Speaker: Aaron Richert

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. There are certain places in history, certain locations that have been witness to multiple significant events. Take, for example, the dueling grounds in Weehawken, NJ. Now it’s long been well known that founding father Alexander Hamilton was shot in a duel by Aaron Burr and it’s more widely known recently due to the success of a Broadway musical, Hamilton, that Hamilton’s own son, was also killed in a pistol duel. But what might not be well known is that the location for both of those duels was the same, the dueling grounds near Weehawken, NJ. Maybe it’s because in those days there weren’t a lot of dueling grounds to choose from. Maybe it’s because Alexander decided that if he was going to die in a duel, it was going to happen at the same place that his son experienced the same fate. Whatever the case, by chance or by design, the dueling grounds in Weehawken, NJ were home to the death of two Hamilton men, a mere 3 years apart. There might be room for discussion about the motivation behind two Hamiltons dying in the same spot, but there is no room for doubt when it comes to the train car where WWI officially came to an end. Maybe you’ve heard this story before. On November 11^th, 1918 allied forces met with Germany in a train car to sign the Armistice that ended WWI, but about 20 years later, when Nazi forces captured France on their conquest for Europe, during WWII, Hitler made the French representatives sign their surrender in the exact same train car, and that was no accident. That was not coincidence. That was revenge for what had happened there in the past. Significant events happening at the same spot. There’s also a spot significant location mentioned in today’s Old Testament reading, one where multiple important events happen throughout the scriptures, one where multiple deaths occur, one chosen on the purpose of the future events, based on what happened there in the past, and that location is Mount Moriah. Genesis 22 opens with God’s words to Abraham. “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” Now certainly there’s much that could be said about this whole story. Much in this narrative foreshadows the work of Jesus. There’s the fact that God calls Isaac, Abraham’s beloved son. Words which are echoed by the Father himself in the baptism of Jesus, there’s the way that Isaac carries the wood for his own sacrifice much like Jesus carries the wood of his own cross up his hill of execution, but today I want to focus on something else. I want to notice something else. I want to spend a few minutes considering the place where this happens, the place where God sends Abraham. See God didn’t tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in the backyard, didn’t tell him to go to the beach, or choose any old place that was convenient for Abraham, someplace that was on the way. No, he sent the patriarch to a specific place, the mountain which the Lord chose and that mountain eventually gets the name, “the Lord will provide”. Location is important to our Lord. In the book of Deuteronomy, he tells the Israelites that they shouldn’t just offer sacrifices wherever they feel like it, but only in the place where he causes his name to be remembered. Jesus himself says in the gospel of Luke that a prophet should not die apart from or away from Jerusalem, speaking of course, of himself. Now perhaps in our day we’ve lost sight of this a little bit. I mean we can stream TV shows or movies or podcasts from wherever we want, anywhere that we have signal. We can call anyone from almost anywhere with our cell phones. We can work remotely. I had a friend in Houston whose dad lived in Austin, and working for CPA firm in Baltimore. We can join meetings virtually. They even hold certain courtroom proceedings or other legal proceedings on zoom these days, and so in our daily experience, one place is oftentimes no more significant than the next, and yet we still seek out those places where something significant happened. We still take trips to our nation’s capital, we still want to go visit the historic battlegrounds, we still take friends and family up to Los Alamos to see where the Manhattan Project happened, and so in some way, yes, location is still very much important to us, still matters, definitely matters to our Lord. God sent Abraham to a specific mountain. He did it for a reason, and when Abraham got there, when Isaac got there, God provided for them on that mountain. That’s what I want you to notice about the story today. That’s the language that Moses uses as he writes the story in the book of Genesis. It might not be the only thing we’re supposed to get from the story, but it is certainly one of the main things. And yes, the book of Hebrews holds up Abraham as an example of great faith, as one who trusts in God’s promise, the promise that through Isaac all nations will be blessed. That’s certainly true. But that’s why Abraham’s name comes up in the book of Hebrews. There’s something else going on, or being emphasized here in Genesis. In the New Testament in Hebrews, those words are written to early Christians who were beginning to wonder whether or not Jesus would ever return, wonder whether or not they should go back to the sacrifices in the temple, and to those people in that context, the author offers a word of perseverance, of endurance, of faith, setting up people like Abraham as examples. But in Genesis, Moses is doing something a little different. The main point is this: God himself provided and he did so when and where he said he would. That’s why Moses tells us the name of the mountain was called, “the Lord will provide”, and Moses even adds in the comment for his readers that it was still in that day called, “the Lord will provide”.  “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” This text continuously points us back to the Lord providing. The Lord provided for Abraham and for Isaac on that mountain. After the Angel of the Lord stopped Abraham’s hand, Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket and Abraham took the ram and offered it in place of Isaac. God sent Abraham to the place where he, God, would provide a substitute. God provided on that mountain, provided something else to die so that Isaac could live. But that wasn’t the only time God provided the substitute on that mountain. 1000 years later, King David found himself once again on Mount Moriah. You can read the story in 1 Chronicles 21. Israel was being punished for David’s hubris. He had taken a census, against the Lord’s command, and so the Lord sent a pestilence into Israel, and David watched as the population of his mighty Kingdom began to decline rapidly. The Lord sent a prophet to David and told him to build an altar on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, which just so happened to be on Mount Moriah. So, David bought Ornan’s threshing floor and his oxen for 600 shekels of gold, and presented the Lord burnt offerings and peace offerings on Mount Moriah. The Lord relented of the disaster set to befall Israel. The Lord once again provided a substitute on Mount Moriah, this time not a ram for Isaac, but this time oxen for all of Israel. The Lord was not done with Mount Moriah. The mountain comes up again in 2 Chronicles, chapter 3, and actually has a role in the history of the world to this day. We get to see one generation later, David’s son Solomon set out to build the temple of Israel. What better place than Mount Moriah, the place where the Lord had appeared to his father David, the place that David had appointed on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. So once again the Lord provided a substitute on Mount Moriah, this time by way of the whole sacrificial system, through which God forgave the sins of Israel, and sanctified them to be his own. God would continue to provide for his people on Mount Moriah, even after Solomon’s temple was destroyed. The exiles who returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, rebuilt the Lord’s temple on Mount Moriah, reinstituted the practice of sacrifice there, on the mountain of the Lord choosing, the mountain where the Lord said he would provide for his people. All of this happened on Mount  Moriah, the place where God provided for Abraham. All of this recalls the way the Lord provided on that mountain in the past, but more  importantly all of that foreshadowed what would happen on that mountain when the son of God himself visited Mount  Moriah in the flesh. Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, gave his life as a sacrifice on Mount Mariah, just outside the walls of Jerusalem, not too far from the altar in the temple, not too far from the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, not too far from the place where the ram, caught in the thicket, was sacrificed for Isaac. The Lord did indeed provide on Mount  Moriah, provided the sacrifice that makes us whole. The Father’s beloved son sacrificed for the sin of the world. On the mountain of the Lord, it was provided. That’s what continues even to this day. Maybe not on the literal Mount Moriah, but through the means our Lord has used there, in the past. The temple once built on Mount Moriah as a place where God would provide for his people. The temple is no longer a building of stone and mortar, it is made of living stones, the people of God, built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. It’s here. It’s here in our Lord’s church that he continues to provide for our deliverance. He ensures the proclamation of his word, law and gospel, law to condemn us in our sin, gospel to heal us with the promise of forgiveness. He provides for us gifts from this very altar, the fruit of his cross, the life-giving tree for all who believe, the body and blood of Jesus himself to forgive our sins, to enliven us in faith toward him and fervent love toward one another. Here in his church is where the Lord is found today, wherever the word of God is taught in his truth and purity, wherever his sacraments are given out according to his institution. Here is where the Lord provides for us today. It’s the first Sunday in Lent. Lent is the season of repentance. To repent is to return to the Lord, to turn around from walking in our sin and to face the other direction. So, in repentance we return to the Lord, but we do so thankful that he has not left us to search blindly for him. Location matters to our Lord, and so we seek him where he may be found, where he’s told us that he is. Here in his church, on this holy mountain of our Lord, we received the gifts he wants to give us. The proclamation of his forgiveness, the body and blood of his son. Here is the mountain of the Lord’s choosing. So here we are gathered in the name, and the remembrance of Jesus, where he continues to provide for us, because ultimately, that’s who he is. He is the God who provides. Provides for Abraham, for Isaac, for Israel through David and Solomon and the temple, provides for us today. Thanks be to God for that. 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 Christian author, Chad Bird, once pointed out that while the name Jonah comes from the Hebrew word for dove, the story itself presents the prophet more like a chicken. You know the story, the story of Jonah and the whale. The Lord came to Jonah the prophet and said to him “Arise. Go to Nineveh that great city. Call out against it, for their evil has come up to me.” What did Jonah do? Jonah arose, but he went the opposite direction. He went to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. Chicken. He went down to Joppa and found a ship. He paid for passage in the exact opposite direction from where the Lord had sent him. Chicken. Or was he? Was Jonah running away in fear, like a chicken? Well maybe, although by his own admission, later in the book, we learn that the thing Jonah was afraid of, might actually make him more of a vulture. We know the story. We know how the Lord caused a great storm to beat against the ship carrying Jonah, and how the sailors cast lots trying to figure out who was to blame, and the lot fell on Jonah. They cast him over the side into the sea, where Jonah was swallowed up by great fish. We know that Jonah remained in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, and we know that Jonah saw the error of his ways, and was brought to repentance. We know the fish vomited him back up on the shore, which is where today’s reading picks up. The Word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, this time saying the same thing it did the first time, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out to it the message that I tell you,” and this time Jonah goes. He enters that great city, and delivered to it the message from the Lord. Yet 40 days, and that city will be overthrown. Five simple words in Hebrew, an amazing thing happened. They listened. The people of Nineveh believed a God who was not their own. They called for a fast. They put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them, to the least of them, even all the way to the king himself.  The king removed his robe, covered himself with a sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and the king issued a decree that no one, not man nor beast, should taste food or water. He called upon the people of Nineveh to turn from their evil ways. “Who knows,” he said, maybe God will turn from this disaster, relent from his fierce anger, so that we will not perish.” When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God did relent of the disaster that he said he would do to them. He did not do it. See Jonah, what are you afraid of? Chicken. The Lord not only protected you on your journey he gave you success in your message. Noah preached for 150 years, and no one listened. You were in Ninevah for all of the day, preaching a sermon of five simple words, and an entire city was brought to its knees. Why are you afraid Jonah? Why are you a chicken? What are you afraid of? That’s the problem, actually, is that is what Jonah was afraid of. This is the thing Jonah feared. Jonah wasn’t afraid of failing as a prophet, Jonah feared success. It displeased Jonah greatly. He was angry with the Lord, so he cried out against the Lord. “See this is what I said when I was back in my own country. This is why I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God, but you are merciful, that you are slow to anger, that you are abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore, O Lord, since you have spared Ninevah, take my life from me. I would rather be dead than see my enemies forgiven.” Jonah’s name means dove, and when we see him run away from the Lord’s call, we might be tempted to think of him as a chicken, but by the words of his own mouth, we see him for something else, maybe more of a vulture. Had the Lord asked him to circle the skies above Ninevah so that when the city fell under judgment, he might be able to pick the meat off the bones of his enemies, well then John would have happily obliged, but the thought of being brought to repentance, actually forgiven. The thought that they might get the mercy of God, that they might be spared from the wrath to come, well that was just too much for Jonah. That sent him running in the opposite direction. No Jonah was no chicken. The only thing he was afraid of was that his enemies might receive the mercy that he himself enjoyed. I wonder how we might have fared in the same circumstance. That’s the question the book of Jonah leaves us with. The book ends with God giving and taking away a vine to Jonah, something that provided shade for him, and when Jonah voices his displeasure with God over the fate of the vine the Lord responds. “Do you pity a plant that you didn’t plant or tend to? Should I not also pity the city of Ninevah, filled with life that I created, people who don’t even know up from down, right from left, should I also not have mercy on them?” The end. The book doesn’t give us Jonah’s answer. The book leaves us with no easy resolution, but the question really isn’t really just for Jonah.  It’s our Lord’s a question to us as well. God looks to us and says “Should I not be merciful, even to those that you consider the worst, even to those that you consider your enemies.” How do we answer that question? It’s a fairly easy question to answer here in this room, or in a Bible class, or anywhere else that we can tell ourselves, and feel fairly confident that it’s just a hypothetical question, but I wonder how we would fare if our Lord to came to us and send us into the Ninevahs of our own time. What would we say? What would we do? Now on the one hand, it’s a really important question to consider based on Jonah’s story. It’s one of the questions the book leaves us with. It warns us against writing people off. It warns us against assuming that there are some people who are so wicked that they’re beyond any hope of repentance or forgiveness, some people who don’t even deserve to hear the word of the Lord. The book of Jonah comes in and silences that kind of thinking, and it comes in and it comforts us with the assurance that our Lord can soften even the hardest of hearts. Whether we’re talking about the cruelest dictator we can think of somewhere else in the world or whether we’re thinking of the family or friend closer to home, who steadfastly refuses to believe the promises of Jesus. Our Lord can soften even the hardest of hearts. And so, on the one hand, there’s definite value in reflecting on how we think about the Ninevahs of our time, but truth be told, I don’t think that’s even the main point we’re supposed to take away from the story of Jonah. Rather, I think that what the Lord’s question at the conclusion of the book puts before our eyes, isn’t primarily a challenge about our behaviors or our attitudes, but the depths of our Lord’s own mercy. The book of Jonah shows us what our Lord thinks about this creation. It shows us what our God thinks about the Gentiles, the unbelievers of the Old Testament, show us what our God thinks about the Gentiles the unbelievers of our day, show us what our Lord thinks about us. We have a God who is gracious and merciful, he is slow to anger, he is abounding in steadfast love toward us. He showed his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Our Lord sees us through the death and the resurrection of his Son. You’re reminded of that every time you walk into this room, and see this Trinity sculpture behind the altar. You see the eye of God in the center of it looking out at you, his people only through his Son. The Father looks out of this creation, through the death and the resurrection of his Son. When God looks at you, he doesn’t see the stain of your sin, he sees the purity of his Son. When God looks at your life, he doesn’t see the successes or the failures you have in the face of temptation, he sees the righteousness of his Son. When God looks at you, he doesn’t see you as Ninevah or as Assyria, he sees the new Jerusalem, adorned as a bride for her husband. So, take comfort, for the Lord whose mercy extended even to the people of Nineveh, that Lord has had mercy on you. As the proclamation of his word changed even the most hardened Assyrian, hearts so it has changed yours. As the Lord relented of the disaster set to befall Ninevah, so also you have been spared from his wrath, for you are united to the death and the resurrection of his Son. You were washed at his fount, you are fed his altar, you are forgiven in his church and you are his people. So yes, the world around us still remains wicked as was the city of Ninevah, and yes we still struggle with the wickedness of our own hearts, as did the prophet Jonah. But the Lord, the Lord remains merciful, he was merciful to Jonah, even after the prophet ran away. He was merciful to Ninevah, even though they were the Gentiles, and the pagans, and the political enemies of God’s people. The Lord remains merciful, because that’s who he is. Merciful to Ninevah. Merciful to Jonah and merciful to us. So, give thanks unto the Lord for he is good, his steadfast love endures forever. In Jesus name, Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. What are your expectations for this coming year? Did you make New Year’s resolutions? Are you planning to eat healthier, maybe exercise more, maybe go to bed a little earlier? There’s a couple of projects around your house that you’ve been meaning to get to and haven’t quite crossed off the list yet, but this is the year that you’re going to do it. What are your expectations for the next 12 months? Expectations can be a funny thing. On the one hand, you need them, they’re absolutely necessary part of a healthy life. If you don’t learn from your past experience you, don’t grow as a person. If your experience has taught you that getting five hours of sleep just isn’t enough, you could expect to have a bad day at work if you don’t get to bed early enough. If expectation or experience has taught you that it takes 20 minutes for you to get to work, and you leave 10 minutes before your shift starts, you know you’re not going to make it on time. If experience has taught you that a certain person is not really trustworthy well then your expectations ought to shape your behavior toward that person. Expectations are part of our everyday life. Sometimes they’re flexible, especially if we don’t have enough experience with something to form a conclusion about it yet, other times our expectations are immovable, especially if we’re convinced, if we feel like we’ve been through a situation so many times, that we know exactly what is going to happen next. So, on the one hand, expectations are good and necessary, but there are other times when our expectations blind us to different possible outcomes. There’s time where our expectations are flat out wrong, and in fact could prevent us from something good. Just think of the child who’s never tasted a specific food and their expectation is that they won’t like, but there’s a chance that child will end up loving that food. They’ll never know, but they let expectation determine their diet. Expectations. Sometimes they’re an asset, sometimes they’re a crutch, and today I wonder what exactly those wise men were expecting when they set out to follow that star. We sometimes think of them as the three kings of Orient are, but scripture never calls them kings. Matthew calls them magi, the same root word that we get the English word magic or magician. They’re likely astronomers of some kind, scholastics of some kind, not kings. I mean if they were kings Herod would certainly have greeted them with a more kingly reception, probably would have even gone to Bethlehem with them because Harod was nothing, if not politically savvy. He would never have insulted visiting royalty by sending them off on an errand for himself. Neither does the Bible actually say there were three of them, only that they brought three gifts. It could have been two, could have been ten, there could have been dozens, we don’t know, but what we do know is that, according to Matthew, magi from the east set out to follow the star. I wonder what they expected to find at the end of their trail. It seems likely they expected to find something noteworthy, otherwise they wouldn’t have made such a journey. It seems likely they expected to find something more impressive than the tiny village of Bethlehem, after all, when they left to follow the star, they went first to Jerusalem, they went to the city of the palace, to the city of the king, they went to Jerusalem the city of the temple, and the high priest, the capital city, the place where all foreign dignitary would have gone, the place that was the economic center of the whole region, the place that had been the center of the Jewish universe for 1000 years. Seems reasonable to expect the Messiah to be in such a place. Jerusalem is the city of God, the place of Mount Zion, and yet, the Messiah was not there. In fact the scripture seemed to indicate that no one in Jerusalem was even aware of the star, of the possibility that the Messiah had been born. The city of God was completely oblivious to what God was actually doing. And when the wise men asked about the one born king of the Jews they were sent to Bethlehem. That would be like someone from a distant land coming to the United States and going to New York or Los Angeles or Washington DC to find the promised child, and instead being told, no you need to go to Espanola, or you need to go to Socorro. That’s where you’ll find him. It defies expectation. Why would one so important as the Christ not be found in a place as significant as Jerusalem? Why would the Messiah be in Bethlehem? But unlike the stubborn child who refuses to try a new food, the magi were not slaves to their expectations. They heard the word of God and they believed it. The prophet Micah spoke of Bethlehem in the land of Judah, so they went to Bethlehem, even though it seems to all appearances, to be least among the rulers of Judah. But you see that’s what faith does. Faith hears the word of God, and it trusts the word of God, and it follows the word of God, even if it leads it into places it never expected to be. That’s what the faith of the magi did. That’s what our faith does too. It clings to God’s word and is thereby lead to the place where Christ is for you.  This world has many expectations about how God should act, what God should be like, where God should be found. So often we unwittingly follow these expectations, and allow these expectations to shape our own. The world expects God to be fair and just and so its cries follow, whenever it sees something unfair happening. This world’s understanding of justice is not the same as our Lords, except in the world’s idea of justice we’re tempted to cry foul, to claim to be victims every time something bad happens to us, every time something hard enters our lives, never allowing for the possibility that there is no such thing as an innocent person before God for there is no one who is righteous, not even one. As we said a few moments ago, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We have sinned in our thought, word, and deed, by what we have done by what we have left undone, and that we actually deserve God’s punishment both right here and now, as well as into eternity. This world expects God to be loving, according to their definition of love, which basically amounts to nothing more than expecting God to affirm our every choice, to allow us to follow our hearts desires, even as they lead us away from him. So we find it difficult to speak out against sin, opting instead for silence and calling it tolerance, pretending that loving action is to simply coexist, as we silently watch loved ones follow paths that will lead them off a cliff, too afraid to say something for fear that we might hurt someone’s feelings, or worse they might point out our sin. How quickly and how easily the world’s expectations of God become our expectations of God. But the faith of the wise men trusted God word above the expectation of men, and then they found themselves in the presence of the Christ. Our Lord’s word speaks to our faith today, breaking down our worldly expectations, and giving us Jesus instead. So as we celebrate epiphany today, and in the weeks to come, take a moment to remember what we’re celebrating. That word epiphany has to do with perception, has to do with insight, the moment when the proverbial light bulb goes on above your head, and you finally get it. The season of epiphany in the Christian Church deals with God helping us understand who he truly is, showing us who Christ really is, not simply the Jesus of our expectations, because I just told the kids if Christmas is the season where God gave the greatest gift ever to the world, epiphany is the season where he unwraps it for us, so we can see what it is, and our expectations fall away like the bows and ribbons and wrapping paper under your Christmas tree, and you see the real Jesus. We see the child visited by men from the east, and worshipped as king of the Jews. We see the Lamb of God step into the waters of the Jordan river to fulfill all righteousness, he baptized into our sin, that we might be baptized into his righteousness, he into our death, that we might join him in life. We see the king of creation turn water into wine, the first of his signs that point people to the truth about his identity, that he is the son of God. We see him transfigured at the top of the mountain, shining with the glory that dims the sun, before finally seeing the fullest revelation of the Father’s love as he comes down from that mountain, climbs up on a cross to die the death that we deserve, in order that we might live the life that we don’t. That’s Jesus as God reveals him to us. That’s the Jesus revealed to us throughout epiphany, and that’s the real Jesus. The Jesus who comes to us today in ways that defy our expectations, the Jesus that comes to us today through his word, and not just sitting down and reading the Bible, but coming through all of his word, other devotional materials that show you God’s law and gospel, sitting here in this room, hearing the proclamation of God’s word for you, singing it to each other. When your children tell you stories about Jesus that they heard in Sunday school, this is all God coming to you through his word, proclaiming to you who Jesus is, to give you faith, and to strengthen your faith. Coming to you in his body and blood of the sacrament, of this altar, to strengthen you in faith toward him and love toward others. Small piece of bread, the sip of wine might not make the world’s expectations of greatness, but this is who our Lord has promised to be for us, come to us here as we worship together, gather together as the body of Christ in this place, kneeling together to confess our sin. Together, we hear the voice of other sinners, confessing their sin reminded that we’re not alone. We received the gift of forgiveness, reminder that the sinners around us are forgiven too, just as we are forgiven, and we set out to live in that forgiveness. Gathered here in the name of Jesus, he is among us as his people. When the world looks in from the outside, it just sees a gathering of like-minded individuals, but the reality exceeds the expectation. This is the dwelling place of our Lord. He is here through the words we sing as we praise him, as we encourage each other, as we teach each other. This is where and this is how our Lord comes to us. So Satan would have you doubt, he would have us worship our expectations instead of worshipping our Lord. He would have us stubbornly dig in our heels on the steps of the palaces of the world and demand that the king of the universe come to us there, in ways the world would respect and admire, but that’s not the God we have. Satan would have us act like a mule, and refused to be brought to Bethlehem, instead defiantly remaining in the temple courts of Jerusalem, demanding that our Lord show himself in the biggest and most recognizable religious buildings and institutions of our time, things the world would acknowledge, things the world would be proud of. But that’s not the Lord we have. We have the one found in the manger of Bethlehem, and so we follow the example of the magi. Don’t let the deceiver fool you into believing God only comes to you through grand displays of health and wealth and prosperity. Then rejoice in the one who is here for you now in his word, and his supper, in his church, the real Jesus. That’s the one who defies the world’s expectations, in order that he might give us more than the world can, more than we’ve ever dreamed. This is the real Jesus who saves us. This is Jesus for you. In God’s 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. The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Old Testament and even though there’s five books, there’s really only one story, the story of how and why God dwelled among His people in the Tabernacle, in the Promised Land. In fact, if you know the Hebrew names for each of the books you know exactly what part of the story you’re in. Genesis basically means origin, and it tells us not only the origin of creation and of sin, but also the origin of God’s promised first Savior, and the origin of Israel, God’s people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Exodus basically means exit, and it tells the part of the story where God’s people are led by the Angel of the Lord out of slavery in Egypt, brought to Mount Sinai, where God gives them the Law and over sees the construction of the Tabernacle. Leviticus has to do with the Levitical codes and laws that would govern Israel’s worship life. Numbers is actually a pretty poor English translation, based on the first word of the book. The Hebrew title has to do with the wilderness wandering. It’s called In the Wilderness It’s that part of the story where Israel fails to enter their inheritance and instead is sentenced to 40 years of wandering for their lack of faith. And then it ends with Deuteronomy, which basically means Second Law. It’s not a giving of a second law, it’s the second giving of the same law, the part of the story where Moses gives God’s law to the Israelites the second time. This time to a new generation of people. People who had been raised wandering in the wilderness. And on the doorstep of the Promised Land, more or less on the eve of his own death, Moses delivers God’s word to the people one last time. And part of Moses’s words in Deuteronomy include a promise, a very specific promise, a promise that the day would come in Israel when they would be given rest from all of their enemies, rest in the land that they were about to inherit. And when that day arrived, the people were to build a place in the Lord’s land where the name of the Lord would dwell. They were to build a temple for Yahweh. Fast forward 500 years to the life of David, to the story that we heard just a few moments ago. King David sat comfortably in his house. The Lord had given him a rest from all His enemies. He looked around at his circumstances and said to the prophet Nathan who am I that I should live in a House of cedar while God lives in a tent. I will make a house for the Lord. You see David thought he was living in the fulfillment of Moses prophecy. He thought it was time to build the Lord a temple. He wasn’t entirely wrong. There was general peace in Israel. The temple would be built one generation later by David’s yet to be born son Solomon. So, he wasn’t entirely wrong. It wasn’t really right either, so the word of the Lord came to Nathan, the prophet, and said, “I have lived in a tent since the days I brought Israel out of Egypt, and I didn’t tell any of the judges or priests or prophets to build me a palace did I, so go tell David, I don’t need you to build me a house, I don’t want you to build me a house. No David, I will build you into a great house, into a place where my people can dwell in safety. From you, will come the one who is the place where my people will live in peace. When your days are ended David, I will raise up your offspring who will come after you. I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to Him as a father and he will be my son. I will discipline him with the rod of men when he commits iniquity, but my steadfast love will never depart from him.” On the one hand that prophecy was partially fulfilled in the life of Solomon, and the line of kings that came from David, and ruled in Jerusalem for generations. Solomon did build a house for the Lord and the Lord did establish the line of David for nearly 20 kings in Jerusalem, but none of that was eternal. The line of David was cut off by the Babylonian captivity. Solomon’s temple was destroyed, and the people of God did not ultimately have rest from their enemies. So fast forward 500 more years to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man from the line of David, a man whose name was Joseph. The Angel Gabriel came to her and said, “Do not be afraid Mary. You have found favor with God. Look you will conceive in your womb and you will bear a son and you will call His name Jesus, and He will be called the son of the most high and the Lord will give to him the throne of His father David and He will reign over the House of Jacob forever and of His Kingdom there will be no end. An eternal throne, the son of David. This was the fulfillment of the prophecy that God first made for the people of the 1st century as well as for us today. The story of the Pentateuch is actually our story. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, they are all our spiritual ancestors in the faith. We are the spiritual descendants of the Kingdom of David, and the son of David is our King, and He gives us rest from our enemies. He is the House of the Lord where we dwell in safety. Just think about the way the New Testament talks about baptism. It emphasizes the change of location. The phrase that we translate baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, almost always includes the Greek preposition eis, which means into just like you walk into a room and because you have walked into the room now you are in the room so also the New Testament says we are baptized into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and are now therefore in Christ. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ Jesus have now put on Christ, covered yourselves with Christ, like crawling into a tent and being covered from the rain by the canvas. All who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death and there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and Jesus himself says whoever abides in me bears much fruit. In the New Testament one of the gifts of baptism is the gift of location, of being brought into the name of God so that now we live our lives free in Christ. I could promise you when the hurricane is raging outside, inside is where you want to be, in a strong and stable structure, one with hurricane windows, one with hurricane straps fastening your house down to the slab. Inside is where you want to be. But inside is exactly where you are. Jesus is your protection. Jesus is your fortress. Jesus is David’s promised house, the place where the people of God will rest securely from their enemies. And He’s also the one who was disciplined with the rod of men for His iniquity. That sounds strange. I mean Jesus didn’t commit any sin, but yet again, one of the gifts of baptism is that Jesus in His baptism stepped into the water made dirty by our sin and soak it all up into himself. Jesus did not commit sin, but like the scapegoat on the day of atonement the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all. Your sin has been judged in the stripes of Jesus. My sin has been judged in the stripes of Jesus, but the steadfast love of the Lord did not depart from Him, and therefore will not depart from you. You are in Christ, so you are at peace. Today we lit the 4th candle on our advent wreath candle, the candle we call the peace candle. And like last week’s joy candle, peace is listed as fruit of the spirit and like joy, peace is not something God demands from you, something God gives to you. But it’s not simple serenity, it’s not just the absence of nuisance, it’s not just a quiet evening by the fire while the snow slowly falls outside and muffles the din of the outside world. No, the peace that God gives you is rest from your truest enemies.  It’s a rest from sin. Rest from death. Rest from the devil. None of these can harm you for you dwell securely in Jesus. Sin can still tempt you, and we’ll certainly still fail, but our sins do not condemn us any longer. Our sin has been forgiven on the cross. It’s already been judged in baptism; we are in Christ. We have peace and death will still come knocking at our door, and it will still bring grief, but we do not grieve as if we have no hope. Our sin has been judged in baptism, by being united with Jesus, but so also, we have the hope of resurrection, of knowing that our Lord’s taken away the sting of death, and given us peace. And the devil will continue to rage, and froth, and foam, and hiss all He wants. We remain safe in Jesus. Yes, our lives will still have struggles and difficulties, and yes we will still sin, and yes death will still show up uninvited. The peace of the Lord is not an absence from all strife in this fallen world. It is the peace of knowing the big battles have already been won. When David’s Israel had rest from her enemies, they still had courts and judges to settle property disputes. Every nation that’s at peace still has police and people who still have long days at work, but the true peace that our Lord gives us is the peace of knowing that the great enemies, the great battles are not ours to fight. Those belong to Jesus and He has already won victory over them. We are safe in Him who is our house, the one who sits on the eternal throne, to lead and to protect His church. So, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation” and also hope, and faith, and joy, and peace for you. For you belong to him. 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.  What’s at the top of your Christmas list this year, the very top, the one thing you want more than anything else. Is it electronic, some kind of gadget, maybe. Maybe it’s clothing, a specific article of clothing that you want, or maybe it’s an experience, not a thing at all, a vacation, trip to Disney, or cruise, maybe a week on the beach and an all-inclusive resort. Maybe it’s not a thing at all. Maybe it’s a person maybe it’s people, maybe it’s having your whole family gather together under one roof to celebrate together. Maybe it’s that child or grandchild or niece or nephew who was deployed, hoping to get returned home safely. What’s the top of your Christmas list this year? But maybe we should think a little bit bigger than Christmas. Maybe it’s not just what’s at the top of your Christmas list, maybe it’s what’s the one thing that you’re lacking if you had it would make all the difference in the world to you. The one thing. Everyone could use a little extra income, pay down some debts, save a little more for retirement. But I’m guessing it’s more fundamental than that. I’m guessing it’s some sort of relationship, maybe you’re missing a parent that’s gone to be with Jesus, maybe you’re longing for a godly husband or wife, maybe you miss your adult kids, maybe you wish you had kids of your own, or maybe you have kids of your own and you just want a break. Maybe you need to know that you’re not alone in this life, maybe you just want to know that there’s someone there to help, someone to walk with you, someone to be with you to share life experiences, someone to give you hope for the future. Maybe hope is at the top of your list this year. That’s what Israel wanted Israel wanted, hope, especially in the days of captivity. That’s what they needed, even if they didn’t know they needed it, even if they couldn’t put it into words. They needed hope, they needed to know they weren’t alone, to put it another way they needed comfort. You see Israel had seen itself as God’s chosen people for generations. God had chosen Abraham, God had blessed his descendants, God had delivered them from Egypt and established them in the promised land. He had protected them from the Philistines and other enemies in the days of the judges, He’d established them as a kingdom in the days of Saul, and they flourished under David and Solomon. More than that, Israel had the temple of the Lord. They had the priests who regularly performed sacrifices on their behalf, and they traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, to celebrate Pentecost. They had no reason to doubt that they were God’s people, and that He was their God. In fact, they were so confident of this, that they began to take it for granted. The kingdom split in civil war. They built a new temple in the north to mimic what was happening at the temple in Jerusalem. They set up a new capital city, a second palace for the second king, but they still saw themselves Abraham’s descendants. They still saw themselves as the people of God. They welcomed in the idolatry of the neighboring nations, setting up altars to Baal, setting up the Asherah poles, worshipping Dagon, or Molech, or whatever other idols were popular at the time, but they still saw themselves as Abraham’s descendants. They still saw themselves as the people of God. They adopted the economic practices of the neighboring nations; they stopped treating each other as the chosen people of God. Instead, the rich oppressed the poor, their judges took bribes, their kings and their queens were corrupt, their priests were corrupt, the official prophets that worked in the palace were corrupt. Through it all they still saw themselves Abraham’s descendants. They still saw themselves as the people of God, until the captivity, until the Assyrians, until the Babylonians, until their temple was destroyed, until their homes were destroyed, until they were taken off in chains, forced to live in a home that was not the Promised Land, forced to live in a land that did not belong to their God. They were lost. They lost their confidence that they were God’s people. After all, how could they be God’s people if they didn’t have their temple anymore? How could they be God’s people if they didn’t live in the land God promised? How could they be God’s people if God did not deliver them from their enemies as he had once delivered His people from Egypt? They lost their identity. They lost their hope. The prophet Jeremiah wrote about the plight of Israel in the book of Lamentations. This is what he says, “How lonely sits the city that was once full of people! She has become like a widow, she who was great among the nations. She who was a Princess among the provinces has now become a slave. She weeps bitterly in the night with tears on her cheek. Among all her lovers, she has none to comfort her and her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.” Did you hear it? Jeremiah says Jerusalem has no one to comfort her. In fact, five times in the opening chapter to Lamentations, Jeremiah laments the fact that Jerusalem has no one to comfort her. She has been conquered because of her sin. Her inhabitants have been carried away into slavery. The people of God are people in need of comfort, but they have no one to comfort them. So they begin to ask themselves “Has God abandoned us? Have we gone too far in our sin. Are we still the people of God?” Questions which the Lord heard. Questions which he had already answered to the prophet Isaiah a century earlier. “Comfort, comfort my people,” says the Lord, and the word comfort there is not spoken directly to the people to soothe their worries. No, it’s an imperative, this is a direction. “Go comfort my people,” says the Lord. It’s a direction given to another. One who was to speak God’s word, and that word is comfort. And don’t miss the fact that God tells the speaker to comfort my people, even though they’re still in Babylon, even though they’re taken away into captivity, even though they don’t have their temple, even though they don’t have their homes, they are still the people of God, at least from His point of view. And so He sends a messenger to speak a word of comfort, a comfort not based on the righteousness of Israel, no comfort based on the faithfulness of God. In the midst of captivity, God speaks comfort. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. She has received double. Double what? Double judgment. No double comfort. “Comfort, comfort my people.” What a beautiful message of our Lord. What a beautiful picture of our Lord’s faithfulness. In the midst of Israel’s sin, in the midst of her idolatry, her injustice, her indifference to the Word of the Lord, in the midst of all of it, God remains faithful. He is their God. They are His people, and when they think they have no hope, when they think they have no comfort God sent His prophet to speak comfort. To tell her that her warfare is ended, even though they’re still in Babylon, even though they can’t see it yet. So, we have a picture here of how our Lord deals with us His church today. For like Israel of old, our lives and our behavior do not well reflect our calling as the people of God. We are quick to absorb the idolatry of our neighbors, we’re not as charitable as we could be with those who are in need, we’re prone to taking bribes, maybe not of money maybe it’s just the bribery of a boost in reputation, of being liked and accepted by the world around us. Like Israel of old, we live in captivity of sorts. We soldier through our days in this fallen creation, knowing that this is not the way things are meant to be, captive to broken relationships, captive to broken lives, captive to disease, captive to death, captive to people who hurt each other. And like Israel of old, maybe we wonder at times if God has forgotten us. Has He abandoned us here, just left us to our own devices. To use the words of Lamentations once more are we just like Zion, stretching out our hand for comfort, but finding no one there, finding no one to comfort. No, we’re not. In a word, no we are not, we do have someone to comfort us. We have the Word of our Lord’s comfort and the Word of the Lord stands forever. The glory of the Lord has been revealed. It’s been revealed in His Son. Jesus has come. Jesus has reconciled us to the Father.  Jesus has made all things new.  Jesus now tends His flock like a shepherd. He gathers His lambs into His arms, He carries them in His bosom, and He gently leads those who are with young. Jesus speaks words of comfort to you, His church to you, His people. He is here to forgive your sin, to the voice of one He has given for your comfort. He is here to feed you heavenly food, to comfort you, to strengthen you, to nourish you for life’s journey. He surrounds you here with your brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for you, to encourage you, to cry with you, to laugh with you, to remind you that you are never alone. He is here to comfort you, to remind you of the hope that is yours through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Here with comfort. So, I don’t know what’s the top of your Christmas list, and truth be told, I don’t really even know what’s at the top of mine. One thing I do know. The Lord is here for your comfort. You are still His people. He has not forgotten you. He has not abandoned you, and He never will. You have hope, for you have Jesus. So may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. 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. Well, you may have noticed that the celebration of Thanksgiving has grown over the last few years, last generation maybe. What used to be one day set aside for giving thanks has turned into a full weekend, and then some. It started with Black Friday, a day set aside to get a jump on your Christmas shopping, take advantage of all those door buster deals. For a while Black Friday was incredibly popular, a huge deal, although the popularity has faded somewhat over time. I don’t see as many news stories about people lining up outside of Walmart at 2:00 in the morning to get that TV. But it’s not just Black Friday is it? There is small business Saturday a day set aside to make sure you’re supporting your local mom and pop shop instead of just always going to the big box stores. Then there’s Giving Tuesday, the day to support charity, to support their work in the community, and of course cyber-Monday, cyber-Monday, the day of online promotions and deals beyond compare to match the growing popularity of online shopping in general. I don’t know if you participated in cyber-Monday this year. I know I’ve bought my fair share of stuff on Amazon, but it’s usually just on prime day, but let’s be real. I bought a lot of stuff off Amazon when it wasn’t prime day too. I don’t remember the last time I bought a book from an actual brick and mortar bookstore, ordered T-shirts, sweatshirts, socks, shoes, furniture. Just about everything I buy, anymore, I buy online somewhere, aside from groceries, and maybe the stuff that I get at Home Depot. I pretty much only shop online. I don’t know if you shop online, but if you do, you know there’s that window of time between when you click “complete order” and when you actually have the thing in your hand. When you click “complete the order” they charge your card, they draw the money from your account, the website or the vendor isn’t going to ship you something that you haven’t actually paid for, and so you have to pay first before you actually get the product. So, there’s this window of time where you own the thing which you ordered, it belongs to you, but you don’t actually have it yet, you’re waiting for it, you’re waiting for the day of its arrival, the day when you can hold it, or wear it, or watch it, or read it, whatever the thing may be. The time of waiting, and that’s the waiting that we observe during this season of Advent, that’s the waiting that marks our life as the children of God. It’s part of what we do during Advent, to set aside time to remind ourselves that our lives are lived waiting. So, Paul’s talking about the opening verses of his Epistle to the Corinthians, verses we heard just a few moments ago. He says, “I give thanks to my God, through Jesus Christ, for you, for the grace that was given to you in Christ Jesus.” Now when Paul uses the word grace in this way is usually using it as shorthand for the whole gospel, the full message of Jesus. He’s giving thanks for the work of Jesus, and for the gifts of the Spirit that had been given to the church in Corinth. The gift of forgiveness, the gift of a clean conscience before God, the gift of knowing that their worth in God’s eyes is not determined by their success or failure as Christians, but by the robe of righteousness that was given to them in the water baptism. He’s giving thanks for the gift of hope, the assurance of things not yet seen, the confidence that what is unseen now will be revealed one day when the Lord comes again in glory. Now in one of his sermons on this text, Luther commented that we, as the children of God, lack nothing except, this one thing, that blessed day when Jesus comes again, when He will reveal himself to us, with all the heavenly gifts that we now possess only by faith, things that are ours right now, even though we don’t see them fully, even though we don’t have them fully, just like the Christmas gifts you ordered off Amazon, but are still making their way to your front door. In the Large Catechism, Luther puts it like this. He says we’ve already received creation, we can look up there and see it, and redemption too is finished, Jesus has been nailed to the cross, has died and risen again for us. We have redemption but the Holy Spirit carries on His work throughout creation, without ceasing, until the last day, till the day Christ comes again. And Advent puts this reality squarely before our eyes. This is the season of preparation, this is the time of waiting, a season of reflecting on the coming of our Lord, the way He came to us as an infant, came into his own creation, even though His own received Him not. The way He continues to come to us today, the proclamation of His Word, the gift of his sacraments, and the way He will come again one day to take us into the new creation, to rescue us from the threatening perils of our sins, and to save us by his mighty deliverance. In the words of Luther, this is the one gift we have yet to have. This is the one that we’re waiting for. It’s already ours through faith. One day it’ll be ours by sight. So, until then we wait. While we wait, Luther says, we live here by the gifts and grace that we do have. We live in the gift and the grace of our baptism. We live knowing that God has set us free from the Egypt of our sin, through that precious water. We live knowing that He has brought us into the promised land of His Church, that He has cleansed the leprosy of our sin, that He has recreated us through the flood of those waters, and that through daily contrition and repentance, the old Adam in us is daily drowned and put to death, that a new man will one day emerge to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. That grace is already ours by faith, we live in it each day. One day it will be ours by sight. And we live in the gift and the grace of our Lord’s Holy Word. His Word of law that restrains our sinful urges, that reveals our sins to us so we might see our great need, that guides us in the way of Godly living, His word of gospel that proclaims the life death and resurrection of Jesus in our place for the forgiveness of our sins for the salvation of our souls. Luther says what more could we possibly desire than the knowledge that regards children through baptism, and the Word of God that we have in our hands, for our comfort and our strength and weakness in sin. And while I try not to make a habit of contradicting Luther, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also add the gift of the sacrament the Lord’s body and blood, given to us for the forgiveness of our sins, and the strengthening of our faith, the gift and the grace of the Lord’s Supper, the pardon and peace that He gives us in this sacrament, the gift of Jesus himself, come to us from this very altar. The body of Jesus among us, so that as He arrives here to deliver our salvation, we greet Him with the same exact words sung by the crowd in Jerusalem when He arrived there to win our salvation. “Hosanna. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” So, what was true of the Church of God in Corinth, is also true of the Church of God here at Grace in Albuquerque. Like the Corinthians, we are not lacking in any spiritual gifts, we have them by faith, and as we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain us to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, we wait, with hope, we wait with confidence. Like the things you bought online, these spiritual gifts are ours today, even if we don’t possess them as fully as we will one day. What is ours now by faith, will one day be hours by sight. And we have confidence in this because, like Paul says, it does not depend on us, it does not depend on our abilities. It rests in the hands of God, and God is faithful, and none who trust in Him would be put to shame. So, this season of Advent, we are reminded that our lives are lived remembering the ways our Lord has revealed himself to us in the past, rejoicing in the ways He reveals himself to us today, and waiting for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ on the last day. And that last day will come, so rejoice, O daughter of Zion, and shout out loud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold your King comes to you righteous and having salvation. He comes to give you His righteousness. He comes to deliver to you your salvation. These things are yours already today, but how much better will it be on the day of delivery, when we see our Lord face to face, when He wipes away every tear from every eye, when He welcomes us into the Father’s house with its many rooms, when we celebrate the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom which has no end. So, stir up your power, O Lord and come, that by your protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sin, we may be saved by your mighty deliverance. 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. Well, we’ve come to an end, at least an end of sorts. I’m not just talking about college football as we know it, with the PAC 12 going away, and playoff expanded to 12 teams. Next year the sport will definitely look different in the future. That’s not the end I’m talking about, and I’m not just talking about the end of that awkward time of the year where you’re not quite sure if you’re allowed to be in the Christmas spirit yet, and August is definitely too early even though that’s when you start to see the Christmas lights in the stores, and Thanksgiving is definitely OK, it’s just that first part of November you’re not quite sure if you can turn the Christmas music on in the car yet, and not just the end of Divine Service setting 4, as we switch to Divine Service setting 1 next week. Thank you for bearing with me on one month of singing the same canticles over and over again. No this is the end of the church year. Today is the last Sunday of the church year, next week starts the new liturgical year, the first Sunday in Advent. So, we’ve come to the end of the church year but it also means we’ve come to the end of the Gospel of Matthew. Today’s the final part of Jesus’ long discourse, right before His crucifixion. That’s the end of our walk through Matthew’s gospel. It was an extended section that Jesus ends right before His crucifixion, the communication, like a conversation with His disciples where He told them to watch the signs, just like you see the leaves change on the tree and know the weather’s changing, so also know the signs of your time. Be ready for an unexpected return of your Savior, but also be ready to wait and while you’re waiting, use the gifts that the Master has entrusted to you. Live in faith towards God, live in love towards one another, and He ends it today by telling us what will happen when the Son does return. When the Son of Man comes in glory and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations. He will separate the people from each other as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He’ll place the sheep on His right and He will say to them “Come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you, and He will place the goats on His left and He will say to them, “Depart from me cursed ones, go into the fire prepared for the devil and his demons.” These ones will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. And both the sheep and the goats will be surprised. Both the sheep and the goats will be surprised at the way that Jesus says they did or didn’t feed Him, or clothe Him, or care for Him. So in sort of a continuation of last week’s message, and in looking ahead towards the actual end of Matthew’s gospel, we have here, I believe, another description of what it looks like for us to be the disciples of Jesus, what it looks like for you and me to live life as His disciples until the day of His return. We’ve spent six months methodically working our way through Matthew. We missed the beginning portions, Jesus’ birth, the Sermon on the Mount, His first miracle, His baptism in the Jordan, and we started our journey together at the point where Jesus started to face opposition from the Pharisees and the religious leaders, and so we heard the parables that He told about faithfully proclaiming God’s word without worrying about earthly standards of success or failure, we heard His teaching about what true greatness looks like, in service. We heard the parables about the depth of God’s forgiveness for you, and the life of forgiveness that He calls us to live, and now we’ve spent the last several weeks hearing our Lord’s teaching about His second coming. We know that chapter 25 isn’t the end of Matthew’s gospel. We know that what follows today’s reading are the remaining events of Holy Week, it’s Maundy Thursday, the institution of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus prayer in Gethsemane, betrayal at the hands of Judas, trial before the high priest, Peter’s denial in the courtyard, and we know that after that comes Good Friday, His trial before Pilate, the crowd choosing Barabbas, Jesus’ mocking and beating at the hands of the Roman soldiers, His crucifixion, ultimately His death. Then the resurrection, the resurrection of our Lord and Jesus’ directive that His disciples should go ahead and meet Him in Galilee. And that’s where Matthew’s gospel actually ends, in Galilee, on Jesus’  well-known words on the Mount of Ascension. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me, therefore go make disciples of all nations by baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit by teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you and I’ll be with you always even to the end of the age until I come and sit on my glorious throne and separate all the nations the sheep to my right, and goats to my left.” When we put these things together, I think we get a clear picture of what life looks like for the children of God today. And simply put, we live as His disciples, and at the risk of oversimplifying, it means that we live in faith toward Him, we live in love toward one another. We live in faith toward Him, making disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching. The language of the Great Commission is more than just evangelism, it’s not just winning souls for Jesus. It’s the language of discipleship, the language of life as a child of God, it’s a way of life. We live as the disciples of our Lord when we continue to guard our Lord’s teaching. Most English translations translate the Great Commission as teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you or to observe everything I have commanded you. The Greek word there is the word tereo, and it literally means to hold on to, to cling to something, to protect it, to guard, to it keep it. So to live as the disciple of Jesus, just to hang on to His gifts, to cling to His word, to rejoice in the gift of baptism, return to a daily through contrition and repentance, to rejoice in the gift of His Supper, to regularly gather at this place, at this altar to receive His body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins, and the strengthening of our faith and to rejoice in the proclamation of His Word, to be gathered around that Word regularly in worship and Bible study, in your devotions at home, and to be shaped by it, to be molded into the people that see the world the way He would have us see the world seeing ourselves for who He has declared us to be, and seeing Him for who He has revealed himself to be. So, to live as the disciple of Jesus is to live in faith toward Him, trusting His word, and rejoicing in the gifts that He so freely gives. And it’s also a life lived in love towards those around us in our God-given vocations. Parents caring for, providing for, mentoring their children. Children honoring and obeying their parents. Citizens praying for kings and rulers, and all in authority. Employees taking pride in their work, and a job well done. Employers providing a good wage, and safe working environment. The list goes on and on. We simply live in love, and live in good works, done according to God’s design for creation as revealed in the 10 commandments. Done for the people around us, done without expectation of reward from God, or from anyone else, so that when our Lord commends us for those works on the last day, our question will be “Lord, when did I do that?” Faith toward God, love toward others. It’s the simple shape of our life till the day of our Lord’s return. So maybe the main thing for us to take away from the text this morning is simply this. The second coming of Christ is not something we should ignore, but we don’t prepare for it by living in fear or hiding from the world. CS Lewis once said the two great dangers when it comes to demons are first, to give them too little respect, treat them as if they’re nothing to worry about, for a second, to give them too much respect, to act as if they might be more powerful than the Holy Spirit. And his point was simply that we ought to live with a healthy sense of how dangerous demons can be, without living in fear of them as if the fight between God and the devil might go either direction, we’re just not sure. The same thing can be said about the second coming of Christ, and how we live in light of it. We should not treat it as if it’s no big deal. We should not treat it as if it might never happen. Today’s gospel makes that clear. The Son of Man is coming to sit on His throne and all the angels with Him, and He will separate people from people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, but we don’t need to obsess over it. We don’t need to try to figure it out. We don’t need to try to decode which dictator, or which war, or which blood moon signifies what in which page of the scriptures. We don’t need to hide in fear burying, our talent in the ground, or hoping that our Lord won’t be too harsh when He returns. No, we simply live in the gift of forgiveness. We live in the vocations our Lord has given us, clothing, feeding, housing, giving water to all of those who cross our paths, confident that when Jesus comes again, because we have already been united to His death and resurrection in the water of baptism. He will look to us and say, He will look to you and say, “Come you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” May God grant that to us for Jesus’ sake, 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. What do you like to do while you wait? How do you pass the time? Last week I told you about our trip to Disney World last year, actually was exactly a year ago as my Facebook memories keep reminding me of where I was at this time last year. I think about all the different ways that we pass the time while we’re standing in line waiting for a ride or waiting for our food. Play charades on your phone, the game where you put the phone on your forehead and you try to get somebody to say the right word or to act out the right thing. Of course when we did that, we flipped the phone down and threw it on the ground and crack the screen. Not the best way to pass your time. Maybe just scroll through social media looking through Twitter, Instagram, or something like that. At restaurants our family likes to play I spy, especially when the kids were younger, and especially at the Mexican restaurants that have the multi colored things everywhere. I spy something blue and there’s a hundred different possibilities. Great way to pass the time. Maybe talk about the ride you’re about to get on to, or talk about the one you just got off of. Talk in anticipation. What do you like to do while you wait? How do you pass the time? That’s the question Jesus is answering for His disciples today, the question  is answering for us today. Remember that this is part of a longer conversation, Matthew chapters 24 and 25 are all one conversation that Jesus is having with His disciples and His message to them is actually very straightforward and simple when we take a step back and look at it its entirety. His message is simply be ready. Be ready for the line to be shorter than you expect it to be. As you recall last week, don’t get caught with a brain freeze because you’re eating your ice cream so fast trying to make it into the building, but also, be ready to wait, just simply be ready. And then anticipating the next question, Jesus immediately tells a parable to answer the question, “Well, what do I do while I wait, Jesus?”  He tells us a parable of a master, master of a great estate, who went on a long journey. Before He left, He entrusted His property to some of His servants, giving to each according to their ability, to one He gave 5 talents, another one got two talents, another one got one talent. Now don’t forget just how much money a talent is. We talked about that in Matthew chapter 18, the parable of the unforgiving servant. A talent is 20 years’ worth of salary for a day laborer, or blue-collar worker. We did the math earlier this summer and decided that a low estimate for a talent is about $575,000, that’s a low estimate. So when Jesus says the master entrusts to one, 5 talents, to one, 2 talents, and to one, 1 talent, He’s saying that to one He gave about 3 million dollars, 1 million dollars and a half million dollars, each one according to His own ability. The first one uses the five talents earns five more. The second one did the same thing, which I think indicates that we can see these characters as interchangeable. The amount of money is irrelevant. It’s not the point Jesus is trying to make. He doesn’t want us to get hung up on that detail. Each one simply used what the master had given to him, and the master rejoiced at what each one had done. It’s the third servant who breaks the pattern and in Jesus’ parables, when someone breaks the pattern that’s where the spotlight goes, that’s the one who deserves our attention in trying to understand Jesus’ point. Rather than using the talent the master had given him, he buried it. He hid it in the ground. When the master returned, that servant accused the master of being a wicked, cruel, greedy man reaping where he did not sow, harvesting that which was not his. I think it’s fair to pause here and ask ourselves if there’s any reason to believe these accusations. Authors and screenwriters sometimes use a device known as the unreliable narrator, it’s when the person who’s telling you the story isn’t telling you the whole story. They’re not completely credible, maybe because they’re a child, maybe it’s because they have some sort of mental disorder, maybe they’re just trying to hide something from you, the reader, you the viewer. Whatever the case may be there are unreliable narrators and it’s a powerful literary device because it creates suspense, makes for a great twist ending sometimes. While I don’t think Jesus is simply trying to build suspense or set us up for a surprise ending, I do wonder if we should really take this servants accusation at face value. Seems like the master has already demonstrated His trust in His servants by giving them 3 million and 1 million and half  a million dollars, and we’re told that  He gave to each one according to His ability, not asking anything unfairly from them, no unreasonable expectations. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the text indicating the master is a hard man. Even His answers are probably sarcastic, “If you knew that I was a hard man, why didn’t you at least put the money in the bank so that I could have my interest.” I think what we have going on here in this parable illustrates yet again one of my favorite Luther quotes that I’ve shared with you before, that I promise I’ll share with you again You get the God you asked for.  You think your master is a hard man, reaping where he does not sow, gathering what is not His. Well, that’s what He’ll be to you. The servants who used what the master had given them were greeted with joy.  He didn’t ask how much have you earned, there’s no indication that it was only because they had doubled their money that He was pleased with them. He simply rejoiced that they used what He had given them, and the third servant, who thought the master was going to be a harsh judge, well he was met with harsh judgment. The master became for him exactly what the man feared him to be. And so in this parable, I think Jesus offers a somewhat simple answer to the question “What should we do while we wait?” Look at the flow of Matthew 24 and 25. First Jesus says beware of the signs. Like a woman who’s going into labor knows the baby is coming, like you see the leaves on the trees change color and know the winter is coming, so also you pay attention. Look around you. The Son of Man is coming soon, the signs are all there. So be ready for him. Don’t be caught unaware like a servant who was not prepared for His master’s quick return, but also be ready to wait, lest like the foolish virgins, you don’t have enough oil to get you into the wedding feast. And while you’re waiting while you’re waiting, simply use the gifts the Master has entrusted to you. Don’t get caught empty handed when He comes again. Be about the Masters business while He’s away. I think that’s the simple answer to the question. What do I do while I wait for you Jesus? Simply live the life the Lord has given you to live in this time and in this place, in your family, and in your job, and in your country, and in your era of history. Simply live the life the Lord has given you to live. We use the time that’s been entrusted to us.  The language of judgment in today’s text and in last week’s text is strong. The day of the Lord is darkness, the day of the Lord is judgement, there’s fire and weeping and gnashing of teeth, but you don’t need to live in fear of that. That’s not for you, for you belong to Him. You belong to the Master who will rejoice to see you when He returns. So don’t live in fear of the times. We hear of wars and rumors of wars. If we look at the rising inflation, wonder if we’ll ever have enough to retire, look at the ongoing debate in our world over things like gender and sexuality, it can be easy to look at the world around us and live in fear or frustration. We don’t need to give into that temptation. I don’t know what I would have done if I lived in the days of the Reformation or was asked to fight in the wars that followed it. I don’t know what I would have done if I was in Israel during the days of the Babylonian captivity, or during their slavery in Egypt, but I do know that the Lord was faithful to His people then, and He will be faithful to His people today. Because that’s the God that He is.  He has promised He will return to take us to His Father’s house in which there are many rooms, many mansions prepared for you. He’ll keep that promise and until the day He does, like the servants in the parable who used their gifts from the Master, so also, we use ours. We use the time He’s given us and go about our lives, go to work, you go on vacation, we celebrate holidays with family and friends. We live waiting for the day of His return, using the time He’s given us, using the treasures He’s given us. The first two servants in the parable used the talents their master had left with them. Nowhere in the parable did we hear the Masters joy was based on how much they earned, simply that He was pleased that they used things He had given them. The fact that the numbers are the same is probably indicating that that’s not the point at all. Five to five, two to two, that doesn’t matter. It’s not important how much they earn, it’s simply they used the money their master had given them. So also, us. While we’re waiting for our Lord’s return, we use the treasures He’s entrusted to us. We use our money in a wise and godly manner, not hoarding it for a future that we haven’t been promised, not burying it in the ground living in the fear of the God who might come back for it someday, not foolishly wasting it in extravagant living. We simply use it to pay our bills, to feed our kids, to clothe our kids, to pay our heat bills, we use it to support the work of our Lord’s church like faithful people have been doing here for the last 40 years, making it possible for us to sit in a room like this, decorated like this, with art like this, with lights on, with microphones, making it possible to sit here and see the gift of baptism in action, to see another daughter of Christ brought into His family, to once again approach our Lord’s table to be fed by Him, the gifts of His body and His blood for the forgiveness of our sins and the strengthening of our faith. What do we do while we wait for our Lord’s return? We live. We live as His people. We live in the world; we live in the church. As for you, no one needs to tell you the day is coming like a thief in the night, Paul says. While people are saying there is peace and security, well then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. But you belong to Jesus. You are not in darkness for that day to surprise you like a thief. But since we belong to the day, let us put on the breastplate of faith and love for our helmet, the hope of salvation. Let us live, not in fear, not in fear of the world that could harm our bodies, but cannot touch our soul, not in fear of the Master, for He is not a hard man who reaps where he does not sow, no He is your Savior. We live in the gift of His forgiveness, we live in the vocations He has given us, and we live in the hope that on the day when returns He will speak to us with those words “Well done good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master.” May God grant it to us for Jesus’ sake, Amen.