Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist

Today is the Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist. According to Colossians 4:14, Luke was a physician.  He joined Paul during his second missionary journey (Acts 16:9-11) and accompanied him during several portions of his travels.  He traveled with Paul to Jerusalem and was with him during the two years that he was imprisoned in Caesarea (Acts 21-26).  It is likely that Luke used this time to gather material he used in writing the Gospel of Luke.  Luke wrote the Book of Acts as the second volume that accompanies the Gospel of Luke (Acts 1:1-2).  More than one-third of the New Testament was written by Luke.

Scripture reading:

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ (Luke 10:1-9 ESV)

Collect of the Day:

Almighty God, our Father, Your blessed Son called Luke the physician to be an evangelist and physician of the soul.  Grant that the healing medicine of the Gospel and the Sacraments may put to flight the diseases of our souls that with willing hearts we may ever love and serve You; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Commemoration of Ignatius of Antioch, Pastor and Martyr

Today we remember and give thanks for Ignatius of Antioch, Pastor and Martyr.  Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch in Syria at the beginning of the second century A.D. and an early Christian martyr. Near the end of the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan (98–117), Ignatius was arrested, taken in chains to Rome, and eventually thrown to the wild beasts in the arena. On the way to Rome, he wrote letters to the Christians at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, and also to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. In the letters, which are beautifully pastoral in tone, Ignatius warned against certain heresies (false teachings). He also repeatedly stressed the full humanity and deity of Christ, the reality of Christ’s bodily presence in the Lord’s Supper, the authority of the bishop, and the unity of the Church found in her bishops. Ignatius was the first to use the word catholic to describe the universality of the Church. His Christ-centeredness, his courage in the face of martyrdom, and his zeal for the truth over against false doctrine are a lasting legacy to the Church.

Collect of the  Day:

Almighty God, we praise Your name for Ignatius of Antioch, pastor and martyr.  He offered himself as grain to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts so that he might present to You the pure bread of sacrifice.  Accept the willing tribute of all that we are and all that we have, and give us a portion in the pure and unspotted offering of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity - Isa 55:1-9

                                                                                                  Trinity 20
                                                                                                   Isa 55:1-10
                                                                                                   10/9/16

Recently, I received an email that said the following, “I am Private Adviser to former Minister of Petroleum (Diezani Alison-Madueke). I want you to help my boss receive [US$70.5Million US Dollars] for investment. NB: This became imperative so we can avoid total lost to the on going onslaught against my boss by the present government in my country. Your share shall be 25% of the total value upon the completion. Please kindly send email below and your data so that I can send you more details. Respectfully yours, Deribo Agidigan.”

Now of course, as soon as I received this email, I wanted to help. After all, how could I not be concerned about the ongoing onslaught against the former Minister of Petroleum of this unnamed country? The present government simply could not be allowed to get away with this!

And in this case being helpful actually had a great reward. I could receive $17.5 million dollars just for helping to overturn this injustice! This was a clear win – win situation. All I would have to do is contact Mr. Agidigan, and probably give him some personal information like my Social Security number and maybe my bank account information so that he could send me millions of dollars.

Of course, as you have already correctly surmised, I never responded to this email that showed up in my junk email box – the place where spam emails are deposited. I deleted it because it is obviously a fraud. If it sounds too good to be true, it certainly is. Emails like this have been sent for almost as long as there has been email, and at this point we just laugh at the absurdity of the story.

We quickly learn in life that if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. You don’t get something for nothing. That’s just not how life works. And that is why the Gospel words of the beginning of this morning’s text are so striking. God exhorts the people of Israel to receive from him food and drink that truly satisfy – and he declares that this is free and without cost.

The prophet Isaiah wrote in the eighth century B.C. But the thing that is interesting about this part of Isaiah’s prophecy is that while he is writing in the eighth century, he is actually speaking to events that won’t happen for nearly two hundred years in the sixth century B.C. He speaks about how the southern kingdom of Judah will be taken into exile by the Babylonians. This will happen because of Judah’s sin and rejection of Yahweh. But God’s love for his people will not come to an end. Instead, he will graciously act to return them from exile to the land he had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Isaiah speaks about the return from exile that God’s people will experience in the future. Yet when Isaiah does so, he is not only talking about this event. In the Old Testament, the great Gospel event was the exodus from Egypt as Yahweh rescued Israel from slavery. He redeemed them. And this rescue from slavery – this redemption – becomes an important way that the New Testament talks about what God did in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God redeemed us in an even greater way – he freed us from slavery to Satan, sin and death. 

Isaiah describes the return from exile as a kind of second exodus. And this alerts us to the fact that here too, a saving action by God points forward to the ultimate rescued that God has provided in Jesus Christ. And so Isaiah is also talking about the salvation that we now know God has provided in Christ to all people. In the case of our text, Isaiah’s language speaks directly to us as God’s people today. He says, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”

God exhorts people who are thirsty and hungry to come to him because he offers drink and food. He offers it without cost. It’s free! And this is not just water or bargain off-brand stuff – instead he offers milk, wine and rich food. He offers the good stuff. He gives it away without cost. It all sounds too good to be true. It sounds like it is foolish to believe these words.

But through Isaiah, God says that all too often, what we do is in fact really foolish. He asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Of course, in the poetic language of the prophet, Isaiah is not talking about what we put in our stomach. Instead this is a metaphor that describes the things that we strive after in life. It describes those things that become our focus; the things to which we look for security, worth and value; the things we look to for enjoyment and satisfaction.

If you are honest, you know what they are in your life. They are the things for which you apply more attention, effort and energy than you do to God and the life lived by faith in Jesus Christ. They are the things that seem to promise peace, happiness and satisfaction. 

But God warns us that in spite of the great cost we expend in order to obtain them, they do not satisfy. They cannot satisfy. They cannot satisfy because we were created for something more. We were created in the image of God to live in fellowship with God. As St. Augustine expressed it, “Man remains restless until he finds his rest in God.” All of the other things are a mirage. They tantalize, but they cannot provide the contentment and peace for which we were created.

When we seek all of these other things; when we put them ahead of God, we sin. We break the First Commandment. It was the same for Israel. In spite of the covenant God had established with them as he made the nation his unique possession and gave them the Torah to guide their life, they had rejected Yahweh. They had worshipped other gods. They had put the things of the creation ahead of the Creator.

Sin is the problem for all people. But just two chapters earlier in his prophecy, Isaiah had described how God would do something completely unexpected in order to provide the answer to sin. He would act in his Servant, the Servant of the Lord. Isaiah wrote about him: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 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.”

This Servant of the Lord would bear the sins of all in order to give us forgiveness and peace. And because of what has happened in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ we now understand a shocking truth. We understand that Servant of the Lord is also the Christ – the Messiah – descended from King David. The suffering Servant of the Lord is the same one about whom Isaiah says in our text, “Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.  Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.” The Messiah who is described in the Old Testament as a figure of might and power is also the humble Servant of the Lord who bears the sin of all in suffering and death.

God the Father sent his Son into the world as he was incarnate by the work of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He was born in Bethlehem, the city of David, and because Joseph claimed this virgin born son as his own, Jesus was the son of David. Anointed, not with olive oil, but with the Holy Spirit at his baptism Jesus was the Messiah – the Christ – described by Isaiah. Yet at this same baptism he stepped into our shoes as he took on the role of the suffering Servant and began his journey to the cross. There he offered himself on the cross for your sins in order to give you forgiveness. But on the third day he rose from dead as he defeated death – a victory that guarantees you the same resurrection of the body on the Last Day.

This is what God has done for us in Christ. And so, when we stumble in sin, we know that we can trust in God’s call to repentance. Isaiah says in our text, “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” 

We turn in faith to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We do so in confidence we because we have seen in Jesus that God wants to have compassion on us. He wants to abundantly pardon. He wants to give us what we don’t deserve. He wants to give us the riches of forgiveness, resurrection and eternal life with him for free.

Does it sound too good to be true? Does it sound like it makes no sense? That is precisely the joy of the Gospel that we have seen in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ! In his grace and love God does what makes no sense to us. But he does it in order to give us forgiveness and salvation with him. In the end, the amazing grace of God’s salvation in Christ really shouldn’t surprise us. After all, he tells us in our text, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth,so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity - Mt 9:1-8

                                                                                                     Trinity 19
                                                                                                      Mt 9:1-8
                                                                                                      10/2/06

“Almighty God the Father has given His Son to die for you and for His sake forgives all your sins. As a called and ordained servant of Christ, and by His authority, I therefore forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

You hear these words of Holy Absolution spoken at the beginning of every Divine Service. If they weren’t part of the service I would probably hear complaints. In fact when I first arrived at Good Shepherd ten years ago, I did. The previous hymnal that we were using at that time, Lutheran Worship, was laid out with the assumption that when there was a baptism this would take the place of the beginning of the service that included the confession and absolution.

The first time I had a baptism here at Good Shepherd, that is how the service was done. Soon after the service I received complaints because there had been no confession and absolution. I explained that this was simply the way the hymnal laid things out when there was a baptism. But this answer did not satisfy those who raised the complaint.

It will be important for James Peterson and Josh Schiff to learn that part of the art of pastoral practice is learning to determine which are the hills that are worth dying on. There are times when the subject and circumstances necessitate that a pastor take a very strong and firm stand even if some people don’t like. But quite often there is no key biblical truth at stake. The pastor may have a preference about how something is done, but if congregation members want something different there is just no sense in making an issue about it. Holy Absolution is Gospel and if people didn’t want to be without that form of the Gospel in the service, I certainly wasn’t going to deny it to them. And you’ll notice today as we had the baptism of Sophia Trinity Toler that ten years later we are still doing Confession and Absolution at the start of the service before the baptism.

We hear these words every week, and certainly cherish them. At the same time, because we hear them so often it’s inevitable that we become used to them. But to someone from outside the Lutheran Church or the broader catholic tradition, these words are often surprising – and even offensive. After all, they are truly dramatic in their claim.

The pastor is not speaking in general about the forgiveness that is available in Jesus Christ to every repentant sinner. He is not saying that you have done something against him, and so now he forgives you. Instead, the pastor addresses all the sins you confess and then says, “I forgive you all your sins.” In a very direct and unambiguous way he says what only God can say, because after all, your sin has been committed against God and only God can forgive sin in this way.

In our Gospel lesson this morning we see the reason that the pastor can speak this way in Holy Absolution. It is Jesus and his ministry that has provided this Gospel gift. Yet we see in our text that the remarkable way Jesus does his Gospel work has always caused offense.

In the Gospel lesson this morning, we learn that Jesus returned to Capernaum – that city on the Sea of Galilee that served as the base of operations for his ministry in the north of Palestine. We learn that some people brought a man lying on a bed who was a paralytic.

It’s not hard to understand why they did this. In this portion of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus performs a whole series of miracles as he heals and casts out demons. Jesus is well known for doing this and people flock to him seeking help for themselves, and for friends and family.

They brought the man to Jesus and we learn that Jesus saw their faith. Certainly they didn’t understand everything about who Jesus was and what he had come to do – even the apostles didn’t have that yet. But they believed that Jesus was the One in whom God’s kingdom – his reign had arrived. They believed that he was the One in whom God’s saving work was present.

Jesus saw the faith of the paralytic and those bringing him, and so he said, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” Your sins are forgiven…. We are not told how the paralytic and his friends responded to this. But we do know how we respond. After all, we come to God all the time in prayer asking for relief and healing from physical ailments. We come asking God for help with mental illness. We come in prayer on behalf of others who desperately need help with these things. Often Jesus doesn’t provide the answer we want to hear. Instead he keeps saying: “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven. “Take heart, my daughter; your sins are forgiven.” And so we are not pleased. We become upset because God is ignoring us. He is not listening to us. He is not giving us what we think we really need.

We learn in our text that there was someone there who was upset – and it was wasn’t the paralytic or his friends. Instead our text says, “And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, ‘This man is blaspheming.’” These experts in the Torah heard Jesus’ statement, and they immediately concluded that Jesus was saying something that infringed on God’s rights. That’s why they said Jesus was blaspheming. Clearly, they perceived that Jesus was claiming he could pronounce forgiveness – a forgiveness that counted before God.

Our Lord knew their thoughts. He knew the accusation they were raising against him. And so he asked, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?”

Jesus said their thoughts were evil. They were a rejection of God and what he was doing. And then Jesus asked a question – one of my favorite questions that our Lord directed to his opponents. It is a question that cuts both ways depending on how you think about it. On the one hand, it is easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” It’s easier because no one can check what has actually happened. We don’t come equipped with a “sin meter” that you can examine to verify if the forgiveness spoken has worked. On the other hand, either the paralytic gets up and walks when you have said “Rise and walk,” or he doesn’t. That one is very clear.

However it is the other way of thinking about the question that brings us to the deepest significance of Jesus. It is in fact easier to say, “Rise and walk” than it is to say “Your sins are forgiven.” The reason is that sin is the root cause of all that is wrong in the world. Every physical ailment finds its source in the sin that since the Fall has warped and twisted our bodies and our souls – all that we are.

This was the problem that Jesus had entered into the world to address. God the Father had sent him to offer himself as the sacrifice for sin – the once and for all sacrifice that allows us to stand before God because our sin have been forgiven. They are no longer counted against us. Because of Jesus we are saints – forgiven sinners whom God will reckon as righteous and holy on the Last Day because of Jesus.

But that is not all Jesus did. Jesus died as the sacrifice for your sin. But then he did something no sacrifice had ever done before. He rose from the dead. As true God and true man he emerged from the tomb with a transformed humanity that can never die again. He began the absolute and complete renewal of humanity and creation itself that on the Last Day will undo everything that the sin and the Fall have caused.

Jesus’ ministry of miracles and healing demonstrated that he was in the process of bringing this answer to sin. He had come to remove the root cause. He had also come to fix everything that sin had done. Jesus was the presence of God’s kingdom – his rein – that was overcoming Satan, sin and death in every possible way.

And so we find in our text that immediately after asking his question Jesus said, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”— and he then said to the paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” The man was healed. He rose and went home. And when the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

Jesus had the authority to forgive sins then. And as the crucified and risen Lord who has defeated Satan, sin and death he has that authority now. Jesus won forgiveness. It is his to give out. And he wants to give it to every repentant sinner. He wants to give it out, and he leaves no doubt about how he does this.

Our Lord does it through his Means of Grace. He does it through his Word, through Holy Baptism and through the Sacrament of the Altar. But our Gospel lesson focuses our attention today on how he does this through Holy Absolution. In chapter 18 of Matthew’s Gospel we Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.” And after his resurrection we find that Jesus says in John chapter 20, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

Our Lord has given Holy Absolution to his Church. And he has not left to chance how it is administered. He instituted his Office of the Holy Ministry as the means by which he speaks this forgiveness. Pastors are called and placed into the Office of the Ministry in a congregation through the work of the Holy Spirit. They now speak this word of absolution.
But they do not speak on their own authority. It is not really they who speak. Instead, it is Jesus. It is Jesus’ forgiveness. It is Jesus’ Office of the Ministry. It is Jesus’ absolution. That’s what it means when the pastor says, “As a called and ordained servant of Christ, and by His authority.”

Jesus leaves no doubt. He says to you, “I forgive you all your sins.” And like the crowd in our text we glorify God, because if the Lord who died on the cross and rose from the dead to win forgiveness says it, this is most certainly true.