Reason concludes that God rewards the one whom He considers righteous. The rich man is prosperous. Therefore, God favors the rich man. God sends afflictions on the one whom He considers to be wicked. The poor man is afflicted. Therefore, God considers the poor man to be wicked. That’s the judgment of reason. Poverty and afflictions are a sign of God’s contempt. Riches and prosperity are a sign of God’s favor.

But reason’s reasoning is flawed, in several ways, but most of all, reason’s reasoning ignores this important truth: this earthly life is not the main venue for God’s rewards and punishments. The real reckoning is revealed in the next life.

That’s the point Jesus was driving home in His parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus. It’s not a simple warning for the rich to share with the poor, or else they’ll go to hell. Far from it! It’s a message to rich and poor. Don’t be deceived by appearances! Prosperity in this life is not necessarily a sign of God’s favor, and affliction in this life is not necessarily a sign of God’s contempt. Your lot in life here on earth, whether it lasts only a few months or whether it lasts a hundred plus years, is not all you get. It’s the proverbial drop in the bucket compared with the everlasting joys—or punishments—of the next life. Your lot in life here is not a reliable indicator of God’s favor or displeasure.

According to Jesus’ parable, the rich man was dressed in fine clothes and “fared sumptuously every day.” He received good things. Lazarus, on the other hand, spent his earthly life sick, poor and begging, yearning for the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. He received bad things.

But death took them both, as death always does, rich and poor, male and female, celebrities and nobodies, kings and peasants. And in this case, their situations were completely reversed. Poor Lazarus wasn’t poor anymore. His soul was at peace and he rested comfortably in God’s presence with all the saints, with all the righteous who had gone before him, most notably, Father Abraham. Here Lazarus received his good things. The rich man’s soul, on the other hand, was in torment and flame, far removed from God and His saints. As Lazarus had yearned for the rich man’s crumbs in this life, the rich man yearned for a drop of water from Lazarus in the next life. Here he received his bad things.

Now, knowing how things turned out, do you think Lazarus wished he could have gone back and traded places with the rich man? No, not for a second. His life on earth had been hard, but that was over now. He endured the hardships and made it through, and now there would never be any more pain or want to endure.

And knowing how things turned out, do you think the rich man in hell was able to look back at his wonderful life on earth and bask in the happy memories of good times past? A lot of people want to believe it will be that way. But no. The rich man realized too late that he had squandered his earthly life, and it was not worth it in the end. Hell is a worse punishment and torture than anyone on earth imagines it to be. We may speak metaphorically of people who are “going through hell” right now. But let me assure you, hell itself is still much, much worse, because for as much as it may seem like our present troubles have no end in sight, there will most certainly be an end to them. Not so with the torments of hell.

The rich man learned from Abraham that there was no possibility of him receiving any help from anyone or of eventually being able to cross over from Hades to Paradise. As the writer to the Hebrews says, it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. Or as Abraham put it, Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us. So his thoughts turned to his brothers, who were still alive on earth. What could be done for them? How could they avoid this place of torment? Maybe sending Lazarus back to them from the dead? No, says Abraham. They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’

Hear Moses and the prophets, the Bible, the Word of God. That’s what the rich man’s brothers needed. That’s what you need. That’s what everyone needs. To hear the Law of God recorded in the Holy Scriptures, and to let it have its effect. Moses is the one who reveals how sin entered the world through Adam, and that all men born of Adam are born in sin and subject to sin’s curse, which includes all manner of sickness, suffering, poverty, and finally death, all of which is not necessarily a direct punishment from God, but the general curse under which all sinners live in this cursed world. So the poverty and sickness of Lazarus wasn’t a good indicator at all of whether or not God accepted him.

As for the riches of the rich man, here’s what Moses had to say: You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD destroys before you, so you shall perish, because you would not be obedient to the voice of the LORD your God. God does give wealth to some people. But He also requires those people to hear His voice and to obey His commandments, and that, the rich man never found time to do. He was too busy enjoying his life to care about God, or to care about that beggar at his gates, even enough to send him the crumbs that fell from his table.

So hear Moses and the prophets as they reveal your sin. And then hear Moses and the prophets as they call you to repent and look to God for mercy, not because you deserve it, but because of Christ alone. As the Psalm says, O Israel, hope in the LORD; For with the LORD there is mercy, And with Him is abundant redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. That redemption is wrapped up in Christ, the Redeemer. Abraham knew that, one of the richest men alive at his time, and righteous in God’s sight, not because of his goodness, not because of his obedience, but through faith alone in God’s promise to forgive sins for the sake of the coming Christ. Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Whether you’re rich or poor, prosperous or afflicted, it’s this same message of sin, repentance, and God’s forgiveness through Christ that you all need to hear and believe, because what you’re suffering here or the life you’re enjoying here on earth will soon be over. And the good things here and the bad things here won’t matter at all anymore. The real reckoning will be revealed in the next life.

So for now, if you’re impoverished or sick or otherwise miserable in this life, take heart! Don’t despair, don’t give up, don’t imagine that God is displeased with you because of how difficult things are, or that you’re alone in your suffering. Lazarus appeared to have been abandoned by God, but in reality, God was there with him, ready to bear him home to Abraham’s bosom at just the right time. To endure hardship for Christ’s sake, without giving into despair, is a blessed thing, a precious good work that has God’s own seal of approval. It’s what Jesus did, after all.

We can make an application here to suicide. People commit suicide because their life is hard, in one way or another. It’s not what they want it to be. Even Christians can be tempted to end the suffering here, thinking that even hell itself must be better than what they’re suffering now, or that God will understand if they choose to cut their life short and will bring them safely into Paradise anyway. But those are both lies from the devil. Learn the lesson of Lazarus. Lazarus suffered until his last breath, when the Lord Himself, in His own time, chose finally to end his earthly suffering and send His angels to collect Lazarus’ soul.

So, if you’re suffering in this life, keep hearing God’s Word and receiving His Sacraments, and you have God’s promise to sustain you in faith by His Spirit, to help you persevere until the end, to enable you to bear the cross with patience, until the suffering is past and the comfort of the next life is revealed.

Or, maybe you don’t suffer, not really—I mean, everyone suffers some things in this sin-stricken world. Or maybe it’s just that you’re not suffering right now, but fare sumptuously every day, like the rich man did, or as I daresay most Americans do, including most of us. What will you do with this time when you have all you need and more? You could focus on enjoying life, like the rich man did, and maintaining this lifestyle, while ignoring both God and man. But then you would end up like the rich man in the parable, regretting it all in the end.

Instead, if you have a moment of comfort, a moment of peace, a moment of prosperity, a moment of leisure where you’re not scrambling just to survive, use it. Use this time wisely. Use it to hear God’s Word, His Law and His Gospel. Walk in the new obedience of the children of God. Walk with the Holy Spirit and set aside your passions, your desires, your selfish goals and devote your life—every moment—to God’s service within your own vocation. Turn your gaze outward. Turn toward your neighbor in need, and especially your brother in Christ, who sits at your gate, yearning for just a little help, for even the leftovers of the prosperity with which you have been entrusted.

Rich or poor, carefree or weighted down with cares, train your reason to submit to God’s Word and don’t assume God’s approval or disapproval based on how much or how little you have or you suffer in this life. God’s approval comes for Christ’s sake alone and through faith alone in Him. That reckoning takes place right here in this life, and it will most surely be revealed in the next. Amen.