Commemoration of Katharina von Bora Luther

Today we remember and give thanks for Katharina von Bora Luther.  Katharina von Bora (1499–1552) was placed in a convent when still a child and became a nun in 1515. In April 1523 she and eight other nuns were rescued from the convent and brought to Wittenberg. There Martin Luther helped return some to their former homes and placed the rest in good families. Katharina and Martin were married on June 13, 1525. Their marriage was a happy one and blessed with six children. Katharina skillfully managed the Luther household, which always seemed to grow because of his generous hospitality. After Luther’s death in 1546, Katharina remained in Wittenberg but lived much of the time in poverty. She died in an accident while traveling with her children to Torgau in order to escape the plague.

Collect of the Day:

O God, our refuge and our strength, You raised up Your servant Katharina to support her husband in the task to reform and renew your Church in the light of Your Word.  Defend and purify the Church today and grant that, through faith, we may boldly support and encourage our pastors and teachers of the faith as they proclaim and administer the riches of Your grace made known in Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent - Rorate Coeli - Deut. 18:15-19

                                                                                                        Advent 4
                                                                                                        Deut 18:15-19
                                                                                                        12/18/16

If I say the name “Moses,” what are the first few things that come to mind? If you have been around the Lutheran church for any period of time, several items are likely. You may think of “Law” or “Ten Commandments” or “Mt. Sinai.” If we gave you a little longer to think about it, you would probably think of something like “Exodus” or “Red Sea.” Depending on your vintage you may think of Charlton Heston.

However, it seems unlikely that if I say the name “Moses,” one of the first things that comes to mind is “prophet” or “intercessor.” Generally speaking, we just don’t think about Moses in these terms. Instead, he is the law giver. Or he is the one who led Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus.

Part of the reason we think about Moses in this way is because these are the things that have usually been emphasized. And it’s not as if there is anything wrong with this. Obviously, Moses is the central figure involved in the reception of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are Law, and as Lutheran emphasize Law and Gospel, “Moses” sometimes is almost another way to say “Law.”

And likewise, Moses is right in the middle of all the awesome things that happen in the Exodus. He is the one who announces the ten plagues to Pharaoh. He is the one God uses to part the Red Sea so that the Israelites can escape.

However in our text today, we learn that Moses was a prophet. In fact he is the great prophet of the Old Testament – the one who set the standard for every prophet that followed. And he was a unique mediator and intercessor between God and the people of Israel. In these roles no one surpassed him … until Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem.

In the verses just before our text begins, Moses has said, “When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.” In particular he warns them against “anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD.”

Israel was not to take up these practices of paganism in order to receive revelation. These would draw the people away from Yahweh into idolatry. And besides, they clearly had no need for this! Instead, Yahweh had already given them the prophet Moses, and would continue to give them prophets.

When we hear the word “prophet” we usually think of someone in the Bible who foretells future events. Certainly, there are examples of this such as when the prophet Isaiah writing in the eighth century B.C. says that God will use Cyrus, the Persian king, in the sixth century to return the people from exile. We tend to focus on these because they are miraculous and spectacular. But in truth, the real job of the prophet was to declare God’s word to the king and the people.

This is what Moses had done. And he had done it because the people didn’t want to hear from God directly. At Mt Horeb – which was also known as Mt Sinai – Yahweh had descended on the mountain in fire. There was thunder and lightning, and the sound of a very loud trumpet blast. The mountain trembled and it was wrapped in smoke because of the fire. It was a fearful scene, and eventually the people said, “Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.” They were scared to death, and so they told Moses, “You go and talk with God for us.” They asked Moses to be the intermediary, and to bring God’s word to them.

These events teach us something that we need to remember. God is holy. And he is terrifying to sinners – or at least, he should be. We live in a world that either denies God’s existence altogether, or creates the image of a non-judging, benevolent deity who just wants us to be happy. Now we may recognize the extreme versions of this, but we too are carried along by our culture in ways that we often don’t perceive.

Our sense of the holy God is muted, and so it becomes easier to let money, wealth and our definition being “comfortable” guide our lives. It becomes easier to act in selfish ways, instead of looking to help my wife or husband. It becomes easier to “go all the way” or to shack up with that guy or girl. It becomes easier to ignore the Ten Commandments.

But God has not changed. Israel got an up close and personal look at God, and they didn’t want any more of it. And writing in the New Testament era, the writer to Hebrews warns us that “our God is a consuming fire.”

Moses took on the role of intermediary. When he heard from God, he was present with Yahweh in a way that caused his face to shine. In fact he had to put a veil over his face until it returned to its normal appearance so that he wouldn’t freak out the Israelites. And he spoke God’s word to the people. He was God’s prophet.

In our text this morning we hear Moses say: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the LORD said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.’” 

Yahweh did in fact continue to give prophets. Some of them were certainly mighty figures, like Elijah. But the book of Deuteronomy ends with these words: “And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.” And when you arrive at 2 Chronicles and Malachi – the last books written in the Old Testament – that statement is still true.

A prophet had not arisen to fulfill Moses’ words, until Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem and then began his ministry as an adult. The New Testament leaves no doubt that Jesus Christ is the One who fulfills Moses’ words. In Acts 3 Peter said to the crowd at the temple, “But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.” And then he went on to add, “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days.”

Jesus Christ is the great prophet like Moses, who is in fact greater than Moses. He is greater because the baby born in Bethlehem is true God – the only Son begotten of the Father. Moses may have in a sense “seen God face to face,” but as the Son of God now incarnate as Jesus Christ, he had always been in communion with the Father and the Spirit. Where Moses face glowed in reflection of Yahweh’s glory, Jesus face shown bright like the sun out of his own divine nature at the Transfiguration.

In particular, Luke’s Gospel presents Jesus as a prophet. As Moses describes in our text, Jesus came to speak God’s word. He called sinners to repentance. And at the same time he declared that in his person, the saving reign of God had entered into the world. He spoke comforting words about the Father’s love and forgiveness for us that were revealed in Jesus.

Moses was the great prophet of the Old Testament. And the treatment he received from Israel set the pattern for all the prophets. He was repeatedly resisted and rejected. In fact, when Israel refused to enter the promised land because of the report brought back by the spies, they were getting ready to stone him to death when Yahweh’s glory showed up.

Jesus Christ was also rejected. The Jewish leaders rejected Jesus by killing him on a Roman cross. But this rejection and death was God’s plan all along. On Pentecost Peter declared, “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”

Moses died and never entered the promised land. But Jesus Christ conquered death in his resurrection. As true God and true man, he is now the mediator between God and man. He is the One who gave himself as the sacrifice to take away our sins. Baptized into his saving death, we have been clothed with Christ. And so now, he is the One through whom we have access to God. God is still the holy God who terrifies sinners. But we approach as those who are in Christ – those who are holy in God’s eyes because of Jesus. 

When we fail – when we fall in sin – we repent. We confess our sin because we know it is an offense to the holy God. But through repentance and faith in Jesus we also know that we have forgiveness. We approach God knowing that we are covered by Jesus’ righteousness. And we know that Jesus Christ intercedes for us.

Moses interceded for the people when they worshipped the golden calf, and again when they refused to enter Canaan. In his intercession he held up before Yahweh his own promise of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He called upon God to be true to his character as the God who is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and forgiving sin.

Now Jesus intercedes for you. Yet he does so as the One who is exalted to the right hand of God. And he intercedes on the basis of his own saving work – his death and resurrection. He says, “I paid for that sin with my own suffering and death. He is forgiven. She is forgiven.” And in this God the Father agrees and rejoices because the death and resurrection of the Son was his saving will. It is the word that he gave to the Son. It is the word that Jesus began to fulfill for us on Christmas Eve, when he was born to be the prophet like Moses – the prophet, who is in fact, greater than Moses.

Sermon for the third mid-week Advent service - Lk 1:26-38

                                                                                                Mid-Advent 3
                                                                                                Lk 1:26-38
                                                                                                 12/14/16

On Monday of this week, St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic church here in Marion had a Mass for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This feast celebrates the reported appearance of the virgin Mary to Juan Diego and his uncle in Mexico City during December 1531.

The story goes that Mary appeared to Juan Diego on several occasions and also once to his uncle as she miraculously healed him. Mary told Juan to gather flowers on Tepeyac Hill where you would not expect to find them in December. When he did so, Juan found Catilian roses blooming there which are not native to Mexico. Mary arranged the roses in Juan’s cloak, and when he opened his cloak before the archbishop the flowers fell away and left the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Today this image is enshrined in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The location is one of the most visited Roman Catholic pilgrimage sites in the world. The feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe was made part of the Roman Catholic church year, and Juan Diego was canonized as a saint in 2002.

You would be hard pressed to find a better symbol of all that has gone wrong in relation to the virgin Mary during the history of the Roman Catholic church than Our Lady of Guadalupe. What was already bad at the time of the Reformation where Mary was viewed as a uniquely qualified and effective intercessor with God has become even worse during the last two centuries. In 1854 the Roman Catholic church declared that the Immaculate Conception of the virgin was a dogma of the church. The Roman Catholic church claimed that Mary was born without sin. Then in 1950 the church declares that the Assumption of Mary was a dogma. The claim was made that Mary was taken up, body and soul, into heaven. She is called the Queen of Heaven and Roman Catholics have described her as the “Co-Redemptrix” along with Jesus Christ.

Now none of these things have any basis in Scripture. And as for the virgin Mary’s supposed appearance in Mexico City, I think that there are two possible explanations. Either it is a fraud – which may have been prompted in part by pious self-delusion. Or something really did happen, but the source was not God. Instead, it was demonic – because what would please the devil more than to focus attention in the church itself away from Jesus Christ.

The false teaching and excesses associated with the virgin Mary in the Roman Catholic church have probably caused Lutherans to overreact in the opposite direction. We are inclined to say too little and to understate what is true. After all, as we learn in our text, the miracle of the incarnation necessitates that we say some rather remarkable things about Mary. And in Mary’s reaction to the angel Gabriel, see a model of faithful trust in God’s word.

We learn in our text that six months after Gabriel’s appearance to Zechariah, he then appeared to Mary. She was a virgin betrothed to man named Joseph who descended from King David. Mary was probably in her early teens. In a world of high infant mortality, girls began to marry and give birth to children as soon as they were physically able to do so. Gabriel appeared to Mary and said: “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” The appearance of an angel would freak us out, and it did the same thing for Mary. And so Gabriel went on to say, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

In his grace, God had chosen Mary to play a unique role in the history of humanity. She would conceive and bear a son who be called the Son of the Most High – the Son of God. This son was going to be fulfillment of God’s promise to King David. He would be the king who would reign forever.

Apparently Mary perceived that there was nothing normal about this. She asked Gabriel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.” 

Mary, the virgin, was going to conceive a child through the work of the Holy Spirit. She would give birth to a real human baby. But this baby would also be the Son of God. He would be true God and true man. Mary would be the unique instrument used by God for the incarnation. Because her Son truly is God, the early Church confessed that she is the Theotokos – “the God bearer.” While our hymnal refers to Mary as the “Mother of Our Lord,” historically the description has been a stronger confession of the incarnation – she is the mother of Jesus and so she is the “Mother of God.”

As we heard last week, the incarnation would take place in a way that brought Jesus into the line of David through his adoptive father Joseph. The incarnate One came as the fulfillment of God’s promises about the Messiah – the One through whom God would put all things right. 

Gabriel greeted Mary with the words, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” By the end of the conversation, it would have been understandable if Mary didn’t feel very favored. Mary learned that apart from any kind of say in the matter, she was going to be pregnant. Though she had been faithful to God’s will in keeping the Sixth Commandment, she would now appear to all to be an immoral woman. Without being asked, she was now being involved in the great and mighty things involving the Messiah.

Yet Mary’s response was to say, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” She believed God’s Word. She declared herself to be the servant – the slave – of God, and so she willingly accepted all that the angel announced.
In faith, Mary accepted God’s calling of being a mother. It is in the vocations where God places us that we too are called to live by faith in God’s word. It is as husbands and wives; fathers and mothers; sons and daughters; employers and employees that we are used by God to serve and care for others. Serving others isn’t about me. And so it goes against the old man within us. There are times that we fail. And if we are to succeed, we need a source of strength that comes from outside of us. It is the One whose conception is announced to Mary that provides both.

Mary believed God’s word, yet she did not know what this would involve. Very soon after the birth of Jesus she began to learn when Simeon said, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” Jesus would be opposed. Mary would know the pain of watching her innocent son die by crucifixion.

In our text Mary learns that Jesus is the Christ – the Messiah who descends from David. And yet then on Good Friday she will see him die on the cross. It is only after his resurrection on the third day that Jesus explains this to the Church when he says, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Our Lord opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

As we get closer to the celebration of Christmas, our text about Mary sets before us the incarnate Son of God, and faith that receives God’s Word. In Jesus Christ, God has acted to give us forgiveness and new life. As Mary received this news about the incarnation, she accepted the vocation God had given her, and trusted his word. When we fail, we find in Jesus the forgiveness that gives us peace. And the Spirit uses the good news of the Gospel we hear tonight to strengthen us as seek to follow the example God has given us in Mary.

Commemoration of Lucia, Martyr

Today we remember and give thanks for Lucia, Martyr.  One of the victims of the great persecution under the Roman emperor Diocletian, Lucia met her death at Syracuse on the island of Sicily in the year A.D. 304, because of her Christian faith. Known for her charity, “Santa Lucia” (as she is called in Italy) gave away her dowry and remained a virgin until her execution by the sword. The name Lucia means “light,” and, because of that, festivals of light commemorating her became popular throughout Europe, especially in the Scandinavian countries. There her feast day corresponds with the time of year when there is the least amount of daylight. In artistic expression she is often portrayed in a white baptismal gown, wearing a wreath of candles on her head.

Collect of the Day:

O Almighty God, by whose grace and power Your holy martyr Lucia triumphed over suffering and remained ever faithful unto death, grant us, who now remember her with thanksgiving, to be so true in our witness to You in this world that we may receive with her new eyes and without tears, the crown of light and life; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.