Commemoration of Basil the Great of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa

Today we remember and give thanks for Basil the Great of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, Pastors and Confessors.  Basil and the two Gregorys, collectively known as the Cappadocian Fathers, were leaders of Christian orthodoxy in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in the later fourth century. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa were brothers; Gregory of Nazianzus was their friend. All three were influential in shaping the theology confessed by the Council of Constantinople of 381, which is expressed in the Nicene Creed. Their defense of the doctrines of the Holy Spirit and Holy Trinity, together with their contributions to the liturgy of the Eastern Church, make them among the most influential Christian teachers and theologians of their time.

Collect of the Day:

Almighty God, You revealed to Your Church Your eternal being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in a Trinity of persons.  May Your Church, with pastors like Basil, Gregory and Gregory, receive grace to continue steadfast in the confession of the true faith and constant in our worship of You,  Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who live and reign, one God, now and forever.

Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord

                                                                                  Epiphany

                                                                                  Isa 60:1-6

                                                                                  1/6/15

          It will probably not surprise you to learn that I am a creature of habit.  Like many people, I often fall into certain patterns of doing things because I find that they help me to make sure I get things done.  And over time, these patterns themselves become almost comforting. They provide a rhythm to life that is expected and lets me now that everything is going as it should.

          My Sunday morning routine is the same week after week.  My alarm goes off at 5:45 a.m. and after showering and getting dressed I go downstairs to eat breakfast.  It is at this point that the only real variable arises since sometimes Michael gets up and we eat breakfast together, and sometimes he remains asleep like everyone else in the house.

          Next I go downstairs to the basement where I run through my sermon one last time.  After this I get in my car and drive over to church, parking at the spot on the far southeast corner of the church property.  I enjoy this quiet time on Sunday morning, before all the bustle of activity begins at church.  At this time of year, it is of course dark when I get up.  By the time I arrive at church the sun is beginning to come up, but it is still more night than day.

          This past Sunday I did this same routine, just as I do every Sunday.  I walked up to the door at the east end of the building in the waning darkness and got out my keys to unlock the door.  And just as I did so – without warning – a light suddenly flashed on above my head.  I was completely startled.  Where there had been darkness, now there was bright light.  This was not part of the routine, for it had never happened before.

          Once I had regained my senses, I looked up and to the right in order to figure out what had happened; in order to determine where this light was coming from.  I soon discovered that there now a motion activated light installed at the entrance to church and I had tripped it off. Unbeknownst to me, someone had installed this in order to help provide more security here at church. I am glad it is there – it’s a good idea to have it.  I just wish someone would have told me about it and spared me from quite a start.

          In our Old Testament lesson for the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord, the prophet Isaiah describes the sudden appearance of light in the midst of darkness.  He describes the sudden arrival of God’s glory which brings joy and salvation to his people.

          Isaiah begins our text tonight by saying, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”  This light is needed because of the circumstances he goes on to describe when he says, “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.” 

          Writing in the eighth century B.C., the prophet writes words of comfort for the people of Judah who would be taken into exile by the Babylonians in the sixth century B.C.  God’s light – his glory would be revealed in the midst of the darkness of exile.  He would act to bring his people back and restore them to the land of Judah.

          Yet Isaiah’s words point to something even bigger than this.  The saving action by God in the sixth century B.C. pointed forward to something even great that God would do.  The exile and its suffering was simply one manifestation of a deeper problem that plagues all people.  It was simply one way that sin manifests its presence in the world.

          This darkness afflicts your life.  You experience it in the pain and suffering that come your way. But even more so, you perceive it in the thoughts you have, the things you say and the things you do – or fail to do.  You find that most of all, you are into … you.  Selfishness and self-service guide the way you deal with others. This is bad enough. But then on top of this, you find it so easy to act in petty, vindictive and just plain mean spirited ways with others.

          This is the darkness that covered the earth.  This is the darkness that covered that peoples.  And then, in the first century A.D., God did something about it.  Light entered into the darkness as the glory of the Lord was revealed in the incarnate Son of God.

          During the season of Epiphany we rejoice in the fact that the light of the glory of God appeared in Jesus Christ.  The word “epiphany” comes from a Greek word that means “to appear” or “to shine.”  We give thanks that the salvation of God appeared in our world through Jesus and began to shine forth.

          Tonight our Gospel lesson describes how God’s saving glory in Christ was revealed to Gentile magi through the light of a star. They saw a star at its rising, and interpreted this to mean that a king of the Jews had been born. Eventually, after stopping at Jerusalem, the star not only appeared, but even guided them to where the child Jesus was located in Bethlehem.  These Gentiles brought with them expensive gifts - gold and frankincense and myrrh – and gave them to Jesus.

          Knowing what happened with Jesus, it is of course impossible to hear the word’s of our Old Testament lesson and not think about the visit by the magi.  Isaiah writes, “And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”  He says, “A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come.  They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord.”

          Jesus Christ came as light into darkness.  He came to bring light into the darkness of sin. But in order to do this he submitted himself to darkness.  In the darkness of Good Friday he suffered God’s judgment against your sin. As Paul tells us, he was made to be sin for you.  He suffered the darkness of death for you and was buried in a sealed tomb.

          But on Easter, at first light, the women who went to the tomb discovered that light had dawned – the light of the resurrection. The One who had been dead was now alive!  And because he has risen from the dead, he promises that all who have shared in his death through baptism will also share in this light on the Last Day.

          This is what Christ has done for you.  But when we look carefully at our text, we find that it also talks about what you are now and about what you will do.  Isaiah writes to the people of God and says, “And nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising.”  Where Israel had failed, Jesus the Christ went forth as Israel reduced to One – the Servant of the Lord – who fulfilled God’s will. And by fulfilling God’s will, he worked the salvation that applies to all people – Jew and Gentile alike.

          Though most of you are Gentiles, you have been included in the salvation that our text describes.  It is a Gospel for all nations; all peoples. The forgiveness that we could never earn for ourselves has been given to us as a gift. Through baptism we are now those who are in Christ.  We are the body of Christ.  We are the Israel of God.

          And because this is so, the words of our text apply to you in a very specific way.  On this Feast of the Epiphany we rejoice in the fact that your light has come.  The glory of the Lord has risen upon you in Jesus.  And so now the words which were true of Israel are also true of you: “And nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

          In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.  Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

          You have received the saving light of Christ – a light that was one of service and sacrifice for you.  And now as those who are in Christ, you are called to reflect this light to others.  You are called to a life of service and sacrifice.  You are called to do good works – works that are good in God’s eyes only because of Jesus; works that follow the pattern of Jesus as you seek to serve others.        

          On this Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord, we rejoice and give thanks to God because his saving light appeared in the darkness of this sin filled world.  In the incarnation, death and resurrection of the Son of God you have received this light.  And now, as those who have been saved by Jesus Christ, you seek to share the light of his love with others. 

                   

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas

Christmas 2

                                                                                      Gen 46:1-7

                                                                                      1/4/15

          “Read my lips: no new taxes.”  “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.  If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

          These are two famous promises made by Presidents of the United States.  The first was made by then Vice-President George Bush at the Republican National Convention in 1988 as he was nominated by that party as its presidential candidate. The second was made by President Obama on too many occasions to list as he worked to convince the nation about his health care overall, now commonly known as Obamacare.

          These two examples of promises come from very different politicians – one a Republican and the other a Democrat.  What they share in common is that both promises proved to be false.  Taxes were raised.  And it turns out that no – if you like your doctor or health care plan you don’t necessarily get to keep them.

          These two promises are dramatic examples of what we have come to assume about politicians – they make promises that aren’t kept and that they don’t even intend to keep.  Hard experience has taught us to be jaded about what politicians say because all too often they are not true to their word. 

          It would have been easy for Jacob to feel much the same about the promises that God had spoken to him, to his father and to his grandfather.  God had called his grandfather Abraham and prompted him to move to the land of Canaan.  God had promised to make Abraham into a great nation and to give the land of Canaan to his descendants. And he had promised that in Abraham’s offspring all nations would be blessed.

          Jacob now represented the third generation to whom the promise had been given.  If he took stock of things, it would not have been hard to conclude that God wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping his promise.  Though God had miraculously provided Isaac to the aged Abraham and Sarah, Jacob wasn’t a great nation.  In fact we learn that his extended family only numbered seventy.  He didn’t possess the land.  All he actually owned was the plot of land where his grandmother Sarah was buried.  And certainly, one could not make the claim that in Isaac or Jacob all people had been blessed.

          God didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of keeping his promises.  And yet, in the words that God speaks to Jacob in our text this morning we learn that Jacob continued to believe those promises. And in the words that we hear this morning, God again affirms that he will keep those promises – even if it is going to happen in ways that Jacob does not expect.

          Jacob had just received incredibly good news.  For many years he had believed that his son Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.  Now he learned that not only was Joseph alive, but he was second in charge over the great nation of Egypt! 

          But this good news brought with it a new source of uncertainty. A famine gripped the land of Canaan.  The conditions of the famine were present in Egypt too, but there God had worked through Joseph to see that food had been stored up during the seven prosperous years that had preceded the famine.  Joseph now wanted his father to bring the whole family down to Egypt so that he could take care of them.  Yet to do so would take Jacob out of the land that God had promised.  It was an action that seemed to run against God’s promise.

          In our Old Testament lesson we learn that God spoke to Jacob – to whom he had given the name “Israel” - in visions of the night and said, “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph's hand shall close your eyes.”

          God assured Jacob that the journey to Egypt was not a denial or rejection of God’s promise.  Instead, it was part of the means by which God would fulfill his promise. It was in Egypt that God would make Israel into a great nation.  But at the same time, God’s promise had not changed.  Jacob would be returned to the land of Canaan because the land was still the land promised to his descendants.

          In our text this morning we see an illustration of the fact that God works out his plans in ways that we don’t expect.  Indeed, sometimes the way God works his plans appears as if God isn’t doing anything at all; that he is nowhere to be found.  The descendants of Jacob did turn into a great nation while in Egypt.  And yet in time there arose a Pharaoh who did not know Joseph.  He saw the Israelites as a threat and so he enslaved them.  Jacob went down to Egypt as God says in our text – and the nation ended up as slaves.

          There are many times in life when things don’t go the way we want them to go; the way we think they should go.  We encounter issues related to our health, our children, our job and a host of other things in life that don’t go the way we want.  We experience hardship and sorrow that we don’t want to encounter.  And in the midst of those things the temptation is to doubt God.  The temptation is to be disappointed with God.  The temptation is to be angry with God.  It becomes easy to fail to fear, love and trust in God above all things.

          In our Old Testament lesson we see that God does work in unexpected ways.  He promises that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will become a great nation.  He promises to give them the land of Canaan.  And in making them a great nation he takes them to Egypt – out of the land of Canaan.  He takes them to a place where eventually they will be enslaved.

          God tells Jacob not to be afraid to go down to Egypt with his family.  As he does so, he also says, “I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph's hand shall close your eyes.”  In Hebrew the statement, “I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again,” is especially emphatic.  God says that he will be with Jacob.

          God promises to be with Jacob in Egypt.  This provides the assurance so that Jacob can obey God’s word in confidence.  It provides assurance, even though what God is doing is unexpected and surprising.  This promise to be with Jacob leads us to a recognition of why we can believe and trust in God’s love and care in the midst of unexpected and unwanted circumstances.

          In our Gospel lesson we hear about the unexpected way that God worked in Jesus Christ as God commands Joseph to take the infant Jesus and his mother down to Egypt in order to escape Herod the Great’s murderous plan.  We listen to this knowing that in the previous chapter the angel had announced to Joseph that the child conceived in Mary was from the Holy Spirit. And then Matthew has told us, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us).”

          God promises in our text to be with Jacob as he goes down to Egypt.  And now at Christmas, in a way never experienced before God is with us in the incarnation.  The Father sends forth the Son into our world as he is conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.  He is God with us, for the baby born in Bethlehem is true God and true man.

          The angel had told Joseph that Mary, “will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  The Son of God came to save us from our sins.  Yet in our Gospel lesson we see him being taken to Egypt at night to escape death.  It is the first of many things about Jesus that don’t go the way we expect. Yet through it all God remains at work fulfilling his promises.  As we hear in our Gospel lesson, the flight to Egypt fulfills what the prophet Hosea had written, “Out of Egypt I called my son,” as Jesus fulfills what Israel was supposed to be.

          It is unexpected.  It is surprising.  And the unexpected character of God’s work in Jesus Christ reaches its culmination on Good Friday.  For there the incarnate Son of God dies as he gives his life as a ransom for many.  He dies to give us the forgiveness of sins.  It’s unexpected. And then on Easter God does something else unexpected as he raises Jesus from the dead.  He begins the resurrection of the Last Day in Jesus … before the Last Day actually arrives.

          This is what God has done for you.  And because he has done this in Christ, you are able to trust God and how he is doing things right now. In our text today, God tells Jacob not to be afraid.  He says to him, “I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again.”  God promises to be with Jacob. 

          We know that God has been with us in the incarnation. Yet Jesus the incarnate One is not “God used to be with us.”   He is Immanuel – God with us.  He is the incarnate One who continues to be with us in his body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. Through his body and blood he gives us the forgiveness that he won on the cross. And by this presence he comforts us with the guarantee of his love and care. 

          Through the Sacrament and the other Means of Grace he sustains in us the faith so that we can continue trust that he is at work.  The path may be unexpected, but we never need to doubt who is guiding it or his good intentions for us.  Like Jacob, we are encouraged to trust in God as we wait for him to take us to the “promised land” – this world renewed as the new creation on the Last Day when he returns in glory to raise and transform our bodies to be like his.  

           

Commemoration of J.K. Wilhelm Loehe, Pastor

Today we remember and give thanks for J. K. Wilhelm Loehe, Pastor. Although he never left  Germany, Johann Konrad Wilhelm Loehe, born in Fuerth in 1808, had a profound impact on the development of Lutheranism in North America. Serving as pastor in the Bavarian village of Neuendettelsau, he recognized the need for workers in developing lands and assisted in training emergency helpers to be sent as missionary pastors to North America, Brazil, and Australia. A number of the men he sent to the United States became founders of The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod. Through his financial support, a theological school was established in Fort Wayne, Ind., and a teachers' institute in Saginaw, Mich. Loehe was known for his confessional integrity and his interest in liturgy and catechesis. His devotion to works of Christian charity led to the establishment of a deaconess training house and homes for the aged.

Collect of the Day

Heavenly Father, Shepherd of your people, we thank you for your servant Wilhelm, who was faithful in the care and nurturing of your flock; and we pray that, following his example and the teaching of his life, we may by your grace grow into the stature of the fullness of our Lord; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Mark's thoughts: The Jerusalem temple, Jesus and the future

Recently I passed a Christian church that had the message on its sign: “Support our friends in Israel.”  Now on the surface of things this may seem like a very strange message for a church to share.  However because of the theological belief called dispensational millennialism, many Christians believe that the modern nation of Israel has a key role to play in God’s end-time plans.

Dispensational millennialism was created by the Englishman John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) and was then popularized in the United States by Cyrus Scofield (1843-1921), a  pastor in Dallas, who included it in his Scofield Reference Bible (1909; revised 1917).  It has led many Christians to believe that the temple in Jerusalem must be rebuilt in order for God’s end-time plans to unfold.  This assumption leads these Christians to read the Old Testament prophets’ many references to the temple and Mt. Zion on which the temple was located as predictions of a future temple building.  The description provided in Ezekiel 40-48 is understood to be the plan for this new temple (the third temple, after the destruction the temple in 587 B.C. and 70 A.D.).

Dispensational millennialism fails to recognize that all of Scripture is about Jesus Christ.  He is Israel reduced to One and it is in him that the statements about Israel find fulfillment (see for example Matthew 2:13-15). The same thing is true of the temple and this recognition provides the key to understanding much that the Old Testament prophets have written.

In Genesis God’s promised Abraham, “And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:8 ESV).  In the patriarchal promise first made to Abraham and then repeated to his descendants, God promised to give the land of Canaan to his people.  The land would be the means by which God would bless his people.  It would be the place where God would be present in the midst of His people.

After entering into the covenant with Israel Yahweh said, “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst” (Exodus 25:8 ESV).  The ark of the covenant in the tabernacle became the means by which God located himself in the midst of his people, a fact that was demonstrated as the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle when it was erected (Exodus 40:34-38).

While the tabernacle was mobile and was used by God to lead them during their journey, he promised that in the future he would choose one place: “But you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, your vow offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock” (Deuteronomy 12:5-6 ESV).

The place was eventually identified as Zion on which the city of Jerusalem was built (2 Samuel 5:5-9).  Solomon built the temple to be God’s dwelling and at its dedication the glory of Yahweh filled the structure, just as it had for the tabernacle (1 Kings 8:10-13).  The temple in Jerusalem was the means by which the Yahweh’s saving presence dwelt in the midst of his people. Because the temple was located on Mt. Zion, all of the biblical truths about God’s saving presence located in the midst of his people are often summarized in the Old Testament by one word: Zion.

Yahweh had chosen to use the temple as the located means of his presence.  However, he was also clear that if Israel was unfaithful and worshiped other gods he would reject the temple and it would be destroyed (1 Kings 9:1-9).  As the sad and unfaithful history of the nation played out, eventually God showed Ezekiel that this was going to happen when the prophet saw the glory of Yahweh leave the temple (Ezekiel 10:4-19; 11:22-25).

God’s judgment arrived in 587 B.C. when he used the Babylonians to destroy the temple and take Judah into exile.  Yet God had promised through Jeremiah that the exile would end (Jeremiah 25:11-12) and through Isaiah that Cyrus would be the instrument for doing this (Isaiah 45:1-4).  Ezra tells us that in fulfillment of this Cyrus the Persian leader who had conquered the Babylonians issued a decree that the exiles could return and rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:1-3).  The Edict of Cyrus in 538 B.C. allowed the Jews to dedicate the rebuilt temple in 516/515 B.C. (Ezra 6:13-18). God worked through the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to see that the second temple was completed (Ezra 5:1-2; 6:13-15).  Expanded and rebuilt in a magnificent way by Herod the Great (74-4 B.C.) the second temple stood at the time of Jesus Christ.

At the beginning of his Gospel John writes about the incarnation of the Son of God: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 ESV).  The Greek verb that John uses for “dwell” is based on the same root as the word that is used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) to translate the Hebrew word “tabernacle.”  In a similar manner, John 1:14’s reference to “glory” recalls how God’s glory filled the tabernacle (Exo 40:34-38).  John is telling us that everything that was true of the tabernacle and temple is now found in Jesus Christ.   

In Jesus Christ, we meet the One who is the fulfillment of all that is meant by Zion and the temple in the Old Testament.  In the Old Testament God located Himself in the midst of his people through the means of a building on a mountain in Palestine.  Israel knew that they met God there.  In the incarnation, God located himself in the midst of his people through the means of a human being in Palestine.  God’s people learned that they now meet God in the located means of the body and flesh of Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament’s temple theology.  He made this clear when he said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).  They replied “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” Yet John then adds, “But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken” (2:20-22).

But what of the plans for an end-time temple in Ezekiel chapters 40-48?  The center and fulfillment of all of Scripture is Jesus Christ and the blessings that He brings.  When we read the Old Testament we must recognize that it expresses theology in the language of the B.C. setting in which Israel existed.  However, that language must be read in light of the theology it intends to express and the New Testament realities that fulfill this theology – namely Jesus Christ, His Means of Grace and His Body, the Church.

Perhaps the best illustration of this is Ezekiel 47:1-12 which describes water flowing from the temple that issues forth in a lush land filled with life.  It is a picture of the new creation - Eden restored.  Revelation 22:1-5 also describes the river of the water of life, but now it flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb (22:1).   Just before this we learn, “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22 ESV). What Ezekiel described using the language of the way God worked before Christ is now expressed in the language of the fulfillment that occurred in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.