Lent 2 [Luke 13:31-35]

This sermon was preached at Trinity Lutheran Church, Tailem Bend (9 am).  The preaching outline turned out a bit different than the manuscript.  Oh well.  

For someone who's not funny, I like to think I know a lot about comedy. And one of the basic rules for being a comedian is being able to lie to yourself. Because for the first year you do comedy, you will bomb every night. So the trick is to be able to say, “it's really going very well” when a whole room of people doesn't like you. It's part of the job. So when we're hearing Jesus speak the words of today's Gospel, if we just say, “well that's depressing”, then we're really missing something about his job.

It's not an easy job for Jesus. His face is set on Jerusalem, where he knows he's going to die. But that doesn't mean he's looking for any excuse to get out of it. And he has the opportunity here. The Pharisees say, “You should go from here, because King Herod wants to kill you.” - probably meaning “Yes, go really far from here, because we're warning you as a favor to you.” What we do know is that when Herod has Jesus in front of him thanks to Pontius Pilate, he doesn't say, “There you are. I've been meaning to kill you.” He just mocks and ridicules Jesus and leaves it at that. And we do know that the Pharisees were among his adversaries, and if you just turn back to Luke 13 he calls the people who were against him hypocrites.

Not that Herod's mocking is a good thing, but the scheming of the Pharisees is what Jesus is really addressing when he talks about the way Jerusalem puts the prophets and those sent to them by God to death. That's a big hint: what's worse – a crafty nuisance of a fox, or a prophet killer? And it's not so much that they scheme, but that they scheme in complete rejection of Jesus, who is the very source of the forgiveness of sins. They have their own evil devices for sure, but when it comes to any excuse to get around this whole forgiveness thing, we have a set of evil devices all our own. Luther often referred to the devil as a 'master of a thousand arts' who is constantly and in many subtle ways working against the main thing of the Christian faith – forgiveness! It's like when we were teenagers – teenagers' one skill is sneakiness, so they spend much more time thinking of ways than to be sneaky than in actually listening to parents and authorities. That's what we do so we can squirm out of simply seeing our hearts in the clear light of God's Word. And the devil doesn't work his arts just to get us to pull pranks, but always goes after our trust in the Lord to save! To convince us that Jesus isn't able to forgive someone as bad as me, or that there is simply nothing I need to repent of at all. And the Bible, where we hear how bad our sin is, well, that's just so boring, or it's so important it's best not to listen to it. A thousand arts!

But Jesus is a lot different. You don't see many schemes in what he does. He has no devices. You see that in his reply to the Pharisees. Real simple: the Pharisees tell him “go” and he replies “you go . . . and tell that fox . . .” - he answers in the way they spoke to him. But his answer is also pretty simple: he's going to Jerusalem, and it's part of his work. “I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course [or I am brought to an end].” His death is bringing to fulfillment his work, and his work is suffering, being rejected, and put to death so that he may gather sinners into his kingdom by the forgiveness of sins which happens there at the cross.

It's pretty straightforward. It's pretty straightforward when he brings an end to your sin and your death by his death and his carrying your sin at the cross. It's pretty simple when he goes around proclaiming repentance of sin and release from sin, death, and the devil. What does he do that doesn't fit into those two things: parables, teaching, prophecy, healing, speaking condemnation to the proud and delivering comfort to the low – it's all exposing sin and bringing forgiveness. It's all threats and promises. It's all Law and Gospel! It's all straightforward, and it's all for our good, because the Law is the servant of the Gospel. It's not like watching the evening news, where too much bad news is bad for you. The Law is bad news for your sinful nature, but that's for the sake of the Gospel, the goal is to be comforted by the Gospel. The Gospel is good news of free forgiveness. The sacraments are free forgiveness. The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting are free forgiveness.

But still, when it comes to speaking of the people's sin and rejection, Jesus does it in the form of a lament.

He laments over Jerusalem. He doesn't say that the inhabitants of Jerusalem have killed the prophets, he puts it in the present – they do kill and stone the prophets and those sent/apostled to them. This includes many Old Testament time prophets, Jesus' own coming crucifixion, and the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7. The sad thing is that it's in Jerusalem where all this happens. Jerusalem was the very place where the temple had been established, and it was established by the same God who sent those prophets that were rejected by the people and suffered. But when we're talking about anger against something from God – we have it inbuilt, because we have the same sinful nature as the inhabitants of Jerusalem. God sends pastors, fellow Christians, family members and loved ones – and when they speak the truth of God's Word, when they speak Law and Gospel to us, when they speak – we have every excuse. God's Word exposes a bad conscience, in order to create a terrified conscience, in order to bring rest to that conscience from the only place it can come from: Jesus' blood and righteousness. But the first two steps lead to the third, but they're not fun.

Jesus didn't find it fun to describe the rejection he received. But we often miss just that fact, that he is mourning over the unbelief of the people, and not rejoicing over it. He laments because he always wishes to reach out like a hen pulling in her brood.

But, he keeps sending preachers anyway. (part of the job for Jesus and for Christians, is being rejected. It's what we call, not the fun part.)

And yet, nothing prevents him from his one work: forgiveness. Forgiveness happens at Jerusalem: the place of atonement by the cross. Forgiveness happens in his kingdom where he smashes heaven and you together in baptism, absolution, and the Lord's Supper. Forgiveness happens in fulfilment in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Jesus laments over sin because he died to forgive you.

Conclusion: For Jesus, rejection is part of the job That job is forgiveness. It happens by the Word of Law and Gospel. The Law serves the Gospel. Jesus is such a loving Savior that he reaches out with his Word to draw in wayward sinners who need his forgiveness (which includes us!). All this is because there was no place he could die but Jerusalem – the place of sacrifice: his life to destroy your death. Amen.     

Lent 1 [Luke 4:1-13] (17 February, 2013)

This sermon was preached at St. John's Karoonda at 9 am.  

Temptation. “Ooh, that sounds like a new ice-cream bar. Sounds good.” And I'd agree, but it's not the only thing to think of when it comes to this word. But the first thing that should pop into our heads when we do hear the word is: Jesus. Not because he is the source of temptation (he's not), but because of this very reading, and the Lord's Prayer which he teaches us.

Christ Jesus leads us through temptation and in the Church.

He leads us through temptation because he was tempted in our place. For us, to be tempted is #1 – to be a Christian. All Christians are tempted because they are Christians, and as long as they are Christians. To be tempted is #2 – from three sources: our sinful nature, the world, and the devil. God is not the source, but he does allow these temptations to happen, so that they may be overcome only in Christ. Without faith in Christ, our temptations would be too much for us. To be tempted is also #3 – not the same thing as giving in to temptation. This is obvious from our Gospel reading. Jesus was tempted, but he resisted the temptations of the devil. So temptation, as the Bible shows us, is a serious thing. So for those who are tempted, we must be armed for it. To be armed is to confess that:

Jesus was tempted in our place. For Jesus, to be tempted is something a little different. As the Son of God born of the Virgin Mary, he has no sinful nature. But the manner of his temptation is very similar –

He was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. To be tempted by the devil as he was reminds us of Adam, which is no surprise because Luke places the genealogy of Jesus at the end of chapter 3, and it ends with Adam. Then here in chapter 4 we have the temptation of Jesus. That's on purpose. But to be tempted in the wilderness is to be tempted just as the children of Israel were tempted after the exodus from Egypt. And both Adam and the children of Israel have something in common – they both are tempted to break the same commandments – the commandment of gladly hearing and keeping God's Word (#3), and the commandment of having no other god (#1). Jesus faced the same issues in his temptation. But another thing that those two temptations have in common is that both failed – Adam fell, Israel failed. But not Jesus. Where Israel was faithless, Jesus was faithful. Jesus is fulfilling what Israel was supposed to do in the wilderness; for us he is Israel reduced down to one person. He resisted the devil, and the devil left.

Jesus overcame temptation as true man in Israel's place and ours, and for our sake. As true God he was in no trouble from the devil, but as true man he obeys God in place of humanity, for the sake of humanity. When he had done so, the devil left. But he left, as we heard “until an opportune time.” That time was the Passion and death of our Lord. That's why we read this reading at the beginning of Lent – it points to the cross. The devil was very active in Jesus' death, through Judas. But there is another link: in the third temptation the devil takes Jesus to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem. It's in Jerusalem that Jesus dies as the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world. Jesus doesn't go to Jerusalem to have angels catch him (as the devil tempts him), he doesn't go to Jerusalem to be rescued at all, but he goes to be totally abandoned, to bear God's wrath against sin all alone, that we may be rescued.

And when Jesus resisted the devil, he did so with the same tools that we have: #1 – as we hear: “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness ² for forty days”. We too are filled with the Holy Spirit because Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit. And #2 – every word that Jesus says to the devil is a quote from the book of Deuteronomy. He combats the devil with the Word of God! We also have the same Word of God! We have the same tools!

More important than that, the same Jesus who overcame the devil is the one who delivers us through all temptation in the Holy Christian Church. We may pray “and lead us not into temptation”, but that's because we don't remain in temptation, but are just passing through. Temptation isn't forever, it only lasts from the time Christ claims us through faith until, we pray, we enter into eternal life in heaven. That does still seem like a long time, but –

We're just passing through the attacks of our sinful nature, the world, and the devil. But we overcome them and win the victory only because of Jesus. That's the overcoming of temptation for us – as we pray in the Lord's prayer: “and deliver us from evil”. This is because Jesus overcame temptation, died to forgive our sins, and we belong to him.

Aside: [But this does mean that on earth we are never free from temptation, and as the saying goes “we stand today, and tomorrow we fall”. So daily we pray for the victory that Jesus has promised us, that he may drive back the devil from us. The more we try to do that ourselves, the more space we give the devil to attack. Jesus must do it. And we pray this part of the Lord's Prayer always right after we pray “and forgive us our trespasses” - because as often as we need the devil to be driven back is as often as we need forgiveness for the sins where we have fallen.]

And if we pray “lead us not into temptation” together in the Lord's Prayer, then in truth Christians pass through temptation together in the Holy Christian Church. This is true because Jesus overcame temptation in the place of the people of God, and also because the Church is the place where the attacks come (and because of our sinful nature, the place the attacks come from).

Israel may be reduced to one in Jesus so that he might actively fulfill God's Law. But Israel, the people of God, grows in Jesus (as he gathers in the nations by giving his Word and Spirit). By his Word and Spirit, Jesus brings about the Church, safely places those who believe in him into the Church. It's the best place to weather the attacks of the devil.

Christians pass through temptation in a congregation by living in our baptism, repenting and being absolved (and forgiving each other), hearing the Word read and preached, and receiving that same eternal life by the forgiveness of sins when we receive the body and blood of Christ in our mouths and on our tongues. But other than that, being a member of a congregation isn't important [That's sarcasm.]

We pass through temptation in the Church. “In the Church” is right, because temptation really ramps up in the Church (outside of the Christian congregation is easy pickings for the devil, to be cut off from the Word and fellow Christians is to be vulnerable). But at the same time, inside the congregation we are under serious attack precisely because the congregation is the place of the most protection. So that's also why the congregation is where the attacks happen, because the devil loves to use the members of the congregation as the weapons of tempting Christians into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice.

The devil quoted Psalm 91 to Jesus when he said, “for it is written, "'He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,' ”. If he even uses the Word of God, which is pure and holy, as a weapon to tempt, we can bet he'll use the congregation as a weapon. But that's precisely because the congregation is such a strength to Christians under attack – because God is at work in the church service: here we are washed, fed, taught, and loved. Here there is strength in numbers as we strengthen each other through the same strength we have received in the congregation from God. That's why I love the Church: she is Christ's holy creation, through water and the Word.

Conclusion: We should be concerned about temptation, but that concern should only chase us to one place: to Jesus. Jesus was tempted, but overcame the devil. Jesus was tempted in our place, that he may overcome where we fall. Jesus was tempted, but he would not turn aside from his journey to the cross, that through his death he may send his Holy Spirit to put believers into the Holy Christian Church to weather temptation and receive strength until, we pray, we pass through all the attacks into eternal life in heaven. Amen.  

Lent 1 Video Sermon

Ash Wednesday [John 19:1-16]

This sermon was preached at St. John Lutheran Church, Karoonda, 12 February at 7:30 pm and Trinity Lutheran Church, Tailem Bend, 13 February at 7:30 pm.  It is the beginning of a sermon series on Lenten objects. 

Tonight we receive a cross of ashes on our foreheads. The ashes remind us of God's Word of judgment against sin: “Dust you are. And to dust you shall return.” It becomes a special call to repentance in Lent. But a cross of ashes? A Christian becomes used to seeing crosses all around. We lose the initial shock of what it is. It's a death sentence. And we get used to seeing empty crosses, not a cross with a man hanging on it, probably to keep from offending somebody. But the cross of Jesus Christ is shocking, does offend. Yet today is Ash Wednesday, the day we begin this season of repentance, where we remember that Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross, suffered, and died, and was buried. And we remember why.

Lord Jesus,

Be thou my consolation, my shield, when I must die;

Remind me of thy passion, when my last hour draws nigh.

Mine eyes shall then behold thee, upon thy cross shall dwell,

my heart by faith enfold thee, who dieth thus dies well.

Behold Jesus on the cross!; but behold your sentence – death.

Why doesn't Pilate [the Roman governor of Judea] why doesn't he want to put Jesus to death? He says it again and again: I find no guilt in him. Pilate finds no charge for a case against Jesus – no reason why he deserves to die. Jesus is innocent 1) of all wrongdoing of which he's charged. Pilate figures this out. Jesus is innocent 2) of all sin, though Pilate doesn't know that. There is no case against him. Pilate tries to persuade the Jewish chief priests and Pharisees (who handed Jesus over to him in order to exercise the right of execution which only the governor had), tries to persuade them of all of Jesus' innocence, so he has the soldiers punish Jesus and dress him up in a royal purple robe, with a crown of thorns, to show them how silly their request to find him guilty is. He says, “behold the man!”, and sarcastically, “behold your King!”. Even though Pilate has declared Jesus innocent, yet the people began to riot, so he delivered Jesus to be crucified, nailed to a cross until he died. But he was still innocent, there was no guilt in him.

A much better case could be made against those who handed Jesus over – they handed over an innocent man to death. That's not good. But if we're building a case, and laying charges, why stop there? Are we guilty? Is there a charge against us? Is Jesus' death the result of us? Each of us, yes. That's not good. With God, you're either guilty or you're not. And deep down we all know that before God, to say that we are without sin, that we are completely innocent in all that we have done, would be lying. That's the case against us. Our own heart accuses us. And the sentence is death. Behold your sentence. | Behold your sentence – yet in your place Jesus received it. His death sentence is your death sentence. He is innocent, you are guilty, and he dies, that you may be set free.

What thou, my Lord, has suffered, was all for sinners' gain;

mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly pain.

Lo, here I fall my Savior! 'Tis I deserve thy place;

look on me with thy favor, and grant to me thy grace.

Behold he who stood before Pilate, Jesus, and behold the truth Pilate said to the crowd and us without even knowing it. Pilate said two things: Behold the man! And Behold your King! Is he wrong? But how is he right? John the evangelist wants you to know. Lent is also a period of instruction for the Church. Christ is the teacher and the subject, and tonight John is our text. The inspired Word of God was given to the apostle John. John wants to subtly imply what we find in his Gospel, that we might tease good things out (It's like brushing knotted hair. You have to go slow, have patience, slowly work from different angles. John wants to subtly imply all sorts of Old Testament sections that you the reader have to tease out, fully dive in to (to see Jesus' identity in his crucifixion). He does this subtly, so the language and style he uses is very simple, but what he writes is very deep. Because of that John has been suggested to be the first Gospel someone reads all the way through, but also because of that to be the last of the 4 Gospels you read all the way through.).

On the one hand, Pilate wants to convince the people that Jesus should not be put to death, so he says, “behold the man”, and he means, “look at this poor fellow!”, but that's not what he said. He didn't even know he was saying “behold the man” - the man who will carry the sins of all humanity, the man who stands in your place. John points us by these words from this man (who is the Son of God) to the first man – Adam (which in Hebrew means 'man'). John doesn't just want to bring up Adam's name, but the whole of his life, from his creation to his fall into sin and death. So behold another Adam, the first one in the Garden of Eden fell into sin, and all fell with him. This man Jesus, however, is the man, and will take away all sins by his death on the cross.

Our sermon series this Lent includes various objects of the Passion. The first is a crown of thorns. On my vicarage, in a lovely act of devotion, one member wove hundreds of tiny crowns out of a weed that wasn't sharp but looked like thorns. This went on a small Lenten cross display. Simple as it was, it was still a crown. Pilate says, “behold your King!” He means that he doesn't see a threat to anybody in this Jesus, but is he wrong? He is the King! John has a few sections here he invites you to see. One of them is from the book of Daniel, chapter 7, “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. ¹⁴ And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. (ESV) ” What did Jesus say to Pilate earlier? “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting.” The glory of this king, you're seeing it. Don't think of glory like having riches and sitting around in splendor, think of Jesus' glory as receiving honor from the Father by the disclosure of his own identity as the Son. That, incredibly, is exactly what is happening when Pilate shows the bruised and bloody Jesus to the crowd, exactly what is happening when he is put to death on the cross. The cross is Jesus' glory. Jesus is taking the wrath for sin – in the place of Adam and all who inherited something bad from Adam! Taking it in a way that reveals his glory! - bruised and bloody, wearing royal robes over bruises and cuts, and a crown of thorns.

The proper observing of Lent, therefore, is to see our great problem: the sin that sentences us to death, but also that Jesus takes away our cross as his cross, our death as his death, and that there is no other place where our heart and life must rest than in Christ's blood and righteousness. To observe Lent is to be instructed by Christ concerning Christ. It is to be instructed of our sin, which leads him to die out of love for us, to be instructed of his person and work, that he can do this. It leads us to be instructed of his Word that calls us to repent, of his Baptism in which we daily live in repentance, and of his Holy Supper that gives forgiveness, life, and salvation.

Conclusion: So behold Jesus on the cross!; but behold your sentence – death [the sentence he served in your place!] Behold your new sentence – life from the cross of Jesus Christ. If the cross of Christ is his glory, then there is no other glory for the Christian than this blessed cross.

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down.

Now scornfully surrounded with thorns thy only crown.

O sacred head, what glory, what bliss til now was thine!

Yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call you mine.

God grant it. Amen.

Harvest Thanksgiving [John 6:25-35]

This sermon was preached at Trinity Lutheran Church, Tailem Bend (9 am) and St. John Lutheran Church, Karoonda (11 am) on 10 February, for the celebration of Harvest Thanksgiving. 

It's very funny that on the day we give thanks for the harvest, and give of our harvest, that we would hear words from Jesus from John chapter 6: The Bread from Heaven discourse, which talks about spiritual gifts and spiritual eating. It's like we bring our harvest, with thanks, only to hear: “that's nice, but let's talk about something better.” But it is only that we may give double thanksgiving on this day.

Thanksgiving on top of Thanksgiving is what the Church gives because Christ is the true bread from heaven.

The Church gives thanks for the harvest and for all earthly gifts. (See, we are here to talk about the harvest). We do this in two ways. The first way is by what we say about the harvest during our everyday life. We say that God set up and blessed this work way back in the garden of Eden before Adam and Eve fell into sin. God put Adam in the garden to work and keep it. When we work the land we do it knowing securely that Christ our Lord hasn't forbid this work but only upheld it, and that we have God's command to work the earth and his promise that this is pleasing to him and that he will provide through this work.

We look at every earthly gift of God in the same way: Martin Luther wrote in the Large Catechism “[God] causes all created things to serve for the uses and necessities of life. These include the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens, day and night, air, fire, water, earth, and whatever it bears and produces. The include birds and fish, beasts, grain, and all kinds of produce. They also include whatever else there is for bodily and temporal goods, like good government, peace, and security.” So we learn from this article that none of us owns for himself, nor can preserve, his life nor anything that is here listed or can be listed. This is true no matter how small and unimportant a thing it might be. For all is included in the word Creator” - as in “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”

And we don't just do this on Harvest Thanksgiving, we do it a lot on Sundays. During the service of Communion, when we say, “it is truly right, and for our lasting good, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to you . . .”, we are giving thanks. It's always good to give thanks to God for everything good.

And when we pray the offering prayer; we mention “what you have first given us – ourselves, our times, and our possessions” and that includes our money, and so what we give to the Lord on the Lord's day is standing in for what we just said: ourselves, our time, and all our possessions. But they're not really gifts if God has first given them to us, they are a proper thank you for something that has been given. (it's like kids giving their parents a present all wrapped up - “Oh, it's my own watch. Thank you I guess.” - more of a 'thanks' than a 'giving').

At the same time,

The Church repents because it doesn't give thanks for the gifts of creation and for the gifts of the Church (“But you just said we do give thanks.” “I know.”) The people who found Jesus didn't give thanks in the right way for the feeding of the 5,000. “When [the people] found [Jesus] on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" ²⁶ Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” These are the people who were there for the Feeding of the 5,000. Jesus says the people didn't come because they saw signs (which point beyond themselves) but because they ate a lot (which doesn't point beyond being full); and to prove that they don't think Jesus is doing signs, they ask him what signs he does! After he just fed the 5,000! They didn't give thanks in the right way because in rejecting Jesus' signs they were rejecting spiritual gifts from him.

Unfortunately we too confine ourselves to the quest for earthly things at the expense of spiritual heavenly matters. And we can do that whether we can afford the earthly things or not, because we can pursue them in our heads by mentally arranging them in our house:, “Oh, I know right where I would put that thing and right where this thing should go”.

But all the while we never acknowledge that – everything is perishable. Even non-perishable food items aren't really. Imagine a can of beans after just 100 years. I wouldn't eat that. Even though that's true, still our sinful nature prefers the perishable over the imperishable. So Jesus says, “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.” Martin Luther once preached, “Thus Christ directs the attention of the people to a different supply of food. But when this is proclaimed to flesh and blood, man soon loses interest in this message. Everyone is determined to remain with bread that he can see and feel. Thus the peasant sticks to his corn, saying: “Yes, I hear that You offer to feed me and to give me bread; but I fail to hear the guldens ring or to see the sacks of grain. Where are You keeping these? I am sure that You are a beggar Yourself. Where do You have Your granary? Where is this food?” In reply Jesus declares:

Which the Son of Man will give to you.” And all talk back is silenced.

We don't give thanks for the Word of God (the Holy Scripture), Baptism, and the Lord's Supper when we emphasize the 'give' over the 'thanks'. How can Baptism, the Word, and the Lord's Supper be just another thing that we give to God, when there is nothing we can give to God that he hasn't first given to us? Aren't these things then something different? Something he gives to us?

The Church gives thanks for all gifts because of the Bread from heaven – Christ Jesus our Lord (who reveals himself in his glory at the Transfiguration, which we also remember this day). For Christ and his cross puts everything in its proper place – earthly gifts remain earthly gifts, and spiritual gifts remain spiritual gifts. If Christ is the true bread from heaven, and if the work of God is to believe in Christ Jesus, we can give proper thanks for earthly bread, for him, and for his flesh (even all at the same time).

For Christ can give us all sorts of gifts – earthly as well as spiritual. The foundation of his spiritual gifts is that by his suffering and death he has freed me from sin, death, and the devil. And no earthly gift should take away from that or distract from that but only lead to that, just as we confess the creation of the earth and then right after the salvation of the earth when we confess the Apostles Creed.

And so thanksgiving is never the most important part of Sundays. If it was, everything would be backward. We don't give thanksgiving on Sunday as our gift to God, because then we would leave it at the altar and just go about our week without it. But we take the thanks for what God has done for us on Sunday especially, and we take it with us wherever we go every day of the week, in our hearts, mouth, song, and eyes (that we give thanks for every good gift that we see – clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all that we have). The Christian life is a never-ending song of praise when our eyes see everything in the way that God gave it to us – and that includes fellow church members, family members, government, community, daily bread, the Lord's Supper, the Word – everything!

None of this can happen unless Christ is the true bread from heaven, as he says. This is why Jesus brings up Moses: “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³ For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always." ³⁵ Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Moses didn't give the bread from heaven but it came from God, and the true bread is someone greater than Moses: the Son of God, God himself, Jesus Christ.

He is the bread from heaven who gives eternal life by giving his flesh unto death on the cross that you may have this bread by faith and by eating his flesh. Jesus says that he is the bread from heaven and that his flesh is the bread from heaven, and that the one who eats his flesh will have eternal life. These are shocking words. There is an eating of Christ as the true Bread from heaven that happens in faith. And there is an eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Christ that occurs in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Both of these truths belong together, always. Again, Jesus is the foundation.

So what we do is, we confine ourselves to what Christ lays out for us. We look to all spiritual gifts and earthly gifts for what they are, because of who Christ is. Then we receive all good gifts and no fake gifts (fake gifts would be shown in the 10 commandments – your neighbor's good and property aren't gifts for you because they're for your neighbor, etc. And fake, false teaching isn't a gift because it doesn't teach Christ rightly.)

Conclusion: And so we bring a double thanks. Because Christ is Christ we repent for not giving thanks. Because Christ is Christ, we do give thanks. And because Christ is Christ, we give thanks for bread, for his cross, and for his flesh given for us which we eat. At the altar there is Thanksgiving upon Thanksgiving.  Amen. 

Epiphany 4 [Luke 4:21-30] (3 February, 2013)

(I should probably post these more around the time I actually deliver them.)
This sermon was preached at St. John's Karoonda (9 am) .

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. 

 There's a comedian who does a bit about his mother giving a prize to the first of his siblings to get married, in order to encourage these things, you know. One evening his sister came home from a blind date saying, “he kept calling me Christina the whole night” [that's not her name], to which the mom said, “well you look like a Christina.” That means she took his side, all for the sake of marrying her daughter who would now be known as Christina to a nice if forgetful husband. Now what does this have to do with Jesus being rejected in his hometown? The people of Jesus' hometown thought for sure that Jesus would do the same miracles for them that he did in other towns, but he didn't. “Of course he'll take our side”, they thought. And he did, but he didn't.

Jesus doesn't take your side when he takes your side.

Jesus doesn't take your side when you don't acknowledge your great need for his Gospel, in fact he exposes your sin too by the Law. The people in Nazareth thought he was obligated to them because they were the people of his fatherland (which is why they mention who his father is: “Isn't this Joseph's son?” Legally, they're right. In truth, they're not. But the point is that he's “one of them”, because he's from Nazareth and, as we know, because he's truly God and man.) That's why Jesus tells them what he does – about how God sent his prophets to strange foreigners/'not one of us' people in the Old Testament: “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. ²⁵ But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, ²⁶ and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. ²⁷ And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” Here's what gets them mad: he undercuts all the people's demands of what they think Jesus has to do for them, and says that even his hometown benefits in the exact same way as those godless OT pagans – only through God's mercy in Christ Jesus.

Bring that to today and how Jesus loves us - only one thing on our part moves Jesus to act – our great need. Our great need for what? For everything Jesus read out of the book of Isaiah (which was last week's Gospel reading): good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, liberty to those who are oppressed, that is, the year of the Lord's favor. These are all things we need because of sin, and all things we deny that we need because of our sinful nature.

You can see how hard this is for our sinful nature when we ask the question, “why does Jesus forgive my sin?” Well the answer is obvious: “I'm a good person, and so Jesus is obligated to forgive me because I've earned . . .it. Oh.” “I offered my heart to Jesus, and so it's because of something I did that he then has to forgive . . .me. Oh.” These answers are no different than the people of Nazareth saying, “Jesus has to do miracles for us because we're related, because he's one of us.”

So Jesus doesn't take their side, because he exposes sin (and is rejected for it). It starts with a true statement: “Jesus loves me and is on my side”. But then it goes to a false conclusion: “My Jesus wouldn't tell me anything I do is wrong.” So when we hear in his Word of our own sin, our conscience tells us “that thing that you like, yes, that's a sin”, then we get angry: “he's not on my side. Well, I'm right and God's Word must be wrong.” But that's because we want Jesus to be different than how he is. And how is that any different than the people of Nazareth? Jesus does purposely expose our sin to us through his Word. And we don't like it.

Now, if someone came to your home and exposed deadly mold, you'd thank them even if they didn't do anything about it. But Jesus exposes our sin, and we're filled with rage, when he is the only one who can do anything about it.

Our sinful nature is filled with wrath because you can't stand having one bad word said about yourself, just as you can't stand one good word being said about anyone else (like when it would bug you when your parents would praise one of your friends: “oh your friend Joe, he's really good on the footy field”).

And that rejection by the people there in Nazareth, that's not just a one time thing. It's always part of Jesus' work to expose people's sin. So this crowd here, they want to lay hands on Jesus and kill him, and then the next time in the book of Luke that we hear of somebody putting hands on Jesus in that way is when he's arrested. The people who want to kill him then are the ones who have him arrested and call for his death.

Transition: This is because everything Jesus does there in Nazareth is a lot like what he keeps on doing, what he does all the time. And that includes exposing sin, but it also includes proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor. That's actually why he exposes sin, so he can deal with it.

Jesus actually does take your side when he doesn't take your side - when he defeats sin, death, and the devil in your place by his totally free forgiveness. What Jesus does at Nazareth is the same as what he keeps on doing – exposing sin, and declaring the year of the Lord's favor. He does it not only there, but at the cross and resurrection, and throughout the entire life of the Church. That's his sermon: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” - that's what he was doing when he said it, and that's what he's still doing for you right now. That is him taking your side. But he does it by dying for you on a cross, and does it by baptising you, and does it by giving you his Holy Supper.

The only obligation he has toward you is his mercy, and the only thing we can expect is his grace. And both of those are gifts. Grace means “undeserved gift” and mercy is “pity, compassion and love brought about by the need of the person who receives the mercy”. And that's a lot more comforting than the other way, because you know they're totally good enough, because he tells you in his Word that they're totally good enough. His grace is good enough for you. “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. (Romans 9:16)”. “For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. (Romans 11:32)” But your works, they are never totally good enough to save you. They are totally good enough to serve your neighbor in love, because through them Christ is serving your neighbor.

It's a comfort that he takes your side when he's the one who does the invading. [Who's the one who went out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil? Jesus. Who's the one who brought up Nazareth's rejection? Jesus. Who's the one who goes to synagogues so that even the demons cry out, “leave me alone”? Jesus. And that's all just Luke chapter 4. Go look it up.] When it comes to winning your salvation, that's a fight that Jesus is always happy to start and finish.

You know, if doctors came unannounced, diagnosed disease for which there were no symptoms, cured it on the spot, and for free, everyone would be over the moon. Jesus does better: The Lord's favor for nothing, forgiveness for free.

Conclusion: So never let anyone try and tell you that Jesus isn't on your side, that would be wrong. But at the same time, don't let anyone try and tell you that Jesus isn't on the side of forgiving sins, because he's always exposing sins that he might forgive you, not because you make him, but because he is mercy. Amen.