Jesus’ invitation to a dinner party is a surprisingly deep text. For something that on the surface is a simple text about compassion and justice, it dives to the heart of the gospel. It opens with a view to a status game. Is Jesus clubbable? Which the answer is both “no” and “how ridiculous are you in thinking you have the ability to ascribe status to The Son of Man?” In Jesus’ first answer, the healing, he sets the real terms. The Son of Man has come to pull all of us out of the well on the Sabbath.
But Jesus then turns around and observes how we assign honor. He tells a parable to the entire guest list. And then he gives some advice to the host. In the parable the key point is that it is an invitation to the wedding feast. How we assign honor is inescapable in this world. And such civil righteousness might not even be bad. But we need to check realm we are thinking of when we show up. If we are talking about the wedding feast, forcing ourselves forward to the place of honor will just shame us. The advice Jesus gives to the host is to ponder who you want to owe you? Those of this world who can reciprocate in worldly status, or God. It’s a challenge to live into the grace and love of Christ, which is always costly.
This is my first sermon at Mt. Zion. I think the text hovers around something quite important but rarely talked about. “Will many be saved?” is the question that kicks it off. That question plays on the fears of our loved ones and the doctrine of election. The all too easy answer is universalism. It also plays on our prejudice. Just our people, right? But Jesus’ answer is “the east and the west, the north and the south.” Anytime we become too concerned – taking responsibility for – the salvation of others Jesus and the apostles but the onus back on ourselves. “You strive to enter through the narrow door.” The election of God is God’s business. And the way he has chosen to work it out in time is our witness to our hope in how we live and faith in the work of Jesus Christ. Today is the day of grace for those who would here by those means.
It is always a bit melancholy seeing your house in the listings. 41 Coneflower Dr, West Henrietta, NY 14586 | realtor.com® . We lived here 12 years. Really, we raised three babies there. Yes, the youngest two aren’t fully baked, and the oldest has already boomeranged, but that was home. And it was a really good one.
But when you think about homes you are really thinking about the people and the activities that were centered around that place. When you’ve moved you are in that liminal space living off hope. You have left behind something good that was completely known. You are looking for a new hub. You are meeting new people. You are living on the promise that God intends good for his people, hoping that you haven’t made a big mistake just because you felt an itch. Or because you felt a call to someplace new.
My story isn’t perfectly like that of Abraham setting out from Ur. He was leaving family. We are living with my parents for the time being. But every move should have the Christian reflecting upon Abraham. While we are now looking for our “permanent” home, none of our homes here are permanent. Every move is an intimation of our final move to the promised land. Every liminal time of living on hope is an image of the Christian life of seeing that promised land from a distance while being sojourners here. Every move is an act of faith, that God is the same God everywhere, and there is no other. And He keeps his promises.
The Apostle Paul says “he forgets what lies behind and strains forward to what lies ahead.” Although if you read the rest of Paul, I don’t think the man forgot anything. It’s a spiritual statement. If one holds onto things past too tightly, the warning is Lot’s wife, turned into that bitter pillar of salt. That does not mean that one can’t take the good things. Paul soon follows that statement with “only let us hold true to what we have attained.” You get to keep the good stuff. Your life is hidden with Christ. Things that are built here alone are all destined for the fire. But the good stuff is treasure in heaven. The good stuff is what has formed our souls on our journey.
It has been a crazy week personally. In the midst of taking a call to another congregation and moving across the country my father-in-law passed away. He was a very dear man and a wonderful Christian witness. This was my attempt to do right by him. (The Black and Gold colors are for his beloved Pittsburgh teams.)
This was my final sermon at the call at St. Mark’s Lutheran in West Henrietta, NY. A wonderful church. A great part of the body of Christ. We were there for just over 14 years. Leaving was a hard decision, but I believe the right one. Both for the call I am heading towards, and for the good of St. Mark’s. Some problems are bigger than just one congregation, and nothing happens on those problems in the LCMS until there is a vacancy. But that is not the sermon. The lectionary texts of the day (proper 13, year C, Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2: 18-26 and Luke 12:13-21) were tough texts for the purpose of a final sermon, but worth pondering. They challenge you about how you take stock. The way the Kingdom of God takes stock is completely different. In reality it doesn’t. Because the needful things are assured in Christ. The work we have to do is from the hand of God, and to recognize it as such is an enjoyable toil.
Ok, I start off with something a bit hokey – Tony Stark/Iron Man – but this is about Fathers and Sons. (And yes it includes daughters, but the language we are given in Father.) The Lord’s prayer in Luke is a revelation of the Father of Jesus Christ. The Father of Jesus Christ is good, compared to all of us earthly fathers who are by nature sinful. This sermon is a meditation on what that means. The biggest hurdle is what Luther’s catechism emphasizes about it – believe it. The Father of Jesus Christ has been made Our Father in Christ, and he gives us good gifts.
The text is Mary and Martha which is usually taken as a compare and contrast of two symbols. Martha representing the active life and Mary the contemplative life. But I think that is a bit facile. And I’m basing that on both the immediate context – largely Luke 9-10 – and the life situation that is being displayed. Martha and Mary are not simple cut outs. Both are making choices about actions. And Martha’s request and Jesus’ words are not directed at action, but disordered action. Mary is acting. She is just acting after contemplating the good of the Kingdom. Not what her own anxieties and troubles desired, but what Jesus desired. As a sermon, it is probably a bit subtle. But the take away if I were to force one would simply be ordered action. A gift of the spirit is self-control. In the spirit we have the ability to act with kingdom purpose, not out of our anxiety.
(Note: This was a piece I wrote while I was a pastor at St. Mark’s Lutheran in West Henrietta, NY. I forgot to import it over to here when I brought over my sermon file. Luckily it was on the internet archive and I was able to recover it. It came to mind in bible study at Mt. Zion in Peoria, AZ when asked a question dealing with the flood and sheol.)
The scriptures are rather silent about today. The Nicene creed goes from “he suffered and was buried” to “and on the third day he rose”. Notice how the Nicene creed even skips the flat declaration of Good Friday, he died. The apostle’s creed though states it “was crucified, died and was buried”. The east, the seat of the Nicene dealt with what we would call Nestorian sensitivities. The west, the seat of the apostles, was clearer. That apostle’s creed continues with the line “he descended into hell”. It is a line that has baffled moderns for a long time. A bafflement that I think stems from an obscuring of the scriptural teaching. Not a loss but a shift of emphasis. The creedal hope is resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. The obscuring is something like my eternal soul goes to be with Jesus. Going to be with Jesus is true, and it is comforting, but it obscures the real hope. Our hope is that in Christ we will attain the resurrection of the dead and life in the age to come. The descent into hell, only really attested to scripturally in 1 Peter 3:18-20, is for a single purpose.
Like I often say about Pentecost, Easter did something. It actually did many things, but I’m focusing on
one thing here. What Peter says is Christ “proclaiming to the spirits in prison”, the artists have a very clear image of. My favorite is the hymn verse from Hark the Glad Sound. He comes the prisoners to release/In Satan’s bondage held/The gates of brass before him burst/the iron fetters yield. (Hark the Glad Sound LSB349). But visually the iconographers have it. I’ve placed a few around this post. This is the harrowing of hell. The psalmist would talk of “going down to the pit”. The word that usually stands behind that is sheol. And it is one of those difficult to translate words because our conceptual framework has shifted. The KJV often just translated it as hell. Except for the pagan undertones you might say underworld or abode of shades. Before Good Friday and Easter that flaming sword keeping us out of Paradise was there. We were in bondage to the spirits of this dark realm. What descent into hell means is the victory parade of the faithful souls out of sheol to be with Christ. Adam and Noah and Abraham and Jacob and David and Sarah and Ruth and Leah and Rahab and you get the picture. In fact look at this picture and you see the crown on the one soul. That is not the “crown of life” which would simply be the nimbus or the halo, but the representation of David, freed by his Royal Son.
The is the harrowing of hell, a term I think that needs to come back into everyday usage. If we talk of a harrowing, it is an escape, a jailbreak by divine means, from situations that we got ourselves into and can’t get out of. When we confess that he descended into hell, we confess that Christ has come to our lowest point and brought us out. That lowest point is death to sin. Appropriately Peter continues in that next verse (1 Peter 3:21-22) to talk about baptism. Baptism is our harrowing. Every remembrance of our baptism (confession & absolution, confirmation, awakenings through life) are a harrowing. We have been harrowed out of the chains we often put ourselves in. This last painting I think gets at the core of this victory parade. That carved out tomb was deeper than we can imagine. But Christ has knocked in the doors. Satan is beaten to the side, and the saints marched out from the tomb with Christ. We too will rest in that tomb. But unlike those in former days, we rest with Christ. And we rest in the certain hope of a resurrection like his. A Harrowing is a victory parade. It goes past Calvary and the grave, but like going to Jerusalem it is uphill all the way singing the Halleluiahs.
