Unlimited forgiveness within the Church

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 22

Deuteronomy 7:9-11  +  Philippians 1:3-11  +  Matthew 18:23-35

As you probably remember, four months ago there was a terrible massacre at a church in South Carolina. That deranged young man, Dylann Roof, shot and killed nine people in cold blood. Immediately afterwards, after Roof was apprehended and put in jail, the members of that church came forward, one by one, including many of the family members of those who were shot, and they sent a message to Mr. Roof: “I forgive you.”

Many people, many Christians applauded those family members for that. It certainly took a lot of courage on their part. They should be commended for their lack of bitterness and hatred toward the shooter who killed their family members. But were they right to forgive him? Were they following Jesus’ instructions in today’s parable? Is that what Jesus is calling on His people to do—to pronounce forgiveness on our impenitent enemies?

In all the Scriptures, you will not find a single instruction to do that, nor a single example of any believer ever doing it. But didn’t Jesus forgive those who crucified Him? No, He prayed for them. “Father, forgive them!” Didn’t the first martyr, Stephen, forgive those who were stoning him to death? No, he prayed for them, “Father, forgive them!” It’s not the same thing.

God surely has guidance in His Word for how we are to treat or think about our enemies who hate us and sin against us. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.” Love, bless, do good, pray for those who intentionally do you wrong and are happy about it. But “to forgive someone” is different. Forgiveness, in the Biblical sense, doesn’t work that way. When Jesus specifically addresses the circumstances of when and whom you are to forgive, He says (Luke 17), If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.

I wanted to begin with that, because there’s plenty of instruction for us in this parable about forgiving our debtors. You can see how serious God is about our Christian duty to forgive our brother who sins against us, as we see the king’s anger toward the servant who refused to forgive his fellow servant. But it won’t help us at all if we have a twisted understanding of forgiveness. Jesus’ parable is all within the context of the Church. It’s directed toward Christians and how Christians are to treat, not all people in the world, but fellow Christians, our “brothers,” our “fellow servants” in God’s kingdom.

Now let’s take a look at the parable. The parable is told in response to Peter’s question: “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” So the parable’s main point, right from the beginning, is that there is no limit to how often we are to forgive our fellow Christians. As Jesus explains further in Luke 17, If your brother sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.

How can we possibly do that? Why should we do that? Consider how you have been treated by the King.

The King called in His servant to call the enormous debt owed by His servant: 10,000 talents, 10,000 years worth of wages. It’s an astronomical figure. The servant had no way of repaying the debt. So the King ordered that everything the man had should be sold and the man himself be sold into slavery, together with his family. That’s what the man rightfully deserved.

So also God comes in the preaching of the Law and says to each one, here is what you owe Me: perfect, devoted love for Me and for My Word, and perfect, sacrificial love for your neighbor. But you have not done it. You have managed to cram 10,000 years worth of sins into your short life. So you must suffer for all eternity, in payment of your enormous debt. That is what justice requires.

The servant stood convicted before the King. He acknowledged his debt and the King’s righteousness in his condemnation, but yet he begged for leniency, for time to repay.

So the sinner who takes God’s Law seriously, who takes it to heart, who is honest with himself and with God, stands convicted before God’s judgment. He begs for mercy. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. But he doesn’t foolishly ask for more time to pay. He doesn’t bargain with the Judge and make promises of repayment—promises of future obedience. God, be merciful to me, even though I don’t deserve it. That’s the penitent confession.

And see how merciful the King was with His servant! He forgave His servant his huge debt, right there, on the spot.

So, too, the Gospel proclaims forgiveness. Not, forgiveness if you pay. Not, forgiveness if you work off your debt. Not, forgiveness for a portion of your debt. No. Full and free forgiveness, based on nothing but God’s pity and mercy in Christ.

Now, this parable isn’t intended to give a full and complete picture of God’s forgiveness. It mentions neither the price of forgiveness, which is the obedience, suffering and death of Christ Jesus, nor the means of forgiveness, which is the ministry of Word and Sacraments and faith that lays hold of Christ in the Word and the sacrifice He made for sin. The parable isn’t intended to teach every aspect about how God forgives sinners. Its focus is on the enormous amount of debt that God has forgiven you for the sake of Christ and the corresponding fruit that God seeks from those who have been forgiven such a great debt by Him.

The fruit God seeks: that you should go forth, forgiven, set free, justified from your many sins, and from now on be generous with your fellow Christian whenever he sins against you, because no matter how many times he may sin against you, it will never come close to how many times you have sinned against God and been forgiven by Him.

But what often happens? See how the first servant treated his fellow servant in the parable. He went out and found his fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii, a few months wages, and took him by the throat and demanded payment. And his fellow servant begged for mercy and for time to repay, just as the first servant had done with the King. But now the first servant, unlike the King, refused to have mercy on his fellow servant, refused to forgive him his debt, and instead had him thrown into debtors’ prison.

Anyone can see how wrong that was. And the rest of their fellow servants did see it and reported it to the King, who was furious with that servant. You wicked servant!, He said. I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him.

Jesus applies this to His Christians: So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.

It’s not as if you were earning God’s forgiveness by forgiving your fellow Christian. Just as the King first forgave the huge debt of the first servant, so God has first forgiven you your huge debt in the waters of Holy Baptism. And He continues to forgive you your sins in the Absolution and in Holy Communion, not because of any past, present, or future works you have done or might yet do, but freely, for Christ’s sake.

But now Christ commands you to do this relatively small thing, to show mercy to your fellow Christian, to forgive your brother his trespasses against you. And, like the unforgiving servant, you will forfeit God’s forgiveness if you refuse to forgive your fellow servant who comes to you in repentance, because if you refuse to forgive, you show that you yourself have already fallen away from faith. You despise God and His forgiveness toward you.

So be very careful how you treat one another. You’re not free either to go around sinning against your brother in Christ or to go around holding a grudge or refusing to forgive your fellow Christian. If you’ve gotten angry with your fellow Christians, if you’ve harmed them in some way or spoken carelessly to them in a way that is unkind, take responsibility for it. Go and beg for mercy, like the servant did. When you have sinned against someone, offer a real apology.

Likewise, if your brother sins against you, rebuke him, but rebuke him humbly, with the goal, not of lashing out at him or giving him an earful or making yourself feel better, but with the goal of forgiving him. And when your rebuke works, or if your fellow servant comes to you on his own in repentance—your spouse, child, father, mother, sister, brother, fellow church member—you remember, God is the great Judge, not you. God has forgiven you more than you can imagine, more than you could ever repay. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dear children. Forgive your brother from the heart, no matter how often, no matter how great the offense. Even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. Amen.

 

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A shield of faith built by Christ

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 21

Hosea 13:14  +  Ephesians 6:10-17  +  John 4:46-54

Driving back from Ruidoso on Friday, we saw a billboard along Hwy. 70. It had nothing on it but a single word in big bold letters: BELIEVE. Amy and I both commented on it, what a huge waste of money it was to put up that billboard. Believe what? Believe whom? Believe in whom? Our emotions-based, me-centered culture seems to think that there is something noble or useful in the act of “believing,” holding a sincere belief, whatever that belief might be. It’s supposedly sacred. It’s supposedly life-changing. Bah.

It matters what you believe. It matters whom you believe. It matters in whom you believe, in whom you trust and for what.

God sets before us in the Gospel an exercise in believing, an exercise in faith, and it’s vitally urgent that we learn this lesson, because, of all the pieces of the armor of God that St. Paul described in today’s Epistle, he says, above all, take the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. If faith is to serve as a shield, as a protection against the deadly darts of the devil, then it had better be more than a generic believing in something. See how Jesus forms our faith in today’s Gospel, how He molds it and strengthens it and gives it focus.

The nobleman from Capernaum came to Jesus in faith. He believed that Jesus could and would heal his dying son, if only Jesus would come close enough to where his son was. That much faith he had, and it’s a lot more faith than many other people had. It was good that he believed in Jesus that far. Already his faith had a solid object. He didn’t just believe in something, or in some god of his own making. He believed in Jesus for the healing of his son, if Jesus could get close enough to his son.

So why does Jesus rebuke his faith? “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe.” Didn’t he already believe? Yes, but not yet as he should and as he needed to. His faith was feeble and weak. And, what’s more, Jesus’ words weren’t only directed at the nobleman. “You people,” he says. His words were meant for all those who heard Him that day, and also for us who hear Him in this Gospel today. It’s a common fault among us sinful human beings, that we tend to tie our faith to miracles and to signs and to feelings and to experiences.

What was the problem with the nobleman’s faith? There were two problems, actually, two weaknesses. First, faith—the faith that serves as a reliable shield against the darts of the devil—cannot cling to signs or to sight or to anything on the inside of you. Faith must cling only and entirely to the Word of God. Not what you think God would do or should do, not what you want God to do, but what God says He will do, that you must believe, no matter what your eyes tell you, no matter what your reason tells you.

Jesus addressed that flaw in the nobleman’s faith very directly. The nobleman pleaded with Jesus, Sir, come down before my child dies! Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your son lives.” Jesus refused to do what the man specifically requested—to go down with him to his house, and yet at the same time He gave the man all that he ever wanted, the promise of healing for his son. He gave him nothing to see, nothing to experience or feel. Only a word, a spoken promise. Your son lives.

And against all logic and human reason, it says that the nobleman believed Jesus. He took Him at His Word, without having to see a single thing, without having to feel anything or experience anything.

This is how God deals with faith. He exercises it. He works it. He stretches it, sometimes so thin you would think it had to break. But God knows what He’s doing. Faith is His Spirit’s creation, after all. So He knows what it can take and what it can’t. He knows what it needs to grow. Because faith has to grow. It has to increase so that it clings only to God’s Word. Otherwise, it will fail as a shield against the devil’s darts, because the devil is crafty. His lies are convincing. And only the Word of God can defeat him.

The second problem with the nobleman’s faith was this: he believed in Jesus to heal his son on this occasion. He believed in Jesus for earthly healing. But that’s all. Faith needs to go beyond trusting in God to fix an earthly problem for you. Yes, your earthly problems matter to God. Yes, He is concerned about your body and your life on earth, and He has promised to provide for you here on earth, until your days on earth come to an end. But if Jesus is your Helper only for this life, or even primarily for this life, then, as St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, you are to be pitied above all men. If you think your biggest, most urgent, most pressing problem in this life is sickness or pain or poverty, then you are living under an illusion. If you think that Jesus’ greatest work for you would be to extend your life or your family member’s life on this earth for a few more years, then you’re missing the whole point of His coming.

Jesus didn’t come to give you a fairytale life on earth, or to make your life on earth happier or longer. He came because you’re a sinner, born under God’s wrath and doomed to die. He came to succeed at keeping God’s Law where you have failed. He came to bear your sin and suffer the consequences of your sin. He came to reconcile you with God, to give you peace and hope and life after death.

As God promised through the prophet Hosea, I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O Death, I will be your plagues! O Grave, I will be your destruction! That! That is the Word of God to which faith must cling, God’s promise to forgive you your sins for the sake of Christ and to give you victory over death.

The nobleman finally got it. He believed Jesus’ word that his son would live, and so he went home, and his servants met him and told him that his son had recovered at the very time that Jesus said, “Your son lives.” Then it says, he himself believed, and his whole household. Believed what? He already believed Jesus’ word that his son would be healed. So what does he now believe? What does his whole household now believe? Now they believe in Jesus to be their Helper in every need, in every future crisis, in the face of sin, death, and the devil. They know Jesus to be their Savior, who will never disappoint them, who will never let them down, who will be their Advocate before the throne of God and a strong Refuge in every time of trouble.

In a world that is constantly changing and changing for the worse, where the people around you are floundering like drowning men at sea, searching for anything to hold onto, anything to believe, you have been thrown a lifeline, the one certain thing that will hold you up for time and for eternity: the living and enduring word of God, whose promises are all “yes” in Christ Jesus. You have His Word to you in your Baptism, promising you remission of sins. You have His Word to you in Holy Absolution, promising you continual remission of sins. You have His Word to you in the Sacrament of the Altar, promising you forgiveness and strength, communion with the Son of God, and a share in His resurrection and eternal life. Believe! And in believing, you have a reliable shield with which you will be able to quench all the deadly darts of the devil, a shield built by God’s Holy Spirit, a shield of faith that will never fail. Amen.

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Called and chosen to escape the darkness of this world

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 20

Isaiah 65:1-2  +  Ephesians 5:15-21  +  Matthew 22:1-14

There’s an awful lot of darkness in this world. The days are evil, St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians almost 2,000 years ago. And they haven’t gotten any less evil. If anything, the darkness around us is growing, thriving, consuming everything. There is violence in our world like there has never been, violence in general, violence toward Christians, violence toward innocent children in their mothers’ wombs, and so many people defending the violence. Wickedness in all its forms is praised and promoted, and truth and righteousness are rejected and attacked on all sides. Such darkness all around.

But you have been called out of darkness into the wonderful light of Christ. Not that you have been brought out of the world yet, but you have been made citizens of God’s nation, which is not America, but the Holy Christian/Catholic Church. You are now in the world, but not of the world. The darkness that is around you cannot touch you, cannot consume you, because God has called you into the well-lit wedding feast of His Son.

Many are called, of course. But few are chosen. What does that mean? What’s the difference between the called and the chosen? Between the called and the elect? You’ve heard of the doctrine of election. Elect and chosen are the same word in Greek. The doctrine of election is the Biblical teaching that God has chosen beforehand those who will finally spend eternity with Him in His kingdom of light. It’s a doctrine that can be confusing, but not if we stick with the simple explanation that Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel.

This parable of the wedding feast isn’t hard to understand at all. A King arranges a marriage for His Son. God the Father, in eternity, before the world’s foundation is laid, decrees that He will send His Son into the world and shed His blood to redeem fallen mankind from sin, death and the devil, and will unite His Son to a Bride, to the Holy Christian Church that He will purify by the washing with water through the Word, through Holy Baptism, as Paul writes to the Ephesians. Already in eternity, God the Father chose those who would be incorporated into the Bride of His Son.

Throughout the Old Testament, God spoke to people about this wedding and specifically invited the Jews, the people of Israel, to be ready for the coming of the Christ, so that, when He arrived, they could be the first to come and meet Him, to come to the wedding feast and be saved.

Then Christ came. The wedding was ready. And the word went out, from John the Baptist, from the apostles, from Jesus Himself. Word would keep going out after Jesus’ death and resurrection. All things are ready. Come to the feast! Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins! But those who were invited, the Jews especially, mostly refused to come, refused to be baptized and come to God through the reconciliation made by Christ. The King sent out other messengers, but still, the people mostly refused to come. Some were too busy or too uninterested to worry about the Word of Christ, while others got so angry at the messengers that they mistreated them and put them to death.

This is still the reaction most people have to the true Gospel. Either they’re uninterested in it, or they persecute it, because it calls their deeds evil and insists that they repent of their sins, acknowledge the God of the Bible as the only true God, and turn to Christ in humility, for forgiveness. It’s no secret how unbelievers have persecuted the Church, from the Old Testament Prophets to John the Baptist, to Jesus Himself, to His apostles, and down through the ages to the present time, as we continue to hear in the news. So it does us no good to worry about people rejecting the Gospel. It does us no good to wring our hands when the Gospel of Christ goes out and not many come into the Church. And it certainly does us no good to whine or complain or get angry when Christians are persecuted or killed. That’s the way it is in this dark world. That’s why we were called out of it in the first place to the wedding feast of Christ, that we may not perish with the unbelieving world. Let God get angry about it. He does, as Jesus says in the parable that the king was furious. Let God do something about it, as Jesus says in the parable that the king sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. But those armies are not Christians. They are the angel armies who will gather the wicked on the Last Day and throw them into the fires of hell. As for us, let us continue to simply be messengers of the truth.

Through the Gospel that has gone out into the world, through God’s servants who proclaim it, the King invites many more people. Go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding. Come to the feast! Come and dine with the King in His house! Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins! And many have come, including many of the least important people in the world. Weak, sick, poor, sinful, of every nation, tribe, language and people, the good and the bad. Whoever hears this Gospel of Christ is being called by the Holy Spirit to come into God’s kingdom. Because the worthiness for attendance at this feast does not come from the invited guests, but from the Bridegroom Himself. He offers His worthiness in the baptismal waters, to cover the guests with it as with a garment, so that they may attend the feast in the house of God. As St. Paul says to the Galatians, You who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

But there is a guest in the house when the king comes who is not dressed with the wedding garment. He has entered the house. He has entered the Church. He has been baptized. He calls himself a Christian. But he is not dressed with the garment of faith. He calls himself a Christian, but has no trust in Christ alone as the only God and Savior. He doesn’t believe what the Holy Spirit teaches about Christ in the Word of God. He may be able to hide that lack of faith from his fellow guests, but he can’t hide it from God, the King. God knows those who are His. And so, when God comes on the Last Day, that Christian-in-name-only is bound and cast outside into outer darkness together with all those who were once invited and refused to come.

Many are called, but few are chosen. The Jews boasted that they had been called. We are Abraham’s children, they cried. God has called us by name. And to be called by God into His kingdom is, indeed, a very great gift. No one can be saved without being called by the Gospel.

But hearing the Gospel does no one any good if they don’t combine the hearing with faith. The Holy Spirit is working through the Gospel to bring people to faith in Christ whenever the Gospel is preached, but many of those who hear stubbornly resist the Holy Spirit, as the Martyr Stephen accused the Jews of doing as they were about to stone him to death for daring to invite them to receive forgiveness through Christ. Not all who are called are chosen to enter eternal life, but only those who hear the Gospel and believe it and persevere in that faith until the end.

But when does this “choosing,” this “election” take place? We learn from the Scriptures that it took place before the world was made. The chosen, the elect, were chosen in Christ in eternity, chosen by God’s grace; called here in time through the Gospel; justified through faith in Christ; and persevere until the end wearing the garment of Christ’s righteousness by remaining in true faith in Christ until the arrival of the King on the Last Day. Or, if they fall away from faith for a time, which can certainly happen, they are called again by the Gospel, brought to repentance, and justified by faith.

So what do we learn for our correction and edification from this Gospel?

First, we learn that God’s invitation to come into His Church and His eternal kingdom does not depend at all on the worthiness of the guests, but only on God’s grace and the merits of Christ.

Second, we learn that God’s invitation to come into His Church and His eternal kingdom is always sincere. God truly wants all those who are invited to come, to believe in Christ, to receive forgiveness of sins, and to have eternal life. This is where Calvinists and the Reformed get it so terribly wrong. Calvinists teach that God does not truly desire that all people should be saved, and that the Holy Spirit does not intend the Gospel invitation for all those who hear it. But Christ teaches that the King eagerly desired that all the invited guests should come. So you can trust that when you hear the Gospel, when you are told to repent of your sins and flee to Christ for refuge, God intends that message for you to take to heart and believe.

Third, we learn that it’s man’s own fault when he turns down the Gospel invitation. It was entirely the fault of the invited guests when they refused to come or refused to wear the wedding garment. This, too, is against the Calvinists, who teach a “double predestination,” that God, in His sovereign will, made an absolute decree in eternity that some would be saved and some would be damned, that some would be created for heaven, while most people would be created for hell. But Jesus does not teach that anyone was chosen by God to be condemned. He says that “few are chosen,” referring to those who are chosen to eternal life. He doesn’t say that the rest were “chosen” for eternal death.

Fourth, we learn that it’s all God’s doing when people are saved. From the election of grace, to the sending of the Gospel invitation here in time, to the faith that is given as a gift by the Holy Spirit from the hearing of the Gospel, to the justification by faith, to the preservation of our faith through the Means of Grace, to our final glorification in heaven, it’s all from God.

And finally, we learn how urgent it is that we hear and take to heart the Gospel invitation, to make our calling and election sure, as St. Paul says. God doesn’t send us back into eternity to search to see if your name is written in Christ, the Book of Life. He sends you to this ministry of the Word, to Baptism and to the Holy Supper. Listen to His Word now that tells you of the goodness of Christ, His atoning sacrifice, His resurrection, and His will that all men should believe in Him to be saved. Those who are not baptized should not put it off any longer. Those who are baptized should use the means God has provided for our salvation. Hear the Word of God. Receive His Sacrament. Be steadfast in prayer, in godly living, in struggling against the flesh, and in bearing the cross patiently. God has provided and will continue to provide all that is necessary for your salvation. Take it as evidence of your election that God has called you through the Gospel into fellowship with His Son, and be assured that your faith and your salvation is no accident. It was planned by God in eternity. You were chosen in Christ from eternity, and neither Satan nor death nor any of the darkness of this world will be able to snatch you out of Christ’s hand. Amen.

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Take a rest from self-service

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 17

1 Samuel 2:1-10  +  Ephesians 4:1-6  +  Luke 14:1-11

Today is the Sabbath. But not because it’s Sunday. Today is the Sabbath, even for us New Testament Christians. Time to rest. Time to take a much-needed break. But a break from what? Rest from what? Rest for what? What was the purpose of the Old Testament Sabbath? What is the New Testament Sabbath? Our Gospel provides some answers to those questions.

Our Gospel took place on a Sabbath Day, possibly on a Friday evening after sunset, or, more likely, on a Saturday before sunset. Remember what the Old Testament Sabbath requirements were. First, it was not for all people on earth to observe. God said through Moses, “The Sabbath Day is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever.” Not a sign between God and all flesh or all people, but between God and Israel. Why? Because He had special things to teach Israel about the coming of Christ, until the coming of Christ. The Sabbath Day was from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, and the people of Israel were to do no work. They were to take the day completely off. Not to go out and play games. Not to go on a trip or a journey or to get some chores done around the house. But to rest. To let their servants and workers and animals also rest, and to gather with other Israelites in sacred assembly around the Word of God.

There was nothing wrong with having a meal together with friends and guests on the Sabbath Day, as we see in our Gospel, as long as the preparations for the meal were done ahead of time. But at this particular meal, the Pharisees who were there had an agenda. They were watching Jesus closely. What would He do on the Sabbath, this man who claims to be a teacher sent by God? Would He slip up? Would He break God’s commandment? Could they catch Him in some kind of sin and so try to prove to the people that He hadn’t come from God?

As we heard in the Gospel, there was a man present at that Pharisee’s house who had dropsy, a disease that causes pain and swelling. He must have heard that Jesus was kind and merciful and had the power to heal and to help, so he went to where Jesus was.

Jesus knew they were watching Him. So He put the ball in their court. He put the question to them, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? They didn’t answer. So Jesus gave them the answer by healing the man. The Sabbath Law was never intended to prevent the Israelites from doing good for one another. It was intended to force them to rest, not from service, but from self-service. In other words, it was about faith and love.

It was especially about faith. Faith in God means resting from doing work to earn God’s favor. It’s a Sabbath rest. You’re not allowed to do any work, because your works—even your best works—are sinful and not good enough to satisfy the strict requirements of God’s holy Law. As Jeremiah says in Lamentations, It is good that one should hope and wait quietly For the salvation of the LORD. As the Psalmist says, Be still, and know that I am God. Or as God says through Isaiah the Prophet, In returning and rest you shall be saved; In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.

Faith is confidence in God to save you without your works, but solely by His grace, for the sake of Christ Jesus and His works. In fact, if you try to work for your salvation, if you try to merit God’s favor, you’ll never get it, because that’s not faith in God. It’s faith in you. And, no matter what anyone tells you, you should never believe in yourself, because you’re not God. Believe in God, who tells you in His Word that He wants to save you through rest, through faith, and not through any merit or worthiness on your part. The Sabbath Day was to be a weekly object lesson in faith that rests in God’s grace and mercy.

It was also about love. The Israelites were to be thinking about their neighbor and his need to rest, too. It was a day for the Israelites to stop working to earn money for themselves, to stop working to take care of their own property, their own family, their own needs, so that they could look up from their self-service and see how they might serve their neighbor, to have a chance to love their neighbor without worrying about themselves, especially in times of emergency or great need. The Sabbath Law was not there to be a burden to Israel, and it certainly wasn’t intended to give them an excuse to sit back and watch their neighbor go hungry or die, because they were so busy resting that they couldn’t lend a hand to help.

Jesus made that point to the guests at the Sabbath meal. Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day? Of course they would pull their animal out of the pit! As well they should! How much more should they help their neighbor on the Sabbath, if he needed their help. And, of course, the greatest Helper of all helpers was present on that day. The Pharisees should have been overjoyed that Jesus was there to help the man with dropsy on that Sabbath—not to mention that He was also there to help them, to be their Savior from sin and death.

So the Sabbath was always about faith and love—faith toward God that rests and offers Him nothing to earn His favor, and love toward the neighbor that seeks to serve the neighbor and not the self.

The rest of the Gospel is an illustration of this very thing. There the guests were at this dinner, on the Sabbath, serving themselves, choosing the best seats at the dinner for themselves, the seats of honor, because at that time it was the custom to arrange the seating at such events to show whom the host of the banquet held in greater or lesser esteem. So choosing your own seat of honor, as if you could determine how highly the host should think of you, was an act of great arrogance toward the host, and of great disdain for your fellow guests.

That’s not the thing to do, Jesus says. It’s precisely the opposite of what the Sabbath teaches. But it’s not the seating at a wedding banquet that matters. It’s the attitude of your heart toward God and toward your fellow man. It’s your position in the kingdom of God that truly matters. And if you seek to serve yourself in God’s kingdom, if you seek to grab a position of honor in God’s kingdom, if you think of yourself as being better or more worthy than your fellow guests in God’s kingdom, then God will not be happy with you. He will come and shame you publicly on the Last Day and cast you down.

Instead of choosing the highest place for yourself, Jesus says, choose the lowest place for yourself. Consider your own sinfulness before God and recognize that you deserve no honor from Him whatsoever, only wrath and punishment. And, as Paul writes to the Philippians, in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. In your heart, choose the lowest place, the lowest seat, and then sit there and wait. Sit there and trust. Sit there and rest. So that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

The truth is, you were invited into God’s great wedding feast by grace, not because of your worthiness. God honored you, not because you were honorable, but because He intends to make you honorable. You weren’t chosen above other people because you’re better than other people, but only because of God’s grace in Christ Jesus. By faith in Him, God counts you as honorable in His sight, and you can be sure that He will honor you on the Last Day. There’s no need to serve yourself or to work for yourself. God has come to serve you and to work for you. The Son of God came and shed His blood for you, that you may be told on the Last Day to “go up higher,” higher than you deserve, higher than you think you deserve, to sit at the table with Christ Jesus Himself, and with all those who, by faith, have received their worthiness from Him.

He invites the humble to the Table even now, to go up higher, to kneel in the presence of Jesus and to share in this communion with the Most High. Here is your honor! Here is your worthiness! This is what makes today a Sabbath Day for us New Testament Christians. Not the fact that it’s Sunday, but the fact that the Word of God is preached to you and the Sacrament of Christ is administered to you. It’s time to rest. It’s time to take a break from self-service. Let God serve you with His forgiveness. Let Christ honor you as a guest at His Holy Supper. And look around at your fellow guests, not to think of ways in which they may serve you, but for ways in which you may serve them, until all believers enter that eternal, heavenly Sabbath rest in the glorious kingdom of God. Amen.

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A death surrounded by hope

Posted on September 20, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Trinity 16

Deuteronomy 32:39-40  +  Ephesians 3:13-21  +  Luke 7:11-17

Our Gospel today turns our attention to sorrow, weeping, coffins and death—and resurrection! — as if the Holy Spirit, through His Church, were preparing us for a funeral. In effect, He is. That’s exactly what He’s doing, preparing you for a funeral, your funeral or the funeral of a loved one. He’s preparing you for death, which can come for any of us at any moment, expectedly or unexpectedly, slowly or quickly, painfully or painlessly. We know that too well. Death seems distant most of the time, but when it strikes, everything stops.

So, how does God prepare you for the funerals you will take part in? Not by pretending death isn’t real, or by distracting you so you don’t have to think about it. He prepares you for death by surrounding death with hope—the hope of a compassionate Lord Jesus who will come, unexpectedly, and do something about death, even as He did in our Gospel.

A young man in the city of Nain had died. Had he been sick? Was he in an accident? Was it sudden, or was it a long, slow process? We don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He died too young. Of course, in reality, everyone who dies dies too young. The 93 year old who dies dies too young, because we weren’t supposed to die at all. God didn’t create us to die. Sin brought death upon our race, and we’ve gotten very used to death over these past 6,000 years.

Still, it’s especially hard when a mother loses a son, and even harder when the woman is left all alone, without a husband, without other children, when she was counting on her son, not only to keep her company, but to support her and care for her in her old age. Instead, here she is, burying her boy.

But then Jesus appears and meets the funeral procession as it’s proceeding out of the gates of Nain. And what it says about Jesus speaks volumes about the heart of God. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her. Pay attention to those words. They tell you about Jesus, and therefore, they tell you about God. The widow hadn’t done anything to earn God’s compassion. God’s compassion is aroused, not by a person’s goodness, but by a person’s misery, by a person’s hopelessness and helplessness. And even though you will not see Jesus coming up to anyone’s coffin at a funeral, this Gospel text allows you to see what your eyes can’t see, that God is not indifferent to our loss, that God isn’t cold or heartless or forgetful. He has compassion on the bereaved. That compassion is unseen when a person a dies. But what’s hidden at our funerals is revealed in St. Luke’s Gospel. So again and as always, cling to the Word of God, and not to what your eyes can see.

Jesus approaches the widow and says to her, “Do not weep.” It’s not a rebuke, not a, “Stop crying. You should be happy that your loved one is dead!” Or, “Death is no reason to cry!” No, no you shouldn’t be happy when someone dies, even a Christian who you know is only sleeping until the resurrection. Not happy, but hopeful! “Do not weep” is not a divine commandment that forbids you to weep at a funeral. It’s a word of deep sympathy from Him who can and does sympathize with us in our weakness, from Him who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. More than that, it’s the assurance that, “I am about to remove the reason for your weeping.”

That happened immediately in the widow’s case. Jesus walked up to the open coffin as they were carrying it, touched it, halting the funeral procession, and said to the dead man, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up and began to speak. Such is the almighty power of the Word of Christ.

This is the first of the three Gospel accounts of Jesus raising the dead. And we ask, why only three? Were there no others widows in Israel who lost a son during Jesus’ time on earth? Were there no other deaths, no other coffins, no other funerals? What about all the death that has taken place from the time of Adam to the present day? If Jesus can do something about it, why didn’t He? Why doesn’t He?

He did. And He does. But His solution to death is not man’s solution. Man’s solution is, “Well, OK, sure, I rebelled against God, even though He threatened me with death if I did. But now it’s God’s fault if He actually follows through with His threat and kills me. If He were a good God, He wouldn’t punish me or anyone else with death. If Jesus were the Messiah, He would rid the world of death immediately.”

That’s man’s solution. See how arrogant it is, how idolatrous? God says that the wages of sin is death, but man says, “God has no right to punish sinners with death. It’s God who’s unjust. It’s God who’s mean and unloving and uncaring.”

You can’t overlook the seriousness of sin, including the nature-sin that infects the soul from birth. Death is God’s doing, He’s in charge of it; but it isn’t God’s fault. The soul that sins shall die, God says. And He is righteous in His judgment.

So what is God’s solution to death? It was to send His only-begotten Son into our flesh in order for Him to suffer death, in order that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. But by His death, the Righteous for the unrighteous, He conquered death. And so He rose from the dead, never to die anymore. That’s what He did.

What He does—God’s solution to death in the present time—is not to stop people from dying or to raise the dead immediately. His solution is to speak His Law that exposes our sin and brings the impenitent to acknowledge their sins, so that they feel the sting of death in their hearts. And then, through this ministry of the Word, He speaks His Gospel of peace, calling sinners to flee to Him for refuge, for the forgiveness of sins, for life instead of death. He sends ministers to baptize people and attaches the promise of everlasting life to it. He gives His body and blood in the Sacrament as the medicine of eternal life, so that whoever believes in the Son has eternal life even now, so that, when a Christian dies, death is surrounded by hope. Not the hope of an immediate resurrection, but the hope of a resurrection that will take place “soon,” when Christ returns, when He will raise your sleeping ones who were baptized into Him and remained faithful until death.

So between now and your funeral, or the funeral of your loved ones, what could be more urgent than Baptism and remaining faithful until death? It’s not in your power to force anyone to be baptized or to remain faithful until death. It is in your power to speak the Word of God, to urge your unbelieving family and neighbors to turn to the true God and the Christian faith, and to urge your believing brothers and sisters to stay close to God’s Word and Sacraments and to remain faithful until death, trusting that the Holy Spirit will be in charge of the outcome.

There will still be weeping on this earth, for many reasons, including death. Remember the picture St. John paints for us in Revelation 7: it’s only after death that Christ, the Lamb of God who sits on the throne of God, will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Our Gospel isn’t intended to turn death into a happy event, but into a hopeful event for Christians. It’s here to prepare us for death ahead of time, so that when it comes, your weeping may be accompanied by hope. Soon, and unexpectedly, the God of all compassion will remove the reason for your weeping. Soon the Lord Christ will return and put an end to funerals for good. Amen.

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