Speaker: Aaron Richert

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. And let us pray.

 

O Lord, send forth your word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name. Amen. In December of 1525, Martin Luther published his famous book, The Bondage of the Will.

 

It’s usually considered one of his most important publications, and it’s quintessential Luther. His style is blunt and often abrasive, because for Luther, there’s no room for fancy rhetoric or word games when the gospel is at stake. One must be direct.

 

One must be clear. But, 500 years later, the bound will that he’s arguing for makes a lot of 21st century Christians uncomfortable. Even in Lutheran churches that bear his name, many are not sure they agree with Luther’s assertion.

 

Because the idea of a bound will flies in the face of what most of us value above all else, autonomy. We live in a world that unquestioningly believes that we have freedom of self-determination, that you can be whatever you want to be, as long as you work hard enough. Now, on the one hand, it is true that we have freedom in our lives, freedom to desire and to pursue certain goals, certain aspirations.

 

I can commit myself to losing a few pounds, and that includes choosing whether or not to pack a salad for lunch or hit the drive-thru. I can choose what clothes I put on in the morning. I can choose what radio station I listen to, things like that.

 

Luther didn’t argue against that in The Bondage of the Will, although he does make a passing point that even in those areas of our lives where we can exercise our will, we still aren’t as free as we like to think we are. There’s far too many variables outside of our control. Even healthy people still get sick and die young.

 

But for Luther, the amount of ability that we have in making choices in our earthly lives is kind of an irrelevant question. The passenger on the Titanic has a choice about whether they put on their blue or black socks while the water pours in. But does it really matter if they’re still stuck on the ship and can’t get themselves off as the ship goes down? So also for us.

 

What does it matter that I can choose what I eat for breakfast? The real question is, can I choose God? And for Luther, the answer to that question is a resounding no. No, sinful humans have the power to choose whether or not to wear boots or flip-flops, but we do not have the power to choose God. The language that we just heard Jesus use a few moments ago reiterates this point.

 

Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. We hear this verse every year at the Reformation. The language of slave in those words is clear.

 

It is obviously language of bondage. It’s the language that Luther used. Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

 

But what about that language of committing? If the one who commits sin is a slave to it, then what does it mean to commit sin? Some translations put it like this. Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. Others just simply say, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

 

The verb they’re all trying to translate is the Greek word poieo. Its literal definition is to produce something, like a tree produces its fruit. Whoever produces sin is a slave to that sin.

 

Think of the Apostle Paul’s struggle described in Romans. The good that I want to do, I don’t do that. The evil that I don’t want to do, well, that’s what I find myself doing.

 

I’m trapped. My existence is internal warfare. I’m enslaved.

 

Who will save me from this body of death? When I look at my life, I find myself producing sin. And as hard as I try, I can’t seem to set myself free from it. So Jesus’ words prove true.

 

I am a slave to sin. But for Luther, the very hope of salvation is found in the simple reality that Jesus’ words hold true. And not only his words that the one producing sin is a slave to it, but more importantly, the words that if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.

 

You see, for Luther, this was the key. If our salvation depended in any way on us completing something, anything at all, the comfort of the gospel is lost. How could I ever be certain that I’ve done enough? I’d be tempted to pride, to despair.

 

I’d be left to wallow in uncertainty. But thanks be to God that our salvation rests entirely on the work of Christ. It’s His death in our place.

 

His declaration of forgiveness. His making us alive in Him. As the famous preacher Jonathan Edwards once put it, we contribute nothing to our salvation except the sin that made it necessary.

 

But don’t hear this as disappointing or deflating news. It’s the opposite of that. Because we contribute nothing to our salvation, we can be confident in it.

 

Because the Son has set us free, we know we are free indeed. Now, there’s certainly more that can be said about the far-reaching implications of this reality, so I invite you to stick around for Bible class. We’re going to be discussing a lot of those things today.

 

But for now, for here, I think the important question before us is, where in my life am I still trying to contribute to my own salvation? Where am I blurring the line between living a life pleasing to God or seeing myself as living a life that somehow obligates God to grant me salvation? Do I live as if God can be bought by my political affiliations? Do I live as if God can be won over by my acts of charity, kindness? Do I live as if God has moved to forgive me because I’ve got all my doctrinal ducks in a row? Is my posture to stand before God and say, thank you, Lord, that I’m not like those other sinners? Because none of that, none of that is going to save me. None of that will bring forgiveness or comfort or hope. That’s just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

Now, true freedom comes when the Son sets you free. And the gift of the Reformation is the return to the certainty of that promise. For the Son has set you free.

 

He was born for you. He lived for you. He died for you.

 

He rose for you. He ascended for you. And He is now seated at the right hand of the Father for you.

 

And He did all this without any merit or worthiness in us. We could not by our own reason or strength or our will believe in Jesus Christ as Lord or come to Him. So He came to us.

 

The Holy Spirit has called us through the proclamation of the Gospel. He has made us alive with the gifts of His Word and Sacrament. He sanctifies us for lives pleasing to God.

 

He keeps us in the true faith. It all depends on our Lord. And for Luther, and for Jesus, and for us, all means all.

 

If it all depends on Him, there’s nothing left for me. None of it depends on me. Apart from Jesus, we are dead in our trespasses and sins.

 

Our wills are in bondage to the devil. But we are not apart from Jesus. He has kicked down the door of our hearts.

 

He has bound the devil. The Son has set us free. And even though the sinful flesh will continue to rear its ugly head, and even though Satan will continue to scratch and to claw, because the Son has set us free, we are free indeed.

 

Free to live under Him and His Kingdom. Free to serve our neighbor in love, not worried about how many points it’s earning me in the eyes of the Father. Free to meet the challenges, the obstacles of this life, with the sure and certain hope that there is still a rest waiting for the people of God.

 

There is still the hope, and the promise, and the certainty of resurrection. So we live in that hope. We cling to that hope.

 

We no longer belong to sin. We no longer belong to death. We no longer belong to the devil, because the Son has set us free.

 

And so now, we belong to Jesus, and He will never let us go. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. And let us pray.

 

O Lord, send forth your word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Now, I find the historical narrative of God wrestling with Jacob to be one of the more fascinating stories in the entire Bible.

 

Luther compared it to the event of a father teasing his son. Luther writes, God plays with Jacob, doesn’t sound like playing in the text. Luther says, God plays with Jacob to discipline him, to strengthen his faith just like a godly parent takes from his son an apple with which the boy was delighted.

 

Not that the boy should flee from the father or turn away from him, but rather that he should be incited to embrace his father all the more, and to beg him, saying, Father, give me back what you have taken away. Then the father is delighted with the test, and the son, when he recovers the apple, loves his father all the more ardently on seeing such love and such child’s play gives pleasure to his father. So according to Luther, then, the example of Jacob demonstrates to us that God is at times accustomed to play with his saints.

 

And as far as God himself is concerned, it’s quite childish playing. But to us whom he tempts in this way, it appears far different. Really, Luther? Far different? To us whom are afflicted and tempted and tried in this way, it appears far different? Of course it does.

 

No toddler likes it when you hold the sippy cup or the stuffed animal just out of their reach, taunting them just a little bit. It makes them feel frustrated. It makes them feel helpless.

 

They scream at you. They cry to get it back because there’s nothing else they can do. They are helpless.

 

And whether you’re two or 52, helplessness is one of the worst feelings. Just like a child doesn’t like to feel helpless by hands of an older, a taller, a stronger brother or sister, we Christians don’t like to feel helpless. Not in our lives, not before our God.

 

And so we want something. We want anything to give us a bit of control. We try to take credit for the strength of our own faith.

 

We try to take credit for the genuineness of our repentance, for the intensity of our praise. We’ll try anything not to feel helpless. But we are helpless.

 

So Luther draws a jarring parallel, comparing God assaulting Jacob in the middle of the night to God assaulting us, his children, with the various trials and afflictions in our lives. Language like this feels out of place among many Christians today. It’s a thought that makes us uncomfortable.

 

We so naturally jump to the assumption that anytime something is difficult in my life, it must automatically be coming from the work of the devil. We scarcely even give it a moment’s thought. Our instinct is to blame God whenever we’re uncomfortable, as if he’s being negligent, as if the only way a God should ever act is by making us healthy and wealthy and generally comfortable, prospering us in whatever life choices we’ve already made for ourselves.

 

And then when things don’t go the way that we think they should, well then, like a toddler, we threaten to turn our back on him, tempted to issue the ultimatum that if God doesn’t start to answer my prayers when and how I want him to, well God, then I’m going to be done with you. Tempted to try to incite a response from God through threats, through manipulation. Luther says God’s wrestling with Jacob gives us a different way to look at it.

 

Rather than growing weary or angry with God in the face of hardship, or when you think he’s taking too long to answer, conquer him. Rather than giving up on him when times are tough, beat him at his own game, for nothing gives God more delight than to be conquered by his children. Yes, there are times in our lives where we feel helpless before God, but that’s not failure on God’s part, as if he’s just arbitrarily toying with us like some capricious bully.

 

We feel helpless before God because we are helpless before God. We are dead in our trespasses and sins, and sometimes because we’re so blind to that reality by ourselves, he needs to make it abundantly clear to us. He doesn’t want us to throw in the towel, he wants us to fight back, he wants us to wrestle with him, for we are his Israel.

 

After the night of wrestling, God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, which literally means wrestles with God. And not only Jacob that one night, but generations of his descendants would be called Israel, those who wrestle with God. We are Israel today, those who continue to wrestle with God.

 

But we don’t wrestle by means of physical strength, we wrestle by means of a relentless faith, a trust that never gives up. That’s the widow in today’s gospel reading. Jesus emphasizes in the parable that God actually wants to be conquered by the faith of his people.

 

That’s why he named them Israel, the people who wrestle with God. Jesus told this parable, and we’re told explicitly, he told this parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. And then he tells a parable about a woman who pestered the judge into fulfilling his vocation and giving her justice.

 

She wrestled with him until he relented, and he was an unrighteous judge. How much more will God, your heavenly father, who unlike the unrighteous judge actually delights in you coming to him, how much more will he respond to you when you cry out? We are called to be Israel today, called to struggle with and to wrestle with God, called to cling to him and to not let him go until he blesses us like Jacob did that night so long ago. But we don’t wrestle with God as if we could ever bend him to our will, as if we could ever conquer him in such a way that he becomes subject to our whims.

 

Rather, whatever opposes us, Luther says, is conquered when we simply turn it over to him in prayer. He might not respond as quickly as we would like, but like the judge in today’s parable, he will ultimately respond. He will ultimately meet our needs.

 

And so Luther described this time of waiting to God’s response as a time of wrestling, clinging to our Lord in faith until he answers our prayer. He even described it as a time of exercise. He wrote about the comfort that we have that God does exercise us in such a way, that he exhorts us to fight back.

 

He shows that such fighting is a most pleasing sacrifice to him. He wants us to conquer him, because ultimately, we’re not the ones doing the conquering. This is not up to our strength.

 

This is the work of God in us. The God who took on human flesh to sacrifice that flesh, to allow the forces of evil to conquer that flesh in order that he might defeat death and win for himself our place in his eternal kingdom. The God who rejoices in victory through what always looks like defeat.

 

That is the God who is at work in us. He is the one who is the strength of our faith. He is the one who enlivens our hearts and our hands to cling to his promises, to trust his goodness and his mercy, even when our eyes and our experience tell us something different.

 

Luther rejoices that God exercises the faith of his children. Just like eating an exercise of how an earthly child grows into a healthy adult, so also our Lord feeds us and then exercises the new creation in us, so that our souls can grow healthy and strong. So be fed and nourished by God’s word, through the promises he makes to you there.

 

Be fed and nourished here at God’s altar, where you get more than just the scraps that fall from the master’s table, you have a seat at the feast itself. Here you receive pardon and peace in the body and blood of Jesus. Here you get the food to sustain you throughout all your days of pilgrimage.

 

And then having been fed, don’t expect to get lazy and fat, prepare for exercise. And exercise isn’t always pleasant. The act of lifting weights strains your muscles to the point where they tear.

 

The microscopic holes all over your muscles that are there after a workout regenerate, fill with new muscle. The gaps bring in new tissue. And after it’s all said and done, you have more muscle at the end than you had at the beginning.

 

That’s why nutrition is important to working out. Your body needs the nutrients and the hydration to rebuild the muscle. So also when God exercises you, be fed and nourished by God’s word and sacraments because they provide us with the nutrients necessary to strengthen our faith.

 

And when difficult circumstances and challenges come our way, embrace them as God’s exercise for your faith. And even more than that, as strange as it sounds and as hard as it might be, rejoice in the exercise. Like an athlete who relishes being challenged physically, who knows that pushing the body and its muscles to their limit will ultimately strengthen them, rejoice when God wrestles with you.

 

For there you learn to trust him. There you are shown your own inability and weakness. There you learn to rely on the strength of Christ alone.

 

Consider it pure joy when you face many trials because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. And rejoice in hardship, knowing that suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

 

So when life is challenging, and it will be, and when you feel reasons to doubt God’s love for you, when you wonder if God is listening to your prayers, remember your name, O Israel. Wrestle with your God. Cry out to him.

 

And if Satan tries to convince you that God isn’t listening, remember the persistent widow. Remember that you have been encouraged, no, you’ve been commanded to pray, and God has promised that he will hear you and answer you. And if it seems like he’s taking too long, cling to him in faith like Jacob.

 

And don’t let go until he listens, for he has promised that he will hear you, he promises to answer. Capture him with his own words. He himself is the one who said, whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

 

So take him captive in his own promises. Cling to his word in the face of every obstacle, for he delights to be conquered by his children. You are Israel.

 

So wrestle with your God. Do not lose heart. Do not give up.

 

The promise is already yours. Hold him to it. The one who spoke this word is faithful.

 

He will keep his word. For our God does not wrestle with you because he wants to overcome you, but so that you might prevail against him and thus receive your reward. In Jesus’ name, amen

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us pray.

 

O Lord, send forth your word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name. Amen. So what do you consider to be the official start of fall? Are you a literalist? Is it September 22nd, the autumnal equinox, the astronomical beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere? Or are you, like most people, more symbolic in your answer? Maybe it’s Labor Day, the start of the school year, the arrival of football season.

 

Maybe, here in Albuquerque, it’s the arrival of all the balloons, the fiesta that kicks off the start of fall for you. Maybe it’s when you turn off your swamp cooler, if you still have one. Regardless of when you think fall begins, one of the clear signs that it’s in full swing is the Halloween decorations popping up in front yards all across the city.

 

And in a few short weeks, boys and girls, and teenagers, and adults, will dress up in costumes for parties or for trick-or-treating. And a lot of those costumes will include masks. Goblin masks, president masks, werewolves, maybe even a celebrity or two.

 

Because Halloween is a time when people revel in hiding behind masks for fun. But fun is not the only reason people wear masks. Far more common are the metaphorical masks that we wear, the ones that each of us put on from time to time.

 

False appearance that we display before strangers, maybe before people we’re trying to impress. That mask of professionalism that we wear when we know the boss or the supervisor is watching. The mask of innocence that the devious students like to wear when they know the teacher or the administrators are in the room.

 

The mask we wear when we’re trying to make a good first impression, maybe trying to look smart. Trying to look adequately impressed, or unimpressed as the case may be. Or just trying to look like we have it all together.

 

We all occasionally wear these masks, but the thing about them is, none of them ever passes the test of time. In any lasting relationship, like a marriage, eventually the mask is going to fall off. Your true colors will be revealed.

 

All it takes is time. Which is why it’s so strange that we try to wear these masks before God. As if he doesn’t really know who we are underneath.

 

I mean, he is from everlasting to everlasting. He is the almighty. He’s the one who knit us together in our mother’s wombs.

 

He searches us, he knows our inmost desires, and yet we put on masks before him. Do we really think we can hide our sin from God? As if he can’t see right through the silly facade? That’s like the toddler, who thinks that you can’t see them because they put their hands over their own eyes. And yet, for some reason, we quickly and easily give in to that temptation.

 

To put on the masks of self-justification. Yes, Lord, we say, I know that you said hatred in my heart is a form of murder, but my boss just gets under my skin like no one else can. What I feel for him isn’t hatred, Lord, it’s righteous anger.

 

Well, yes, Lord, I know that you call me to defend my neighbor, to speak well of them, and to explain everything in the kindest way, but that one co-worker is the worst. She flies all the wrong flags, her car is full of all the wrong bumper stickers, she’s so smug and she’s so condescending, she doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. It’s not pride, Lord, I just really am better at my job than my incompetent co-workers, and I get frustrated putting up with their mistakes all day.

 

They deserve the way that I talk to them. It’s not gossip, Lord, everything I said was true. You know your life better than I do, so you can fill in your own blanks.

 

Where does Satan tempt you to self-justification? Where does he tempt you to put on a mask when you address our Lord? But here’s the truth. Self-justification is a bottomless pit. It is a vicious and never-ending cycle.

 

And the reason that Satan loves to tempt us to self-justification is that he knows our attempts to explain away any particular sin doesn’t remove that sin. Attempts to justify sin leave sin unforgiven, festering in our conscience, weighing us down with guilt and shame, spreading like a disease that corrupts our soul. And ignoring a disease will not cure it, neither will ignoring sin.

 

Now this disease must be cured, the mask must be removed. It must come to our Lord saying, not, oh, it’s just that, or, yeah, but. Like the lepers in today’s gospel reading, our cry to the Lord can only be, Lord, have mercy on us.

 

These lepers don’t cry out to Jesus in self-justification because they know all too well the seriousness of their disease. They felt the pain in their own flesh as the leprosy ate away their skin. They felt the emotional pain of isolation, separation from their family and friends.

 

Leprosy is contagious, and in order to keep it from spreading, those who were infected were quarantined in the colonies outside of cities and villages. They were not allowed to see their family for fear the disease might spread. So there were no holiday dinners with loved ones, no Sunday afternoon visitors.

 

For all intents and purposes, they were dead to their family, dead to the life they knew before. And in their death, in their helplessness, they cry out to Jesus, and they do not do so in anger. These lepers didn’t challenge Jesus, ask him why they were sick.

 

Neither did they offer a string of reasons why Jesus ought to heal them. There’s no sad story about a wife and three kids left at home trying to make ends meet. None of them tell Jesus about the family farm that’s in danger of foreclosure.

 

Their cry is simple. It’s vulnerable, it’s honest. There is no mask.

 

It’s just a cry for help. Lord, have mercy. But such is the cry of faith.

 

Because faith looks not to itself, it looks only to the gifts of the Savior. Such is our cry of faith as we kneel in confession before our Lord, admitting that we are, by nature, sinful and unclean. There is nowhere to hide.

 

We have sinned against him in thought, word, and deed. We have sinned against him by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. There are no excuses.

 

We have not loved him with our whole hearts. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. There is no mask.

 

Just confession. Telling the truth. Repeating back to our Lord the reality that he has revealed to us in his word.

 

Simple repentance. Faithful pleading that for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of his beloved son, Jesus Christ, that our Lord would be merciful to us poor sinful beings. Lord, have mercy on us.

 

And merciful he is. As Jesus spoke healing to the lepers, so he speaks healing to you. He does not offer you a list of rationalizations for why you shouldn’t feel bad, why your actions weren’t actually sinful.

 

He doesn’t shrug his shoulders and tell us, well, that’s just the way you are. You were born that way. You’re just working through the trauma of your childhood.

 

He doesn’t pat us on the back and tell us it’s all okay. Our sin is never okay. But it is paid for.

 

We are redeemed. We are forgiven. Jesus has paid the price for our salvation.

 

And now he delivers that gift to us every time we gather in this place. In the stead and by the command of Jesus himself, here our sins are forgiven. As sure and certain as if Jesus himself was standing among us, speaking those words with his own mouth.

 

And faith believes this. His healing is delivered as he feeds us with the medicine of immortality, the body and blood of our Savior, in, with, and under simple means of bread and wine. But in this meal, he forgives our sins.

 

And he sends us home with a heart cleansed from the leprosy of sin. Luke tells us that when the lepers went their way, they weren’t quite healed yet. They didn’t see any difference in their flesh.

 

And that when they noticed healing, one of them returned. The point is that the faith of the lepers believed that even though their disease was not immediately healed, that Jesus would be true to his word. They believed that Jesus would heal him, as they said.

 

So even though they still had leprosy, when they left his presence, they were healed on the way. They were cleansed. So also for us.

 

The gift of faith that we have been given in the water of baptism, believes our Lord’s words. They believe his promise of forgiveness. They believe his promise about his sacrament.

 

And even though we may not always feel different when we leave this room, faith believes. Faith clings to the promise of Jesus. And faith knows we have been cleansed.

 

Remember that Satan hates forgiveness. So he tempts us to wear masks before God. He wants us to hide our sin.

 

Rationalize it. Justify it. Make up excuses for it.

 

But his goal is that it goes unrepented. Because his goal is that it goes unforgiven. But trust your Lord.

 

He knows who we are under the mask. There is no use hiding from him. He sees our sin.

 

But he comes to us in forgiveness. Leave the masks for Halloween. We don’t need them.

 

We are the baptized. We need not wear a mask before our Lord. He has seen our sin already.

 

And paid for it in full. Now the joy of redemption is ours. Our cry is the honest cry of the lepers.

 

Lord, have mercy on us. And like the lepers, our Savior has made us clean. So let us rise and go our way.

 

Trusting the word that Jesus has spoken to us. Living this new life that he has bestowed. And forever trusting in his mercy.

 

In Jesus’ name. Amen.