Sixth Sunday After Pentecost - Proper 9
July 8, 2012 - Pastor Adam Moline
Ezekiel 2:1-5 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 Mark 6:1-13
Ezekiel 2:1-5 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 Mark 6:1-13
Grace, mercy and
peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text today is the Old Testament lesson just read. Thus far our text.
Dear friends in
Christ. What can you expect from your pastor? My home pastor recently shared
with me an email that he had received about what the “perfect pastor” did. Perhaps you have seen it yourself: I must admit, I am a little hesitant to share
this with you, especially as I have just returned from a weeklong relaxing
vacation.
The Perfect Pastor
preaches exactly 8 minutes. He condemns sin, but never hurts anyone's feelings.
He works from 8 a.m. until midnight, and is also the church janitor.
The Perfect Pastor
makes $40 a week, wears good clothes, drives a good car, buys good books, and
donates $50 a week to the poor. He is 28 years old and has been preaching 30
years. The Perfect Pastor has a burning
desire to work with teenagers, and he spends most of his time with the senior
citizens. He smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of
humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his church. He makes 15 hospital
and home visits a day and is always in his office when needed.
If your pastor
does not measure up, simply send this notice to six other churches that are
tired of their pastor too. Then bundle up your pastor and send him to the
church at the top of your list. If everyone cooperates, in one week you will
receive 1, 643 pastors. One of them should be perfect.
What do you expect
from your pastor? What is realistic to
expect from the man God has given to you to be your undershepherd to the Good
Shepherd, Jesus Christ? We can talk
about a lot of different things, social graces, or personality, or whether he
cheers for Bison or Sioux, or even worse the Huskers. We can talk about the right age and weight,
sermon length, or all sorts of different expectations for a pastor.
But dear friends,
our text today tells us that all of these things are not the key to what you
should expect from your pastor. All of
these things are just the peripheral to the center of the issue. Because according to our text, no matter how
nice, or how good looking your pastor is, or which team he cheers for, if he
doesn’t do one thing, he is not doing his job.
The Lord speaks to Ezekiel, “I send you to them, and you shall say to
them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’”
What can you
expect from your pastor? Thus says the
Lord God. When you are faced with a
difficult predicament, you expect from your Pastor the words of God – about
sin, about guilt, about forgiveness, about (pause) Christ. What can you expect from your pastor? The Bible, the Truth. When you talk to your pastor, expect him
whoever he may be, to tell you “Thus says the Lord.”
It is not always
easy. Sometimes what the Lord says isn’t
what we want to hear. Just like the
people in our Gospel lesson today, I hear only what I want to hear, and if I
disagree, I am quick to judge the person.
We don’t want to hear about sin, or death, or guilt, or the consequence
for our own disobedience. And yet, what
can you expect from your pastor? Thus
says the Lord God! When it’s unpopular,
when it’s difficult, when God’s word draws a line that we have passed way
beyond, you can expect your pastor to point it out. Your Pastor proclaims to you the full
harshness of the law, that God expects you to be perfect, and that you blew it,
you messed up, and that you can’t make it right on your own.
No, not to rub
your nose in it, but instead to lead you to repent of sin, to turn away from it
as much as you can as a sinner saint. And
then when you realize that you have nowhere to turn, nothing to do to save
yourself. When you realize that you are
a totally death deserving sinner, then your pastor can say boldly and truthfully
– Thus says the Lord. Then you can and
should expect your Pastor to tell you the gospel as well.
Thus says the Lord
– God became flesh to die for the sinner.
Christ the Lord went to the cross to suffer and die for the sinner who
can’t save himself. Christ came only for
sinners, those who have no other place to turn – Thus says the Lord! You can expect your Pastor to tell you that
your sins are forgiven, that you are made holy in the blood of the lamb. And now, Jesus has washed you in a baptismal
font, to take away all your sin forevermore, and you can expect your Pastor to
remind you of this forgiveness every time – ANY time – that your sin gets the
best of you.
Dear friends,
there is an old Seminary professor who once told of a time over 50 years ago
when a couple came into him – a couple that was the same gender. They asked the pastor to bless their
relationship before the whole church, to publically proclaim them to be united. The pastor very calmly said “No.” He kindly explained that marriage is between
a man and a woman for life, and that anything outside that boundary, no matter
what the circumstances was wrong. “Thus
says the Lord.” That couple cursed at him, they swore at him, they called him
every name under the book, and broke a variety of commandments putting that
pastor in his place. Finally on the way
out the door, they cursed that pastor to the fires of hell.
The pastor prayed
for those people. Year after year that
day came back to the pastor and he prayed for them. Finally, one day one of these gentleman
showed up at the pastors door, “Pastor, can we talk.” They sat down and talked and talked, the man
poured out his soul, the pastor was able to minister to him as he needed,
speaking that same word, Thus says the Lord.
And finally the meeting was over.
The pastor looked at the man and said, “I just have to ask, the last
time you were in here, you didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Why did you come back today?” “I am sorry pastor, but I knew there was one
person who would speak to me straight, tell me the truth, and not tell me just
what I wanted hear – and I needed that today.”
What can you
expect from your pastor? Someone who
will speak the truth in love, Ephesians 4:15.
Not any truth, but God’s truth, THE truth, Jesus Christ, the way the
truth and the life, who will speak the truth to you in good times and in
bad. Who will speak the truth to you
whether he’s your buddy or not. Someone
who will tell you the WORD that unites us as one. The word of Forgiveness, the word of our Lord
Jesus.
What can you expect
from your pastor? If you ask each other
this afternoon, you will probably get as many different answers as people you
ask. Some might have to do with number
of visits, some might have to do with what team he cheers for, some with how
tidy his office is or isn’t. But
underneath all these things, the most important thing you should expect from
your pastor is this: To hear about
Jesus, born of the virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, who rose again from
the dead, and even today lives and reigns forevermore. To hear about your sin, to hear that it is
forgiven, to hear you belong to heaven forever.
To hear, Thus says the Lord.
Amen.