Ash Wednesday – 2016 LSB #440
Text – Luke 22:12-13 And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there. And they went & found it just as He had told them, & they prepared the Passover. A PLACE AT THE TABLE FOR YOU Caroline was a woman who had her place. It was right there, on the right-hand side of the church, near the first stained glass window, closest to the side aisle. That was where Caroline worshiped & that, to Caroline, was her place. Her pastor learned this one day as he was bringing her Communion. You see, Caroline was no longer in church as often as before. She was unable to leave home without difficulty, & the pastor had started bringing her Communion once a month. One day, after the receiving communion, she finally raised the subject: “Pastor, has anyone begun to sit in my place?” He was surprised by how tenderly she raised the issue. It was as if she were embarrassed to ask, & also afraid of the answer he might give. What to him was simply a seat in the church, to Caroline was very important. It was her place: her place of worship, her place of prayer, her place among God’s people. So she was afraid of his answer. Other people had begun to sit in her place, people who didn’t think she’d make it back &, in the future, people who wouldn’t know her at all. For Caroline, sitting there in her home, knowing that she would not be coming back to church this year, it was very important that she still have a place. I’m sure you have felt Caroline’s fear – the fear of losing your place. It happens to all of us. We’re certain about our job or our role in someone’s life. Then suddenly things change & we find that someone else has come & taken our position, or done our work. We’ve lost our place. It used to be that you were the one who could work well with numbers at the office. If there was a financial problem, people would come crawling to you, & you kind of liked that power. “If nothing else,” you said, “at least they noticed.” But then, in comes a new kid with the latest technology & you find that others are seeking her advice about finances or, worse yet, they’re doing it themselves. You’ve begun to lose your place, & you begin to wonder how long you’ll be needed. You survey the workforce, do some mental downsizing &, suddenly, in the pit of your stomach, there’s a fear you haven’t felt since you first went interviewing for a job. You begin to wonder if you have already lost your place. If you have felt that fear, then you have an inkling of what was going on in the Gospel lesson this evening. Luke tells us that “the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near.” (22:1) This was the Passover, yet it was filled with an unholy fear. Luke says that “the chief priests & the scribes were seeking how to put [Jesus] to death, for they feared the people.” (v. 2) Feared the people? It’s a strange thing to say about these men. After all, they were the ones who confidently took their places among people. They loved the most important seats in the synagogue & the greeting in the marketplaces. They were experts in the law, able to make a person break under its burden in a single word. They wore the long tassels; gave a tenth of their possessions; fasted twice a week. They could stand in the center of the synagogue & thank God they were not like the others. They had wisdom & power & the respect of the people... until Jesus came. His ministry attracted crowds. His words touched hearts. His hands opened eyes, & His words & hands were everywhere. His very presence brought about a life they’d never known & a gratitude they could only describe as divine. With His words & His work among the people, they had begun to lose their place. So they gather on this day & prepare for His death. While everyone around them is preparing for Passover, they are afraid; & in that fear, they prepare for the death of Jesus. Did you notice the irony? Luke tells us that the Feast of Passover was approaching, & then the only preparation for the feast he reveals is fear & conspiracy & intended murder. He takes us into the lives of the religious leaders of the community & he reveals their sin. When the leaders of God’s people spend their time plotting death before the Passover, one can only wonder what lies at the heart of their faith. It shouldn’t surprise us then that Luke talks about the foe. This is certainly Satan’s realm: religion on the outside but corruption within. Where there is fear, there we’re likely to find the foe. Satan enters Judas, & Judas discusses how he might betray Jesus. Not only is there the foe, but there’s also the use of force. Luke tells us that when Judas comes to visit the religious leaders, he finds them with “the chief priests & officers.” (v. 4) If you can’t secure your position by your work among the people, you can at least protect your position by force. Not only is there force, but Luke also points to finances. Upon hearing of Judas’s offer of betrayal, “they were glad, & agreed to give him money.” (v. 5) So we have fear, we have force, we have finances, & we have the foe – a deadly combination. It brings about death in the life of faith. It did then, & it still does now. You once were the pride of your child. After soccer practice, your child came running to meet you at the car. The ride home was filled with talk about the game, questions of your opinion, & security in your words. That was only a year ago. Today it’s all changed. Now you’re lucky if you’re needed. He usually tries to get a ride home with his friends. When he runs to the car, it’s so you can get out of there as quickly as possible so no one will see him with you. And the ride home... well, that’s filled with your apprehensive questions – it’s so hard to sound casual – & his one-word answers, with your mutual silence as he looks out the window, & you wonder where things went wrong. You experience this & realize that you’ve begun to lose your place. His friends & his desire to be free have taken your place as a parent. When you begin to fear what’s happening, you also realize how easy it is to turn to force. You begin to demand that you pick your child up from practices. Where there is force, finances are certain to follow. Who pays for his equipment? If you pay money for his equipment, he better realize that you have a right to know what happened at the game. Force & finance & deep down, further down than any of us can notice, lies the foe. He’s stirring up anger, churning your fear, working in the lives of you & your child to bring about anger & separation & reasons to rebel. Honor of one’s parent. Love of one’s child. These holy things are torn apart by the work of the foe. Luke points out that in the face of all of this, in the face of fear, force, finances & the power of the foe, there is one other factor: God. God, who prepares a place for His people at Passover. God is still at work in this story, & His work is really so simple that if you don’t read closely, you miss it altogether. Luke writes: “Jesus sent Peter & John, saying, ‘Go & prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.’ ...They went & found it just as He had told them, & they prepared the Passover.” (v. 8, 13) Jesus speaks & a place is prepared. He offers a strange depiction of circumstances – a man carrying a water jar, a journey through the city, a furnished Upper Room. His disciples go & find that it is exactly as Jesus said. In the middle of all of this, God is still at work. What is Yahweh doing? He is preparing a place for His people. That’s what the Passover is, after all – the place where God comes & rescues His people. The place where God declares that He & He alone is at work to set His people free. God’s people have gone far away from Him, but Passover still draws near. Love has turned into fear. Fear has turned into action. Service has turned into force & offerings have turned into bribes. And still, Passover draws near. Regardless of what His people are doing, God continues to do His work. It is His work after all that sets people free. Free from the fear of slavery in Egypt, free from the force of Pharaoh, free from sin & free from suffering – God alone, again & again, sets His people free. Through God’s action, His people are brought out of their sin into salvation. And year after year, decade after decade, God’s people gather to celebrate God’s simple yet wonderful work. This evening, we gather at the beginning of another Lenten season. Once again, Passover draws near, & this year, among us, there are those who have lost their place. Relationships have changed, children have grown, jobs have been lost or become less secure. Those who were once close now seem far away. And in the midst of all of this change, we might get that sinking feeling, that fear in the pit of our stomach, wondering, “How will we survive, how will we manage?” For those of you who gather, these weeks of Lent come to point out to you that one thing does not change. Passover draws near & once again God does His work of freeing & forgiving love. This Lent, we will gather for a season to reflect on the places of the Passion. We will read through the entire Passion account as told by Luke, a small portion each week, & you won’t be surprised at the story. It’s a simple story. You’ve been to these places before. In them, God once again prepares a place for you. The Upper Room, the Garden of Gethsemane, the halls of Pontius Pilate, the hill of Golgotha – these are the places we remember when we meditate upon our Lord’s Passion. Yet when Jesus enters a place, He never leaves it as He finds it. The most troubling places in our lives become the most amazing places of God’s grace when Jesus visits them. Peter will still be Peter – denying Jesus in the courtyard. Pilate will still be Pilate, struggling in his judgment hall. And the crowds are still the crowds calling for Jesus’ death outside the palace. But don’t be put off by these places of the Passion, for in the midst of this story there is a wonderful, powerful love. We will see tonight & every night that no matter where we are in our lives, God is still coming & claiming us as His children. God is still coming, preparing a place for us in His kingdom. In a way, God is very much like a parent who realizes that His children have left Him, & strayed far from home, though they live there every day. While He can’t control the fact that His son gets a ride home with friends after practice, while He cannot control the fact that His daughter puts on headphones & listens to music rather than the voice of Her father, while He cannot control the fact that His children shut themselves up in their rooms rather than sit with the family, He can control how many places He sets at the table. As long as He is the father & as long as this is His household, there will always be a place for His children; always, there at His table – a place for you. Tonight, we begin our Lenten observance with a celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Tonight, God comes & brings with Him a feast that always has a place for you. His suffering, His death, His resurrection had a purpose. There’s no reason to fear. Your sins have been forgiven, your life is no longer your own, & tonight there is a place set at God’s table for you. A simple meal, a simple story, & a simple remembrance, but what a wonderful work God has done, & is doing, for His people this year. You know, if Caroline were still alive, that pastor could answer her question. No, she no longer has that place in the pew, the right-hand side of the church, by the 1st stained glass window, closest to the side aisle. That place has other people sitting there now, yet she does have a place at God’s table. Jesus has prepared that place for her, right alongside the angels, the archangels & all the company of heaven. Tonight, our Lord & Savior has come to this place to assure you that nothing in all of this world, neither height nor depth, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Not a single thing in all of creation will be able to take Jesus’ place away from you. In spite of its somber character, there is no need for fear, not this evening, nor on any other evening to come. When Jesus is the Lord of the table, or the subject of your Lenten contemplation, there is always a place for you. Amen. If my sins give me alarm & my conscience grieve me, let your cross my fear disarm; peace of conscience give me. Help me see forgiveness won by Your holy passion. If for me He slays His son, God must have compassion. Graciously my faith renew; help me bear my crosses, learning humbleness from You, peace mid pain & losses. May I give You love for love! Hear me, O my Savior, that I may in heaven above sing Your praise forever. Amen. (LSB 440:5-6) Transfiguration of our Lord – C LSB #414
Text – Luke 9:32 Now Peter & those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw His glory & the two men who stood with Him. HEAVY WITH SLEEP Have you had one of those moments where you wake up with a start! You go from being unconscious to totally conscious in an instant. You go from sensing nothing to being aware of absolutely everything. Now, imagine finding yourself realizing that Jesus is standing right in front of you & He’s speaking with Moses & Elijah. You’ve never in your life met Elijah or Moses but you know instantaneously who they are. What would you do? Where would your mind take you? We know where Peter goes: “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you & one for Moses & one for Elijah.” The Gospel of Luke comments that Peter didn’t know what he was saying. Heavy sleep will do that to you, especially when you awake from it with a start. Would you or I know any different? Would our response be just as off the wall? Here’s the message of the Transfiguration. The OT is passing away & the NT is arriving. Jesus is the ultimate prophet to whom Moses & Elijah pointed as His forerunners. Jesus is the fulfillment of the OT & all of its teaching. In the Transfiguration, Moses & Elijah disappear because the task of all the OT prophets is now finished. Jesus has arrived. When the Son of God comes down from the Mt. of Transfiguration, He sets His face toward Jerusalem to suffer & to die. For us, the season of Lent is ready to begin! It is a reminder to you & to me of Jesus’ determination to complete His somber & frightful mission. Yet most of the time, even during the season of Lent, we are heavy with sleep. Your heart & mind are slumbering away. Your soul is asleep at the switch. Life & salvation are all around. The power & majesty of God’s Holy Spirit is at work delivering human beings from death to life, & we haven’t a clue to the miracles that are taking place. We, like Peter, John & James are heavy with sleep. We spend most of our days stumbling through the darkness without the light of our Heavenly Father’s Word. As we considered in last Sunday’s sermon, “It is a dangerous Word to have, as it is a two-edged sword. It discerns not just the heart of those to whom we speak the Word of God. It discerns also the heart of those speaking that Word.” That should be us. Yahweh has placed His Word into my mouth & into yours. What have we done with it? Given all of our blessings, has the Word of God lost its precious character in the heart of those hearing this today? Do we take it for granted? Does all the activity of our busy days qualify as nothing more than heavy with sleep, relative to the Word of God? Is our faith in Jesus as Savior barely conscious? “Now Peter & those who were with him were heavy with sleep…” If you recall, this won’t be the last time Jesus finds these same three disciples sleeping. Do you remember on what other occasion the Word of God specifically highlights that? Before I answer, I’m going to ask another question. There are two separate times Jesus finds His disciples sound asleep. What do those occurrences have in common? It’s something Jesus did. (Could I have the Gospel reading put back up on the wall) Let’s read that 1st sentence together: “Now about 8 days after these sayings [Jesus] took with Him Peter & John & James & went up on the mountain to pray.” The Gospel of Mark tells us, “And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And [Jesus] said to His disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ And He took with him Peter & James & John, & began to be greatly distressed & troubled. …And He said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’ And He came & found them sleeping, & He said to Peter, ‘Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?’”[1] On both occasions that the Bible tells us Peter, James & John are sound asleep, Jesus has been praying. After He finds them asleep in Gethsemane, Jesus warns them, “Watch & pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”[2] You & I deal with the same struggles, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. When it comes to our spiritual lives, we too are heavy with sleep. So we look for church services that are exciting & fun to keep us awake, but the problem is NOT with the service. It is our own flesh that is weak & unwilling to resist the temptations of Lucifer. When Jesus prays, we sleep! What will it take for us to wake up? We may think our lives are a struggle, our economy is down, terrorists are threatening & our government seems totally clueless. People are drifting away from the church & falling into all manner of self-destructive activity. Still, we don’t see people thirsting to hear about the life Jesus offers. Here’s a very different story. As his eyes well up with tears, a young man who goes by the name Puya recalls how mujahedeen militants in Afghanistan murdered his parents when he was a child, forcing him to flee to Iraq where he was placed in an orphanage. He says while in the orphanage, he met someone who discreetly introduced him to Christianity. “I had all these questions about Islam that the Koran & the [local] imam could not answer,” Puya says. “I knew something was not right.” He says the more he learned about Christ, the more things made sense to him. The Gospel helped him cope with his parents’ deaths & the anxiety stemming from that trauma. “I saw the Bible as truth by learning about Jesus’ love & His death on the cross,” Puya says. However, when he began to share what he was learning about Jesus with others, Puya says one of his friends reported him to the local imam who instructed the orphanage to deny Puya any food. Some people had falsely accused him of being paid by outsiders to evangelize. When the imam & others observed Puya was no longer praying at the local mosque, Puya says he was driven from the Iraqi orphanage due to death threats originating from the imam. He fled for his life to Germany. Today, Puya is a refugee in Berlin, where he attends Trinity Lutheran Church in Berlin, a congregation of the SELK. The Rev. Dr. Gottfried Martens, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, has been receiving refugees & catechizing them for decades. In the 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he ministered to East Germans who previously lived under atheist communist rule with no pastoral care, while also caring for refugees coming to Germany from Russia. In 2011, he baptized his 1st former Muslim, a refugee from Iran. That same year, Martens would go on to baptize a 2nd. Since then, he has baptized hundreds of refugees, the majority of whom come from Iran & some from Afghanistan. Now, as more than a million Middle Eastern asylum-seekers are flooding into Europe, many are knocking on Martens’ door. He said so many are coming to his church that he averages only four hours of sleep a night. In a November 15th service, Martens baptized 10 more refugees who had completed rigorous catechesis & an examination of their faith & who also demonstrated consistent church attendance. As they renounced Satan in the baptismal rite, each catechumen also openly renounced Islam. More than 300 fellow refugees attended the service. With the pews & balcony so full, extra chairs were brought into the aisles to seat more, while others stood in the stairwells. Puya, whom Martens had catechized & baptized some time ago, was one of the communion assistants during the service.[3] Hundreds of former Muslims are waking up from their heavy sleep & turning their hearts to Jesus. For them to do so is to risk their very lives, & because they are willing to take that risk, the power of our heavenly Father’s love is being put on display. Does God’s love show through our lives that clearly? Is our faith in Jesus as Savior ‘heavy with sleep?’ That is the natural, sinful reaction to all the blessings we’ve received from God. Jesus’ transfiguration woke up Peter, John & James. That glimpse of His heavenly glory was meant for the saintly nature of His disciples. It’s meant for our saintly nature as well, & it’s also meant to wake us from our spiritual slumber. There’s a battle raging between heaven & hell. Your eternity is in danger if you remain asleep. So the heavenly Father speaks, because He knows we need guidance. For that reason He tells us: “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to Him!” Jesus is the Way to eternal life. In Christ we have life now & forever. Apart from Christ we have death now & forever. The purpose of the Bible’s OT was to point ahead to Messiah. The NT points back to Him. Israel was rescued from Egypt at the Red Sea. That rescue pointed ahead to the rescue Jesus would accomplish in leading us to the other side, not through the Red Sea, but through the barrier of death. There’s no way we could overcome death on our own. So Jesus gives this brief lesson in encouragement to His disciples so that later they’d understand what’s happening. Then Jesus sets His face toward Jerusalem to accomplish His mission. He will pay for the sins of the whole world. We can’t even remain awake while Jesus prays. That’s how completely sin has corrupted everything about us. Learning those lessons in humility is a constant need for us, just as it was for the 12 sons of Jacob, & for the 12 disciples of Jesus. There is a tremendous need among the people of the world today, to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. Many will reject it. Others will fall asleep, & remain so, on the way. The events of our lives, the sufferings & the joys, are meant to wake us up, to turn our hearts back to Jesus. Like Peter, we will say & do foolish things. Much of the time our actions will reveal just how heavy with sleep we are. Yet Moses & Elijah appeared with Jesus & spoke with Him of His upcoming death on the cross because it is the central event of all of world history. Billions of lives have come & gone yet each of them is totally dependent upon Jesus to be saved. Life & salvation are all around. The power & majesty of God’s Holy Spirit is at work delivering human beings from death to life, & we haven’t a clue to the miracles that are taking place. Our glory is coming in the next life. For now, Jesus’ suffering is the pathway to glory, & so is our suffering. Sin has forced on us a detour, yet the Son of God is leading the way. In fact, Jesus is the Way, & the Truth & the Life. No one comes to Father except through Him. Compared to the refugees in Germany, who are renouncing the devil & renouncing Islam, even those of us here are heavy with sleep when it comes to spiritual things. Given the mercy & grace of God, a little more suffering in our lives would likely be a good thing. Amen. Fulfiller of the past & hope of things to be, we hail Thy body glorified & our redemption see. ’Tis good, Lord, to be here! Yet we may not remain; but since Thou bidst us leave the mount, come with us to the plain. Amen. (LSB #414 v. 3, 5) [1] Mark 14:32-33, 36-37 ESV [2] Mark 14:38 ESV [3] Drinnon, R., Lutherans Engage the World, Volume 4, Number 3, 2016, p. 13. |
AuthorPastor Dean R. Poellet Archives
March 2024
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