Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

March 13, 2022

Lent

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Heavenly Father, it is your glory always to have mercy.  Bring back all who have erred and strayed from your ways; lead them again to embrace in faith the truth of your Word and to hold it fast; through Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.  Amen.

Opening Hymn:  “Jesus, Refuge of the Weary” (LBW 93)  

Sermon: March 13, 2022

Slava Kyrie

Luke 13:35

The Reverend Philip Nesvig

As we move one week further into Lent, I am reminded of an old saying.  “Art imitates life.”  This is to say that current events will find their way into various forms of art.  Think of the Nobel Prize-winning writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or the political protests disguised in the music of Leopold Stokowski.  Now think of the enormous anti-war art piece by Picasso entitled “Guernica.”  This oil canvas grotesquely portrays the terror and destruction of the Spanish Civil War in 1937.  A bull is even included in the terrible scene.  Art imitates life.  Art mirrors life. The list of books, poems, paintings, and music is as long as history itself.

      I think that the Bible is art.  And the life which the Bible imitates is the interaction between God and human beings.  No emotion is spared in the Bible.  No evil goes unexamined.  No sin is left unnamed.  No death is hidden from view, especially the death of Jesus of Nazareth.  And yes, no greater surprise is expressed, and no greater joy is known when people find themselves in the presence of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.  “My Lord and my God,” shouted Thomas the twin.  “The Lord has risen indeed” shouted the villagers of Emmaus.  “Were not our hearts burning within us while Jesus was talking to us on the road?” (Lk 24.34, 32.)

      It is still Lent, so we are not yet ready for any Emmaus joy.  But art imitates life, so we are ready to say to each other that “our hearts are burning” because we have seen houses, hospitals, tanks and people burning in Ukraine.  Art imitates life, so we are those who find the destruction of Ukraine to be appalling.  It is gut-wrenching.  It is agonizing.  It is beyond depressing.  The Swiss theologian Karl Barth, who left Germany in 1935 because he refused to swear an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, is given credit for this admonition to preachers.  “Preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.”  His meaning was that current events should be evaluated in light of the Bible.  Art imitates life.  The Bible is art—a mirror for what is happening today in our world.

      I heard it said many times in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s that preachers should stick to religion and not make mention of political events.  But the events of the past two weeks are not squabbles between Republicans and Democrats.  These events are the forces of darkness against the shining of light.  These events are about truth and propaganda lies.  These events are historic and cataclysmic for millions of people—including millions of our fellow Christians whose lives are being uprooted, destroyed, and changed forever.  It is truly pathetic, and my heart grieves the losses which I see in my newspaper, which includes my TV and my iPhone. 

      When such pathos strikes our hearts, we cannot help but join the ranks of the Old Testament prophets.  These prophets…Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea…and all the rest, cried out in protest over and over again.  The targets of their protest were the royal houses of Israel…those kings who were almost 100% intoxicated by their power and wealth.  It is said by scholars that only two kings were truly faithful in the Old Testament.  These prophets did not avoid mixing politics and religion.  If we avoid the topic, we are not reading the Bible or applying it very well to our day.

      In turn, the New Testament gospels are set within a backdrop of the foreign power of Rome dominating the daily life of what my boyhood Bible called Palestine.  Herod, the fox, was the puppet ruler over that piece of turf.  He was “the sheriff” whose job was to keep the lid on any disturbance or rebellion.  He did his job well.  Since he came from the gene pool of his evil father, Herod the Great, it is no surprise that when John the Baptist confronted Herod Jr. (Antipas), about his immoral marriage, Herod ordered John to be beheaded.  (Lk 3.19-20)

      Fast forward 10 chapters in Luke’s Gospel.  Here’s our Gospel lesson for today.  Jesus was warned by the Pharisees—who were on his side for once—to take refuge.  Find a safe cave and lie low!  But Jesus said, “Go and tell that fox.”  Fox?  How about a roaring lion?!  Herod’s butchers could have sliced up Jesus just as the Pharisees warned.  But Jesus remained on course.  He had not yet completed his mission for God the Father.  There were exorcisms and healing cures to be performed.  He responded like this to the Pharisees and hoped that Caesar’s puppet, Herod Antipas, would get the message.  “Step aside.  Listen. I am going about my business as usual “today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.  Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.”

      Jesus, the Son of God, is solid in his purpose and witness.  He seems cool and collected, his anger rising, but now his anger turns to anguish.  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.”  The old RSV language says, “and you would not!”  I like that version, but I like the Greek play on words even better.  Jesus says, “I desired you, but you desired not.”  That’s divine desire but human lack of desire.  Human beings know what’s good for us, but we are apathetic when the stakes are raised regarding Jesus.  So this is the sound of a lover’s spat, a marriage in jeopardy, one spouse saying to the other, “We’re not in this together.  I don’t think this marriage is going to work.  We have no mutual desire.”

      The intimacy of our faith marriage has nothing to do with sex.  Instead it is the image used by Paul in his letters and John’s Book of Revelation to describe the grace of a Christian’s relationship with Christ the bridegroom.  It is Jesus saying, “There’s some stunning beauty to our faith relationship.  Don’t muck it up.  I desire you, and I’m waiting for you to desire me.  What kind of chickens are you?  You don’t want to come to me for safety?  What do I have to do? Gather you under my wings like a mother hen does for her chicks?”  The text says that’s precisely what Jesus is prepared to do.  Jesus keeps reaching out, keeps calling us through his word.  Jesus keeps desiring to gather us, keeps offering us his body and blood.  Nevertheless, the human response hangs in the air.  We are a stubborn lot!  But the Holy Spirit is at work through such a “desire to gather us in” as the “brood of Christ.”  Whether “brood” or “bride,” it is a declaration of love unto “death do us part.”  And it is also a painful remembrance of humanity’s consistent and sinful rebellion against the love of God in Christ. 

      What does it take for us to be a chick fleeing from danger to our mother hen?  It usually takes some shocking events.  When I was a boy visiting my great Uncle Carl on his dairy farm in Wisconsin, it was the shocking event of a skunk attacking the chickens.  Carl came running with his shotgun, and that was the end of it!  I was stunned by what I had seen.  And remember the two examples in the beginning of Luke 13?  Some Galileans have died at the hand of Pilate while offering religious sacrifices.  In addition, a construction tower has collapsed and killed 18 people.  What message of sympathy does Jesus give?  Here it is:  “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” (Lk 13.5)   Now that’s some kind of “shock and awe!”  Death awaits all those who do not repent!

      The events of the past two weeks are also “shock and awe” for us, even when the bombs are not falling in our neighborhoods.  Evil is a constant reality in our world.  Worse yet, evil never really goes away.  When this horrible war is settled, there will come yet another one at some point in the future.  The name Herod is ever relevant.  We might dare to say that we need a Brutus to take us out of this mess.  Julius Caesar had his Brutus, while Jesus had his Judas.  Judas did not wield the dagger, but his betrayal of Jesus sent him into a kind of repentant suicide.  His tragedy was that Jesus desired him also, but he desired not.

      The mysteries of repentance, that is, desiring Jesus, are not under my control or your control.  It is, as the Augsburg Confession says, the work of the Holy Spirit “who works faith, when and where he pleases, in those who hear the Gospel.”  I wish I knew how to unravel that enormous ball of yarn regarding why some people hear and desire the Gospel, while many do not.  Nevertheless, “The Office of the Ministry” in the Augsburg Confession pushes on beyond that question to say:  “And the Gospel teaches that we have a gracious God, not by our own merits but by the merit of Christ, when we believe this.”  (Book of Concord, Tappert edition, p. 31) 

      I also fervently wish that I knew why this war started and when it will end.  I would have an extremely hard time telling any Ukrainian that this calamity is a lesson in repentance like Jesus did in Luke 13.  I suspect a Ukrainian Christian might be on the verge of faithlessness and lament to us that faith in Christ didn’t do them any good.  The fox has eaten the chicks because no mother hen came to gather us under her wings. 

      These are painful matters to contemplate.  Our point of solidarity with the Ukrainian Church and all people is this:  the mother hen was killed in a gruesome crucifixion.  The forces of good and evil clashed.  The good lost but only for three days.   I have no rationale reasons to offer regarding the slaughter of the innocents in Ukraine and other trouble spots, including the many, many senseless deaths in our own community.  It is the continual manifestation of evil which will not end until Christ ushers in a new heaven and a new earth.  So I hope that we and the Ukrainian Christians will be able to hold our faith.  The bad news is that these evil actions will never be completely thwarted.  Worse yet—we are participants—sometimes instigators of evil actions.  The good news is that God has already solved this crisis by placing Christ on the cross.  Christian hope is of a different nature.  We have a different ruler than any of the series of foxes who hold earthly power.  1 Peter reminds us to keep alert because there is a roaring lion, our adversary the devil, who prowls around looking for someone to devour.  But we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that (we) may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called (us) out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Pet 2.9)  

     Jesus said, “Your house is forsaken.  And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  On the liturgical calendar, that day is Palm Sunday.  On our faith calendar, that day is every day that some kind of “shock and awe” leads us to repentance, faith and hope.  Hebrews 11 says that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  So we wait with patience and trust for that day when we can join the throng and shout “Slava Kyrie.”  “Glory to the Lord.”

Hymn of the Day:  “O God of Earth and Altar” (LBW 428)

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “Lord Christ, When First You Came to Earth” (LBW 421)  

“Jesus’ destiny is to go to Jerusalem and die, risking the threats of the fox, and adopting the role of the mother hen to the chickens faced with sudden danger.  But will Jerusalem benefit from his offer?  Jerusalem has a long history of rebelling against God, refusing the way of peace (that sentence, alas, seems to be as true in the modern as in the ancient world).  As Ezekiel saw, rebellion meant that the holy presence of God had abandoned the Temple and the city, opening the way for devastating enemy attack (Ezekiel 10-11).  The only way for the city and Temple to avoid the destruction which now threatened it was to welcome Jesus as God’s peace-envoy; but all the signs were that they would not.  When Luke brings us back to this point again, it will be too late.

What can we see from the vantage point of the end of chapter 13?  We can see, with devastating clarity, what Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem is going to mean.  Israel’s greatest crisis is coming upon her, and he is offering an urgent summons to repent, to come his kingdom-way, his way of peace.  This is the only way of avoiding the disaster which will otherwise follow her persistent rebellion.  Jesus’ intention now, in obedience to his vocation, is to go to Jerusalem and, like the hen with the chickens, to take upon himself the full force of that disaster which he was predicting for the nation and the Temple.  The one will give himself on behalf of the many.”

Tom Wright “Luke for Everyone,” c. 2004, p. 173

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

March 6, 2022

Lent

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lord God, our strength, the battle of good and evil rages within and around us, and our ancient foe tempts us with his deceits and empty promises.  Keep us steadfast in your Word and, when we fall, raise us again and restore us through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.  Amen.

Opening Hymn:  “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” (LBW 229)  

Sermon: March 6, 2022

Forty Days in the Wilderness

Luke 4:2

The Reverend Douglas Lindsay

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, fellow ministers of the Gospel, Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness and he is there 40 days.  What does it mean that Jesus is in the wilderness for so many days?  It means that Jesus must endure the presence and power of death.  To be in the wilderness means to suffer the extreme heat of the day and the terrible cold of the desert night.  In the desert Jesus must also endure the scarcity of water and he is also vulnerable to the wild predators.  Mark’s gospel says Jesus was with the wild beasts.  Also, the desert around Israel had numerous poisonous vipers. 

     To be in the wilderness means to be confronted by the presence and the power of Satan himself.  Hebrews reminds us that the devil has the power of death and keeps the world in lifelong bondage through fear of death.  Added To these dangers Jesus also undergoes the pangs of great hunger.  Luke tells us “he ate nothing in those days” and when they were ended Luke says in a major understatement, “He was hungry!”

     No doubt Satan thinks he has Jesus right where he wants him, cold, hungry, thirsty, surrounded by danger and the isolation of the wilderness.  Satan has an unerring instinct to spot a weakness and so he attacks Jesus at the point of his extreme hunger. 

     “If you are the Son of God command this stone to become bread.”  Note this is a direct challenge to Jesus’ identity.  “If” you are the Son of God – then prove it by making bread of stone. 

     Jesus rebukes him from the word of God, “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone.” Deuteronomy goes on to say, that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of “the Lord.” (Deut. 8:3) 

     Another aspect of this temptation is that Jesus, by turning stone to bread could become a popular “Corn King.”  After he feeds the multitude of about five thousand, John’s Gospel tells us Jesus perceives then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king.  Jesus withdrew again to the hills by himself.”  (John 6:15)

     Every temptation that Satan throws at Jesus is an attempt to dissuade him from his meeting with the cross on Calvary.  If Satan can deter Jesus from the cross he will destroy God’s plan of salvation for all mankind.  Our hope and our fate are in true jeopardy in this confrontation. 

     Next, Satan proclaims a monstrous lie – “the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time” and said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me and I give it to whom I will.  If you will then worship me, it shall all by yours.”  Luke 4:6-7

     Jesus knows full well that the kingdoms of the world are not Satan’s to give, for Jesus is the rightful King of Kings and Satan rules the world by the whip and goad of the fear of death.  For all people and nations fear death and live their lives and order their politics if possible to overcome and survive death.  The imperative of the political economic and personal life of the world is “just survive”, and to survive men will resort to any extent, whatsoever. 

     The vicious nature of this survival at any cost mentality is revealed after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.  The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do?  For this man performs many signs.  If we let him go on this everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy palace and our nation.”  Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation should not parish.”  John 11:47-50

     This diabolical expediency is the evidence of Satan’s’ bondage of fear that whips the people of the world into obedience to his will.  Jesus knows Satan’s authority is the authority of death and terror. 

     Jesus rejects this sly proposal again by the Word of the Lord, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”  Deuteronomy 6:13.  Jesus has come to break Satan’s rule of death and give his people, life abundantly. 

     Satan’s final attempt to lure Jesus into abandoning God’s will to break down the dividing walls of hostility that have divided the nations.  “For he is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.”

     Jesus knows the power of his cross.  He says, “And I when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”  John 12:32

     Nothing less than the life of Jesus given for the world can, overturn the evil power of Satan.

     Satan still has one more thing in his bag of tricks.  He takes Jesus to Jerusalem to the pinnacle of the temple and challenges Jesus once more about his identity, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will give his angels charge of you to guard you, “and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.”  Psalms 91:11-12

     How easy it would be for Jesus to perform a showy miracle so that all Jerusalem would acclaim him as the Son of God.  Jesus knows this would be a false perception that would amaze everyone and save no one and be an outright manipulation of the Father.  Jesus answers, “It is said, you shall not tempt the Lord our God.”  Putting the Father to the test would be faithless. Deuteronomy 6:16  

     So Jesus confronts all that Satan can do to derail God’s plan of salvation and keep Jesus from setting his face like flint to go to Jerusalem and suffer death on the cross.

     Note that Luke mentions that after the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.  What might be the opportune time for the devil to renew his assault on Jesus?  Two events come to mind.  The first is on Psalm Sunday when Jesus enters Jerusalem to the acclaim of the multitude – crying out “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.”  Luke 19:18 

     Once again Satan dangles before Jesus the opportunity to become a political king and rally all Israel to rise against the Romans and be free.  In fact the expectation of the disciples is that Jesus will do just that and restore the kingdom of David and rule over the nations.  Jesus knows that being a political Messiah would be totally futile. 

     The next place Satan works his evil against Jesus is in the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus confronts in terrible loneliness the horrible specter of his upcoming death and the torture of the cross, so that as Luke’s Gospel tells us his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.  He tells his sleepy disciples, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Luke 22:40

     Satan attacks him here with all the fear and terror at his command.  But Jesus responds to this terrible trial by his total submission to his Father “If thou art willing remove this cup from me nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.  And there appeared to him angel from heaven strengthening him.”   

     So Satan has failed to prevent Jesus from doing His Father’s will, and as Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven.”  Luke 10:18

Hymn of the Day:  “Jesus, Still Lead On” (LBW 341)

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “Guide Me Ever, Great Redeemer” (LBW 343)  

Lent 2022

The cross so tall and high

Flung against Calvary’s sky

Brought glad Easter in its train. 

Show us where the Savior’s lain. 

The scattered stars so bright in space

How far flung burns that fiery race!

Yet they poised on outstretched limb

The universal stars all rest on him.

All awesome nature’s terrible power

All kingdoms see death’s final hour.

The nails piercing held him high

His love the bonds that made him die.

The deep wonder of God’s new beginning

Jesus poured out his grace so unstinting

The Lamb, Oh, His body, Oh, His blood,

Our life borne on that crimson flood. 

He cried “My Father,” His Spirit released. 

Our High, Holy, Eternal Priest

Broken on the final, cosmic cross.

Our Lord, our gain, our total loss.

                   The Reverend Douglas Lindsay

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

February 27, 2022

The Transfiguration of Our Lord

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Almighty God, on the mountain you showed your glory in the transfiguration of your Son.  Give us the vision to see beyond the turmoil of our world and to behold the king in all his glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.  Amen.

Opening Hymn:  “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” (LBW 526)  

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1awJW-aBBXg 

Sermon: February 27, 2022

Listen to God's Story

Luke 9:28-36

The Reverend Philip Nesvig

As a native of western Washington, indeed the “South Sound,” I grew up with a fantastic view (weather permitting) of Mt. Rainier.  The call of “the mountain” was strong for me, and I took countless hikes with family and friends in and around Mt. Rainier National Park.  Before I graduated from PLU, I took a P.E. credit in mountaineering and found myself on the flanks of Mt. Rainier on four successive summer Saturdays.  The goal of every class member was to summit Rainier.  My first attempt was unsuccessful, but the next summer I climbed Mt. St. Helens one weekend and Rainier the next.  Several years later, I climbed “the new” St. Helens (now 1,400 feet shorter) and also Mt. Adams.  These conquests and my hundreds of miles of other hikes in the Cascades, including five strenuous 35-mile hikes from west to east into Holden Village, are a significant part of my life story.  Given everything that could go wrong in the wilderness, I give thanks to God that I am alive and thriving, even though I’ve had some breaks and scrapes on the trail! I have lots of stories about my hiking days. 

     There is a compelling attraction to hearing stories, what Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Coles termed “The Call of Stories” in his 1989 book. According to Coles, stories promote learning and self-discovery.  I’ll happily grant his point.  I’ve had a good dose of learning and self-discovery out on the trail, so I have to squelch a strong temptation to tell some hiking and climbing stories this morning.  So when this Transfiguration scene appears once a year in our lectionary, these personal stories come to mind.  I especially think of the freezing middle-of-the night climb Natalie and I made up Mt. Sinai three years ago.  Moses is said to have walked that trail, and Elijah’s Spring is halfway up.  There’s quite a personal story I could tell about our trip there in 2019.  But, to quote a book title about preaching by another author, the gifted James Sanders,  “God Has a Story Too.” (James Sanders c. 1979).

     This is precisely the point when God speaks out of the whirling, overshadowing cloud, “This is my Son, my Chosen—my Beloved; listen to him!”  “Listen to my story about Jesus!”  So Transfiguration Sunday is not about my hiking stories.  It is not about any number of “mountaintop experiences” which you and I have had, as wonderful as they may have been.  Transfiguration Sunday is not about having a mystical experience and then, like Peter proclaimed, packaging what we have seen by building three Alpine huts, suitable not only for us but as a pilgrimage site for centuries to come!  No.  Transfiguration Sunday is about hearing God’s story through the utterly shocking and stupendous narrative of Christ crucified. 

     In the March “Messenger” for our church, I wrote in the Pastor’s Page that each of our four Gospels is a “Passion story with an extended introduction.”  The Passion Story per se is the last days and hours of Jesus of Nazareth.  That’s God’s story of good news hidden in the very bad news of betrayal and death on the cross.  As we follow Luke’s narrative, we discover three clues telling us that God’s story is the Passion Story. 

     This Transfiguration scene is set between Clue #1 and Clue #2.  Clue #3 will be in our Gospel Lesson on March 13th. Here’s Clue #1:  “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (Lk 9.21) What do we make of Clue #1?  In our “after Easter” privileged position, this clue seems plenty obvious.  We might say to ourselves:  “I get it.  Jesus will be killed, but then be raised.  God’s story will have a happy ending, so not to worry.”  Yet right after Clue #1 there appears this line:  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Lk 9.23)  A seminary professor reminded our New Testament class that Luke is the only Gospel writer who inserted “daily” into this verse shared by Matthew and Mark. 

     “Daily.”  Must we come down from the mountain, padlock our Alpine huts and follow Christ on a daily slog with the various manifestations of the cross of suffering in our lives?  The answer is “Yes!”  The call of the Passion Story is the call to daily discipleship, daily self-sacrificial love, daily humility, daily penance, daily checking our lives against the will of God, daily joining Christ with his Gethsemane prayer, “not my will but yours be done.” (Lk 22.42)  Our weekly echo of that is “Thy will be done” as we prepare for our Holy Communion meal.

     How is any of this possible for us poor sinners?  We’re all in over our heads!  We have insufficient knowledge of how to do God’s will, not to mention our sinful admission that we don’t really want to do God’s will.  As we know from Genesis 3 and the Eve and Adam story, humanity is stiffly set against doing God’s will in favor of our own will.  This defiance of God’s will is particularly pertinent on this first Sunday after the invasion of Ukraine.  How can invading a neighboring country with massive military strength be God’s will?  It is better to stand with Paul when he wrote to the Corinthian church:  “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.  So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me…whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12.9-10)  This confession of our common human weakness will be recalled and visibly signified this coming Wednesday when we wear the ash under the sign of the cross. 

     So Peter, James and John had short term memory loss just eight days after they heard Jesus call them to daily discipleship.  Granted, they may have been so overwhelmed by the dazzling scene on the Mount of Transfiguration that they couldn’t have cared less about what Jesus had told them.  Imagine what they had experienced.  The “Dream Team” of Moses and Elijah had entered “stage right” from the distant past.  They, too, had passed their mountaineering class.  The Law and the Prophets were alive and well!  What more could anyone seek in life?!  Peter, John and James had front row seats at the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the World Series or Carnegie Hall.  The text says, “Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here.”  Good indeed!  Call in the carpenters and build a shrine! 

     Yet soon it was all over.  The cloud “overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.”  Still, the scene is not finished.  The voice of God said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen—my Beloved; listen to him!”  Jesus says no word in this fantastic scene, but Moses and Elijah have already dropped another strong clue.  This clue is buried in the Greek text.  We heard the clue this way.  “Moses and Elijah were talking to Jesus.  They…were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” (Lk 9.30-31)  “Departure” is the clue.  The Greek word for “departure” is “exodus.”  Moses is on the mountain—Moses the law-giver and leader of the 40-year “exodus” wandering in the wilderness.  The Torah—the Law—had been given to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  This was the covenant God made with Moses and the Hebrew people.  The tablets of the law—the covenant—were immediately broken when the anger of Moses erupted after he saw the Golden Calf formed by the idolatrous and impatient people of God.  It took a second try, another long hike up the mountain for Moses to get a fresh copy of the covenant law.

     Moses was the star of the first exodus.  Now it’s Jesus who comes down from the mountain to be the star of another exodus—another departure—the redeeming exodus on the cross.  In our Deuteronomy lesson today, Moses looked across the Jordan from Mt. Nebo, but he did not enter the promised land of Canaan. He did not finish his exodus.   Jesus looked to the Father from the cross and cried out, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Lk 23.46)  Jesus breathed his last and finished his exodus.  His death was the new exodus, the new covenant, the new testament.

     You see—God has a story too.  God has a story for you and for me!  It is the story of our baptism.  Just as Jesus was baptized into the sinful conditions of our lives, so also are we baptized into the blessed condition of his forgiveness.  At the baptism of Jesus, the voice of God said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Lk 3.22)  God was so well pleased with Jesus that Jesus became the means of grace for all time.  God was so well pleased with Jesus that death on the cross became the inscrutable means of salvation.  God was so well pleased with Jesus at his baptism that baptism into his death and resurrection became the basic entry point for all believers of every race and nation.  God was so well pleased with Jesus that God repeated the baptismal proclamation in this Transfiguration scene and put in a turn of phrase.  “This is my son, my Chosen—my beloved; listen to him!”

     What do we hear when we listen to Jesus?  We hear what his disciples heard.  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”  We hear words of challenge, even words of attack, upon our presumption that we can live our lives independently from him and be perfectly happy.  We are deceiving ourselves when we think that way.  We can not have “the peace that passes all understanding” without being connected by faith to the forgiving power of the cross of Christ.  We cannot achieve spiritual victory until we ourselves are “overshadowed” by God’s Passion story—that is, the defeat of the devil by means of him who volunteered to take our sins upon us in order to display God’s love and grace. 

     We hear Jesus say “take up my cross daily and follow me.”  To make a play on words, to hear is to be an auditor.  But we are not “auditing” our course in faith.  That is to say, we are not showing up for our class with Jesus only once in a while because, after all, we’re only “auditors.”  Therefore it doesn’t really matter if we “zone out” and not listen.  It does matter.  Every day is a pop quiz and a test of our faith.  We are asked to listen.  We are called to step up to the daily challenge of following Jesus.  And how difficult it is to hear Jesus say, “Love your enemies, (Lk 6.35), especially for Christians in Ukraine.  So we are “auditors” of a different kind.  We wait for the Holy Spirit to transform what we hear and invade our hearts.  We wait for the Holy Spirit to create good fruit through our daily actions. We wait for our daily transformation, and it is not an easy transformation!

     We gather in this auditorium called a church.  This church, and every church, has good acoustics.  That’s because the church reveres God’s story in the book we call “the Bible.”  Listen to God’s story….the whole story.  It’ll take quite a while to accomplish that task, but even small pieces of the story will create and build faith.  That’s what the Holy Spirit has promised to do.  When God says, “Listen to him,” the Holy Spirit gets to work, not only opening our ears but opening our hearts.  Don’t be afraid to tell God’s story to those near and dear to you.  Don’t be shy about saying to others that you have “good acoustics,” that your ears are tuned to the voice of Jesus.  “Listen to him,” and know that the burden of your sins has been lifted.  “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”  That’s part of God’s story!  “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”  That’s part of God’s story!  And today, and every Sunday, this is part of God’s story:  “The body of Christ, given for you.  The blood of Christ, shed for you.”  It’s just a small wafer and a thimbleful of wine, but contained within those simple means of grace is God’s story for you! And since it is God’s story for you, St. Paul reminds us that this story “has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant,” (2 Cor. 3.6)  the covenant of Christ crucified and risen again for you and for me!

Hymn of the Day:  “Oh, Wondrous Type! Oh, Vision Fair” (LBW 80)

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “Beautiful Savoir” (LBW 518)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e17k9vV-q-o

“In, with and under the cloud and darkness there’s the voice:  ‘This is my Son…listen to him!’  Doesn’t that suggest that the details play second fiddle?  Peter is all lathered up over the fireworks display, but the voice makes clear that the only item on the agenda here is listening to the one of his choice, as if to say, ‘I can do this kind of cloud and glory thing any day in the week; I can make the nations tremble and shake the earth, I can speak from a pillar of cloud, but that’s all beside the point; listen to my Son!’  And when the voice had spoken, Luke writes, Jesus was found alone, and they kept silent and told no one what they had seen.  Who would have believed them?

     There you have it.  Whether you affirm the event, whether it flies in the face of everything you know and have experienced about reality-that’s not the heart of the thing.  What is there for you and me, conceding or doubting, is the acknowledgement that everything about God, about the history of God, the whole history of God with humankind has its center, its core, its culmination in Jesus and his death.  ‘Listen to him!’ ‘Listen to him!’  This voice is the constant.  The mountain and the glistening and the appearance of Moses and Elijah are the variable, so that the mountain could stand for any old mountain, St. Helens or Everest, and Moses and Elijah for any old lawgiver or prophet.  What resists substitution or exchange is the summons to listen to the one being sent to his death.  This is the heart of our story, and everything else the trimmings.

     This is true Christian faith, that when all is said and done, whatever has brought me high or low, whatever I’ve been, learned, or earned, imagined, dreamed, or loved—it all takes second seat to the sight of that one lone figure heading for his cross.” 

Roy Harrisville II “Tell it on the Mountain” 2021, p. 109.

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

February 20, 2022

The Seventh Sunday After the Epiphany

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

God of compassion, keep before us the love you have revealed in your Son, who prayed even for his enemies; in our words and deeds help us to be like him through whom we pray, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Opening Hymn:  “Sing Praise to God, the Highest Good” (LBW 542)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AoRxg88fCY

Sermon: February 20, 2022

Be Merciful Even as Your Father Is Merciful

Luke 6:36

The Reverend Douglas Lindsay

Dear Friends in Christ, fellow ministers of the Gospel, Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

     We are confronted by a plague of gun violence that has settled over our cities like a pall of destruction.  Watching the local news we see a seemingly unending number of shootings.  Sometimes targeted sometimes random, sometimes directed at churches and synagogues sometimes against neighbor.  We are in the midst of an epidemic of gun violence and there seems to be a gridlock about what to do about it. 

     One thing to recognize about American culture is that we entertain ourselves by watching violence on TV and in our movies.  Father Thomas Merton, the famous Trappist monk and theologian once stated, “American culture lives in an atmosphere of hallucinated violence.”  “Now that hallucination is inflicting severe consequences upon us.  What did Father Merton mean by hallucinated? 

     He meant that on an average evening on TV you might see dozens of guns fired in anger.  Yet in actual fact, even with the uprising of shootings lately most of us have never seen an actual gun fired.  Much of the violence we see in our culture is imaginary. 

     Before I went to seminary I drove for Seattle Transit System for ten years between 1970 & 1980.  I drove trolleys on Capitol Hill, on Rainier Avenue and I also drove many nightshifts.  In all those years I never saw a single gun fired in anger. 

     I would guess that none of you have either.  Yet even though the vast majority of violence is imaginary, that doesn’t mean that violent imagery isn’t having a dreadful impact on our nation.  I especially think of our youth.  Some sociologists have estimated the average teenager has seen thousands of shooting deaths on TV and in video games by the time they are out of high school.  This flood of violence and mayhem has desensitized our whole society to the real evil of such violence. 

     This plague of evil violence has influenced many of our young people that the way to respond to conflict with another person is to reach for a gun.  This kind of retaliation is not just some modern phenomenon.  In Genesis God sends the flood because “the wickedness of man was very great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”

     God tells Noah of his judgment, “God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.” (Genesis 6:13)  Notice that God mentions first the inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.  Such inclinations are rampant in our modern culture.

     In an attempt to curb the violent actions of Israel, God gave the what is called the “Lex talionis” or “The law of the talon,” “Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth.” (Exodus 21:24)  As Dr. Martin Luther King quipped, “If we are not careful the whole world will be eyeless and toothless.”  We are now in the situation where the iron law of revenge has become common.  Much of the actual violence around is about the evil of revenge.  What is known on the street as being “dissed” is an insult or disrespected.  If you feel ill-treated by someone you strike back.

     To defend your reputation the thing to do is get your gun and exact retribution.  Thus the world by this cycle of evil for evil is locked into a reflex of violence that seems to have no end and no limit.  The evil imaginations of our hearts have dominated our lives and have exploded into a terrible harvest of sadness and sorrow and death and then even more violence.  This is the dynamic power of sin to enslave us to our anger and even more violence.  St. James writes, “What causes war and fighting among you?  Is it not your passions that are at war among your members.  You desire and do not have so you kill.  You covet and cannot obtain so you fight and wage war.  (James 4:1-2)

     This is a terrible problem that can’t be controlled by laws or by the police.  No external solutions will change the hearts of human beings whose minds are full of evil imaginations of violence and full of anger and pride.

     The Lord tells us exactly how the peril in which we find ourselves originates.  He says in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.  “You have heard that it was said to men of old, ‘You shall not kill and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.’”

     The root of our problem lies in the depth of our hearts where our desires rule over us and Satan manipulates us into evil deeds against our brothers and sisters.  From where is our help to come?  Our help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.  (Psalm 121:1)

     To save us from the violence and anger of our own hearts God has sent us his beloved Son.  God commands us on the Mount of Transfiguration.  “This is My Beloved Son, listen to him”

     So we must listen to the beloved Son teaching us in St. Luke.  Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.  Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, from him who takes away your cloak do not withhold your coat as well.  Give to everyone who begs from you, and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them attain.  And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.  (Luke 6:27-31)

     As you hear these words of Our Lords teaching – I wonder if you have the same reaction as I do.  For us sinners that’s just impossible!  It is too hard for us mere mortals.  That is the truth for sure.  Left to our own devices and our own will we would never do these teachings.  No doubt that is exactly why Jesus has taught us to pray for it continually. 

     As we earnestly pray in the Lord’s Prayer.  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Luther teaches in the Small Catechism in the 5^th Petition, “We pray that he would give us everything by grace, for we sin every day and deserve nothing but punishment, so that we on our part will heartily forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us.” 

     In answer to our prayer for deliverance from our stony, revengeful hearts Jesus commands us to love our enemies.  He actually does what he commands.  Jesus is not some foolish dreamer – he knows he will receive from us cursing and hatred and rejection and ridicule and mockery and even whipping, beating and death by crucifixion.  We the human race have inflicted on the Lord suffering and a terrible death. 

     Yet St. Paul tells us in Roans 5:8, “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us!”  Here is the wonder of God’s grace redeeming us by the Lord’s body given for us.  The Lord’s blood shed for us.  Jesus comes among us blessing and healing and feeding and teaching, not judging us but forgiving us.  Even as he dies in agony on the cross, he pleads for us to his Father, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”.  In his cross Jesus receives all the violence, hatred and malice human cruelty can inflict upon him.  When skeptics say they think Jesus is only a good man but not God incarnate, they must consider the words of our Lord from the cross and ask, could a human being have spoken like this?  Who is like the Lord in love, mercy and forgiveness for his enemies?

     Jesus tells us about a new way to love and then he reveals he is LOVE.  Love your enemies and do good… and your reward will be great… and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and selfish.  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.   

     The only antidote to the poison, the hatred and our violence all around us, is the power of the Holy Spirit transforming and changing our hearts of stone by the blessing of forgiveness and so we in turn forgive others.  The world is perishing from the violence in our hearts and how desperately we need the grace given to us by Our Father and his beloved Son Jesus Christ.  Sanctify us in the Faith, thy Word is Truth. 

Hymn of the Day:  “Lord of Glory, You Have Bought Us” (LBW 424)

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “Sent Forth by God's Blessing” (LBW 221)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLp85eLlaIM

Thinking about Evangelism

First, then what is the Question?  Jesus is the question.  I’m in trouble before I even get started, because many people do not like the definite article used in this exclusive way.  We live in a time when people are working hard for inclusivity.  Sometimes it almost sounds as though Christianity itself is equated with inclusivity.  Everyone is included.  Everything is included.  “Inclusivity” is one of the big banners under which the New Lutheran church is marching into existence.  It goes against the grain of some people to isolate one thing, even if it’s Jesus, and to say that He—nothing else—He—Jesus is the question. 

     I assume, and I think Paul and Luther assumed—if we want to stick with those two for the moment—that if Christianity means anything at all it involves one’s total life.  It means something that controls one’s decisions and actions and reflections and feelings and experiences.  It is something for which one would go to the wall, something for which one would die.  Christians have died for twenty centuries, and continue to die, for the Christian faith.  Christians are people who believe that the faith they embrace and proclaim is not only helpful but true.  They think it’s true about everything and for everybody.  Christians think that everybody in every place and every time ought to be a Christian. 

     To say that Jesus is the question, the question above and below, and before and after, and inside and outside of every other question, is to say that Christianity does make an exclusive claim, and that it believes that claim to be true, that it believes that claim to describe that which is, in fact, the case.  Evangelism is dying or dead in many places because the Jesus question is thought by many Christians to be one of many interesting questions, but not the question.  If a church is going to be an evangelizing church it must believe that it’s message is true, and that means acknowledging that Jesus is the question, not just a question.

The Reverend Doctor James H. Burtness

Luther Seminary – 1985

Reflections on Matthew 16:13-16

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

February 13, 2022

The Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lord God, mercifully receive the prayers of your people.  Help us to see and understand the things we ought to do, and give us grace and power to do them; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Opening Hymn:  “Praise the Almighty” (LBW 539)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_ue8muujXg

Sermon: February 13, 2022

Your Reward is Great in Heaven

Luke 6:23

The Reverend Philip Nesvig

Our focus today is our Gospel passage, but let me first repeat one verse we heard from 1 Corinthians 15.  “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (Vs. 19).  This is a portion of St. Paul’s stupendous proclamation of the resurrection of Christ, and, in turn, our own hope of the resurrection; our hope for life beyond this life; our hope of heaven. 

     Now let’s move from 1 Corinthians to our Gospel passage.  There’s quite a contrast here, but there’s also a connection.  That connection is the word “heaven.”  We immediately think that heaven is what happens when we die.  But “heaven” in Luke 6 is a synonym for the “kingdom of God” or the “reign of God.”  As such, “heaven” doesn’t wait for us to die.  “Heaven” is here today.  How so?  It’s simple.  “Heaven” happens when faith is created.  “Heaven” happens when God’s Word enters our ears.  Then “heaven” happens when God’s Holy Spirit empties our ears into our hearts so that we hear both words of “woe” and words of “blessing.”

     How many of us are eager to hear a word of woe, a word of condemnation, or a word of guilt or shame?  No one!  In fact, we close our ears to any words of woe and try to shift the blame.  If we are held accountable for any of our actions, we have learned throughout our lives to find some kind of excuse to get ourselves off the hook.  So if the word is that we are cold and heartless because of our wealth, we’ll somehow shift the focus to the reasons why the poor are poor.  You know, they’re drug addicts, they’re mentally ill, they’re lazy, they’re unreliable.  And if we are accused of having pantries and freezers which are too full, we’ll call it all common sense and the result of our hard work.  We have earned these groceries the good old fashioned way.  We worked hard.  We might even quote Paul in 2 Thessalonians 3.10.  “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” (My mother said that to me a time or two when I was a teenager lazing about on the sofa!) Finally, how many of us want to put a complete damper on our social life—as if Covid weren’t enough—we are told “woe to you who are laughing now.”  Are we to decline all invitations to a social event because there will be too much laughter there—too much blissful frivolity?

     It is easy for us to reject any suggestion that these words of woe are intended for us.  Instead, we will line up to receive these words of blessing.  We qualify for a blessings.  We are poor!  Just look at what inflation is doing to our paychecks.  We are hungry!  The supply chain hasn’t been delivering my favorite treat from the grocery store.  We are those who are weeping!  We have had extraordinary losses to Covid.  We’ll reach 1 million before too much longer, not to mention all the other kinds of deaths, property losses due to vandalism, and lost contact with our relatives in distant locations due to this pesky virus.  Finally come the harsh experiences we’ve all had of being hated, excluded, reviled and defamed because we are followers of Jesus.  It may not be as bad for us as it is in some countries around the world, but people who are near and dear to us have belittled us for believing in Christ.  People who are near and dear to us have said, “Don’t get all Jesus-y on me.”  Or they have quietly sat beside us in our homes and displayed their apathy by not joining in a simple table grace.  We are not honored for our faith.  We are given the cold shoulder!  So give us this word of blessing, dear Jesus.  Speak, Lord.  We are ready to listen.

     I hope I have brought you to the point where you might wonder with me if I need to hear a word of woe or a word of blessing.  How do these beatitudes in Luke—like the beatitudes in Matthew—function in our lives of faith?  How do we hear these words?  My point is that we hear them differently depending upon our life situations.  We hear these words of woe differently from day to day and year to year, and sometimes the word of woe is what we need, and sometimes the word of blessing is what we need.  Both words of “woe” and words of “blessing” can be used by the Holy Spirit to create and sustain our faith. 

     Through my years of thinking about these beatitudes, I have wondered just how they work. That is to say, I have wondered on a few occasions as a pastor, father, husband or neighbor which words to speak—woe or blessing?  Here’s one way these blessings and curses play out.

     In 1995, I was an interim pastor in Boise.  One day a young man called the church and asked to speak to the pastor.  He was 17-years-old, and I soon learned he was in deep trouble. Pastors receive many such calls.  Like telemarketers or scam artists, you simply listen and wait for the pitch.  But this young man was different.  He never asked for money or a night in a hotel.  Instead, he asked me for “a blessing.”

     I thought to myself:  “A blessing?  Is that all?  I can do this!  I’m in the blessing business!  I conclude the service every Sunday with a blessing.”  But I was suspicious.  A blessing is an unusual request, even for a pastor.  I soon learned more about him.  He was raised a Lutheran in Twin Falls, ID and now, in his hour of need, he found a Lutheran Church in the Yellow Pages.  He needed a blessing because he had fallen among robbers.

     He was involved in drugs, and the gang leader was moving into his apartment.  He needed rent money.  He was scared and unable to say “no” to the drug scene.  We all know there is not much forgiveness when buying and selling drugs.  I began to sympathize with him.

     He wouldn’t give me his phone number or address.  I had built no trust.  So maybe this was my onetime occasion to give “a word from the Lord.”  But which word did he need?  A blessing or a woe?  I didn’t know for sure.  Maybe he needed to hear a word of woe— to admit that his life was caught up in a world of “woe.”  Maybe he needed to hear a word of woe from me so he could be strong enough remove himself from the drug scene.  Maybe he and I should stand together and shout, “Woe to you who deal drugs!  Woe to you who threaten other people’s lives!  Woe to you who manipulate others and crush them for your selfish purposes!”  Which word did this young man need to hear—blessing or woe?

As I recall, I think I gave him both words over the phone.  “Woe to you if you stay in the drug scene!  Bless you if you leave immediately! Go!  Hitchhike, take the bus, call home, do anything to get down the road!  Stand tall!  Your life is ahead of you!  There is no blessing for you if you stay put!  Leave!  Your life depends on it!”

    I’ll never know what happened to that 17-yr-old.  I’ll never know what my words meant to him.  But I do believe I failed him in one essential way.  I did not have the chance to say anything to him about the cross and resurrection.  I did not say his sins were forgiven and because of that his new life in Christ was the best blessing he would ever receive.  I did not get the chance to say to him, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” I did not get the chance to persuade him that the drug world was not heaven.  I didn’t say, “repent and believe for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” I didn’t tell him that the reign of God in Christ is heaven—even today well before he dies.  I didn’t have these words of Luther in my head:  “What more could you ask or desire than God’s gracious promise that he will be yours with every blessing and will protect and help you in every need?  Those who trust God suffer grief and want…must yet learn that these words of blessing will yet prove to be true.” (Large Catechism)

     So it is that our speaking opportunities—our witness chances—our chances to fish for people—can be few and far between.  And when the door finally opens, we wonder what to say.  The trick is knowing whether to give affirmation today and confrontation tomorrow, or vice versa.  Will it be a word of blessing or a word of woe?  Do we lead with the Law or the Gospel?  Traditionally, we think we need the Law to hammer and flatten us—to kill us in the false imagination of our hearts.  Then we follow up with the new life of grace in Christ.  But it can be a very tricky teeter-totter.  It’s exceedingly hard to keep our balance.

     Just remember that the fulcrum of the teeter-totter is the cross of Christ.  Remember that the Word of God is alive and active.  Like a two-edged sword, God’s Word will give us what we need.  Whoever has ears to hear, let them listen.

     The steady, stable words of Christ are these:  “I love you.  I have died for your sins, your confused wills, your unfaithfulness to me which makes it necessary to speak a word of woe.  I have given my life to you.  I have taken your place on the cross.  I have made you mine through my death and resurrection.  And one day I will bring you home.  I will harvest you as my fruit on the day of resurrection.  But, in the meantime, I have planted you by living waters, as the psalmist says.  I have made you a flowering shrub and a fruitful tree.  Now go, be a blessing to others and speak my word as a witness to the God of life, the God of redemption, and the God who brings words of blessing so that we might receive a great reward in heaven even today.”  Amen.

Hymn of the Day:  “From God the Father, Virgin-Born” (LBW 83)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK_hjeBIDLM

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “Your Kingdom Come” (LBW 376)  

“Jesus gave his disciples clear orders as to how his vision of God’s work would go forward.  Four promises, and four warnings, presented in terms of Israel’s great scriptural codes. Now with the renewed Israel formed around him, Jesus gives them his own version of the same thing.

     And a radical version it is.  It’s an upside-down code, or perhaps (Jesus might have said) a right-way-up code instead of the upside-down ones people had been following.  God is doing something quite new:  as Jesus had emphasized in the synagogue at Nazareth, in Luke 4, he is fulfilling his promises at last, and this will mean good news for all the people who haven’t had any for a long time.  The poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated:  blessings on them!  Not that there’s anything virtuous about being poor or hungry in itself.  But when injustice is reigning, the world will have to be turned once more the right way up for God’s justice and kingdom to come to birth.  And that will provoke opposition from people who like things the way they are.  Jesus’ message of promise and warning, of blessing and curse, rang with echoes of the Hebrew prophets of old, and he knew that the reaction would be the same. 

     What are Jesus’ promises and warnings for our world, for people who will hear his call and follow him?  We must all answer for ourselves.  But as Christians we believe that what Jesus began with the call of the Twelve and the sharp-edged teachings of blessings and curses remains in force today.  This is the shape of the kingdom:  the kingdom which still today turns the world upside down, or perhaps the right way up, as much as ever it did.”

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

February 6, 2022

The Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Almighty God, you sent your only Son as the Word of life for our eyes to see and our ears to hear.  Help us to believe with joy what the Scriptures proclaim, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Opening Hymn:  “God Himself Is Present” (LBW 249)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCa1ycBjnCU&t=5s

Sermon: February 6, 2022

A Great Shoal of Fish

Luke 5:6

The Reverend Doug Lindsay

When I was in Minnesota to attend Luther Seminary I became wary of the practice of Ice-Fishing.  Stalwart fishermen would drive their pick-ups out on frozen lakes, cut a hole in the ice with a chainsaw, put up a shelter over the hole, and in below zero cold, catch fish.  Sometimes you’d see a man with a t-shirt that said – “Fishing, a dirty business, but somebody has to do it.” 

     Certainly fishing is a tough and even dangerous job.  Perhaps that is one reason Jesus chose fishermen to become his disciples.  Here were men used to hard difficult labor, dealing with storms and bad weather, fishing at night, hauling in nets heavy with fish and used to adversity.  By the lake of Gennesaret, Jesus has found himself pressed by large crowds that had witnessed him healing many.  Luke tells us, “that any that were sick with various diseases brought them to Jesus and he laid hands on every one of them and healed them.”  Luke 4:40

     Imagine the impact upon people who had little or no medical care or medicine, nor any way of treating so many diseases from Leprosy to simple infections.  No wonder they sought him and came to him bringing their sick to such a wonderful and willing healer.  So they pressed upon Jesus to hear the word of God.  Jesus got into Simon’s boat and asked him to put out a little from the shore and he sat down in the boat and taught the people that the kingdom of God was at hand.  Then he said to Simon, put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. Luke 5.4 

     Peter is skeptical.  He tells Jesus, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing.” 

     Next time you see a fisherman, who has fished all night and caught nothing try one more time and see what kind of expression you get.  But Peter knows Jesus is a man from God, so he finally says “At your word I will let down the nets.  Imagine the astonishment when after catching nothing all night long their nets are suddenly so full of a shoal of fish that their nets are breaking and they have to call their partners to come and help them.  Luke says the filled both the boats to the limit so that their boats were in danger of sinking!

     Peter falls to his knees before Jesus perhaps realizing for the first time that this is no ordinary man in his boat.  “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  Luke 5:10

     James and John – sons of Zebedee were also amazed and awe-struck.  “Jesus knew that this miraculous catch of fish had struck fear into their hearts.  So Jesus tells Simon, “Do not be afraid, henceforth you will be catching men.”  Luke 5:10

     Jesus lifted their hearts and minds from the daily toil of their lives and foretold that their new vocation will be to fish for disciples.  To call everyone to hear and believe the Gospel! 

     Since long ago this first call came to Peter, James and John the church has been caught up from our ordinary lives to the work of catching the souls of all in the net of God’s Love!  Cast the great net of the Gospel by which God brings us in to the ship of salvation.

     The church ever since has known that our clear call from the heart is to be at work among the nations fishing for the Lord.  In years to come the very sign of the fish became the symbol of the church in mission.  The ancient church made the sign of the fish – enclosing the Greed word for fish (IXEUS) – acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.  Church buildings themselves were often built in the shape of a massive fishing boat – framing the ceiling of the worship space.  This encounter at Lake Gennesaret foreshadows the Great Commission itself in Matthew, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always to the close of the age.” 

     We have been given our marching orders to bring the Gospel to each and every person in the world.  The church in truth is a missionary band of disciples whose chief calling is to proclaim the God News that Jesus is the Lord and Savior of the human race!  Unfortunately, the modern church seems to be faltering in its call to proclaim that Jesus is Lord.  We have been turned away from our God given task by some contemporary false prophets who now perpetrate the lie that all religions are the same, that Christianity is just one spoke in the wheel of religions that all lead to God.  The church has been reproached for being exclusive in its proclamation.  We believe the words of Our Lord. “I am the way, and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.” John 14.6

     The modern heresy that any old religion will do, that to insist that Jesus is indeed, “the way, the truth and the life” is to narrow, too exclusive, too restrictive, to divisive has intimidated the church and we have become reluctant even to speak the name of Jesus Christ.”

     Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the Saints.  A clear sign of our difficulty is American Civil Religion which wants to talk about God without talking about what kind of God we are speaking about.  God has become a generic term, a rubber nose which can be shaped and molded into an idol that suits us.  One form of this is the modern conceit that Love is God – rather that God is Love!  If love is God than anything we do that we want to call Love is acceptable.  C. S. Lewis remarked that this conception of God is of some remote benevolent Cosmic Grandfather who doesn’t mind how we act as long as we are happy. A God without power is a form of religion that demeans the power of God.  A God that leaves us just the way we are and who would never judge us and all of our sinfulness and call us to “repent and believe the Gospel.”  Mark 1:15

     This “God” is a God of our own making and desire, unconcerned that we remain selfish, greedy and sinful, focused on our own desires.  A God that is in fact a satanic lie that will destroy us. 

     Indeed the church knows that its sole Lord and Savior is none other than Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Son of God, who will judge the living and the dead and from whom no secrets are hid.  The God whom the Book of Hebrews says “Cannot be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the earnest entreat that no further messages be spoken to them”  Hebrews 12:18 

     This is the One, True God who is revealed to us by Jesus himself.  As the Gospel of John proclaims, “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God.  It is God the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, who has made him known.”  John 1:18 or as Jesus tells Philip and the disciples, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?  He who has seen me has seen the Father!  John 14:9

     We are called to fish for the souls of people, to catch them in the gracious net of “God’s love in Christ, and bring them into the ship of salvation – the one, Holy Catholic Church!  Amen.

     Sanctify us in the truth, thy Word is Truth.  John 17:17

Hymn of the Day:  “Lord, Speak to Us, that We May Speak” (LBW 403)

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “Holy God, We Praise Your Name” (LBW 535)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5vLtzrM_4E

Therefore to God alone belongs that sort of seeing that looks into the depths. With their need and misery, and is near to all that are in the depths; as Saint Peter says (1Peter 5:5): “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  And this is the source of men’s love and praise of God.  For no one can praise God without first loving Him.  No one can love Him unless He makes Himself known to him in the most lovable and intimate fashion.  And in us and which we feel and experience within ourselves.  But where there is this experience, namely, that He is a God who looks into the depths. And helps only the poor, despised, and afflicted, miserable, forsaken, and those who are nothing, there a hearty love for Him is born.  The heart overflows with gladness and goes leaping and dancing for the great pleasure it has found in God.  There the Holy Spirit is present and has taught us in a moment such exceeding great knowledge and gladness through this experience.  

Luther’s Works, Volume 21, The Magnificat, pages 299-300.

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

January 30, 2022

The Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

O God, you know that we cannot withstand the dangers which surround us.  Strengthen us in body and spirit so that, with your help, we may be able to overcome the weakness that our sin has brought upon us; through Jesus Christ, your Son our Lord.

Opening Hymn:  “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” (LBW 551)  

Sermon: January 30, 2022

Amazed at Gracious Words

Luke 4:14-21

The Reverend Philip Nesvig

Today’s gospel lesson begins with the exact same verse we heard last Sunday as the conclusion to the Gospel passage.  It’s like a TV series tying together the new episode with the previous episode.  Here’s that verse again:  “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  We ask today, “What Scripture has been fulfilled?”  Well, let’s back up another couple verses and hear this phrase from Isaiah 61 as quoted by Jesus.  “Proclaim the Lord’s favor.”  If you saved your bulletin from last Sunday, you’ll see that was my sermon title. 

      “Proclaim the Lord’s favor.”  Everybody in the Nazareth synagogue loved that line!  It was good news to them, and Jesus was a fine rookie preacher.  We heard a minute ago that “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”  It would be nice to call this a Disney ending and move on to other things.  But this just won’t work.  Or, at least it won’t work for very long in Jesus’s ministry. In two weeks, February 13, we’ll hear Jesus say this:

       “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”  (Lk 6.26) Jesus learned this truth through first-hand experience.   It is the preacher’s “fatal vice” to be popular.  When all speak well of you, something’s wrong.  The truth is being obscured—withheld because it is so hard to hear.  Stay tuned for how this plays out in two weeks!  There will be blessings and woes from the mouth of Jesus.  And you’d think that his words of woe should be the words which will motivate people to throw him off a cliff.  But this cliff episode is already upon us in Luke 4 at the true conclusion of this Nazareth sermon.

      We can’t move on to what we desire—a Disney ending or a nice cup of tea in a circle around a guru mouthing mystical thoughts.  (We don’t know what they mean, but they sure sound good!).  No.  We cannot move on until Jesus gives two illustrations of what it means to be a recipient of the Lord’s favor.  So before anyone could doze off in the pew, Jesus told his homies two Old Testament stories about God’s gracious works and words.  These stories—lifted from the deep memory of the prophets of God—completely alienated Jesus from his Nazareth neighbors.  So we are told that his home town folks “got up, drove him out of town, and led him to the brow of the hill, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.”

      What in the world did it take for them to get so riled up?  Why were these people so intensely angry, so angry they would commit murder?  It was misplaced nationalism.  It was nationalism run amok.  It was a kind of civil religion which combined the God of Israel with the nation of Israel.  Time and again, the Old Testament prophets warned against all kinds of idolatry.  And one fundamental idolatry was to make their nation their god.  It took this simple form. 

      “God is the one true God.  We are God’s chosen people, so it doesn’t matter what we do, God will always bless us, and God will always curse our enemies.  We are the good guys, and they are the bad guys.  Thanks be to God.  Please pass the pita bread.  Amen.”

To this idolatrous mindset, Jesus was saying this:  “God is indeed the one true God.  And you are God’s chosen people.  But God is always God.  And God, even our God, can choose to shower blessings upon non-Jews, those unclean people of other nations and ethnicities.”  Now this may sound like pretty simple stuff as American Christians.  But bear in mind that the U.S.A. is only 4.25% of the world’s population.  It is tempting to say that God has blessed us in ways that the other 95.75% haven’t received.  That is nationalism that has run amok.  We have indeed been blessed by God in this land of abundance.  But we dare not wear rose-colored glasses when we read U.S. history.  And we dare not neglect the sins of our nation—whether committed by Christians or non-Christians.  We have heard plenty about our American economic and social sins the past two years.  It is not my purpose to rehearse those sins. 

      My simple purpose—and I believe it is true to our Gospel text—is to say that God has proclaimed favor to all people of all nations and ethnicities.  And the bite of that apparently simple point came when Jesus told his two Old Testament stories.

First up is Elijah and the widow of Zarephath.  We heard this story back on November 14, 2021.  The great prophet Elijah had been wandering the wilderness without adequate food and drink.  Nevertheless, God’s favor had been upon him by means of ravens bringing him bread and meat twice a day. 

     As the story goes, Elijah is sent to a widow who is completely destitute.   It is a time of drought.  The crops have failed.  And the widow has but one handful of bread dough in a jar and a few drops of oil.  Her plan is to bake this pita bread for herself and her son.  Then they will have their last supper and die.  Elijah is now told by God that this destitute widow will feed him from her paltry pantry.  Despite her plight, Elijah was appointed to say these gracious words to her.  “Do not be afraid…the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” (1 Kgs 17.13-14).

      And so it was.  Now how could this story not be heartwarming to the people in the Nazareth synagogue.  Why wouldn’t they all speak well of Jesus after he told this grace-filled story about how God provides abundantly in a time of need?  Here’s why.  It’s a sad but true answer.  The widow of Zarephath was in Sidon—outside the boundary of Israel.  She was a foreigner and not a believer in the God of Israel.  She didn’t deserve any help from the food bank managed by Elijah and his God.  How incredible that seems to us, but this was nationalism run amok.

     Now for the second illustration which got Jesus into really hot water.  This is one of the most bizarre stories in the Bible.  It takes all of 2 Kings 5 to appreciate it, but here’s the Readers Digest version.  Naaman, the Joint Chief of Staff in Syria, was a leper.  Right away, we have the main point of the story.  Naaman was not an Israelite.  He was a Syrian who worshipped false gods, as we soon shall see.  Nevertheless, the word came to him from his wife’s maid that there was a great healer named Elisha (Elijah’s successor) who lived down south in Samaria.  Why not take a trip to see Elisha? 

      Desperate occasions call for desperate actions, so Naaman loaded a fortune of gold, silver and fancy clothes on his pack train and left for Samaria.  Elisha’s prescription for healing was for Naaman to wash seven times in the Jordan River.  “Do that and you will be clean of all your leprosy.”  Naaman complained that the rivers of Syria were far better than the River Jordan, but his aides said, “Look, this is simple.  Just do it.”  Much to his amazement, Naaman rinsed seven times and was cured of his leprosy.

      Now it was time for Naaman to pay his bill, but his mule train fortune of silver, gold, and garments were not accepted by Elisha.  The God of Israel’s health plan was zero premium, full coverage, no co-pay.  Naaman persisted but with a twist.  “Okay, I now believe in the one true God of all the earth, the God of Israel.  But I have one favor.  May I please take home two mule-loads of dirt so I can build a memorial sacrificial altar back home in Syria?  I promise to worship only the Lord God of Israel.”  His request was granted, and off he went with his holy dirt.  Naaman was healed of his leprosy, and he was also healed of his own brand of nationalism run amok.  He was a convert from both his nation and his gods.  Naaman now worshipped the one true God, and this God could now be revealed not only in Israel but also in Syria. 

      There’s even more craziness when you read all of 2 Kings 5.  I have not told the full story—only the Readers Digest version.  Fast forward to the Nazareth sermon in Luke 4.  Jesus made a reference to Naaman in just one verse, but that was enough to evoke the memory of the whole story and incite a riot.  Here’s what happened immediately after Jesus mentioned Naaman the Syrian.  “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.”  Now this is some kind of reaction, but this is what happens when nationalism runs amok.

     Now note this well.  The point of Jesus’s Nazareth sermon was incredibly simple.  “I am here to proclaim the Lord’s favor.”  It sounded great to start with, and the worshipers were, as the text says, “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”  What they didn’t realize was that these gracious words were applicable to all people, all nations, all ethnicities, the powerful and the poor, the strong and the weak, the hungry and the well-fed. 

      When St. Luke tells his story in Acts 1 & 2 of how the church began, he makes the particular point that Christ’s people are to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  (Acts 1.8). What follows in the book of Acts is story after story about how that played out.  Empowered by the Holy Spirit, the first Christians gave their witness, speaking “gracious words” as they crossed from one national boundary to another.  There was no sense of nationalism run amok.  The gracious words were all about the reign of God through the kingdom of Christ.  Whoever believed and was baptized was part of this new kingdom…a kingdom beyond nationalism…a kingdom of disciples of Christ, the Prince of Peace.

     I take this text from Luke 4 to mean that we ought not be smug about who we are.  Instead, we are to be humble about whose we are.  We are Christ’s, the man who almost died through being thrown off a cliff.  We are Christ’s, the man who said, “Woe to you when all speak well of you.” We are Christ’s, the man who said, “Take up your cross daily and follow me.” (Lk 9.23)  We are Christ’s, the man who was despised, rejected and went to the cross to bear the sins of the world, even yours and mine.  We are Christ’s, who rose from the dead, walked the road to Emmaus (Lk 24.30), met his destitute, despairing disciples but then broke bread, blessed it and gave it to his disciples like Elijah did for the widow of Zarephath.

      We are Christ’s who offers us the bread of healing, the wine of forgiveness, and the promise of life eternal.  May we be amazed by these gracious words today.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Hymn of the Day:  “God Has Spoken by His Prophets” (LBW 238)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rbR63VCTg4

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (LBW 315)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQrNMJrgbyM

“Jesus’ teaching is a fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture.  That same teaching will meet with success and—even more so—with rejection.  Luke has deliberately put this story at the beginning of the public ministry to encapsulate the entire ministry of Jesus and the reaction to it.  The fulfillment story stresses the success of his teaching under the guidance of the Spirit, but the rejection story symbolizes the opposition that his ministry will evoke among his own.  The rejection of him by the people of his hometown is a miniature of the rejection of him by the people of his own patris in the larger sense. 

Joseph Fitzmyer “The Gospel According to Luke,” c. 1981, p. 529.

“Why then did Jesus begin his address with the long quotation from Isaiah (61.1-2)?  The passage he quotes is about the Messiah.  Throughout Isaiah there are pictures of a strange ‘anointed’ figure who will proclaim the Lord’s will.  But, though this text goes on to speak of vengeance on evildoers, Jesus doesn’t quote that bit.  Instead, he seems to have drawn on the larger picture in Isaiah and elsewhere which speaks of Israel being called to be the light of the nations, a theme which Luke has already highlighted in chapter 2.  The servant-Messiah has not come to inflict punishment on the nations, but to bring God’s love and mercy to them.  And that will be the fulfillment of a central theme in Israel’s own scriptures. 

      This message was, and remains, shocking.  Jesus’ claim to be reaching out with healing to all people, though itself a vital Jewish idea, was not what most first-century Jews wanted or expected.  As we shall see, Jesus coupled it with severe warnings to his own countrymen.  Unless they could see that this was the time for their God to be gracious, unless they abandoned their futile dreams of a military victory over their national enemies, they would suffer defeat themselves at every level—military, political and theological.

     Here, as at the climax of the gospel story, Jesus’ challenge and warning brings about a violent reaction.  The gospel still does this today, when it challenges all interests and agendas with the news of God’s surprising grace.”

Tom Wright  “Luke for Everyone,”  c. 2004  pp. 47-48. 

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

January 23, 2022

The Third Sunday After the Epiphany

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Almighty God, you sent your Son to proclaim your kingdom and to teach with authority.  Anoint us with the power of your Spirit, that we, too, may bring good news to the afflicted, bind up the brokenhearted, and proclaim liberty to the captive; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Opening Hymn:  “O God of Light” (LBW 237)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF1U4hdp1Wo

Sermon: January 23, 2022

Proclaim the Lord's Favor

Luke 4:19

The Reverend Philip Nesvig

When I was a beginning pastor in a small town in eastern Oregon, the Presbyterian pastor invited me to a Tuesday morning text study.  It was supposed to be a text study, but it was mostly a coffee break at “The Burger Hut.”  (No burgers. Just coffee.)  There were usually four of us at the table.  The Presbyterian pastor, the Episcopalian priest, myself and the American Baptist pastor—a graduate of Yale Divinity School.  The first three of us talked about the texts we would all be hearing on the following Sunday.  We shared a common lectionary. 

     One Tuesday, Clay (the Baptist) arrived a little late.  He asked us what Bible text we were going to use on Sunday.  He said he needed a theme or a text to work with, and he was stumped.  The three of us in turn were a bit stumped with Clay.  His church didn’t use a lectionary system—the set system of Bible passages which appear in the front pages of our hymnal.  So Clay had to think of a Bible passage or a theme of his own making and take it from there.  I remember feeling sorry for Clay.  What a chore to have to figure out every week what Bible passage to use for the basis of a sermon.

     Jesus wasn’t like Clay.  He was like the other three of us.  Jesus had a lectionary called “the Law and the Prophets.”  The Law would be a passage from one of the first five books of the Bible.  The Prophets would be one of the prophets like Isaiah or Jeremiah.  We are not told what the first reading was for Jesus when he appeared in his home synagogue.  But scholars have indicated it was probably Genesis 35.  That passage relates the death of Rachel after giving birth to her second son, Benjamin.  Rachel died, but the 12 sons of Jacob were now complete.  The 12 tribes were the newly-formed Israel, this nation of promise and destiny.  Out of death came life. 

     By analogy, the new Israel is the church, the body of Christ.  Just as the 12 tribes of Israel had many gifts, so also the church has many gifts.  St. Paul described those gifts for us today in our Second Lesson.  These gifts are described in terms of body parts, but we get the point.  We are an eye, an ear, an arm or a leg—all working together for the common good.  That’s a good reminder as we move forward in this transition process for our next pastor. 

     And, if you listened carefully, it’s always good to hear this:  “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Cor 12.26)  Paul himself is a good transition pastor for us!  And did you hear his words about baptism?  We are “one body…For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body….and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 1.12-13)  Our backgrounds and experiences  are all different, but we are all one through baptism.  So thank you, Daniel William, for presenting yourself for baptism today.  We are delighted to receive you, and you are an appropriate illustration of our 1 Corinthian text.  The lectionary rolled the right way today!

     The lectionary also rolled the right way for Jesus when he returned to his small town in the north of Palestine.  Nazareth was “nowheresville,” and Jesus lived among people who were too far from Jerusalem to be clear about religious practices and doctrine.  For the most part, they really were suspicious characters!  But they welcomed their home town boy and thought he did a real nice job at reading the lectionary on that sabbath.

     “What was that he said?” asked one worshiper to another.  “I heard the part about ‘good news to the poor.’  You know, we could always do more for them.  That’s why I give a little now and then to the Food Bank and the Welcome Table.  And I always feel sorry for those who are vision-impaired.  It’s really too bad that we can’t somehow fix cataracts and macular degeneration, but we help when we can.”

     The person next to this worshiper was quick to give a jab in the ribs.  “Shut up, you fool!  He was just quoting from Isaiah.  And I think you missed the real point.  It was a bit of a mashup from Isaiah 58 and 61, but he said he was in our synagogue ‘to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’  It didn’t really hit me until he said, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’  I guess that was his sermon, and I think it belongs in the Guinness Book of Records for the ‘world’s shortest sermon.’  It was only one sentence!”

     Yes.  Only one sentence, but the impact was really earth-shattering.  Jesus proclaimed “the year of the Lord’s favor,” and for those with ears to hear, Jesus declared he was the long-awaited Messiah.  What does a Messiah do?  A Messiah rules our hearts!  A Messiah does what no earthly ruler can do.  He forgives our sins.  The Messiah had arrived “to proclaim release to the captives,” and to “let the oppressed go free.” 

     Some church traditions pray “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”  That’s historic church and synagogue language hearkening back to Lev. 25 when a Jubilee was declared, that is, the cancelling of debts so that everyone could play on a level field.  Scholars have debated whether this Big Jubilee ever happened, namely, that after a sabbath of sabbaths, that is, after 49 years, all indebted property would suddenly be debt free.  The poor would finally get their deeds of ownership.

     It is tempting—as we read this passage—to imagine that Jesus is talking about a new economic theory which he will be implementing.  And Luke makes the suggestion in Acts 2.44-45 that immediately after Pentecost the first Christians “had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”  That sounds like some kind of ‘60s hippie commune, or the kind of social welfare system in Scandinavia.

     That’ll never fly in Congress!  But it certainly brings new meaning to Paul’s pastoral advice to the Corinthian church, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”  What might it mean for today’s church to be so radical that our wealth is shared—not only with the church budget but with each other?  I’m not here to give an answer to that, but the question hangs in the air from the scroll of Isaiah, to the Gospel of Luke, to the book of church history called Acts, and to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.  What can it mean for today’s Christians to be so generous?

     I hope you’ll take that question home with you, but, more than that, I hope you’ll keep asking yourself what does it mean to be ruled by the Messiah?  What does it mean to say “Jesus is Lord?”  That is the question presented by Jesus when he gave his sermon.  “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Regardless of whatever else this Gospel text means, it means that Jesus came to forgive debts, to let the oppressed go free, to forgive sins.  What is more binding and burdensome than our sins?  What is more oppressive than our sins?  What other kind of “good news” is better than “Your sins are forgiven?”  

     This is the first point of his Jesus’ ministry, and it is repeated over and over again throughout his three years of public ministry.  This word of forgiveness is also the last word he spoke to the penitent criminal on the cross.  “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”  So in many and various ways, Jesus proclaimed “the year of the Lord’s favor.”  These words of Jesus may have economic implications, political implications, social implications, and knowledge implications. 

     However, these are all “back burner” issues.  The front burner issue—the issue with the highest heat value, which is meant to warm us the best and the fastest—is the forgiveness of sins.  That is the Lord’s favor, the Lord’s grace, the Lord’s unearned gift—forgiveness—granted to us despite who we are because we are imbued with the Holy Spirit at baptism to become something we otherwise couldn’t be on our own power.  We are “the body of Christ and individually members of it.”  Nothing feeds the body and keeps it together more than the forgiveness of sins.

     Jesus came to “proclaim the Lord’s favor,” and so we do it again, week after week, cutting each other some slack because we are that hand that the toe needs for itching.  We are that eye that the ear needs because there is hearing loss and confusion.  We are that head which the foot needs so we can navigate our complex world.

     If we are a body, then we need food.  Thanks be to God that today we have three dishes on the menu—water, bread and wine.  They might not look like much.  But the water of baptism seals the deal, the bread refreshes the soul, and the wine quenches our thirst.  These are all “the means of grace,” which “proclaim the Lord’s favor” to us, and strengthen us for another day, another week, another month, another of discipleship as individual members of the whole Body of Christ.   Now that’s the “good news to the poor” from the Nazareth synagogue for you and for me today.  Go, proclaim the Lord’s favor!  Amen. 

Hymn of the Day:  “Hail to the Lord's Anointed” (LBW 87)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmgVTuFk5NU

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “Bright and Glorious Is the Sky” (LBW 75)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01Hrg-pKQyc

“‘Inspiration:’  we use the word loosely.  We imply that ‘it just came over them,’ that they suddenly became someone different.  Of course, we know that it didn’t happen like that.  The brilliant athlete has been training and practicing, hour after hour and week after week.  The musician has been playing exercises, perfecting technique for long hours out of the public eye.  Then, when the moment comes, a surge of adrenalin produces a performance which we call ‘inspired’ — but which is actually the fruit of long, patient, hard work.

     When Jesus said ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me’ Luke has already let us into the secret.  His years of silent preparation.  His life of prayer leading up to his baptism.  The confirmation of his vocation—and then its testing in the wilderness.  Then, at last, going public with early deeds in Capernaum (as the exchange in the Nazareth synagogue makes clear, people had already heard of what he’d done elsewhere.)  Now, with years of prayer, thought and the study of scripture behind him, he stands before his own town.  He knew everybody there and they knew him.  He preached like a man inspired; indeed, in his sermon that’s what he claimed.  But what he said was the opposite of what they were expecting.  If this was inspiration, they didn’t want it.” 

     Luke says that the people ‘were astonished at the words of sheer grace that were coming out of his mouth.'  Sometimes people have understood this simply to mean, ‘they were astonished at what a good speaker he was.’  But it seems more likely that he means ‘they were astonished that he was speaking about God’s grace—grace for everybody, including the nations—instead of grace for Israel and fierce judgment for everyone else.’  That fits perfectly with what followed.”

Tom Wright “Luke for Everyone,”  c. 2004, pp. 46-47.

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

January 16, 2022

The Second Sunday After the Epiphany

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Father of heaven and earth, hear our prayers, and show us the way to peace in the world.  Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Opening Hymn:  “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise” (LBW 90)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVWsOpMYp9A

Sermon: January 16, 2022

Divine Wine

John 2:10

The Reverend Philip Nesvig

Today’s Gospel story is about wine—150 gallons of wine.  That will get the attention of most of us!  This is “Total Wine & More!”  But is our story about wine or something else?  Maybe it’s about marriage.  Our hymnal has this lovely prayer in its “Marriage” service.  “Eternal God, our creator and redeemer, as you gladdened the wedding at Cana in Galilee by the presence of your Son, so by his presence now bring your joy to this wedding.”  See, the story must be about the joy that Jesus brings to a couple at their wedding.  Then again, maybe it’s about the first of Jesus’s seven signs which, John tells us, was a way for Jesus to “reveal his glory.”  Or maybe this story is about “the third day.”  John drops a hint here for Christian ears.  The Creed says “on the third day he rose again.”  That makes it sound like a preview of coming attractions, a trailer—if you will—of Easter Sunday. 

     Maybe this story is about the stereotypical “Jewish mother.”  Mary is chiding Jesus, and Jesus responds with what is called “oppositional behavior.”  “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?”  “Woman?” Mary might have sneered.  “You dare to call me “woman” and not “Mother?!”  Not “Mom?!”  Maybe this story is about “cancel culture,” that is, setting aside the Jewish purification rite of washing pots and dishes, hands and feet in order to be ritually clean at the wedding.  Maybe Jesus is saying, “Throw that dirty water out, and replace it with fresh water.  I am the fresh water.  Wash with me in the waters of baptism.”  And, if a wedding miracle is going to happen, it’s going to happen with clean water!  Maybe this gospel story is about a peculiar kind of etiquette—namely, get the wedding guests lightheaded with cheap wine, then start pouring the good wine.  What sense is there in that?  Well, what sense is there in most of what Jesus said and did?  There is no obvious sense, except for these three words:  First—“My hour has not yet come,” said Jesus.  And, John the story-teller concludes this episode with “Jesus revealed his glory.” Now the third word, equally important to the first two words is this.  “His disciples believed in him.”

     What is this Gospel passage about?  Well, it really is about wine—not human wine, but “divine wine.”  Divine wine is a contrast to human wine, both in quantity and in quality.  The quantity is the self-emptying of Jesus at the cross.  That’s mighty big!  The quality is the new life given through the resurrection.  In order to appreciate these contrasts, let’s take a quick look at human wine.

     One of my best friends for the last 45 years has been Leonard in the Walla Walla Valley.  He was raised to manage apple orchards but expanded to vineyards about 20 years ago.  He and his wife own a fabulous 10-acre vineyard which produces grapes for several well-known wineries.  (See me after the service for which bottles to buy!)  I have followed Leonard around in his vineyard, observing the production of grapes from their May bloom till their October harvest.  I have watched his crew harvest the grapes, then truck them to the winery for the crush.  Then there’s the yeast, the fermentation, the filtering, the barrels, and finally the wait.  After 2.5 years, there’s the bottling, but in between comes the barrel tasting and the blending.  Then the bottling line is set into motion and off comes the corked wine, then the foil and the labels.  What’s left to do?  Marketing and sales!  Now comes the enjoyment of the consumer.  That’s human wine at its best.

     One day I asked Leonard how to make bad wine.  He looked at me like I had two heads.  He was not into making bad wine but very high quality wine!  “Well,” he began, “if you don’t have good grapes, good growing conditions, a timely harvest, good yeast, good fermentation, good blending, or if you water it down, then you’ll have bad wine. Cheap wine. Even the cork will make a difference.  There are plenty of shortcuts, but I’m not into bad wine.”

     Now let’s use the metaphor of wine and turn it from human wine to divine wine.  What do we get?  Are we into “bad wine” or “divine wine?”  Bad wine is the easy wine—the easy religion.  We may call it any number of things.  One bad wine is “cheap grace,” as Bonhoeffer famously called it.  Cheap grace is grace without the cross of Christ, grace without confession and repentance.  Another bad wine is glory road theology where your faith is made valid by the good things which happen to you.  This is fine when “the mountain is out,” but watch out when nature isn’t kind.  Be very careful of feeling good about being a Christian through looking at the beauty of nature, the joys of friendship and human love, the gradual climb up your employment ladder, the Seahawks & Huskies record, your disease-free Covid status, your longevity, your retirement plan with all the perks lined up to satisfy you. 

     Bad wine is all our human accomplishments which we use as substitutes for the real thing—the Divine Wine who is Christ.  Bad wine is an idol.  Divine Wine is the Son of God, Jesus Christ and his grace and the forgiveness of all our sins.

     Be very careful with all of this.  It is not “divine wine” or anything close to it.  You may think your hour has come when things are going well, but your clock may well spin backwards, and you suddenly see that your hour didn’t come but left, sending you into a downward spiral.  Instead, the only hour that comes which is always timely, always punctual, always dependable, always never late or too early but “right on time” is the hour that came long ago for Christ our Lord.  It came to him on Good Friday.  It was his submission to the will of the Father.

     For those of us of a certain age, we remember the TV commercial with the somewhat snooty Orson Welles shilling for Paul Masson:  “We will sell no wine before its time.”  Compare that with Galatians 4.4-6:

    “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.  And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ’Abba!  Father!’  So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”

     So we confess our sins this and every day.  We settle for bad wine, and confess that is our preference.  It is, after all, cheap, so it’s good for our bank account.  But then we rejoice.  Do not be misled or mistaken.  The Divine Wine is costly but only for Christ.  The Divine Wine—Christ himself— has been given to us “in the fullness of time.”  It is grace—gratis!  Christ’s hour came at Golgotha, his revelation of glory.  And in our own time this Sunday morning we participate in that hour of crucifixion glory with the means of grace—the wafer and the sweet Port wine from our silver chalice.  It’s Divine Wine, and it doesn’t get much better than that!

     Christ’s hour of glory came hidden in the despair and abandonment of the cross.  Nevertheless, that hour was the revelation of God’s glory in the life and sacrificial death of the Word made flesh—full of “grace and truth” from the beginning when he appeared in human form—and then revealed in the fulness of glory on the day of resurrection. 

     So to review:  Jesus said his hour had not yet come at the wedding of Cana.  Instead, the hour came for Jesus at the cross.  That was the right time.  And his glory was revealed precisely at that time, when, to use the words of St. Paul, “he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”  But God was not done with him quite yet, says Paul.  “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  (Phil. 2.8-11)

     Now comes the third word to hear and observe.  “His disciples believed in him.”  To believe is to “trust and obey” as the Gospel hymn says, “because there’s no other way.”  The servants—the waiters at this wedding—obeyed the word of Jesus even though they may not have believed what was about to happen.  But obedience counts for a lot in the kingdom of God, so the servants—the waiters—filled the six jars with water to the brim.  The rest was up to Jesus.  In a way that none of us is prepared to explain or understand, the water became wine—fine wine fit for this joyous marriage feast. 

Hymn of the Day:  “All Praise to You, O Lord” (LBW 78)

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “As with Gladness Men of Old” (LBW 82)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB8rKNrlpDQ

“It is normal for crises, or emergencies, or at least for problems like this to arise in life and in marriage.  Wine gives out.  This biblical text, often used at weddings, can teach us at the beginning of the story that the extravagant wine of wedding celebrations will always, eventually, give out, and (as the story teaches) that Jesus is always equal to the crisis.  Is it not encouraging to marriage that Jesus’ first miracle repairs marriage’s needs and failings?

     “My hour has not yet come.”  Usually in our Gospel the weighty expression “my hour” means the still outstanding hour of Jesus’ paradoxical glorification-in-crucifixion.  Jesus’ “hour” consistently suggests The Great Weekend of his humiliation and exaltation.  Here, in its first use, it could sound like it means the hour for Jesus to begin his public ministry.  For now, his second-sentence “my hour” remains almost as mysterious as his first-sentence address, “Woman” and his accompanying question, “What are you trying to do with me?”  The most important point is this:  Jesus’ “hour” is the initially secret but gradually revealed center of every story in the Gospel:  Jesus’ Cross is the crux of the Gospel story as a whole and of each story in it in particular, and it is the key to the right understanding of every story.”

     “Wine always gives out.  We have the deep privilege of living contact with the Winery.  Let us trust him presently by doing “whatever” he tells us to do.  The most important “doing” of all, throughout John’s Gospel, and now here in this story at the beginning of his public ministry, is to trust Jesus.”

Frederick Dale Bruner, “The Gospel of John,” c. 2012, p. 128-130.

“Christ lures all hearts to himself, to rely on him as ever ready to help, even in temporal things, and never willing to forsake any…..Christ waits to the very last moment when the want is felt by all present, and there is no counsel or help left.  This shows the way of divine grace; it is not imparted to the one who still has enough, and has not yet felt his need.  For grace does not feed the full and satiated, but the hungry, as we have often said.  Whoever still deems himself wise, strong, and pious, and finds something good in himself, and is not yet a poor, miserable, sick sinner and fool, the same cannot come to Christ the Lord, nor receive his grace.”

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

January 9, 2022

The Baptism of Our Lord

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Father in heaven, at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan you proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit.  Make all who are baptized into Christ faithful in their calling to be your children and inheritors with him of everlasting life; through your son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Opening Hymn:  “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright” (LBW 76)  

Sermon: January 9, 2022

The Beloved of God

Luke 3:22

The Reverend Philip Nesvig

Today we revisit a portion of the Gospel passage we heard on Dec. 12th.  Among the four gospel writers, Luke is the only one who says that John’s preaching is “good news.”  You may remember that this mention of “good news” follows directly after the first three verses of our Gospel reading for today.  John the Baptizer humbly acknowledges that his baptisms are done only with water.  But someone in the future would be baptizing with “the Holy Spirit and fire.”  This someone—who is not identified—will be carrying a winnowing fork in his hands, threshing the grains of wheat, breaking these grains open, saving them for use but throwing the outer shell of the grain—the chaff—into the unquenchable fire.

     “How,” we ask, “could this ever be defined as good news?”  And, as we celebrate the “Baptism of our Lord,” how does this help us understand the meaning of Jesus' baptism and our own baptisms?  First off, let this passage shock you!  The shock is that we might be chaff and not wheat.  When we use our brief order for confession and absolution in our hymnal, we shock ourselves with the acknowledgement that we are indeed chaff.  You know how the pastor’s admonition sounds,  “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  The pastor is not making this up—nor did some worship committee back in the late ‘70s when the green hymnal was developed.  No, it’s in the Bible: 1 John 1.8.  Then the pastor gives a hopeful invitation.  Again, this is written in 1. John 1.9.  “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Now it’s our turn. “We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”  In terms of our Gospel text today, we are saying, “We are chaff, and we deserve to be thrown into the unquenchable fire.”

     Now this is stiff medicine to swallow on Sunday morning or anytime.  Who is volunteering to be burned, to face the refiner’s fire? (Mal. 3.2-3) (I don’t see any hands!)  We are all thinking that the “good news” Luke connects to the ministry of John the Baptist is not that we are “chaff,” but that we are “wheat.”  This is more pleasing to our ears, and not nearly as terrifying as facing the furnace of fire.  I saw a Facebook cartoon this week that illustrates this in straightforward terms.  Two preachers are standing at their podiums with signboards hanging from their lecterns.  The sign on the left says, “Sermon Series:  What God has said.”  There is no one gathered around the preacher.  The sign on the right says, “Sermon Series:  What you would rather hear.”  A crowd of people is eagerly gathering around this preacher!

     Cartoonists love to exaggerate, but there is always some truth being proclaimed.  Neither Luke nor John the Baptizer were cartoonists, and we may wish to say they are making exaggerated claims.  But their own extraordinary language leaps off the page and makes us consider whether we are wheat or chaff.  There are those who delude themselves and put a bumper sticker on their car that reads, “This car has wheat for its driver.”  This car will be sparkling new and fresh, always something to be boasted about and eventually retired to America’s Car Museum by the Tacoma Dome.  It is usually fairly easy to see when someone is assuming to be wheat.  There is the smell of pride and self-righteousness emanating from this driver’s spotless car and tailpipe!  (After all, it’s an electric car!)

     Now let us look at the car driven by someone who is chaff.  This car will never be a museum piece.  It’s all beat up, lacking in style or flash, and we easily cast aspersions upon the driver!  The car and the driver sure need that Classy Chassis car wash for a beginning, and maybe even a new paint job.  In case you’re wondering, the default position for Lutheran thinking about faith is to say straight out that we are the trashy car.  We are the chaff.  What are we to do?

     Well, it never hurts for Lutherans to listen to Luther himself!  So the bulletin back has Luther tell us both the bad news about ourselves—that we are chaff, but also the good news of God in Christ.  God likes to work with chaff!  Take a look with me. 

      “It is God’s nature to make something out of nothing; (that is “chaff.”)  hence one who is not yet nothing (“chaff”), out of that person God cannot make anything.  Man, however, makes something else out of that which exists; but this has no value whatever. (that is pretending that you’re “wheat.”) Therefore God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life only to the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to the unwise.  In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched, and gives grace only to those who are not in grace.  Therefore no proud saint, no wise or righteous person, can become God’s material, and God’s purpose cannot be fulfilled in him.”

Commentary on Psalm 38.21; “Luther’s Works,” vol. 14, p. 163

     Do you see how this works?  God can’t really do much for any grain of wheat that isn’t willing to submit to the winnowing fork and the refiner’s fire!  But for those who despair over being cast aside as chaff, there is a solid and confident hope.  You are “God’s material?”  God can miraculously do something with chaff, with the sick, the blind, the dead, the sinners, the unwise, the wretched, those who think they’re not in grace.  “God’s material” is each one of us who have ears to hear both words of fear and words of hope.  Wheat has something to fear!  But “chaff” listens for words from beyond their own life situations.

     Luke, Luther, and I have been speaking in metaphors to proclaim the good news.  Here’s another metaphor.  The life of faith is life on a teeter totter.  (My grandchildren have been in town for a week, so it’s a handy visual image for me!)  The 9-yr-old girl outweighs her 5-yr-old brother.  Not by much, but she has the advantage on the teeter totter!  Our faith teeter totter is about whether we are wheat or chaff.  If we spend too much time believing we are either wheat or chaff, the teeter totter will always bounce us around.  It will never be in balance.  And we will have a distorted understanding of who we are as the baptized children of God.  Once again, if we think we are wheat, we succumb to pride and self-righteousness.  If we think we are chaff, we fall victim to despair and anxiety.

It’s easy to be out of balance in our lives of faith…easy until we worship the fulcrum placed in the center of the teeter totter.  The fulcrum is the cross of Christ.  The fulcrum’s purpose is to bring balance, purpose and joy to our lives.  It is the good news of what God has done for us in Christ.  Let us turn once again to Luther on the back of the bulletin.

     “Is not this a beautiful, glorious exchange, by which Christ, who is wholly innocent and holy, not only takes upon himself another’s sin, that is, my sin and guilt, but also clothes and adorns me, who am nothing but sin, with his innocence and purity?  And then besides dies the shameful death of the Cross for the sake of my sins, through which I have deserved death and condemnation, and grants to me his righteousness, in order that I may live with him eternally in glorious and unspeakable joy.”  What Luther is saying is that we are no longer to sink either into despair or rise to exaggerated pride.  No.  The life of faith begins when the cross becomes the fulcrum for our teeter totter lives.  The event which declares with water and the word that we are the beloved of God is our holy baptism.

     “Who can ever grasp this glory and power of holy baptism with human senses or understanding?  It is true that we do not see this with our eyes, but Christians are the kind of people who should not insist upon seeing, but rather hold fast to the Word and believe.” 

Baptism of Bernhard von Anhalt, 1540; “Luther’s Works,” vol.  51, pp. 316, 323, 327

     Now we have arrived at the question raised by the crowd who were so sharply condemned by John the Baptizer.  “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” (Luke 3.7)  The worthy fruits of repentance are all round us, ready to be picked off the tree of faith.  We are those who have multiple opportunities to pick the fruit of faith and use it in our lives because of our baptism into Christ. 

     We are never completely free of the chaff stuck to our seeds of wheat.  There will always be some missed opportunities in the life of faith.  We blow it at least as often as we get it right.  The good we would can become the evil we didn’t intend, but it happened anyway.  But don’t despair!  Remember you are the beloved of God, made “beloved” because God’s voice echoes through the ages.  “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  (Lk 3.22) For all who are baptized, there is the shocking but delightful good news that for the sake of Christ, God is calling you “beloved.”  You have been loved….not to the moon and back as is so frequently said these days….but you have been loved to the cross and back, to the fulcrum of our teeter totter life. 

     Balance is possible as one of the beloved of God.  If you’re feeling dizzy, come to the Communion rail and receive the bread of life and the wine of forgiveness.  It’ll do wonders for you!  These simple means allow you to experience God’s mercy through the cross of Christ.  These simple elements—the water of baptism and the bread and wine of Holy Communion—will keep you in faith because Christ has promised to be present.  These elements will move us forward like they did for the Apostle Paul, who was well aware that he was a mix of wheat and chaff.  Nevertheless, he could write boldly yet humbly to the Philippian Christians, “not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; (for today let’s call his goal a balanced life on the tear totter of life).  But I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own…..one thing I do:  forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3.12b-13) 

     Press on!  Christ has made you his own in baptism.  You are the beloved of God!

Hymn of the Day:  “To Jordan Came the Christ, Our Lord” (LBW 79)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmDzL03cs_E

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “All Who Believe and Are Baptized” (LBW 194)  

“God’s Material”

“It is God’s nature to make something out of nothing; hence one who is not yet nothing, out of that person God cannot make anything.  Man, however, makes something else out of that which exists; but this has no value whatever.  Therefore God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life only to the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to the unwise.  In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched, and gives grace only to those who are not in grace.  Therefore no proud saint, no wise or righteous person, can become God’s material, and God’s purpose cannot be fulfilled in him.”

Commentary on Psalm 38.21; “Luther’s Works,” vol. 14, p. 163

“The Glorious Exchange”

“Is not this a beautiful, glorious exchange, by which Christ, who is wholly innocent and holy, not only takes upon himself another’s sin, that is, my sin and guilt, but also clothes and adorns me, who am nothing but sin, with his innocence and purity?  And then besides dies the shameful death of the Cross for the sake of my sins, through which I have deserved death and condemnation, and grants to me his righteousness, in order that I may live with him eternally in glorious and unspeakable joy.  Through this blessed exchange, in which Christ changes places with us (something the heart can grasp only in faith), and through nothing else, are we freed from sin and death and given his righteousness and life as our own.

     The man who was so conceived and born in sin is now born anew in the sight of God and he who before was condemned to death is verily a child of God.  Who can ever grasp this glory and power of holy baptism with human senses or understanding?  It is true that we do not see this with our eyes, but Christians are the kind of people who should not insist upon seeing, but rather hold fast to the Word and believe.” 

Baptism of Bernhard von Anhalt, 1540; “Luther’s Works,” vol.  51, pp. 316, 323, 327

Online Abbreviated Sunday Liturgy

January 2, 2022

Christmas

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Opening Hymn:  “The First Noel” (LBW 56)  

Reading: January 2, 2022

The Word Became Flesh

Martin Luther (LW 22:23-25, 73)

Christ must become true God; otherwise we are damned forever.  But in His humanity He must also be a true and natural son of the Virgin Mary, from whom He inherited flesh and blood as any other child does from its mother.  He was conceived of the Holy Spirit according to Luke 1:35.  However, Mary, the pure virgin, had to contribute of her seed and of the natural blood that coursed from her heart.  From her He derived everything, except sin, that a child naturally and normally receives from its mother.  This we must believe if we are not to be lost.  If, as the Manichaeans (a heretical group in the third and fourth centuries) allege, He is not a real and natural man, born of Mary, then He is not of our flesh and blood.  Then He has nothing in common with us; then we can derive no comfort from Him.

     However, we do not let ourselves be troubled by the blasphemies which the devil speaks against Christ the Lord.  We cling to the Scriptures of the prophets and apostles, who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.  Their testimony about Christ is clear.  He is our Brother; we are members of His body, flesh and bone of His flesh and bone.

     To sum up, we must, first of all, have a Savior who can save us from the power of sin and death.  This means that He must be the true, eternal God, through whom all believers in Him become righteous and are saved.

     But secondly, we must have a Savior who is also our Brother, who is of our flesh and blood.  “In the beginning was the Word”; “this Word,” he added later, “became flesh.”

     The evangelist John says here that the Word – which was from eternity, coequal with the Father in power and glory, through which all things were made, and which is also the Life and the Light of humankind – assumed human nature, was born of Mary, came into the world, dwelt among people in this temporal life, and became like any other human being in all things, took the physical, human form such as yours or mine, and was cumbered with all the human frailties, as St. Paul says in Philippians 2:7.  This means that He ate, drank, slept, awakened, was tired, sad, and happy.  He wept and laughed, hungered, thirsted, froze, and perspired.  He chatted, worked, and prayed.  In brief, He required the same things for life’s sustenance and preservation that any other human being does.  He labored and suffered as anyone else does.  He experienced both fortune and misfortune.  The only difference between Him and all others was that He was sinless.  Since He was also very God, He was free of sin.  And yet He was the one through whom the whole world was created and made.

                        Martin Luther (LW 22:23-25, 73) Sermons on the Gospel of St. John

Hymn of the Day:  “Of the Father's Love Begotten” (LBW 42)

The Lord’s Prayer

Benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  

Closing Hymn:  “Let All Together Praise Our God” (LBW 47)