Jesus, the humble healer of ears and tongues

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 12

Mark 7:31-37  +  Isaiah 29:17-24  +  2 Corinthians 3:4-11

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” Those words from Psalm 46 – in Spanish – served as the text for the sermon I preached to my congregation in Puerto Rico on the Sunday after 9/11, ten years ago.  Some of you here weren’t born yet when the twin towers fell, others are too young to remember, but for the rest of us, it was a terrible, but memorable day in American history when the threat of militant Islam and global terrorism became more than a remote threat. It became a life-changing reality for our country.

But while that event is definitely on the radar today, it surely isn’t our focus this morning.  Our focus is on God as the refuge and strength of His people, an ever-present help in trouble for all who trust in him. Especially, our focus is on the One who is God and who came in the flesh to reveal God to us, Jesus Christ.  We, the saints of God, do not share the world’s delusion of earthly peace as the highest good, nor do we look for peace in the goodness of the hearts of men or in the amount of security and protection our government may or may not be able to provide.  We, the saints of God, find peace in knowing that our citizenship is in heaven, purchased for us by Jesus’ blood, no matter what happens on this earth, even though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.  Our comfort is in God and in the refuge and strength of the cross of Christ, who has promised that his Church will never be shaken or moved.

While the world commemorates today a horrifying event in American history, the Church Year and the Lectionary offer us some much-needed stability in this unstable world.  We just go about our business, slow and steady, of following Jesus.  As far as the Church is concerned, today is simply the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, so today we follow Jesus through the Gospel of Mark, ch. 7.  We watch him today as the ever-present help in trouble – not for nations or countries or cities, but for one man, one man who needed him.  And his help for that one man extends also to each one of you.  Today we see Jesus, the humble healer of ears and tongues.

First we see the faith and love of those who brought the deaf man to Jesus and begged him to place his healing hand on the man.  Although their friend couldn’t hear, they had obviously heard about Jesus, that he was kind and good and merciful to those who came to him for help, and powerful to heal all kinds of sicknesses and diseases.  They had heard, and they believed.  They had faith in him that he could and would help their friend.  And where there is faith, there is love.  They showed love for the deaf man by bringing him to Jesus for help.

That’s what Christian love does.  Christian love is more than just helping out someone in need.  Lots of people helped their fellow man when the towers collapsed in New York.  Some made amazing sacrifices for others.  That’s good for this life, but it doesn’t make anyone good in God’s eyes.  Only Jesus is good, and only faith in Jesus makes a person good in God’s eyes.  But where there is genuine faith, it will always lead to works of service and love, like it did in our Gospel, where people who trusted in Jesus for help served their deaf friend by bringing him to the humble healer of ears and tongues.

Then we see Jesus drop everything, as if nothing else in the world were as important as this deaf man.  He halts his journey. His takes the man aside, away from the crowds, and deals with him one on one, with all of his attention dedicated to this one man who couldn’t hear or speak.  He uses divine sign language to communicate with the man.  With his fingers in the man’s ears and on the man’s tongue, he tells him that he knows exactly what his malady is.  With his spit he informs the man that healing only comes from the mouth of Jesus.  With his gaze fixed on heaven, he tells the man who it is that is healing him, and with his deep sigh, he tells the man that relief is on its way.  Heaven’s Healer has come!  Finally, he lets the man read his lips, “Ephphatha!” “Be opened!”  And the deaf ears become hearing ears, and the imprisoned tongue is loosened.  And the man begins to speak clearly and correctly.

See how humble and gentle is our Great Physician! – a gentle Savior who cares for each one and stoops down to address the individual needs of every individual, a humble Healer who isn’t the least bit squeamish about touching sinful, unclean people. Jesus isn’t the least bit deterred by saliva or germs or earwax – or by bedpans, for that matter.  Nor is he deterred by the filth of selfish hearts or foul language or dirty deeds committed in the past. This Healer has not come to heal at a distance, but to get his hands dirty – and his body bloody in order to help.

This is the glorious ministry of the Spirit that the Apostle wrote about in the Epistle today.  This is what the glorious ministry that brings righteousness and life looks like – humble, simple, personal, powerful, but not glory-seeking, not pretentious.

What did Jesus do next?  He ordered the people who were there not to tell anybody.  Why wouldn’t Jesus want that word to get out?  Because the real glory of Jesus, the lasting glory of the ministry that Jesus has commissioned in these New Testament days is not the glorious ministry of physical healing, but the hidden glory of the ministry of spiritual healing.

Jesus’ physical healings were signs of the great healing that he will accomplish when he raises his believers from the dead on the Last Day and gives them new, healthy, glorious bodies like his glorious body.  Until then, all people, including the saints on earth, will still be plagued by sickness and disease of all kinds, including ears that can’t hear and tongues that don’t work right.

But more than that, those physical healings were intended to draw us to Jesus for the spiritual healing of our spiritual diseases. There is a deafness that plagues mankind much more serious than physical deafness.   We are all born with spiritual ears that cannot hear, because since the Garden of Eden it’s the devil’s voice that rings in our ears, “You can be like God!”  And so no one in this world can stand to hear that sin infects everything we do.  No one can stand hearing that Jesus is God’s Son, and that by his death and resurrection from the dead he has opened heaven to all believers in him.  No one is able to hear the Gospel of Christ with believing ears.

There is also a dumbness that plagues mankind much more serious than a tongue that cannot speak clearly. No tongue in this world is able to speak about God rightly, or give him the praise that is rightly his – the praise of being the only one who is holy, the only one who is to be worshiped and served as God in accordance with his Word, the only one who saves through faith alone in Jesus Christ.

Instead, what did the tongues of men say after 9/11?  “Terrorists are evil, but all who love America are good.”  What gibberish!  “We all have to come together in peace – Christians, Jews, Muslims – because we all worship the same God!”  Do you remember hearing all that after 9/11?  What blasphemy!  But such are the tongues of men that have not been touched by Jesus, the humble healer of ears and tongues.

But ears that do not hear the Gospel in faith and tongues that cannot speak about God rightly – those are the ears and tongues that Jesus really came to heal, not with big, impressive miracles, but with the humble, simple power of his Holy Spirit, working through humble, sinful ministers of the true Gospel, working through the humble, lowly means of preaching and baptizing.

God calls on this wicked, sinful world to repent and to seek him in Christ alone.  That includes Muslim terrorists.  It also includes the most patriotic Americans.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  All.  9/11, like all disasters on this earth, was a call to repentance, a precursor to the great day of judgment on which every tower on earth will fall and every soul will be held accountable to God.  9/11 was a wake-up call, not to America, but to Americans to seek refuge from God’s wrath that will be much more terrifying than the scene in New York City.

But what 9/11 didn’t do was to tell anyone where to seek refuge from God’s wrath.  That’s what the Church is for. Through the Gospel, Christ has opened our ears to hear his call to repent and believe.  He has also loosened our tongues, to preach the Gospel of Christ rightly so that men know why these tragedies happen and where to find a safe place to hide – in the wounds of Jesus Christ, in the promise of forgiveness for his sake, in the truth of his glorious resurrection from the dead and in the promise of an eternal inheritance in heaven for all who trust in him.

You who believe in Jesus as your Savior from sin, who look to him for forgiveness and peace and eternal life – forgiveness is yours!  Peace is yours!  Life is yours!, no matter how much death surrounds you in this world.

And even now the Gospel of Christ continues to hold your ears open to his Truth.  Even now the body and blood of Jesus are about to touch your tongues again and bring his healing to your troubled hearts.

Now you and I, as the Church of God, have a mission in this dying world, to love and serve our neighbor, to use our loosened tongues to bring the healing power of the Gospel of Christ to our friends and neighbors and community.  You and I can be like the brave men and women who went up the stairwells of the twin towers on 9/11 instead of down, risking life and limb in order to save those who could not save themselves.  We, too, risk life and limb and reputation and friends and career and income if we would speak the Truth of Christ in this world.  But how could we not risk life and limb and everything else for the sake of the Gospel?  Jesus, the healer of ears and tongues, gave himself on the cross and brought that healing Gospel to our ears and tongues, so that we could hear his Gospel, believe and be saved; so that we could speak his Gospel for the salvation of others.

Today’s Gospel is the perfect message for us today on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  Jesus, the humble healer of ears and tongues, is present in this world through his Church to bring a great healing, a spiritual healing to you and to others, even the forgiveness of sins and salvation from eternal death.  God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear.  Amen.

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Be the one who goes home justified!

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 11

Luke 18:9-14  +  Genesis 4:1-15  +  Ephesians 2:1-10

King Solomon said this in the book of Ecclesiastes, “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.”

It’s serious business, even dangerous business to do what all of you have done today.  You have dared to come to the house of God, to assemble as the Temple of God on earth.  Did you guard your steps?  Did it even occur to you when you got in the car this morning that you were going to meet with God?  “Where two or three come together in my name,” Jesus says, “there am I in the midst of them.” “This is my body; this is my blood.”

It’s a serious matter to come into God’s presence, because whether you realize it or not, you will always receive something from God when you come into his house: either divine acceptance or divine rejection; either divine salvation or divine condemnation.

You heard today of two men – brothers – Cain and Abel, each of whom dared to approach God with an offering.  The offering of the one was acceptable to God.  The offering of the other was rejected.  Abel received God’s approval.  Cain received God’s judgment.

You heard today in the Gospel of two men – brothers in the people of Israel – a Pharisee and a tax collector, each of whom dared to go to the house of God to offer something to him in their prayers.  The prayer of the one was acceptable to God. The prayer of the other was rejected.  The tax collector received God’s salvation. The Pharisee received God’s judgment.

You have come to God’s holy church today – for what?  What do seek from him? What do you wish to offer him?  Chew on this for awhile: What you receive from God depends on what you seek from God. And what you seek from God depends on what you have to offer him.  You could, like the Pharisee in Jesus parable, be the one who goes home today condemned.  But Jesus calls out to you today and pleads with you: Be like the tax collector!  Be the one who goes home justified!

The Gospel tells us who Jesus’ audience was when he first told this parable.  He spoke it to church members – members of the church of Israel – who were very self-confident, confident in themselves that they were righteous, that they were good people who deserved to receive good things from God.  As a result, they looked down at everyone who didn’t live up to their standards.

So Jesus tells of two men who went to the Temple in Jerusalem, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

Now, I know we mention the Pharisees quite a bit and we’ve talked about them before, but this parable really highlights what it meant to be part of that religious social organization called “the Pharisees.”  They were the law-abiding citizens of Israel, religious activists who took the rule of law seriously.  They loved the law.  But – and this is key – their major flaw was not in their love for God’s law, but in their delusion that they were actually keeping it!  They thought that, because they weren’t murderers or robbers or adulterers, that they were good, righteous people who didn’t deserve God’s anger or punishment.  They thought that, because they prayed often and fasted often and put big offerings in the plate, that they did deserve God’s approval and praise, far more than other men deserved it.

The Pharisee’s prayer was pretty arrogant, wasn’t it?  He stood up in the Temple where he could be seen and heard. He looked up to heaven and prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”  So, why did the Pharisee go to the Temple that day? Because he had something to offer God.  He wanted to offer God his good deeds, his righteous life.  He came to God with his record of law-keeping in his hand. And what did he seek from God in return?  He was seeking God’s praise, wasn’t he?  He sought praise from God because he offered to God a life of good works that he thought had earned him God’s approval and praise.

Then there’s the tax collector.  We’ve talked about the tax collectors many times, too.  The tax collectors were employed by the Roman government to collect a certain amount of taxes from people.  That was enough to get people upset with them.  But what really gave them a bad reputation was that they were authorized by Rome to enhance their own salaries by adding a commission fee to people’s tax burden – as much as they wanted, to keep it for themselves. So you can imagine how they abused their fellow Israelites. It was perfectly legal according to Roman law, but according to God’s law to love your neighbor and not take advantage of him, it was utterly sinful and shameful.

So, knowing that he has no righteousness to offer God, nothing in his hand but sin, why does he go to the Temple?  Why bother coming into God’s presence if you have nothing good to offer him?  And yet, he went.  He stood in a corner of the Temple where hopefully no one would see him or hear him.  He looked down, too ashamed to look up to heaven. He beat his breast and prayed just a few words: God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  Why did he go to the Temple that day?  You see, he had something to offer God, too.  Not a single excuse, not a shred of his own righteousness, just his sin.  He held his sin up to God in shame, seeking not a word of praise, but seeking only God’s pity and help.

Now here’s the unknown. Here’s the mystery that only the Son of God could reveal, because only the Son of God came from God the Father and knows what verdict is handed down in the heavenly courtroom: Which one of these men, the Pharisee or the tax collector, received God’s approval and which one was rejected? Which one went home condemned and which one went home justified?  If you would have asked the average Jew who saw those two men praying, he would have said, “Well of course, the Pharisee is righteous; the tax collector stands condemned.”  If you would have asked the Pharisee, he would have told you, “Well, of course God judges me as righteous. I am righteous.”  But Jesus turns human wisdom upside down.  I tell you that this man – the tax collector! – rather than the Pharisee, went home justified.  Forgiven of all his sins, the sinful tax collector was declared righteous in heaven’s eyes, while the Pharisee stood condemned.

Why?  Remember, I asked you to chew on this on the beginning of the sermon: What you receive from God depends on what you seek from God. And what you seek from God depends on what you have to offer him.  If, like the Pharisee, you have your righteousness and goodness to offer to God, then, like the Pharisee, you will seek praise and approval from God because of your righteousness.  And then you, like the Pharisee will receive condemnation from God, because in his judgment, “There is no one righteous, not even one.”  But if, like the tax collector, you have only your sin and shame to offer to God, then, like the tax collector you will seek only mercy from God.  And then you, like the tax collector, will receive mercy and forgiveness and justification.

Our Lutheran Confessions get this exactly right: “So the worship and divine service of the Gospel is to receive gifts from God. On the contrary, the worship of the Law is to offer and present our gifts to God. However, we can offer nothing to God unless we have first been reconciled and born again. This passage, too, brings the greatest comfort, as the chief worship of the Gospel is to desire to receive the forgiveness of sins, grace, and righteousness.”

This is where it gets serious for you who have assembled today as the Temple of God.  What will you offer him?  What do you seek to receive when you come before God?

There are only two things you can offer him.  Either you can offer him the worship of the Law like the Pharisee – your record of good deeds, seeking his approval based on that record, or you can offer him the worship of the Gospel, which means that you offer him nothing, like the tax collector, nothing but your sin, seeking his mercy for the sake of Christ, seeking to be judged, not by your record, but by the record of the man, Christ Jesus. The record of Christ is perfect and full of God’s mercy, full and free and abundant.

So you who have come here today into God’s presence confident that you are a good person, confident that you are righteous, maybe not even caring about receiving anything from God here – Jesus wants you to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God thinks you’re wretched.  He judges you to be the Pharisee; your arrogance alone condemns you.  If you will not humble yourself before him, then know for certain that he will humble you.  I only pray that he does it to you yet in this life, while you still have time for him to lift you up by his Spirit, because if you go down to the grave still thinking so highly of yourself, then it will be too late.  You will be humbled in God’s eternal condemnation.

But you who have come here today into God’s presence convinced that you are unrighteous, that you are a wretched, unworthy sinner who can’t seem to get it right no matter how hard you work at it – for you there is hope, a sure hope that can never fail.  Jesus wants you to know that God loves to be merciful to sinners.  God’s purpose in humbling the proud is so that he may lift up the humble.  So offer him your sin. Seek his mercy in humility, not because you deserve it, but because, in Christ, God is a gracious Father.  Seek his mercy for the sake of Jesus Christ who has paid the price for all your unrighteousness and now gives you his own righteousness to wear.   He forgives you your sins – all of them.  He forgave them when you were baptized.  He daily and richly forgives all sins to you and all believers in Christ.  He forgives them right here, right now in the Word of the Gospel.  He forgives them with the seal and pledge of his very body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar.

So guard your steps when you go to the house of God.  It is no trifling matter. Eternal verdicts are handed out in this place: life and death, condemnation and justification.  Only in the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of Christ’s Sacraments are justification verdicts handed out.  So don’t be the one who comes here to offer God your goodness or your works.    Come always into God’s presence with an open and empty hand, and you have God’s guarantee that he will always fill it with his grace.  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not by works, so that no one can boast.  You who believe in the God who is merciful to sinners for the sake of Christ will go home today having received again his forgiveness and his life.  You will go home with the love and favor of God.  You will go home justified.  Amen.

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See how Jesus loves Jerusalem!

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 10

Luke 19:41-48  +  Jeremiah 7:1-11,20  +  Romans 9:30 – 10:4

Twice in the New Testament it says that “Jesus wept.”  He may have wept more often than that, but twice it’s recorded for us to know and consider.  The first time was at the grave site of his friend Lazarus.  Jesus was moved to tears by the tears of his friends, and by the sadness and sorrow that accompanied death, even the death of a believer. Jesus wept.

The other time Jesus wept was on Palm Sunday.  We don’t usually make the connection, do we?  We think of Palm Sunday as a day of celebration and rejoicing, palm branches and singing at Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  And that’s all true.  It’s just not the whole story.  Because the closer Jesus got to Jerusalem, the bigger those walls grew in his vision, the harder it struck the Son of God: This “holy” city is going to be destroyed.

On this day of the Church Year, the Church remembers the fall of Jerusalem, which took place in the year 70 AD, as prophesied by Jesus in our Gospel today some 40 years before it happened.  When Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus, the crowd exclaimed, “See how he loved him!”  As we witness Jesus weeping at the gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we exclaim, “See how he loved her!”  And see how he loves her still!  See how Jesus loves Jerusalem!

First, we see Jesus’ love in his tears as he mourns for apostate Jerusalem.

“Apostate” means “fallen away.”  Some people get a little carried away with this text and picture Jesus crying for all the lost sinners of the world.  But that’s not exactly right. It’s true, God doesn’t want anyone to perish.  But it’s more specific than that.  Jesus weeps for Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was special.  Jerusalem had been the home of God’s people and the site of God’s holy Temple for 1,000 years.  Jerusalem represented God’s Church on earth, those who had received God’s very own words and promises, those who were pledged to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, like a woman who is pledged to be married to a man.  Jerusalem’s long-awaited Messiah was coming.  Jerusalem was supposed to be his Bride when he arrived, and he would bring her peace.  If she would have received Jesus in faith, she would have received every blessing, both temporal and eternal.

But Jerusalem became apostate.  The city as a whole claimed to worship God, claimed to know God, but when God came to her, when the Messiah arrived, she didn’t receive him.  She didn’t even recognize him.  The Savior was hidden from her eyes.  His divine identity was hidden in words, in prophecies, in flesh and blood and weakness and humility.  God’s Holy Spirit opened the eyes and ears of a few to believe the words and see him for who he was, who he is.  But for the most part, this beautiful old city lived in unbelief.  She who had all the promises and all the prophecies about the Messiah rejected the Messiah and despised God’s Word.  Five days after Palm Sunday, she would call for her Husband’s crucifixion.

Now sometimes, Jesus addressed the impenitence of the Jews with harsh words and stern threats.     But now, as Jerusalem is about to betray Jesus and reject him once and for all, he has no harsh words for her.  He shows only love, only tenderness, only pity for those who despise him.  He mourns for her, he grieves over her as people grieve over a loved one who has died, or who is about to die.  Jesus sheds no tears for himself and what he is about to suffer.  His tears are only for Jerusalem, because, by rejecting him, she was sealing her own fate.  Her destruction was set in stone.

And Jesus saw it all too clearly, how, within forty years, Jerusalem would be surrounded by the Romans.  The siege would start on Passover, with all the visitors from other countries trapped in the city – some 3 million people, for 143 days.  By the end, it was pure mayhem.  The food was gone; the people were starving.  They were resorting to cannibalism by the time the Roman armies finally entered the city and tore down the Temple, killing up to a million people before they were through.  Jesus saw it all before it happened.  And he wept over the destruction of those who despised him.  See how he loved Jerusalem!

Jerusalem stands as a symbol for the Christian church on earth of all times.  This Christian Church has no capital city.  The Church is the city.  Its walls aren’t made of brick and stone, but of baptized people from every nation on earth who confess the name of Christ crucified as God and Savior.  It has no Temple.  It is the Temple of God where he dwells through his Holy Spirit, where his Word and Sacrament bring God into the presence of man.

But what is the state of the Christian Church on earth?  It is fast approaching the state of Jerusalem in 30 AD.  False teachers are everywhere.  The name of Christ is still mentioned, but people look to him more for moral teaching than for the forgiveness of sins.  Rare are the Christian churches that still believe the Bible to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from God.  And how many have been baptized or called themselves Christians their whole lives and yet rarely if ever set foot in a church?

Here, even in this place, the Word of God is offered and proclaimed freely; the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen is preached; the Sacrament is offered every Sunday; we have a Book of Lutheran Confessions that is pure gold, and everyone has access to a Bible.  But do we use them? Are our hearts in them? Is our gathering as the Church around Word and Table the high point of our week from which everything else flows, or is it just another check in the to-do list?

Let us remember the fall of Jerusalem not in arrogance, but with fear.  Because as the Last Day approaches, the visible Christian church on earth will become more and more apostate. You can count on it.  It’s not restricted to any single denomination.  And the last day will not only bring destruction on the secular world, but also on the apostate Church, of every denomination.  Judgment, says the Apostle Paul, does not begin with the world, but with the house of God.  It begins with those who had his Gospel proclaimed in their midst most clearly, most abundantly, and yet who still didn’t cherish it.

If you think you are standing first…that’s when you should be most afraid of falling.  Jerusalem thought she stood firm, that she could never be moved.  And so she grew casual about her faith and careless in her watching.  If Jerusalem, God’s city, could become apostate, so could you! If Jerusalem could fall, so could you!  If Jesus mourned for that city and its imminent downfall, how much more will he mourn for you who have been baptized into his name, if you should come to despise his Word!

See how Jesus loves Jerusalem!  He weeps over the Christian Church as it slowly abandons him and becomes apostate.  He weeps over every baptized Christian who walks away from the faith, or who becomes secure in his or her sin. And the tears of his love call us back to repentance so that we do not perish together with the multitudes.  His tears over the destruction of those who despise him – don’t they move you not to despise him any longer?

But tears aren’t the only face of Jesus in today’s Gospel.  On the front cover of your service folder you see a picture of an angry Jesus.  But you who mourn over your sin, don’t be afraid.  He isn’t the least bit angry with you.  He’s fighting for you.  His is a righteous anger. A sad and mournful Jesus approaches Jerusalem.  But a fierce and determined Jesus heads straight for the Temple to fight for the salvation of those who hope in him.

See how Jesus loves Jerusalem!  He fights for her salvation.

Jesus goes straight to the Temple on that Palm Sunday, that 10th day of Nisan when the Passover lambs were chosen for sacrifice.  He goes to the Temple to teach the people.  He hasn’t given up on Jerusalem.  He knows that most people will remain in unbelief, but he also knows that some will hear his words and believe in him and escape the destruction that is to come. These people form a New Jerusalem, a spiritual one.

So God comes to his Temple to teach.  But he can’t teach. Because the Temple has become a marketplace, a “den of robbers,” as Jesus put it.  God’s house, God’s Temple was to serve as a beacon for all nations, the only place on earth where man could be sure to encounter the living God, because He promised to be there.  They were supposed to be able to come and seek him there and pray to him there, and he promised to listen.  But instead it was full of money changers exchanging currency, selling animals, making it impossible for people to hear God’s Word.

So Jesus drove them out of his house.  “It is written, my house will be a house of prayer!”  And then he began to teach the people earnestly, with his final days, with his final breath.  He handed out to people the word of life, even as he would hand over his own body to be sacrificed on the cross and his own blood to be shed on the outskirts of Jerusalem before the week was out, so that there could be forgiveness of sins for all men.  See how Jesus loves Jerusalem!

Now, in his fight for his Bride, Jerusalem, Jesus sends ministers into the world, and like him, they mourn over the downfall of his Church.  But like Him, they also fight for his Church.  They preach repentance; they hand out the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name.  They call the erring sheep back to the fold, and comfort those who are afraid.

That’s what the Church is for – for the ministry of Word and Sacrament. It must never become a den of robbers.  We can’t prevent the destruction of Jerusalem, of the Christian Church on earth. But we can be vigilant in our own walk, in our own church, in our own lives.  The true Church of Christ – the New Jerusalem will never be destroyed.  You don’t have to be among those who are perishing.  For he who is your peace has come, and reveals himself to you here and now, to believe in him, to be saved by him.  He comes again today into Jerusalem, into the midst of his people.  He comes to teach.  He comes in flesh and blood. As literally as he came into Jerusalem, he comes in flesh and blood in the Sacrament to fortify the walls of New Jerusalem.

Apostate Jerusalem was finally abandoned by God and reduced to rubble.  That is the imminent fate of all things.  But spiritual Jerusalem, God’s holy people – the saints, will never come to ruin.  And you are among the saints, by faith in Christ Jesus.  May Jesus’ love for Jerusalem – both in his tears for those who perish in unbelief and in his fierce determination for those who will be saved by faith in him – may Jesus’ love for Jerusalem melt your heart and keep you strong in him, so that when he comes for his Bride, for his New Jerusalem, you may be found within her walls.  Amen.

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Learn a bit of wisdom from the wicked when it comes to wealth

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 9

Luke 16:1-9  +  2 Samuel 22:26-34  +  1 Corinthians 10:6-13

We hear all the time about how the people of this world are lost in their materialism, their greed, their thirst for more and more money.  We know how people tend to make money and wealth and financial security into a god whom they serve like slaves.  The world is presented in Scripture as foolish when it comes to God. But in one sense, in their dealings with one another, even unbelievers show a kind of wisdom, not true wisdom that comes from God, not wisdom that will serve them for eternity, but a very basic, common-sense kind of wisdom: The day will come when I need help from other people, so I’d better treat them well. What goes around comes around.

Jesus capitalizes on that bit of worldly wisdom as he teaches us today in the Gospel. We have before us this rather unique parable about the unjust steward or the shrewd manager, a real rascal, and yet that rascal, in the end, is praised for his shrewdness, his wisdom.  Let’s follow Jesus through this parable of the shrewd manager and heed Jesus’ words:  Learn a bit of wisdom from the wicked when it comes to wealth.

Jesus tells the story of a rich man who had an estate manager.  The manager was being accused of wasting or squandering his master’s possessions.  He wasn’t necessarily a thief or a cheat. But neither was a good steward. He spent his master’s money recklessly, uselessly, without gaining a profit for his master.

The manager knew the accusations were true.  He was caught red-handed.  His master called him in and fired him right there on the spot, and then ordered him to turn in his accounting records.  Even though he already lost his job, the manager would still have to answer for all the bad decisions he made with someone else’s money.  The day of reckoning was fast approaching.

But here’s where that wicked, wasteful manager finally began to become wise.  He put two and two together.  He knew he couldn’t justify any of his actions as an employee of the rich man.  He didn’t try to make a case for himself or beg for a second chance to get it right.  He knew he had messed everything up beyond repair with his master.  He also knew that he needed someone to help him after he lost his job.  There was no unemployment insurance back in those days.  He would be out on the streets in just a little while. He had nothing saved up in the bank, and the only work available was hard manual labor, for which his cushy managerial job had left him completely unprepared.

I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.  For just a little while, he still had access to his master’s debtors – those who owed him a certain return on their farming endeavors.  So he worked fast and hard with the little time he had left before the day of the reckoning of accounts occurred, giving his master’s debtors the bargain of a lifetime. One got a 50% reduction in the amount he owed.   Another got a 20% reduction.  The manager couldn’t buy his way back into his master’s good graces.  But by doing these favors for his fellow man, by using the wealth that was at his disposal to help others, the wise manager was buying friends for himself who could help him get back on his feet after he lost his job.

And the real beauty of his scheme, was that it was a win-win situation for everyone.  The debtors got a great deal, the manager would have friends to help him after he lost his job, and the rich man got the reputation for being the most generous landowner in the country, because his debtors thought the manager was giving them a break on the rich man’s orders.  So instead of becoming angry, the rich man praised his manager for finally doing something intelligent with his money.  Finally he had made a profit for the rich man – not a monetary profit, but a profit of friendship and loyalty, a non-traditional business transaction that would benefit everyone.

And so the manager acted shrewdly, wisely.  He didn’t have an ounce of righteousness or personal goodness in him.  But he was very smart in his final dealings with his master and with the people whom he made his friends by doing favors for them with the money he had at his disposal for that short time before the day of reckoning came.

And so it is, Jesus says, that the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.  What goes around comes around, they say.  Do unto others, because someday you may need them to do unto you.  That’s worldly wisdom.  Most people of this world know that the day will come when they need help from other people.  So they give funds for cancer research, because they know they might benefit from that research someday.  They do favors for their neighbors, because someday they may need to ask for a favor back.  Parents set aside money for their children’s college fund, because they know they may depend on their children’s care someday.  Politicians are famous for kicking back money to their constituents to win a favorable vote.  And citizens are all too happy to contribute to campaigns in order to buy the friendship of their elected officials.  It’s called self-preservation.  There’s nothing righteous about it.  There’s nothing God-pleasing about it.  But at least it makes sense for life in this world.

We, however, the people of the light, don’t always act with such sense when it comes to our dealings with one another.  We, like the manager in the parable, have totally mismanaged God’s riches that he has placed into our hands.  You’ve been entrusted by the Rich One with everything you think you “own.” It’s his property. You are stewards of it, managers.  Do you even consider that every penny that has been entrusted to you has been entrusted to you so that you might serve God with it – using it as he has commanded you to use it in his Word?  What kind of profit have you made for God with his wealth?  How often don’t you waste his possessions on things that won’t help anyone at all, not even yourself, much less anyone else, not even for this life, much less for eternity?

You stand accused before God of mismanagement of his funds.  A Day of reckoning has been set.  THE Day of reckoning – your death or judgment day, whichever comes first.  Even knowing that, though, the people of the light still battle against this inner darkness that wants to spend our time and energy and money on self-serving things, things that don’t help anyone, that don’t serve anyone, as if, on the day of reckoning, we won’t have to give an account, as if, on the day of reckoning, we won’t need any friends to speak up for us.  We’re people of the light, we think.  God has to welcome us into his eternal dwellings.  We don’t need to be concerned about helping other people.  We don’t need them!

But, Jesus says, you do.  I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. What does he mean?

He means, learn a bit of wisdom from the wicked when it comes to wealth.  Learn from the shrewd manager.  He knew the day of reckoning was coming and that he was guilty and that he couldn’t possibly justify himself.  You know the same thing.  Your works condemn you and you can’t justify yourself before God, either.  Don’t try.  Don’t try to buy your way into heaven or bargain with God. Don’t try to make excuses for your sinful record.

How, then, will you stand on that day when you have to give an account before God?  The rich man knew that he needed friends to help him on the day of reckoning.  You know that, too.  Repent!  Admit your bad management and look to your Friend, Jesus, whose friendship you did not buy or earn, but who loved you with an everlasting love and gave himself for you as a sacrifice of atonement, who cancelled your debts with God by his death on the cross and settled the accounts for you with his heavenly Father.  Christ has managed his Father’s estate perfectly.  He has earned for you a gracious Father in heaven.  You enter heaven on his merits, not on your own. Trust in him, because it’s by faith in him – faith alone! – that God forgives you all your sins, all your bad management, all your bad decisions.  They are erased from his accounting records.

But if it is by faith alone in Christ that you will be able to stand on the day of reckoning, then be wise in the short time you have before that day arrives.  Spend your time and energy devoted to those things that create and strengthen and nourish your faith.  That God does in the Word and the Sacraments alone, where he gives you Christ, he gives you himself. 

And it’s also through Word and Sacrament that God transforms you into people like him, people of the light who walk in the light, into generous people who see wealth not as a goal in this life, but as a means of serving, not God, but your neighbor, who needs your wealth, who needs your charity and your generosity.  And as you use God’s wealth to help others, you, like the manager in the parable, will only be enhancing God’s reputation with others, because you act in his name.  You act as a Christian.

And you’ll find that, as you use your wealth to help the poor or to help fellow Christians in need, to support pastors and teachers and missionaries and the people whom they serve all around the world – you’ll find that you are accumulating friends for yourselves who will welcome you into eternal dwellings on the Last Day.  It’s not that you’re buying your way into heaven.  Faith in Christ saves.  But works of love testify to the presence of faith.  Those who are helped by your faithful stewardship of God’s possessions will be witnesses for you on the Last Day, friends who will give thanks to God for your shrewd management of his wealth.  This one took time for me.  This one helped me.  This one acted generously with me.

The world is not wise at all when it comes to God, but the wicked can be wise in how they treat one another.  That’s a bit of wisdom you can learn from them.  But here’s a bit of wisdom the world will never know:  Live your life with an eye toward the Day of Reckoning, with daily sorrow over your sin but with even greater daily rejoicing, with confidence that your life with God depends on Christ alone, but living out your days on earth as if your neighbor’s well-being depended on you alone.  Amen.

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The wise man watches out for false prophets

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 8

Matthew 7:15-23  +  Jeremiah 23:16-29  +  Acts 20:27-38

Do you want to be wise?  Only a fool wouldn’t, right?  Jesus once told a parable, as he was wrapping up his famous Sermon on the Mount, a parable of two men – a wise and a foolish builder.  The wise builder built his house on the rock; the foolish builder built his house on sand.  The wind and waves demolished the foolish man’s house, but the wise man’s house was undamaged by wind and waves.  To build on the rock, Jesus says, is to build on his words – to hear them, to heed them, to do them.

We have one of those words before us today in our Gospel, the verses that come right before Jesus’ parable of the wise and foolish builders, his final word of wisdom in the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s a word you may not think of very often, but if you would be wise, you would do well to take Jesus’ words to heart and put them into practice.  And what are those words?  Watch out for false prophets!  That’s what the wise man does.

What is a false prophet?  A “prophet” is one who speaks a message from God.  A false prophet is one who claims to speak a message from God, but in reality, his message isn’t from God.  Sometimes false prophets are scam artists who lie on purpose.  But as Jesus reveals in today’s Gospel, most false prophets honestly believe they’re serving the Lord Jesus – while, in reality, they neither know the real Jesus nor are they known by him as his people.

There have always been false prophets, and there always will be.  You heard in the First Lesson today about those false prophets in the days of Jeremiah who proclaimed peace from the Lord God to those who despised the Lord God.  You heard the Apostle Paul warn the Ephesian Christians in the Second Lesson today about the false prophets who were bound to come, savage wolves, men who would arise from their own congregations and who would distort the truth.  Keep watch, Paul said. Be on your guard!

Watch out!, Jesus says in Matthew 24, because in the last days many false prophets will come in his name and deceive many.  Paul warns Pastor Timothy about the same thing: The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.  They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

One look at the world today, and you see – Jesus was speaking the truth!  Paul was speaking the truth!  Many false prophets have gone out into the world, and many people will not put up with sound doctrine.  And notice in our Gospel, Jesus is not talking about all the pagan religions and the pseudo-Christian cults of the world.  He’s talking about false prophets in Christian churches, those who call Jesus “Lord”!

There is a pope in Rome who calls Jesus “Lord,” who says many nice things about Jesus, many true things.  But he also says that you are not saved by faith alone in Jesus, but by faith and deeds of love; that Jesus’ merits are not enough to cover you, that his blood did not pay for all your guilt, that the merits of Mary and the saints will help you, too.

There is a whole branch of Pentecostal or Evangelical preachers who call Jesus “Lord,” but who deny the Means by which that Lord has chosen to forgive us our sins – through the preaching of the Word, and through Baptism, which, they, claim, is not the washing of rebirth and renewal in the Holy Spirit. And they deny the forgiveness of sins in the Lord’s Supper, where, they claim, Jesus’ body and blood are really not present.

There are also Lutheran preachers who call Jesus “Lord,” but who have taken his Word and twisted it to mean whatever they want it to mean.  No church is immune to the influence of false teaching; no church is immune to the presence of false teachers.

I say to you what the Apostle John said to his people, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

Watch out for them, Jesus says.  They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.  They come to you in sheep’s clothing – so don’t expect to be able to identify false prophet by how impressive they look or by how inspiring they sound.  Don’t try to identify them by how much outward success they have, or by how good they make you feel, or by the size of the crowd they gather.

How, then, will you identify the false prophets?  By their fruit you will recognize them, Jesus says.  And what is “the fruit” of a prophet?  It’s his doctrine and his practice – the whole of his teaching.  So a false prophet may teach many things that are true, just like the prophets in Jeremiah’s day did.  The pope says lots of true things, so do the TV and radio preachers.  They make plenty of true statements; but where there is error mixed in, it’s like having a lump of unleavened dough and adding a bit of yeast to it. Can you really separate the leavened parts from the unleavened parts anymore?  Or it’s like having a quart of good strawberries, but in the middle, touching them all, is a rotting, stinking, moldy strawberry.  Even the good ones around it get thrown into the trash.

How do you evaluate the fruit – the doctrine and practice – of a prophet, a pastor, a preacher?  People tell me sometimes, “I’m looking for a church that teaches what I believe.”  Do you see how backwards that is?  It turns your beliefs into the benchmark, the touchstone for judging a prophet’s fruit.  No, no, that won’t do.

You evaluate the fruit of a prophet first and foremost by the Word of God itself.  Now, every false prophet in the history of the Church has quoted from the Bible.  Satan himself quoted from the Bible when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness.  Quoting from the Bible isn’t enough to prove a prophet’s fruit to be good.  Getting straight the Bible’s whole message – that’s what you have to look for.  Recognizing throughout the Scriptures that, as Jesus said, “These are they that testify concerning me.” Christ is the goal of the Scriptures. Christ must therefore also be the goal of Christian preaching.  Anything else obscures Christ our Savior, removes the certainty of our salvation and the comfort of the Gospel.

How did Jesus summarize the message he entrusted to his apostles after his resurrection from the dead?  He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations.  What was the climax and the goal of the Apostle Peter’s preaching on the Day of Pentecost?   Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins.  How did the Apostle Paul summarize the theme of his message to the Corinthians?  For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

So you evaluate a preacher’s preaching by the Word of God:  Is he calling sin what God’s Word calls sin?  Is he preaching repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins, or is he preaching something else?  Is he preaching Christ crucified and risen from the dead or is he focusing on something else? Is he preaching the forgiveness of sins by faith alone in Christ, or is he preaching that Christ did his part; now you have to do yours?    Is he preaching the message of the cross or is he preaching a message of miracles, a theology of glory, a how-to-live-a-more-fulfilling-life-on-earth message?  Look at the fruit! Is it good or bad?  Watch out for false prophets!

There is another test that should rightly be applied to evaluate the fruit of a prophet.  Does his message agree with the Confessions of the Church?  You see, the Creeds and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church do not contain any “new” things. They simply proclaim the “old” things, what the Christian Church had always taught about the Scriptures since the days of the apostles.  The Lutheran Confessions are the Scriptures rightly taught and explained and practiced.  Alongside and under the Scriptures, the Confessions are the benchmark by which we, as a Lutheran congregation, are to judge the doctrine and practice of every pastor and every preacher, to see whether it is good or bad.

Judge for yourselves if the Confessions are good fruit or bad:

Human beings have not kept the law of God but have transgressed it. Their corrupted human nature, thoughts, words, and deeds battle against the law. For this reason they are subject to God’s wrath, to death and all temporal afflictions, and to the punishment of the fires of hell. As a result, the Gospel, in its strict sense, teaches what people should believe, namely, that they receive from God the forgiveness of sins; that is, that the Son of God, our Lord Christ, has taken upon Himself the curse of the law and borne it, atoned and paid for all our sins; that through Him alone we are restored to God’s grace, obtain the forgiveness of sins through faith and are delivered from death and all the punishments of our sins and are saved eternally. . . . It is good news, joyous news, that God does not want to punish sin but to forgive it for Christ’s sake.

Aren’t you glad – aren’t you thankful to have a solid, Scriptural, Christ-centered confession like that as the foundation for your church? But we hold it in trembling hands, knowing that we neither deserve to hold the truth like this, nor are we capable of holding onto it.

But Jesus has given us this promise – that he will keep his own from being led astray.  And Jesus has given us the means by which he will keep his promise – his Word that endures forever, and preachers of it who will produce the good fruit of right teaching.

So watch out for false prophets! Jesus speaks to you, his disciples, today and tells you that you have work to do, that following him will not be easy or comfortable or simple, that following him means knowing his voice and turning away from anyone who doesn’t speak with his voice.

Fathers, mothers, grandparents, you have been given this task of being vigilant, not just for yourselves, but also for your children and grandchildren.  Sunday School classes resume next week.  Don’t make excuses for not sending your children to learn their Savior’s voice so that they can watch out for all the imitators out there.  Bible study continues as always, but let it not be as always that only a few come to learn.  Take seriously the charge of the Lord Jesus today to watch out for false prophets.  You can only recognize the false if you know the true.  The only way to know is to know God’s Word and the right confession of it.  There is no substitute for study.

There are many foolish people in this world who build their house on sand, who put their eternal destiny in jeopardy by not being concerned about knowing the truth of God’s Word and seeking the preacher who preaches it.  Don’t be one of them.  Build on the rock of Jesus’ Word, including his word to watch out for false prophets.  Then you will be wise, and no wind and no waves will be able to tear down your house, built as it is on the living and enduring Word of God.  Amen.

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