Midweek 6 LSB #’s 439 v.1-4, 437, 439 v.12-15
Text – Luke 23:25 [Pilate] released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection & murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will. The Trial: A Place of God’s Will We live in a world of trials. Turn on the television & frequently some major trial is underway. O. J. Simpson, Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, Saddam Hussein . . . you can almost chronicle the passage of time by watching the major cases & trials on TV. More interesting, however, is the way these cases are told. Have you noticed how on television a trial is turned into a drama? It really isn’t about the facts of the case at all. Instead, the reporters are more interested in the strategy of the lawyers, the emotions of the people, the intentions of the witnesses, the biases of the judge. Impartial observation or a clear statement of the facts is not common in court reporting today. Instead, we find families of the victim sobbing out their story. This keeps us watching. It provides a sense of drama, but it does not advance our understanding of the case. Drama brings ratings, so we are directed from facts to feelings. Justice no longer sits blindfolded & impartial. Now she holds a TV camera in one hand & a list of ratings in the other. Since this is the way we tend to view trials today, we can expect that Luke’s account of the trial of Jesus would strike us as radically different. Luke begins by saying that he carefully investigated everything from the beginning. He tells us he desired to write “an orderly account.” (1:3) We expect Luke to present the trial of Jesus in a less dramatic, more reasoned fashion. After all, he didn’t have a TV camera, was not concerned about ratings, & courtroom drama had not become his hearer’s standard fare. Surprisingly, however, Luke’s account doesn’t sound all that different. As He records the trial of Jesus, he spends a great deal of time telling us about the people, the emotions & the behind-the-scenes plotting that surrounds the case. Luke tells us about the relationship between the judges, Herod & Pilate. Enemies before, they become friends on this day. Luke tells us what Herod wanted, what Pilate wanted, & all the while, Luke never lets us forget about the anger of the chief priests & the teachers of the law. Today, it happens so people keep watching the show. For Luke, I think there’s another reason. Have you ever gone to look out a window & suddenly seen a reflection of yourself? You go to the kitchen window to check on the kids in the backyard, but for a moment all you notice is your own reflection. It’s a work of the light. You see yourself, anxious, well-dressed, ready for a dinner meeting with a client, yet you realize you’re not being the parent you wanted to be. This is the 3rd evening in a row you’re going out. There hasn’t been a night at home with the children all week. As the babysitter arrives, you’re looking out the window to make sure they’re all right & you realize they are. They are okay, kicking a soccer ball around the yard, oblivious to what’s going on inside. You, however, are the one who is not all right. Looking out the window to check up on your children, you find yourself looking within instead, checking up on yourself. In a way, Luke’s record of the trial works like that window. He causes us to see ourselves by a work of the light. You read this trial expecting to look into the facts about Jesus &, instead, Luke teaches you the facts of a fallen world. You read this trial expecting to establish the truth of Christ’s claims, & instead, Luke asks you to confess the truth about yourself. Luke knows the trial is not about establishing Jesus’ innocence. That’s firmly recognized. Pilate himself finds no reason to crucify the man. The matter in question is “Why is an innocent man condemned to die?” To this, Luke gives an answer in the last sentence of this section: Pilate “delivered Jesus over to their will.” (23:25) “Their will.” That is the fact, the glimpse of the fallen world, that Luke gives to us. It is the will of a fallen world that its God should die. Luke invites us to look within the human heart this evening & confess the facts of a fallen world. It affected Jesus then, & it still affects Him now. Haven’t you found yourself willing one thing in the church but doing another in the world? Have you ever wanted to tell of God’s love to your neighbor but then talked about the weather instead? Although Jesus has rescued us from the sin that lives in us by nature, there are times we find ourselves acting like we are still part of the fallen world. Jesus says, “the spirit is willing but the body is weak.”[1] Luke’s account of the trial helps us to call sin sin. It shows us where such willfulness leads, & gently encourages us to confess our plight. It’s easy here to will the peace of God for all people; it’s much harder to act on that when you have not been promoted because of the color of your skin. It’s easy in church to want to help the poor, but it’s hard to do that when you see an advertisement for that new flat-screen TV . . . &, you do work hard for the money you earn. The more & more we go through this changing will, the easier it becomes to simply come into church saying one thing while going out into the world & doing another. That, my friends, is sin. But this trial is not the end of the story. Jesus’ trial is about more than the changing will of human beings. It is also about the eternal will of God. This evening, Yahweh enters a place filled with the battle of human will & transforms it to be a place of His eternal will. At the very beginning, Luke tells us what happened to Jesus at the hands of the men who were holding Him. They blindfolded & beat Him, then cried out to Him “Prophesy!” They mocked Jesus as a false prophet, yet their actions fulfilled the very prophecy of God. Jesus had predicted His Passion. He’d even predicted this mocking. The death of Jesus is part of God’s eternal will. God so desires to save all people that He sends His own Son to suffer in their place. This is the will of God: a love stronger than death; a word more powerful than sin; the death of Jesus that brings forgiveness to all people, even here tonight. Each time we gather, Jesus comes & forgives us our sins & then sends us out, forgiven, into the world. Our world is full of trials. There are TV shows like Law & Order, or trials of real people in real circumstances. The greatest trial, however, is that of our Savior. It goes on all the time. It happened there in Jerusalem, & it happens today. Week after week, people whom God created make judgments against their Creator. Sometimes, it receives national attention as courtroom dramas debate the rights of Christians to witness to their Savior. Other times, it goes unnoticed – in the office, around the lunch table, during the 1st year of college. People repeatedly subject Jesus to a trial of consideration & deny Him as their Lord. He was a great teacher, perhaps; a revolutionary; a prophet; a figment of the Church’s imagination – these are their verdict. But God? No. For the world around us, Jesus is not Lord, & He certainly is not the only way of salvation. Luke, however, teaches us to confess Jesus; to confess His death & resurrection as the only way of salvation for all people. As Luke tells of this historical event, we see the mission of God. Wherever people with a changing will fight against Yahweh, He comes among them, fighting for their salvation. In those courts of Jerusalem, there among the nations, here at St. Matthew Lutheran & around us in Holt, MI are the people for whom God has offered His Son to be our Savior. They are lost in the grip of an ever-changing will. Their actions might offend you. Their conversation might be rude. You may get tired of trying, or become angry at their words. They hold Jesus up to trial & declare Him to be foolishness, but our heavenly Father continues to seek them in His love. Week after week, even tonight, in this place, He works the wonder of His love. Certain of our Savior, certain of His salvation, as we leave here, we go to a world that waits in need of its God. The thief on the cross next to Jesus, was mocking Christ, right up to the moment he realized that Jesus was his Savior. Later that day he joined Him in paradise. That happened because it was God’s will to save him. The thief could not have waited much longer. Amen. Was it for crimes that I had done He groaned up the tree? Amazing pity, grace unknown, & love beyond degree! But drop of grief can never repay the debt of love I owe; here, Lord, I give myself away: ’Tis all that I can do. Amen. [1] Matthew 26:41 5th Sunday in Lent – C LSB #’s 425, 571, 698
Text – Philippians 3:10 That I may know Him & the power of His resurrection, & may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death. SHARING HIS SUFFERINGS Suffering is not now, & never has been, a very popular pastime. Think of the countless hours we spend in conversation about the things that go wrong in our lives. The car broke down, the children have been in trouble at school, your best friends are moving away, things at work aren’t going really well, the neighbors are upset with you, some health issues have come up. If you write down all the things going wrong in life, just on a daily basis, it can drive you to depression. Certainly, that fits right in with the devil’s hopes & dreams for our lives. In the reading from Philippians, St. Paul shares a very different hope for the lives we live here on earth. And he’s in prison when he writes this letter. Most of us would consider that alone as suffering worthy of a long list of complaints. Yet, the words from Philippians 3 reveal quite a different attitude: “For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things & count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ… that I may know Him & the power of His resurrection, & may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:8a, 10-11 ESV) What’s happening is that Paul is so encouraged, & strengthened, by knowing Jesus was raised from the dead, that this former persecutor of Christ now looks at all of life from a totally different perspective. Instead of bringing suffering to the followers of Jesus, Paul is now telling them why, & how, they can endure suffering. Paul is so certain of the glories of eternal life that anything of this world pales in comparison – in fact, he considers the ‘things’ of this world as mere rubbish. Yet, he also knows that people inherently look for answers. The fears & doubts of life in a sinful world are very real. We cannot look past them; we cannot overcome them, unless we are certain of the power of Christ’s resurrection to restore the creation of our heavenly Father to its original perfection. Looking for answers, it often appears to us that God is silent during our struggles, suffering & sorrow. The poem Footprints in the Sand [1] deals with one aspect of that ‘silence’ when it asks of God, “Why, when I needed You most, You have not been there for me?” The Lord replied, “The times when you have seen only one set of footprints, is when I carried you.” Another aspect of how God responds to our suffering is dealt with in the following illustration. An old Christian woman had a dream like this. She saw three people at prayer asking God to deliver them from their suffering & sorrows. As they were praying Christ drew near to them. When He approached the 1st, He bent over her in tenderness & grace, with a smile full of radiant love. He spoke to her in accents of purest, sweetest music. Leaving her, He came to the next, but only placed His hand upon her bowed head, & gave her one look of loving approval. The third woman He passed by almost abruptly without stopping for a word or a glance. The woman in her dream said to herself, “How greatly He must love the 1st one, to the 2nd He gave His approval, but none of the special demonstrations of love He gave the 1st; & the 3rd must have grieved Him deeply, for He gave her no word at all & not even a passing look. She wondered what her Lord had done, & why so much difference in His response to the three.” As she questioned His actions, her Lord Himself stood by her & explained. “O woman, how wrongly you have interpreted me. The 1st woman needs all the weight of my tenderness & care to keep her feet in the narrow way. She needs my love, thought & help every moment of the day. Without it she would fail & fall. The 2nd woman has stronger faith & deeper love. I can trust her to trust me however things go & whatever people do. The 3rd woman, whom I seemed not to notice, & even to neglect, has faith & love of the finest quality, & her I’m training by quick & drastic processes for the highest & holiest service. She knows me so intimately, trusts me so utterly, that she is independent of words or looks or any outward indication of my approval. She’s not discouraged or dismayed by any circumstances through which I arrange that she will pass. She trusts me when sense & reason & every finer instinct of the natural heart would rebel because she knows that I’m working in her for eternity. She believes that what I do, though she knows not the explanation now, she will understand hereafter. I am silent in my love beyond the power of words to express. Also, I am silent in my love for your sake that you may learn to love & to trust my wisdom & grace.”[2] The aspect of suffering which that illustration deals with, is how easily we assume that we are capable of accurately evaluating of our heavenly Father’s actions. In our mind we ‘see’ the result. It’s usually something like, God did not take away the struggles like we prayed for Him to do, therefore He must be angry with us, or with something we did. First off, that response on our parts assumes that suffering always has no good outcome. So it should always be God’s will to remove it. That’s a knee-jerk response on our part & once the suffering is over, we commonly have the wherewithal then to look back & ‘see’ the good which our heavenly Father was able to bring out of it. The more troubling response that illustration reveals is that we do believe we are capable of evaluating the work of God. From our extremely limited view of history, we judge the actions of the eternal Creator of the universe. From the brokenness of sin, where our own mind constantly fails us, we assume that our wisdom is capable of measuring all the things God is doing. From our self-centered view of life, we trust our own opinions over the Word of God. So to really challenge us in our following of Christ we need to hear these words from Hebrews 5:8, “Although He was a son, [Jesus] learned obedience through what He suffered.” Could our suffering also be a path to obedience? Accepting things we do not like, might that be a test which challenges how much we ‘really’ trust our Lord & Savior? We appreciate the last part of that phrase – Savior. It is a much greater struggle to appreciate the 1st part – Lord. Everybody can love Jesus as long as He’s allowing us to lead the way. When push comes to shove, it’s a little bit tougher to love Jesus when He is Lord. From Luke 9:23, “And [Jesus] said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself & take up his cross daily & follow me.’” Luke 9:59, “To another [Jesus] said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, let me 1st go & bury my father.’” Luke 9:61, “Yet another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me 1st say farewell to those at my home.’” From Luke 18:22, “When Jesus heard this, He said to him, ‘One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have & distribute to the poor, & you will have treasure in heaven; & come, follow me.’” It’s fairly clear in that selection of Bible verses that Jesus’ command to follow Him is all inclusive. He leaves nothing out. Yet, we also see the struggle people have in following. Jesus is Lord. He gets to make all the decisions if we really want Him to be our Savior. Now, that doesn’t mean we have to follow Him perfectly to be saved. No, Jesus saves us from those failures too. My point is that ‘sharing His sufferings’ is what our heavenly Father, in His eternal wisdom, has called us to. We will fail at that certainly, but we shouldn’t fight so hard against it. That causes more problems for us, & for the people around us. Obedience is a virtue after all. The point St. Paul is making is that, even though none of us enjoys suffering, it is possible to look at it with a very different viewpoint than the unbelieving person does. After all, shouldn’t believing in Jesus make a noticeable difference in our lives? Shouldn’t unbelievers be able to tell that you follow Jesus? What better way for that to be obvious than in the viewpoint we take regarding suffering? What better way for that to be obvious than in how we respond to our own suffering? Yes, it is difficult. Paul isn’t saying this is a cake walk, but he doesn’t just tell us to do it by sucking it up & being a man. Where does that leave the female followers of Jesus? No, St. Paul tells us why we can share in Christ’s sufferings & not lose our faith. He tells us how we can share in Christ’s sufferings & still be a winsome witness to our Lord & Savior: “That I may know Him & the power of His resurrection, & may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death.” If we are only followers of Jesus in the easy times, hardly anyone will notice, but if we still follow Jesus during times of suffering, that makes a statement which is a lot more difficult to deny. Yes, the fears & doubts of life in a sinful world are very real. We cannot look past them; we cannot overcome them, unless we are certain of the power of Christ’s resurrection to restore the creation of our heavenly Father to its original perfection. Looking ahead to resurrection, there we will for the 1st time see God’s creation in its original glory & beauty. Since we know that is true, by Jesus’ own resurrection, we are empowered through faith in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, to share Jesus’ sufferings. Hebrews 12:1-2 tell us how Jesus endured His sufferings: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, & sin which clings so closely, & let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder & perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, & is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Heaven was set before Jesus in all its perfection, glory & goodness, but especially heaven with all of Jesus’ brothers & sisters, God’s children, joining Him there. For that reason the only-begotten Son of God endured the cross. As God works through us, does He use our suffering to reach other people with His love? Seems like the answer to that is yes, but when our suffering begins, when it drags on & on & on, are we still thinking about that? At times like those, we need to lean upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ for the strength to continue. That’s why our celebration of Easter is such a big deal. There is a day coming when each one here who trusts in Jesus as Lord & Savior will experience their own resurrection from the dead. Our sufferings will then appear as but a blink of the eye compared to the glories of heaven. Until then, we have the power of the resurrection of Christ to instruct us & lead us home. The resurrection of Jesus’ dead body was merely the beginning of the new creation. One day, all of the universe will once again be surveyed by God & declared to be good. You can be part of that declaration. Amen. Christ Jesus is the ground of faith, Who was made flesh & suffered death; all then who trust in Him alone are built on this chief cornerstone. God loved the world so that He gave His only Son the lost to save, that all who would in Him believe should everlasting life receive. Glory to God the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, Three in One! To You, O blessed Trinity, be praise now & eternally! Amen. LSB 571:2, 1, 6 [1] Copyright © 1984 Mary Stevenson, from original 1936 text, All rights reserved. [2] Dr. John Sound, adapted from Charles E. Cowman, Streams in the Desert (Vespery, Madras, India: Evangelistic Literature Service, 1982), 44-45. Midweek 5 LSB #’s 704, 609 v.1, 4-7, 575
Text – Luke 22:55 And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard & sat down together, Peter sat down among them. The Courtyard: A Place of Renewal Have you ever been caught by surprise in a store? Your son’s car won’t start, so you drive him to an early morning football practice. You haven’t had time to shower or put on anything decent. On the way home, you stop by the store to grab a few things & then comes the voice. Someone calls out your name. Normally, you like meeting people... but not today. Today, you want to run & hide. Why? Because all of a sudden you see yourself & you think, “Do I really look like this, out in a public place?” It’s a moment of self-revelation. Tonight, we have a moment of self-discovery for Peter. He sees who he is in terms of his denial, but, by God’s grace, Jesus also holds out another picture for us. A picture of who Jesus is for Peter: his Savior. This evening, we’ll meditate on these two pictures – Peter’s denial & Peter’s Savior. Doing that, it is my prayer that we will grow in trust of our Lord, who enters places of denial & turns them into places of renewal in His love. Consider the courtyard – the place of Peter’s denial. As we listen to the conversation that occurs there, we see more & more of Peter’s life stripped away. It’s like watching a crack in the foundation slowly spread, bringing the whole house to ruin. The servant girl is the 1st to reveal the problem. She mentions the relationship between Peter & Jesus: “This man also was with Him,” she says. (Luke 22:56) She puts Peter & Jesus together with these words, but Peter denies it: “I do not know Him,” he says – a crack in the foundation. He denies his Lord, & when your relationship with Jesus is broken, it doesn’t take long for everything else to give way. From there, we move to Peter’s relationship with Jesus & the disciples. Someone says, “You are also one of them.” (22:58) So, we have Peter & Jesus & then Peter & the disciples. Finally, someone offers the bigger picture. He says, “Certainly, this fellow was with Him, for he too is a Galilean.” (22:59) We move from Peter & Jesus to Peter & the disciples to Peter & all of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee. And Peter still says “No.” When your relationship with Jesus is broken, it doesn’t take long for everything else to give way. At that moment, Peter experiences a time of painful self-revelation. He hears a sound, sees a face, & remembers a word. Luke wrote: “Immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned & looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord.” (22:60–61) Like hearing your name called in a store, Peter at this point remembers & sees. He remembers what Jesus said. Jesus knew him better than he knew himself. Peter said he would follow Jesus to prison. He’d follow Him to death, but instead, he denied that he ever knew Jesus. This is a moment of spiritual self-revelation. By our own might, we are unable to follow Jesus. Salvation is not dependent on what we do for our Lord. It never has been, & never will be. If ever we rely on our own strength rather than Jesus, we also have entered into a place of denial. That is what really makes a place of denial; not the drama of having other people question you about Jesus. It is the simple nature of your relationship to God’s Son. Whenever we rely on our own strength instead of on Jesus, we’ve entered into a place of denial. Think about our places of denial. They are not as dramatic as Peter’s, but they are places of denial, nonetheless. It could be a place of honor in the church. We are founding members of the congregation. It could be a place of great leadership, as we’ve done much to further the kingdom of God. It could be the frequency & fervor of our devotional life. We look at these things: our years of membership, our leadership, our attendance in a congregation, our time spent in Bible study & prayer, & slowly we begin to think we are strong in the faith because of our own doing. We become a bit bolder in our witness. We speak out at work, sharing our disgust with our culture’s sinful lifestyle. We speak up at church meetings. After all, people should listen to us; we’ve been members around here for years. And, as we think we are growing stronger & stronger in the faith, we actually are neglecting the crack in the foundation. There are many ways of denial, you see. We can deny Jesus by saying we never knew Him – clearly, emphatically, right in the middle of a courtyard – or we can deny Jesus by saying we do know Him, loudly, emphatically, self-righteously, all the while forgetting His work in our lives. You look like a Christian. You act like a Christian. You do all the things that a Christian does, but there’s a crack in the foundation. You’re relying on your own power, your own achievements, & the crack between you & Jesus grows. Soon, the whole structure will fall. There’ll come a time when we’ve not been able to do as we had hoped, when we tell our child “Christians don’t do that,” & he says, “But, Dad, you do it all the time.” When we sign the divorce papers & our spouse says, “But I thought you said, ‘I do.’” When we see that we cannot follow into prison or give our lives unto death, that we are weak, & we are sinful, & there is no health in us, & for a despairing moment, all we can say is “We are lost in sin & cannot set ourselves free.” To such people, Luke offers another word this evening. The word of Jesus. The story of His Passion. In the midst of our failure, Jesus is & remains the one who takes our sin away. Our salvation does not depend on how much we can bear for Jesus. Instead, it depends on what Jesus bears for us. Our forgiveness does not depend on what we do or say for Jesus. It rests securely on what Jesus does & says for you & me. In the face of Peter’s denial as His disciple, Jesus continues to be his Lord. While Peter goes out to weep bitterly, Jesus goes on to suffer for the man who is weeping. It is His work, His love, His mercy that overcomes our sin. Jesus knew Peter better than Peter knew himself. Jesus knows you better than you know yourselves. He sees this denial & our sin, yet He continues on to the cross. We are not saved by giving our lives up for Jesus; Jesus saves us by giving up His life for the forgiveness of our sin. That’s what Luke reveals this evening. When Peter is caught in the act of denial, Jesus continues in His act of love. By doing this, Luke asks us to see a different picture – the picture of a Savior’s love. Jesus comes to us in the most awkward of moments. He doesn’t wait until we get it together to visit our home. He doesn’t wait until we’ve overcome our temptations & fought our demons & conquered our sins & achieved our goals. He comes now, while we struggle. Now, while we confess our failure. Now, while we feel like we’ll never be the person God wants us to be. He comes now to assure us that “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9) Jesus is the foundation of our life before God. God the Father received His life for your life that He might give you His love for all time. Jesus comes to you tonight with a love that never changes. Time passes & life is filled with change. We move from a dorm to an apartment, from an apartment to a house, from a house to a condo, from a condo to a retirement center, from a retirement center to a skilled care facility, from the skilled care facility to our grave. From our grave we will be raised to live in heaven. In each place, however, Jesus remains the same. He is the one who forgives our sins & saves our soul. Even at the end, after death & the grave, we will be raised to find Him as we have always known Him to be. The one who went to the cross to die for our sin & rose from the grave for our salvation. Jesus brings us tonight a picture of His love. In those times when you are faced with a painful self-revelation, Luke wants you to see, not just your sin, but also your Savior. Trust in His love, live in His kingdom, pray in His name, & know that as you now know Him, He ever will be. Jesus enters our places of denial & makes them places of renewal in His love. When Christ is with us, moments of self-revelation are a good thing. Amen. Jesus sinners doth receive; oh, may all this saying ponder who in sin’s delusions live & from God & heaven wander! Here is hope for all who grieve; Jesus sinners doth receive. Now my conscience is at peace; from the Law I stand acquitted. Christ hath purchased my release & my every sin remitted. Naught remains my soul to grieve: Jesus sinners doth receive. Amen. LSB 609:1, 6 4th Sunday in Lent – C LSB #612
Text – Luke 15:24 For this my son was dead, & is alive again; he was lost, & is found. And they began to celebrate. LOST & FOUND In schools across the nation, the Lost & Found box has been a fixture for generations. Lots of things go in. Very seldom does anything get taken out. Appeals are made, “Please check the Lost & Found box to see if anything belongs to you.” Almost no one ever does. At the end of the year the contents disappear in some way or another, to make room for next year. For some reason, it is embarrassing to claim items from the Lost & Found box. They’ve become like the lepers in Jesus’ day – untouchable. They’ve been rejected, left behind, lost & alone. There are human beings like that all over the world, even across our land. We see them, homeless & living under bridges. They scrounge for food & clothing wherever they can find it. Many of them suffer from mental illness & have little capacity to function well in our fast paced, technology driven society. We see them in nursing homes, confined to wheelchairs, or to their bed. No one visits, & hardly anyone cares. They’re moved around like pieces of furniture, shuffled here & there, fed, sanitized & accounted for in a daily process of inventory. We see the lost in the womb of a mother & father who don’t want to raise a child. Many of them end up being crushed or torn to pieces so their ‘valuable’ body parts can be sold for research. We’re told it’s noble research to find a ‘cure.’ We see the lost in the endless assembly line of our public school system. Many of the students get shuffled through the machine, finally graduating with a debt load of six figures & not a job in sight that will pay off the loans. Along the way, they’re taught to create their own truth. Just make sure it’s a politically correct version of truth. Students come out of that system lost & confused with no anchor in reality, & with zero knowledge of what they are actually gifted to accomplish in life. The homeless, the unborn, the aged & the young, all of them are being left behind by our culture. That is true without even considering their relationship to our heavenly Father. In the Gospel reading for this morning, we’re presented with a parable that has a lot going on. So it’s important to focus on the introduction that St. Luke gives to the three parables – the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, the Lost (or prodigal) Son. Listen again to these words: “Now the tax collectors & sinners were all drawing near to hear [Jesus]. And the Pharisees & the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners & eats with them.’” In the eyes of the Pharisees & scribes, the only more depraved thing Jesus could do would be to go to work feeding pigs. Receiving sinners & eating with them was the equivalent of ending up in the Lost & Found box! So Jesus tells the parable of the Prodigal Son because He isn’t just trying to save the people who are unclean. He’s also come for the purpose of saving the self-righteous. This parable addresses both groups, but mainly is a call for the self-righteous to come home. The reason we get lost in the 1st place is due to sin. The reason people don’t want to find us is because of sin, their sin & ours. Jesus spent three years preaching, teaching & performing miracles across the land of Judea to seek & to save the lost. Then He willingly suffered the humiliation & excruciating pain of the cross in order to erase every sin. It sounds simple enough, but you know from very personal experience that not all of mankind has bought into God’s answer. Sin has so corrupted who we are, that God Himself has to work miracles in order to turn anyone’s heart back to His love & to the beauty of His new creation. You see, in Christ, we become a totally new creation. Let’s see if you can answer this question, “How many of the things in the Lost & Found box are able to get out of the box on their own?” Can this sweatshirt jump out of the box & search for its owner? Can this lunch box pack itself & then run off to find & feed its child? Ever since Adam & Eve willingly disobeyed God, all people have been conceived in the lost-ness of sin. Once Adam & Eve fell, Jesus would have to come & find us, because we are lost & powerless to get out of the box. Our sin makes us blind & helpless & unwilling even, such that we actually run in the opposite direction from God. Like the younger son, as soon as we’re able, we gather up all that we have & journey into a far country where we squander all that our heavenly Father has given us in reckless living. With the parable for today, in the younger son, Jesus reveals that greed & desire for independence are the motivating factors in the heart of sinners. Yet, also in the heart of the older son, the ‘good’ son, lies the same greed & desire for independence: “But [the older son] was angry & refused to go in. His father came out & entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, & I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.’”[1] Did you catch that the older son did not want to celebrate with his father, but with his friends? The desire for independence is the very root of sin. Every Sunday our heavenly Father invites us to celebrate with Him, at Holy Communion, & the feast is the forgiveness of our sins. Do we long to be at this banquet? At this feast, Yahweh Himself reaches down in to the box & He pulls us out. Our Father in heaven lifts us up, dusts us off, washes us clean, & places upon us the robe of righteousness, earned for us by the blood of His Son. “And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, & he began to be in need. So he went & hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, & no one gave him anything.” “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise & go to my father, & I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven & before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose & came to his father.”[2] Such is the way our heavenly Father often deals with us. He allows us to go our own way, & discover, if need be, by painful experience that the only real freedom involves obedience to Him. The younger son had a great time for a while. He thought he’d found freedom & life, but living in this box is not freedom. The box is always where sin leads. This parable is often referred to as ‘The Prodigal Son,’ because the younger boy squanders his wealth lavishly. Yet the real prodigal is the father as he welcomes home his son after the boy returns from his rebellion. The father clothes his son in the best robe, has a ring put on his finger & sandals on his feet. Then the fatted calf is killed so they feast & celebrate. The second part of the parable focuses on the older son who could not comprehend the mercy of his father. This part is an indictment of the Pharisees & Scribes. They could not comprehend the mercy of Jesus that led Him to receive & eat with sinners. This part rebukes those who begrudge the father’s forgiveness & generosity toward sinners. What good is faithfulness & dedication if a sinner is celebrated in a banquet at his homecoming? Is living a good life good for nothing? Those kinds of questions easily come to mind when we’re confronted with a decision to forgive. Can we forgive as God does? Can we receive God’s blessing as pure grace, as something we also do not deserve? The Pharisees & Scribes regard Jesus’ forgiving spirit as an attack on the validity of the Law. We can describe that by saying there’s a Law/Gospel paradox going on here that a legalistic attitude cannot grasp. It’s very much like the way people are loath to reclaim something from the Lost & Found box. Those things should be rejected. The father’s response to the younger son’s return, instead of rejection, is immediate, unequivocal action to restore a relationship, a covenant, that was broken by his son’s callous rejection & selfishness. This made the older son livid. Jesus ends the parable with the father’s words to the older son: “Son, you are always with me, & all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate & be glad, for this your brother was dead, & is alive; he was lost, & is found.” Those are words of invitation to each & every one of us as well when we are struggling to forgive. The parable closes in that way because the true ending is still being written by all who hear these words of Jesus. Do we take offense at our heavenly Father’s forgiveness of sin, or do we welcome it? To welcome it is to confess our own need to be forgiven. That paradox of Law/Gospel should not always be easy to resolve. God works through that tension to shape & mold us into the children He originally created us to be. In this sinful world, getting you & me out of the Lost & Found box is a process. As they say, it’s not just a destination, it’s a journey. We are already a new creation in Christ, but we are not yet complete. And since we are that new creation, we have been given the ministry of helping other people to be reconciled to our Father in heaven as we have been. Yet, who is it that did & still does the reconciling? The focus of this parable isn’t exclusively on the one, or the two sons. The focus is on the father, & on His loving mercy & kindness, which motivate Him to forgive: “What was lost is found, what was dead is alive!” That is a tight summary of the entire message of God’s Word. “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”[3] That applies to anyone, young or old, homeless or yet unborn. It applies to those who have had abortions & to those who have performed them. Come home. Amen. As rebels, Lord, who foolishly have wandered far from Your love – unfed, unclean, unclothed – dare we recall Your wealth so rashly squandered, dare hope to glean that bounty which we loathed? A feast of love for us You are preparing; we who were lost, You give an honored place! “Come, eat, drink, & be no more despairing – here taste again the treasures of My grace.” Amen. [1] Luke 15:28-29 ESV [2] Luke 15:15-20a ESV [3] 2 Corinthians 5:20-21 ESV Midweek 4 LSB #’s 849, 611, 919
Text – Luke 22:52-53 Then Jesus said to the chief priests & officers of the temple & elders, who had come out against Him, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords & clubs? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, & the power of darkness.” The Betrayal: A Place of Eternal Love Tonight we consider the arrest of our Lord in the garden – The betrayal. That’s what we’ve called it & that word sums up the event. “On the night when He was betrayed...” we say every time we celebrate Communion, & everyone knows what we mean. But when you read this account more closely, you realize Jesus is not the only one being betrayed. In the garden of Gethsemane, many people are betrayed. Consider the disciples. A disciple followed his master. That is basic to discipleship. “Come, follow Me,” Jesus said &, in a moment, with the setting down of a net & a walk up from the shore, fishermen became disciples. Yet on this night in the garden, these disciples no longer follow but lead. Luke writes: “When those who were around Him saw what would follow, they said, ‘Lord, shall we strike with the sword?’ And one of them struck the servant of the high priest & cut off his right ear.” (22:49–50) So the followers take action, asking a question but not waiting for an answer, praying to God but doing what they want. A servant is struck. An ear is lost & followers become transgressors of God’s gracious will. Disciples? Their actions betray them. They are not disciples but something less than that. Consider Judas. Lest we forget, Luke reminds us that he is one of the Twelve, but his lips are filled with poison, & his kiss is deadly. He approaches Jesus as a disciple; to kiss his master, yet the crowd behind betrays the man. And so we have another betrayal in this text. “One of the Twelve”? Judas is something less than that name. Then, consider the chief priests & the elders. Luke informs us that the officers of the temple guard accompany them. They’ve complained about the oppression of their nation, yet now they are using force to oppress one of their own. Sitting in the temple, they listened to His teaching & fought with the Scriptures. Here in the night, they’re fighting with swords & clubs & the temple guard. These prisoners to foreign rule now try to rule in ways foreign to God. So we have a 3rd betrayal. Leaders of God’s people? Their weapons betray them. They are something far less than that name. Luke helps us to see that the story of our Lord’s betrayal has something to say about us. Sometimes, you can’t trust what you see. Jesus is right when He says, “This is your hour – when darkness reigns.” (cf. v. 53) The hour of darkness is not a full-frontal attack in the middle of daylight where armies are armies & weapons destroy. No. The hour of darkness is that time when evil remains hidden. It hides under a kiss, under discipleship, under the office of leadership. People may kiss & pray & preach about peace, but underneath it all lies a heart ready for war. Perhaps you have been in this darkness. It usually catches you by surprise. You’re saving for retirement. With corporate downsizing & the turn in the market, every penny has become precious. Unfortunately, you start to neglect the poverty of others. You cut what is called your charitable giving. It’s your money after all; you worked for it. Suddenly, your tomorrow has become more important than another person’s today, & God’s call for justice is simply a word on a page. You speak about justice & the love of God for the poor, but your actions betray you. The power of darkness doesn’t look dark at first because it is deceiving. One day, we’re filled with righteous zeal for God’s kingdom, pointing out to the world how it’s gone astray from God’s ways. Later, we discover what’s been hidden all the time under our religious zeal & proclamation of holy living: a cold hearted indifference to our neighbors, not a shred of a desire for their salvation at all. Luke’s account alerts us to this hour of darkness, & we confess this evening how easily it creeps up on us as well. Thankfully, that’s not the only story Luke has to tell. In this account, Jesus does more than reveal the hour of darkness. He also reveals the eternal love of our Lord. Our Savior enters the hour of darkness & turns it into a place of His eternal love. In the midst of all of the deception, Luke points to one thing that remains true: what Jesus is seeking to do for them. Jesus never betrays His Father’s eternal mission. When His disciples fight, He brings peace. When a slave is injured, He heals. When His enemies come, He willingly submits to the suffering that brings our salvation. In each case, Jesus meets the hour of darkness not by withdrawing but by bringing into this world the eternal kingdom of God. Take, for example, the healing of the high priest’s servant. Luke records that one of the disciples drew his sword & cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. The confrontation in the garden is beginning to turn deadly. In the face of this escalating violence, Jesus intervenes to stop the hurting of a slave. Although He will not act in His own defense, Jesus works for the defense of others. Weak enough to be arrested, He is strong enough to heal. And in this moment, He reveals that no matter what is done to Him, He will always remain our Maker, coming into His world to heal His fallen creation. He is who He is, the Son of God, our Savior, & though the powers of darkness rise against Him, He remains strong & obedient to eternal love, for He has come to set us free. Now, we begin to see that there really is more here than meets the eye. Jesus is revealing to us the power of God’s eternal love. For ages, people have trusted that such a love exists. They have waited for God to send them a Messiah, one who would set His people free. For three years in Galilee, the people had seen a Savior, had brought their sick to a healer, & had looked for the reign of this Prince of Peace. Now, even in the midst of the power of darkness, we find this Lord being what His name proclaims Him to be. In the face of such oppression, He is & remains the Anointed One of God. When thrown in a situation where He should protect Himself, He uses His hands to heal another. When given good reason to fight His enemies, He lays down His life for their salvation. When faced with disciples who were fighting for His freedom, He asserts His authority as their leader, a Prince of Peace. The names of Jesus remain true in all situations. He is Savior, Healer, Prince of Peace there in the garden & here, tonight, in our midst. Have you experienced the power of darkness? Have you found how easily it can slip among us as well? Fear not, for today our Lord comes as our Savior. He offers forgiveness through His Word this night. In the midst of our illness, He comes as our healer. In the midst of our struggles, He bids us His peace. Each time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we begin by saying “on the night when He was betrayed.” With that statement, we are remembering the hour of darkness in the garden, but we are also remembering every hour of darkness that comes after that. Times when we have been less than our name as Christians. Yet, no matter how often this hour comes among us, God’s love remains eternal. He comes to forgive us by His body & blood. Each time we begin with the words, “On the night when He was betrayed,” Jesus continues by saying, “Take, eat; take, drink; this is for you.” Whether that hour of darkness occurs in the garden, or your home, in your marriage or in your church, God’s love remains with you. In eternal love, He continues to come & forgive us our sin. Amen. Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed His blood for me, died that I might live on high, lives that I might never die. As the branch is to the vine, I am His, & He is mine. O my Savior, help afford by Your Spirit & Your Word! When my wayward heart would stray, keep me in the narrow way; grace in time of need supply while I live & when I die. Amen. |
AuthorPastor Dean R. Poellet Archives
April 2024
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