Commemoration of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg - Pastor

 

Today we remember and give thanks for Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, Pastor.  Moving from the Old World to the New, Muhlenberg established the shape of Lutheran parishes for America during a 45-year ministry in Pennsylvania. Born at Einbeck, Germany, in 1711, he came to the American colonies in 1742. A tireless traveler, Muhlenberg helped to found many Lutheran congregations and was the guiding force behind the first American Lutheran synod, the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, founded in 1748. He valued the role of music in Lutheran worship (often serving as his own organist) and was also the guiding force in preparing the first American Lutheran liturgy (also in 1748). Muhlenberg is remembered as a church leader, a journalist, a liturgist, and—above all—a pastor to the congregation in his charge. He died in 1787, leaving behind a large extended family and a lasting heritage: American Lutheranism.

Collect of the Day:

Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd of Your people, we give You thanks for Your servant Henry Melchior Muhlenburg, who was faithful in the care and nurture of the flock entrusted to his care.  So they may follow his example and the teaching of his holy life, give strength to pastors today who shepherd Your flock so that, by Your grace, Your people may grow into the fullness of life intended for them in paradise; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity - 1 Cor 1:4-9

                                                                                      Trinity 18

                                                                                1 Cor 1:4-9

                                                                                10/3/21

 

          You have been called by God.  That is a theme the resounds throughout the first nine verses of 1 Corinthians, and on into the rest of the chapter.  The apostle opens this letter by writing: “Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.”

          You will notice that first, Paul acknowledges that he has been called by God to be an apostle of Jesus Christ.  This is certainly not something that Paul ever expected. It is not something that he wanted.  He told the Galatians, “For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.”

          Paul was entirely satisfied in his life as an enemy of Jesus Christ.  He had purpose, meaning, and he was having success in his career. But God had called Paul by his grace and revealed his Son to him.  The apostle speaks about this in chapter fifteen of this letter as he recounts the many people who had seen the risen Lord. Finally he adds, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

          Paul’s calling was not only to believe in Christ, but also to the unique position of being an apostle of Jesus Christ – his authorized representative charged with speaking the Gospel to others.  But at the same time, the apostle stresses that each of the Corinthians - and each of you – have been called by God.  In verse two he describes the Corinthians as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.”

          Then, in the last verse of our text he writes, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The apostle highlights the faithfulness of God, and reminds the Corinthians that it was God who called them into their present status – those who share in the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ.

          Now in our text, Paul thanks God for how he has blessed the Corinthians.  He writes, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge-- even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you-- so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift.”  But things are not as simple here as they look, because these are actually all issues that Paul is going to address in the letter – problems that were present in the Corinthian congregation.

          Corinth was teh “problem child” congregation. Though Paul was the one who had first proclaimed the Gospel to them, they were now critical of the apostle. They recognized that Paul’s speech was not up to the standards that were expected of Greco-Roman rhetoric.  They thought they had knowledge that enabled them to take part in eating at pagan temples.  They were fixated on spiritual gifts and prideful about the status they believed were provided by them.

          Among these topics, I want to focus today on what Paul calls “speech,” because it is the very thing that he goes on to discuss in chapter one.  The apostle tells the Corinthians that the Lord sent him to “preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”  Later he adds, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

          Paul’s speech was not something that the world would recognize as wise or sophisticated.  Instead he had proclaimed the cross of Christ – Christ crucified.  We are so used to the cross, that it is very difficult for us to understand how the message of Christ crucified was perceived in Judaism and the Greco-Roman world.  After all, we have crosses and crucifixes in our churches, in our homes and on our bodies as jewelry.

Among Jews, crucifixion meant that a person had been cursed by God, because the book of Deuteronomy said, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”  Of course, it meant that person could not possibly the Messiah – the Christ, because the Messiah was going to be the victorious and mighty one.  For the Greco-Roman world, the cross was the most shameful and humiliating form of death. Criminals died on the cross.  They died powerless, and in a manner meant to cause such great public suffering and shame that polite society didn’t even talk about the cross.

That is why Paul says in this chapter, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”  The apostle admits that to those who are perishing – to those who reject the Gospel – the world of the cross is folly.  To put the Greek into more colloquial English you could say that it is moronic.

And so Paul goes on to add, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” Notice again our word “called.”  Yes, the crucified Christ was a stumbling block to Jews.  Yes, the crucified Lord was folly to Gentiles.  But to those who are called – to you – Christ is the power and the wisdom of God.  He is God’s way of salvation that sounds foolish and weak, but is actually God’s wisdom and strength.

God has called you. And only God could call you.  To be sure, we sin in thought, word, and deed.  But the deeper problem of humanity is that on our own we don’t even recognize that our sin has cut us off from God and turned us against him.  Paul says in chapter two, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”  It is only the Spirit of God who can do this.  Paul says in this letter, “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.”  By contrast the apostle tells us that as fallen people are conceived and born in this world, they are unable to understand God and his salvation.  He says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”

The cross sounds like folly.  It sounds moronic.  But through God’s calling by the Spirit, we instead recognize that it is the power and wisdom of God for our salvation. We do because we are now able to perceive our sinfulness.   We understand that our angry words, selfish actions, and lustful thoughts are sins against the holy God.  We confess these as sin, as we turn in faith to the crucified Christ.

In our text, Paul says of the Corinthians, “you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Paul says that the Corinthians – and you - will be guiltless.  He has already described them – and us - as “sanctified in Christ Jesus.”  This means that we have been made holy through Christ.  Now we know that in ourselves this is not what we are. But in the cross God acted to change this. 

In chapter fifteen Paul provides a summary of the Gospel he shared with the Corinthians as he says, “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” Jesus’ death on the cross was not just another person dying at the hands of the Roman Empire.  Instead, it was God acting once and for all time in order remove those sins and give us forgiveness. In 2 Corinthians Paul writes, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Jesus Christ the sinless One took our sins as if they were his own, and received God’s judgment in our place.

Jesus Christ was crucified and buried, just like so many others across the scope and history of the Roman Empire.  And if that were it – if that was then end of the story – then Christ crucified would be nothing more than folly.  But as Paul says in our text: “you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  You don’t wait for someone who is dead to be revealed.  But the apostle Paul, the Corinthians, and we wait for it because Jesus did not stay dead. Instead, on the third day God raised him from the dead.

In chapter fifteen Paul says of the resurrection: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.” And of course, he also appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus.

Paul and the apostles went forth to proclaim Christ crucified.  They went forth to proclaim a message that they knew was a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles – it sounded moronic to the Greco-Roman world.  But they knew it was God’s wisdom for salvation because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. They struggled, and suffered, and even died in order to proclaim this Gospel because they knew that the risen Lord has conquered sin and death.

God has called you to faith in the crucified and risen Lord through the work of his Spirit. He has called to into the fellowship of his Son. In baptism “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”  When you stumble in sin, that same baptism remains, ready to be grasped in faith, for through it you continue to receive forgiveness and the work of the Spirit who strengthens you.

Like the Corinthians, we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Our risen Lord has ascended into heaven.  He has been exalted to the right hand of God.  He intercedes for us. And he will return in glory in the Last Day – the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.  On that day he will raise our bodies from the dead and transform them to be like his own. This is the hope that we have because Christ was crucified and then rose from the dead.  This is the hope that we have because God is faithful, and he has called us into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commemoration of Jerome, Translator of Scripture

 

Today we remember and give thanks for Jerome, Translator of Holy Scripture.  Jerome was born in a little village on the Adriatic Sea around the year A.D. 345. At a young age he went to study in Rome, where he was baptized. After extensive travels, he chose the life of a monk and spent five years in the Syrian desert. There he learned Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament . After ordination at Antioch and visits to Rome and Constantinople, Jerome settled in Bethlehem. From the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, he used his ability with languages to translate the Bible into Latin, the common language of his time. This translation, called the Vulgate, was the authoritative version of the Bible in the western Church world for over 1,000 years. Considered one of the great scholars of the early church, Jerome died on September 30, 420. He was originally interred at Bethlehem but his remains were eventually taken to Rome.

Collect of the Day:

O Lord, God of truth, Your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.  You gave Your servant Jerome delight in his study of Holy Scripture.  May those who continue to read, mark, and inwardly digest Your Word find in it the food of salvation and the fountain of life; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

 

Mark's thoughts: Lamentations - Comfort in an unexpected place

 

With a name like “Lamentations,” you don’t expect to find much that is positive in this book of the Old Testament.  Lamentations was written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.  The Babylonians destroyed the temple, tore down the city’s walls, and took all but the poorest of the land into exile in Babylon.

 

As the name of the book describes, the author (who was perhaps Jeremiah) laments the conditions of Jerusalem.  He begins by saying: “How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave” (1:1).  Lamentations describes the destruction as it states: “In the dust of the streets lie the young and the old; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword; you have killed them in the day of your anger, slaughtering without pity” (2:21) 

 

There is no doubt about who had done this.  Yahweh had brought judgment and wrath against his people.  Lamentations 2:1-3 says:

How the Lord in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud! He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel; he has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger. The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers. He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel; he has withdrawn from them his right hand in the face of the enemy; he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around.

While Yahweh has brought judgment, there is also do doubt why He had done it.  The writer confesses the sins of the people: “Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore she became filthy; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns her face away.” He adds, “The LORD is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word” (1:18). 

 

The writer also laments how the enemies of Judah celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem:

All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?” All your enemies rail against you; they hiss, they gnash their teeth, they cry: “We have swallowed her! Ah, this is the day we longed for; now we have it; we see it!” (2:15-26).

Yet in the midst of this doom and gloom shines a passage that give tremendous hope and encouragement.  We read in 3:21-26:

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. 

The writer laments the tragedy of judgment and confesses the sin of the people.  Yet that is not all.  He returns in faith to the reason for hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; and the Lord’s faithfulness is great. Therefore, it is good to wait for the salvation of the Lord.

 

Lamentations confesses the loving and merciful character of God.  In this, the writer finds hope.  We have this hope too, because God has demonstrated this character through his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ.  Jerusalem was important not because it was the place where the king lived.  Instead, it was important because of the temple which was the place of God’s located presence in the midst of his people. God demonstrated this fact at the dedication of the temple. We learn in 1 Kings 8, “And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the LORD, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD” (8:10-11).

 

In response to Judah’s sin, God abandoned and destroyed the temple in his judgment along with the city in which it stood. As we have seen Lamentations describes the response of Judah’s enemies: “All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem” (2:15).

 

Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the temple as God’s glory dwelt in the midst of his people through the incarnate Son of God (John 1:14).  Jesus told his opponents, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), as he spoke of the temple of his body (John 2:21).  On Good Friday, Jesus hung on the cross.  Matthew tells us, “And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross’” (Matthew 27:39-40).

 

The destruction of the temple in God’s judgment pointed forward to the judgment God poured out on Jesus Christ in our place.  Our Lord Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath against our sin (Matthew 28:39).  On the cross Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).  As God abandoned his temple in the Old Testament in judgment, so God abandoned his own Son as he received the judgment against our sin to win forgiveness for us.

 

But God had promised in the Old Testament that his Holy One would not see corruption (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:25:28).  On the third day God raised Jesus from the dead. Peter tells us, “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” (1 Peter 1:3).  In the death and resurrection of Jesus we have the forgiveness of sins, and the assurance of resurrection and eternal life.

 

God has revealed his loving and merciful character to us through his incarnate Son. Because we know this, we can trust in God and find comfort in the midst of all circumstances. We know that like the writer of Lamentations, we too can say:

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. (Lamentations 3:21-26).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

 

Today is the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels.  The observance of a day to honor the angel St. Michael dates to the fifth century.  It was later expanded to include all angels. .  We confess in the Nicene Creed, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.”  Included in this are the angels who are spiritual beings created by God to serve Him and help His people.

 

The Bible mentions two angels by name.  Michael is mentioned in Daniel (10:13, 21; 12:1), Jude 9 and Revelation 12:7.  On the basis of these passages he has been honored as “captain of the heavenly hosts.”  Gabriel is mentioned in Daniel 8:16 and 9:21, and was the messenger of God in the annunciation to Zechariah (Luke 1:19) and Mary (Luke 1:26).  In the Scripture reading from Revelation 12, Michael and the angels cast Satan from heaven.  This casting out of Satan took place as a result of Christ’s victory in his death, resurrection, and ascension.  No longer is Satan allowed to appear before God and accuse His people (such as we find in Zechariah 3:1-5; the name Satan means “adversary” in Hebrew). 

 

Scripture reading:

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.  And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” (Revelation 12:7-12).

 

Collect of the Day:

Everlasting God, You have ordained and constituted the service of angels and men in a wonderful order.  Mercifully grant that, as Your holy angels always serve and worship You in heaven, so by Your appointment they may also help and defend us here on earth; through Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

 

 

 

Commemoration of Jonah

 

Today we remember and give thanks for the prophet Jonah.  A singular prophet among the many in the Old Testament, Jonah the son of Amittai was born about an hour’s walk from the town of Nazareth. The focus of his prophetic ministry was the call to preach at Nineveh, the capital of pagan Assyria (Jonah 1:1). His reluctance to respond and God’s insistence that his call be heeded is the story of the book that bears Jonah’s name. Although the swallowing and disgorging of Jonah by the great fish is the most remembered detail of his life, it is addressed in only three verses of the book (1:17; 2:1, 10). Throughout the book, the important theme is how God deals compassionately sinners. Jonah’s three-day sojourn in the belly of the fish is mentioned by Jesus as a sign of his own death, burial, and resurrection (Mt. 12:39–41).

Collect of the Day:

Lord God, heavenly Father, through the prophet Jonah, You continued the prophetic pattern of teaching Your people the truth faith and demonstrating through miracles Your presence in creation to heal it of its brokenness.  Grant that Your Church may see in Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the final end-times prophet whose teaching and miracles continue in Your Church through the healing medicine of the Gospel and the Sacraments; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

 

Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

 

Today is the Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist.  Matthew was a tax collector who was called by our Lord to be a disciple (Matthew 9:9-13) and was then appointed as one of the twelve apostles (Matthew 10:2-4).  He is the author of the first Gospel in the New Testament.  There is uncertainty about the areas in which he worked (some traditions suggest Ethiopia or Persia) and whether he was martyred.

Scripture Reading:

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.  And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”  (Matthew 9:9-13)

Collect of the Day:

O Son of God, our blessed Savior Jesus Christ, You called Matthew the tax collector to be an apostle and evangelist.  Through his faithful and inspired witness, grant that we also may follow You, leaving behind all covetous desires and love of riches; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.