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 be a fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. So, what do you think of imitation? Is it something to be desired, or something to be avoided? Confucius said that imitation is one of the ways people learn wisdom. Salvador Dali said “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” Playwright George Bernard Shaw said “Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery – it’s the sincerest form of learning.” But on the other hand, author Herman Melville said, “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” Actress Polly Bergen said that imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery, “Imitation is the sincerest form of insecurity.” Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Imitation is always insult–not flattery.” and Oscar Wilde put his own twist on the well-known saying, changing it to “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” So, where do you fall on imitation? Is imitation something to be desired, or something to be avoided? Now it’s obviously unavoidable to a certain extent. Children learn to walk by imitating their parents, athletes learn a specific skill by imitating the body movements of their coach, but does there come a point where we outgrow imitation? Does there come a point where imitation can actually hold us back? It seems that for all the imitation we see in the world around us, it kind of has a bad reputation. When people are quick to dress like their favorite celebrities, talk like them, use whatever shampoo or skin care product they endorse, but then those same people, and those same celebrities will quickly turn around and say something like “Be unique. Be original. You’re the only one of you.” So, which is it? Should we imitate, or not? Thankfully scripture is actually pretty clear on this one. Let’s take today’s reading from Ephesians. Paul encourages imitation. “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” But Ephesians isn’t the only time Paul uses this language. Twice he tells the Corinthians to be imitators of him. He tells the Philippians, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” He commends the Thessalonians for becoming imitators of the Lord, and of his church. And it’s not just Paul. The author of Hebrews encourages his readers to be imitators “so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” And in his first epistle, the evangelist John encourages the church “Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good.” Seems that imitation is actually a fairly important part of our Christian life. What exactly are we supposed to be imitating? Paul says be imitators of God. OK. That seems a little farfetched to think that I could ever imitate God. Isn’t that stepping right up to the line of idolatry, if not jumping over it completely? There’s a few things to keep in mind here. First, the word translated “imitate” in this text and in other texts. It’s the Greek word memétés. Same root as our word for mimic. It’s commonly used to describe the part of a relationship between teachers and their students. You see in Paul’s day, learning wasn’t just about accumulating facts, not just learning names and dates for your history test, countries and their capitals for geography, different formulas you might need in math or science. You know being a student, being a disciple, was understood as something that affected all the areas of your life. Students were to be molded into the pattern of their teacher. Thus to be an imitator of God doesn’t imply that I have the ability to actually behave like God does, to reproduce his works or his essence. That’s not what Paul’s saying at all. What Paul is saying becomes clear. We remember that and remember something else about this text. This exhortation to imitation comes at the end of the reading. It’s the conclusion of a larger section where Paul describes the Christian life. Paul is well known for his words to the Jews, telling them that their former way of life is not compatible with the new life that is theirs as a Christian. We all know that Paul reminds them that one is not saved by following the laws of Moses, not by observing Jewish holidays, or rituals, or sacrifices in the temple. That Jesus is the only way to salvation. That’s not just his message to the Jews. That’s his message in today’s text too, except today he’s talking to Gentile converts. Like he told the Jewish converts they weren’t Jews anymore, but they are fellow members of the household of God. So also, the Gentiles. They’re not actually Gentiles anymore. They’re Christians. “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.  They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”  No, Paul says you’re not Gentiles, you’re Christians. “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.  Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” And so, Paul’s words to the Ephesians are his words to us. We’re not Gentiles anymore, neither are we Jews. We’re Christians. We are the body of Christ. We in this place. “remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.”  ^“And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.” “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.” Let us mimic God. Let us be shaped into his image. As he has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles, let us breakdown any walls that would divide his church today. Let us take a sledgehammer to the walls of pettiness, or bitterness, or grudge holding. Let us demolished the walls of individualism isolation and loneliness. Instead, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” If we are to be imitators of God, we are imitators of God in forgiveness, but we love each other as Christ has loved us. “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” It’s a beautiful rhythm to the way that Paul writes Ephesians, because it’s the rhythm of the Christian life. We see it clearly in Ephesians 2 verses we all know, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Paul so wonderfully and clearly gives us the comfort of the gospel and the constant reminder that this comes to us. This new life is a gift, but we also know that verse 10 follows “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Today’s reading is no different. Our new life in Christ is given freely from the hands of our merciful Lord, without any merit or worthiness in us. But it’s a life and life is meant to be lived. And so in today’s reading Paul exhorts us, live, “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” by walking in love. Don’t wander aimlessly through this life, tossed to and fro by the winds of change, be imitators of God. Walk as Jesus did. Mimic him. Be molded into his form and his image and his likeness. Such walking is not what makes us children of God, no the Holy Spirit already did that when he claimed us as his own to the waters of baptism. Such walking isn’t what makes us children of God, but it does give shape and purpose to our lives, as we live in faith toward him, and love toward others. Imitation Paul says, we’re certainly not to blindly mirror the priorities, the words, the behaviors of the world around us. Don’t be shaped into that image. But we are called to be imitators of God, to be imitators of Christ, to be molded into his image, not simply asking ourselves “What would Jesus do?” as if behavior alone can fully encapsulate or capture the extent of what Paul is saying. Rather ask ourselves “Who is this Jesus?  What did he value? What did he prioritize, and how does his character show up in my life, in my relationships, and my vocations?” And when we look at Jesus, we see trust in the Father’s word, and so through the gift of the spirit we imitate. We trust the Father’s word when he forgives our sins and makes us his children. And when we look at Jesus, we see him give himself for the life of the world. And so, we imitate. We rejoice to receive that life from him, and then we, in turn, support and protect the lives and the reputations of the people around us. And when we look at Jesus, we see our forgiveness. And so, we rejoice in that forgiveness, and we mimic it. We gladly forgive those around us, “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” It’s actually quite simple. Through his great love for us, our Lord has made us his children, and now his love flows through us, making us imitators of him, shaping us into his image, that we might mimic him, empowering us to walk in his love. May such love be present in our lives every day, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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 excites you? What gets your blood pumping? What gives you that Christmas morning feeling? What gets the blood going through your veins? Now currently I’m looking forward to the start of college football season in a few weeks. I love college football Saturdays, moving from game to game throughout the course of the day, watching some on the TV, and then when my kids want the TV, switching to my phone or my computer. I love the drama. I love the excitement. I love the pageantry and the traditions, and it’s only a few weeks away. Last week at this time, I was excited for the seminary course to begin here at Grace. I was looking forward to the class sessions. I was looking forward to conversations with visiting pastors, looking forward to the elders BBQ. What are you excited for? What excites you in your life? What are you eager for? Today’s reading from Ephesians, Paul encourages us “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Does that excite you? We’re all excited for something, maybe the start of the school year, maybe a new movie or a book you’ve been waiting for, maybe you’re already eagerly awaiting the arrival of Christmas. We’re all eager for something. Are we eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace? Maybe the better question is, what does that even mean, the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Well, this is the unity that we received as a gift from our Lord. It’s the unity given to us through Jesus himself. Think of it like this. There is only one Jesus, and so then anyone who is united to him is therefore also united to each other. It’s not a unity that we create for ourselves. It’s a unity that’s already ours by virtue of our baptism, by virtue of kneeling at this altar to receive the body and blood of the one Jesus, for the forgiveness of our sins. It’s the unity that Paul wrote about in the first three chapters of Ephesians. Jesus has broken down the dividing wall of hostility. Those who are “far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Paul wants the Ephesians to recognize that despite their cultural and language differences, they are one body in Christ. The unity is theirs, and it’s ours. The same is true for us. Whatever differences we have in political leanings, or brand loyalty, we are united in Christ, and while this unity is not ours to create, Paul does encourage us to maintain it. Maintenance. It’s a simple concept. It’s one we all understand and apply, probably on a daily basis We maintain our cars, change the oil and the brake pads, we keep an eye on the fluid levels, We maintain our bodies, we go to the doctor, we eat healthy, maybe even sprinkle in a little bit of exercise. We maintain our homes. You fix the leaky roof, you replace the hot water heater when it breaks, you straighten up the mess from time to time. We all know what maintenance is. We do it every day. Do we make it a priority to maintain the unity we have as the body of Christ? The unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, through unity that belongs to any and all who are united to the same Jesus. The bond of peace. It’s the glue that holds that unity together, the gift from Jesus himself. It’s a bond that unites us, not only to Jesus, but unites us to one another. Are we eager to maintain that bond? Do we treat the relationships we have with our brothers and sisters in Christ with as much care and concern as we show to our cars, or to our houses? Do we make that maintenance a priority? How would we even do that? Paul points us first to humility. A Christian pastor in the 4th century wrote these words: “Meekness is the foundation of all virtue. If you are humble and aware of your limits and remember how you were saved you will take this recollection as the motive for excellent moral behavior, you will not be excessively impressed, either with chains or with privileges.  You will remember that it is all of grace and so you will walk humbly.” The point that he’s making is that a humble and honest estimation of our own abilities fills us with eagerness to forgive each other, to bear with one another, to bear with the sins of each other, frees us from becoming too proud of our successes, or too depressed at our failures, that allows us simply to live each moment in love. Far too often we’re quick to set aside humility, and fall victim to pride. We’re quick to speak an accusation, spread of juicy bit of gossip, but we’re slow to speak in defense of a brother or sister in Christ. There’s a reason that the reviews and comments sections on the Internet are so negative. We love to share our bad experiences. Maybe because it makes us feel vindicated, makes us feel righteous. We’re quick to spread stories that make us feel like we’re better than someone else, quick to point out why so and so is wrong and I’m right. We love to broadcast the failures of others, to become mired in criticism, but not only do such actions not maintain the unity of the spirit, they actually work to destroy it. It’s like skipping the oil change, and instead pouring sugar in your gas tank. It’s the opposite of maintenance. It’s sabotage. We’re called to repent of such an attitude, to repent of speaking hurtful words, repent of spreading rumors and gossip, even if what we’re saying is true. Rather than letting the sin of another become the topic of conversation that leads us feeling self-righteous, our Lord calls us to see in their sin a reminder of our own. Our Lord desires that we all be led to repentance of our own. In the Large Catechism, Luther calls us to have graveyard ears, ears where the unflattering stories go to die and be buried, never to surface again. Now Paul’s not telling us to keep a secret if someone’s being harmed. We don’t need to ignore dangerous behavior and call it unity, but neither do we let the reputation of a brother or sister in Christ be dragged through the mud. Usually when we find ourselves relaying an unflattering story, we aren’t simply reporting concerns through the proper channels, usually we’re just gossiping about who did what, who said what, why so and so was a failure. And in those cases, when the juicy tidbit is passed to us, we repent of the eagerness to pass it on, and instead, ask our Lord to fill us with eagerness to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. We refuse to speak words that would divide, refuse to speak words that would create camps among us. We refuse to speak words that end up driving a wedge into the body of Christ. Instead, we’re eager to maintain the unity that we have as the body of Christ. We let the rumors and device of speech die in our ears. We let words of life and hope and encouragement flow from our tongues, for those are the words Jesus has spoken about you. Jesus did not drive a wedge between the creator and his creation. Jesus did just the opposite. Jesus united us, coming into his creation as one of its own. He took on human flesh in order that we might be reconciled and reunited to our Father in heaven, he took all of our impurity, he took our imperfection, he took all of our sins of thought, word, and deed, and he buried them not, in his ears but in his tomb, where his own lifeless body was laid. He suffered and died to pay the price for our careless words, for our hurtful actions, for the many and various ways that we undermine the unity of the Spirit, and in his resurrection, he restored that unity. Unity with the father in heaven and here on earth, unity among us his body, unity among our brothers and sisters in Christ. And so, now we’re called not only to maintain that unity, but to be eager to do so, to be excited to do so, to make it a priority to take pride not in finding ourselves better than others, but to take pride in the unity that we possess together as forgiven sinners. Maybe we invite new members into our circle of friends. We have graveyard ears. We walk in humility and patience, but above all else, this unity is maintained by being and remaining united to Jesus himself. That is how it is the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. We maintain this unity by regularly confessing our own sins, not merely in private, but here in this room in the company of those with whom we are united, the very people that we sit next to every Sunday, fellow sinners, people whose lives are marked by the same failures and disappointments as their own, the same hurts and anxieties that keep us up at night. We confess our sins together eager to hear together that good news of forgiveness  When we hear of someone else’s sin, we don’t eagerly await the chance to spread that news to others, rather we see in their sin a reminder of our own, and in humble repentance we confess our sin in the presence of God, and one another, eager to confess, eager to be forgiven, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And that unity is maintained by kneeling regularly at this altar to be united to the body and blood of Jesus himself, and the simple gift of bread and wine. We call it communion for a reason and hear the word union in its name. Through this gift we are united both to each other as well as to our Lord himself. Anything that would divide is removed. The unity of the Spirit is what remains. We don’t create such unity, it’s already ours in Christ. But we are called to maintain it, through confession, through our Lord’s supper, through forgiving each other, through graveyard ears. Such is the gift of Christian unity, given to us by our Lord through his Word and sacrament, sustained by our Lord through the same, and as his Word works in our hearts, it converts our desires so that they begin to resemble him, and for no matter what else we might be eager for, the arrival of a holiday, or the release of a new movie, we are also eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Let us walk in humility, in gentleness, and patience, remaining united to the one Lord, one faith, one baptism, to the God and Father of all, who is over all and through all, and in all. To him be glory and honor forever and ever, Amen.

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. What is it that divides us?  I remember the image was different, the language was different, when I was in elementary school. In elementary school, I was taught that America is a melting pot. Didn’t matter where you came from, didn’t matter what your own personal history was. Everyone was thrown into one big pot together, and melted down, blended into something new, something uniquely American. Then when I was in college, the image shifted from melting pot to salad bowl. America was like a salad, and a salad is different from a puree, because in a puree all the ingredients get blended together in such a way you can never take them back apart. Instead, we were taught that America should be like a salad. Carrots stay carrots, tomatoes stay tomatoes, the lettuce stays the lettuce, and each person lives out their heritage individually, and the flavors combine to make a nice multicultural experience. I don’t know if there’s an image like that circulating today. If we stick to the food analogy today, it feels more like everything is supposed to be prepackaged, and to stick to its packaging, everything separated into a different category, the apples stay in their wrapper with the other apples, but the uncrustables stay on its side of the lunch box, never to touch any other part of the food, let the dipping sauce stay in its own container. Or perhaps that’s just the way I see the situation. Maybe there’s actually something there, but it feels like the rhetoric of division in our world is just getting out of control, and we see it pretty much everywhere we look. We see it in politics. Political opponents no longer debate the issues with each other. Instead, they opt for name calling, fear mongering. There’s rioting, there’s looting, burning down cities. An assassination attempt is bad enough, but the conversation following it, if you can call it conversation, well that has been, in many ways, worse. But let’s not pretend that we can limit it to politics. There’s a lot of social issues that are a powder keg, waiting to explode. We’re divided over pay for men and women, divided over who should pay what in taxes, divided over sexual orientation and gender identity, divided over climate change, sustainable farming practices, critical race theory, DEI mandates, the list just goes on and on. Feels like we’re being driven towards division, towards argument on all sides, but such division is nothing new. The intensity of the language may ebb and flow, the ferocity of it may rise and fall over time, but it’s nothing new. Go back and read the newspaper editorials about the possible election of Abraham Lincoln. They could easily have been written anytime in the last 10 years. So, we return to our original question. What is it that’s actually dividing us, because ultimately, it’s not politics, and ultimately, it’s not social issues, it’s not race or gender that lies at the root. It’s sin. It’s my sin. It’s our own sin. It’s the sin of the people around us. It’s sin that leads to hostility. It’s sin that drives wedges of division between people. It’s sin that turns the rhetoric so harsh. Our world is lost in its sin. Our world is dead in its sin. Our world has no true knowledge of its sin, and no desire for repentance, but Paul gives us a different way. We are not of the world. Remember Paul says, “remember that you were at that time   separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promises, having no hope and without God in the world.” And when people have no hope in the godless world, it’s not really all that surprising when their words and actions and attitudes sound the way that they do. But Paul says, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.   For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… so making peace,” Now to be fair Paul’s language in today’s reading, is really directed more towards the relationship between Jewish converts and Gentile converts in the early church, but I think it still applies to us. I think it’s still relevant in the church today, and our relationship to each other, and our dealings with the world around us. Jesus came in order to reconcile the world to God through the work of the cross, killing the hostility by taking it upon himself. “And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.  So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.  In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by^[e] the Spirit.”  It’s all nice language, but what does it mean? I think first it means we’ve been given the gift of the eyes of faith, the gift of seeing the real problem, and the real solution. I think that’s one of the causes of the escalating rhetoric in our world around us, is that people can’t even agree on what the biggest problem is. Is the biggest problem abortion, or guns, or climate change, or wealth distribution, election integrity, immigration, discrimination, foreign threats, the list goes on and on. Through the working of the Spirit, we know the true problem is actually sin. Sin that alienates us from our Lord. Sin that produces all manner of bitterness and hate in us. Sin that corrupts our speech, that leads us to villainize the people around us, sin that drives the wedge even deeper, creating even more separation, even more hostility, but sin cannot be solved through any earthly means. Fixing the economy isn’t going to cleanse the heart of sin. Fixing the environment is not going to remove sin, neither will solving gender inequality, or bringing peace to the Middle East. Jesus is the only solution for sin. His death is the only payment. He is the only way out. It’s like when a person is hangry, might be lashing out at you because the way you’re typing too loud, I don’t like the sound of your pen clicking, but simply removing the minor annoyance won’t ultimately fix the problem. The anger is just going to get directed somewhere else. When a person is hangry, the only true solution is to eat something. When the problem is sin, the only true solution is the death of the old Adam, the gift of new life that is ours through Christ Jesus, our Lord. And so, we come to our Lord in repentance. We humble ourselves and confess our sin every time we gather in this room. We remind ourselves of the true problem. We cry out to our Lord for his deliverance, and he answers every time. He forgives our sin to the proclamation of absolution, he forgives our sin in the sacrament of this altar, he renews us, he strengthens us to leave this place refreshed, ready to be his salt in a world of bitterness, ready to be his light in a world of darkness. That’s another gift of being brought near by the blood of Christ. It changes the way we respond to the world around us. The world will continue to bicker and fight and sling mud at each other. We speak the truth in love. We speak the truth, and the truth will always cause division, that’s what the truth does, it divides itself from error and falsehood, but even in the midst of such division we recognize that our battle is not against the people who disagree. Our battle is not against flesh and blood but with the spiritual powers that work in this present darkness. And so, we speak God’s truth, but we always speak God’s truth in love to the world around us. It doesn’t mean that we should never get involved in social or political causes, doesn’t mean we should cloister ourselves away either, barricade ourselves apart from the world around us, but it does mean we don’t get dragged down into the muck, we don’t play by the world’s rules. To use Paul’s language from later in Ephesians, “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”  We don’t seek to defeat or obliterate or humiliate the people around us. We want to convert them, to help them see the depth of God’s love for them, to bring them to confess the truth of their own sin, to experience the sweet healing of forgiveness. As far as it concerns us, we live at peace with the world around us, and we live at peace with each other. There’s so much in this world that would divide us, and Satan would love nothing more than to rip the body of Christ apart, limb by limb, but he is not more powerful than our Lord. He is not more powerful than our Lord’s Word. We are united to the world around us because we all share the bondage to sin from which we are unable to free ourselves, but even more so we are all united to each other, those who have been made alive by the blood of the Lamb. And so, we live in that unity. We rejoice in that unity. We speak the truth in love. Where the world would sow despair, we speak hope. Where the world would sow death we speak life, and even in the midst of all such worldly chaos and division, we live in the peace of our Lord, the peace of our Lord that surpasses all understanding, that guards our hearts and our minds in the one true faith unto life everlasting. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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. As many of you already know, my family and I are about to go on vacation. Actually, my family is already gone. I fly out to meet them later today. Now, the way that we have vacationed has changed over the years. Back when we lived in Michigan, we lived close to family. And so, we saw grandparents and cousins all the time throughout the year, which meant that when vacation came, we could go anywhere we wanted, travel around the country, visiting national parks. Then we moved to Houston, which meant that we had to dedicate some of our vacation time to going back to Michigan to see family. It meant fewer trips just the five of us. But a few years ago, we went to Washington, DC, and as part of that trip we stayed in the glamping tent. If you’ve ever done glamping, it’s glamorous camping. And so, it was a tent, but it was a nice tent. It was built over a wooden deck. There was electricity in there. There was a ceiling fan, even a TV that wasn’t hooked up to anything. But it was still a tent. And so, one night when we were there, a significant thunderstorm rolled through. You could feel the canvas pulling in the wind. You could hear the thunder and lightning as if you were standing right outside. You could hear the water hitting the roof. But ultimately, we stayed safe and we stayed dry. We had a similar experience over 10 years ago. We took a road trip through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and across the northern United States to come back down towards Mount Rushmore. And one night of that trip, we stayed in a teepee. Again, it had a concrete slab for the floor, but that was it. The rest was canvas and cots. And that night, a thunderstorm rolled through. And so, we figured out how to close the door to the tent. We shut it up, figured out how to close the roof. And we soon understood why all the cots were bolted to the floor on the perimeter of the tent, why there was a table bolted right in the middle. Because as the rain came down, it came right through the hole in the top of the tent. The table got drenched, but we stayed dry. All the cots on the perimeter stayed dry. And there was one time when we went camping in seminary in northern Indiana. And then again, this time the rain was so hard that the weight of the water actually caused our tent to collapse while we were sleeping in it. I was brand new to camping. I was definitely clueless. So, Becky went outside to restake the tent while I stayed inside with baby Elizabeth, and Becky got soaked, but I stayed dry. Elizabeth stayed dry. All of this is to say that when it comes to shelters, a tent can be very helpful. It has its limits, but it can keep you dry in a storm. They can provide some shade from the sun. And if it’s built right like a teepee, it can even keep you warm if you build a fire inside. The tent is good, but a building is better. Becky and I experienced that first hand on a different vacation, different weekend getaway. This time we were staying in a hotel and yet again, a thunderstorm rolled through. This one had tornado warnings. We were told to go into the hallway to get away from the glass of the windows in the hotel room. When we got into the hallway, we were met by a crowd of about a dozen or so people who had driven in from the campground. They were worried that their tents and their campers would not provide enough protection from the storm. They wanted the safety of a building. They wanted the security, the walls, the ceiling, the concrete. Because a tent is good, but a building is better. That’s the image that Paul gives us this morning. We just heard it from a second Corinthians. A tent is good, but a building is better. Paul compares our life in this broken, fallen, sinful world, the bodies that we currently inhabit. He says they’re like tents. They’re good for what they are. They provide dwelling for our souls. Not that the soul is somehow more important than the body, but the bodies that are currently the home for our souls are enfleshed souls. These bodies are temporary. And not only are they temporary, they get sick, they breakdown, eventually, they die. And yet, Paul says we don’t lose hope. We have courage. We don’t lose hope in the face of disease. We don’t get discouraged by old age. We don’t need to live in bondage to the fear of death. For as Paul says, “We know that if the tent which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”  And that building is the resurrected body. “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.” What was sown in corruption is raised incorruptible. “It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory.” What was sown a natural body is raised a spiritual body. Yes, a tent is good, but a building is better. It’s a theme that we see throughout Scripture, actually. Just think of the story of the Exodus and the Promised Land. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, they lived in tents. They slept in tents as they journeyed to Mount Sinai. Then they slept in tents as they journey to the Promised land. And then, after they did not enter the Promised land, they lived in tents for another 40 years in the wilderness, but when the time came for them to finally enter the Promised Land, Moses unfolded the gift that God had prepared for them. This is what he said. “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give you–with great and good cities that you did not build and houses full of all good things that you did not fill and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant–and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget that the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  The Lord had certainly provided for his people in the wilderness when they lived in tents. But he promises something even better for them. He has something even better in store for them, houses in the Promised land. Because the Promised land is better than the wilderness. Not that God wasn’t with his people there, but he had something more in store. So, the Israelites would commemorate this reality each year at the Feast of Booths, sometimes it’s called the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Tents. Jews from all over would travel back to Jerusalem. It was one of the pilgrimage feasts, so anyone who wanted to be in good standing under the Law of Moses had to go to Jerusalem to observe it. And part of the observance included setting up camps outside Jerusalem, and living in tents for a week. It was a reminder that the Lord had protected his people in the wilderness, but even more so that he had delivered them into the Promised land. Tents are fine, but buildings are better. So also, the house of God himself, began as a tent. The Tabernacle constructed at Mount Sinai was made of fabric. It was collapsible. It was portable. It was the home of the Lord. It was the place where God dwelled among his people. It was the place where he forgave all their sin, but it was a tent. Tents are good, but buildings are better. And so, King David tried to build the Lord a building, and eventually his son Solomon did just that. The Tabernacle was replaced by the temple. And all of that was replaced when the Word became flesh and tabernacled among his people. Yet even that tent was replaced by the temple of the Church, built on the foundation of prophets and apostles, Jesus himself being the cornerstone, and we, the living stones, built together into a dwelling place for God. Throughout scripture, tents are good, but buildings are better. Paul applies that promise and that hope and that comfort to us. Our present existence in this fallen world is like a tent. But Paul reminds us of the heavenly existence waiting for us. He says that existence is a building. And in this tent, in this life, we may groan, longing to put on that heavenly dwelling. Life this side of paradise is difficult. We deal with the brokenness of creation every day. The sickness, bloodshed, temptation, sin, shame, failure, persecution, famine, nakedness. While we are still in this tent, we groan because we are burdened. Not that you want to be naked in the sense of being homeless without any tent at all exposed to the elements, but more so that we desire to be further clothed, in the sense that we want to be moved from this tent into something more secure, into the building so that what is mortal may be swallowed up in life. And the beauty of it is, that’s exactly the promise our Lord has already made to you. That’s the promise of baptism that we saw applied to Edward just a few moments ago. As difficult as life in this world may be, it is still life. It is still a gift. A tent may not be the best housing in the world, but it’s still shelter. Yet the promise is that this life is not all there is for us. This tent is not all that there is for us. There remains something better for the people of God. A building, an eternal existence in a world free from sin, where God himself wipes away every tear from every eye, where we feast on rich food full of marrow aged wine well refined, or we eat from the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of all people. Tent is good, but the building will be better. So don’t lose heart during the battles of this life. Don’t be overcome by the storms. Don’t let them drive you to despair. They’ll be crushed by the dread of death. Your Lord is already with you in this tent, and he is preparing for you a room in the Father’s mansion, a building where the sun will not scorch you, where the storms cannot drown you. That is your promise. That is your hope. And your Lord is faithful. He will see it done. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Grace, mercy and peace are yours 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. You know, no matter how old you are, I don’t think you ever outgrow the excitement of a new toy. When you’re young, the toy is, of course, a toy. A remote-control car, maybe an American Girl doll. Then as you get older it’s something electronic, probably phone or an iPad. And then maybe you reach the point where it’s something new for your kitchen; a new tool for your garage, maybe even a new car. Something is still going to give you butterflies in your stomach. You never outgrow the joy of a new toy. But as exciting as it is to get something new, it’s equally as disappointing when that thing breaks, when it stops working right? When we moved in Houston, something happened to our TV. The picture worked fine, you could see everything clearly, but the internal speakers jostled loose in the move so that whenever somebody on the screen would talk, there’d be this nasty vibration that shuttered the whole conversation. Couldn’t understand a word. Or my wife bought a new MacBook when she started her master’s degree about 10 years ago. And my daughter used it for online classes this year. But right about Christmas or so, certain keys on the keyboard stopped working, one of them being the space bar. It’s very difficult to write papers for school without a space bar, so we had to connect a Bluetooth keyboard and do a work around every time she needed to type. It’s frustrating when stuff breaks. Disappointing when stuff no longer works like it was supposed to. And it’s not just things. The same thing happens in relationships. A marriage is designed to work one way. You get butterflies in your stomach at the beginning of something new and beautiful. But when one spouse does not work the way they’re supposed to, when one spouse does something that breaks the relationship, undermines the trust of the other, makes the marriage no longer a safe space, well then that relationship no longer works right. It’s broken. For parents and their children, when one side of that relationship destroys the trust of the other, there otherwise breaks the relationship, and no longer works like it’s designed to. It’ll be filled with tension and division where there was supposed to be unity, mutual support. We see that in today’s reading from Genesis. Not only does Genesis 3 narrate the events of the fall into sin, but it especially emphasizes in today’s verses how that sin has broken the relationships that our Lord built into this creation. What was once shiny and new and perfect has been dropped, so to speak. And now it doesn’t work right. It doesn’t work like our Lord intended. See it in verse 8. Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden. What did they do? They “hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Why would you hide from God? Because sin had broken their relationship. Had their relationship with God been working as he intended it, they wouldn’t have hidden from him, they would have run towards him. When my dog hears the sound of keys in the door, she doesn’t run and hide under the couch. She runs to the door. She wants to see who’s coming. She’s eager to greet whoever’s there. When my kids were little, they’d run up and give me a big hug when I came home from work. And honestly, sometimes they still do. I would be suspicious though, if when I got home, they all ran to their rooms and hid from me. Make me think that they’re up to something. Would make me think that they’re hiding something. That’s what Adam and Eve did. When God showed up, they ran, and they hid from the presence of the Lord because they were ashamed, because they were embarrassed. They had broken the Lord’s perfect creation, and they had broken their relationship with him in the process. What should have been a relationship of trust, instead, was marked by fear. But that’s not all that was broken. Their relationship with each other had been broken too. When God questioned Adam about whether or not he had eaten from the tree, Adam’s response was to blame Eve. His response was to blame God. It was the woman that you put here, Lord. The woman you put in my life, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and yes, I ate. Now, according to God’s design for creation, Adam would love his bride. He would defend his bride. He would protect her at all cost. He would lay down his life for her, loving her as Christ loves the church. But instead, in his sin, Adam blamed her. Instead of taking the blame for her, instead of falling on the sword to protect his wife, Adam threw her under the bus. And in so doing, he puts the blame on God as well. If you hadn’t put this woman here, Lord, I wouldn’t have eaten from that tree. It’s God’s fault. It’s Eve’s fault. But that’s what our sin does to us. It blinds us. It twists our judgment. It leads us to accuse God rather than confess to Him. Our Lord came to Adam and asked, “Have you sinned?” And instead of saying “Yes Lord, please forgive me.” Adam says, “Well, if I did, it’s your fault. It was the woman.” But how often do we do the same? When our Lord comes to us and asks us, “Have you sinned?” Is our answer simply, “Yes Lord, please forgive me.” or did we say something else? Do we blame the ones that we’ve sinned against? “Yes, Lord, I called him that name. I spread those rumors and unflattering truths about her behind her back.” “Yes, Lord, I was daydreaming hateful thoughts, fantasizing about his demise, but God, he was asking for it. Did you see who he voted for?” “Did you see what she put on social media?” “Did you hear what he said about me first?” “I may not be perfect Lord, but that guy was asking for it. Ultimately, Lord, my sin is his fault, not mine.” Or do we blame some sort of undefinable and indistinguishable boogeyman out there? “Yes Lord, I did put those terrible things online and I harbored sinful thoughts and emotions in my heart, but God, the system is just so corrupt.” Capitalism will kill us all, Lord, so my little acts of rebellion are justified.”  “God, I’m just sick of seeing rainbows everywhere, the whole month of June, so, my callous heart, my cruel dismissal of other people’s struggle, well, that’s completely justified, God.” “I didn’t build the system, I didn’t make the rules, so I certainly shouldn’t feel guilty for exploiting the loopholes.” Or maybe we just go for broke and blame God himself. “Well, sure, I was dishonest on my taxes, Lord, but you didn’t give me that promotion at work. Money’s really tight right now.” “Yes, I lost my temper at my kids. God, but why did you have to make him so strong willed?” “So what if I’ve been quarrelsome, irritable. God, I would be more pleasant if you would just make my life a little easier.” We’re no different than Adam. We’re no different than Eve. In all of our relationships we are tempted to reflect just how broken this creation really is, just how broken are our relationships with each other, and our relationship with God himself. When our Lord comes to us and asks, “Have you sinned?” why do we act as if his ultimate goal is to punish us? Why do we treat him as if he takes some sort of twisted joy in watching us squirm? He likes putting us under the interrogation lights. Do we not remember that God Himself has told us, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live”. What do we picture when we hear that the Lord God was walking in the garden in the cool of the day? Why do we think he came down to find Adam and Eve that day? Do we think he was there to condemn? Do you think he was unaware of their sin before he sent them up to find them? Why did he come down that day? The narrative answers the question for us. First, he came down to curse the serpent, to speak words of judgment against Satan. I’ve heard it said that the curse of the serpent is meant to remind us of the brokenness of this creation after the fall. Just picture a snake, picture the way that it moves. It’s almost like it swims on the land. The way that it moves would be more appropriate for a fish in water, as it glides through. The serpent is out of place in creation. It doesn’t look right. A visual reminder that this world is now broken by sin. But it’s a reminder that’s meant to beckon us home. To bring us back to our Lord, inviting us to confess that sin, and be reconciled to Him. That’s what he promises Adam and Eve. The seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. One who would destroy all that is broken and out of place in this world. One who would put back together what sin had broken. And then what does God do? He covers their shame. He gives them clothing, and finally he removes them from the garden, unless they eat from the tree of life and lives forever in their sin. And then he continued to bless them. Blessed them with life, gave them children. They continued on in the place that God had given them as stewards of His creation. He does not abandon them in their sin. He does not turn his back on them in their sin. He reconciles them unto himself. He reconciles them to each other. And the same is true for us today. Our Lord comes not to catch us in sin so that he can punish us “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Our Lord calls us to repentance. He calls out to us in our sin, because he’s beckoning us out of it, inviting us back to him, promising us the reconciliation that is possible only through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in our place. “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” A reconciliation won at Calvary’s cross. Reconciliation delivered to us each week in Word and sacrament. The reconciliation that overflows our souls, and into the daily lives and relationships that we experience. We live in a world that’s broken by sin, and our life in this world will continue to be marked by sin. This world is broken, and we are broken, by nature, sinful and unclean. We have to acknowledge that even the way we look at sin is broken. Treating our Lord as if he takes pleasure in judgment. Instead, he gives us a different way. Instead of trying to avoid the reality of sin by shifting blame, we’re free to simply confess it, and to rejoice that it’s been forgiven. To trust our Lord’s promise that through the working of the Spirit in our lives, we can live in faith toward him and in love toward others. So, when our Lord asks, “Have you sinned?” we don’t need to hide in the trees. You don’t need to shift the blame, whether we rejoice enough that our Lord cares enough to call us out, to show us our sin, and to show us that that sin is forgiven. And then he gives us new life, reconciled to him, and reconciled to each other. May that continue to be our life in this place. In Jesus’ name. Amen. 

Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray. O Lord sent forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives. in Jesus’ name, Amen. My family and I have lived in an apartment since we moved to Albuquerque last summer. And one of the hardest parts about being where we are is that there’s no backyard, which ultimately means there’s nowhere to grill. I love to cook on the grill. We used to always grill the obvious things, burgers and brats and steaks. We also liked to grill vegetables. Asparagus and zucchini were the favorites. We even grilled frozen pizza. Sometimes watermelon or pineapple. One time we even tried to grill cookies. When I was a kid, my dad would grill out almost every night when the weather was nice. Standing by the grill at the end of a long day with a cold beverage was how he liked to unwind and he passed that down to me. And when it comes to grilling, there’s different approaches you can take to prepare the food. Now we tend to use dry seasoning because it’s convenient. You grab a couple of spices out of the cabinet and mix them together while the grill is heating up. But sometimes on a special day and a special occasion we’ll marinate the meat for a couple hours, maybe even overnight. I can still mentally taste two specific marinades that my parents used when I was growing up, one for chicken, one for steak. And I can remember the 24 or so hours leading up to the meal. Every time you open the refrigerator, there was the baking dish, telling you what was to come, containing all that raw goodness. Now in our house we tend to use zip lock bags. It still locks in the flavor, it’s easier to shove in the fridge, takes up less space on the shelves. And when it comes time to cook, to grab the zip lock bag out of the fridge,  the anticipation grows, because that bag is about to deliver something precious, something delicious. And I’m thankful for the zip lock bag, but I’m even more thankful because of what’s inside. The contents are the real treasure. The same thing is true for the leftovers the next day. The leftover is the day after Thanksgiving, that Tupperware in your fridge is a beautiful thing. Not because I have a particular love of plastic, but because of what’s inside. And that’s what Paul’s talking about today in 2 Corinthians. He speaks about the great gift of the Gospel, the good news of forgiveness. For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ has shown in our hearts.” And He has given us the gift of faith, reconciliation with God, faith that clings to our Lord’s promises. To use the analogy of food, it’s like the Tupperware container that holds the treasure. You see the steak has to be kept in something. Leftovers have to be kept in something, and the gospel, the message of the gospel has to be kept somewhere. It has to live somewhere. It has to be delivered somehow. And what does God choose? Where does God house the proclamation of the Gospel? He puts it in jars of clay. He puts it in weakness. He doesn’t enshrine it in the gold-plated vault with top notch security, eye scanners and biometric locks. He places it in common, perishable everyday vessels, clay jars. The kinds of stuff you’d find lying around your house if you lived in 1st century Corinth. It’s like the food analogy. The gospel isn’t even wrapped in foil shaped like a swan that you get from a fancy restaurant. It’s in zip lock bags and Tupperware. The kind of stuff you have lying around your kitchen. Because the message is what’s important. And Paul says that our Lord did not place the proclamation of his gospel into the mouths of dynamic beings or angels who could shoot lightning from their fingertips, who could darken the sun with a snap of their fingers, or who could conjure the winds like some sort of X-Men? He didn’t leave the proclamation of forgiveness to the things that the world would find impressive. He gave it to people, simple people, normal people. He gave it to his apostles. He gave it to his church. And he gives it to us. He placed his treasure into jars of clay. And why did he do that? In order that the world might know that the surpassing power belongs to God, not to us. The focus needs to be on the message, not on the messenger. And if the messenger happens to draw our attention at all, it should not be because of how wonderful he looks, because of how expensive his suit is, or because of his winning smile. It shouldn’t be because of how eloquently he speaks, or because the church is so huge, or he has such a great smile and tells such  wonderful stories. No, according to Paul, if the messenger draws our attention at all, it should be because, through his weakness, the power of God is seen all that more clearly. The messenger is afflicted in every way, but not crushed. Imagine what would happen to a clay jar in a trash compactor. How many shards of clay would splinter all over the place? It would truly be an incredible sight if the trash compactor broke and bent itself around the clay, because clay isn’t that strong, not by itself, and so also us. We are jars of clay, unable to withstand the pressures of the devil on our own. The proclamation of the Gospel, living the life of faith that puts a bullseye on our back, the arrows of doubt assail us, the pressure of living as light in a world of darkness, threatens to crush us, but our Lord defends us. Our Lord protects us. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” And so, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat down on the couch to relax and I turn on the TV and I scroll through Hulu, then I wonder what’s on Netflix. So, then I scroll through Netflix, then Amazon, maybe even Disney Plus. There are thousands of options at my fingertips, but I can’t choose one. So instead, I turn off the TV and throw the remote in disgust. Some call it decision paralysis. Paul says that being entrusted with the proclamation of the gospel can create a similar situation. There are so many possibilities. Who should I share the gospel with? How should I share it? What do I say? How do I say it? What if they don’t listen?  What if they do listen? What if they challenge me? What if they ask questions I can’t answer? What if? What if, What if? We may be perplexed, but we will not be driven to despair. When being a jar of clay that houses the proclamation of the gospel feels overwhelming and confusing, we find our comfort that the success or the failure of the proclamation doesn’t lie in our hands anyway. The sower sowed his seed. Some of it grew, some of it didn’t. But the sower sowed. That was his job. The growth belongs to someone else. The growth is the work of the Spirit. Proclaiming the truth to a dying world may be confusing and frustrating, but through the power of the Spirit we are not driven to despair. Even if we’re persecuted for our confession, even if it feels like we’ve been abandoned, we remember that we are not forsaken, our Lord is with us. Even if we are struck down or injured for the proclamation of the gospel, we will not be destroyed. We may be jars of clay, but we will not be shattered. Even if the world holds us above its head and throws us to the ground with all its might, we will not be broken. I pray that we’re spared from that kind of experience, but even if we aren’t, Paul’s words become that much more comforting. If in the end, we end up bearing in our bodies the scars of persecution, they are simply a reminder of the scars of Jesus, and an encouragement to look forward to resurrection. It’s one of our Lord’s wonderful ways of working. He takes that which the devil would use to drive us to despair and flips it around. He catches the devil in his own schemes. The devil sets out to make us suffer, to cause us to lose hope, but the suffering just reminds us of the suffering of Jesus himself, that Jesus suffered. Which reminds us that there was resurrection at the end of his suffering, which reminds us that there’s resurrection waiting for us too. And so, what the devil would use to drive us to despair, our Lord uses to give us hope. And it’s not just the physical hardships. When I tell myself I’m just a jar of clay, no one will listen to me, I’m reminded of all the people who didn’t listen to Jesus either. If you feel like the proclamation of the gospel is falling on deaf ears, if you don’t see changes in the lives of the people around you, in your home or in your work, be comforted and reminded that the message didn’t get through to everyone, even when it came from the mouth of Jesus himself. And if you feel like the devil, and the world and your sinful flesh are actively trying to silence you, to prevent you from speaking words of hope, well, they tried to silence Jesus too. But they could not. Jesus accomplished the purpose for which he was sent. Your forgiveness has been won, and it is delivered to you every week, through word and sacrament to strengthen life for the life that you live. It might not be that impressive in the eyes of the world. We might be simple jars of clay, but through the working of the Spirit in our simple lives, we are reminded that the surpassing power belongs to God, and not to us. Us, we get to live in the freedom of the gospel. We get to live as the forgiven ones. We get to live as the redeemed. We get to speak the words we’re given to speak. We live the lives we’re given to live, and we leave the rest to God. We take each day as it comes, faced with the tribulation of the world, but not overcome by it. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shown in our hearts to give the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Death may be at work in this world, may be at work in our lives, but life is too. And life and hope get the last word. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Grace, mercy and peace are yours 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. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Perhaps you’ve heard that before. Whether you’re rushing to judgment or even if you take every possible precaution, the truth remains that making a decision without all the facts can lead to behavior that is sometimes comical, sometimes tragic. How many movies have you seen where that’s the case? Someone gets himself or herself into an uncomfortable situation by making a decision without having all the facts. Like loading your family into a brand-new station wagon for a cross country vacation, only to find out that Wally World is closed when you get there. For Romeo and Juliet, like many tragedies, the plot turns when the messenger cannot deliver his message in time. If the messenger had been able to inform Romeo of the plan hatched by the Friar and Juliet, their relationship might have ended quite differently. But because Romeo didn’t know all that he might have known, he jumped to the wrong conclusion. He didn’t have all the facts. He didn’t know as much as he thought he knew, and it turns out he was quite wrong. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And yet our sinful flesh idolizes knowledge. We worship our own understanding. We, as a species, are convinced there is nothing outside the grasp of human understanding. We believe that even if I don’t personally understand something, surely someone, somewhere does. And even if no one does today, we tend to convince ourselves that on some level, there will be someone in the future, someday, who gets it. Humanity as a whole, loves understanding. We love our knowledge. We convinced ourselves that every mystery can be solved if the right person just has enough time. Oh, fools we mortals be. There are many things that are beyond our understanding, like the doctrine of the Trinity. As we confess to the Athanasian Creed here on Trinity Sunday, majesty coeternal, coequal persons and substances, begotten, and proceeding in all kinds of technical language. How can there be three persons who are one God? Human efforts to understand the Trinity beyond what we’ve been given in Scripture have gotten people in trouble for centuries. Any student of the early church will be confronted with these misunderstandings. Any student of the history of the rest of the church will see how they keep popping up with each new generation. But maybe that’s not you. Maybe you’re not really worried about understanding the Trinity. Maybe you’re content to let it remain a mystery. That doesn’t mean you don’t still fall victim to the temptation to idolize human understanding. One of my favorite insights from Luther is the realization that while Christians may be willing to admit that God is bigger than we are, that he is more powerful than we are, we have a really hard time admitting that he’s wiser. That’s why the Apostle Paul’s words to the Romans are so hard to stomach. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways? For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” Who has known the mind of God? Certainly, we haven’t. Yeah, we like to act as if we have. We’re quick to question God on the basis of our own understanding. To challenge him, to take him to task for the way he is handling something in our lives. We’re quick to accuse God of being foolish, or pigheaded, flat out wrong, assuming that we know better than he does. Why me? is one of our favorite questions. Why me, God? Why did I get cancer? Why did my loved one die? Why did I lose my job? Why was my childhood so hard? Why do I struggle with depression? Why me? We question God, persistently questioning God about the way he’s working in our lives, often accusing him of not knowing what’s best, of not doing what’s best for us. But we haven’t seen the mind of God. We haven’t explored the depths of his wisdom and knowledge. His judgments are unsearchable. His ways mysteriously beyond our comprehension. At least that’s the way Paul puts it. When God himself speaks, he’s a bit more blunt. Just look at the book of Job. Here was a man who had been faithful to God. He had been blessed with much earthly wealth, great comfort, large family. Then God sent Satan to take it all away. Job’s family died, and his fortune dried up, and Job himself was stricken with illness, and his friends tried to figure out what he had done wrong to deserve such punishment from God. Job’s wife told him to just curse God and die already. And when Joel himself finally reached the end of his patience and did question the wisdom of God, here is God’s response: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you can make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements–surely you know! Or who stretched out the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone?” It continues from there. God puts Job in his place, and by extension, us as well. Who are we to question the Almighty? To think that we might know better than God. That our brains could fathom this world better than the one who created them. Do we understand how the created world works? We may understand that it works, what it does, but that’s such a little knowledge compared to the omniscience of the Almighty. And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So rather than leaning on our own abilities to understand God, we are called, instead, to rely on the little knowledge that God has revealed about himself. That’s what Jesus says to Nicodemus. “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen.” Doctors talk about medicine. Lawyers talk about the law. We speak about what we know, and no one has ascended into heaven to see God except for the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. He speaks about what he knows. If you rely on your own understanding, Nicodemus, you will fail. You don’t even fully understand the things of this earth, how the wind works. How could you possibly understand the things of heaven and the ways of God? Now if you want to understand the ways of God, listen to the one he sent. If you want to know God, don’t look at the details of your life, look at his. Look at Jesus. It was Jesus, who was born for you, the sinless Son of God, Jesus, who lived a life of perfection in your place, fulfilling God’s covenant with Moses. It was Jesus who kept the law perfectly for you in thought, word, and deed. It was Jesus, who suffered for the way that our very existence as sinful people violates the holy law of God. It was Jesus who overcame death in the grave for you, who opens for us the way of everlasting life. If you want to understand God, look at the way he acts in Jesus. For this is how God loves the world. This is how God acted out his love for the world, just as Moses lifted up a snake in the wilderness so that Israel would be delivered from snakes, so also God lifted up a dead man on a cross so that you would be delivered from death. Look at Jesus. Jesus is how God loves the world, by giving his only Son over to death, in order that all who looked to him might not perish, but have eternal life. God did not send the Christ into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. And it is saved, and you are saved, and you have eternal life, as Jesus himself says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” That’s you. That’s me. We have passed from death to life, all because of what God Himself has done for us. And there’s joy in this. There’s freedom in this. Rather than getting bogged down and lost and confused in vain attempts to uncover the mysteries of God, we rejoice in what little knowledge we have. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but in this case it’s dangerous for Satan. So, he’ll stop at nothing to distract us, to pull out every trick in his bag, in an effort to drive us to despair. And make no mistake, every effort to understand God, apart from Jesus, ends in despair. For apart from Jesus, all we have are the things of this world. The things of this world always die, always crumble, always fail. If we rely on the things of this world, rely on our own understanding, we find ourselves confronted with the false God who fails and who crumbles. But that’s not the God you have. That’s not the God who he is. The true God has revealed himself in Jesus, and when we fix our eyes on him, we see life. We see him overcome this world, and we see him promise our deliverance. And so, yes, we still live in the valley of tears. Yes, we are still unclean people who dwell in the midst of an unclean world, people of life, in a dying world, people of hope in a world of despair. And if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, it will likely get worse before it gets better. Sin will increase. Society will continue to get worse. We’ll continue to look to heaven and wonder why God allows these things to happen. Why, God, do you sit back and watching the wickedness continue? Why do you allow tornadoes and earthquakes to take so much life? Why do you allow such wicked people to rise to political power? Why don’t you act when you see the greed and the corruption and the lust and the narcissism of our world? And in our frustration, we can look back to the words of Paul. We have not known the mind of the Lord, and we don’t understand His reasons, for they are His own. Therefore, they are justified, and there’s truth in that. There’s no hope in that. Our hope is found in the words of Jesus, the life of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus. That is the promise of your resurrection. Jesus is the key. Jesus is the answer. Christ crucified to set you free. There are many questions in this world that we may want answered and never get answered. But Jesus says what matters. Don’t understand the Trinity? That’s OK, look to Jesus. Don’t understand the hardships in your life? That’s OK, look to Jesus. Keep your eyes fixed on him, for in him you see God’s love in action. When compared to the omniscience of the Almighty, it may only be a little bit of knowledge, but when it comes to Jesus, a little knowledge is a beautiful thing. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. It’s not usually a good thing to be at a dead end. Now maybe you like the privacy if you live at the end of a dead-end street. But no one wants to be stuck in a dead-end job, or a dead-end relationship. More often than not, when you call something dead end, it’s not a compliment. It conveys hopelessness, discouragement. The Prophet Ezekiel describes just such a scene for us this morning, a scene of discouragement, hopelessness. But instead of dead end, he gives us dry bones. “The hand of the Lord was upon me,” says the Prophet, “and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones.” And then the Lord said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole House of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off.’” Israel was at a dead end. They were exiles in Babylon. The promised land had been ravaged. Their temple was destroyed. Their families had been scattered, when they were captives in a strange place. And Israel looked out at their circumstances and Israel looked out at their situation, and they regarded it as God’s hand of judgment, a political defeat, a military defeat that was irrevocable. They saw it as proof that God had abandoned them. They saw it as evidence that God’s promises to Abraham would not be fulfilled, that the God who once dwelled among them as Immanuel in their temple, was now gone for good. No longer God with us, but now a distant God, and that Israel, who at one time was the chosen offspring of the Lord, now they were abandoned to live as orphans. They saw themselves as the valley of bones. Bones with no ambition. Have you ever tried to discover the purpose of a pile of bones, asked it what its goals are, what dreams it aspires to? Bones can’t carry out any kind of plans. Bones don’t have a future. Bones only have a past, and it was a past that ended in death. There is no zeal. There’s no fire. There’s no emotion, there’s no heart, there’s no driving force in a pile of bones. Ezekiel could have set down a leprechaun’s pot of gold and walked away, and those bones couldn’t have cared less. He could have been choking. He needed someone to give him the Heimlich. A pile of bones isn’t going to notice. They’re not aware of their situation. They have no sense of what’s going on around them. They’re oblivious. Because they’re lifeless. So Ezekiel stood there and looked at this depressing sight. And as he looked on, God began to speak to him. And the Lord asked him, can these bones live? I wonder if Ezekiel rolled his eyes, confused by the question. Maybe he shuddered at the pile of death in front of him. I wonder if he was remembering that, as a priest, he was prohibited from coming into contact with these bones or any human death. Or I wonder if he was remembering that according to God’s holy ceremonial law, bodies that were left unburied, piles of bones were done so as a sign that they had fallen under God’s curse. These people are not only dead, they’re cursed, totally without hope. And here God calls Ezekiel to go stand in the middle of the cemetery and prophecy to the bones, to climb up on a tombstone, with neck bones and thigh bones and wishbones as far as the eye can see. That’s what he does. He says to Ezekiel, prophecy over these bones. You can almost picture Ezekiel taking a deep breath, and then pausing. What exactly does one say to a pile of bones? I can’t hear you anyway. There’s no inspirational speech you could give that would bring them back to life. But God did not tell Ezekiel to prophecy his own words. God tells Ezekiel exactly what to say. “Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” You see, these bones didn’t need a lecture. They needed life. They didn’t need advice. They didn’t just need encouragement. They needed breath. They don’t need Ezekiel’s words. They need the word of the Lord. That’s what we need too. For we live in a valley of dry bones. We live in a world marked by death. There are all the small deaths we experience: poverty, hunger, there’s illness, political divisions, racial tensions, the hurtful rhetoric that’s spewed on the news and on social media, protesters on the duck pond. Politicians, the political media would tell us that if we could just get the right person elected, if we can just implement the right policies, everything will get better. The advertisers tell us that if we just buy the right product, that at least we’ll feel better about ourselves, be better equipped to make it through the day. But none of those words speak life into dry bones.  Not only use our world marked by death, each and every one of us, individually, is a valley of dry bones. There are the secret sins that we cling to behind closed doors, there’s the hate that we harbor in our hearts for certain people in the world around us, just the way that we make excuses for our own sins while holding others to an impossible standard. It’s the halfhearted repentance that we fall back on when the guilt gets to be too much. All of it is the fruit of the sinful flesh. All of it is our own personal valley of dry bones, and there is no human way to overcome it. There’s no human word, there’s no politician’s speech, there’s no celebrities advice that can bring life into dead hearts. But it wasn’t Ezekiel’s words that brought life into that valley. What those bones needed was the word of God, and that’s what they got. And that’s what we have too. So don’t be fooled by the dead bones or the dead ends of your life. Don’t trust your eyes or your ears when they tempt you to despair. Don’t believe the world when it tells you that all hope is lost, that your sin is too great to be forgiven, but that death and taxes really are all there is. For when you are without power, when you are weak, when you’ve run out of options, when you’re dead, there is still the breath of God. When the breath of God speaks, brittle bones band together and breathe the breath of life. God’s spirit still rattles old bones. God’s Spirit still breathes life into that which was dead. Ezekiel tells us, “So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”  What once looked hopeless was turned on its head by the mercy and by the power of Almighty God. Yes, the Jerusalem temple may have been destroyed, but the Lord would establish a new temple, a greater temple, built on the foundation of prophets and apostles, Christ Jesus himself the cornerstone. And yes, the Israelites may have been in exile in Babylon, but God would bring them home. And then, through the miracle of Pentecost, he would send his word into all nations, into all languages, gathering for himself a people of every tribe and race. No, God did not forget his promises to Abraham. And he does not forget his promises to you. He is faithful. He will see it done by the working of his Word. That’s what’s happening here this morning. That’s what happens every time our Lord comes to us through his Word and sacraments. He brings life out of death. He brings hope out of despair. We who were dead in our trespasses and sins are made alive, together with Christ Jesus and raised up with Him. Our Lord’s message of hope for those dry bones, is his message of hope for you. Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.” The world is always tempting us to despair. Our sinful flesh is always tempting us back to that valley of bones. It wants to steal our joy, our zeal for life, our ambition to live as the people of God. The world wants us to throw in the towel, to resign ourselves, to live out our days as nothing more than a pile of bones. The devil whispers into our ear that that valley is exactly where we belong. But our Lord breathes life. The new creation that is yours through the Word of the Lord is not so easily deceived. The new creation is strengthened through the gifts of this altar. You are God’s child. So come, Holy Ghost,

“Let trials turn us not aside.

Lord, by Your pow’r prepare each heart,

And to our weakness strength impart

That bravely here we may contend,

Through life and death, to You, our Lord, ascend.”

 

May God grant it, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.

Alleluia. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. Grace, mercy and peace are yours 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. Today is the 7th Sunday of Easter. Seven weeks of me finally remembering to start my sermons with the Easter Acclamation. Seven weeks of singing “this is the feast” for those of you who are waiting to go back to setting 3 next week. Seven Sundays of celebration. 7 weeks long. A week of weeks. 7 is an important number in the scriptures. Traces it all the way back to creation. God created the world in six days, and on the 7th day he rested. And that number 7 became a significant a symbol of wholeness and completion throughout the church. Book of Revelation tells us there’s seven churches that the letters are sent to. It’s a symbol of the whole church, not just a message to those seven congregations, but to all Christians. Peter asked how many times must I forgive my brother? 7 times? Jesus says No 7 times 7 times10. It’s a number of fullness. The Sabbath was instituted at Mount Sinai as part of the framework for how God wanted His people to live. That 7th day. That they have rest. But I’ve probably told you before, I don’t remember if it was in a sermon or if it was in a Bible class that the Sabbath for Israel, that 7th day, it was more than just one day. It was more than just one Sabbath. There was the weekly Sabbath, in recognition of God resting on the 7th day of creation, but there was also a Sabbath year. Just as the people were given rest from their work on the 7th day of a week, the land itself was given rest from planting and from harvesting every 7th year. The Israelites wouldn’t plant any crops. They wouldn’t harvest any crops. They wouldn’t prune their fields. They wouldn’t trim their bushes. They wouldn’t cultivate the land in any way. They would just eat  what the land produced. People and animals would survive, on whatever the land grew on its own, the land got a year of Sabbath rest. And then there was the Year of Jubilee. Every 7th, 7th year. Every 7th Sabbath year, there was a time of Jubilee in the Land of Israel. It began on the Day of Atonement. The significant thing about it was that for the Israelites, all debt was forgiven. Any Israelite who had to indenture himself to make money for his family, was to be returned to his land, to have his debt wiped away.  Any land that was sold by one Israelite to another Israelite was returned to its original family, the family that it had been assigned to in the days of Joshua. Because ultimately, this land belongs to God. And the Israelites simply worked it as his people. God’s goal in all of this was to shape the Israelite’s identity. To shape the way that they saw themselves, how they understood their place as his people, and how they understood their relationships with each other. God wanted them to see themselves as people redeemed from Egypt. They were his first born. So, part of the instructions of the very first Passover was, from that day forward, the Passover would be the start of the year for the Israelites. They would always see themselves as the delivered people. And they’d always be reminded that this land in which they lived was theirs as a gift. It was theirs as an inheritance. That’s what the Book of Joshua calls it. And the way that they lived in that land would change the way that they live with each other. You see, it’s always hard to ask for help, but it’s a bit easier if you know that there’s a reset coming. If you know that in the end of 50 years the land will be returned to the original family, all your debts will be wiped out. It made the Israelites willing to help each other, knowing that that help was always going to be temporary. You were always leasing the land from someone, not just buying it from them. God wanted Israel to live as a community, to see themselves as the gathered people of God, not just some random collection of individuals. God’s family. God’s people. And of course, all of it points forward to Jesus. When the disciples of John asked Jesus if he was the Messiah, Jesus answered by saying that he is proclaiming the good news to the poor, he’s giving sight to the blind, and he’s proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor. That’s the language of Jubilee. Jesus says that his arrival is the Jubilee. Jesus came to cancel all debts. Jesus came to fix and restore all relationships. Jesus came to hit the reset button between the people and God. What he said in today’s gospel reading. He prays to his Father. Lord, “keep them in your name… that they may be one, even as we are one.” A prayer for unity. The unity of God’s people. A unity found in the name of Jesus, a name which we all share. The unity found in the forgiveness of sins. For all of us have had our debts cancelled. All of us have had our sin forgiven. All of us have had our relationship with God restored. And now our relationship here with each other, this gift of community and the church, is redefined through him. We are all one as Jesus and the Father are one. It’s not a unity of race. It’s not a unity of politics. It’s not a unity simply of geography, because we all happen to live near each other. And it’s not simply a gathering of like-minded people who enjoy singing the same type of music. We are united in something far more significant. We are united in the name of Christ. Baptized into that name. Adopted into the family of God. As we heard a few weeks ago, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Joined to each other every time that we are joined to him at this altar, feasting on his body and his blood for the forgiveness of our sins, being united to our Lord. And being united to everyone else who is united to our Lord. The gift of togetherness. The gift of knowing we don’t journey through this life alone. We are never alone. We know that Jesus is always with us. That’s one of the gifts of the Ascension. Jesus ascended far above all heavens, Paul tells us, in order that he might fill all things. Your Lord is with you. Your Lord walks with you wherever you go, where you are united to His name. The gift of the Ascension is that Jesus is with you wherever you may be. But we also know that we’re not alone, because we have other people in this room with us. Other people united to the name of Jesus. We are all united to each other. We pray for one another. We pray for one another in times of hardship. We cry with one another. We celebrate with one another. We visit each other when times are difficult. We help each other when we are in need. We celebrate with each other. We rejoiced with each other. We are united together in the name of Jesus. The Israelites were given the gift of a year of Jubilee, a year of having everything reset so they could continue to live at peace with one another. In this Church, the Church of our Lord, every year is for us a year of Jubilee. Every day is a day that we start fresh in the name of Jesus. So, where there is division among us, let us repent and embrace reconciliation. Where we have tried to go our own way, have tried to make ourselves an island, let us repent and be joined with the body of Christ. Let us live in the name of Jesus. That’s who we already are in him. Claimed as his people. Set forth, sanctified in his truth and sent into the world to proclaim that truth, to proclaim that hope into the people we meet. May such a proclamation be part of our lives in Jesus’ name every day.  Amen.