The best place is the lowest place

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 17

Proverbs 25:6-14  +  Ephesians 4:1-6  +  Luke 14:1-11

Today’s Gospel overturns all the wisdom of the world.  The world seeks glory and honor, comfort and success.  The Christian simply seeks Christ.  The world seeks to get ahead by living according to the Law. The Christian understands that the Law of God doesn’t get us ahead at all.  On the contrary, it drives us down to the lowest place, down below everyone else, where, as believers in Christ who receive all things from Him for free, we can truly begin to serve our neighbor in love.  The people of the world run after first place, for their own gratification.  But the people of God run in the opposite direction.  The people of God seek the place of dishonor, the place of lowliness and humility, because that’s where Jesus is, to lift us up to glory that the world will never comprehend.  Only the Holy Spirit can make us understand all this.

Today we see Jesus invited to a banquet at a Pharisee’s house, not because the Pharisees loved Jesus, but because they wanted to watch Him, to evaluate Him, to catch Him saying something or doing something that they could use against Him.  The Pharisees and the lawyers gathered to sit in judgment on their neighbor, even to sit in judgment on Jesus.  See how they had exalted themselves!

But then we a sick man, a man with dropsy—that painful swelling of the limbs, especially the legs.  He didn’t come to judge anyone.  He came only with his sickness, and with faith in Christ, trusting that Jesus was good and merciful and would help him in his need.  How did he come by this faith?  The same way anyone comes by this faith.  He had heard the Gospel; he had heard that Jesus was good and kind and merciful, that He forgives sin, that He helps the lowly and heals all who come to Him for help.  That’s who Jesus is.  And by hearing that Gospel, the man with dropsy was encouraged to seek Jesus.  He knew that he would find in Jesus a faithful friend.

The Pharisees saw an opportunity.  Aha!  A sick man, and Jesus the healer.  But it’s the Sabbath day!  And we consider healing to be work that violates the Sabbath.  Aha!  We’ll catch Jesus in “clear” violation of God’s Law.  So Jesus puts the question to them: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”  But they remained silent.  They didn’t want to say that it was lawful to heal, because they cared nothing for the man with dropsy, and they wanted to condemn Jesus for healing.  But they didn’t want to tell him it was unlawful, because that would be awfully hard to prove from God’s Law.  They just sat there silently, wickedly, and waited for Jesus to act, so that they could jump on Him and condemn Him afterwards as a law-breaker and a sinner.

But Jesus foiled their plan with a question that none of them could answer.  “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?”  Of course, all of them would do that.  So they could hardly condemn Jesus for showing love to this sick man and healing him, even though it was the Sabbath day. Jesus showed them that love for the neighbor is the goal of the law, even the summary of the Law, as the Apostle Paul says, “Love is the fulfillment of the law.”

And then Jesus drives it home to the Pharisees and the guests at the Pharisee’s house with a parable.  He watches the lovelessness going on around him, the self-centeredness.  He sees as everyone rushes to save the best seat for himself, as each one pushes past the others to get what he wants, to grab the highest place, the place of honor at the banquet.

And so Jesus tells this little parable in which He shows them that instead of running for the highest place, they should be running toward the lowest place, the place of least honor, the place of disgrace and humiliation, because it’s better to be raised to a higher place by the master of the banquet than to be humiliated by the master of the banquet and cast down to the bottom by him.  It doesn’t matter what your neighbor thinks about you.  What matters is what God thinks about you.  And here God reveals that He thinks very little of the one who exalts himself.  But He thinks very highly of the one who humbles himself, who seeks the lowest place, who makes himself the servant of all, who considers others to be better than himself.

Why? Because that’s Jesus.  Jesus’ love for rebellious sinners caused Him to lower Himself down, further and further, down to taking on human flesh, down to becoming a servant of sinners, down to humiliation and obedience to His Father’s Law for us, in order to redeem us and raise us up.

This is what Paul says to the Philippians, So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Now the love of Christ pushes us down, further and further, down to the lowest place, down to the utmost humility, where He shows us our sin, where He leads us to repentance, where He shows us that none of us deserves anything from God, so therefore, none of us can be any more deserving than our neighbors around us.  In that place where you know you’re a wretch and you’ve messed up everything, where you know you’re a sinner; in that place where you look around at your fellow sinners and you recognize that we’re all equally messed up, there, in the lowest place, Christ’s Spirit empties us.  He kills us with our pride and bitterness and anger, but He doesn’t leave us for dead, even as He didn’t leave Jesus for dead.

On the contrary, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There in the lowest place is where the superabundant treasure of God’s grace is found—every treasure He has to give, all wrapped up in Christ.  Christ is found in the lowest place and summons us down to where He is.  As long as you’re seeking to exalt yourself, you’re cut off from the Gospel.  When you stop trying to exalt yourself, that’s when you hear the Gospel proclaiming to you, Christ Jesus is everything.  He is your Savior from sin. His blood made atonement for all sin. He has washed you with His blood through Holy Baptism.  Your sins are forgiven and heaven is yours. See how He lifts you up and exalts you through faith in Him, even to the heights of heaven, even to the status of a saint.

Is there any joy to be found in this lowliness and humility? Is there joy here in this Christian Church?  Maybe you think you remember a time when the church was a more joyful place.  Maybe you mourn the loss of that joy.  I understand.  But now I ask, what is the joy of the Christian?  The world seeks joy in superficial things, in external things, worldly things.  Christian joy is found in only one place—at the bottom, in the lowest place.  Why?  Because that’s where Jesus is, with all His love and faithfulness; in the gutter, with sinners.  That’s where the one Lord, one faith, one Baptism is found, all wrapped up in Christ.

So what has changed?  OK, so you see disunity and anger and bitterness around you.  Things seem to be unstable and uncertain.  But are they, really?  What has changed?  Is Christ now dead?  Has His blood lost its cleansing power?  Has a single promise of His ever failed?  No.  Jesus still lives, and His blood is as precious today as it has always been. Has the Gospel ceased to be the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes?  Has your Baptism lost its power to cover you?  Are the body and blood of Christ gone from the Sacrament of the Altar?  Has God’s Spirit left you? No, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever. Nothing has changed.

Now Christ summons you to follow Him down into the depths, to bear the cross He gives and to not be afraid.  He who has called you to follow Him is faithful.  He has tied Himself to you in Holy Baptism.  Where He has gone, you must go, and it won’t be pleasant in this life.  But you won’t go alone.  He’s with you.  This life for the Christian is the cross of humiliation, but that means you’re together with Jesus on the path, even now.  It’s the next life, the life after death, the resurrection from the dead, that’s where you will find the crown of glory and eternal joy in His presence.

See, this is what Paul says to the Philippians, 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

The best place for the Christian is the lowest place, because from there, our exaltation, our being lifted up again is a sure thing.  It’s just that, it happens on God’s timetable, not ours.  It happens when God wills, not when we will, which means that we simply have to be still. We simply have to wait, and to trust.  Be still, and know that I am God, he says.  I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.  Wait for the Lord.  Be strong and let your heart take courage.  Wait for the Lord.  Amen.

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God has a plan for death

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 16

1 Kings 17:17-24  +  Ephesians 3:13-21  +  Luke 7:11-17

How could God let him die?  The prophet of God was so close, living right there under the same roof.  The widow of Zarephath had taken Elijah in and provided food and shelter for him and trusted in his word that the jar of flour would not run out and the jug of oil would not run dry.  And yet God took her son away anyway, her only son.  How could He do that?

God had a plan for that boy’s death, a plan to do something even more important than keeping that boy alive.  The plan was to bring the boy back to life through the word of the prophet, and so to confirm the faith of widow and of her son, as she said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.” Why was that important?  Because to trust in the word of God’s prophet is to conquer, not only the death of the body, but the death of the soul.  To trust in the word of God’s prophet is to vanquish sin and hell and death and every curse imposed by sin.  God had a plan for death that day, a good plan, a plan of salvation and life.

The same is true in today’s Gospel.  Sometimes in the Gospels we see examples for us to imitate, examples of faith like the faith of the centurion who trusted in Jesus’ word to heal his servant from afar.  That’s the account that comes right before our Gospel today.  But sometimes, as in today’s Gospel, we see no one running to Jesus for help.  On the contrary, we see Jesus running to help the lives that have been broken by sin and death.  We see the face of God who is moved to compassion by our tears.  We see the word of God’s Prophet doing what it has always done—creating life where there was only death, and confirming faith in those who had no strength of their own to believe. We see the God who has a plan for death.

It sure didn’t look that way when Jesus approached the town of Nain.  It was the saddest kind of funeral procession.  It’s horrible enough when the elderly die.  But when a young man dies… When the only son of a widow dies… Why would God let such a thing happen? Didn’t He know how hard it would be for that widowed mother?  Something so terrible couldn’t possibly be for good to those who love God.  How cruel, the devil whispers.  He must not care.  A good God wouldn’t do that, would He?

But look, is God really indifferent to this death?  See how God acts in the Person of Jesus Christ.  See how He is moved by the widow’s tears!  When He sees the dead man being carried out of the city gates, when He sees the mourners walking in procession, when He sees the widow weeping, He doesn’t just go whistling by, does He?  On the contrary, when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.

You see, the devil is a liar, and has been since the beginning.  He is a murderer.  And we are his accomplices.  God did not plan death for the human race.  The devil did.  God is not responsible for death.   We are. Sinners are.  The soul that sins is the one who will die.  Ever since Adam and Eve, sinners have been blaming other people, even God Himself, for their troubles.  But that’s wrong.  We are the sinners, not God.

But God has a plan to help sinners, condemned to death by our sin.  His plan to help doesn’t involve preventing death.  It doesn’t work that way.  Instead, His plan uses death, turns death into His slave and forces death to do His bidding.  God sent His only Son into the world to save sinners, not by removing death—not yet, but by submitting to it.  By submitting to the hatred of sinners, by submitting to the persecution of those who hated Him and His Gospel, by submitting to the punishment of suffering and the curse of death on a cross, Jesus has become the curse for us, has made atonement for us, has paid for the sins of all sinners and has won the gift of eternal life for all, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

But how are we to believe in Him?  We see only death all around.  We see the Gospel being persecuted all over the world and right here in our midst.  We see the Church tormented and battered, weeping and mourning.

But look!  What does Jesus say to the widow in mourning?  “Do not weep.”  And to the dead young man who had zero capacity to hear Jesus’ words, much less to obey them, Jesus spoke anyway and said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”  And he arose.  Just like that.  And he started to speak.  And Jesus gave him to his mother.

The word of Jesus is that powerful.  The Gospel of Jesus is that mighty.  It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, as the Apostle Paul says in Romans.  It is the Gospel of Christ that calls out to dead sinners, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved!”  And by the power of God, as a gift of the Holy Spirit, the dead arise.  Those who were dead in unbelief become believers.

This is exactly what Jesus is talking about in John 5.  For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.

You see, He says that an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.  That’s you who were dead in sins, dead in trespasses, dead in unbelief but have heard of the Word of Christ and have been brought to faith, have been brought to life.  The word of Jesus has already visited your graves and has emptied them.  You have passed from death to life.  This is the verdict of Christ, the judge, that no matter how great your sins have been, no matter how unworthy you are to spend eternity with God in heaven, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

That, my friends, is the forgiveness of sins and it is yours right now through faith in Christ Jesus.  And if your sins are forgiven, then you have eternal life.  If your sins are forgiven, then you have access to God, you have been born again, raised from the dead, adopted as God’s child. If your sins are forgiven, then death cannot harm you and there is now no condemnation, because you are in Christ Jesus.  How?  Not by works.  Not by your doing or by your choice.  But by faith in Him, faith that He has given you, faith that He has worked in you by the almighty power of His Word that gives life to those who were dead.

Do you see why I will not speak like some people would require me to speak?  How can I say that unbelievers have been forgiven already, but are still going to hell?  If your sins have been forgiven you, you are not going to hell.  You will not die in your sins.  Forgiveness means something.  And when I pour water on you in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and when I absolve you of your sins, that is Jesus Himself speaking forgiveness to you, speaking life into your hearts, by the same almighty power with which He raised the young man of Nain.

Jesus isn’t done bringing the dead to life.  He will continue sending forth His Spirit until the Last Day, calling the dead through the Gospel, enlightening us with His gifts, sanctifying and keeping us in the true faith.  And then Jesus will do for us who believe in Him something even greater than He did for the young man of Nain.  Jesus raised his body back to temporal life.  But on that day, He will destroy death forever.  On that day, He will take these mortal bodies and transform them into glorious bodies like His resurrected body, as He says in John’s Gospel, an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

Today’s Gospel teaches us to trust in Christ, who is moved to compassion by our tears, to trust in Christ who entered our death-filled world to suffer death once for all, the Righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.  Today’s Gospel teaches us to trust in the word of Christ, who comforts those who mourn, who strengthens those who are weak, who gives life to the dead and who now uses death to serve His plan of salvation, to serve as a doorway to eternal life.  This is God’s plan for death.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

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Seek first the kingdom of God, that is, the way of faith in Christ

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Trinity 15

1 Kings 17:8-16 + Galatians 5:25 – 6:10 + Matthew 6:24-34

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It was April, 1987, just a week or two before my confirmation.  The pastor handed out a list of Bible passages—confirmation verses—to the confirmands and randomly assigned numbers to us to set up the order for choosing verses.  There must have been over 20 options—we had over 20 students in my class.  But I knew immediately which one I wanted, the only one, Matthew 6:33. I had my eyes set on it for weeks.  I knew it was one of the choices. Unfortunately, someone picked that one ahead of me and wasn’t willing to trade it with me when my turn to pick came along.  But I stayed after class and talked with the pastor and stubbornly insisted (believe it or not) that I had to have that verse.  He didn’t understand why.  He said, “Of all the kids in the class, I don’t think you need that verse to be a special reminder for you.”  I said, “Yes, I do.  You have no idea.  I need this word of Jesus.  I need this direction, and this promise. I want to be guided by this verse.”  He gave in.  That was probably the only year, before or since, that the church had to place a special order for two confirmation certificates with the same verse imprinted on each.

Why do I tell you this?  Simply to illustrate the Lord’s faithfulness.  Working in His own mysterious ways, He knew that I would benefit from this particular word of Jesus, this direction to seek God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness ahead of all worldly concerns, and this promise of Fatherly care and providence and protection for those who do.  And since He has brought you here today to hear this Gospel and has placed me in front of you to preach it, He knows that you can benefit from it, too. 

Jesus presents us with two paths in this Gospel.  One, he warns us away from.  The other, He draws us toward and urges us to seek.  The one is the path of the Law and unbelief.  The other is the path of the Gospel and faith in Christ.

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.  Whatever or whomever you fear, love and trust in above all things is your god.  You can serve money as a god by loving money, by being greedy, by living to get more and more and by being infatuated with the things money can buy. But you also serve money as your god when you put your trust, your confidence, your certainty, in money.  The more money you have in your wallet, in the bank, the more confident you are that there will be bread on the table tomorrow.  The less money, the less confident, and the more worried you become.

You see the people surrounding Jesus, worried about so many things, because money was tight—even tighter than it is today in our economy, in a society like ours where there are such things as social welfare programs.  There was always a jobs shortage in the Judean market, and for many people, there was no such thing as a career.  There was only a get up every morning and look for a day job. So they were anxious all the time.  They were asking, “What will we eat?  What will we drink?  What will we wear?”  They had put their confidence in money. They looked to money to provide these things, and money was proving to be a fickle god.

You can relate to them, can’t you?  The more money you have in the bank, the more security you have on the job, the better you feel.  The less money, the less job security you have, the worse you feel, the bigger the pit in the stomach when you wake up in the morning. What will we eat?  What will we drink?  What will we wear?  Or even more pathetic, How will we maintain the lifestyle we’ve grown accustomed to? 

It’s almost understandable, though not at all excusable, that unbelievers would put their trust in their own hands, their own brains, their own skills, that they should chase after money and things and put their confidence there.  After all, whom else do they have to rely on?

But that believers in Christ should be deceived in this way?  That we should rest our confidence on ourselves, our doings, our jobs, our skills, our money?  Or that we should chase after certainty and security in other places—in our friends or family, in a pastor, in a church building, in a church body? Oh, the devil is a wicked enemy and a powerful deceiver that he should convince us to turn our eyes away from our heavenly Father and turn again to the path of things, the path of the Law and unbelief. And our sinful flesh is a wicked and powerful ally of the devil, that we should be so easily deceived, so easily shaken in our faith, so easily worried. And when I say “we,” I mean “we.”  You and me. 

Jesus scolds us, in love, for this self-reliance, for this confidence we place in ourselves and our works.  “O you of little faith!”  He shows us the other path, the other path where there is just God and His Word, God and His promises.  And nothing else.  It doesn’t look like much.  But it’s actually more than enough.  Jesus shows us His Father, the good and faithful God who feeds the birds of the air and provides for them without any of their worry or care, without any merit or worthiness on their part.  He provides for the lilies of the field and clothes them with beauty, even though they are here today and gone tomorrow.  Are you not of more value than they? 

The answer is yes, you are.  You have eternal souls.  You were made in the image of God, although that image is distorted now by sin.  But you believers in Christ—you’re being remade in the image of Christ.  He gave Himself as a ransom for many.  He has redeemed you, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won you from all sin, from death and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent sufferings and death.  Of course you’re worth more than the birds, more than the grass.

Do you worry?  Of course you worry!  Does that make you a sinner?  No, it doesn’t make you a sinner.  You worry because you are a sinner.  But Jesus came to save sinners.  And so Jesus urges you to repentance and faith.  He pulls you back from the brink of despair and destruction in unbelief and He shows you that the other path, the other way is better.  The other way is the only saving way, the way of faith in a heavenly Father who has adopted you as His child through Holy Baptism, a heavenly Father who has already not spared His only Son but has given Him up for us all.  How will He not, along with Jesus, graciously give us all things?  You’re right to trust in this Father for forgiveness and life and salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.  And if you trust in Him for that, then of course you can trust in Him to provide your daily bread.

And so Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  You’re wrong if you think you need to focus first on food, first on income, if you think you need to pursue worldly wealth or worldly happiness.  In fact, the more you chase after those things, the more elusive they will become, because that’s the path of unbelief.  That’s the path of you fixing things, you making things right, you controlling the world around you, you doing things for yourself.  The path of faith is the path, not of doing, but of receiving the good things that God has promised to those who love Him.  To seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness is to seek Christ—nothing more and nothing less.

So, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, not your little kingdom, not your righteousness.  Do not seek first financial security.  Seek first His kingdom.  Do not seek first your pastor.  Seek first His kingdom.  Do not seek first a synod or a church body.  Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all the things you need, every last one, will be added to you.  Because it doesn’t come from you.  It comes from your Father in heaven, who is your gracious Father through faith in Jesus His perfect Son.  As Paul says to the Ephesians, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”

And do not be anxious about tomorrow.  Well, that’s easy for you to say, Pastor, your tomorrow is certain.  Is it, now?  No.  No, it isn’t at all easy for me to say, and tomorrow is not certain. What is certain is the Word of God.  What is certain is the atoning sacrifice of Christ.  What is certain is the all-sufficient righteousness of Christ, the righteousness that is yours by faith alone, the forgiveness of sins that is held out to you in the Sacrament.  What is certain is the love of a Father, and that those who seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness will be provided for by that Father, without their worry, without their anxiety, and God will do it miraculously, if necessary, as He did for Elijah, as He has done for countless others.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 6:33.  I wanted that verse as a confirmation verse, because, by the grace of God, I want to be guided by that verse until my dying day.  And whether or not it’s your confirmation verse, God wants you to be guided by it, too.  Amen.

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Faith is not a four-letter word

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 14

Proverbs 4:10-23  +  Galatians 5:16-24  +  Luke 17:11-19

It was recently suggested to me that I should try preaching 20 sermons in a row without talking at all about faith, as if faith got in the way of the Gospel, as if faith made salvation uncertain, as if faith were opposed to Christ, as if faith were a four-letter word. Dear friends, if I ever preach a single sermon to you without mentioning faith in Christ or believing in Christ, then you should come up to me afterwards and reprimand me.  And if I ever preach 20 sermons in a row like that, then you should pick me up and throw me out on the street.  I would be an unfaithful servant of Christ, because “the very voice of the Gospel,” as our Confessions say, is “that we should believe the Absolution and regard it as certain that the forgiveness of sins is freely granted to us for Christ’s sake. We should believe that through this faith we are truly reconciled to God.”  Faith is a good thing, not a bad thing.

“Yes, but you’re teaching them to put their faith in faith!”  Good God, what ignorance fills the visible Church!  No, dear Christians, don’t put your faith in faith.  Put your faith in Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, and understand that faith is not doubt, but certainty.  Faith is not a question mark, but an exclamation point!  It is the very gift of God by which all the merits and mercies of Christ are poured into your lap.

The Holy Spirit preaches to us about faith in the Gospel of the healing of the Ten Lepers—what faith is, how it behaves, and the fruit it produces.  More than that, He urges us to faith and confidence in the goodness and mercy of Jesus Christ, the Healer of lepers, the Healer of all who are sick because of sin and who cry out to Him for mercy, as the lepers did, as you have done and continue to do every Sunday and in between.  Lord, have mercy!  That is the prayer of faith.

Jesus was traveling down to Jerusalem for the last time.  But He was taking the back roads, the indirect route, so that He could preach and teach in as many places as possible along the way.  He took the path between Galilee and Samaria, again, giving even those Samaritan foreigners—non-Jews or half-Jews, an opportunity to find Him and to hear Him.  And just as we heard recently of that Good Samaritan who showed mercy to the wounded man where the Jews walked right on by, this week we hear of that faith-full Samaritan who returned to thank Jesus where the other nine healed lepers forgot about the One who had healed them.

Ten men with the debilitating skin disease called leprosy approached Jesus, but from a distance.  They stood and called out to him, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” And there, right away, you have it:  Faith.  See what it does; see what it’s like.

First, faith fully expects to find God’s grace with Jesus.  As in so many cases, a good report about Jesus had reached these lepers, living in isolation, living apart from society.  Somehow, the word about Christ had been told to them, that Jesus is good and merciful and a helper of those in need.  That simple word about Jesus was the instrument of the Holy Spirit to create faith in their hearts so that they were bold to come to Him, and when they got there, they knew what to expect, and so they knew what to pray.  “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  That’s a perfect prayer.  It’s the prayer of lepers, the prayer of sinners who see how wretched they are, but who know that Jesus is merciful to the wretched.  To pray to Jesus for mercy, to expect mercy and grace and help from Jesus—that is faith.

So you’ve heard, haven’t you?, that Jesus is good and merciful.  You’ve heard that the Son of God came to seek and to save what was lost.  When all is helpless and hopeless, when your sin weighs heavily upon you, when the sins of others threaten to overwhelm you and when ten thousand enemies surround you, you will still find God’s grace with Jesus.  Go to Him with a “Lord, have mercy!”  And know for certain that you will find mercy with Him.

The second thing about faith is that it doesn’t need proof ahead of time that Jesus will help. The lepers went to Jesus sick with leprosy, not already on the mend.  They had no guarantee in writing that Jesus would cleanse them of their leprosy.  They didn’t see their healing as an already-existing reality out there somewhere.  Even Jesus’ words to them to “Go, show yourselves to the priest” were no proof, not for the eyes at least.  When Jesus said those words, their eyes still saw leprosy all over their bodies.  Their eyes still saw a miserable life and a hopeless future of pain and loneliness.  But faith takes the word of Jesus and runs with it, so that without any proof, the lepers hurry away at Jesus’ word, confident that, by the time they reach the priest, who diagnosed lepers as clean or unclean, they would have nothing but healthy bodies to show him.

So no matter how bleak things look, how uncertain your future appears, how distressed our church may be, the words, “It will be OK,” are not an empty wish for the Christian.  The Lord has taught us over and over again in the Holy Scriptures that He is present most when we see Him least.  He has taught us to trust in Him and His salvation especially when our eyes and when our human reason tell us not to.  Who would have thought that hanging the Son of God on a cross until He was dead could have turned out well for the Son of God or for the Church?  And yet, it did turn out well.  It does turn out well.  It will turn out well for all who trust in Him.

The third thing about faith is that it doesn’t bring any merit or worthiness to the table.  There’s no attempt on the lepers’ part to strike a bargain with Jesus.  “Jesus, have mercy on us, and then we’ll pay you back!”  “Jesus, have mercy on us, because we’re really good people.”  “Jesus, have mercy on us, because if you don’t, we’ll tell everyone how nasty you are!”  No, faith comes to Jesus empty-handed, sick, poor, wretched, miserable and blind, confident that the mercy of God in Jesus Christ is divvied out only because of how good He is, not at all because of how worthy you are.

All ten lepers demonstrated that kind of faith in Jesus.  Whether strong faith or weak faith, it doesn’t matter.  Whether one calls out in a loud voice or whether one is only able to squeak out a barely audible “Lord, have mercy,” that’s all it takes. That’s true faith, genuine faith, Spirit-worked faith, saving faith.

Ten lepers had faith. Ten lepers were healed.  And then something happened.  Nine lepers, when they were healed, kept going, away from Jesus.  Only one leper turned back to where Jesus was. Faith in Jesus quickly turned into forgetting about Jesus for nine out of ten.  But for the one leper, faith in Jesus immediately turned into a life of thanksgiving, a life of praise as the faith created by the Holy Spirit went on to produce the fruit of the Spirit, including joy in the Lord’s great salvation, love for Jesus and His Word, and love for his neighbor as the praises he shouted encouraged everyone around him to trust in Jesus for mercy, too.

All that teaches us something else about faith.  It isn’t necessarily permanent.  You can get everything you wanted and expected and hoped for from God, and then when you get it, you can be tempted away from Jesus.  You can take all the gifts He has given to you, pack them all up and leave Jesus behind in the dust.  You may well keep some of the physical blessings He has given.  But if you leave Jesus behind, then you forfeit your soul.

It doesn’t have to be that way, not for a single one of you.  Jesus has provided the means for sustaining the faith He has granted.  You know what those means are—the Word of God, the Sacraments of Christ. As you use those means, you have God’s promise that He will not let His Word return to Him empty.  You have His promise that Baptism now saves you also and gives you a good conscience before God.  You have His promise that the Absolution spoken by your pastor is valid in heaven itself.  You have His promise that the forgiveness of sins won at the cross for all people is given to you to receive by eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ.  Today’s Gospel itself is given to you as a gift to heal those who are hurting, to warn those who are straying, to call back those who have gone their own way and forgotten that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Faith enables you, too, to come back and worship Jesus your Savior, to fall down at His feet in thanksgiving and to ask again and again for His mercy, because in this sin-sick world, you need His mercy every day, every moment.  And it’s here for you every day, every moment, free of charge.

Faith is not a four-letter word.  On the contrary, faith is a good and salutary gift of God.  It’s the Holy Spirit’s work of opening the valves of your heart so that God can pour in His gifts of grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, strength and healing.  Rise and go, Jesus said to the leper; your faith has made you well.  Not because faith is a good work, but because faith lays hold of Christ, the Healer.  Faith will never disappoint you, because Christ will never disappoint you.  Never hesitate to seek mercy from Him, for He is a good and merciful Savior. Amen.

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You have to know mercy to show mercy

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 13

2 Chronicles 28:8-15  +  Galatians 3:15-22  +  Luke 10:23-37

Seventy-two men had been hand-picked and sent out by Jesus to go ahead of Him into the towns and villages of Israel as He made His way to Jerusalem. He sent them out with a simple message, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”  How so?  Because Jesus the Savior had come near to them and was right at the door.  Then, just before our Gospel today begins, the 72 returned rejoicing because many people had believed their message and received them.  Even the demons fled before them.  Jesus rejoiced, too, and prayed to His Father, thanking Him—for what?  For revealing the Gospel of Christ to little children, and for hiding it from the smart people.  The message of Christ doesn’t require a law degree or a theological degree to understand it.  It requires the Spirit of God to reveal it, and He likes to do that for children, for the simple-minded, for the average person, for those who know that they cannot do a single thing to inherit eternal life, because you don’t receive an inheritance by doing things.  You receive an inheritance by being a child in the family.  And Jesus has earned for everyone a place in God’s family.  As John says in his Gospel, “To all who received him (Jesus), to all who believed on his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

But that sweet Gospel is foolishness to the wise and the learned, to the smart people of the world who think highly of themselves and of their ability to earn a place in God’s family.  That’s what we see in the Gospel today—a smart person, a lawyer, who was none too happy that Jesus was praising the simple faith of children and bashing the hard work of the wise.

So this smart man asks a very dumb question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Again, you don’t receive an inheritance by doing.  You simply receive it as a child in the family.  But Jesus plays along.  OK, what does your Law say?  Oh, that’s easy.  Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor.  Right, Jesus says.  Do that, and you will live.

And the lawyer grows uncomfortable.  God’s Law, “Do this!”, was making him squirm, because for as good as his life may have been, the Law always pricks the conscience and always accuses, “You have not done that.  You will surely die.”

But his response to the condemnation of the Law was utterly wrong.  The Law reveals transgressions in us in order to lead us to Christ where we’re sure to find mercy, where it is God who justifies.  But the lawyer didn’t want to beg for mercy, certainly not from Jesus.  Instead, he wanted to “justify himself.” “Who is my neighbor?”  How can I know that I’ve done enough to inherit eternal life?  Whom do I have to love?

So Jesus tells that parable of the Good Samaritan to show the lawyer, to show us, just what you have to do, if you want to live eternally and escape condemnation.  You must show mercy to your neighbor, to everyone who has need of your help, to everyone whom God places in your path.  And you must do it with the utter devotion and concern that the Good Samaritan showed to the man who had been left for dead on the side of the road.  Do this, and you will live.

Remember the story.  The poor Jew had been robbed and beaten and wounded.  And two of the smart people, the decent people, the “godly” people from Jerusalem saw the wounded man lying there and walked right on by.  It was the Samaritan who stopped, who showed him mercy, who poured oil and wine on his wounds to clean them and to soothe them, who bound him up, put him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, cared for him through the night and then left money and instructions with the innkeeper, and even promised to return to check up on him and pay for any additional costs.  That kind of mercy, that kind of devotion, that kind of love for your neighbor—that’s what God’s Law demands and no less.  Do this, Jesus says to the lawyer. Show mercy like that, and you will live.

And at once we’re amazed and inspired by how good God’s Law is.  Really?  This is what the Ten Commandments are all about?  That kind of mercy?  That kind of love and devotion to your fellow man?  This is what mercy looks like?  That’s great!  God is truly good and His Law is truly perfect, beautiful, and just.  Let’s all be like the Good Samaritan!

But at the same time, if you’re one of those who want to get to heaven by doing the Law, then your heart has to sink, because the kind of mercy shown by the Good Samaritan is beyond your reach.  You know how hard it is to show that kind of selfless devotion in your own home, in your own church, to your spouse, to your children, to your parents, to your fellow members here or to your pastor.  To show that kind of mercy to a stranger?  And not just once or twice, but every single time, throughout your entire life, when God places someone with a need next to you.  Do this, and you will live.  And if that’s the case, then none of you nor I will live.  You have not done it.  You cannot justify yourself. You must die.

This is where, again, the purpose of God’s holy and righteous Law comes in.  The Law was never given by God to justify people or to save people.  As Paul said in the Epistle today, the Law was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. The Law of God, including the parable of the Good Samaritan was added because of transgressions, in order to show you and me how completely we have transgressed, sinned against, God’s requirement to show mercy to our neighbor.

But!  The Law of God is not supposed to be our final destination.  It’s supposed to kill you, because it’s only when you’re dead that Christ can bring you to life.

The offspring Paul was referring to in Galatians 3 is Jesus Himself, the offspring of the woman—Eve, the offspring of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of David, and of Mary.  He is the end of the Law for everyone who believes, as Paul says in Romans, or as he says in Galatians, the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. What promise by faith?  The promise of inheriting eternal life.  That it might be given to whom? Not to those who “do,” you see, but to those who “believe.”

Who believe what?  Who believe that Jesus is our Good Samaritan who “did this,” that is, kept God’s perfect law of love, showed mercy to His neighbor, not so that He might live, but so that we might live.  He found us wounded and bleeding and dying, helpless and alone and abandoned, and he stooped down to help by shedding His own blood on the cross—dying our death! — and by a righteous life of obedience, love, devotion and mercy, a life He lived in our place.  Not only that, but He has found us, wounded and dying, and has now brought to us the balm of healing, the Gospel of peace, the wine of the forgiveness of sins in His blood and the soothing oil of His Word, “Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven.  Your fellowship with God has been restored.”  He has brought us to the inn of His holy Church, where He takes care of us, where He has left money, that is, the Word and Sacraments, and has left us in the care of the innkeeper, of your pastor, with instructions to keep taking care of the sick—that’s you and me—every day until He returns.

Those who wish to inherit eternal life by doing will never be justified.  But God freely by His grace justifies the one who dies to the Law and, instead of doing, believes in Christ, the Doer, Christ the crucified, Christ, our Good Samaritan.

Did you wonder why I put a baptismal hymn at the beginning of the service?  It’s because Holy Baptism is where you died with Christ and were raised to new life by Him.  That’s where your Good Samaritan found you and first applied the healing balm of His forgiveness to you.  The next verses after today’s Epistle from Galatians 3 say it explicitly, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  You yourselves haven’t done the Law well enough to receive anything from God but condemnation.  But you were condemned with Christ when you were baptized into His death and you have now been raised to the status of a son in God’s house who doesn’t have to “do” a thing to inherit eternal life, because you’re a son in God’s family—even you ladies and little girls, because it’s the status of Jesus, the Son of God, that has now been pronounced on you.

Since you have now died to sin and been raised to life with Christ, the parable of the Good Samaritan has new meaning for you.  Now that you are done trying to do things to inherit eternal life, you have a new reason to observe and imitate the Good Samaritan in your life.  Christ is the Good Samaritan.  And you have put on Christ.  You wear Him like a costume.  And each day you drown your Old Adam and take off that costume and wear Christ instead.  So Christ now goes around showing mercy to people through you.  When you see your neighbor in need, at home, here in church, at work, at school, wherever—there is Christ who lives in you, going out to your neighbor and showing mercy through you.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is only bad news to the one who wants to do things to get to heaven.  The mercy we see in the Good Samaritan is beyond our reach. You have to know mercy to show mercy.  In Christ, God has revealed His mercy to you, and now you have received it.  Now you know it and have been saved by it.  And now you, too, must show it, but not to fulfill the Law, not to inherit eternal life.  You know mercy and must show mercy, as a child of your heavenly Father, as a believer in Christ Jesus, who has done everything for you and has made you an heir of eternal life.  Amen.

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