Speaker: Warren Graff

Reformation Day (observed on Pentecost 21)                     October 30, 2022

 

Romans 3:19-28

¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. ²⁰ For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

²¹ But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶ It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

²⁷ Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. ²⁸ For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

 

John 8:31-36

³¹ So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, ³² and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” ³³ They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”

³⁴ Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵ The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. ³⁶ So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

If a pastor were to preach only one sermon, what would it be. If only one sermon, this would be it.

 

—By the Law, no person is justified in God’s sight.

 

—By the Law comes the knowledge of sin. Not good works, not good motivation, not the power to love, by the Law, but, the knowledge of sin. The Law always accuses.

 

—But now God has manifested to us a righteousness apart from the Law.

 

—This is a righteousness not earned by the sinner, but given to the sinner by God, and which the sinner receives not by works, but by faith in Christ.

 

—So, the sinner is justified by God, pure grace, and this through the redeeming blood of Christ Jesus.

 

—This means that God is just, and in Christ Jesus, he is the justifier. He justifies the sinner, declaring the sinner righteous, and the sinner holds this by faith in God’s promise.

 

—For, to be clear, the sinner is justified by faith, apart from works of the Law.

 

That’s the sermon. If a pastor were to give just one sermon, that’s it.

 

 

But there is only one sermon.

 

If we were teachers of the Law, there would be many sermons—how to love more—for Paul reminds us that love is the summation of the Law, how to comport yourself in public, how to make up for a major sin, how to make up for a minor sin, how to give offerings, how to live ethically, how to make Christian decisions, on and on. If our Lord gave us to be teachers of the Law, the sermons would be endless, the pressure of the Law, unremitting, the guilt, inconsolable.

 

But we have only one sermon:

By the Law, no person is justified in God’s sight. By the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

 

Not good works, not good motivation, not the power to love, but, the knowledge of sin. The Law always accuses.

 

But now God has manifested to us a righteousness apart from the Law. The righteousness God gives as gift, received by the sinner by faith in Christ Jesus. So that the sinner is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. [Romans 3:28]

 

Because, as Paul writes to the Church in Corinth,

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

[1 Corinthians 1:23]

 

We preach Christ crucified, says the Apostle. Not Christ the example, not Christ the motivator, not Christ the life-coach, not Christ the law-giver. But Christ crucified. Christ, the holy One shedding blood on the cross to atone for your sin. Christ, your Redeemer. Christ, the One justifying you before his Father in Heaven, so that by faith in Christ, you are justified.

 

 

That’s the one sermon.

 

Scripture, says Jesus, testifies of me. [John 5:39]

 

All Scripture testifies of him; all Scripture preaches Christ crucified and the justification of the sinner by faith.

 

So Adam and Eve sin; and then the Lord in mercy comes to them and gives the promise that Eve’s seed would crush Satan’s head, would justify the sinner, and by faith in that promise of the Christ, Adam and Eve are justified.

 

The promise of the seed is then preached to Cain and Abel. But Cain gives sacrifice as the way to justify himself, and by that sacrifice of self-justification, Cain is condemned. But Abel gives sacrifice as a receiving of the gift of the promise, and by faith in that promise, Abel is justified. [Hebrews 11]

 

All Scripture testifies of the justification of the sinner by the promised Christ.

 

So Abraham, a great sinner, has faith in the promise, and is justified by that faith. [Genesis 15:6]

 

Later, King David, a great sinner, heard the preaching of the promise, heard the forgiveness of his sins, and was justified by faith in that promise. [Psalm 51]

 

 

Then, the promised One, Christ Jesus comes in the flesh, and preaches the forgiveness of sins, justifying sinners throughout Galilee.

 

Then in our text this morning, John 8:36:

[Jesus said to the Jews who had faith in him,] “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

 

Free from what? In our world we know of this word freedom. It can be freedom of debt. It can be freedom from oppression, freedom from government tyranny. It can freedom to travel, or to speak, or whatever.

 

When Jesus says, “When the Son sets you free, you are free indeed”—free from what?

 

Jesus sets you free from the Law. Free from the accusation of the Law. Free from your guilt before the Law. Free from your shame. It is always, with Jesus, freedom from needing to justify yourself with works of the Law.

 

Because he, Jesus, justifies you. So that you are justified never by your works of the Law, never by your own righteousness, never by your works of love—which is the summation of the Law, but, apart from the Law, you are justified by faith in Christ Jesus.

 

That’s the sermon. The one sermon.

 

Every other sermon—a sermon on works of love, a sermon on grace, but grace mixed with works of love, a sermon on ethical living; a sermon on motivated Christian life—every other sermon is a sermon of Law, and Jesus did not need to die on the cross if we are still to live under the Law.

 

In Christ Jesus, you are free. That’s the one sermon for the Christian pastor to preach.

 

The promise preached to our parents Adam and Eve, preached to Abel, preached to Abraham, to King David, to all the other sinners in the Old Testament, preached to Peter and John and the other Apostles; preached to the woman at the well, to the tax-collectors and drunks; preached to the centurion, to the Pharisees and teachers of the Law; preached to you and me and our children, the promise that the sinner is forgiven by the blood of Christ and you are justified by faith in him—that’s the one sermon:

 

Romans 3:28

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith … [and this] so that [God] might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus …

For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

The Day of St. James, Brother of Jesus and Martyr           October 23, 2022

(observed on the 20^th Sunday after Pentecost)

 

Matthew 13:54-58

⁵⁴ Coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? ⁵⁵ Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? ⁵⁶ And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” ⁵⁷ And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” ⁵⁸ And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

“Coming to his hometown”—we can contemplate what it means that Jesus had a hometown.

 

It’s a gift to us, that Jesus had a hometown.

 

There are no hometowns with false gods. Zeus, god of the Greeks, where did he grow up? Jupiter and Mars of the Romans, what town were they from, what did their father do to feed the family?

 

Ra and Isis of the Egyptians, same thing. Where’s the house they grew up in, the lake they fished in.

 

Sometimes cities were attached to the names of these gods, but no one actually thought they were born there in a certain year, under a certain king, in a particular home. Just fantasy.

 

More to the point, our own false gods.

 

Who are our false gods? The Large Catechism asks the question, “What does it mean to have a god?”

 

The Large Catechism then gives the answer, “A god means that from which we are to expect all good and in which we are to take refuge in all distress.”

 

 

Then it continues, “Confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol.”

 

So we can see what our own false gods are. Not Zeus and Hermes or Ra and Isis. But where do we place our confidence for every good gift in life?

 

We learn these things from our world. How is your self-esteem? You can’t be happy with low self-esteem, so you better work on that.

 

Or your own resources. Are you using your own resources or talents well enough? Maybe that’s why you’re not happy.

 

Do you need more stuff to be happy? More possessions, more wealth, more success at work, that’ll make me happy. There you have found your god.

 

These gods of our ours, these gods to which we will spend our hours dwelling on what we think we need to be happy, be finally content—to these gods we find ourselves giving sacrifice: the sacrifice of time, of our thoughts and dreams, we can even sacrifice our family or loved ones, as we spend our time chasing down the gods we’ve made up and confident that we’ll be happy when we’ve finally reached our goal.

 

As the Large Catechism says, “Confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol.”

 

 

Matthew 13:24:

“Jesus came to his hometown and taught them in their synagogue.”

 

Made up gods don’t have a hometown. Concepts, dreams, systems, goals we concoct in our mind, they have no address on Earth. They have no hometown. We make them up, and then spend our time chasing them down.

 

Jesus is not a concept. Not a dream. Not a system made up to make things better; not a goal we are going toward so that we’ll be happy when we get there.

 

Jesus is a person, a man. Flesh and blood.

 

He grew up in a certain household, as unique and particular as every other household. He had Joseph and Mary, human parents, looking over him. He had brothers and sisters, including James.

 

And he knew people, and encountered people, not in their minds, not in their thoughts and decisions and dreams, but he encountered people on the road, or in a house with an address, or at the synagogue, or anywhere else his feet took him.

 

He walked out to the Jordan to John the Baptist and let him pour water on him and baptize him into the promise, so that upon baptizing Jesus, John then publicly announced him as the Lamb of God bearing the sins of the world. [John 1]

 

And as the Lamb of God bearing the sins of the world, Jesus touched the diseased skin of the leper and made him clean and healthy [Matthew 8]; and healed the Roman Centurion’s servant with just a word; and cast the demons out of two afflicted men who were in the countryside with the pigs; and made healthy the woman with a blood disorder; and took the dead girl by the hand and made her to stand up, alive. [Matthew 9]

 

Historical events. Not concepts in the mind, not actions of the will, not systems to bring things under control. But flesh and blood Jesus, walking through towns, encountering other flesh and blood people, people like you and me, and cleansing them, healing them, standing them up in life.

 

No one is from nowhere. We’re all from somewhere.

 

With that comes all the history, all the dirt and grime. Where were you born, where did you go to school, where to high school, where was your first job? No one is without the history.

 

Jesus had a hometown.

 

 

So when he went back to his hometown, to these people among whom he grew up,

“they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?’”

[Matthew 13:55]

 

He didn’t get them from Nazareth.

 

He’s flesh and blood. And he’s Son of the Father in Heaven. True Man, True God—two natures in oneness in Christ Jesus.

 

From Heaven Jesus brings a Word foreign to Earth, foreign to sinners. The Word would not be heard on Earth, unless the Council in Heaven had it spoken on Earth.

 

It is the conversation of Heaven.

 

The conversation between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is the conversation of the Father giving his Words to the Son and sending him to Earth to become flesh and blood in order to give the atoning sacrifice for all sinners.

 

It is the Son on Earth speaking the Words of his Father, revealing to us sinners his pleading to his Father with his own holy blood, revealing to us his pleading on our behalf to his Father for the justification of the sinner on Earth. It is the Father hearing his Son’s intercession for the sinner, and according to his Son’s intercession, justifying the sinner.

 

It is the preaching to the sinner on Earth of that intercession of the Son to his Father in Heaven, so that the sinner has faith in the Word the Son speaks on his behalf.

 

It is the Son ascending back to Heaven after his crucifixion and resurrection on Earth, and the Father and the Son then sending the Holy Spirit to continue bringing the Words of the Son to sinners on Earth so that the sinners are justified and gathered into the Church as they hear this Gospel of the forgiveness of all sins by the atoning blood of the cross.

 

Where did Jesus get these things?, asked the people of Nazareth.

 

The Words are from Heaven.

 

They are words never possible to be spoken on Earth but that the Father sends them from Heaven to be spoken by his Son. Words forgiving sins; words justifying the sinner; words raising up the dead and making leprous skin clean. Words reconciling the sinner with God and reconciling sinners with each other.

 

 

But it’s all because Jesus came in the flesh.

 

He had a hometown. He grew up with a family, including James, one of his brothers. James who, after Jesus ascended to Heaven, was martyred, brutally thrown from the top of the Temple then bashed in the head, all because he, James, would not deny that Jesus, his brother in the flesh, was also true God who shed the atoning blood to cleanse every sinner.

 

Every sinner, including you and me at our own addresses, in our own mundane lives, with our own histories. But in our own histories, Jesus approaches us, he encounters us, in his own common, mundane ways which he has appointed.

 

Common water, common bread, common wine. A common preacher, flesh and blood along with every other sinner in the Church, a common preacher given to preach human words, but words from Heaven.

 

This is water, and bread, and wine, and flesh and blood men, in the Office of Christ, and human words, Jesus takes up into his use.

 

And his use for these common things and common people, is for the Word of Gospel to be spoken to you for the forgiveness of your sins.

 

It is for you to be gathered to his Name. For you to know that he intercedes to the Father on your behalf, to know that the Father hears his intercession, and you are justified at the Throne in Heaven.

 

It was for you that Jesus came to Nazareth as his hometown, that he then went to the cross, and that he now comes in his Body and Blood.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

The 19^th Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 24, c]                  October 16, 2022

 

Genesis 32:22-30

²² The same night [Jacob] arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³ He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. ²⁴ And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. ²⁵ When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. ²⁶ Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” ²⁷ And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” ²⁸ Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” ²⁹ Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. ³⁰ So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

What does God want you to do?

 

That would make a popular sermon. Just preach about what God wants you to do, preach it in a way that makes it seem like you can do it, and wouldn’t everyone be ready to pack the pews.

 

The sermon could take off with saying that God wants you to live a more fulfilled life. Then would follow ways and methods to have a more fulfilled life, whatever that might mean. Then you would leave the pew ready to enter the week striving to accomplish the sermon.

 

Or that God wants you to be a more effective Christian, aflame, ablaze, excited for the Lord, whatever all that would mean in real life. Then would follow a sermon on pathways to improving yourself, getting better and better each day. Then you would go home ready to strive for improvement and progress.

 

Or the sermon could be that God wants you to be more spiritual. Then would follow a talk on denying all the material things in life so that your mind could drift up into the clouds to contemplate spiritual things. Whatever that might mean. And you would go out into the week striving to be more spiritual everyday until you reach some spiritual nirvana, perhaps.

 

But it all—whatever way the sermon takes off telling you what God wants you to do—it all has you striving for what you can be tomorrow, next week, next year. It’s all striving, striving, striving, but never getting there, because with the Law, you always have further to go.

 

You can never live in the day, because you’re always worried with where you are going.

 

Can you feal the anxiety? The despair over lost days? The distress of striving which never ends?

 

 

What does God want you to do?

 

Maybe we can flip it around to what God wants to do toward us.

 

He wants to make us more fulfilled. Or to make us more effective, ablaze and on fire for the Lord. Or to make us more spiritual.

 

That sounds better. Now it’s God doing the work. Surely we’re better off now.

 

If it’s going to be a sermon, or sermon series, about what God wants to do toward us, then we can title it, Jesus changes lives!

 

That sound like grace. Jesus doing the work.

 

Until we settle in and realize we’re no better off than before. For it’s about what God will do, yet I’m still left sitting right where I am right now, looking for what I don’t yet have, but which maybe God will change tomorrow. I still can’t live in the day, because I’m still concerned about what I need to be tomorrow.

 

Jesus changes lives—it’s still about putting me in motion, so that what I have today is not yet good enough, but maybe I’ll be changed into something better tomorrow!

 

To live everyday as not yet good enough, but waiting, striving for a changed tomorrow, which I’ve never yet experienced but somehow hope that I might at some day in the future—can you feel the anxiety, the distress of never being able to quite get there?

 

 

What does God want you to do? Genesis 32:26:

And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

 

We start out thinking about what God wants us to do to reach a potential tomorrow, or what God is doing to improve us in the future, and we find we’re stuck in anxiety, never being able to have joy in living today.

 

We start out that way, because the Law is written on our hearts and we try to live, and progress, and improve things, according to the measurements of the Law.

 

But then we see the Lord come to Jacob, and what?

 

No instructions about how to improve yourself. No deep teachings about being more spiritual. No nonsense about how to be a Christian on fire or to have your life changed.

 

None of that. But a wrestling match.

 

A wrestling match where the Lord comes in the form of a man and puts himself in a position to be grabbed and grappled and held onto by the sinner, yet in which the Lord also leaves no confusion about who has the power.

 

The Lord has the power, not Jacob. Because after the Lord lets Jacob wrestle with him, the text tells us,

When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

[Genesis 32:25]

 

If the Lord, coming on this night in the form of a man equal to Jacob, had the power to touch Jacob’s hip and put it out of joint, did the Lord not have the power to do that at the beginning of the match? Did the Lord not have the power to touch both Jacob’s hips and put them out of joint, and touch both his shoulders and put them out of joint, and both his elbows?

 

Is there anything of Jacob’s body the Lord could not have ruined by touching it? Not even by touching it. Could the Lord not have ruined Jacob’s whole body with just a word?

 

The Lord has the power. Even Jacob knows that. But Jacob won’t stop the match. He won’t let go.

 

He holds on to a man he knows is God in the flesh. Why? Does he not know God can destroy him without even a second thought?

 

Yes. Jacob knows. He’s not naïve.

 

But Jacob wants what God most wants to give. Jacob wants the blessing. Genesis 32:26:

Then [the man] said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

 

The blessing. The blessing the Lord swore to Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather. And swore to Isaac, Jacob’s father. The blessing is the promise of the Savior to come in Abraham’s lineage.

 

The blessing is the promise of all sins forgiven. Of death defeated. Of the crushing of the devil. The blessing is the Word justifying the sinner, so that by faith in the promise, Abraham was justified. And this blessing goes to Abraham’s children, including Jacob. Including, along with them, you and me and our children.

 

 

What does God want to do? God wants to bless the sinner.

 

God wants to have the sinner hold onto him like a wrestler not letting go, until the blessing is given.

 

God wants the sinner not looking to some improved life later months away after much work,

the sinner not striving for more spirituality or more effectiveness or whatever other measure of more the sinner comes up with according to the measurements of the Law,

but God wants the sinner living today, living in faith, living in the confidence that he, the sinner, is clean right now before God,

is at peace in his conscience right now, is beneficiary of every good gift of grace and life right now,

not because of how the sinner has finally accomplished that, but because God, the Lord of life, the Lord who came in the flesh on that particular day to wrestle with Jacob and later came in the flesh for good, for all days, to die on the cross for all sins—the Lord of life, Jesus, blesses the sinner.

 

God wants the sinner to hear the blessing.

 

So what does God want you to do?

 

Be done with the Law and its measurements and its seeming potential to lead to an improved Christian life.

 

Be done with the Law. Hold on to the Gospel. Do not let go of the promise. When God comes in the flesh to you, say to your God, I will hold on to only you for the blessing.

 

When God comes to you and say, Take and eat, Take and drink, this is me, my body, my blood for the forgiveness of your sins, hear those words, it is God blessing you. He does not forget the blessing he swore to you.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

17^th Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 22]               October 2, 2022

 

PSALM 62

¹ For God alone my soul waits in silence;

from him comes my salvation.

² He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress;

I shall not be greatly shaken.

³ How long will all of you attack a man to batter him,

like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?

⁴ They only plan to thrust him down from his high position.

They take pleasure in falsehood.

They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.    Selah

⁵ For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,

for my hope is from him.

⁶ He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress;

I shall not be shaken.

⁷ On God rests my salvation and my glory;

my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

⁸ Trust in him at all times, O people;

pour out your heart before him;

God is a refuge for us.                                                                Selah

⁹ Those of low estate are but a breath;

those of high estate are a delusion;

in the balances they go up;

they are together lighter than a breath.

¹⁰ Put no trust in extortion; set no vain hopes on robbery;

if riches increase, set not your heart on them.

¹¹ Once God has spoken;

twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God,

¹² and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.

For you will render to a man according to his work.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

Find God in this world. How would you do it?

 

This world of injustice, of malice, of tearing people down, of terrible sickness coming to a little child—find God in this.

 

The Hurricane, families ripped from homes, without good water, no power, no internet, where’s God in this?

 

A worker losing his or her job not because of poor work, but for refusing to deny God’s institution of the marriage of man and woman, refusing to bow down to the prevailing ideology; a professor losing his classroom because he or she speaks truth; the liquor store owner watching the rioting mob burn his family business to the ground—find God in this.

 

We search, we use our intellect, our reason, we consider every angle to find God in all this we see around us—we find what?

 

We will find the God the world knows. We will find the God of retribution, the God angered over sin, dishing out justice in a sinful world.

 

In short, we find the God of Law.

 

That’s a problem. If he’s the God of Law, of retribution and vengeance, of what’s just, what’s right, of punishment to the sinner, then what do we do when God’s hurricane destroys the home of a family with three small children? Where’s justice in that?

 

Or when we see the rioting mob burn down a man’s liquor store because he won’t join their violent movement? Where’s justice in that? The little child suffering in the hospital. Justice?

 

When we find the God of Law and retribution by looking around our world, we will spend the rest of our days trying to explain how God works using evil when it sure doesn’t seem just to us, or how God strikes one person but not the next, when both are sinners.

 

 

Then we will find ourselves not only doing gymnastics in our brain trying to make God fit our logic, but also trying to explain how God is working in our lives.

 

 

What do you do when you’re trying to figure out how God works in your life, but all you can do is figure God out by the Law?

 

In our Old Testament reading today, we hear the answer from Habakkuk.

 

Habakkuk lives in an unjust world, too. He, too, sees innocent people suffer; sees mobs intimidating their neighbors with violence; sees politicians using violent mobs to their advantage.

 

So he speaks two words, two truths. The prophet first speaks of the problem with trying to figure God out by running God according to the Law.

 

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not hear?
Or cry to you “Violence!”
and you will not save?
Why do you make me see iniquity,
and why do you idly look at wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law is paralyzed,
and justice never goes forth.
For the wicked surround the righteous;
so justice goes forth perverted.

[Habakkuk 1:4]

 

That’s the first Word. The Word showing how God’s Law hits our sinful world, and our sinful lives. With the Law, all we can see, as the Apostle Paul describes it in Romans 8—is a world bound in futility, in bondage to death; a world groaning as a mother suffering the pangs of birth.

 

That’s the prophet’s first Word—Law. The Law showing us the God of retribution, and the whole world sees that god—all the manmade religions, whether Muslim or Mormon, New Ager or Atheist, everyone sees the god of retribution, even if they don’t call it that.

 

So Habakkuk speaks the second Word. The Word unknown by looking around our world. The Word unknown to our reason, our rationality, our efforts to try to make sense of what we see, the Word we cannot know by just piling up more and more knowledge about God, as if God is a mathematics textbook we need to study more.

 

Habakkuk speaks the second Word, the Word we need to hear. Proclaimed in the Church, preached to the sinner, taught in our families, spoken at the hospital bedside, delivered to every person in despair, this is the Word the Lord gives us to hear.

 

It is the Lord’s Word making the promise that he will save the sinner.

 

The promise is based not upon anything of the sinner, for if the sinner could take care of it, he wouldn’t need a promise from the Lord.

 

The promise is based on the faithfulness of the Lord. The Lord puts his Name on it. For the Lord to not keep his promise to the sinner would be for the Lord to tear down his own name.

 

The sinner will never know the promise by looking out into the world to figure out how God must work, never know it by reason or rationality. The sinner will know it only as the Lord speaks it to him, as the Lord has it preached so that sinners will hear the promise and hold on to it for dear life.

 

So for this second Word, Habakkuk starts with:

I will take my stand at my watchpost
and station myself on the tower,
and look out to see what he will say to me.

 

What he, the Lord will say to me, says Habakkuk. Not what the Lord will show me in the world, not what the Lord will let me figure out about him according to the Law, but what he will say to me.

 

Habakkuk is looking for a Word, a speaking, something the Lord will say into his ears—I need to hear a Word, Habakkuk is saying.

 

That’s the way a promise works. The promise is spoken, and the certainty of the promise depends on the one making the promise.

 

So the promise is different than what we see in our world.

 

What we see around us is the suffering, the injustice, the sin, the decay—we don’t need faith for that. You only need your eyeballs and your mind.

 

But a promise is not for eyeballs; it’s for faith:

Faith is the certainty of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

[Hebrews 11:1]

 

So the prophet Habakkuk, looking for God in this world of injustice, sin, and suffering, proclaims,

The Lord answered me [this]:

“Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets, …
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay.

Behold, [the unrighteous] soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,
but the righteous shall live by his faith.”

[Habakkuk 2:4]

 

That’s the promise. The righteous one lives not by sight, but by faith.

 

The righteous one is righteous not by works of the Law, but by faith in the promise.

 

The righteous one is made righteous not by being pushed and nudged and coerced into being a more righteous person, but by being declared righteous by the Word of God preached to him.

 

That is, the righteous one is made righteous by hearing.

 

As Paul says,

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ … and how are they to hear without a preacher?”

[Romans 10:17,14]

 

 

It is all by the promise. By the Gospel of all sins forgiven. By the Word of grace preached to the sinner, making him righteous. By the Word heard by ears of faith.

 

So King David, the great sinner, but the justified sinner, ends the Psalm we chanted this morning, Psalm 62:

Once God has spoken;

twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God,

and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.

For you will render to a man according to his work.

 

To render to a man according to his work is rendering to the man of faith not according to his works of the sinful flesh, not his works under the Law, but according to his works lived in faith to the promise.

 

These works are not by sight, but by faith.

 

For David has extolled not his own works, which are rubbish to God’s eyes, but the Word the Lord has spoken to him through the prophet:

Once God has spoken;

twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God,

and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.

[Psalm 62:12]

 

 

When you’re trying to figure out what God is doing in your life, or in this troubled world, cover your eyes—they will only show you the God of retribution, of Law.

 

Open your ears. Hear the Word preached. Hear the promise declared.

 

The Lord sealed this promise to you by putting his Name on you in Baptism—your Lord will not depart his Name.

 

Your Lord hands this promise over to you in the Testament of his Body and Blood for the forgiveness of your sins. Even in the face of your sin, especially in the face of your sin, your Lord will not break his promise.

 

Let your eyes look around at this world of Law.

 

But then let your ears hear the promise of Christ crucified for you. Faith comes by hearing your Lord speak that promise to you.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

16^th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 21[c]                           September 25, 2022

 

Luke 16:19-31

¹⁹ “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. ²⁰ And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, ²¹ who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. ²² The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, ²³ and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. ²⁴ And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ ²⁵ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. ²⁶ And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ ²⁷ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— ²⁸ for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ ²⁹ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ ³⁰ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ ³¹ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

How does Jesus pull someone out of the jaws of death?

 

Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees. Not to the Pharisees only; everyone, his own disciples included, can hear the parable, but the point at dispute is with the Pharisees.

 

So to the Pharisees, Jesus preaches this strange parable.

 

It is strange. Heaven and Hell. A rich man, a poor man, Lazarus. And then throw in Abraham, and throw in Moses and the prophets. And throw in the rich man in Hell having a conversation with Abraham in Heaven. It is a parable, after all. So it’s not a narrative to give an accurate picture of Heaven and Hell. It is, rather, as the other parables, pressing a point. The parable draws a picture of Heaven and Hell and a conversation between them not to show how Heaven and Hell work—but to force the point, the big point Jesus wants to make.

 

He’s preaching to the Pharisees. What is Jesus doing to the Pharisees with his preaching?

 

The Pharisees were teachers of the Law. As Jesus says to them in the previous verses, the Pharisees wanted to use the Law to justify themselves. Luke 16:15:

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard [the words of Jesus], and they ridiculed him. And [Jesus] said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.”

 

When Jesus looks at Pharisees, he sees teachers pressed down by the Law. They want the Law, they use the Law to justify themselves, and when Jesus sees a sinner using the Law to justify himself, he sees a dead man, and man belonging to the realm of Hell.

 

So he preaches to the Pharisees. He preaches a parable driving home the futility of living under the Law; he preaches it in order to bring them into the comfort of the Gospel.

 

There was a rich man in Hell. Rich in his own accomplishments. Rich in justifying himself in the eyes of the world. Rich, that is, in living an effective life under the Law.

 

So, he’s in Hell. To be enslaved by the Law, to be justifying yourself, that’s to belong to the realm of Hell, even while you live here on Earth.

 

 

So the rich man pleads at least for his brothers still on Earth that they would be kept from Hell.

 

Send Lazarus from the dead, the rich man pleads to Abraham. A man from the dead, that will impress his brothers. If his brothers were only to see the almighty power of God in raising a man from the dead, well, then, in the face of such pure power, then they would finally know to repent and hear the Gospel.

 

But the Gospel doesn’t come in power.

 

The Gospel—the forgiveness of sins—doesn’t come in ways to impress the world. The Gospel of the sinner justified by faith in Jesus doesn’t come in ways to bowl over his brothers with the promise of grace and life. The Gospel comes in weakness, in humility, in ways not big and impressive, but small and humble.

 

So in the parable, Abraham says to the rich man, “Let [your brothers] hear Moses and the prophets … If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

[Luke 16:31]

 

Moses and the prophets, and Abraham, they’ve always had them. If his brothers have Abraham and Moses and the prophets, they lack nothing.

 

Abraham was a sinner. But the promise was given to Abraham, the gift of the Name of the Lord was given to Abraham and his descendants.

Abraham is lowly and humble, nothing impressive in the counting of this world, nothing impressive to the counting of the Law, but he heard the promise, he had faith in the promise, and the Lord accounted it to him as justification. [Genesis 15:6]

 

Moses was a sinner. But the promise was given to Moses, and Moses preached that promise to the Israelites, and by that promise the Lord brought the Israelites into the promised land. By faith in that promise, Moses was justified, and the Israelites, this small, unimpressive tribe of people, they were justified, too.

 

The prophets, Elijah and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos, and the rest, were they not all despised by the people, tormented, sometimes thrown into jail, other times chased out of town, often even killed—but by these lowly, common, humiliated prophets, the Lord was having the promise preached to his people, and by faith in that promise, the sinful people were justified.

 

Your brothers have Moses and prophets, Abraham tells the rich man. From the words of the prophets your brothers will hear their justification.

 

 

In the parable, Jesus shows us the weakness of the Gospel.

 

The Gospel is preached to the sinner, but it’s preached in lowliness. It’s brought to the sinner in the humble means of water and the Word, of Wine and Bread and the Word, but in this weakness is the power of God unto salvation. As the Apostle Paul writes to the Church, God’s grace is sufficient for you, for his power is made complete in weakness. [2 Corinthians 12:4]

 

So it comes to us. To us and our families. Jesus has the Gospel preached.

 

Is that the way we would want it?

 

We would want some great sign of God’s presence with us. Some impressive evidence that God is with us. Something effective and awesome to the eyes of the world.

 

Is God with you? How about if God gave evidence of that by giving you success at work?

 

Is God happy with you? How about if God signaled his pleasure with you by giving you good health?

 

Is God on track with you, is your will aligned with his? How about if you could know by how you felt as you drive down the road, by your emotional state being stable and happy?

 

And the corollary would be, if you are having trouble, if you don’t feel spiritually close with God, if things just don’t seem to be clicking right, then God must not be close to you.

 

The evidence of our world, the testimony of our feelings, the effectiveness of our life—this is not the Gospel.

 

Because, it’s not the Gospel, it tells us nothing abut God’s disposition toward us. The Gospel comes in weakness. In the preaching of the promise. In the Word of the justification of the sinner.

 

They have Moses and prophets, Abraham said to the rich man. Moses and the prophets, the preaching of the promise, the Word of justification, this is God rescuing your brothers from Hell, Abraham is saying to the rich man.

 

It comes to us.

 

Moses and prophets, Paul and the Apostles, the preaching of the promise, the Word of justification into the ears of the sinner, that’s Jesus coming to you in a way weak and lowly to the world, but it is the full power of God unto the salvation of the sinner.

 

The preaching of the cross—this is Jesus pulling you out of the jaws of death into life. The Word of justification, this is Jesus releasing you from the Law, bringing you into grace.

 

It’s lowly, it’s humble in the counting of this world; this preaching seems not nearly impressive enough, but it is the crucified Christ making you his own.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20,c)                 September 18, 2022

 

Luke 16:1-15

[Jesus] also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. ² And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ ³ And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. ⁴ I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ ⁵ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ ⁷ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ ⁸ The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. ⁹ And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. ¹⁰ “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. ¹¹ If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? ¹² And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? ¹³ No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” ¹⁴ The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. ¹⁵ And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

 

Jesus hates debt. He wants no debtors.

 

So he releases debt—your debt, my debt, our neighbor’s debt, the debt of the world. He releases debt with no rhyme or reason, no logic, ridiculously to the eyes of our world.

 

If Jesus’ releasing of debt, his forgiveness of our sin, made sense, if it were rational, logical, then it would not be grace. Rationality, logic, rhyme and reason, fairness, is of the Law.

 

The man with the wealth is mad. You would be, too, if you had a manager wasting your possessions.

 

We’re not told how he’s been wasting. Jesus had just told the Parable of the Prodigal Son, so maybe we think of things such as drunkenness, laziness, parties, and prostitutes. This all comes under the language of the Law. It’s in the comfortable domain of the wisdom of our world.

 

The sinner will never have good news from the Law.

 

But the man with the wealth is mad. His possessions are being wasted. There will be an accounting. Jesus said,

“There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’”

[Luke 16:2]

 

The Lord doesn’t put up with wasting.

 

That seems a simple enough lesson—so take the gifts and talents you have from the Lord, wake up each morning thankful for them and looking how you can enjoy using them for the benefit of your family and neighbor, don’t waste them, and go to bed each night thankful for another day.

 

Simple enough. Use your master’s possessions well. And your master will commend you for not wasting.

 

It a great motivational speech. But it’s all Law. It’s the Commandments. It’s loving God and loving your neighbor: Law.

 

Try to do it, and it will kill you. You can always intend to do it—but intention is not the same as doing, and that too will kill you. It’s horseshoes and hand grenades. Either you keep the Law fully, or you keep it not at all, for God is a holy God, and holy doesn’t stop.

 

 

So, we are wasters. Miserly managers who have not managed his wealth at all. What a waste.

 

But that’s not why Jesus is telling this parable.

 

If this were a parable about how we must be good managers and not waste any of the time God gives us, or the talents God gives us, or the opportunities God gives us, then the parable could’ve ended with the wasteful manager turning around his life, committing himself to his Lord, practicing good management and good life skills, and, when he started doing all that, the rich man would commend him for being a good servant.

 

The rich man does commend him. But not for any of that. When the servant had been caught out at being a waster, what did he then do that had the rich man commend him? Luke 16:5:

Summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.

 

The wasteful manager started releasing debts.

 

But the debts belonged to the rich man! If the rich man was going to hold the manager accountable when he was being a waster, how much more will he hold him accountable for releasing debts that belonged to the rich man?

 

He won’t.

 

It’s the Gospel.

 

Accountability is language of the Law.

 

Accountability and measurements, examinations and reminders of when you have fallen short, this is all language of the Law. And the Law will always find out the waster, and the accountability comes down like a hammer. The Law counts things up, measures, and you are found short.

 

But Jesus doesn’t tell parables in order to put people under the Law. He tells parables to people who are under the Law—for we all are in our sinful flesh—in order to reveal to us the mystery of his Gospel.

 

Jesus said his parables are a speaking of the mystery of the kingdom of God [Mark 4:11]. The Apostle Paul tells us that the mystery of God is the preaching of Jesus Christ crucified [Romans 16:25]. If we hear a parable in a way that it makes sense without Christ crucified for the justification of the sinner, then we are hearing the parable not as the mystery of the cross, but as a moral teaching, and that is nothing more than Law.

 

But if a parable has its way with us, we hear it first for Law, which is no mystery, then we hear it for the mystery of Christ crucified, for the release of debts, for the justification of the sinner, for the forgiveness of all sins—and that’s why Jesus, the teller of the parables, came: for the justification of the sinner.

 

And the mystery of the Gospel is this: Debts released; sins forgiven.

 

That’s when the rich man commends the wasteful manager: when he’s releasing debts—releasing debts ridiculously, no rhyme or reason—releasing the debt of 50 measures of oil here, of 20 measures of wheat there, releasing debts to each debtor, one-by-one, freely handing out the forgiveness of debt like he didn’t even care, as if it weren’t his wealth he was handing out anyway, but someone else’s.

 

And the rich man, whose wealth it was, commended him! He’s mad at the manager when he’s wasting his wealth, but he commends that same manager when he’s giving his wealth out freely.

 

With the Gospel, the parable makes sense. With Jesus, it’s not finally about accountability, measuring, figuring out who’s efficient—it’s not finally about the Law. We are all nothing but debtors on that account, anyway.

 

Jesus wants no debtors.

 

With Jesus, it’s always about the Gospel. About releasing debt, forgiving sins, freely handing out the wealth of forgiveness like we don’t even care, as if it’s not our wealth, our forgiveness, we’re handing out anyway, but someone else’s.

 

Because it is.

 

Jesus is the wise manager. He’s not the wise manager because he wisely keeps the Law perfectly. He does do that. He has fulfilled the whole Law. In his life of obedience and in his death for the penalty of the Law that belonged to us, Jesus has fully and perfectly kept the whole Law. But that’s not what makes him the wise manager.

 

He’s the wise manager because … he releases debts.

 

He looks at those who have sinned against his Father and says to us, Your debt: released. Go in peace. You are free.

 

He releases debts, ridiculously, with no rhyme or reason, releasing the debt of that sinner over there, of this one over here, of you, of me, releasing debts and holding no one in debt to the Law, because … he wants every sinner to be free, no sinner to be chasing obedience like a bankrupt man trying to figure out how to pay his mortgage; he wants every sinner cleansed in Baptism and reconciled to his Father, for there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. [1 Timothy 2:6]

 

And when we’re releasing debts, when we’re forgiving the sins of those who have sinned against us, we’re doing nothing but handing out the wealth of Jesus.

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16,c)                  August 21, 2022

 

Luke 13:22-30

²² [Jesus] went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. ²³ And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, ²⁴ “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. ²⁵ When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ ²⁶ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ ²⁷ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ ²⁸ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. ²⁹ And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. ³⁰ And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

In the chapter previous to the text we have before us, Jesus spoke of living a life of no fear. He taught of the Kingdom of God as pure gift. Luke 12:32:

[Jesus said,] “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

 

The angel had told Mother Mary of this kingdom. The angel told her of the Holy Spirit coming upon her so that she will bear the Son of God. And the angel told Mary that her Son’s kingdom will be eternal. [Luke 1:33]

 

Later, Jesus gives us to see this kingdom of no fear as he pulls in a sinful woman of the city, so that in thankfulness she enters the Pharisee’s house in order to anoint Jesus’ feet. [Luke 7:36]

 

This kingdom is Jesus forgiving sins and sending his Apostles to forgive sins.

 

This kingdom is Jesus healing the servant of a Gentile centurion; of him looking at the paralytic let down on a mat and saying, “Your sins are forgiven,” then telling the paralytic to stand up and walk. This kingdom is Jesus touching lepers and making them healthy; of him eating and drinking with the worst sinners in town and announcing himself to be friend to tax-collectors, drunks, and sinners.

 

This kingdom is God the Son coming in the flesh to be with sinners, to take all their sin upon himself, to cleanse them of all shame—it is the kingdom of Jesus making these sinners his own.

 

Jesus has been going out into the towns and villages gathering sinners into this kingdom of God, and sure enough, someone comes up to him and says,

“Lord, will those who are saved be few?”

[Luke 13:23]

 

Why ask that question?

 

It’s easy to note that the man did not say to Jesus words of thanksgiving for opening the Kingdom of God to all sinners. He didn’t say words to extol the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He didn’t even say words of petition, praying for mercy for someone he knew or even for himself. He said, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?”

 

The man asks a question seeking the limits of God’s Kingdom. What are the borders of the kingdom?, the man wants to know. Who’s allowed in, who’s not.  Give us some measurements for the kingdom—what is the count of those saved?

 

The question assumes the Law. Who gets in, who doesn’t? Who’s worthy, who’s not? To whom does the Lord give mercy, from whom does the Lord withhold? The man wants to measure by the Law. Jesus will give him the Law. Luke 13:24:

[Jesus said,] “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’

 

The man had been looking around at others. His question wondered how many were righteous enough to get in. That’s a Law question. So Jesus gives him a Law answer. Jesus uses the Law to bring the man to look at himself. Because, that’s what the Law does—it puts a mirror in front of you so that if you rightly hear the Law, you will be looking at your own sin. So, as the man asks how many will get in or how many won’t be counted worthy, Jesus tells him what he must do: Strive to enter through the narrow door.

 

When all is said and done, when the Law has its way, the sinner is brought to repentance not because he’s able to count up the sins of others, or to figure out how many make it into the kingdom, but the sinner is given repentance as the Law shows him his own sin and excludes him from the kingdom. In hearing the Law, the sinner finally hears the Lord’s voice: “I don’t know you, I don’t even know where you came from.” [Luke 13:25]

 

 

With the Law, the borders of the Kingdom shrink so tight that the man could now count the number of those who are saved without even getting to the number one. It’s a stingy kingdom that is run by the Law. But that’s not the kingdom Jesus wants the man left with. Luke 13:29:

[Jesus said,] “People will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

 

Jesus’ kingdom bursts borders. His kingdom gathers from all the nations. He brings in sinners of every tribe and language to the table. This is the kingdom Isaiah prophesied.

 

The prophet Isaiah had spoken of the virgin bearing a Son who would be called by the name Immanuel, which means, God is with us. [Isaiah 7:14] So Isaiah proclaimed the kingdom of the Messiah who would bear the sins of every sinner. This Messiah would be oppressed and afflicted on our behalf, stricken for our sin, all in order to account sinners righteous. [Isaiah 53]

 

In our Old Testament reading this morning, we hear Isaiah describing sinners being gathered from all nations and all tongues, from Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, and from the distant coastlands.

 

This is the kingdom of Jesus. The kingdom of the virgin’s Son, the suffering servant upon whom the sins of the world were laid. This kingdom is not tightened down by the counting and measurements of the Law. It’s opened up to dimensions the teachers of the Law cannot even fathom, stretching to the farthest coastlands. This is the kingdom of no boundaries of tribe or language or culture:

The time is coming, [says the Lord,] to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them.

[Isaiah 66:19]

 

 

So we are given to see Jesus going out into the towns, including the unclean villages of the Samaritans.

 

He’s gathering sinners to into his kingdom.

 

The teachers of the Law taught a Kingdom of God as small and constricted, confined to the acreage of the Temple, confined by the borders of Jerusalem and Israel. But Jesus teaches a Kingdom whose borders are defined by the blood of the cross. And the blood of the cross leaves out no sinner.

 

The Lord never intended his Israel to be a matter of confining his salvation. He set Israel as a light to the nations, a servant to the world of sinners; he set Israel to be his congregation into which he would gather the nations.

 

For the true Israel of God is nothing other than the kingdom of God sinners gathered to the Lord’s Name. The Lord gathers these sinners not with the Law, for the Law gives only condemnation to all, but the true Israel he gathers by the Gospel.

 

Where the Lord has his Gospel being proclaimed, where Jesus is justifying the guilty by his word of forgiveness, where the Holy Spirit is calling sinners to the Body and Blood to be cleansed of sin, there Jesus is gathering his true Israel, the Kingdom of God on Earth—it’s the church.

 

In the church, the counting is over. The Law has done its work of measuring and found us to be sinners.

 

Now, it’s the Gospel.

 

By his Gospel, Jesus gathers you into his Israel, the kingdom of God. He wants no sinner left out. He reaches into the home under a blanket of despair, into the marriage twisted in conflict, into the friendship cut by malice—he reaches into the heart and conscience of the sinner living in fear.

 

His kingdom recognizes no boundaries, for Jesus left out no part of our sin, our shame, or our fear. He took it all upon himself, so that his righteousness now goes to all. We can find not a single sinner to whom we can say, Jesus is not for you, your sin does not belong to him.

 

This is our own salvation. In knowing that no sinner is to be left out of the proclamation of the Gospel, we find that the Gospel is for even us.

 

Jesus proclaims his Gospel to us, to all sinners, gathering the lowliest into his kingdom. Hebrews 12:24:

you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in Heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new testament, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 15,c)                        August 14, 2022

 

Luke 12:49-56

[Jesus said,] ⁴⁹ “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! ⁵⁰ I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! ⁵¹ Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. ⁵² For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. ⁵³ They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

⁵⁴ He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming.’ And so it happens. ⁵⁵ And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. ⁵⁶ You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

Jesus came to bring peace on Earth. That we were given to hear at his birth.

“Glory to God in the highest,”

declared the angels to the shepherds,

“And on Earth peace among those of God’s good pleasure.”

[Luke 2:14]

 

Peace. When the old man Simeon took the little child Jesus up into his arms, Simeon said,

²⁹ “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
³⁰ for my eyes have seen your salvation that
you have prepared in the presence of all peoples.

[Luke 2:29]

 

Peace. The word of health and vitality, of happiness and safety. The word of life and the building-up up of life. Peace, the word of peoples and cities and nations in oneness with each another, of families bound together in oneness, of husband and wife united in oneness.

 

Peace, the word of no break between people or in families, the word of no division.

 

Jesus is the Lord bringing peace to the Earth, peace to you and me.

 

And yet. Luke 12:51:

[Jesus said,] “Do you think that I have come to give peace on Earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

 

Division? What is this division Jesus brings to you and me?

 

 

In the book of Genesis, after the Lord had given the promise of a Savior to Adam and Eve, and then again, the promise to Noah and his family, in the generations following: The Tower of Babel.

 

All the families and clans on Earth, following the flood, got together to build a tower to the heavens. Genesis 11:4:

And [all the people] said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then [all the people] said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole Earth.”

 

The people were unified. That were at peace together. Their project would to bind them together. They would build themselves up to God. They would make themselves a worthy name. They were unified.

 

The Lord came down from Heaven.

 

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who in the beginning, in that divine, life-giving conversation among the persons of the godhead, had said, “Let us make man in our image,” in then in the image of God he created the man in the woman, [Genesis 1:27]—this Lord came down, saw the abomination of the creature trying to overtake the Creator, of man and woman trying to be like God, and the Lord said that mankind was not ever going to slow down in their arrogance, all the peoples were not going to ever be dissuaded from working to make themselves worthy of God; so the Lord broke their unity.

 

God, who created mankind out of love, who loves all people, every person—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, saw the ridiculous Tower and in the divine, life-giving conversation with each other, said,

“Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they  may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the Earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the Earth.

[Genesis 11:7]

 

When does the Lord—of life, of health and unity, the Lord of peace—when does this Lord bring division?

 

This Lord brings division to save our lives! To save us from ourselves.

 

To work yourself toward God, to work to unify with others to make yourself and them more sanctified, to justify yourself before God by your own desire, your own decisions, your own passion, your own works of your sinful heart—to justify yourself before God by any of your own work, no matter what form that work may take, to justify yourself is death.

 

So seeing the sinner in death, the sinner whom he loves, the Lord comes down. He comes down in his Word. And the Word of God is alive and active, a sharpened two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, discerning every thought and intention of the heart—with no creature hidden from God’s sight, but every person naked to the eyes of God to whom we must give account. [Hebrews 4:12]

 

God comes down in his Word to bring division to you and me, dividing each of us at the very depth of who we are, in order to bring us into life.

 

For what God is dividing us from, is everything bringing us death.

 

With his word of Law, his word of accusation piercing to the depth of our soul and spirit, the Lord is daily dividing us from our own Towers of Babel. Our works of self-righteousness, of efforts to change our lives and sanctify ourselves, our systems to make ourselves worthy of God—these are our own Towers of Babel.

 

So the Lord speaks the accusation against us, and with his Law, he divides us, daily putting to death our sinful flesh, our Old Adam.

 

Wherever the God of life is having his Word of Law and Gospel spoken, wherever he is having the Word of Christ Crucified preached, the Lord is bringing division to the sinner.

 

But it is the best division of all, the blessed division. It is dividing off the Old Adam that the New Adam, the life of faith, may daily stand in the righteousness not of self, but of Christ. The righteousness which comes never by works, but always by gift, by grace.

 

 

By this preaching of Christ crucified for the sinner, the Lord is bringing division also into our families—even father against son, son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother. [Luke 12:49]

 

For sinners never want to hear the crucified Christ. For if the Crucified Christ is the justification of the sinner, then the sinful flesh is robbed of its deadly desire to justify self. And that brings division, because all who insist on justifying self cannot bear to hear the Word of the cross.

 

So, yes, Christ brings division. Division of the sinful flesh which wants to self-justify, over against the life of faith, which rejoices in the free gift of justification by Christ the crucified. And division of those who want to sanctify themselves, over against those who rejoice in being sanctified only by the blood of Christ.

 

In the preaching of the cross the Lord does bring division. But it is only so that in his Gospel, he can do what he most wants to do toward the sinner. And what he most wants to do is justify the sinner, cleanse the stained conscience, destroy all our Towers of Babel, and bring us into unity with him, Christ the crucified, who forgives every sin.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14)                           August 7, 2022

 

HEBREWS 11:1-16

¹ Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ² For by it the people of old received their commendation. ³ By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. ⁴ By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. ⁵ By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. ⁶ And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. ⁷ By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. ⁸ By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. ⁹ By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. ¹¹ By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. ¹² Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. ¹³ These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. ¹⁴ For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. ¹⁵ If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶ But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

 

Faith. How do we speak of faith? Do you have faith? Do you have enough faith? Do I have enough? How to know?

 

And all of the sudden we realize we’re talking about faith as something we can measure. How much faith do you have? How much do I have? We might as well be talking about ice-cream or marbles. How much ice-cream do you have in your bowl? Guess how many marbles I have in my hand. How much faith?

 

 

But faith is not a substance. You can’t measure it—that’s for the ice-cream.

 

If we are looking at faith as a matter to be quantified, something we can measure or feel, then we are looking at faith with the eyes of the law.

 

But faith is not of the Law; faith is of the Gospel. Faith is not of our work; faith is pure gift from God. And God does not give gifts by measure.

 

And faith does not look at faith. Faith looks at Jesus alone, holds onto him, and rejoices in his grace.

 

 

Faith is not for what we are doing toward God, but for what he is bestowing on us. Faith receives gifts from God.

 

And the gift faith receives from God is righteousness, justification.

 

Faith hears the Lord speak his word of forgiveness, and is justified. Faith sees the Lord baptize his Name onto a sinner, and is saved. Faith takes the Body and Blood given by Jesus to his word, and is sanctified.

 

It’s all about standing righteous before God. After all, how is the sinner going to be made righteous? By faith or by works?

 

In the confessions of the church, the distinction is explained like this:

The difference between [the righteousness of] faith and the righteousness of the Law is easily discerned. Faith is the divine service that receives the benefits offered by God. The righteousness of the Law [though,] is the divine service that offers to God our merits. [But] God wants to worshiped through faith, so that we receive from him those things he promises and offers.

 

Then it later continues,

The worship and divine service of the Gospel is to freely receive from God gifts. On the contrary, the worship of the Law is to offer and present our gifts to God.

 

 

So we are in these pews today because of faith. By faith, the sinner hears the word of justification and is justified. By faith, the unrighteous one holds to the promise of Baptism, and is clothed in the righteousness of Christ Jesus.

 

We are here to receive these gifts from God—that’s faith. But in our world, faith is a slippery word.

 

We get caught-up in the talk. For who in our world can ever say anything bad about faith? But what is it? Do you have faith? If you do, is it strong? If it’s strong, then why don’t you step out in faith? And what does talk like that even mean?

 

I may have faith that this year my team will win the Mountain West championship. Even though not one single football sports writer predicts that my team will win the Mountain West championship, I have faith in them. So should I step out in faith and bet my house?

 

I need more faith. I’ll go home and gin it up, and then I’ll step out in it. What does all this faith talk in our world even mean? It can get pretty slippery.

 

 

Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

 

More literally, this verse in the Greek says that faith is the substance of the things we have hope in, it is the testimony of things not seen.

 

That is, we hope in our Lord Jesus . We don’t see him now. But by his Word, we have the hope, the certainty of his coming again and of the resurrection of the dead—that’s faith bestowed by the Holy Spirit through the Word.

 

Our eyes don’t see our Lord forgiving our sins, we don’t see him interceding to his Father in Heaven for us, but our Lord gives us to see the evidence of Baptism, and the testimony of the Body and Blood—that’s faith our Lord gives us by his Word of promise.

 

Which means, in our Lord’s way, faith is not a slippery word at all. It is a sure and certain word; it is a solid determination based on the promise given us by our God.

 

That’s why my faith that my team will win the conference championship is really not faith at all. It’s a wish; it may give me a warm fuzzy feeling, but it’s not faith. Because my Lord never spoke that Word of promise to me in Holy Scripture. And without the Lord’s promise, faith has nothing to cling to.

 

 

God speaks a Word. That Word creates the faith that clings to the promise. So now, to step out in faith means nothing other than to hear the Lord’s word and be given the certainty that you have been spoken righteous, justified by your Lord. But is always by the Word.

 

So the Lord gave Adam and Eve the gift of sacrifice where he would forgive their sins, bringing them into the promise of the Savior who was to come, and Adam and Eve taught that gift of sacrifice to their sons Cain and Abel.

 

But Cain sacrificed in order to make God happy with him, not to receive the gift. So the Lord rejected Cain’s sacrifice of works. Abel, though, hearing the Word of promise, sacrificed for the gift of sins-forgiven, and by that faith in the Word, Abel was justified.

 

Later Noah heard the word of promise; according to that promise he built the ark. By that faith in the Lord’s word, he was justified.

 

And the Lord spoke the promise to Abraham; Abraham heard that word; he picked up his family and moved to the promised land. By his faith in the promise, Abraham was justified by God.

 

And Sarah his wife, hearing the promise, had faith and was justified. She was given a son, who became the father of the tribes of Israel, so that from Sarah and Abraham came the promised Savior generations later.

 

 

You can’t have faith by having faith. Faith doesn’t cling to itself. Faith clings to an object and won’t let go. Faith holds onto gifts from God. Faith holds onto the promise; that’s why faith is sure and certain.

 

Faith that’s something I work on and measure and try to strengthen, something strong one day and weak the next—that’s not faith. It’s just an emotion or feeling—not faith.

 

The Holy Spirit breathes faith into you and me.

 

He does it by the Word of Gospel, by the word of Jesus Christ crucified for the forgiveness of our sin. The Holy Spirit creates faith in us by giving us Baptism to cling to, by having us eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus, so that though we don’t see him, we bodily receive him in the eating and drinking, and by faith in that Body and Blood, we are justified.

 

 

Faith is always in the Word of promise.

 

So we see things with our eyes. We see sickness, we see fear; we see despair, we see our own sin, we see friendships broken, we see the brokenness in our own lives, but this is of our sinful flesh; it’s not of faith.

 

Faith clings to that which is not seen. Faith is in the Word of Christ Jesus crucified, the Word of Gospel, of sins forgiven, of justification before God, of the sinner clothed in righteousness, of the conscience cleansed—all by the Word of promise.

 

God gathers us here today to receive those gifts of faith.

 

 

We are here today, in these pews, at this altar, because faith receives gifts.

 

And the Lord who loves the sinner, gives gifts. Our faith hears the Word of Jesus and holds on to his promise.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13)                          July 31, 2022

 

ECCLESIASTES 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-26

² Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

¹² I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. ¹³ And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under Heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. ¹⁴ I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

¹⁸ I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, ¹⁹ and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. ²⁰ So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, ²¹ because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. ²² What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? ²³ For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. ²⁴ There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, ²⁵ for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? ²⁶ For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

 

The Lord blesses the work you do. Your work as a 9-5 laborer, or a clerk, or a teacher, or a business owner; your work as a father or mother, as a son or daughter, or a wife or husband; your work as whatever you do according to your several callings, vocations you are given to serve your family, your neighbor—the Lord blesses your work.

 

Does it seem like that? The drudgery or the repetition or the thankless hours or the dealing with headaches or chasing after projects which never seem to complete, does it seem like the Lord blesses your work?

 

Ecclesiastes 1:12:

It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

 

Solomon, the wise king said that: The work we are busy with.

 

With his line “the work we are busy with” Solomon drives us into the ground with the weight of pointless tasks repeated daily, of redundant programs, of reports that must be filled in before closing time, of tax forms and insurance forms and writing out goals, of harvesting the hay or loading the lumber—are we just walking on a treadmill till closing time?—it is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

 

The work we are busy with. It rings with emptiness. What you do, are you doing it to make things better, to help someone’s life, to stand as a person of God doing his work on Earth, or is it just the business you are busy with—this unhappy, never-ending line of tasks. It’s just the work we are given to be busy with—it’s an unhappy business.

 

 

But then we notice how Solomon describes it. He describes it not as pointless, but as a gift from God. Not empty; not just an old treadmill. It’s gift from God.

 

Ecclesiastes 1:12:

It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

 

God who loves all people, who created each of us in our mother’s womb, giving each of us the gifts particular to us, our work is his gift.

 

In these gifts God gives us, he gives us also our needs and appetites.

 

We need food. So, God gives the farmer to put the seed into the ground and give it water.

 

We need drink. So, God gives a man to drill the well or run the pipe or even build the dam.

 

God gives some to bind our wounds, some to fashion a guitar out of wood, some to protect our homes, some to cook our food—all tasks God gives for persons to be busy with. All gifts from God, vocations from our Lord who loves all people.

 

 

But, says Solomon, I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. [Ecclesiastes 1:14]

 

What is it that takes a God-given task, a holy calling to love our neighbor by the work of our hands, and makes it into an unhappy business you’re just busy with—just punching the clock, just filling in the blanks?

 

What reverses it is what happens to you on the day you die. It’s a man building new barns to store his crops. He’s doing the building, he’s stacking the crops, but why?

 

You don’t know why. You don’t know why, that is, until you know what he thinks happens to him on the day he dies.

 

If he thinks that on the day he dies, he just dies, and he thinks that when he dies this death, he’s nothing then but a dead body in the ground, then he thinks there’s no more him left.

 

He’s just stuff in the ground, but there’s no him, no person, no one to laugh with loved ones, to eat good food, to drink good wine, to love neighbor—it’s just over, gone, dead bones in the ground, nothing but memory.

 

If that’s what happens when he dies, then to build a barn is just striving after wind. It’s to build up wealth today, only to be dead tomorrow. And when you’re in the ground, who knows who’s going to get that barn you built? Maybe an ungrateful heir who never cared for you anyway, maybe an enemy who files a lawsuit, maybe the government—but whoever gets it, it’s not you; there’s no more you; you’re dead in the ground. If that’s the way we view ourselves upon our earthly death, then that changes everything; and everything is left as being a striving after wind, a vanity of vanities.

 

 

But, there’s life!

 

If on the day you die, you do not die; if on the day you breath your last breath you are with your Lord; if death has been conquered so that all those belonging to Christ Jesus are united with him in his resurrection; if in Baptism you have already been given your death to your life of sin and your life is now hidden in Christ Jesus, then when you build that barn, you are building it as one who belongs to Christ Jesus. And now, all your work to build that barn is a task of how you may serve your neighbor by providing good food to him and his family over the long winter.

 

Colossians 3:3:

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

 

This promise of Baptism changes everything! Now your tasks are brimming with life. The mother changing the diaper, she belongs to Christ Jesus, to eternal life, she is his servant, and Jesus is using her hands to serve that baby with the gifts of life.

 

The high-schooler flipping hamburgers, that’s no dead-end job. It’s a servant of Jesus serving neighbor by providing food. And if that high-schooler ends up later in life serving neighbor by being a police officer, or by helping a business thrive by doing the bookkeeping, what better way to be a servant of Jesus and serve your neighbor?

 

In Baptism, you have died. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. All which you are given to do, you do as one belonging to Christ, to eternal life, and your God is now honoring you by setting you as his servant to family and to neighbor.

 

This is the gift our Lord gave us to witness this morning as he placed his Name on little Macy, calling her his own. She, along with us, belongs to him, belongs to life.

 

 

Now, when one who bears the Name of Christ reports to that so-called dead-end job, that daily task that never seems to end, it may still be boring at time tedious even, but it is gift from God. Your job, your tasks, your callings—this is gift to you from your Lord who loves all people and wants every person to be well fed, well-taught, to hear good music, to enjoy good drink, to know all his gifts of creation. And when the Lord uses our hands to do even a small part of that, it is never just a striving after wind.

 

So Solomon, who belongs to the Lord, is able to say,

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

[Ecclesiastes 2:24]

 

Eat your food. Laugh with your friends. Drink your wine—if that’s the drink you like, or your coffee or tea or whatever is good to your taste—drink it with a smile and rejoice in your work.

 

For apart from God, no one has true enjoyment. For how can the man rejoice who knows that tomorrow he dies and is thrown in the ground and is no more? But belonging to the God of Life God, knowing that in Baptism you have already died and now your life is hidden in Christ—for you, there is no death. All that you do is not a striving after wind. Rather, it is your Lord caring for your neighbor through you.

 

 

So, eat good food; enjoy good drink; find joy in your work. Your sin has been put away in Christ Jesus; he has forgiven you guilt, covered your shame, he stands you before his Father in honor, for in Baptism, your life is hidden with him in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, you also will appear with him in glory.

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.