Rejoice! If not now, then in a little while.

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Jubilate

Lamentations 3:18-33  +  1 Peter 2:11-20  +  John 16:16-22

Jubilate.  Be joyful!  For Christ has risen from the dead, and lives and reigns eternally.  Jubilate.  Rejoice!  For God has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light and has brought you into the kingdom of His Son!

Jubilate.  Be joyful!  But what if you aren’t?  Jubilate.  Rejoice!  But what if you can’t?

That’s OK.  It’s not a command from God’s Law.  “You shall be joyful!”  If you’re not full of joy all the time, you’re not alone.  And there’s nothing wrong with you; it doesn’t make you a “bad Christian.”  Jesus tells His own disciples in our Gospel, “You will weep and lament.” And He isn’t rebuking them for it, either. God’s Word gives you permission to cry.

In fact, “crying” is the name of the Old Testament book from which we took our OT reading today.  “Lamentations.”  The “cryings” or the “laments” of Jeremiah, the Prophet.  “You will have sorrow,” Jesus assures His disciples.  But, your sorrow will be turned to joy.  That’s a promise.

Right in the middle of this depressing book called Lamentations, full of laments, full of grieving and mourning, as Jeremiah weeps over the idolatry and rebellion of Israel against God, over the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the slaughter of his people by the Babylonians, you have the beautiful, comforting, even joyful words of the OT reading, saying the same thing as Peter said, and the same as Jesus, and the same as so many of the Psalms, especially Psalm 30.

4      Sing praise to the LORD, you saints of His,

And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name.

5      For His anger is but for a moment,

His favor is for life;

Weeping may endure for a night,

But joy comes in the morning.

There will be grief in this life.  But see!  Jesus says it will only be “for a little while.” You will not see me, Jesus says, and then you will see me.

Of course, He said that on the night in which He was betrayed.  He was speaking of His death and burial, over which His disciples would weep and mourn while the world rejoiced.  But just for a little while.  Then the sorrow of Jesus’ disciples would be turned to joy when they saw Him again.

But these words aren’t recorded in Scripture for the sake of those disciples.  They had all fallen asleep by the time John wrote down these words.  This promise of Jesus is for you, too, and it’s consistent with the entire history of the people of God, Old and New Testament.  There are times when God hides His face, and His people mourn.  But He promises to show it again, and the joy will outweigh and outlast the sorrow.

God hides His face for a little while.  He allows or even brings affliction into the lives of men, even the lives of His chosen and precious people. But did you catch the last verse of the OT reading? “He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.”

What a comforting verse.  God doesn’t take pleasure in afflicting the children of men.  He doesn’t afflict willingly or apathetically.  So when He does bring affliction, He must have a good reason for doing it.

Now, that’s easy to say.  “I don’t enjoy bringing this punishment on you.”  It sounds like a father disciplining his son.  Of course, you have two kinds of fathers who discipline their sons.  You have the wicked ones who don’t love their children.  Their discipline is more abuse than discipline.  They may say “this hurts me more than it will hurt you,” but they don’t mean it.  For them, it’s about power and control and inflicting pain.

But then there are fathers who truly love their children and discipline them, and afflict them harshly, for the good of their children, and it really does hurt the father more than the child, because he doesn’t willingly deprive or hurt or rebuke.  But he knows he has to do it, and it hurts.

Now, what kind of Father is God?  Is He the second kind who takes pleasure in afflicting?  Or is He the third?  And how can you know?

Listen to what He says.  And then look at what He does.  Could anyone doubt the love of the Father for Jesus?  And yet, look what He does.  He forsakes His Son to affliction, pain, suffering and death. But what does Jesus say about it, even ahead of time? I am returning to my Father.  This is how He returns to His dear Father?  Returning through affliction?  Returning through agony?  Returning through suffering and death? Yes.  And all the while, Jesus knew, My Father loves me.  And He wanted His disciples to know, no matter what happens to Me, no matter what I suffer, you remember, I am returning to the Father.  And even in this time of sorrow, do not imagine that God has abandoned Me, or you, forever.

But how did it turn out?  It turned out with Easter Sunday and the redemption of the world.  It turned out with joy that knows no end, and the establishment of an eternal kingdom.

Through it all, Jesus illustrated to His disciples, that when God afflicts, He has a good reason.  You won’t understand it at the time.  You won’t see it.  But after a little while, you will see it.

And so, Jesus’ disciples would grieve for awhile over Jesus’ death.  He must have a good reason.  But how could He possibly have a good reason for this?

Just a little while.  Then they would see.  Then would understand and know that it came from a loving Father.  Then they would rejoice forever, because it is the ultimate proof that God is good, that He gave His Son into death for a good reason, to pay for their sins and to earn forgiveness and life for them.  Then they would see Jesus, risen and glorified.

It will be this way with you, too.  God must have a very good reason for bringing affliction and sorrow into your life, for hiding His face.  How could He possibly have a good reason for it?

That requires faith, doesn’t it?  Sometimes God just needs to crush your human reason and grind it down to powder.  He promises that it will be for just a little while.  He’s shown you what He means.  The joy of a risen Savior who lives to intercede for you.  Now that He has suffered and died and risen again, He lives to shelter you from God’s wrath, to protect you from the devil’s attacks, and to preserve you at all times.

It’s OK not to be joyful all the time.  That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to be sorrowful all the time, either.  You’re not supposed to be anything, except sorrowful over your sins, but confident of God’s mercy to you in Jesus Christ, who gives Himself to you in His Word and in the Sacrament.  You will have times of sorrow, and times of joy.  Which will last longer?  Which will outweigh the other?  You have God’s gracious promise that the joy will outweigh the sorrow and last forever while the sorrow will surely fade away.  Jubilate.  Rejoice!  If not now, then in a little while.  Amen.

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A God who goes out looking

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Misericordias Domini

Ezekiel 34:11-16  +  1 Peter 2:21-25  +  John 10:11-16

What an image God paints for us of Himself in the three Lessons today.  God, the Shepherd.  God, the Shepherd, who knows His sheep, who cares for His sheep. God, the Shepherd, who sees His sheep in danger—wandering, scattered, hurt and lost.  And what God reveals to us today in His Word is that He is a God who doesn’t sit back and do nothing.  He is a God who goes out looking.

I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day.

What is the cloudy and dark day?  How were the sheep scattered?  Who are the sheep?

The sheep, first, are Israel. Once brought into God’s flock through Abraham and the covenant of circumcision and the covenant of the Law on Mt. Sinai, the sheep of Israel were scattered on many cloudy and dark days, in a few different ways.  At times, they themselves wandered away from God.  They broke His commandments and served other gods and didn’t trust in the Lord, but instead, trusted in themselves, and they were lost.  At other times, it was the very shepherds of Israel, their teachers and their priests and their leaders, who abused them and abandoned them and led them astray from the true God.  And at other times, the world and the surrounding nations abused and mistreated God’s sheep, from Egypt to Assyria to Babylonia, where the people of Israel were still in captivity as Ezekiel wrote the words of the Old Testament reading.

But the sheep are not only Israel.  The sheep are also Christians, once brought into God’s flock through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.  At times they wander away from Christ and His Word; they wander again after the lusts of the flesh, in rebellion against God, in apathy toward His Word; they wander, seeking friendship with the world, seeking careers and relationships and success.  At times it’s the leaders—the pastors and priests—who abuse the sheep with false doctrine or with a scandalous life; or they abandon the sheep when the wolf comes in order to save their own necks.  Jesus calls them “hirelings.”  And at other times, it’s the world, family, friends, schools, governments, that abuse God’s sheep and hurt them and treat them unfairly.  And they scatter the sheep.

Where is God in all this?  Why doesn’t He do something?  He does.  He doesn’t snap His fingers and make it all go away.  It doesn’t work that way.  He does what He has to do to help His sheep.  He goes out looking.

And not just looking; not like looking through a telescope or a pair of binoculars.  He steps out into the fields and valleys and forests and mountains; He enters our race. He sent His Son to be born among the lost.  I am the good Shepherd, Jesus says.  He knows the sheep, that they are prone to wander, so He goes out looking.  He faced the wolf and stared him down.  He gave His life for the sheep. Every moment of His life, every word, every deed, every breath, every drop of blood—He spent it all on His sheep, to obey God’s Law where the sheep had gone astray, to suffer for their sins and to bear the wrath of God in their place.  So every time you wonder, why doesn’t God do something about how His sheep wander, how His sheep are scattered and mistreated in this world—you remember.  He did.  He came. He suffered and died, the innocent Shepherd for the wandering sheep, the Righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

And He promises, I will bring them!  I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries.  Of course, He couldn’t do that if He were still dead.  There’s a reason why we read the Gospel of the good Shepherd during the Easter season.  A dead Shepherd, even one who gave His life for the sheep, would still be useless.  A dead Shepherd can’t go out looking for His sheep and gather them up in His arms and care for them and wash them clean in His blood.  But a living Shepherd can and does.

I will bring them out from the peoples.  God did that for the captive people of Judah.  He did lead them back to the land of Israel after 70 years of captivity.  And Jesus did that in His own ministry on earth, too, as He went out looking for sinners—tax collectors, thieves and prostitutes—and called them to repentance and faith in Him as their Shepherd.

But He does this for us, too.  How does God go out looking for you to find you and to bring you into Israel’s fold?  He sends His Word into your life and calls you, first, to repentance.  He calls you to see your sin for what it is—to recognize that you have not feared, loved and trusted in Him as God, and that you have not loved your neighbor as yourself.  And once He causes you to see that, He calls you to turn from it and live.  Live, by dying with Christ on the cross.  How do you do that?  Trust in Him who came looking for you; trust in Him who gave His life for you on the cross.  Trust that, as Peter says, He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness— by whose stripes you were healed.  For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.  “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one should boast.”

Now what does Jesus promise to do for His sheep that He brings out from the peoples into His own flock?  I will feed them in good pasture. Now, that “good pasture” includes heaven itself.  And all who persevere in faith in Christ have that best pasture of all to look forward to.  But there is good pasture, green pasture and quiet waters for you even in this messed up world.  What does the Psalm say?  The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.  These very words of Jesus in our Gospel are the green grass that feeds our souls.  Here is mercy and grace and forgiveness of sins.  Here in God’s house, surrounded by God’s Word.

Here you find healing and rest—healing and rest that will sustain your faith and follow you throughout the week until you come back again next week for more.  Here you have found a decent hospital.  That’s all.  Remember that.  This is the hospital where the Shepherd brings His sheep that were lost to tend to them and care for them, to bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick, as He said in the Old Testament reading.  This is not the place where God pats people on the back and tells you how good you are.  He warns those who see themselves as strong and “good.”  But I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment, says the Lord.  No, the Church is a hospital that tends to people who have wandered and been hurt and broken by sin—by their own sin and by the sin of others.  Here is the pasture you truly need: Forgiveness of sins.  A gracious Father.  The quiet waters of Baptism into God’s house.  The bread and wine that revive us again with the body and blood of our good Shepherd.  Our God has gone looking for you and has found you and brought you here, where Jesus is among us, What do you have to fear?

In the midst of this dreary world that is dead and brown and dried up like the desert without rain, faith in Christ shows you, at the same time, a world in which everything around you is green.  Christ, the Good Shepherd, the risen and living Shepherd, is here.  So what can be lacking to you?  What shall you want?  I shall not be in want, as the Psalm says.  For You are with me, Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.  Notice, the Psalm doesn’t say, “this world comforts me.” It doesn’t say, “my wonderful family comforts me,” or “my happy, problem-free life comforts me.”   No, that doesn’t comfort me.  Even if I have a wonderful family and a relatively problem-free life at the moment, that wouldn’t comfort me.  Because my family doesn’t stand between me and the devil; my health doesn’t protect me from God’s righteous anger against sin.  My money doesn’t shield me from death.  But Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.  The fact that Jesus is your Shepherd, and that He knows you.  He knows you—wanderer that you are—and still wants you.  He knows you and has committed His life to guarding you and shielding you and feeding you.  And He has promised to walk with you through this valley of the shadow of death, where you needn’t fear, not because there’s nothing to fear, but because He is with you.

Remember, He spoke of you in our Gospel.  Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. He was looking ahead, looking across the world, seeing you wandering, seeing you dying in sin and pain.  All along, He knew you and planned how He would go out looking for you, and find you, and bring you into His flock, and keep you here through a living faith sustained by His Word and Sacraments.  Truly we have a God who goes out looking.  That is our peace and comfort and salvation.  Amen.

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That you may believe

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Quasimodo Geniti

“As newborn babes…”

Ezekiel 37:1-14  +  1 John 5:4-12  +  John 20:19-31

(Audio only today.)

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Christ is risen. And it matters.

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Easter Sunday

Isaiah 52:13-15  +  1 Corinthians 5:6-8  +  Mark 16:1-8

Today we celebrate.  Today we rejoice.  This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Christ is risen.  And it matters.

In an age of doubt like the one we live in, in an age like ours where everyone creates his or her own version of “god,” in an age in which facts and reality don’t matter as much as feeling and personal experience, it’s more important than ever for us Christians to emphasize that Jesus Christ truly and bodily suffered, died, and rose again from the dead.  In an age of denial and twisting of God’s Word, it’s important for us to know and believe and proclaim the Scriptural significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

First, that Christ truly died and was raised from the dead.  The women were the first witnesses of it.  They had been there when Jesus breathed His last and was pierced by the spear, when blood and water flowed out.  They watched as His body was taken down from the cross and wrapped up quickly and laid in the tomb.  And they were the first to make their sad and fearful way to the tomb on Easter Sunday.  How would they remove that heavy stone?  How would they go on living now that Jesus, their Lord, was dead?

But they found the stone rolled away.  They found the tomb empty, except for the angel who greeted them.  “He is risen.  He is not here,” not here in the place of death, not here in the place where His dead body once lay.  Mary Magdalene and the other faithful women were the first to hear the good news and the first to see Him with their own eyes, but they would not be the last.  As the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians,

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.

Christ appeared with His risen body to hundreds of people, on several occasions. And it was the fact of the resurrection of Christ that strengthened Paul and Cephas (Peter) and all the other apostles to sacrifice everything, even their lives, for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.  What, were they all lying? What kind of fools would make up a fictional story about seeing Jesus raised from the dead and then lay down their own lives for the sake of their own made-up story, for the sake of a lie?  No, the Church exists because of the blood of the eye-witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, who willingly faced death, not for a lie, but for the truth.

Now, what does it mean?  What is the significance of the resurrection of Christ?  Why does it matter?   Well, that is the subject of every Christian sermon you will ever hear, because the whole Christian faith is wrapped up in the resurrection of Christ.

Why does it matter?  Because Jesus told His disciples.  He told them.  He said He would be crucified and rise again on the third day.  He told them He would meet them in Galilee after He had risen.  He promised them that He was the resurrection and the life, and that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.  The fact that Christ is risen means Christ was telling them the truth all along.  You can trust Him.  His promises are more certain than death itself.

Christ is risen.  Why does it matter? Because God has made Him—the crucified and risen One— both Lord and Christ, as Peter said to the crowds on Pentecost.  Because He is the man through whom God will judge all nations, as Paul told the Athenians.  And He will reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians.

Christ is risen.  Why does it matter?  Because sin is a terminal disease, infecting the human race.  Everyone born of Adam not only inherits Adam’s sin, but also puts it into practice.  And because all sin, all die, and it’s a death that doesn’t end with the death of the body.  It’s the eternal suffering of God’s wrath against sin.

Jesus’ own disciples were evidence that no one keeps God’s commandments to earn salvation by their obedience.  Could Peter claim any merit for himself after he denied the Lord three times when it mattered most?  Could any of Jesus’ disciples claim a place next to Jesus in heaven after they all abandoned Him on the field of battle?  Could the Apostle Paul merit a righteous status before God after he had persecuted the Church, imprisoned believers and given his approval to their executions?  No, neither they, nor any of you, can be justified by anything you do.

God had to become man, if any man was to have a place in God’s family.  And so the Son of God was truly conceived, born, suffered and died for the sins of the world.  Look at Christ’s suffering on the cross and see God’s wrath unleashed against idolatry and all of our self-worship; against the misuse of His holy name as it rolls off the lips of men in vain; against the way men despise His Word and don’t believe it and don’t gladly hear and learn it; against the dishonoring of parents and others in authority; against murder and abortion and abuse of our neighbor’s body; against sexual immorality and adultery and homosexuality and lust; against greed and stealing and lying and gossiping; against coveting and the depraved desires of the human heart.  For all these things and for the people who do them, Christ, the God-Man, has suffered and died.

And now satisfaction has been made, for these sins and for any others that may exist. God’s holy law has been satisfied—the punishments it requires have been meted out; the righteousness it requires has been lived out, has been acquired, has been obtained, a righteousness that counts before God.  But that satisfaction for sins and that righteousness obtained by Christ is wrapped up in Christ.  If He is dead, if He is buried, then we have no Savior, no Christ, no one to believe in.  Faith in a dead man is worse than worthless.

That’s what the Apostle Paul says. If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty…If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.  But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

It is written in the prophet Isaiah, When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days… He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities.

You see?  After His soul was made an offering for sin, “He shall see His seed; He shall prolong His days.”  The resurrection of Christ was prophesied all along.  And who are His seed?  How shall He justify many?  How does this happen, that we become the seed or the descendants of Christ?  How do we enter into Him and receive the benefits obtained by His suffering, death and resurrection?

The risen Christ Himself accomplishes it.  He has given this ministry of the Word.  He has given His own living Spirit in the Gospel to call all men to repentance, that all men should gaze into God’s holy commandments and see that they have offended the holy God with their disobedience.  But He also calls all men to believe that a sacrifice has now been made to atone for those sins.  A sacrifice has been made, and God the Father is appeased by it and has raised His Son to life again for our justification—that we may hear this Gospel and believe in the risen Christ, who bore our iniquities, who was wounded for our transgressions.  And by believing in Him, we are born again in Him, and so receive from Him all the benefits He has won for us: the gift of forgiveness, the gift of a gracious Father and a heavenly family, the gift of eternal life and an eternal inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.

You heard in the Old Testament reading today: So shall He sprinkle many nations.  My dear family in Christ Jesus, Christ has sprinkled you with His blood by sprinkling you in baptismal waters.  Christ has pulled you into His death and now into His life and feeds you with His life in the Sacrament of the Altar.  Where He is, there you also shall be.  Christ Himself will see to it.  So He has promised.  And because He is risen from the dead, it’s a promise He lives to keep.

Christ is risen.  And it matters.  Sin, death and hell have been vanquished by your Savior.  And while the devil, the world and your sinful nature will rage against you as long as you live in this world, you have a living Savior to shield you from harm and to walk with you safely through this vale of tears, and through this valley of the shadow of death.  You will still face many trials and doubts and fears in this world.  But let this never be one of them: “Maybe Jesus is still dead.”  He is not dead.  Christ is risen. He lives forever.  And so will you who believe on His name. Amen.

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Glorified in His Life

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Easter Vigil

+  John 20:1-18  +

(This sermon draws on the theme of our midweek Lenten services this year as we followed the Gospel of St. John leading up to Holy Week:  The Hour Is Coming for the Son of Man to Be Glorified)

On the night before He laid down His life, Jesus prayed, And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

How hollow those words must have rung in the ears of Jesus’ disciples as the events of Thursday and Friday unfolded.  If ever a prayer seemed to have gone unanswered, this was it.  Where was this eternal glory that Jesus had shared with the Father since before the world was, since before the Word was made flesh?  Humbled and crucified and lying dead in a tomb.

Or so Mary Magdalene thought.  In truth, Jesus had passed over from death to life.  In reality, He had suffered for sin once for all, defeating sin, hell, Satan, and death.  He had been dead, but now was alive forever and ever, never to die again. He had been shown with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead, and so was glorified in His resurrection.

But still not glorified in how He appeared. Mary didn’t recognize Him at first on that first day of the week—she certainly didn’t see anything spectacular about His appearance, as Peter, James and John had seen at His transfiguration.

But then Jesus called her by name, and she beheld the glory of the Risen One, not in how He appeared, but in the fact that He appeared at all, in the reality that He who was crucified, died and was buried, now stood before her living and breathing.  She beheld His glory in the truth of His life.

Jesus said to Mary, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’ ”

Jesus would receive more glory still; He would fully enter into His glory again when He would ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of God and fully share again in the glory He had with the Father since before the world was.  That had to happen.  Mary wasn’t allowed to cling to Jesus’ risen body to try to hold Him down on earth and keep Him here in this visible way.

But what Mary was given, what Jesus’ disciples were given, what you and I and all Christians have been given, from this very moment until the end of time, is the right to be called Jesus’ brethren—His brothers, the right to call God “our Father” and “our God.”  Here’s how St. John had put it way back at the beginning of his Gospel:

He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

The risen Christ has called each of you by name, too, when through the minister who baptized you, He spoke your name and brought you to faith in Christ crucified and risen, and adopted you, too, as God’s child.  Now you claim His death as your death.  Now His life is your life, and you will share forever in the glory of the only-begotten Son of God.  And the words with which St. John began His Gospel have new meaning for you who have heard and believed the words of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Amen.

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