Sermon: April 25, 2021

Love Jesus Properly
(John 10:17)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Why do you love Jesus – hopefully with a “love undying” (Ephesians 6:24)? Is it because he’s a nice guy (Matthew 9:36)? Or is it because he’s famous (Philippians 2:10)? Or is it because your family or friends do (John 1:41)? None of these are good reasons for loving Jesus. He himself tells us that we are to love him because he sacrifices himself for us on the cross (John 10:17, 14:23). That’s God’s reason for loving him, and it should also be ours. But that’s not how it goes. Martin Luther spells this out carefully. Christians, he explains, love Jesus “so long as… the message of the Gospel will… enrich them. This is all they look for in the Gospel. But when they hear that through its message they will be delivered from sin, death, and the power of the devil, they ignore all this and despise the Gospel.” Caring for their belly is their “one concern.” They’re not interested in acquiring “a treasure that will not pass away” (Luther’s Works 23:11, 10). So material considerations matter more to Christians than the sacrifice of Christ – which is the only sound basis we have for loving him. And we’re not alone in digging this hole for ourselves. “False teachers [will arise] among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought [you]” (1 Peter 2:1). The Master who bought you? Yes, that’s the sacrifice which is the basis for our love of Christ. So what’s needed most is what’s attacked directly. Because of that “guilt is greater than pain and sin is worse than death” (LW 52:279). Our corruption is that bad.

     And there’s hell to pay for our corruption manifest in the wicked displacement of the sacrifice of Christ. “And what does God do about it? If the Gospel and the everlasting food are despised, then God must bring about famine, withdrawing physical food from us and ushering in pestilence, war, and every type of catastrophe. Thus he teaches us manners…. God cannot tolerate abuse of His Gospel by the selfish pursuit of our own interests and our greed, which we disguise in the cloak of the Gospel. God does not have His Gospel proclaimed for the sake of the belly, but for the welfare and the salvation of our souls” (LW 23:12). So Christ’s sacrifice must be lifted up above everything else. “He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). “He gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). And God made “peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20). Because this sacrifice is so essential, it’s a disaster when it’s either ignored or attacked. And yet churches go down this two-lane road and become “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18). Don’t they see that we need this sacrifice because we cannot save ourselves? We can’t save ourselves, “not by a long shot, my dear fellow” (LW 68:39). Again, Luther helps us see what the church denies. “As little as a natural sheep can feed, direct, guide itself, or guard and protect itself against danger and misfortune – for it is a weak and quite defenseless little animal – just so little can we poor, weak, miserable people feed and guide ourselves spiritually, walk and remain on the right path, or by our own power protect ourselves against all evil and gain help and comfort for ourselves in anxiety and distress” (LW 12:154). Indeed, apart from Christ “you can do nothing” (John 15:5). And yet Christians go on trusting in material well-being above Christ’s suffering and death for us. Not far off from this misstep is fierce self-reliance which stands on the conviction that “people rise to the level of their ambition, and there’s no such thing as luck” (Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, 2013, p. 229).

     Against this we must always cling to the belief that Jesus “bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). To be saved, then, means nothing more than “to be made free, to get rid of sin and death, to be freed from God’s wrath, from evil’s power, from the Law, and an evil conscience” (Luther’s House Postils 2:172). This is a great message of hope. “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). So let us “rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). That’s because “all our good is outside of us, and this good is Christ…. Hence all the praise of the church… belongs to Christ, who dwells in His church through faith, just as the light of earth does not belong to the earth but to the sun which sheds its light upon it. [So] the saints… declare that all their good is outside of them, in Christ, who yet through faith is also in them” (LW 25:267). Oh, how difficult it is to see that the light never emanates from within us – especially when fame tells us that “it’s okay to seek greatness. That does not make me a black hole seeking attention. It makes me a supernova.” From this it quickly follows that we quit worrying that “abundance is forbidden fruit” (“The Rise of Amanda Gorman,” Vogue, May 2021, pp. 138, 104). Be forthright, then, and insist that Christ is our protector, our friend, and our good shepherd. But note carefully what Luther has Jesus say about this. “You did not make yourselves My friends; but you became My friends through Me. Before this you were enemies and the devil’s friends by nature. Now you shall be and remain My friends if only you keep this one commandment [to love others] for My sake and for your own good. I gave My life for you; and to Me you are dear friends acquired and bought with My blood. You shall have everything through Me and be free” (LW 24:255).

     So rest assured that you have been healed and that the new heavenly life has been opened up for you (Hebrews 9:20). For you, God’s wrath has been set aside (Romans 5:9). So peace in heaven awaits you after you die. But not now. No, now you’ll have tribulations (John 16:33). For some their childhood even has been “bookended by... 9/11 [and] this global pandemic” (Michael J. Fox, No Time Like the Future, 2020, p. 229). So be warned. “If you want to be a Christian and strive earnestly for the life to come, you will surely feel the devil pressing you…. He will terrify you, aggrieve you, he will choke you…. We have to suffer for that now; and we must not imagine that we will have happiness and peace here on earth” (LW 28:106). Enduring those troubles is one of our good works on earth – along with showing love for others and helping them bear their burdens (John 13:34, Galatians 6:2). And we can hold on in tough times because none of that suffering is worth comparing with the glory that will be ours in heaven (Romans 8:18). So don’t despair. Keep on loving others. God is on your side because of Christ’s sacrifice for you. That will make all of the difference for you when suffering comes your way. Ground your life in that sacrifice. Keep your eye on Jesus and his cross and suffering (2 Corinthians 2:2, Hebrews 12:2). Then you’ll prevail. Steadfastness will be yours (1 Corinthians 15:58). And then you’ll also be able to love Christ properly. Amen.

Hymn of the Day:  “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” (LBW 456)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cHWMltF9_8

Sermon: April 18, 2021

Keep Repenting
(Luke 24:47)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) catches us off-guard. He tells us not to confess our sins. Isn’t that outlandish? Doesn’t it fly in the face of the Bible which tells us to confess our sins (1 John 1:9, Luke 24:47)? Doesn’t it even contradict Kierkegaard’s faith in Jesus (Luke 13:5)? Well, not quite. And that’s because of the reason he gives for not confessing our sins. Kierkegaard believes that going over the sinful details of our lives as a “petty arithmetician in the service of faintheartedness,” breeds dishonesty by way of a “perpetual enumerating” of sins. The result is that we never become sinners but only people who make mistakes now and then – and so by confessing our sins one after another we miss grasping “the essential magnitude” of the sin within us, which makes us sinners in and of ourselves. That’s critical because true confession of sin is “not merely a counting of all the particular sins but is a comprehending before God that sin has a coherence in itself” which makes us more than a collection of sins, but an actual sinner. Without that we’ll never be changed by our confession – having lost the “conception of the change that takes place in the knower when he is to use his knowledge” of sin correctly (Kierkegaard’s Writings 10:34, 29, 31, 32). So admitting that we’re sinners before God is better than listing sins one by one. For in the midst of our sins we easily lose sight of the fact that we’re sinners. We “can’t see the forest for the trees” (The Proverbs of John Heywood, 1546). Kierkegaard, being the “Danish Luther” that he was (R. F. Marshall, Kierkegaard in the Pulpit, 2016, p. 286), probably learned this from Martin Luther who was famous for saying that we should “sin boldly” – not meaning by that to sin all the more, but rather to admit being a “mighty sinner” or fortissimus peccator in the original Latin (Luther’s Works 48:282). And there’s nothing nice about that, for a fortissimus peccator means that we’re nothing but “damnable knaves” (LW 43:228). And that makes us “completely worthless” (LW 16:16–17). We are “all sin” because we are “saint and sinner” simultaneously (LW 73:185). No wonder Kierkegaard had to concentrate all of his earnestness if he was ever going to see himself as a simple, straightforward sinner (Journals, ed. Hongs, §4:4038).

     As you can imagine, many pooh-pooh this understanding of ourselves. Admitting that we’re sinners is too much for us – having “no soundness” in us from the “sole of the foot even to the head” (Isaiah 1:6). Having our sin magnified “beyond measure” like this – so that it completely engulfs us – is over the top (Romans 7:13). Being a sinner altogether devastates us – doing in our self-esteem and positive self-image. Luther knew this meant that we would “resent reproof” and not admit that we’re sinners (LW 22:389, 25:207). And so he also knew that repentance would be “rare” (LW 32:35). When preachers then defiantly fly in the face of these objections and “diligently… exhort” us to repent anyway, we “bear… a grudge” against them (LW 46:171, 22:396). That’s why many today believe that they have “outgrown” such a childish faith based on the “poison of scrupulous self-loathing,” insisting that “the intended faith of the Bible” is quite different (James Carroll, Christ Actually: Reimagining Faith in the Modern Age, 2014, pp. 36, 42). But against this criticism of sin and repentance, the Bible continues to insist that only repentance enables us to “come to know the truth… and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:25). This captivity is ghastly and it leads to the fires of hell that never go out (Mark 9:48). So hell is horrible and much to be feared. “It will not be a fire that roasts and singes... a little and then dies out.... No, [the damned] will remain in the fire forever and be burned to powder” (LW 24:238). But many today think this is funny. The deathcore band, Winds of Plague, however, have a short music video, Open the Gates of Hell (2013), which puts the lie to all of this frivolity. In it the demons scream out – “Follow me to the city of woe, follow me to where divinity dare not go. March among the damned through barren wastelands; follow me to fire and brimstone.” This surely isn’t Paradise Lost (1674), but it’s about the best we have today in popular culture to illustrate this major Biblical theme. And we need the help because Christians also should have “zero tolerance for... gravitas as dead weight, a millstone for the mind” (Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey, 2018, p. 9).

    So don’t disparage repentance – for without it we are “worthy of death and hellfire” and “hell stands ajar” (LW 76:434, 22:405). Only repentance protects us from perishing (Luke 13:5). Only repentance opens up the way to forgiveness (1 John 1:9). Only repentance restores our life with God (Luke 15:21). And these time-honored promises aren’t crafted by people but come solely from God. Even though ancient scribes wrote them down they are “really” words from God (1 Thessalonians 2:13). So it’s wrong to interpret them “by the properties of human textual communication” (The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, April 2021, p. 310). That’ll only blind us from the truth about ourselves and God. For “by nature we are all palsied. The more we try to draw close to God and be reconciled with him through our works, the farther from him we get; and… the greater becomes our trepidation” (Luther’s House Postils, ed. E. Klug,1996, 3:88). So rather than interpreting the Bible we need to fall down before it. That’s because “repentance… consists mostly in our acknowledging that God is right and… that we are all sinners and all condemned” (LW 51:318).

     So do not look to your own strength but to Jesus who is “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). We must decrease; Jesus must increase (John 3:30). Don’t be fooled into thinking that “it is possible to reject Christ as Lord without making Jesus superfluous to an ecclesial project” (Timothy Murphy, Counter-Imperial Churching for a Planetary Gospel, 2017, p. 170). Trust in the Lord Jesus and then everything is turned around for the better. “I will rebuke myself; then God will praise me. I will degrade myself; then God will honor me. I will accuse myself; then God will acquit me. I will speak against myself; then God will speak for me” (LW 14:150–51). But none of this happens because we’re sinless or holy. “No, you must learn to feel and recognize your sin…. A sinner is a person who feels his sin…. Thus only those sinners belong in the kingdom of Christ who recognize their sin, feel it, and then catch hold of the Word [of forgiveness]. He admits no saint; He blows them all away; He expels from the church all who lay claim to holiness. If sinners enter, they do not remain sinners. He spreads His cloak over their sins…. To be sure, sin is there. But the Lord in this kingdom closes His eyes to it, covers it, forgives it, and does not impute it to the sinner” (LW 23:318). That’s because on the cross Jesus bears our sins, suffers for them in our place, and cancels the legal bond that stood against us (Colossians 2:14). His blood saves us from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9). And so on the cross Jesus draws us to himself (John 12:32). Even though few are drawn (Matthew 7:14), and the redeemed as a container is “getting smaller,” its contents are graciously all the “more concentrated” as a result (Deseret.Magazine, January/February 2021, p. 66).

     So spread the good news that God will not despise “a broken and contrite heart” (Psalm 51:17). Get the word out. Don’t give up on repenting. “Again and again we must proclaim that the grace of God cannot be attained unless we confess our sins” (LW 22:405). And don’t throw in the towel by praying – “Please help me to hate White people. Or at least to want to hate them. At least, I want to stop caring about them.... Free me from this burden of calling them to confession and repentance” (A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal, 2021, pp. 69, 71). Don’t be fooled either by the culture of self-esteem. Learn what its practitioners have discovered of late – that rather than grasping for self-worth we should aim for “learning, mastery, personal growth and communication with others” every day of our lives (David D. Burns, Feeling Good, Revised Edition, 2000, p. 343). So work at finding a positive, constructive place in your life for a “heavy heart” (LW 13:376). Beware of the “fleeting pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:25). Don’t cave into the urge to be “constantly stimulated” and entertained (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 20th Anniversary Edition, 2005, p. x). Instead focus steadfastly on that “eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17). And give thanks to God for all of these admonitions, for by their power we can keep on repenting. Amen.

Hymn of the Day: “With High Delight Let Us Unite” (LBW 140)

Sermon: April 11, 2021

Don't Doubt
(John 20:27)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Jesus never budges. Again and again he tells us not to doubt him (John 20:27, Matthew 14:13, 21:21). He doesn’t think doubt enriches our Christian lives. Doubt doesn’t make us sophisticated believers – building in us courage and insightfulness (contra Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 1957, pp. 18–22). Neither is it the hallmark of our identity as followers of Christ Jesus. Our faith isn’t about dubito ergo sum– “I doubt, therefore I am” (Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Works, 1969–70, I:219, 324). It instead is about oro ergo sum – “I pray therefore I am.” For the goal isn’t investigation and discovery, but dependence and obedience. Becoming “slaves of God” is our rightful aspiration (Romans 6:22). Because of that, “answering back” to God has no place in Christian living (Romans 9:20). Hearing and keeping his word is enough (Luke 11:28). Doubt politicians all you want – for people aren’t trustworthy (Luther’s Works 45:123, Jeremiah 17:5; John R. Lott, Jr., “A River of Doubt Runs Through Mail Voting in Big Sky Country,” The Square Center, March 24, 2021). And be sure to check over your mathematical calculations, for you could have slipped up. But when it comes to the message of the church, it “must rest on certainty” (LW 13:140). “For faith is and must be a confidence of the heart which does not waver, reel, tremble, fidget, or doubt but remains constant and is sure of itself.” That’s because “the Word of our God… is steadfast, it is certain, it does not give way, it does not quiver, it does not sink, it does not fall, it does not leave you in the lurch. And where this Word enters the heart in true faith, it fashions the heart like unto itself, it makes it firm, certain, and assured. It becomes buoyed up, rigid, and adamant over against all temptation, devil, death,… that it defiantly and haughtily despises and mocks everything that inclines toward doubts, despair, anger, and wrath; for it knows that God’s Word cannot lie to it” (LW 15:272). Therefore we do “holy Scriptures the honor of believing firmly that none of their writers has ever erred” (LW 32:11). With this godly certainly we soar among the clouds – we’re “borne aloft above the clouds [where] everything is lofty and heavenly” (LW 8:165, 167). Glory be to God! So when it comes to his holy word, “don’t find fault with it, and dispute it. Just hear it. [Don’t] probe it, measure it, and twist the words to read as you want them to, brood over them, hesitate, doubt, and then judge them according to your reason. [Instead] tread your wisdom underfoot” (LW 23:229–30).

     This, of course, appalls the intellectually respectable. Certainty like that, they say, leads to extremism which can easily lead to physical violence. So the better part of wisdom calls Christians to hold their horses. Back off and become lukewarm again (contra Revelation 3:16). The Christian’s “imperialistic certainty” must give way to moderation. For “love of truth demands commitment to open-ended exchange” (Morson & Schapiro, Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us, 2021, pp. 25, 56, 74). The irony in this critique, however, is that it’s a case of the “pot calling the kettle black.” So the moral alternative to Christianity isn’t free of the very indictment that it levels against devout Christians. It’s like complaining about complainers. Or being sure that it’s wrong to be sure. No advance here. Nothing morally superior at all. Just a standoff. So this critique of Christian certainty resolves nothing. All it does is show a conflict of convictions – the determined Christian against the cautious secularist. So Christians had better “stand fast like a wall” (LW 60:106). That’s because there’s nothing convincing calling them to the contrary. In fact, if they were to move toward moderation, conciliation and compromise, God no longer could help them (James 1:6–8). They would then lose their distinctive blessing – “the defiance and arrogance of the Holy Spirit” (LW 24:118, 15:275). For “a wavering heart… will certainly receive nothing. For our Lord God can give such a person nothing…. It is as if you have a vessel in your hand, but refuse to hold it still and keep waving it back and forth…. That’s the way it is with an unbelieving, wavering heart. God yearns to give us what we need, but we stand there like crazy beggars. We hold out our hat,… but keep on moving it around, refusing to hold it still” (Luther’s House Postils, ed. E. Klug, 1996, 2:423). This is serious business and it’s mostly laughed-off today. May we never forget, however, that “when the heart has doubts... it is also driven in a short moment to blasphemy and despair” (LW 4:144). Now if that goes un-rectified, we’ll have hell to pay for it, given the severe wretchedness of blasphemy. So doubters aren’t heroes. They’re “sheep gone astray” (LHP 2:59).

     To bring us back home and help us out of this jam, Christ sets another example for us. He remains still and keeps focused. His “steadfastness” marks him indelible (2 Thessalonians 3:5). “He set his face to go to Jerusalem” and never looked back (Luke 9:51, 13:33, 23:46). He dies on the cross rather than running from it. He sacrifices his life on it to save us from our sins (Hebrews 9:26). He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He follows God’s “definite plan” exactly (Acts 2:23). He knows that “no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). The more we fiddle around, the less gets done. For “nothing can be so pointedly argued with reason which cannot also be refuted by reason” (LW 39:219). The debates are endless – as we see today in what’s being disputed regarding sexual freedom (Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest, ed. Berlant & Duggan, 2001, pp. 304–311). This leaves us “hanging in doubt;” “fallen into doubt” (LW 79:81, 82). Christians, therefore, must cut this short and “confess and lament” their weakness of faith and hardness of heart, that they cannot bring the love for Christ into their hearts “with as strong a faith as they ought.” And so they have to “fight and contend against their weakness all their lives” (LW 77:46). So we also “must fight against doubt” (LW 73:392). And that’s because faith is “such a great and difficult matter!” (LW 6:10). But without Christ our battles get nowhere. He has to set the stage and send forth certainty – “The Lamb of God is slain…. The true High Priest has completed His offering; the Son of God has… offered up His body and life as a payment for sin; sin has been blotted out; God’s wrath appeased; death overcome; the kingdom of heaven won and heaven opened” (LW 69:265). Those eight clear, straightforward and stunning victories give us breathing room to live for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:15). They make the impossible possible (Luke 18:27). Here, then, “is a great certainty. This certainty depends only on strong faith, which does not waver. Christ certainly will not waver. He is firm enough. We should, then, emphasize faith and exercise it with preaching, working, and suffering, so that it stands the test and becomes firm” (LW 75:203). When the church does just that, it rightly says to heretics: “Mine is the wisdom; to the Gentiles: Mine is righteousness; to the Jews: Mine is worship and piety; to death: Mine is life; to sin: Mine is peace and joy, not by myself or my own strength, but through Jesus Christ.... This is a most beautiful transformation, that the church, miserable in the eyes of men, should be so richly adorned in the eyes of God” (LW 12:261).

     Moving ahead, we in the church should then uphold that “what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). But we have to be careful here. While it’s true that “faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26), not just any works will do. We can’t forget “that there are two kinds of works: some are before and without faith; others are from and after faith. As little as nature outside of faith can be idle, and just as natural works do not make or precede nature but nature must first exist and the works be produced out of and from it, so also believing works do not make faith, but they follow and are made by faith. For this reason, the works must be present, but they do not merit or save; rather, all salvation and merit must first be present in faith” (LW 79:84). And when it is, then the work of this conviction about what’s exalted among us has its place in the Christian’s life. Much to our chagrin, the world exalts the lukewarm and moderate (Revelation 3:16). Christianity, however, calls us to fight against the evil in us and around us (1 Timothy 6:12, Ephesians 6:12).This is our constant state, for Christ, the Lord of the Church, is always “surrounded” by enemies. “In the very center, where He is, He will find the area full of enemies. There is no indication... that Christ will reign anywhere else, or that His churches will be found anywhere else, than in the midst of enemies. Who would expect such a kingdom or believe that it could endure?” (LW 13:273). No wonder, then, that we’re called to be godly “soldiers” (2 Timothy 2:3). And as soldiers, we won’t be averse to running into danger and forgoing at least for a time our “petty little lives” (Jane Blair, Hesitation Kills: A Female Marine Officer’s Combat Experience in Iraq, 2011, pp. 133, 274). May God be with us when we do just that, as we wage this dangerous but good war (2 Corinthians 10:3–6) – and pursue its goal which is not to doubt. Amen.

Hymn of the Day: “Thine Is the Glory” (LBW 145)

Sermon: April 4, 2021

Don't Flee
(Mark 16:8)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     The first Easter didn’t go very well. Those who found the empty tomb and heard that Jesus had risen from the dead, “fled,… for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). That’s about it. We don’t know why they were afraid. In earlier times of trouble we’re told that they failed because “the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). If that’s the case here too, then they’d have a tough time with Easter also. For it would be hard to apprehend the eternal while dwelling on the weak flesh – on the transient and temporal (2 Corinthians 4:18). If your minds are set on earthly things, you won’t be able to appreciate what’s heavenly (Colossians 3:2, John 3:12). If death consumes you, then resurrection goes begging.

     Martin Luther understood this. Believing that we “rise from the dead after this life” is very difficult to fathom because “present appearances… belie this, with man lying under the ground, stinking like a rotting carcass” (Luther’s Works 28:98). “Death, which is the almighty empress of the entire world,… clashes against life with full force,… and what it attempts it accomplishes” (LW 26:281). “Right before our eyes... the entire world is being snatched away by death and is dying.... Great and small, young and old – in sum, all the children of men – are laid in the grave and covered one after the other. One is devoured by wild animals; another is [cut down] by the sword. This one leaves his bones [scattered along the road]; that one is burned up by fire. This one is consumed by worms in the earth; that one by [sharks] in the sea; another is eaten by the [vultures] of the air. It is indeed hard to believe.... that the human soul shall again dwell in the very same body where it had dwelt before; and that a human being shall have the very same eyes, ears, hands, and feet, except that the body with its members shall have a different substance” (LW 69:286). All of that stymies us – and Easter takes a back seat at best. Dead people just don’t live again – especially after being buried for three days. Because of that, the Easter report sounds like “a useless, inert, and powerless babbling” (LW 77:104). No wonder they fled. We would have too. “Hence the church will have this title:... Miss Hopeless. This is the way things are especially according to [our] feelings” (LW 17:242). Left only with those macabre feelings, “they rate the world as a gruesome place, where fair looks fade to a skull’s grimace” (Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems, ed. J. Gibson, 2001, p. 208). And that squeezes Easter right out of the world.

     To rectify that, more is needed to open our eyes to the truth of Easter. Luther thought four compelling testimonies – first from the prophets of old, then the enemies of Jesus, then his friends, and finally from Jesus himself – all “certified” the truth of Christ’s resurrection (LW 69:288). But still “a greater power” is needed if we are going to take these testimonies to heart (LW 57:283). If we are going to “treasure [this] eternal blessing,” we’ll first have to despise this life so that we don’t “sink too deeply into it either with love and desire or suffering and boredom, but [instead] behave like guests on earth, using everything for a short time because of need and not for pleasure” (LW 28:52). Otherwise we will “choke” (Matthew 13:22) on the testimony in the Easter report, and flee like those wayward followers of Jesus did long ago. We need to learn to long for a “future and better life,” since this life is no life at all but only the “mortification and vexation of life” (LW 8:114–15). Much is twisted up – even the “inequality” between men and women in procreation rates (David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, 2018, p. 246). And nothing abides. Don’t forget Bill Hwang’s “$100 billion [that] evaporated in mere days” (K. Burton and T. Maloney, “One of the Greatest Hidden Fortunes is Wiped Out in Days,” The Seattle Times, April 1, 2021).

     But if we hold on to the testimonies of the resurrection, then we’ll be able to “strive for something other than [what] we find here on earth, something no king… can give and no scholar or doctor knows and understands” (LW 28:157). This begins when Christ transfers his “victory to us” with all of it attending power and might (LW 28:213). In that victory he bore “our sins and death, which we had justly deserved…. He stepped into our place, and… let the Law, sin, and death pounce on Him…. Now they are overcome for us…. In that way we have complete victory in Christ” (LW 28:210–11). Then we’re “made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). And that life comes to us when Christ “our Paschal Lamb” is sacrificed (1 Corinthians 5:7). In that sacrifice “a new covenant” is set up which redeems us from “the transgressions under the first covenant” (Hebrews 9:15). That’s the good news we’ve been waiting for. Now the curse is lifted, which was inflicted on us for our sins against God (Galatians 3:13). “Give up on yourself and your own powers and cling to… Christ” (LW 56:225). For “we benefit only from the precious payment… of Christ, purchased… out of His unfathomable… love, if we hold to it with firm faith” (LW 57:283). And “this is the very work of faith, to fight against sins and to slug it out with death. This is the security of the godly” (LW 17:389). Glory be to Jesus! – even if this security is only held by a minority in America anymore (S. P. Bailey, “Less than Half in U. S. Say Religion is Very Important,” The Seattle Times, March 30, 2021).

     But that security must never be hoarded. We have been called to comfort others with the consolation we ourselves have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:4). And that will include more than commiseration. We must help others “take the benefit and fruit of the resurrection to heart [and] understand it rightly” (LW 56:135–36). Being imprecise and vague about this won’t work, as in – “Have you seen the gizmo with the adjustable thingamajig I use to tighten the doohickey on the whatchamacallit?” (Mike Baldwin, Cornered, January 17, 2021). So putting it correctly is important and no small task. So “boldly press forward like drunken men. [Be] full of the Holy Spirit [and] bold, that [you may] go… confidently,… rather than fearing danger” (LW 20:295). Begin with explaining that there is a desire in us “that cannot be satisfied through what is relative and perishable.” Then add that “our deepest longings will not be satisfied in this life.” That’s because “death and age [will] bring the realization of human possibilities to a screeching halt.” Herein lies the crisis that we all face. That’s because even though “we know that life is mortal, that life is fleeting,… we are loathe to acknowledge this fact.” But our aching incompleteness plagues us anyway. And that drives us to “the transformation of the present order” (Janis Rozentals, The Promise of Eternal Life, 1987, pp. 29–31).

     At that point Christ’s life matters. And it does by showing that “if the body did not decay in the earth, a new, living body would never come from it. Life must come out of death” (LW 58:123, John 12:24). And furthermore we remember that “if there was no sin, death would have no right or power over us…. Through sin, death slays us.” And it is precisely Christ’s death that shows how believers “no longer have sin” enslaving them, for even though sin still goes on, it isn’t counted against them any longer. Through faith in this miracle I then will have power to “snap my fingers at death straightaway” and be free of its torments (LW 58:156). That’s precisely where we should all want to be – defiantly snapping our fingers at death. With that defiance we’ll stand on the conviction that “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail” (Nicholas A. Basbanes, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 2020, p. 343). Settle into that defiance by finding glory in Easter, and then thank the Lord for his goodness and mercy, so that you remain steadfast (1 Corinthians 15:57) and don’t flee. Amen.

Hymn of the Day: “Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands” (LBW 134)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkmEmSksHv0

Sermon: April 2, 2021

Cross the Finish
(John 19:30)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Seconds before Jesus dies on the cross he tells us that it’s finished (John 19:30). But we already knew that. Nobody walks away from a crucifixion. So why are we told that it’s come to an end? Crucifixions aren’t like races that are done (2 Timothy 4:7). There could reasonably be other races or other laps coming up. And it’s the same with projects in general (Philippians 1:6). Questions remain when and if they’re really done. But not with crucifixions. So why does Jesus tell us what we already know? Well, because we actually don’t know what we think we know. For Jesus is not talking about the crucifixion itself – but what it’s about. And that had to do with more than what a passerby could see. So if we’re ever going to know, we’ll have to be told. A revelation will have to be made. And that’s exactly what we have – beginning at the cross with these cryptic words of Jesus – “It is finished” – and then extending throughout the rest of the Bible.

     When Jesus dies more is happening than his sheer dying – something invisible is going along with the visible crucifixion (2 Corinthians 4:18). When he dies more is accomplished than shutting him up. When he dies his life is still unfolding – like that grain of wheat, when planted, which bears “much fruit” after having been dead in the ground (John 12:24). What we have is what we can’t see. There is a fragrant offering made to God by Jesus when he dies (Ephesians 5:2). For when he dies he saves sinners from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9). That’s what’s finished on the cross – that’s the finish line Jesus crosses when he dies. That’s the revelation we were waiting for – and yet it hides as much as it reveals. We still need to know why God was so angry. And we still need to know how the death of Jesus helps us escape from being hurt by that anger. Without those answers we really don’t know what Jesus is saying from the cross when cries out with a loud voice, “It is finished” (John 19:30). And so we’re on the search for what does not meet the eye. And thankfully it can be heard from various voices throughout the Bible.

     Of all who have lived on earth, God expected the most from us. Human beings alone were made to praise him (Isaiah 43:21). And like no other creatures, we were expected to “learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, and plead for widows” (Isaiah 1:17). God doesn’t expect that from gold fish or carrots – or from anything or anyone else but from us. Not even baboons and orangutans. He has these high expectations for only us, and we blew it – and we have been blowing ever since. So early on it’s no surprise that God even wished that we’d never survived (Genesis 6:6). That’s because like sheep we all went astray (Isaiah 53:6). Good grapes were planted, but wild grapes were all that hung on the vine (Isaiah 5:2). This waywardness irreparably damaged us. And so we were helpless – there was “no balm in Gilead” (Jeremiah 8:22). The ransom for our lives was too costly (Psalm 49:7–9). And that was because our iniquity – our failures and wickedness – had created a separation from God that couldn’t be bridged (Isaiah 59:2). Being cut off from his mercies, we all languished. There is no good in us; and we don’t even want God back (Romans 7:18, 3:11). That leaves us delusory (Revelation 3:17) – and on good days, despairing (Romans 7:24).

     And there we all sat, stewing in the juices of original sin (Psalm 51:5). But when the time was right (Galatians 4:4), God had mercy on us and sent his only son, that by believing in him we might have new life now and in the life that comes after death (John 3:16, 1 Timothy 4:8). But how did God’s son, Christ Jesus our Lord, bring this about? It only could happen by the “sacrifice of himself” – then, and only then, could he be “the mediator of a new covenant” (Hebrews 9:15–26). Dying on the cross, Jesus is punished for our sins, so that they no longer separate us from God (1 Peter 2:24). That’s because God punishes Jesus instead of us. It’s as if Jesus “had been slapped by a giant hand” (J. M. Coetzee, The Death of Jesus, 2019, p. 50; Isaiah 53:4). So by dying on the cross, Jesus saves us from the wrath of God which our sins earned for us. This rescue was utterly necessary because for generations we had been troubled by the thought that “if a man sins against God, who can intercede for him?” (1 Samuel 2:25). But now the rescue has come. And by admitting our error and believing in Jesus, God freely gives us this new life. Indeed, “Christ has taken our place [and] has once and for all paid and satisfied for us the whole debt by which we were obligated to the Law” (LW 73:127). But “if we do not repent but misuse his kindness and patience, his judgment will be all the more severe. We must, therefore, be careful not to be found among the calloused and unrepentant” (Luther’s House Postils, ed. E. Klug, 1996, 2:376). Then we are saved from the everlasting fires of hell (Mark 9:48, Luke 16:23, 28, 2 Thessalonians 1:9). For “even though I have been stung by the devil and his hellish poison, bitten by sin, troubled by my conscience, aware that by birth I am a child of wrath and condemned to death, nevertheless I believe and am convinced that my Lord Jesus Christ bore my sins on the cross, overcame death, and has reconciled me with my heavenly Father…. The promise of eternal life is mine. Therefore, I will joyfully put my whole trust in him” (LHP 2:221). And Christ deserves it – having sacrificed “Himself on the cross.... He hangs on the cross... and there dies a shameful death. He does that for the benefit of the whole human race, to redeem it from the eternal curse. Therefore, He is both the greatest and only sinner on earth, for He bears the sins of the whole world, and also the only righteous and holy One, since no one is made righteous and holy before God except through Him” (LW 58:45).

Sermon: April 1, 2021

Eat & Drink Christ
(Mark 14:22-24)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: March 28, 2021

“Remember That Curtain”
(Mark 15:38)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     When Jesus dies on the cross the curtain in the temple is torn in two from top to bottom (Mark 15:38). What a loud ripping sound it must have been! Yet we usually pay little attention to it. That, however, is a mistake. That’s because the cross causes the tear – thereby illuminating the reasons behind it. Martin Luther drives this home. He proclaims that the cross brings Judaism “to an end” (Luther’s Works 29:203). That’s why the curtain in the temple is torn in two. That curtain in the temple stands for Judaism – the religion of the Jews that doesn’t depend on the divinity and sacrifice of Christ. So with Christ’s death, Judaism is made “obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13). For Christ is “the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant” (Hebrews 9:15). That’s important because the first covenant couldn’t save the Jews. And that’s because we are actually “justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28).

      But the first covenant thought works of the law were just fine (John 1:17). That’s why the Jews acted “abominably and foolishly” when Jesus called them to love him and follow him. And so God punished them for their unbelief. That’s why to this day “they have been wandering about in misery with hardened hearts and have lost their kingdom, priesthood, and everything…. This is what happens when someone despises God’s Word: God despises the despisers in return” (LW 69:246–47). And this opposing of the wayward isn’t vicious. Even “many animals set up actual barriers for walling off their microbial gardens [building] good fences for making good neighbors” (Ed Young, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and the Grander View of Life, 2018, p. 86). Furthermore, we shouldn’t suppose that this punishment is just for the Jews. Luther firmly believed that when Christians are half-hearted about following Jesus (Revelation 3:16), the divine wrath inflicted on them for their smug defiance is “even worse” than what the Jews have had to suffer (LW 47:268).

     Still Luther concluded that it’s a good idea that “Judaism should die” (LW 19:104). Otherwise we might lose so great a salvation based on faith in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:3). For if Judaism were to remain viable, we could easily be enticed to become “righteous before God” through ourselves (LW 78:7). And if that were to happen we would end up making a “shipwreck” of our faith (1 Timothy 1:19). But many reject Luther’s idea and his critique of Judaism – and the Bible verses that buttress it – and think that the Jews are fine the way they are living at peace with the law. But Luther insists that “the substance of Christianity is a much nobler thing and altogether different” from what Judaism provides (LW 14:22). And he believes Judaism and Christianity cannot go together – forming some kind of a hybrid Jewish-Christian religion. “Believing and glorying in the grace of Christ and the forgiveness of sins cannot exist together with wanting to follow sin and remain in the old, former, unchristian way of life characterized by error and destructive desires” (LW 79:184). This strict view is the narrow way that brings life through Christ alone (Matthew 7:14). Even though it sounds bull-headed, it is still better than a life based on the law which doesn’t “cease manifesting our sin… and terrifying” us (LW 26:371).

     But Christ brings us a good and wholesome life with God. He sets us free from sin and brings us peace with God (Galatians 5:1, Colossians 1:20). And so we need Christ because our sin deadens us, leaving us spiritually “corpselike” (Romans 7:9, LW 3:152). But in Christ we have “abundant life” (John 10:10). When he lives in us through faith in him we become a “new creation” (Galatians 2:20, 2 Corinthians 5:17). This is because of the power he brings from dying on the cross. When he’s crucified, he “stepped into our need and misery, Himself became a man, and took such dread, eternal wrath on Himself, and for it He offered His own body, life, and blood as an offering and payment for sin. He… made satisfaction, and paid for us” (LW 57:283). Doing so he extends power to us to “die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). Doing so he acquires that power from God to bless us by saving us from the divine wrath. “Eternal death and God’s wrath take us by the throat; we are never at peace but constantly plagued in body and soul here on earth, making it an enormous, woeful, fear-ridden kingdom of the devil” (Luther’s House Postils, ed. E. Klug, 1:111). Indeed this earth is a place where in some countries we’re allowed “to be foolish so often” (Chris Stirewalt, Every Man a King, 2018, p. 113). So when Jesus saves us from the wrath of God it’s a big deal (Romans 5:9, Galatians 6:14). That’s true for us even though “the cross… is the basest thing in the world’s eyes” (LW 67:117). Therefore Luther, in one of his Christmas sermons, puts these words into God’s mouth that “this child was not given only to the mother so that she might supply Him with milk, but for you, so that He might die and deliver you from My wrath” (LW 58:194). May that deliverance never look to us like the worst thing on earth. May we never fixate on Jesus “looking real Petered out” on the cross (Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind, 1958, p. 16). May his deliverance instead be our everlasting joy!

Hymn of the Day:  “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” (LBW 482)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDkuxEIcpdI

Sermon: March 21, 2021

“Hate Yourself”
(John 12:25)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Listen to these three statements about love and hate from the Bible. We are to hate ourselves but not others (John 12:25, 1 John 4:20). God can love the world but we must not (John 3:16, 1 John 2:15). We are to “hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9).

     So what do you make of them? Are they all clear and sensible to you? Or are they confusing? Do you wonder why we don’t just love everyone and everything and leave it at that? Martin Luther thought that would be fine if it weren’t for sin. But sin ruins everything. Sin is rebellion against God and his law. So sin is defined as lawlessness (1 John 3:4). And that lawlessness leads to unbelief – making sin also “whatever does not proceed from faith” (Romans 14:23). That double definition of sin plagues us. It ruins us. No wonder God “abhors” us (Leviticus 26:30). No wonder God wants to “destroy… sinners” (Isaiah 14:9). Therefore Luther concludes that “there is nothing to hate but sin” (Luther’s Works 14:162). That’s why we are to hate ourselves – because when we sin we become sinners. This hate doesn’t mean sticking a needle in your eye. It instead means detesting your lawlessness and unbelief. So self-hatred for Christians has to do with “spiritual life and spiritual affairs,” focusing on our hearts – so it’s “in the presence of God… where you… deny yourself, and forsake all” (LW 21:90). Our hearts are “deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt” (Jeremiah 17:9). No wonder then we’re looking for “gigantic forepleasure lives” (James Dickey, Poems 1956-1967, 1967, p. 259). So if we think that we can make improvements by negotiating with contenders we betray “a profound ignorance of the human heart” (Robert Elder, Calhoun: American Heretic, 2021, p. 272).

     Acknowledging this deep corruption shows that “we are nothing” because of what sin has done to us (LW 4:55). Nothing good is in us (Romans 7:18). Self-hatred then isn’t such a problem because there isn’t anything to defend because we’re nothing. “I am nothing,” says the Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 12:11). And we should say the same in order to hate ourselves. Hating ourselves is for giving all the glory to God (1 Corinthians 10:31). In fact, we’re no longer even alive – but only Christ is alive in us (Galatians 2:20). That’s our “new creation.” “The old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is our rebirth – being born again, after our physical births, this time being born “of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5). It’s the birth of our transformed minds, you could say (Romans 12:2). It happens when Jesus chooses us “out of the world” (John 15:19). It’s what changes us from being happy earthly residents (Luke 12:19), to “aliens and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11). Then we’re “fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Corinthians 4:10). Which makes us in favor of “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). That’s because we’re against people living “for themselves,” as worldly folks do (2 Corinthians 5:15).

     This transformation changes the way we love. Loving ourselves, pleasure, money and the world are out (John 12:25, 2 Timothy 3:4, 1 Timothy 6:10, 1 John 2:15). Loving God, our neighbors and our enemies are in (Matthew 22:37, 1 John 4:20, Matthew 5:44). Because we are defiled from within (Mark 7:20–21), our love is fouled-up. We don’t love correctly because we’re distorted inside. We’ve been “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). So our love is mixed-up and backwards. Luther thought it was marked by “hellish wickedness” (LW 77:379). That’s because left to ourselves we love what we shouldn’t. Luther thought we excelled at “making right wrong and wrong right by all sorts of clever artifices and queer tricks” (LW 21:115). So hating ourselves is in order because our love is wrong. And so we ought to be “displeasing… to ourselves” (LW 27:181). This fight with ourselves over right and wrong love shares traits with the “most massive and vicious war on this planet: that between bacteria and the viruses known as bacteriophages” (Walter Isaacson, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race, 2021, p. 75).

     Luther also knew how difficult and massive this war was. He knew that when “the preacher declares we are nothing,” a great cry will go out that we’re “going too far” (LW 23:157). For we continue to believe that we are fine (Revelation 3:17). We deny sin, “justify it [and] reject all reproof.” We are that “steeped in darkness” (LW 22:399, 391). Opposing the challenge to hate ourselves, we even take up the life of the rich man who “feasted sumptuously every day” (Luke 16:19). We desire “exquisite food and magnificent clothing.” We want them, we cling to them, we choose them. We get all our “joy, delight [and] pleasure” from them. We use them to serve ourselves (LW 78:56). These mistakes make us unsound “from the sole of the foot even to the head” (Isaiah 1:6). We are thereby “enveloped by darkness” and “shut up in... universal darkness” (LW 22:390, 30:226). That’s why those who reject God end up with “a thick mire” (The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1984, p. 12). So Saint Augustine’s great book, The City of God, from AD 427, argued long ago that “the earthly city is formed by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; [but] the heavenly city by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord” (The City of God, §14.28). These two ways are at war within us. Which way we go is left up to God and our own frightful struggle (Romans 9:18, Philippians 2:12). In the face of our corruption and resistance, we cry out – “Does this not break your heart?... Does this not make you weep?” (Luther’s House Postils, ed. E. Klug, 2:191).

     But sadness isn’t all there is. Christ also enters our lives to fight for us, and by his suffering for us, becomes “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:9, 1 John 3:8). That’s because by the shedding of his blood on the cross he saves us from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9). This rescue is monumental. For Luther is right that it “cannot be any trifling wrath of God when we hear that no other sacrifice can stand up to this or compensate for sin except the only Son of God…. This sacrifice is presented to us so that we can have sure and true comfort against our sins, for in this you can see and comprehend that He does not want you to be lost because of your sin, because He gives you this sacrifice as the highest and most costly pledge of His grace and your salvation” (LW 77:19–20). And we need this grace desperately because our problems all boil down to this one – that “there is no greater sin in the world than that of unbelief. Other sins in the world are mere fleabites in comparison, like when [youngsters] go poop in the corner and we laugh at this as if it were something cute and okay” (LHP 2:192). But loving ourselves and opposing Jesus aren’t like little fleabites (Luke 2:34, Philippians 3:18). For “it is imperative to remain solely with the Person Christ. If you have that, you have all; but if you lose that, you have lost all…. In Christ you have the bread of life. He can give you eternal life, deliver you from death, and take the devil captive. You must trust that Christ is the Fountainhead of life, and that God has poured all His gifts, His will, and eternal life into Christ and has directed man to Him” (LW 23:55).

Hymn of the Day:  “My Song is Love Unknown” (LBW 94)

Sermon: March 14, 2021

“Thank God for the Snake”
(Numbers 21:8)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Jesus thought he was a dead snake – for as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, “so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3:14). That led Martin Luther to say – “that bronze serpent was an image of Christ” (Luther’s Works 22:349). So Jesus takes us back to Moses interceding for Israel when God sent poisonous snakes to kill them for disobeying him. God answered Moses by saying to put a bronze snake on a pole and if a serpent “bit any man, he [could] look at the bronze serpent and live” (Numbers 21:9). So time collapses on the cross. What happened long before in the desert happens again at the crucifixion. It’s a time warp. But nobody was looking for a repetition of that. It was too “strange and odd” for that to come around again (LW 22:338). For how can a bronze snake save somebody from poisonous snake bites? Just think about it. “The poor people who had to lie among the fiery serpents were not helped at all, even though they tried all the medicine they could find, but only became worse the more they labored and struck the serpents” (LW 78:53). Furthermore, “you will never be able to stare those serpents away. Rather take a pair of tongs or other tools and use force to drive the serpents away. What a great idea to look at the serpent! Even a cow could stare at the serpent – but how could that help her? Looking or gazing at an object seems so silly. It is an easy task to perform…. But believing that this simple and superficial opening of the eyes and looking at the pole and the bronze serpent should have healing power against the snakes’ venom – this is difficult” (LW 22:349). But against this we know that “the healing lay not in looking at it but in the command from God that they should look at the serpent and in the promise of deliverance” (LW 1:227). Even so we still hope “if only you would, instead, give us a drink, a cooling plaster, a cooling drink, to take away the venom and fever! What good can mere words and looking do? How can that dead and lifeless object up there benefit us?” (LW 22:339). And so we’re left incredulous.

     But you better not stay that way because “sin is a hot, poisonous bite and sting, which attacks the conscience so that there is never any rest. Sin chases and propels death, and death chases the man, so that there is nothing except genuine hell” (LW 78:51). And you also better not stay incredulous because “it is characteristic of our God to perform great things through insignificant, humble, and odd means” (LW 22:349). So don’t be put off by the offense of it all (John 6:61). You wouldn’t want to miss out on the miracle – thinking we can get no more from God than the metaphysically acceptable and modest “patterned intensity of feeling arising from adjusted contrasts” (Stephen Lee Ely, The Religious Availability of Whitehead’s God, 1942, p. 25). No, we have more than that. God’s only son, Christ Jesus, “condemned sin with sin, drove away death with death, overcame Law with Law. How did he do this? He became a sinner on the cross with the title, ‘in the midst of the evildoers.’ As an archcriminal He suffered the judgment and punishment a sinner ought to suffer. He was innocent… and yet the… punishment actually fell on Him. So just in that way – that He loaded the sin onto Himself, which was not His, and let Himself be judged and condemned as an evildoer – He blotted out sin” (LW 78:52). Now that’s some miracle alright. So be humbled by it (Luke 18:14) – and “believe in the serpent, Christ, who bestows eternal life on all those who believe in Him” (LW 22:349). Without Christ and his sacrifice our lives will end poorly, and our funerals will leave much to be desired. The poet, Charles Causley (1917–2003), well describes such a paltry funeral (Collected Poems, Revised Edition, 2000, p. 144):

                  The parson boomed like a dockyard gun at a christening,

                  Somebody read from the bible. It seemed hours.

                  I got the feeling you were curled up inside the box, listening.

                  There was the thud of hymn-books, the stench of flowers.

True faith, however, brings much more consolation (2 Corinthians 1:3–7). It “does not doubt; it yields its whole heart to the conviction that the Son of God was given into death for us, that sin is remitted, that death is destroyed, and that evils have been done away with – but, more than this, that eternal life, salvation, and glory, yes, God Himself have been restored to us, and that through the Son, God has made us His children” (LW 22:369). “Through death Christ… destroys him who has the power of death [and] gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Hebrews 2:14, Ephesians 5:2). “Through this substitution Christ atones for my sins and takes away from me the wrath of the Father. The living, fiery serpent is within me, for I am a sinner, but in him is a dead serpent – provided I have faith in Christ” (Ronald F. Marshall, “Our Serpent of Salvation: The Offense of Jesus in John’s Gospel,” Word & World, Fall 2001, p. 388). Through this sacrificial gift we have life and death is no longer our worst enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26). And we rejoice because we cannot handle death ourselves. For “being brave lets no one off the grave” (Philip Larkin, The Complete Poems, ed. Archie Burnett, 2012, p. 116).

     But watch out. That bronze serpent of old has a name – Nehushtan – and so it had to be destroyed (2 Kings 18:4). The reason was that it “degenerated into error and superstition” (LW 43:157). People decided to worship it – but they “must not worship” it (LW 51:82). And yet they did it anyway thinking it was medicinal in and of itself. So they broke the commandment against graven images (Exodus 20:4). They side-stepped faith and fixated on the pole in the desert. But that didn’t help anyone. Today is no different, but for other reasons. Today we see it in those who are distracted by snake handling in Mark 16 and conclude that if you don’t handle rattlesnakes in church then you’re “going to hell.” But this is to mistake risking snake bites for the “extreme dangers” imbedded in following the words of Holy Scripture about “opposing the devil, the world, the flesh, and all evil” (Ronald F. Marshall, “Taking Up Snakes in Worship,” The Bride of Christ, November 1996, pp. 20, 41). So let us learn from these foibles and steer clear of them (1 Corinthians 10:6). For we need this stricter view if the church is ever to become “half as large and twice as strong” (“Our Serpent of Salvation,” p. 393). May we then see Christ in the bronze serpent, and not the other way around. Then his death will be the only medicine to save us for eternity (2 Corinthians 4:10, Matthew 8:17). Then you’ll hanker after Christ crucified as well as preached above all else (1 Corinthians 2:2). Then you’ll share his death as worthy of all the glory, because it alone crucifies the world to you and then you to the world (Galatians 6:14). That frees you from yourself so that you can live for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:15). Then Christ’s words will guide your steps all the days of your life (Colossians 3:16, 1 Peter 2:21). Then the way that Christ is a snake will become clear to you – that the offensive serpent is none other than “Christ crucified” (LW 30:253). “Concern yourself solely with the death of Christ and then you will find life” (LW 42:104). And then you will, with Luther, also “believe in this serpent, Christ” (LW 22:349). You indeed will, as you surely should, give thanks to God for your weird salvation – and even for that snake. Amen.

Hymn of the Day:  “What Wondrous Love Is This” (LBW 385)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re1EtfbOcp4

Sermon: March 7, 2021

“Keep the Commandments”
(Exodus 20:6)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     When we hear God’s law it sounds awful – screeching with an “unpleasant,… doleful and deadly voice,” like a raven cawing. Or so Martin Luther thought (Luther’s Works 2:160–61). “Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?” (Five Man Electrical Band, “Signs,” 1970). The law is so pushy. It “deals with us very harshly” (LW 73:106). We grow weary with the world “continually urging… and saying, ‘Do, do, do’” (LW 56:44). Indeed, “the law is a word of death, a doctrine of wrath, a light of sadness” (LW 76:48). It’s “an unkind, inhumane doctrine that glowers at the people and appalls them” (LW 58:199).

     Why then should we keep the law (Exodus 20:6)? And how can we sing out – “Oh, how I love your law!” (Psalm 119:97)? How can the law give us “heartfelt pleasure” (LW 75:144)? For “the heart always remains hostile to the Law and strives against it with inward disobedience” (LW 77:230). What’s lovable about the law – that we should love it? Well, it’s what preserves life among us. That’s why we should love it. We’re “roused by the Law” in order to live properly (LW 73:223). Without the law corralling us in, we’d be devouring each other. There’d be only mayhem in our cities and families, in the air and on the seas. We need the law to “restrain the ungodly” (LW 73:171). And the “whole world” needs this – not just believers in God (LW 73:156). So it is God’s law that gives us life that we may “walk at liberty” (Psalm 119:93, 44). Otherwise all that we would have is chaos abounding.

     But for all of that godly order, and benefit provided, the law still wanes. We need more than it can give. For all of the good that the law does, it still “does not make me a better person; it does not make me loving or hopeful or obedient. Indeed, it cannot. For by itself it cannot do anything but afflict, ruin, and alarm consciences” (LW 73:134). This humbles us, and that’s good (LW 73:82). But humble people are not good people in the eyes of God. So the law knows when to refer to another. It knows when to ask for help. It knows its limits. It knows what it cannot do (Romans 8:3). And the only way that we can walk in newness of life is if we “die to sin and live to righteousness” – something which the law cannot provide. No, the only way that this can come about is if a pure sacrifice is made to God by bearing our sins and being punished in our place for them (1 Peter 1:19, 2:24). As the end of the law (Romans 10:4), this is precisely what Jesus does for us when he is crucified – putting away sin “by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). His death for our sins “cancels” the legal debt against us for violating God’s holy law through our rebellion and transgression of those sacred limits (Colossians 2:14). Having “confidence in the law [to make us better people] is vain and stupid” (LW 25:350). Only Jesus can do this (Acts 4:12, John 14:6). In him “I can... begin to love God and my neighbor. Where I still lack and fail, I have a precious umbrella in Christ who shades me.... [I used to think] that it was up to me to keep the Law; now I realize that’s impossible for me.... Under Christ, my umbrella, I am always covered; and so, I am as pure and innocent as the sun, but always on account of Christ in whom I believe” (Luther’s House Postils, ed. E. Klug, 1996, 1:186). So look to Jesus and believe in him (Hebrews 12:2). Because we are all “transgressors of the Law and under sin, [whoever wants] to be freed… should believe in Christ” (LW 73:104).

     What makes the law “noble” is not that it saves us from being punished in hell for our sins, but that it “drew down Christ from heaven” to die for us (LW 73:112). “We have been visited graciously and redeemed with a great price” (LHP 1:474). Indeed, “the Law’s glory… should only shine until you are humbled and driven to desire the sweet face of Christ” (LW 79:36). For when “Christ is present, the Law loses its power” (LW 73:78). Mercy and grace are then “lavished upon us” (John 1:17, Ephesians 1:8). “Christ has taken our place, and He makes good what we lack and by His blood erases the… decree that stood against us, until finally the Law has been satisfied by one in the place of us all” (LW 73:127). “His pain is my comfort; his wounds, my healing; his punishment, my redemption; his death, my life” (LHP 1:474). Therefore “Christ… makes the Law… delightful and sweet” (LW 73:90). But that’s not because the law now saves us through Christ. No, it’s rather because it will now “teach you [how to] be wise and not careless” in leading your Christian lives (LW 58:300). And we need that because when help wanes and withdraws, “the world resumes its old flaws, and things are again mismatched and misplaced and the cruelty of men is tempered only by laws” (Mark Strand, Dark Harbor: A Poem, 1993, 2012, p. 30).

     And so in our Christian lives, focused on believing in and following Jesus, we should “keep the Law, and yet not trust in it” (LW 77:387). For the law helps us “walk by the Spirit” – but not also gain salvation by so doing (Galatians 5:25). If you have no interest in making “every effort to supplement your faith with virtue” (2 Peter 1:5), then only “pure Law… is to be preached” to you in order to instill in you the “fear of God’s wrath” (LW 78:217). But if you’re geared in by the wonders of faith in Jesus to living a sober, upright, and godly life, being “zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:12–14), then the law is your “kind friend and companion” (LW 76:15). So take it to heart and learn from it about how to live righteously.

     “All the wisdom” from the Bible about living righteously follows from the first commandment (LW 51:140) – that we are to have no other gods than the one true God of Israel (Exodus 20:3). That first commandment is our north star. It tells us that we are to trust in God “and in no one else” (LW 44:30). That radical freedom gives us power to set aside ourselves and to care for others. Without it we are hopelessly selfish and ungrateful. That leads to the next commandment about not misusing God’s name (Exodus 20:7). That means not cursing or teaching falsely in his name (LW 51:144). This is important because by so doing we’ll be disabused from seeking a name for ourselves (LW 44:42). And that modesty leads to the third commandment about keeping the Sabbath day holy (Exodus 20:8). In it we’re trained to “give all glory to God alone” (LW 44:79). That comes about by “earnestly and reverently [hearing] God’s Word” as we worship weekly (LW 51:144). No room here for critical evaluations of Holy Scriptures. Instead we are to hear God’s word and to keep it (Luke 11:28). That’s because we are to accept it “not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

     The rest of the commandments are about helping each other. The first is about honoring our parents (Exodus 20:12). That’s not because they brought us into the world or because they are our elders. It’s rather because they are to instill in us God’s deep truths – that we are to “neither fear death nor love this life” (LW 44:85). Only those truths make them honorable – because they too are sinners like the rest of us (Romans 3:23). Next is the law about not killing others (Exodus 20:13). This command doesn’t prohibit stopping wrong doers (Romans 13:4). It’s rather against gratuitous murder and vengeance (Romans 12:19, Hebrews 10:30) – as well as mean-spiritedness (Matthew 5:22–26). Neither are we to break our marriage vows and be sexually promiscuous (Exodus 20:14, Matthew 5:27–30). Struggling against lust enjoys no “peace and quiet” (LW 44:106). It’s a life-long battle. The next commandment is also difficult to keep – don’t steal (Exodus 20:15). That’s because it’s about the larger concerns to “work faithfully and sell your things fairly” (LW 51:158). Most think it’s confined to petty larceny. Even so Luther thinks that this law still would have us sing – “Open thou wide thy kindly hand to the poor man in thy land” (LW 53:279). And the commandment against lying is broader than usually thought as well. It allows for deceiving enemies to protect the innocent (Joshua 2:4, Matthew 1:5). But it also covers treating others the way you would like to be treated (LW 44:110) – a law we call the golden rule (Matthew 7:12). Finally there’s the law against coveting – or wanting what others have (Exodus 20:17). This is wrong because life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions (Luke 12:15). So don’t labor for the food which perishes (John 6:27). Instead lay up for yourselves “treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20). Luther believed that breaking this law had to do with “a more subtle kind of fraud.” Take your neighbor’s fine house, for example. The coveter doesn’t “steal it, of course; but he employs dodges and devises in order to get possession of it” (LW 51:160). So be warned of being “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin,” as well as being taken in by its “fleeting pleasures” (Hebrews 3:13, 11:25). All of these commandments are designed to help you do just that.

     And so keeping these laws will help you be Christian. That’s because being Christian means being “a different man than a reasonable heathen and an intelligent, worldly man” (LW 77:117). It means that you struggle to obey God and his laws. May his power fill you as you fight with all your might to keep the commandments. Amen.

Hymn of the Day: “O God of Earth and Altar” (LBW 428)

Sermon: February 28, 2021

“Deny Yourself”
(Mark 8:34)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Jesus commands us to deny ourselves (Mark 8:34) and we skip it because of our ties to Laodicea. They were the people of old who said “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that [they were] wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17). That’s right, we’re all just like them even though we all have different family backgrounds. That’s because we think and act like them. We’re chips off the ol’ block, as we say. And that makes us fools because while we may have earthly treasures, like them, we aren’t “rich toward God” (Luke 12:21). Only self-denial and faith in Jesus makes us rich in that way. We instead think we’re fine without any of that – but we’re wrong. So even though we need self-denial to improve ourselves, we don’t do it because of our lineage. We also don’t do it because, with Martin Luther, we know how tough it is on us. Luther defined “true denial [as being] dead in yourself” (Luther’s Work 67:292). Now that’ll kill self-denial if anything will. So we’re content to “look at ourselves through rose-colored glasses [so we can] pat ourselves on the back” (LW 21:216).

     How shall we then take up self-denial? What will help us deny ourselves and find the new life of faith that follows from it? Will examples of human wretchedness help? Will that do it – driving us to deny ourselves? Will that help us see how “sin is a very cruel tyrant who cannot be overthrown and expelled by the power of any creature” (LW 26:33)? Will that lead us to self-denial? I don’t know. “Seldom if ever,” Luther laments, “does a man want to be a sinner. For what is it to be a sinner if not to be worthy of all punishment and trouble?.... If you confess that you are a sinner, you must take punishment, injuries, and ignominy as your own and your rightful possessions…. God is proving and asserting that you are a sinner, because He brings to you the things that befit sinners” (LW 25:216). So admitting how bad off we are – so that we see the need to deny ourselves – is extremely difficult to do. For “to become a sinner is to destroy this way of thinking by which we believe tenaciously that we are living, speaking, and acting in a good, pious, and righteous way, and to adopt another mode of thought (which comes from God) whereby we believe from the heart that we are sinners, that we are acting, speaking, and living wickedly, that we are astray, and thus we come to blame ourselves, to judge, condemn, and hate ourselves” (LW 25:218). And when we do, then we’re ready to say that “we are so entirely inclined to evil that no portion which is inclined toward the good remains in us” (LW 25:222). And that leads inexorably to self-denial.

     Now that’s surely exhausting to follow. It takes the wind out of us. Maybe then we do need some terrible examples to get us to practice self-denial. Remember Kitty Genovese (1935–1964)? “For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab [her] in three separate attacks” (Kevin Cook, Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America, 2014, p. 78). That report was bone-chilling. It exposed our extreme callousness – how we’re homo urbanis (Cook, p. 166). Or how about the infamous Nazi doctors who conducted barbaric medical experiments on prisoners for Hitler? Those doctors were the best and brightest – well educated and cultured. But beneath the veneer of civilization they showed nothing but the “darkness and menace” running through us all (Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, 1986, p. 3). And what about Rwanda during the spring of 1994 when “some 800,000 people were hacked to death, one by one, by their neighbors”? (Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: the Killers in Rwanda Speak, 2003, p. vii). Hard to miss the murderer lurking in us all when pondering Rwanda. Then there’s child pornography. Within these circles, “children are… assumed to have consented… or sought sex [and rather than being injured by it, find it] rewarding and educational” (Philip Jenkins, Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography, 2003, p. 117). That this goes on at all shows how perverse we are as a people – to say nothing of its huge popularity.

     Shall we continue? Dare we go on? Yes, there are also the Native Americans. In the 1830s thousands of them living in the southeast United States – many of whom were Cherokee – were forced out of their fertile lands on terrible trails into arid land newly designated Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. The roads were “horrid in the extreme,” often walking under freezing conditions, and even burning up children sitting too close to camp fires to get warm (Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory, 2020, pp. 132, 280). This expulsion shows how deep cruelty runs in us. So does the abuse inflicted on women by women in new leadership roles. The shame is seeing women acting like “Cinderella’s sisters and her step mother too” (Phyllis Chesler, Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman, 2009, p. 490). This shows how little solidarity matters to us. Note also the harm we’ve inflicted on each other over the last hundred years in America through drug production, use and neglected treatment (David Hertzberg, White Market Drugs, 2020). And there’s also the chemical contamination of our land and lives all in order to make more money. After decades of fighting and exposing these dangers, pending legislation designating these chemicals as hazardous substances “has not yet passed” (Robert Bilott, Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against Dupont, 2019, p. 371). This shows how our deep love for money blinds us in the extreme.

     These examples at least make us wonder if we are “nervously balanced between contradictory impulses” (Conversations with Dana Gioia, ed. John Zheng, 2021, p. 54). But maybe they go further and force us to say with Luther – “I belong in hell” (LW 56:334). Or do they? Are we still dodging the indictments? Or are we ready to say – “All people are by nature children of this fratricide Cain” (LW 78:78)? We all murder our brother as Cain did Abel (Genesis 4:8). I think not. Our Laodicean heritage still blinds us into thinking that none of those examples determine who we are. We can’t say that we “should trust no one [and] act as though [we’re] dealing with one who is ungrateful, and should expect persecution and the height of ingratitude in return for deeds of kindness” (LW 30:326). That’s just too much. In our world the truth is that the devil’s chapels are “much larger than God’s church” (LW 41:169). And so the truth goes begging and self-denial isn’t practiced.

     Will we then need more than horrendous examples shocking us if we’re ever going to deny ourselves? It surely looks like it. We’ll need a holy one who has already denied himself for us. And that is Jesus – “who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself” in order to be crucified for us (Philippians 2:6–7). In that divine self-denial – as odd as it sounds – we find hope . That’s because God’s kingdom is “a kingdom of faith in which God rules in a manner strange and different from what men are able to understand and conceive” (LW 13:253). He doesn’t address us with rational propositions for our consideration. Instead he knocks us flat as he did Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:4). He goes “against all the wisdom and power of the prince of this world.” Like a diving, cruel hawk, he attacks the devil in order to save us. And so he explains – “I will force My way through and bring it to pass that you rise and reign” (LW 5:225–27). That’s what his self-denial does for us to bring us to faith through our own self-denial. He dies for us and then we are to die to ourselves (2 Corinthians 5:14). We are to imitate Jesus and walk in his steps (1 Peter 2:21). Glory be to God for Christ’s salutary force and cruelty which brings us to new life! He “does not wait until we come and ask Him for these heavenly blessings, but He anticipates us and comes to us, wants to be near us and with us and to give us the greatest blessings He has” (LW 58:391). “I spread out my hands all the day,” says the Lord, “to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good” (Isaiah 65:2). “There they stand like a rock” (LW 47:175). So what else could our gracious Lord do given that a lost sheep, contrary to its best interests, “does not seek the shepherd” (LW 30:314)?

     In thanksgiving to God for his abounding and steadfast mercy, we find ourselves being “changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Note the gift in this transformation – being changed instead of changing ourselves. Note also the small increments – changing one degree at a time. So don’t look for a big blow-out happening all at once. None of us will become as holy as God is in heaven in one fell swoop (Matthew 5:48). Expect little steps instead. And expect the same when you fast during Lent. Jesus ate nothing for forty days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2). Don’t expect your fast to be on such a grand scale. Instead fast in secret (Matthew 6:18). There’s nothing to show off about. You don’t have to quit eating everything until Easter. No, just cut out some of your favorite foods. Remember the increments. And don’t be disappointed with your small fast. In this case a little is better. You’ll have nothing to brag about. And if you are insulted for fasting, never forget that you’re on the side of the angels, even if your fast is puny. That’ll help you remember that insults “have not the force of insults when overbalanced by what is inviolable” (Marianne Moore, Selected Letters, ed. Bonnie Costello, 1997, p. 249). So living with less than the best during Lent is just right. You’re still obeying Christ’s command to fast – and that command remains inviolable (Matthew 6:9). So you don’t need to fast in the extreme as Jesus did in order to obey him. No spectacular fasting is needed. Just fasting by increments in secret is fine. And remember that this scaled-back fasting is all part of learning how best, with modesty and humility, to deny yourself. Amen.

Hymn of the Day: “‘Come, Follow Me,’ the Savior Spake” (LBW 455)

Sermon: February 21, 2021

“Endure the Test”
(Genesis 22:1)

Grace and peace to you in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     It’s probably the scariest place in the Bible – Genesis 22:1–12. That’s where Abraham, under a command from God, tries to kill his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah. Maybe that’s why some critics have insisted that it “doesn’t cut it” to say that “God is testing our faith” (Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, 2014, p. 158). But Christians move ahead and say that there’s more up there than attempted homicide and cynicism. Christians also find on that mountain Matthew 10:37. There Jesus says whoever “loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” That’s our test on this mountain – regardless of what Abraham’s test was. Ours is not about killing our children. It’s about loving God properly. So for Christians Mount Moriah is the Mountain of Love – Mount Amore, if you will. On that mountain we begin our struggle to love in the way that God wants us to love. And there we stay for the rest of our lives – struggling and striving to love as we should. The test lasts as long as we’re alive. Martin Luther understood this well, noting that our whole life is “the year of probation” (Luther’s Works 44:386). So we never get off the treadmill. And we never come down from Mount Amore either. That’s because our love has to be tested until our life on earth is done.

     Why is that? Why is it an endurance race instead of an hour or two exam? It’s because it has to do with our love and life which keep on going. Therefore we always have to be tested to make sure we haven’t gone off the rails. For “a Christian’s life is in reality not immaculate” (LW 22:140). Glitches occur all the time. And they have to be smoothed out as we go along. Abraham may have spent only part of a day up on Mount Moriah – Christians, however, spend their whole life atop Mount Amore. That’s because we have a lot to sort out there. For one thing, “in the absence of an emergency,” our families must be attended to diligently (LW 23:202). Given the sorry state of families in our land, this is needed more than ever (Jeffrey S. Turner, American Families in Crisis, 2009). And yet we must never “neglect God’s Word for their sakes” (LW 56:356). So even though “obedience to father [and] mother… remain in the fourth commandment; the Word of God and obedience to God soar and prevail over” the family (LW 56:358). That’s because “we should love and revere God above all things” (LW 4:44). “Confidence [in] ourselves” is out of the question. God “abhors” it (LW 3:4). So “let the drop yield submission to the ocean” – that is, the family drop yielding to the ocean God (LW 26:107). This correction is also desperately needed given the demonic preoccupation with family that’s also part of our society (Janet Fishburn, Confronting the Idolatry of the Family, 1991). So when push comes to shove, “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). That’s because even though we are both commanded to obey God and honor our parents (Exodus 20:3, 12) – God matters more than our parents. So when there is a conflict between God and parents, between God and children, between the first commandment and the fourth, between the first table of the law and the second table, the second “yields and is nothing when it impinges” on the first. But in the event that “there is no conflict between” the two, then God does not abrogate the second in favor of the first (LW 5:114). This way of viewing God’s Ten Commandment in terms of two tables – the first table being the first three commands about God which matter more, and the second set of seven about our neighbor which matters less – this approach meant a great deal to Luther who thought it had “undoubtedly been pointed out by the Holy Spirit” (LW 2:59).

     But even with such heavenly authorization, what if we can’t keep these tables straight? What then? What if we only see things “dimly” now (1 Corinthians 13:12)? The old Latin Bible translates that impaired vision as videmus in enigmate. That makes it sound like the enigma it truly is. But how damaging is that confusion? Romans 7:24 says it’s so bad that we’re depleted to the point of spiritual decay and death, so that only deliverance by another can help. Left to ourselves we’re dead in the water. We flounder without aid. And so we would remain if left alone. Then “a certain diabolical dullness reigns in us, our praying is cold, and we are completely lukewarm in other exercises of godliness. Nor do we burn with zeal and love for Christ as we do for the things of this present world” (LW 7:255). Then the Bible is inverted, à la Reverend Ike (1935–2009), and we think that “the lack of money is the root of all evil” – contrary to what 1 Timothy 6:10 really says (Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, p. 67).

     But listen – we have been helped. And the good news is that we aren’t left alone. God sent his only son to take on sinful human flesh, and died on the cross “to put away sins” (Romans 8:3, Hebrews 9:26). And he did that by taking “upon himself the full wrath… of our Lord God,… so that we would not have to suffer” it (Luther’s House Postils, ed. E. Klug, 1996, 1:388). When that happened – when Christ dies like this for us – he draws us to himself (John 12:32). So “the cross, which is the basest thing in the world's eyes, must become the greatest treasure” (LW 67:117). And that miraculous pull from the cross is just what we need – being dead in the water as we are. And so what do we do? We believe in Jesus – as a gift received (Ephesians 2:8) – and then go on to regard him “with love undying” (Ephesians 6:24). Just think of it! We decrease; he increases (John 3:30). He’s primary; we’re secondary. We follow him; he commands us. This loving, obeying, and deferential “second-hand mind” on our part is what the creative and innovative disdain in Christians (George Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, Goethe, 1910, p. 176). But unfazed, we continue to run on with our second-hand minds, deferring to Christ, obeying him, denying ourselves, and getting carried away with it all – so that our love is undying and not casual or half-hearted. And along the way dullness even starts diminishing (LW 7:255). For we don’t love anyone else in this way – with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength (Matthew 22:37). That surely is undying love! We love only the kingdom of God in this way – and seek it first (Matthew 6:33). “Love and revere God above all things” (LW 4:44)! Nothing else can be given this pride of place. Only the “words of eternal life” qualify as number one (John 6:68). And these eternal words are without temporal limits. They extend beyond the place of their initial manifestation “to the outer-most reaches of space and time,” since “the salvation effected here in this planet must... have cosmic dimensions” (Martin J. Heinecken, God in the Space Age, 1959, p. 144).

     But for all the greatness of this heavenly kingdom, we still have other lesser things to do. For instance, “bring up your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Now that matters greatly even though it is secondary. So don’t think that believing in Christ crucified is enough. Don’t be “so confident of atonement that you add sin to sin” (LW 8:40). Instead, also be sure to instruct your children in the Christian faith. Luther even thought that if parents fulfilled this obligation they “could attain salvation… if they were to do nothing else” (LW 44:85)! Now that’s quite a theological whopper! Aren’t there all kinds of objections to it? Doesn’t it compromise the centrality of faith (John 3:16)? Well, maybe – but just listen to what the instructions are, following on the heels of that wild confidence in parents to earn their own salvation. Parents, Luther daringly argues, should train their children “to trust God, to believe in him, to fear him, and to set their whole hope upon him; to honor his name and never curse or swear; to mortify themselves by praying, fasting, watching, working; to go to church, wait on the word of God, and observe the sabbath;…. to despise temporal things, to bear misfortune without complaint, and neither fear death nor love this life.” What, no complaining? Mortifying ourselves? Despising our stuff? Neither fearing death nor loving life? Is that the right way to end this sermon? Are they approriate answers in the examination atop Mount Amore? Well, they must be if you’re going to endure the test. And may we all, by God’s grace, do just that – and endure the test. Amen.

Hymn of the Day: “If You But Trust in God to Guide You” (LBW 453)