Sermon for Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord

                                                                                             Easter

                                                                                             1 Cor 15:1-11

                                                                                             4/20/14

          On Wednesday of Holy Week, the movie “Heaven Is for Real” was released and began to be seen in movie theaters.  The movie is a film adaptation of the 2010 New York Times bestselling book by the same title.  Written by Todd Burpo, it tells the story of how his young son Colton almost died after an undiagnosed ruptured appendix. The claim of the book and movie is that during the life saving surgery, Colton made a trip to heaven and returned with reliable knowledge of the fact that heaven is real and what it is like.

          Now I am certain the movie will be a huge financial success, just as the book was.  I have watched the trailers for the movie and can report that it stars Greg Kinnear who is perfectly suited to play the caring father.  They have found the cutest little boy you are ever going to see to play Colton.  The soundtrack will be filled with music that is deeply moving.  And the story about the life after death of loved ones is something people want to believe.

          Todd Burpo is a Wesleyan pastor, and so the story about Colton and his experience are framed within Christianity.  Christian groups are pushing the movie as a way of getting people to think about eternal life.

          Naturally, the timing of the release of the movie is very intentional. It was released during Holy Week – just days before Easter – because this is a time when people are inclined to think about spiritual things.  Easter is, of course, one of the few times during the year when many people drag themselves to church.

          However, the timing of the movie highlights the degree to which many Christians fail to understand what the resurrection of Jesus Christ means.  It underscores a failure to grasp what it means to be a human being created by God.  And it emphasizes how often people fail to recognize the impact of sin upon us and creation itself.

          The epistle lesson for Easter is the first portion of 1 Corinthians chapter 15 – Paul’s great resurrection chapter.  Like so much of 1 Corinthians, we have this text and all of the important revelation it provides because of problems with the Christians in Corinth.  It’s quite clear that the Corinthians were denying the resurrection of the body.

          Now it’s not the resurrection of Jesus that they doubted.  Instead, they didn’t believe that their own bodies would be raised. They had a spiritualized understanding of the faith in which they seemed to believe that in some way they had already shared in Christ’s resurrection. They thought that they already had arrived – that they were mature and wise in Christ – and that they already had everything.  They didn’t have doubts about the resurrection of their own bodies.  Instead, they rejected it altogether.

          And it’s here that the message of the movie “Heaven Is for Real’ is relevant.  In the strongest terms, the movie affirms life after death. But the question arises: What kind of life is this?  What kind of life are we intended to live for all eternity? The answer is one that does not involve the human body in any way.  In reviewing the book, Dr. Jeff Gibbs of Concordia Seminary wrote: “There is not one crumb, not one word in Heaven is For Real that God’s full plan of salvation in Christ means eternal life now, and on the last day, full bodily holiness and immortality for all believers and for the whole cosmos.  There is no appreciation for the importance of our bodies, and of God’s promise in Christ to redeem them and raise us to everlasting life.”

          If that is what we take away from Easter – from the resurrection of Jesus Christ – then we haven’t understood it at all.  We haven’t understood what God made us to be.  And we haven’t understood what sin has done to us.

          In our text, Paul begins with the crucial fact about today – the crucial fact of the Gospel.  Jesus didn’t just die.  He also rose from the dead.  Paul writes, “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to 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.”

          On Good Friday we focused upon the fact that Christ died for our sins.  Isaiah chapter 53 told us in no uncertain terms that Jesus Christ took our sins upon himself and died for them in our place.  Because of this we have forgiveness.  It’s the same thing that Paul says in 2 Corinthians when he describes how God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

          Jesus Christ did this.  And then on the third day – on Easter – he rose from the dead.  As we heard in our Gospel lesson, the tomb was empty.  But it’s not just that the tomb was empty.  Rather, the risen Lord appeared and was seen by his followers.  In our text Paul provides a list of witnesses: Cephas, that is, Peter; all the apostles at once; five hundred believers at one time; James the brother of our Lord; and then finally Paul himself on the road to Damascus.

          This was no mere vision or apparition.  In Luke’s Gospel Jesus says, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And then to prove the point he asked for something to eat, and ate some broiled fish in front of them.  Jesus wanted them to know that it was a true resurrection of the body.

          Actually after the resurrection it was – and still is – a bodily existence that is more true than what we know now.  You see, God created Adam’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life.  He created human beings as a unity of body and soul.  And the only way you can have the life God intends for you is by having a body. That’s simply the way God set things up.

          Created in God’s image, Adam and Eve lived in perfect harmony with God, with one another, and with the very good creation God had made.  They lived that way, that is, until they were tempted by Satan into disobeying God.  They sinned. And sin brought pain.  It brought sickness.  It brought death.  As Paul say in this chapter, “in Adam all die.” 

          Unless Christ returns first, you are going to die.  In fact, you are already in the process of dying – the pictures don’t lie.  On Facebook, Thursday is called “Throwback Thursday.”  It’s a day when people post picture of themselves an and their family from the past.  Now the pictures of children when they were younger are cute.  But when I look at pictures of myself or the adults I know, the thought that crosses my mind is, “Man we are getting old.”  We are aging, and that process of aging is a one way ticket to death.

          You are aging.  You get sick.  You have aches and pains.  And all of this bears witness to the fact that you are sinner.  The impact of sin on your life is not merely about the fact you think and do things you shouldn’t, and fail to do things you should.  Instead, it is also the fact that your very existence is warped and twisted by sin. Because of sin, you have an expiration date.  You just don’t know what it is yet.  You have that expiration date because you are a sinner who sins.  As Paul told the Romans, “The wages of sin is death.”

          The Gospel as Paul defines it provides the answer to all of these problems. Christ died on behalf of your sins.  Because of his death you are justified – you are righteous now in God’s eyes and will be declared to be this on the Last Day. And then on Easter, Christ rose from the dead.  When he rose from the dead, he defeated death.  He began the resurrection of the Last Day.

          Now we confess that in the incarnation the Son of God took humanity into himself, without ceasing to be God.  Though he was without sin, we saw something on Friday that you should stop and ponder: Jesus Christ was mortal - he was “killable.”  And the Romans used a cross to do just that.

          On Easter Jesus rose from the dead.  But this was no mere returning to the same existence he had lived before – a human existence once again plagued by mortality.  Instead, Jesus Christ was raised by the Spirit with a body that was transformed so that it can never die again.  This is what the resurrection of the Last Day is all about. Easter declares that it has already begun in Jesus.  Just after our text Paul writes, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”

          Many Christians have died during the last two thousand years before Christ’s return.  You may die before he returns.  And so the good news is that the one thing the book and movie have right is that, yes, heaven is for real.  For the Christian death is not the final world.  When Paul contemplated the possibility of his own death he told the Philippians, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” Death cannot separate you from Jesus Christ.  If you die your personal existence, what the Scriptures call the soul, will be with Christ and this is what Bible also calls heaven.  In Christ you already have eternal life now and death cannot change that fact. There is tremendous comfort in this.

          But if you die, there will be a funeral and your body will be buried in the ground. And that is not very good. That is not what God intended for you.  Yes, heaven is real. Yes, heaven is good.  But heaven is not enough.  Heaven cannot be the final destination because it is not the bodily existence that God created you to have.

          On Easter, Jesus Christ rose from the dead with a body transformed so that it can never die again.  That is what is going to happen to your body when Christ returns on the Last Day. Paul went on to say to the Philippians later in the letter, “…we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”  Your body will be transformed, and so will creation itself as it too is freed of sin’s impact – as it is freed from the slavery of corruption.

          Bodily existence in God’s good creation - that is what God declared to be “very good” in the beginning.  That is what God has already begun in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is what you will receive on the Last Day when Jesus Christ returns in glory.  Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and because he has, your body will be transformed too.

Sermon for Second Service of the Triduum - Good Friday

                                                                                                            Good Friday

                                                                                                            Isa 52:13-53:12

                                                                                                            4/17/14

            Well mercifully, it looks like the winter that seemed as if it would never end, has finally come to an end.  We’ve had some warms days and the trees are flowering.  The baseball season has begun and before you know it school will be out and we will be thinking about summer.

            It won’t be all that long before we start to see and hear the hype about this coming summer’s movies. The internet and tv will be filled with ads, commercials, and entertainment news pieces describing the movies as the industry tries to get the public interested in coming to the theater.

            Last summer, much of the hype was focused upon the movie “The Lone Ranger.”  The classic western hero would be featured in a big budget movie that had cost $215 million dollars.  It was being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer who is known for his action movie hits and was starring Johnny Depp who had tremendous success in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

            Disney was behind the movie, and that meant there was a big marketing campaign going on to promote it – a campaign that probably cost around $100 million dollars.  I knew that this marketing campaign was making some serious noise because just before The Lone Ranger came out Legos released a series of sets related to the movie.

            The Lone Ranger was hyped and in the news.  And then when the movie was actually released … it bombed.  It was bad.  Critics panned the movie and Depp’s borderline offensive portrayal of Tonto.  The public agreed as the movie only made $89 million in the United States.  It did go on to make $171 million in the international market, but even with this it is estimated that Disney lost $160 to $190 million dollars on The Lone Ranger.  The movie sounded great … until people actually saw it.

            We find the same contrast in our Old Testament lesson for Good Friday.  In the previous chapters, God has been speaking about his Servant and how he will bring salvation to Israel.  This action by God has been described a mighty and powerful.  Yet when the Servant actually appears, he doesn’t look anything like the hype.

            In our text, Isaiah writing in the eighth century B.C. is addressing the situation that would exist in the sixth century.  Because of Judah’s unfaithfulness to God, Yahweh would use the Babylonian empire as the instrument of his judgment.  They would conquer Judah and take the nation into exile in Babylon.

            However, the message in this section of Isaiah is one of hope.  God was going to be bring his people back to the land of Israel.  Through Isaiah, God says that he is going to use Cyrus to free Judah.  God would bring judgment on the Babylonians by his instrument Cyrus and return his people.  And this is exactly what happened.  In 539 B.C. the Persian king Cyrus defeated the Babylonians and in 538 he issued an edict that allowed the people of God to return.

            Bringing the people back to the land of Israel was one thing.  But dealing with the sin that had caused the exile was another matter altogether.  For this, Yahweh was going to send his servant.  As Isaiah had written in chapter 42, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”

            This Servant was bringing God’s salvation.  Just before our text the prophet writes, “How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation,

who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”  The Lord was going to act in a mighty way – he was going to reveal his saving arm.  Immediately before our text we hear, “The LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”

            The hype about this Servant was great … and then in our text he actually shows up.  Isaiah writes, “As many were astonished at you— his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.”    The Servant – God’s saving arm - doesn’t look mighty and powerful.  Instead, he looks terrible.  In fact it seems impossible to believe what Yahweh had claimed about him. Our text says, “Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

            Isaiah tells us that the Servant was despised.  This is not describing an emotional reaction.  Instead it tells us that he was rejected as worthless.  And this is exactly what we see in the Gospel lesson for Good Friday.  Jesus Christ is the Servant that Isaiah is describing.  God demonstrated this to be true when at his baptism in the Jordan the Spirit of God descended upon Jesus and the Father spoke words from Isaiah chapter 42 as he said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

            But today we see him mocked and scourged and crucified.  He has been judged as worthless – not worthy of life itself.  He has been judged as worthless – not worthy of being treated with human decency.  Instead he is humiliated and powerless.  The powerful have shredded his flesh with a whip.  They have taken his clothes.  They have nailed him to a cross.  They have hoisted him into the air naked and left him there to die a slow and painful death with the taunting sign above his head, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”

            We see a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.  We see a man who knows pain and sickness. But Isaiah tells us that there is more here than meets the eye.  Yes, Jesus is in the midst of grief and sorrows.  But in fact, they are our grief and sorrows, not his. In our text Isaiah emphatically asserts, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”

            The death of Jesus on the cross appears to be worthless and pointless, like so many other crucified by Rome – sometimes thousands at a time.  It appears that God is striking and afflicting Jesus.  But Isaiah reveals to us the mystery of what is really happening.  God is striking and afflicting Jesus in our place.  Jesus receives this treatment for us.

            Isaiah tells us, “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”  Jesus is on the cross because of our transgressions.  He is there because of our iniquities.  He is there because of our sin.

            And, how we do sin.  Isaiah says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” We do our own thing.  We do what we want to do.  It doesn’t matter what God has said about it.  It doesn’t matter how it affects others.  If it helps us; if it makes life easier; if it feels good, we do it.  As Martin Luther emphasized, we are curved in on ourselves.

            Now our world says this is great, and you and I want things to be this way, but it simply won’t fly with the holy and just God.  And guess what?  He gets the last word.  On the day of judgment his word determines what is true and what will happen.  And his word says that sinners who sin cannot exist in his presence.  Instead, they are judged as guilty.  They are damned to hell.

            Yet the wonder of the Gospel is that God does not desire this.  And so he, the holy and just God has acted to be just and be the one who justifies the sinner – who declares the sinner not guilty. He sent the Son of God into the world as the righteous and holy One who did no violence and in whose mouth there was no deceit.  God the Father laid the sin of all people upon him.  He laid your sins upon him.  And he judged Jesus in your place.  He condemned Jesus in your place.  He damned Jesus in your place.

            Because Jesus Christ loves the Father, and because he loves you he willingly took on this role.  Isaiah says, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”  On this day, we solemnly remember this fact. We remember that Jesus bore our sins and died in our place.

            And because Jesus Christ did this for us, everything has changed.  In our text Isaiah says, “The righteous One, my Servant will make many to be accounted righteous.”  Isaiah says that the righteous One, the Servant will cause many to be justified.  That is what he has done for you. By bearing your sins and receiving God’s judgment in your place he has given you forgiveness.  He has made you righteous.  Because of Jesus Christ, at the judgment of the Last Day you will be declared not guilty; righteous; a saint.  By his chastisement you have received peace.  St. Paul put it this way, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

            The Gospel lesson tonight ends with Jesus dead and buried in a tomb.  It ends with Jesus utterly crushed for our iniquities.  That’s what Good Friday is about.  But our text from Isaiah points beyond the tomb.  It directs us to what we will begin to celebrate tomorrow night.  We hear it at the beginning of our text when Isaiah says: “Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.”  High and lifted up – those are the same words used by Isaiah in chapter six to describe Yahweh on the throne when the prophet sees God in the temple

            We hear it at the end of our text when we learn that the Servant will be satisfied.  And then Isaiah goes on to say, “Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah says that you are forgiven and justified.  And you have hope because tonight is not the end of the story. 

           

           

           

           

           

                                                                                   

Sermon for the First Service of the Triduum: Maundy Thursday

                                                                                                            Maundy Thursday

                                                                                                            Jn 13:1-15

                                                                                                            4/17/14

            Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory has been in some hot water recently.  He received some very negative publicity when it became known that he was in the process of building a residence for himself that cost $2.2 million dollars. 

            Now just for the sake of review, as a Roman Catholic priest, Gregory is not married and so has no family.  You may wonder then why he thought he needed a six thousand square foot Tudor mansion in an upscale Atlanta area neighborhood.  Well, you are not the only ones.  As you can imagine there was quite an outcry, and it prompted to Gregory to put the following statement upon the website of the archdiocesan newspaper: “I failed to consider the impact on the families throughout the archdiocese who, though struggling to pay their mortgages, utilities, tuition and other bills, faithfully respond year after year to my pleas to assist with funding our ministries and services.”  To which I can only say: “No kidding.”

            But Archbishop Gregory isn’t even the worst recent case of a church official using church funds to provide himself with extravagant luxury.  In Germany, there is Bishop Franz-Peter-Tebartz von Elst – or as he is also known in the media, “the bishop of bling.”  Bishop von Elst has spent $43 million dollars building a luxury residence for himself.  That can happen when your bathtub costs almost $21,000 as the bishop’s did. 

            The German bishop did not choose the best time to engage in this extreme extravagance.  The new pope, Pope Francis is seeking to emphasize that the clergy need to be humble servants who avoid excess.  Francis himself has chosen not to live in the ornate papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace and instead to live in a more simple residence located behind St. Peter’s Basilica.  He has chosen not to wear much of the expensive liturgical clothing that the papacy has acquired, and instead to wear much more simple ecclesiastical clothing.  He has even used a Ford Focus instead of the papal limousine.  It was therefore not surprising when the Vatican chose to remove Bishop von Elst.

            To his credit, Pope Francis practices what he preaches.  He has called on the clergy of the Roman Catholic church – especially the leadership - to exhibit humility and the attitude of a servant in the way they conduct themselves.  He himself has done this, using the bus when he was a bishop and now seeking to modify ways that the papacy does things in order to avoid excess. He has sought to remind the clergy that as undershepherds of Jesus Christ, they are called to model their behavior after Jesus who came to serve us.

            The Gospel lesson for Maundy Thursday is John’s account of the Last Supper.  While Mathew, Mark and Luke focus our attention on Jesus’ institution of the Sacrament of the Altar, John instead tells us about another significant event that occurred.  He narrates how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet.

            Our Gospel lesson begins with the words, “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.”  Jesus knew what the night held in store for him.  He knew would happen in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He knew about the trials, and the scourging and the crucifixion – the things that will be symbolized by the stripping of the altar at the end of this service.  He knew that the hour had come to begin the events that would lead to his ascension and return to the Father.

            Jesus loved his disciples.  John tells us that he “loved them to the end” which is a phrase that in Greek refers to the temporal end of his ministry and at the same time also means “completely.”  He loved them, and so he did something to demonstate the nature and the character of his life.

            We hear in our text, “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, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 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.”

            Jesus began to wash his disciples’ feet.  Now this action was striking for several reasons.  First, feet were normally washed before dinner – when people had arrived at dinner from the dusty roads and streets. It wasn’t something you did in the middle of dinner.  And second, as you are no doubt well aware, the washing of feet was normally something that was done by a slave. However what you may not fully understand is the degree to which this action went against the grain of the entire ancient Mediterranean world.  This was a world built on status and patronage.  There was a firm hierarchy that determined how people related to each other.  As Jesus says in our text, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.”

            And yet, Jesus lays all of that aside even as he lays down his outer garments in order to serve.  When he was done washing their feet he explained what the action meant.  He put on his outer garments, resumed his place and said, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”

            Jesus laid down his outer garments in order to wash their feet – in order to serve them.  He said that he washed their feet in order to give them an example that they should do just as Jesus had done.  Yet the example here is far deeper than the mere washing of feet.  It is an example in John’s Gospel that points to the cross.

            In our text Jesus puts down his outer garments, and then after washing their feet he takes his outer garments again in order to put them on.  In John’s Gospel the same verbs are used earlier in chapter ten when our Lord says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

            Jesus washes the disciples’ feet as an illustration of the service he is about to give to them on the cross by laying down his life on Good Friday and then taking it up again on Easter.  In that same chapter, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

            Jesus, the Son of God, became flesh and entered into our world to lay down his life for us.  At the beginning of his ministry, when John the Baptist saw Jesus he exclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” 

            Jesus served you in order to take away your sins.  He served you because frankly, you would rather serve yourself. You would rather put your wants ahead of God and ahead of your neighbor.  And you are often willing to do what you have to in order to get your way.

            Jesus Christ did what he had to in order open up the way to God.  He served you by dying on the cross in order to win forgiveness.  Like the lamb of the Passover, the shedding of his blood causes God’s judgment to pass over you.  And so, you are forgiven.

            Jesus leaves you in no doubt.  On this same night and that same supper he instituted the Sacrament of the Altar in which he gives you the body and blood given and shed for you on the cross.  He gives you the price he paid for your salvation and so delivers the saving benefits of his cross and resurrection.

            By his body and blood, Jesus sustains you in the faith.  You received new life in your baptism as you were born again of water and the Spirit.  And now Christ nourishes that life through the Sacrament of the Altar.  He shares his saving love with you in this unique and personal way.

            He shares this love with you, so that now through the work of the Spirit you can share it with others. At the end of this chapter, Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

            Christ calls you to love others in the way that he has loved you.  He loved you by service – the self-giving service of the cross.  And in washing the feet of his disciples on the night when he was betrayed, Jesus provided the model for your life.  He calls you to humble service that seeks the good of others in the different vocations where God has placed you in the world.  He calls you to a love the binds his Church together in mutual care and service.  For as Jesus says in our text tonight: “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.”