The Law is good, but I am not. Thank God for the Good Samaritan!

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Trinity 13

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

If you’re at all familiar with the Bible, and certainly if you’re familiar with the Lutheran Church, then you know that there are two main teachings that run throughout the Scriptures:  The Law and the Gospel.  You hear them both throughout the divine service and throughout the sermon.  The Law reveals God’s will for mankind’s behavior; the Gospel reveals God’s plan for mankind’s salvation.  The Law preaches works; the Gospel preaches faith in Christ. The Law says, “Do this!”  The Gospel says, “Believe that Christ has done it for you!”  The Law accuses all people of sin; the Gospel promises forgiveness of sins for all who believe in Christ.  The Law says, “The sinner must die;” the Gospel says, “Believe in Christ who died in the sinner’s place!”  As we heard last week in the Epistle, the Law – the letter – kills, but the Gospel – the Spirit gives life.

Maybe at one time you learned this mnemonic device:  The Law was and is still necessary to “S.O.S.” – “Show Our Sin.”  The Gospel was and will always be necessary to “S.O.S.” – “Show Our Savior.”  Today in our Gospel, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, Law and Gospel are woven together so intricately by Jesus, the Master Teacher, that one and the same parable preaches both the sternest Law and, to those whom the Son of God chooses to enlighten by his Holy Spirit, it preaches also the sweetest Gospel.  Learn this lesson today: The Law is good, but I am not.  Thank God for the Good Samaritan! As Law, the Good Samaritan shows us our sin.  As Gospel, the Good Samaritan shows us our Savior.

An expert in the Law approached Jesus to test him. He knew the Law backwards and forwards.  He loved the Law.  And he thought he had eternal life through the Law.  “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Here he sees Jesus, this Rabbi who is gaining in popularity, who has attracted big crowds around him.  But what’s so special about Jesus’ message?  What new teaching could he be adding to the Law of Moses?  Is he saying the Law of Moses is defective?  Is it not good?

Oh, no.  Jesus agrees that the Law is good.  He turns that expert in the Law back to the Law and questions him on it: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”  Ah! The Law says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

You have answered correctly, Jesus told the expert in the Law.  Do this, and you will live.

Simple, right?  Or, if not simple, at least achievable, right?  At least within the realm of possibility if you work hard enough, right?  Not if you take the words of the Law seriously, no.

Jesus’ simple statement, “Do this and you will live,” caught the expert in the Law off guard.  Not, “You’ve done enough!” Not, “You’re doing this! Keep it up!” Not, “Try your hardest to do this.”  Just, “Do this and you will live.” If perfect love for God and my neighbor is required of me, thought the lawyer, then I am doomed.  But maybe I can find a loophole in the Law!  Who is my neighbor, Jesus?

And so Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate to the one who relied on the Law what it looks like to keep the law of love toward one’s neighbor.  It looks like a man who has been robbed and beaten half to death and is lying on the road helpless and dying.  And two very religious men, two men from among the leaders of the people of Israel, who consider themselves law-keepers, see the wounded man – their own countryman lying there, and they pass by on the other side.  That’s not what it looks like to love your neighbor as yourself.  That’s not what it looks like to keep the law.

But then a Samaritan comes by – one of those half-Jews who were hated and mistreated by the Jews.  And when he sees the wounded Jew lying on the road, he takes pity on the man.  See, no guilt or sense of obligation motivates him.  Just mercy and compassion.  He goes to the wounded man, pours oil and wine on his wounds – the best medicine available under the circumstances. He bandages up his wounds, places the man on his own donkey, sacrificing his own ride and being content to walk, until they arrive at the nearest inn where the Samaritan further tends to the man’s wounds and pays the innkeeper to keep looking after him until the Samaritan returns from his journey, at which time the Samaritan would be sure to check in on the wounded man and pay any additional expenses to the innkeeper – all out of the goodness of his heart.

That’s love.  That’s mercy.  The expert in the law agrees with Jesus.  It was the Samaritan who kept the law of love.  And so Jesus reveals that loving your neighbor means not looking for a single thing from anyone else, not worrying in the least how someone else treats you.  Loving your neighbor means seeing a person, even a total stranger, in need of your help, and then out of pure love, giving him all the help that you can give, without giving even a moment’s thought to how much you might lose in the process.

“Go and do likewise,” Jesus told the expert in the law.  That’s what God’s Law requires of you.  Do this and you will live.

Now, you have to agree, as the expert in the Law agreed:  the Law is good.  What God requires of man is perfect.  What the Good Samaritan did in the parable, that’s exactly what it means to love your neighbor. That’s exactly what we should all do for each other all the time.   The Law is good!

But I am not.  You will not find that kind of selfless devotion in your heart.  The Good Samaritan stands on a pedestal that you and I will simply never reach in this life.  How easily are you angered at your neighbor?  How easily offended?  How quick are you to forgive them when they come to you in sorrow for how they’ve mistreated you?  How much time or energy have you been willing to devote even to saying “good morning” with a smile to a fellow believer much less running over to offer your care and even your wealth to help someone in need, to help someone perhaps who has mistreated you?

The Good Samaritan shows us our sin.  The Good Samaritan convinces us that the Law is good.  What God requires of us is good and right.  But I am not good, because even in my best moments, I am not the picture of love that the Good Samaritan is.  I do not love anyone like that, much less do I love everyone like that, not my friends, much less my enemies.  And then the words of the Apostle John really hit home, anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. Do this and you will live? Then I cannot live.

So thank God for the Good Samaritan.  He serves to snap you out of your dream world in which you thought you were a pretty decent person.  Jesus’ words, “Go and do likewise” are like a policeman’s order to a drunk driver to “Walk a straight line.” To those who rely on the Law, the love of the Good Samaritan will always be an unattainable goal.

But to those who have been killed and crushed by this Law, to those who despair of themselves and their works, the Good Samaritan is something more – much more!  Thank God for the Good Samaritan.  He shows you your Savior.

Rewind the story of the Good Samaritan in your mind.  Who is the one who is assaulted, robbed of his possessions, bleeding and dying, helpless on the side of the road?  Isn’t it you?  Isn’t it you who haven’t kept the law, who have no spiritual possessions left, no strength, no help, assaulted by the devil and rightly accused by him?  And your countrymen are no help.  They have seen you in your distress and have passed you by on the other side of the road, unable and unwilling to save you.

Then along comes a man, riding on a donkey, a Samaritan – a foreigner, the Son of God who came from heaven, yet now related to you by human blood.  The Samaritan is Jesus.  He is the loving neighbor to the injured.  He sees you sick and dying and hopeless and takes pity on you. In pure love and tender mercy, he goes to you and tends to your wounds – your sins – like a great physician, allowing himself to be wounded on the cross for your healing.  “By his wounds we are healed.”  Then he takes you to an inn – we call them “churches,” to be cared for by an innkeeper, by a caretaker of souls.  We call them pastors.  He gives the innkeeper plenty of money to take care of you until he returns.  That’s the Gospel in Word and Sacrament.  A church is nothing but a hospital where the wounded are cared for, where the medicine of the Gospel is administered to the sick until Jesus, the Good Samaritan returns.

And he will return, as he has promised.  The parable of the Good Samaritan ends there, but the Gospel fills in the rest of the story. When the Samaritan returns to the inn, he finds the man who once was injured and takes him home with him to eternal life in heaven.

This is the revelation of the Gospel that was hidden until Christ came.  The Law was never meant to save anyone.  The Law reveals how far short mankind falls of true goodness.  The Gospel reveals that salvation is by faith alone in Christ.  This is exactly what you heard in the Epistle today: But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

The Law is still good.  It still shows you what goodness looks like.  If you’re wondering how to treat your neighbor today and tomorrow and the day after that, then remember the love shown by the Good Samaritan.  Go and do likewise! Yes! But don’t imagine that you earn eternal life in that way, because if your eternal life depends on your love, you are doomed.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?  The Law answers, “You must do this: love the Lord your God will all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.”  And you should!  But you don’t!  .  The Gospel says, “All who rely on the Law are under a curse.  Repent and believe in Jesus, the Samaritan who loved you as himself and gives you forgiveness of sins and eternal life as a gift.”  Thank God for the Law that shows you what is good.  But more than that, thank God for the Gospel, through which all of God’s goodness comes to the aid of those who are not good!  Thank God for the love of the Good Samaritan, your Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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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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