Instructions in mercy for those subjected to hope

Posted on July 9, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
Sermon (audio)
Download Sermon

Service(video)
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/224881192 w=540&h=360]
Download Service Download Bulletin

Sermon for Trinity 4

Romans 8:18-23  +  Luke 6:36-42

In our Gospel, we are given some instructions by Jesus, including one of the most well-known instructions in the Bible: Judge not, and you shall not be judged. It’s well-known, but not well-applied by most, because before you can practice the words of Jesus in the first part of this text, you have to practice the words of Jesus in the second part, and most people never do that. So we’re going to begin today with the second part of our Gospel

And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye.

When Jesus says to judge not, condemn not, forgive and give generously, your natural reaction may be to think of examples of people you know who do judge, who do condemn, who do not forgive, or give. But, Jesus says, your first reaction should be to check your own eyes for planks. Otherwise, you’re just a hypocrite, a pretender, pretending to help someone else with a problem that you haven’t yet addressed in yourself, a problem that’s far worse than the little problem your brother has.

Jesus knows your sinful flesh better than you do. He knows that you are prone to judge when you have no business judging, to condemn when you have no business condemning. He knows that you are, by nature, inclined not to forgive the ones who have sinned against you, even if they ask for your forgiveness, and He knows that you are not given to giving freely and generously. It’s easy to find faults in other people when it comes to judging, condemning, forgiving and giving, but you’re a fool even to attempt it until you first deal with yourself.

And you deal with yourself by addressing any plank of impenitence, any plank of carnal security that will forever keep you from seeing the right path both for yourself and others.

The call to repent first goes out to people as unbelievers, as those who are outside the kingdom of God, still dead in sins and trespasses. Jesus doesn’t try to get unbelievers to live a more righteous life. He doesn’t tell unbelievers to be merciful. He’s talking to believers, to His disciples in our text when He says, “Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” He’s speaking to those who have been made sons of God through faith in Christ. To the unbeliever, He simply says, “Repent! Be crushed under the weight of God’s holy law, because you lack true fear of God and true faith in God, and so nothing you do can be good in God’s sight! Be terrified by the condemnation you have earned for yourself with your judgmental, condemning, non-forgiving, stingy heart, and all the words and deeds that have flowed from it.”

Repent, and believe the good news! That God, the heavenly Father, has been merciful and is merciful, that He has given His Son to pay for every one of your sins, and even for your sinful, diseased heart itself. God has given His Son to be the Righteous Man by whose righteous deeds He will judge all who believe in Him. In other words, those who believe in Jesus will not be judged according to their deeds, but according to His. So be baptized, He says, and wash away your sins. Be baptized and so be clothed with Christ in a robe of righteousness, and be assured that, by faith in Him, you have already been adopted; you have God as your merciful Father in heaven.

That puts us within a certain framework, if you will, in a covenant-relationship with God. We Christians, we children of God, have been reborn into this framework, we now live between the bookends of Holy Baptism and the resurrection at the last day. We have not been given an easy life between those two bookends, as Paul points out in today’s Epistle. On the contrary, we have been given to struggle, to wrestle with our sinful flesh, to resist the devil and the world, to suffer, in many ways, and for many reasons. But what we have also been given in this life, between the bookends of Baptism and the resurrection, is forgiveness, and hope and a future. We, like the whole creation around us, have been subjected to hope.

To be subjected to hope means that the hardships and the suffering that we have now is not what we want. It’s hard. It’s sometimes painful. Because of the sin in the world, we are forced to live, not by sight, but by faith, in hope—hope that things will get much better, incomparably better, in the future, knowing that that future begins at the resurrection of the dead. For now, we suffer and struggle and fight against our sinful flesh, but always with the sure and certain hope that something better is coming when Jesus comes.

For now, during this age of hope, we have the Holy Spirit instructing us and teaching us, reproving us and correcting us, training us and comforting us, so that we have all the divine strength we need to keep facing this life between the bookends of Baptism and the resurrection.

Now, as those whose sight has been restored through repentance and faith in Christ, as those who have been subjected to the sure hope of eternal life, we can see Jesus’ commands in the Gospel in a new light.

Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. You have come to know the mercy of your Father in the person and in the words of Jesus. Now be like Him. As Paul says to the Ephesians, be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

You have work to do during this time between your Baptism and the resurrection. You’ve already received God’s mercy. You know the glory that awaits. Now it’s time to show mercy to your neighbor, as God has shown to you. Mercy begins in the heart. It’s sympathy, it’s care and compassion.

And that compassion that begins in the heart is shown outwardly in many ways, including the ways Jesus outlines for us. Judge not. Some people are in a position where it’s their vocation to sit in judgment over the behavior or the teachings of other people. Judges, magistrates, ministers, parents over their children, employers over their employees, teachers over their students. But most of the judging that goes on in the world is not the kind to which God has called people. It’s sinful people sinfully, mercilessly pretending to play God in the life of their neighbor. As those whom God has chosen, for the sake of Christ alone, not to judge, even though He could, why would we go around judging the people we encounter? Instead, think of them with mercy.

Condemn not. Again, as those who have been freed from our well-deserved condemnation by the mercy and grace of God, why would we go around condemning others? Mercifully pointing out how people are destroying themselves with their sins and then pointing them to Christ as the Savior? Yes! Mercilessly condemning? No!

And you shall not be judged. And you shall not be condemned. You see, there God holds out that hope again, an added incentive to withhold judgment on our neighbor when we have no business judging him or her, an added incentive to refrain from condemning people, because God holds out this hope of not being judged and not being condemned ourselves.

Forgive, and you will be forgiven. As Christians, we live daily in the forgiveness of sins. You received it again today in the absolution. It’s not as if we’re sitting here working hard at forgiving others in order to maybe someday earn God’s forgiveness for ourselves. But as the baptized children of God, we are given a charge by our Father, to forgive those who repent of their sins against us. He’s serious about it, and adds this slice of hope again, that God will respond in kind toward us, that God is pleased with us when we forgive others as He has forgiven us.

Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. God sees every gift His children give, the big and the small. He sees it and rejoices over it, and even promises to reward it. All that hope, all that incentive tacked onto the merciful generosity that should characterize every Christian, reborn in the image of our Father. St. Paul expressed the same thing in 2 Corinthians 9: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.

Remember hope, the hope that is yours in Christ Jesus during this life between the bookends. And may that hope enable you to be ever more merciful to your neighbor and to your brother, as your Father in heaven is merciful. As Jeremiah wrote in his Lamentations, Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” Amen.

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Instructions in mercy for those subjected to hope

A blessing from two lowly women

Posted on July 2, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
Sermon (audio)
Download Sermon

Service(video)
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/223998535 w=540&h=360]
Download Service Download Bulletin

Sermon for the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Isaiah 11:1-5  +  Luke 1:39-56

Let’s begin with what you already know: Dates don’t matter—the dates on which the Church has chosen to celebrate certain Biblical events, not for the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary that we celebrate today, not for the Annunciation, not for Christmas itself. Still, we use these dates as a discipline, so as to not forget to review regularly the things we should never forget, and to remember that the events recorded in Scripture are actual, historical events that took place in time and that were recorded for our benefit, as God’s chosen means of communicating His truth to us and of bringing the benefits of Christ to us until the end of the world.

So today, July 2nd, it’s the Visitation. The timing of this festival coincides with the 9th day after John’s birth (John the Baptist) according to the same ecclesiastical calendar, June 24th. John’s circumcision on the 8th day of his birth would be on July 1st, and since we’re told that Elizabeth was about six months pregnant when Mary first came to her, and that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months, she almost certainly stayed until John was born, circumcised and named, so July 2nd marks the time when Mary might have ended her visitation with Elizabeth and returned to Nazareth.

But the Gospel for today’s feast tells us, not about the end, but about the very beginning of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, about her arrival at Zacharias’ and Elizabeth’s house, when baby John was still in his mother’s womb. This encounter between these two lowly, godly women, was something the Holy Spirit chose to have recorded for us, so that through their words of blessing, we, too, might receive a blessing.

“Blessed are you among women!” Those were the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary when he informed her that God had chosen her to bear His Son by the miracle of a virgin-birth. Now Elizabeth echoes those words verbatim, as she has been “filled with the Holy Spirit.” “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” calling her the “mother of my Lord.” We can certainly go overboard in honoring Mary, like the Romanists tend to do. But there’s no denying the words of Gabriel or the Spirit-inspired words of Elizabeth. Mary was blessed among women. The only one in history whose womb gave human life to Him who is the Life. Her womb and her descended-from-King-David genes were the Holy Spirit’s raw material for crafting a human body and soul that was taken up into the Son of God, so that there is now one Christ who is both true God and true Man, God incarnate as a man to save men from their sins. Mary was given a vital, intimate role in that incarnation.

Even Elizabeth’s unborn child perceived that and leaped for joy in the presence of God-with-us. That was a confession of faith on the part of John, not just that the Lord is present, but that it’s a good thing, something to jump for joy over.

Why? Not for any earthly reason. Jesus wouldn’t make anything better here on earth, especially for John the Baptist. But now the Lord was present. Not just present as He is omnipresent, but finally present in human flesh. Not God-out-there-somewhere, but God-right-here-in-the-midst, to reveal God to us, to carry our sorrows, to receive our stripes, and to die our death, to make atonement for the sins of all men, and to grant eternal life to all who believe.

That God-right-here-in-the-midst is no longer gestating in Mary’s womb, or lying in a manger, or walking around the land of Israel, or hanging on a cross, or lying in a tomb. He’s sitting at the right hand of God, which means He’s ruling everywhere, and still right here in the midst in the preaching of the Gospel, in the waters of Baptism, and in the giving out of His true body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar.

Finally, Elizabeth said to Mary, Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord. Mary was blessed for believing the word of the Lord, unlike Elizabeth’s husband Zacharias who hadn’t believed Gabriel’s words. But Mary had believed, even though it was humanly impossible, and in that she was walking in the footsteps of her father Abraham, who believed the Lord, against hope, that he and Sarah would have a son in their old age. Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. Mary believed the Lord, and she, too, was blessed. These examples spur us on to faith, too, to trust in God’s amazing promises, to believe in the Word of God, even if no one around us believes, because He is faithful, and through faith in His promises, we will blessed, because faith is counted as righteousness in the sight of God.

Then we have the beautiful words of Mary, which have been sung in the Church ever since in the canticle called the Magnificat, “magnifies.” My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.

First, Mary gives thanks to God and rejoices in Him for what He has done specifically for her. For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. For He who is mighty has done great things for me, And holy is His name.

Mary knows the source of her happiness. It’s the Lord, God her Savior. We often point to this verse as inconsistent with Rome’s strange teaching of the Immaculate Conception. Mary doesn’t need a Savior if she wasn’t conceived in sin, like the rest of us. But we don’t need to rely on this verse alone. The teaching of original sin is very simple. Everyone born in the natural way, of man and woman, inherits the innate corruption of our nature. Mary, too. She was righteous in the eyes of God only by faith, and from that faith came a righteousness of life, obedience and love. But still, she was only righteous by faith, because God, her Savior, had pronounced her righteous through faith in Him and the promised Christ, who was now growing in her womb.

What “great things” had the Mighty One done for her? She hadn’t suddenly been made rich, nor would she ever be. Her life hadn’t gotten easier with this conception; it had gotten a good deal harder. The great things were all wrapped up in Christ. Through Him, Mary’s sins were forgiven. Through Him, Mary received grace upon grace. Through Him, Mary knew her God personally, and she knew that He cared for her and would never abandon her. And because of her Son, she also knew that she would be remembered fondly and blessed by all generations, not because she deserves our honor because of how great she ever was, but only because of Jesus, her Son.

Then Mary goes on to bless the Lord for how He treats all people. And His mercy is on those who fear Him From generation to generation. Mercy on those who fear Him, always and forever. What a promise! This is the special, personal, fatherly mercy for those whom God has brought to faith and who continue now in faith and the fear of God, who fear, not just any god, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who sent His Son into the womb of the blessed virgin. It’s not enough to believe in the Old Testament God without the New, or in the New Testament God as if He were different from the Old.

This is why we Christians cry out in our liturgy, Lord, have mercy! Because Mary was right. His mercy is on those who fear Him. We pray, Lord, have mercy! And He will! Always! From generation to generation, even when we don’t understand how His mercy works.

But His mercy, His tender care and His forgiveness are for those who fear Him, not for those who stubbornly resist Him. Mary goes on to show the great contrast in God’s treatment of the lowly who fear Him vs. the mighty who don’t.

He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, And exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, And the rich He has sent away empty.

How has He “scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts”? How has He “put down the mighty and sent the rich away empty”? By telling them the truth: All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You want to take pride in yourself? No human being has the right to do that. This is what got Jesus in such trouble with the Pharisees later. He didn’t let anyone be good in his own eyes. The tax collectors and sinners weren’t good, but they knew that, and so when Jesus told them that, they could only agree, and then thank Him for coming to save the ungodly. But the Pharisees, who thought they were good and better than the rest, the mighty, the rulers, the rich—the Word of God scattered them, it wouldn’t let them go on thinking so highly of themselves. God wouldn’t let any of them trust in their own works, in their own strength, or in their own riches. You’re all sinners, He said, and neither your works nor your strength nor your riches can help you. You’re lost!

God’s Law addresses us, too, when pride creeps in. You have no right to think so highly of yourself, no matter who you are! You have no right to compare yourself with other sinners. You will surely die, unless mercy steps in to save you who don’t deserve saving.

But mercy did step in, wrapped up in Christ Jesus. Despair of yourselves and trust in Him. He has mercy on those who fear Him. He has exalted the lowly and the poor and the despised. He has filled the hungry with good things. That’s what He does.

And He does it, as Mary confessed, out of faithfulness to His own promises—promises which He first made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—the fathers of the Israelite people—and to their seed forever. He promised those patriarchs that, through their Seed, all nations on earth would be blessed. That seed was Christ Himself, the Rod from the stem of Jesse, as Isaiah called Him, the Branch from Jesse’s roots, from the house of David, through David’s daughter Mary. This is why the nation of Israel has ever mattered in the world, and the only reason it should still matter, that God, in His faithfulness, gave His Son into the world through that chosen nation, according to His promises made to them long ago.

Of course, the same Isaiah to whose prophecies Mary had been alluding in her Magnificat prophesied about how God’s kingdom would extend through the virgin’s Son way beyond Israel, a light to lighten the Gentiles, to the creation of one great Church to fill the world, the New Israel that proclaims the God of the Old and New Testaments, the Church made up of sinners only, who recognize their need for mercy, and God’s merciful gift of the Savior who visited Elizabeth long ago, still in his mother’s womb, and in whose presence John the unborn child leapt for joy.

The same joy is for all the humble and lowly who look to Him for salvation. Learn that from Elizabeth’s words and from Mary’s, and receive the same blessing that those lowly women received. Amen.

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , | Comments Off on A blessing from two lowly women

Abiding in Christ – the heart of the Augsburg Confession

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
Sermon (audio)
Download Sermon

Service(video)
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/223054992 w=540&h=360]
Download Service Download Bulletin

Sermon for the Festival of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession

Romans 10:5-17  +  John 15:1-11

You’ve already confessed 19 articles—most of the Augsburg Confession—today, in English, which Dr. Christian Beyer read out loud, in German, in the presence of Emperor Charles V and the Lutheran princes 487 years ago today. There are two more articles in the main part, and seven others that deal with the corrections the Lutherans had made to certain abuses that Rome had introduced. For the sake of time and because Article XX provides a perfect climax for our celebration today, listen to just one more article, if you would.

ARTICLE XX—Faith and Good Works

Our churches are falsely accused of forbidding good works. For their publications on the Ten Commandments and other writings demonstrate that they have provided a useful account and admonition concerning true Christian estates and works, of which little was taught before now. Instead, people were driven in almost every sermon to childish, useless works, such as rosaries, the worship of saints, becoming monks, making pilgrimages, observing appointed fasts, holy days, brotherhoods, etc. Our counterparts no longer praise such useless works quite as highly as before; in addition, they have also now learned to speak about faith—which they never used to preach about at all. But now they teach that we do not become righteous before God by works alone; they add faith in Christ to it. “Faith and works make us righteous before God,” they say. This way of speaking may bring more comfort than teaching people to rely solely on works.

Now, since the teaching about faith—which is the chief part in the Christian life—has not been promoted (as must be admitted), but only the teaching of works has been preached in every place, this is the instruction about faith that has taken place among us:

First, that our works cannot reconcile us with God or gain favor with Him. Rather, this happens only through faith, if a person believes that our sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who alone is the Mediator to appease the Father. Whoever pretends to achieve this and to merit grace through works despises Christ and seeks his own way to God, contrary to the Gospel.

This teaching about faith is openly and clearly treated by Paul in many passages, especially in Eph. 2: “By grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not by works, so that no one should boast,” etc. It can be demonstrated from Augustine that no new understanding is being introduced in this matter. He diligently treats this subject and also teaches the same thing, that we obtain grace and become righteous before God through faith in Christ and not through works, as his entire book On the Spirit and the Letter proves.

Although this teaching is sorely despised by inexperienced people, it is found to be highly comforting and salutary to the poor, terrified consciences. For the conscience cannot find rest and peace through works, but only through faith, if it concludes for itself with certainty that it has a gracious God for Christ’s sake, as Paul also says in Romans 5: “Since we have been justified through faith, we have rest and peace with God.”

This comfort was not formerly promoted in sermons, but the poor consciences were driven to their own works and instructed in various kinds of works. Some were driven by their conscience into monasteries, with the hope of gaining favor there through the monastic life. Some invented other works with which to merit grace and make satisfaction for sins. Many of these learned from experience that peace was not attained by these things. Therefore, it became necessary to preach and diligently to promote this teaching about faith in Christ, so that it may be known that God’s grace is grasped only through faith, apart from merit.

People are also instructed that we are not referring here to the kind of faith that the demons and the wicked also have; they, too, believe the history—that Christ suffered and rose again from the dead. Rather, we are referring to true faith, which believes that we obtain grace and forgiveness of sins through Christ, and which now knows that it has a gracious God through Christ. Thus it knows God, calls upon Him and is not without God, as are the heathen. For the devil and the wicked do not believe this article—the forgiveness of sins. Therefore they are hostile to God, unable to call upon Him or hope for any good from Him. As noted above, this is how the Scripture speaks about faith, and does not call “faith” that knowledge that the demons and wicked men have. For this is what is taught about faith in Hebrews 11, that faith is not only to know the history, but to have confidence in God, to accept His promises. And Augustine also reminds us that we should understand the word “faith” in the Scriptures to mean confidence in God, that He is gracious to us, and not only to mean knowing the history as the demons also know it.

It is further taught that good works should and must be done—not that one should trust in them in order to merit grace by them, but they should be done for God’s sake and to His praise. Faith always grasps only grace and the forgiveness of sins. And since the Holy Spirit is given through faith, the heart is also thus inclined to do good works. For before this, when it is without the Holy Spirit, it is too weak. In addition, it is under the control of the devil, who drives the poor human nature to many sins, as we see in the philosophers, who undertook to live honorable, blameless lives, and yet they did not accomplish it, but fell into many great and manifest sins. So it goes with man, if, lacking true faith, he is without the Holy Spirit, and is governed only by his own human powers.

For this reason, the teaching about faith is not to be reproved as forbidding good works, but should rather be praised for teaching that good works are to be done, and for offering help by showing how a person may accomplish good works. For apart from faith and outside of Christ, human nature and abilities are far too weak to do good works, to call upon God, to endure suffering with patience, to love the neighbor, to carry out one’s assigned duties with diligence, to be obedient, to avoid evil desires. Such lofty and genuine works cannot be done without the help of Christ, as He Himself says in John 15: “Apart from Me you can do nothing.”

And so it’s fitting that Article XX ends with the words you heard today in the special Gospel appointed for this festival: I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit. Apart from Me you can do nothing.

That gets at the heart of the Lutheran Reformation and of the controversy with Rome and, really, with the Reformed and Anabaptists, too. It all boils down to abiding in Christ.

With Rome, the main question was, Where do faith and good works fit in, in relation to Christ? How do we poor sinners get Christ for a Savior? How do we obtain a gracious Father in heaven? Is it like Rome was saying, that faith and good works work together, so that gradually, eventually, hopefully at the end of a person’s life he will have done enough to deserve to have fellowship with Christ Jesus and to hear that blessed verdict of “righteous”—justified?

Or is it like the Lutherans were saying, that Christ gave Himself freely for all people on the cross and now gives Himself freely to all in the Gospel, that all might trust in Him and in that way have Him for a Savior, who even now is our Mediator before the Father, who even now stands between that believers and the accusations of the devil? As Jesus taught His disciples in the Gospel, good works come as a blessed result, as a product, as a “fruit” of a person already being joined to Jesus by faith. If a person is in Christ by faith, like a branch that’s in a vine, then he already has Christ and everything that Christ has, including righteousness before God. If a person has Christ by faith, then he is justified here and now, by that faith alone—by His very attachment to Christ, not by the good works that follow.

But, as the Lutherans have always said, as Jesus said in the Gospel, good works must necessarily follow faith and justification. Honoring God and His commandments, loving your neighbor—those aren’t optional things for the Christian. They’re necessary. But not to earn grace. Not to merit the forgiveness of sins. They’re necessary because God wants them done, and God is praised when they are done. And if we have faith in Christ, then that matters to us. If we have faith in Christ, then we have the power of His Holy Spirit to do the works that please God, as dear children obey their dear Father.

And where does faith come from and how is the Holy Spirit given? Those were the key questions that were in dispute between the Lutherans and the Anabaptists in 1530, and later, with the Reformed, and they remain a major point of contention still today. How does one come to be “in Christ,” and how is a person able to abide in Him?

The Anabaptists and Reformed said that God works directly on the human heart, that God doesn’t need any ministers or means of grace, that a minister’s forgiveness is not God’s forgiveness, that Baptism gives nothing, that the Lord’s Supper gives nothing but a bit of bread and wine.

But the Lutherans confessed that, according to Holy Scripture, God has chosen to work through the means of grace, through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, to convert sinners to faith in Christ, to give grace, to forgive sins, and to feed the branches with the very body and blood of the true Vine.

As I hope you can see from what you confessed today from the Augsburg Confession, everything that was confessed at Augsburg was for the purpose of being faithful to the Holy Scriptures, so that sinners can have confidence before God. So that sinners can have comfort. And ultimately, so that sinners can have Christ and abide in Christ and so have all the eternal benefits that He earned for us. May we, too, abide in Christ Jesus, our Lord, by faith! And may the words we have confessed today continue to be our confession, before God and the world! For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says…, “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. Amen.

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , | Comments Off on Abiding in Christ – the heart of the Augsburg Confession

You’re going to die. And then…

Posted on June 18, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
Sermon (audio)
Download Sermon

Service(video)
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/222110592 w=540&h=360]
Download Service Download Bulletin

Sermon for Trinity 1

1 John 4:16-21  +  Luke 16:19-31

Our Gospel gives us a few things we could talk about today. We could take about riches and poverty in general, the good and the bad of both. We could talk about the companionship of dogs, like the ones that licked Lazarus’ sores. We could talk about angels. We could talk about fatherhood on Father’s day, taking our cue from Father Abraham, who comforted his son Lazarus but who had no comfort at all for his other “son.”

But there is a main emphasis in this Gospel and we need to focus on it for now. The point? No matter what your earthly life was like, good or bad, pleasant, painful, easy, hard, or a great big rollercoaster running through it all, you’re going to die. Everyone dies. And then everyone goes either to heaven to be comforted or to hell to be tormented. And what you received in this life is not necessarily an indicator of what you will receive in the next.

Look at the two men in our Gospel, the rich man and poor Lazarus. They had some things in common. They lived side by side in the same city. Both of them, by birth, had Abraham for a father. Both were Israelites, which meant they were not just fellow countrymen, but also fellow church members in the Church of Israel, which, at that time, was the Church of the true God. And, of course, they had death in common. Neither poverty nor riches nor anything else could prevent them from receiving the “wages of sin.” Their death proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that both were sinners.

They had other things not in common. They had two very different lots in life, and Jesus doesn’t indicate whether either of them was responsible for what he had, either the rich man for his riches or the poor man for his poverty. Sometimes our actions can produce one or the other. But it is also true that God does not provide equal opportunities for everyone. The rich are not necessarily rich because they worked so hard, and the poor are not necessarily poor because they made so many mistakes in life. (We could talk more about that, but we have more pressing things to discuss.) As a result of their different situations, the two men had other things not in common. One was hungry, the other full. One was sickly, the other healthy. One longed and begged his way through this life, while the other enjoyed his life and all that he had.

And, of course, their souls were taken to two very different destinations after they died. One was taken to heaven, to Paradise, where he was forevermore to be comforted at Abraham’s side. The other went to hell, where he was in perpetual torment.

That reveals to us another difference between the two that may have been harder or even impossible to see in this life. One trusted in the Lord God during his earthly life; the other didn’t. Lazarus was not eternally saved by his poverty, nor was the rich man condemned for his luxury. Lazarus could have cursed God for his lot in life. He could have despaired of God’s help and grace and ended up in hell. And the rich man could have remained rich while still mourning over his sinfulness and putting his trust, not in his riches, but in God and His promise of a Messiah, in which case, he would have ended up in heaven. But their final state shows us what their earthly state was truly like: Lazarus a penitent believer, the rich man an impenitent unbeliever.

Now, in the afterlife, the roles are reversed. The rich man is now the one who is longing for what Lazarus has. He has now become the beggar. Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

But Abraham explains that it’s too late. Once a person reaches heaven or hell, there’s nothing more to be done. Those in hell can never enter heaven or receive any good thing from heaven, and those in heaven cannot help the souls in hell. After this life is over is not the time to repent and change one’s ways. After this life, it is what it is. No, this life is the time appointed for repentance. This life is the time appointed for compassion, for deeds of love and service to one’s neighbor.

The rich man in hell learns that hard lesson, too late for himself. He hopes there’s still time for his five brothers, who were still alive. So he pleads again, I beg you therefore, father, that you would send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ He thinks, maybe a dead man coming back to life can jar his brothers out of their apathy and impenitence and convince them that it’s what’s coming after this life that they need to think about. In modern terms, he’s looking for Lazarus to cry out to them, “Get off your iPad, your phone, your screen! Look up from your work, from your pleasure, from your family time, from your vacation, from your pain! There are more important things! You’ll be sorry if you keep living as you are! Repent now! Become different people now!”

Ah, but no. Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ For this life, Moses and the Prophets are assigned, the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. These are they that testify of Me, Jesus said. God the Holy Spirit has chosen to work only through the Word to convict, to call to repentance, to bring to repentance, to grant faith, and to engender works of love.

The point? Again, everyone dies. And then everyone goes either to heaven to be comforted forever or to hell to be tormented forever. Heaven has to be the goal. This life is the time appointed for repentance to life, to confess our sins, to look to Christ, to receive forgiveness. This life is also the time appointed for compassion, for deeds of love. After this life, it will be too late. And after this life, everyone will see that both the temporary suffering and the temporary pleasures of this life do not compare with what awaits, with either the rest or the torment.

And therefore, since this life must be lived with the goal #1 of reaching eternal life in heaven, and the only way to know Jesus as the Savior is by hearing God’s voice in the Holy Scriptures, the Scriptures have to be priority #1, because they are the tool necessary to accomplish goal #1.

That’s why the first step in becoming a Christian is hearing the Word of God and receiving the Sacrament of Holy baptism, and the first part of living as a Christian is the regular hearing of God’s Word and the reception of His Sacrament. Because the world invades your existence every day. It’s always there, with its pleasures or with its pains, always pulling at you, tugging at you, to live for yourself, or, to wallow in your sorrow. But the Word of God calls out to you, Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

And for those who make the excuse that they read Scripture once in a while on their own and so don’t need to gather for worship, what does Abraham say? They have Moses and the prophets; let them read them. No, let them hear them.

Hearing is where it begins, but not where it ends, of course. Hearing leads to believing: believing that you are a poor, miserable sinner; believing that God gave His Son to die for your sins and to be raised to life for your justification; believing that God forgives you your sins for the sake of Christ alone, that He has made you His child through holy Baptism, that He will continue to preserve you in faith through Word and Sacrament, and that He will hear your prayers and help you through this life into the next.

What if you’re more like Lazarus in this life—poor, suffering, in pain? That hearing of God’s Word will sustain you through it all and hold that better life before your eyes. What if you’re more like the rich man? That hearing will keep you mindful of your sinful condition, even if you are given to enjoy some nice things in this life, so that you don’t depend on them or get too attached to them. Hearing will keep your focus on Christ, who then points you to your neighbor, and especially your brother—your fellow church member and fellow Christian. What can I do for him or for her today?

Because believing always leads to love. Believing in Christ means a new life of obedience here in this world, a life of love. If it doesn’t, if love is not present, then faith is not present, either. As John said in the Epistle, we love God because He first loved us. And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

So hear God’s Word calling out to you today! Look up from your life, whatever kind of life it is, and remember that you’re going to die. But Jesus died so that your death may lead to heaven and not to hell. See your sin as your greatest problem, and Christ Jesus as the only cure! Know that heaven is guaranteed to you who believe in Him, for His sake alone and by faith alone, no matter what things look like here below. And, as you have opportunity, lift up your eyes to see the ones who have been laid at your gate, to love them and to do what you can to help them. That’s, very simply, the purpose of this life, not to become absorbed with yourself and your life in this world, but to know Christ, and to love like Christ, so that after you die, you may be carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. Amen.

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , | Comments Off on You’re going to die. And then…

Knowing and confessing the Trinity in Unity

Posted on June 11, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
Sermon (audio)
Download Sermon

Service(video)
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/221183515 w=540&h=360]
Download Service Download Bulletin

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Romans 11:33-36  +  John 3:1-15

On this festival of the Most Holy Trinity, we confess what every true Christian confesses: that the God who reveals Himself in the Holy Bible is the only true God and the only true Savior. He is the God of both the Old and the New Testaments, the one God who reveals Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God who is three Persons—three distinct Persons, not one Person. One God, not three separate Gods. And, as the Athanasian and the Nicene Creed emphasize, one of those Persons also became Man for us and for salvation. He was already God, and still is God, but He took on a human nature in order to suffer and die in the place of sinful human beings, so that now we have a blood relative in one of the Three Persons of God, so that His Father has become our Father, not just because He created us, but because He has also adopted us through faith in the Son, in the Holy Spirit’s ceremony of adoption called Holy Baptism.

It’s not about understanding God or comprehending God. It’s about knowing God as He has revealed Himself in the Person of His Son. Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” To know this God is to have eternal life. To not know Him is to remain in the darkness of sin and death.

So we do well to keep it simple. Trinitarian Theology isn’t hard, as long as we don’t try to cram the Trinity into our human reason. It’s simply knowing who God is, what He has done to save us, and how we receive that salvation from Him, all of which is treated in our Gospel from John chapter 3.

Nicodemus—a Pharisee, a ruler in Israel—came to Jesus at night. He was intrigued by Jesus, but still didn’t believe in Jesus as the Christ. He was still stuck in his Pharisee’s mentality: salvation by obeying the Law, salvation by good works, salvation by birthright. He rightly saw the signs and miracles Jesus did as a testimony from God that Jesus had come from God. But he still didn’t believe in Jesus as the Son of God, and so he still didn’t know God the Father, either.

Jesus told him the truth: Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. He explained it further: Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

The Pharisees were so proud of their birth, so proud of their heritage as Abraham’s children. They were so proud of the decent, religious, law-abiding citizens they had worked so hard to become. And Jesus tells Nicodemus, it’s all worthless. It’s all for nothing. You’ll never be good enough to see the kingdom of God, to escape death, to enter heaven. Unless you are given a new birth and become a new person, you will perish.

You see, it’s important to know who God is, but it’s really just as important to know who man is, to know who you are. Everyone, every person on earth has the same problem, the same incurable, natural, hereditary disease. One name for it is Original Sin. It has corrupted our flesh—and the soul within—beyond remedy. It’s the root cause of all unbelief and every false religion in the world. It’s at the heart of every homicide, every angry outburst, every lazy attitude, every feeling of jealousy, every act of self-service, every thought that the rest of the world really exists to serve “me.” You can’t fight it, you can’t correct it, you can’t beat it, you can’t get rid of it.

Your only hope, Jesus says, for seeing, for entering the kingdom of God, is a new birth.

How does that new birth take place? God’s Spirit has to do it—the Spirit of the Father, who, through the word of God, drives sinners to see how hopeless their condition is, how lost they are, how needy of salvation. He drives them to fear, to contrition—to mourn over their sins and over their ruin.

And then the same Spirit holds up before their eyes the image of a serpent on a pole. You remember that account, hopefully, from the book of Numbers. The Israelites were wandering through the wilderness, complaining again about God’s providence. So He sent venomous snakes into their camp. Many of them were bitten. So they were driven to fear, driven to contrition, to mourn over their sins and their ruin. And then God provided the miraculous cure: Moses was to take bronze, melt it and shape it into the form of a serpent, then put it up on a pole, so that all who were bitten could look up at it and be saved.

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. And so God the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of Christ, drives fearful, guilty sinners to look up and see God on the cross—God, the Son of God, given by God the Father as the sacrifice that atones for the world’s sins. By looking up at Him in faith, you are born again. You are recreated. You are forgiven. You have eternal life.

And to that rebirth and remission of sins, Jesus ties the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Through Word and water, water and the Spirit, you have a tangible seal of the promised rebirth and eternal life, something visible to put your faith in, because Baptism has God’s promise of forgiveness and salvation attached to it.

It’s no wonder, then, that, when Jesus instituted Holy Baptism after His resurrection, He tied it directly to the Holy Trinity: Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Because it’s this Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who brings about the salvation of sinners.

To confess the Holy Trinity as the only saving God and to confess faith in Him as the only way to be justified and saved from eternal condemnation comes with its own set of dangers, too. This week, we saw yet another example of the world’s hatred for this Christian confession when Bernie Sanders attacked a White House nominee because the nominee had once written that Muslims stand under God’s condemnation. “Do you believe people in the Muslim religion stand condemned?…What about Jews?” he asked. “Do they stand condemned too?… In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?” The nominee in question never directly answered the question, at least, not in his public testimony.

But you answered it today in the Athanasian Creed, and we must all continue to answer it, gladly and boldly, for ourselves and for the benefit of the world, both because it’s the truth, and because it’s only by hearing the truth that the sinners of this world can be brought to repentance and faith in Christ Jesus: “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” That catholic faith, very simply, is that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, and, specifically, that Jesus Christ is true God and true Man, who suffered, died, and rose again from the dead, that all who believe in Him, and only those who believe in Him, will be eternally saved. May that confession be always found in our hearts and on our lips! Amen.

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Knowing and confessing the Trinity in Unity