Easter 3 - Misericordias Domini - G - 2017 - You are Jesus' little dear lamb for whom He died

Easter 2 - Quasimodo Geniti - O - 2017 - Dead bones alive

Easter Sunrise Sermon - Abridged from Martin Luther 1534

Easter Sunrise!

Christ is Risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  Amen. 

To the honor and praise of our merciful, eternal God, we wish to preach today about the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is proper that we do so.  This festival enables us to focus on the Gospel’s account of Christ’s resurrection and to learn from it.  It is incumbent upon us therefore, to speak of these happenings, since so much depends upon them for our good, not only in this present life but also in the life to come.  Moreover, when we dwell upon these events, we do so not only because it is useful and good, but also because there with God is praised and glorified.  At least a few on earth may listen to it earnestly and then to come to thank our Lord Jesus Christ for his suffering and resurrection.  Accordingly, it pleases God when we thus pay attention to and preach about the story. 

In fact, the times never comes when we have preached and heard enough concerning the significance of Christ’s resurrection.  We are not preaching anything new, but always, without ceasing about that man who is called Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who died for our sins and rose for our justification.  Yet even if we were again and again to preach about and dwell upon these events, we could never really exhaust their meaning.  We would remain like infants and young children, just learning to speak, scarcely able to form half words!

That is why we wish to speak about it now, because our highest good depends upon it.  So, it is my greatest concern to sustain your interest in this article so that when I’m dead and gone, I might have left you with this treasure.  A treasure that lasts forever, where rust and mold do not destroy.  A treasure of eternal life found in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. 

Yes, today is about him.  He is the one who has won the victory for us.  Death attacked him, who should not die, and was defeated.  For death had to be swallowed up!  The devil must have trembled in fear along with our enemy death.  For they were felled and laid prostrate under Christ’s feet. 

Christ tore open the belly of the devil and the muzzle of death on this day!  Sin death, do you hear?  Shameful devil, why are you accusing us?  What right have you against us?  Sin death and the devil must now be silent as far as Christ is concerned, for he triumphed as Lord over sin death and the devil, not only because he was true God, but also because he was innocent as concerns his human nature.    

And now we esteem him as highest.  Christ is Lord of all.  For if he is mighty, so too must be the resurrection which he experienced – and which we will one day experience as well.  Yes, you will raise because Christ has raised.  Death is powerless, in fact it has been reduced, as Christ says himself, to a sleep. 

Hear it again!  Today we rejoice because our Lord Jesus Christ by his triumph overwhelmed and felled death and the devil; the devil he strangled in his own body, death he drowned in his own blood; sin he erased with his martyrdom and suffering.  All this Christ personally accomplished, but not for himself.  He did not require such a victory for himself after all, he accomplished it for you and for your forgiveness.  Because of his work, you, I and everyone else, all of us are benefited.  That is the power and the fruit of Christ’s suffering and resurrection. 

If a person does not wish to believe this, let him be.  We preach to those who gladly hear and who have need of this message.  These are the ones who live in mortal fear and despair of death and say, “I have sinned I have neither peace nor rest.  I will one day die for my guilt.” 

Against such an enemy it is necessary and needful that we arm and compose ourselves with a correct understanding of the power and fruit of Christ’s Resurrection.  He did not come for his own sake to earth.  He did not permit himself to be killed for his own sake.  He had no need of this, but instead he bore your sin, and by his death he swallowed up your death (and mine) forever.  Hell, which we deserved, he has destroyed, as Hosea writes, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave.  I will redeem them from death.” 

And so it is that we must remember this day, this Easter, every day of our life.  If the devil approaches us and says, “Look here, see how great your sin is; see too how bitter, how terrible is the death you must suffer;” then you must counter with “Devil, don’t you know the power of my Lord Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection?  In him there is eternal righteousness and eternal life; his resurrection from the dead is mightier than my sin, death, and hell, greater than heaven and earth.  My death and sin are minute drops, but my Lord Jesus’ death and resurrection is a vast ocean.

Dear friends, Christ is risen today!  We should be confident that through Christ’s resurrection and victory we have the firm assurance that no sin, not even death, may frighten us.  If sin and death frighten us, it is unjustly so, or because we don’t believe, for Christ has set us free.  He has surmounted all excruciating suffering, and wishes to be our comfort, greater than our sin and death, yes greater than heaven and earth.  But how does our human nature react?  Since this treasure is not in dollars or gold pieces, which we can see and our fists grab hold of, we despise it when it is preached to us through the Word.  I admonish each of you that you learn and comprehend these facts well.  Whoever is not well-grounded and practiced in these articles of faith will find when attacked what a master the devil is.  May our Dear Lord Jesus Christ, who wishes to be our comfort, give us his grace and Spirit, so that we may well remember and retain this lesson. 

For Christ is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!  Amen.  

Easter Vigil 2017

Tenebrae 2017

Tre Ore 2017

Maundy Thursday Sermon

Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-14

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ² “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. ³ Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. ⁴ And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. ⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, ⁶ and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

⁷ “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ⁸ They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. ⁹ Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. ¹⁰ And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. ¹¹ In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. ¹² For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. ¹³ The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

¹⁴ “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

1 Corinthians 11:23-32

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. ³⁰ That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. ³¹ But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. ³² But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

John 13:1-15, 34-35 

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ² During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, ³ Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, ⁴ rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. ⁵ Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. ⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” ⁷ Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”⁸ Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹ Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” ¹¹ For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

¹² When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? ¹³ You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. ¹⁴ If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. ¹⁵ For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.

“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.”  Thus Paul begins his teaching on the Lord’s Supper to a very divided and struggling congregation in the Roman city of Corinth.  And as Paul uses this words, he uses a very technical greek phrase for the passing on of a tradition.  Meaning the thing he is talking about didn’t begin with him, or his fellow pastors or teachers in fact.  Paul received it, Paul was taught it, and the source of that teaching, he says, was the Lord Jesus Christ on the night he was betrayed. 

In other words, the Lord’s Supper is just that, the teaching of the Lord.  It’s the Lord’s Word that is involved.  It’s the Lord’s Supper.  It delivers the Lord’s promises, which Paul says, the Lord is now passing on to you as well.   

And what are those promises?  They are two-fold really.  First as he take the bread and the wine he promises that these are now – by His word – his body and blood.  That means that Christ’s body and blood are really present in the Lord’s Supper.  Its not for us to understand how this happens, we can’t explain it using philosophy or science.  We can’t see it, we can’t prove or disprove it, all we can do is receive the teaching of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus and believe Him.  It is His supper after all.  It is His Word that says so.  We take him at his word.  The bread is his body.  The wine is his blood.  He is present.

Secondly, he promises that this eating and drinking is for you.  Specifically, he teaches in Matthews Gospel that it forgives your sins.  Yes, yours.  The body and blood, in the bread and the wine deliver the forgiveness earned by Christ on the cross right into our own mouths.  By eating the body of Christ in the bread, you have forgiveness of sins.  By drinking the cup of wine which is his blood, you have forgiveness of sins.  And to be clear it’s not that your action of taking, eating and drinking do this – it is God’s Work.  He gives you this great gift, he comes into your presence to be eaten for your forgiveness. 

That’s the message that Paul received – ultimately from the Lord Jesus himself, and that he is passing along to the Corinthians as is recorded in the words of Scripture. 

And that same message is passed along to us today as well.  It is what we believe teach and confess as Lutherans.  We have these words from St. Paul, which we hear tonight in remembrance of Christ’s first uttering them.  What Paul received, he passed down to us also.  The Word of the Lord, spoken that first Maundy Thursday comes to us here now as well. 

And so, tonight, will you let the Lord have his say?  Will you let him forgive your sins in the eating and drinking of His own body and blood?  Will you participate with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven in the foretaste of the wedding feast of the lamb in His kingdom?  Or will you ignore him?  Will you change what he says to better suit your own rationalism?  Will you make the Lord’s Supper into your supper? 

Of course not, you’ll take the Lord at his Word.  You’ll eat his body in the bread, and his blood in the wine, and be forgiven.  You’ll participate in the heavenly wedding feast of Jesus as it is hidden in the Divine Service.   

The first part of that is acknowledging you have sin that needs to be forgiven.  You know that you do.  We’ve already confessed it, haven’t we?   I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment.  But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, and I pray You of Your boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being.  And what we spoke was true for all of us. 

And we heard God’s Word, and were forgiven.  That too is taught by Paul, in chapter 15 of 1^st Corinthians.  “For I delivered unto you as of first importance what I also received:  that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”  And thus the forgiveness for Christ’s sake was announced by God’s word. 

And now in that forgiveness, we feast.  We eat the body in the bread.  We drink the blood in the wine.  We relish the continued forgiveness of sins.  We participate in that forgiveness boldly.  And in so doing, we remember the Lord Jesus Christ who remembered us upon the cross. 

It is the Lord’s Supper we receive tonight, on the night he was betrayed.  It is a precious means of grace that delivers the forgiveness of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus to us Christians to eat and drink.  It is a teaching we have received as upmost importance.  And as often as we eat and drink – which we ought to often, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again. 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.  

Lent 6 - Palm Sunday - G - 2017 - Crowds at Holy Week

The pastor apologizes - somewhere he bumped the button and turned his microphone off.

Text of sermon below:

IN the name of Jesus Amen.  Our text today are the Gospel readings just read.  Thus far our text. 

Dear friends in Christ.  The entire last week of his life, Jesus is surrounded by huge crowds of people.  We saw it in our processional Gospel lesson.  Jesus enters Jerusalem with crowds of people cheering him on.  Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!  The crowd waved palm branches.  They strew his way with their cloaks.  They followed him into the temple.  The crowd was enormous. 

And the crowd listened to him for the entirety of Holy Week as he taught in the temple.  The rulers of Jerusalem were afraid of the crowds in fact.  Scripture is clear that they did not seek to arrest him because they were afraid of the large crowds that followed Jesus.  In fact, they had to arrest him in secret, in the middle of the night, with the help of one of his own disciples. 

The crowds continue in our Passion Sunday Gospel reading.  Only now the Pharisees have wrangled up their own crowd – still a huge number of people.  And this new crowd shouted, “Crucify him!  Crucify him!”  This crowd makes the Roman Governor aghast at their demands!  You want me to crucify your king?  And the crowd shouts Crucify him again?  Pilate washes his hands, declaring he is innocent of this man’s death, and the enormous crowd shouts, “Let his blood be upon us and our children.” 

Then the crowd follows the beaten and bloodied Jesus outside the town walls, and watches as they crucify him.  Yes, Jesus is crucified to forgive the sins of the crowd that follows him.  And then, as he is hanging naked, bleeding, and dying – as he is suffering hell for sinners, the crowd of people there belittle and mock him, asking him to come down from the cross – essentially asking him not to save them from their sin. 

Crowds surrounded Christ, from Palm Sunday to Good Friday.  More people than live in our town witnessed these events first hand.  Huge numbers saw with their own eyes the triumphal entry, the trial, and the death of Jesus. 

But what about in our day and age?  Will there be crowds that gather to remember what our Lord has done for us?  Will there be giant crowds that remember Christ’s promises in the Lord’s Supper this Maundy Thursday?  Will there be crowds on Friday that hear Christ’s own words from the cross during the hours he hung from that cross?  Will there be people gathered in the church remembering that Christ was taken down from the cross and laid in a tomb Good Friday evening?  Will they gather in the church on Saturday to remember their baptism, to hear God’s Word and to look forward to the resurrection of Christ that means our resurrection also? 

Nobody has time for all that, right? 

Of course not.  We’ve got other priorities!  We’ve got to take the kids to athletic practice and school.  We’ve got to fit in 40 hours of work this week – so how could I fit 8 or 9 hours in for church?  We’ve got smart phone that need to be watched.  We’ve got to see if that giraffe had a baby or not.  We’ve got a long to do list that we’ve got to work on sometime.  Plus it’s so beautiful, and the days are getting longer, shouldn’t we spend some time outside?  The TV won’t watch itself!  The Refrigerator needs to be cleaned, doesn’t it?  The Christmas lights need to be taken down – I need to do that in fact!  And so the holy week crowd lessens each year, because priorities change, as our sinful natures point out to us time and again.

What does it matter anyways, right?  These services are all the same, we’ll hear the same stuff we hear every week, right?  Plus, don’t you know how hard it is to keep children quiet during church?  All kids will do is disrupt, it’s not like they’d get anything out of being a part of the crowd that focuses on Christ’s passion. 

Yes, there may have been a crowd that first Holy Week.  But not this Holy Week.  I mean it’s hard to get a crowd together for anything, isn’t it?  We are apathetic about everything!  We can only scrounge up crowds when beer is for sale in the street, or when we are protesting an election or something that we’ve deemed to be a social injustice.  We can only get crowds for bison games – or Sioux games.  Or prom.  Or graduation.  Or ice fishing tournaments.  Or regular fishing.  Or High School sports.  Or academic banquets.  Or the 4^th of July.  Or cares for cancer.  Or meals at the community center.  Or wedding receptions.  Or funeral lunches.  Or parades.  Or polkaing.  Or…

See how hard it is to get a crowd together?  Why should church be any different?  Especially since all that church offers is complete forgiveness of all sin so that Hankinsinners like you can have eternal life in God’s peace and joy. 

Yes – that’s all that holy week means for you.  It means Christ died for your sin of indifference, just like he died for all your sins.  Good Friday means the Son of God in human flesh pours out his blood while suffering your place in Hell upon the cross – and that he does all this for you – specifically for you! For your forgiveness! Christ gave up 12 hours of his life to be arrested and undergo a fake trial for your sin.  He gave up 6 hours of his life to hang on the cross – and spent that time praying for you – “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”  He gave up his life, and shouted – “It is finished.” Meaning the payment for your sin was finished by his own death.  He laid for three days in the tomb and then rose so that there will be an end to the time you lay in your tomb.  So that one day you would rise to live before God in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness! 

This forgiveness, earned by him, comes to you here where he promises to be!  It comes in the word, because he promises that in his word he will send the Holy spirit to you.  It comes in your baptism – which we constantly proclaim in this place.  Forgiveness comes to you as you eat the true body and blood of Jesus which he gives to you from this altar.  Christ promises to be present here for you, for your forgiveness.  He never ceases to give his mercy to you in this place through his Word and sacraments! 

So repent.  Join the crowd that wishes to receive forgiveness from Christ.  But hear this one word of warning – don’t think that by your action of attending church you are going to earn that forgiveness.  Don’t think that the number of hours you suffer through church will make God happy.  Instead realize that we come to church not to fulfill a good work to God, but instead to receive the gifts Christ freely gives.  He gives you forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, freely through the means of grace – His word and his two sacraments!  Which are given often and generously in the divine service this Holy Week, and really every week. 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.  

Lenten Midweek 6 - Letter to the church in Philadelphia

Lent 5 - Judica - G - 2017 - Whoever is of God hears God's Word