Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity

                                                                                                Trinity 8

                                                                                                Acts 20:27-38

                                                                                                8/10/14

           

            I am not afraid to admit when was I was wrong. And when it comes to texting...I was wrong.  I did not start to text until a couple of years ago when I finally got an iPhone.  Now part of the reason for the delay was technical.  I didn’t have a smart phone and the phone I had was not user friendly when it came to texting.

            But the main reason was that I was just turned off by texting.  I didn’t want to type on a tiny little keyboard.  I couldn’t stand all the shorthand language used in texting – the abbreviations used for phrases.  The compressed nature of texting perpetuates bad grammar and bad writing.  And to be honest, I just didn’t understand how it could be useful.  If the whole point of having a cell phone was that you could call from anywhere at any time, why would I want to fumble with a tiny little key board when I could just call the person?

            Now that I do use texting, I still don’t like the tiny little keyboard.  I still don’t like the way it compresses language and fosters bad habits in writing.  But I have to admit that I was wrong about its usefulness.  I have found that there are indeed times and settings when I want to communicate something but making a phone call is impossible or inappropriate.  I have found that there are some kinds of information and questions that are easier to share in a brief text than in making a phone call.

            And I have learned that there are some people for whom a text is a huge time saver.  You know the kind of person I am talking about – the person for whom there is no such thing as a short conversation; the person with whom you get started into a conversation and then you find yourselves looking for polite ways to bring the conversation to a close so that you can move on to other things you need to do. There are times and situations when we really can’t let ourselves be delayed by a long discussion or visit. And in those cases a text message communicates, but prevents us from getting hung up in a long phone conversation.

            Paul is doing something similar in our second reading this morning from Acts chapter 20.  He is in a hurry to get to Jerusalem as he sails along the cost of the Mediterranean.  This is going to mean making a stop at Ephesus, where he had engaged in ministry for nearly three years.  He knows lots of people there, and they are going to want to visit with him.  But Paul doesn’t have time to get hung up in a long visit. And so instead, he has the pastors of the area come out to Miletus – the port city for Ephesus.  He has some final brief words that he wants to share with them – some words of farewell – and so he arranges things to keep it brief.

            Paul is headed to Jerusalem, and he is under no illusions about what awaits him there.  Just before our text he says, “And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.” The Holy Spirit has been revealing that difficult times await Paul.  And yet Paul says that this is not doing to dissuade him from going.  Instead, he tells the pastors, “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

            And so in the expectation that he will never see them again, Paul does two things in this farewell address. First, he describes how he had conducted himself during his ministry in Ephesus. And second, he exhorts the pastors of the Ephesus area to follow the model he has provided by his own ministry.  He tells them to be faithful in their ministry, just as Paul has, and to keep watch because false teachers are going to arise after Paul is gone.

            Paul begins our text by saying, “for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”  This actually isn’t a great place to start the reading because it cuts off Paul’s statement from what it is explaining.  The whole thought is this: “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” The apostle says that he is not responsible for anyone who may be lost because he did what he was supposed to do – he shared the whole counsel or plan of God.  He told them the whole truth.

            It’s the same thing that Paul said just prior to the start of our text.  Using the exact same language he said, “I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

            Paul says that he didn’t hold back.  He gave them the whole message.  He confronted them with the need for repentance toward God, and for faith in Jesus Christ.  We could just as easily say that he gave them Law and Gospel. And now, the pastors gathered at Miletus have been charged with doing the same thing.

            They have this responsibility because God has placed them to care for his flock.  In our text Paul says, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.”  It is not that the pastors have put themselves in charge.  Instead, working through his Church, the Spirit had made the overseers.  He had placed them to care for the Church – literally “to shepherd” her.  They were to be pastors – shepherds of the flock that didn’t belong to them.  Instead, the flock belonged to God because they had been obtained with the blood of Christ – by his suffering and death.

            There would be a need to do this, not just because of sin in general.  Paul told them, “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.”  False teachers would come in from outside the Church, and would even rise from inside the Church.  And so Paul charged them, “Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.” 

            What we hear in our text this morning is a warning about our world and a description of what you are to expect out of your pastor – what you are to expect of me.  Paul describes a world where it is not easy to be a Christian. There are threats from the outside – from the world and its sinful ways. There are threats on the inside – from those who want to twist the truth of God’s Word.  And so the charge to the pastor is to care for the flock.  It is to avoid shrinking back from declaring the whole counsel of God – the message of repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ.  It is to keep watch and admonish, even when this involves tears.

            It was hard to do this in Paul’s day.  Paul ministered in a world that swirled with all kinds of religious beliefs.  Paganism was everywhere, and the spirit of the age said that you could pick and choose, and combine those beliefs however you wanted.  He ministered in a world where there were almost no limits on the use of sex; a world where homosexuality was just another way people used sex.  He ministered in a world of unspeakable cruelty, where life was cheap.

            It’s not hard to recognize that I have just described our own world.  The parallels in our setting between the first century and twenty-first century are uncanny. And that makes things hard.  You are tempted to think that what you believe doesn’t really matter, as long as it is sincerely held.  You are tempted to think that the highest good is you and your happiness – however you choose to define it.  So there is no reason why you shouldn’t have sex whenever and with whomever you wish.  You are tempted to put your needs and wants ahead of anyone else because the only thing that is really wrong is anything thing that hinders your pursuit of being happy.  After all, you deserve your best life now.

            Because that is the situation in which you live, God has charged pastors with declaring the whole counsel of God; he has charged them with declaring repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ.  The repentance part can be hard. People don’t like to be told that they are wrong.  They really don’t want to hear it when they can easily go out into the world and find affirmation of what they are doing. But this is not truth. It is not the will of God.  It is self-deception.  It is self-destructive delusion.

            And so God charges pastors to speak no matter what reaction they receive. They are to speak the Law. Where people refuse to repent and instead want to hold onto their sin, that is exactly what they are left with – their sin.  They are left with sin that cuts them off from God – eternally if they don’t repent.

            But those who confess their sin; who seek to turn away from it; and who ask for forgiveness find that they are indeed people that God has redeemed with the blood of Jesus Christ.  They find that God is the gracious God who forgives the sins of those who don’t deserve forgiveness, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Just before our text Paul describes his ministry as one that testifies “to the gospel of the grace of God.” Here in our text Paul says, “And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”

            This is the message that pastors are to proclaim.  But the Christian life is not merely a perpetual cycle of sin, repentance and forgiveness.  True, as long as we live as fallen people in a fallen world we will never escape this reality.  Yet the life of faith also moves outside of itself and serves others.  Indeed, Paul says at the end of our text, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

            Because we have received God’s grace in Christ – his undeserved gift of forgiveness and life – we now seek to share this grace with others.  We seek to share the unmerited love of God with others in the place and time in which we live.

           

           

           

           

           

             

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity

                                                                                                Trinity 7

                                                                                                Gen 2:1-17

                                                                                                8/3/14

            When I was growing up in Indiana, we always had a garden in our backyard. It’s a great memory because while I don’t recall having to do all that much work in the garden, I do remember eating all of the wonderful vegetables that we got from it.  In particular I remember having so many tomatoes that my dad and I would eat them like an apple.

            Amy had gardens too when she was growing up.  However, during our married life we have never had one. Really, there are four reasons for this.  They are named Timothy, Matthew, Abigail and Michael.  We would have had a garden when we lived in Brookfield, IL, but before we had been there very long we had the twins and needless to say that put everything else in life on hold.

            When we moved to Marion our backyard initially wasn’t conducive to a garden because of trees, and of course then we had Michael.  The inland hurricane and the clean up that followed took care of all but one of those trees.  And now the kids are old enough so that instead of hindering activities they can actually help out with a garden.  So, if all goes according to plan, that despised sweet gum tree will be coming down and a garden will go in by next spring.  

            In the meantime, this summer, we have made a very small start.  Amy bought a tomato plant, a cherry tomato plant and a green pepper plant that are in pots on the deck.  Matthew, Abigail and Michael have taken on the job of tending these plants, and I would not have thought it was possible for three plants to produce so much excitement.  Every morning the first thing they do is to go out of the deck and water the plants.  They carefully inspect them to see how they are doing, whether they have produced new blossoms, and how the fruit on them is growing.  And then they come inside and share a detailed report about what is happening with the plants.

            For the kids, tending the tomato and green pepper plants is enjoyable – it is something they want to do.  And when we hear in our text this morning that God put Adam in the Garden of Eden “to work it and keep it,” we should probably have a very similar image in mind.  Our text teaches us that we were created to work – that this is part of our God given purpose and that it is something in which we are intended to find fulfillment.  The fact that for us, work can be drudgery, gives us insight into how sin has changed things.  And from our text, we also get a better sense of the hope that awaits us.

            Genesis chapters one and two provide the foundation for all that follows it in the Scriptures. Now I’m not trying to be “Captain Obvious” here.  Of course, these are the first events narrated in the Bible.  But more than that, I am talking about the manner in which Genesis one and two establish the way we are to think about the creation God has made and the bodily existence God has given to us.

            God makes a material creation – he makes a world made out of “stuff.”  It is a place of water and land; a place of plants and animals.  And the text of Genesis leaves us in no doubt about God’s assessment of this material creation.  As God makes the creation in Genesis one, six times we hear the refrain that it was “good.”  This reaches its crescendo on the sixth day when we hear in the last verse of the chapter, “God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.’

            In our text from chapter two Moses gives us a close up look at the creation of Adam.  Here again, you can’t miss how important the “stuff” is.  We hear, “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” God creates a material body and breathes into that body the breath of life, and in that unity Adam becomes a living being.  Or as we express things on the basis of what Jesus says, we are the unity of body and soul.

            Then we learn that God planted a garden and put Adam there. Adam lived a bodily existence. He was located in a place.  And he had a vocation – he had work to do.  We read, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Adam was there to care for the Garden. But there was nothing onerous about this work.  Instead it was fulfilling – the fulfillment of the purpose God had given to Adam.

            Everything we have talked about so far is material – it involves the “stuff” God had made – good stuff.  And the same thing was true when it came to the way Adam worshipped God.  We learn in our text that God commanded Adam, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

            God gave Adam an abundance of food. And then for his material creature who was located in a place, he gave one command about a tree in a place.  He commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  God located one thing in Eden by which Adam worshipped him. Adam demonstrated that he feared, loved and trusted God by obeying him and not eating of that tree. 

            Of course, things didn’t stay that way. Adam and Eve decided that they weren’t satisfied with limitations as creatures. They weren’t going to listen to God. They weren’t going to obey God.  Tempted by Satan they sought to be God – to become more than what God had made them to be.  And in doing so they found themselves plunged into limitations they never could have imagined.  Their life was now limited by death.  Their joy was limited by sickness and pain.  And their experience of work was limited by drudgery – work became real work.

            Your life now follows the same course as Adam and Eve.  You refuse to listen to God and to obey him.  You refuse to put God first as you focus upon yourself.  You refuse to love and honor your spouse as you look out for yourself. You refuse to help and support those around you and instead help yourself. And work?  Well, work is real work.

            Because that has been the way of life for Adam and you, and everyone else since the Fall, God acted to provide the remedy for sin.  But when he did so, he didn’t ignore all that he had done in Genesis chapters one and two.  Instead, he redeemed your material and bodily existence by sending his Son to take part in it.  Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary the Son of God entered into this world and lived your bodily existence.  As Paul told the Colossians, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”  Jesus Christ came as the second Adam.  He came so that as Adam was overcome by the temptation of a tree, Jesus might overcome sin by obedience that led to the tree of the cross.

            And then on third day Jesus overcame death as he rose from the dead.  He emerged from the tomb – not just alive once again.  He emerged with a body transformed so that it can never die again.  Death was swallowed up in immortality as the second Adam began the new creation.

            This is what Jesus Christ has done to win you forgiveness.  And when it came time to give you the forgiveness won through incarnation, God didn’t ignore all that he had done in Genesis chapters one and two either.  Instead, he chose to use material means that are located in your midst.  In Holy Baptism he uses water in the font as you share in Jesus’ saving death for the forgiveness of your sins. And that water poured on your body guarantees that the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead will raise and transform your body too.

            In the Sacrament of the Altar he uses bread and wine at the altar.  Through the power of his creative word, Christ uses that bread and wine to give you his true body and blood.   He puts into your mouth the very price he paid for your salvation.  And by doing so he guarantees that he will raise and transform your body too, for Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

            In Christ, through the work of the Spirit in the washing of regeneration and renewal, you already are a new creation.  The new man in you seeks to live in the ways that God intended.  And so work takes on a new perspective.  Now because we live in the “not yet” of the fallen world; and because we still have the struggle against the old Adam, work has not ceased to be work.  At times and places there still is drudgery.

            But now, just as God placed Adam in the garden to work it and keep it, we begin to see our work within God’s broader purposes.  We begin to see that God is actually working through us to care and provide for our neighbor.  The seemingly mundane becomes freighted with the divine. God’s work and purpose is seen in the midst of the ordinary.

            This work is not merely the work of a job that brings home a paycheck.  It is the work of vocation.  It is the work of a husband and father who takes up the role of being spiritual head of the house - who sets the tone that the Divine Service and family devotions are key things in our life; it is the work that seeks to put the needs of his wife and children before his own, even when that interferes with time in the “man cave.”  It is the work of a wife and mother who who cares for her children in the middle of the night and seeks to meet her husband’s sexual needs even when she isn’t entirely in the mood and

            Now this isn’t always easy.  It isn’t always fun.  But we are able to do it in hope.  Hope is one of the most powerful forces in the human experience. Where there is hope we are able to keep doing, to keep going. He have hope because of the resurrection of Jesus. In fact Peter said, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

            In fact, we have a hope that extends beyond our own bodies to creation itself.  For you see, the Bible ends in the same way as it begins.  In Genesis chapters one and two we learn about human bodily existence in the very good creation God had made.  And in Revelation chapters twenty one and twenty two we learn about the restoration of what God intended.  After the resurrection we learn about the new heaven and the new earth, and the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven.           

            There John sees Eden restored – he sees heaven on earth.  He says, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.”  We live in the hope of the resurrection and the renewed creation in which everything will be very good once again.  And that is a hope that enable us to live each day faithfully in the callings that God has given to us.

           

                             

Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

Today is the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene.  Mary Magdalene followed Jesus after He had cast out seven demons from her (Luke 8:2).  She was present at the crucifixion (Matthew 27:55-56) and was one of the women who went to the tomb on Easter Sunday to anoint Jesus’ body (Matthew 28:1-10).  According to the Gospel of John (20:11-18), Mary was the first to see the risen Lord and He sent her to deliver a message to the apostles.  Although the Western church has at times identified her as the penitent prostitute (Luke 7:36-50) or as the sister of Martha and Lazarus, there is no biblical basis for these identifications and the Eastern church has treated them as three different women.

Scripture reading:

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.  So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” … Then the disciples went back to their homes.  But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.  (John 20:1-2, 10-18)

Collect of the Day:

Almighty God, Your Son, Jesus Christ, restored Mary Magdalene to health and called her to be the first witness of his resurrection.  Heal us from all our infirmities, and call us to know you in the power of your Son’s unending life; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy  Spirit, one  God, now and forever.