Who Do You Say I Am?

Biblical Text: Matthew 16:13-20

This sermon is an attempt to talk about what it means to convert – to come to an authentic faith in Jesus Christ. There are three parts to the sermon. The first part is simply a reflection that the way the church converted people for a very long time was baptism, Christendom and Christian families. For all the worries over cultural Christianity (paging Soren Kierkegaard), it was a lot better than the worries. But big chunks of Christendom let it go. And so the church is confronted with a different type of conversion problem. What is necessary to bring a pagan into the faith. The second part reflects on Jesus’ initial question and the disciples answers. “Who do people say that I am? John the Baptists, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” This is Jesus as true man. The convert has to have a sympathy with Jesus as true man. But that isn’t the fullness if it is necessary. The third part reflects on Jesus’ refinement of his question. “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter’s answer “you are the Christ the son of the living God.” That is an encapsulation of the need to confess that Jesus true man is also true God. This also includes the wrinkle that we can’t force this recognition. “Blessed are you Simon bar-Jonah…”. Conversion is a work of preparation that the church needs to be about. But conversion is also solely the work of the Spirit.

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Office of the Keys

The Symbol to the left is one that you used to find in both Roman Catholic and what were called the Magisterial Protestant churches, which is everybody but the Baptists. But depending upon your Pastor, you might not have been taught this in catechism. It is the symbol of the office of the keys. It is the fifth part of the Small Catechism. Sometimes called confession. And the one most often skipped. Why skipped? It makes an audacious claim. It claims that ministers can forgive sins. But probably even more scandalous is the claim that the office has the authority to withhold forgiveness. Hence the two crossed keys. One of them to loose and one of them to bind.

How are sins forgiven? Why do we believe any of them are? The first biblical story to deal with such forgiveness is the crippled man lowered through the roof by his friends to Jesus (Matthew 9:1ff/Mark 2:1ff). When Jesus first sees the man, he tells him “your sins are forgiven.” Nice, but probably something of a letdown from expectation of the miracle worker. But Jesus has his point. He strikes up the question with the Pharisees watching who were saying he was blaspheming. “Only God can forgive sins.” He tells the man to pick up his mat and walk as proof that the Son of Man also has authority to forgive sins. And this is roughly where the Baptists like to stop the story. Forgiveness is between me and my personal Jesus. And they are not completely wrong. Jesus sinners doth receive. There is nothing that you can’t take to Jesus. But the story doesn’t stop there.

In three places (Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18: 18 and John 20:22) Jesus gives this authority to different groups. If you are Roman Catholic you love our Gospel text for today, the first one, because in that passage the words are said to Peter. Ta-da, the first pope is the owner of the keys. Hence the papal seal to the right. If you are most flavors of protestant you love the Matthew 18 version a couple chapters later in which the same words are given in general to “brothers and sisters”. The Eastern Orthodox and our Catechism like the John passage because the recipients of the saying appear to be the apostles as a group. The interpretive leap in each is the preferred sources of forgiving sins: The pope and those in communion, members of the church, and those called and ordained.

I can’t remember if I’ve referenced it before but this is where I love Luther in a largely forgotten part of the confessions, the Smalcald Articles Part 3, article 4 on The Gospel. “God is superabundant in his grace: first , through the spoken word, by which the forgiveness of sins is preached in the whole world…second through Baptism. Third through the Sacrament of the Altar. Forth through the power of the keys. Also through the mutual consolation of the brethren.” Luther’s answer is “Why not all?”

But that doesn’t address why these keys have a tendency to disappear. Which goes back to the catechism questions. What is confession? Confession has two parts, first that we confess our sins and second that we receive absolution. It is never the use of the loosing key that causes trouble. I’ve never run across a Christian who complains about forgiving a repentant sinner. Yes, I know the parable of the prodigal and the older brother. Yes, I do recognize that people can have trouble with forgiveness. But at least in my experience that eventually thaws. What all kinds of people do have problems with is the necessity of confession for absolution. The binding key is not really a power of the office but a duty – to call sinners to repentance. And sinners who don’t think they have can often respond, “just who do you think you are?”

It is much easier to say your sins are forgiven. But if you are only using one key, you might be like the prophets declaring “peace, peace.” We will see if what they say happens. But the called office has both keys for reason. So that we might be confident in the grace of God through all of his means of grace.

Reconciling Canaan

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Biblical Text: Matthew 15:21-28

Recording note: there are a couple of rough things. 1) We were still having some trouble with the sound system. We’ve got a temporary cheap mic while the good ones get fixed. The result is louder and just higher pitched fake sounding. 2) I was under the weather. You can probably hear the scratch in the voice. Sorry.

That said, I tried to say something meaningful with this sermon. I’m not sure I accomplished it. But it comes down to two things: 1) The church has a calling to be The Church to all peoples. That starts with Jesus being the messiah who comes from the Jews, not the Jewish messiah. While things like nation, people, tribe and language are important enough they have signifiers in the eschaton, they must be secondary to our unity in Christ. 2) Making these things clear – as Jesus does in this text – is often contrasting the good with the nice. Sometimes pointing out ugly things isn’t nice. Getting to reconciliation required a cross, not something nice, but it is on Good Friday.

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The Best Laid Plans

Do you ever start something not really sure where it is going to go?

That usually isn’t me. I want to have “the plan”. I want to work “the plan”. “The plan” might even have multiple paths and checkpoints. Now I’ve never been crazy about this. I’ve always known full well in the wise words of Iron Mike Tyson that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” But when you get punched in the mouth is when you hope your plan is more like a Bach fugue. The melody is solid, you just have to shift to a different mouth.

Something like that might be the secret to a successful and happy existence on earth. Can you roll with the punches? Do you have enough grit such that you don’t have a glass jaw? Are you limber enough to play the rope-a-dope occasionally, or at least get your head out of the way of the haymaker? If you are good at it, or never come up against Mike Tyson at least, you might even think you can go the full 15 rounds and grab the belt. Define “the belt” however you want to.

You can file all of that under what Luther called civil righteousness. The world works a certain way. Some of those ways are not very Christian, using that word in the sense of nice or meeting a certain decorum. But that starts to point out the problems with Civil Righteousness. Everyone around you might think you are the best person on earth, a living saint. But, none of them get a vote that counts. And even if they absolve you of great crimes because you have donated enough money to get your name on a building, their absolution lasts until you leave the building. If you plan for civil righteousness you have received your reward. Enjoy the belt.

The other type of righteousness Luther calls the righteousness before God. And the brutal truth about this type is you can’t plan for it. In fact, the more you plan and scheme and try to earn it, the more it punches you in the mouth. Eventually, bloody and bruised and knocked out, you might conclude that it’s a funny game, the only way to win is not to play. Because you can’t win the righteousness of God. It only comes as a free gift. It only comes to broken sinners. It only comes to those who are flat on the mat admitting they are not going to beat the 10 count. That is the stink of desperation in the civil realm, but before God that is when He can start to do something. That is when we put down our plans and seek out God’s plans. When we are raised by the Spirit.

Part of the good news is that God has told us where this goes. This conforms us to his son, Jesus. He has also told us what to expect. The punches of the world will keep coming. But the plan of God is your eternal salvation. Your reward will be great in heaven.

Part of the good news also is that it is good, not nice. Nice is always defined socially. Nice is always changing. What is good? Conan the Barbarian’s answer isn’t it. What is good doesn’t really change. “Keep justice, do righteousness (Isa 56:1), and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).” For soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance will be revealed. With our plans we never really know where they are going; with God’s plan we know.

Good Omens

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Biblical Text: Job 38:4-18

There are two amazing things about Job. The first one is that it unapologetically holds that God owes us nothing. You can go so far as to hold with Job himself, “the LORD gives and the LORD takes, blessed be the name of the LORD.” If it comes from God, we owe him praise, whatever it is. The second amazing thing is that God allows himself to be called as a witness. He is not mute in his glory. This sermon is a pondering of a God who offers a justification for himself without ever abandoning the fact that He owes us nothing.

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3 AM

Just when you think the bible is giving you shallow travel directions it opens up a deep picture. The Gospel reading this week (Matthew 14:22-33) starts with those travel directions. The crowds have been fed, but as the disciples had remarked earlier, it is late in the day. Even later after 5000 have eaten. And Jesus knows what the crowds want to do – make him king. So, “Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side.” And, “after he dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself.” How exactly does Jesus dismiss the crowd that wants to make him King? We don’t know. Why does he force the disciples into the boat? Maybe because they would have been just as much caught up in making him king, but we don’t know. But if we stop to ponder the scene, it is quite a view of the Christian life.

First, Jesus has sent us out at night onto the chaos of the waters. And somehow this is for our good. Even though we might end up “a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, and the wind was against them, in the fourth watch of the night.” That fourth watch is the metaphorical 3 AM. If you are a horror fan, you know everything bad happens at 3 AM. If you are a worrier or an insomniac, and you are up at 3 AM, it has not been a good day or night and neither will the fast approaching day be good. We know what this feels like. It is dark and we are exhausted and all the creepies come out. Why did you send me to this place alone?

But the second part is the recognition that we are never really alone. Jesus on the mountain top – with apparently Moses’ 120 year old eagle eyes – has them on his disciples. Mark’s gospel is explicit, “he saw they were making headway painfully (Mark 6:48).” The eyes of God are always upon those he loves. And his compassion – his guts being churned – are not just for the crowds. “In the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea.” The chaos and darkness of the sea have no power over this one. He walks on them. What are our reactions when God acts?

The first one, “they were terrified and said ‘it is a ghost!’” We expect the bad. We expect the creepies that have come out to finish us off. This is what the world does; it finishes off the weak and exhausted. Of course lurking in the background there is that saying it is a ghost is easier than saying “our deliverance has come.” Because if what comes to us at 3 AM is God, that comes with demands, with strings attached. Not the least being that he has witnessed our state. Jesus answers all this with the affirmative, “Take heart; It is I.” And yes, our translators wimp out. “Take Heart, I AM.” The Almighty has been watching and has come for you.

The second one, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Ok God, I’m not sure about this, so tell me to get out of this perfectly good boat you placed me in, and walk by myself over the chaos to you. Yeah, we don’t think too good at 3 AM. But Jesus goes with it, maybe for the same reason he sent them in the first place. Of course we were not meant to be on the waters outside of the boat. And that is not because we can’t. Peter does manage it for a couple of steps. But then we always “see the wind” and the fear returns.

So what does Jesus do? Grabs Peter, puts him back in the boat, and joins the rest, who all then worship him. We are meant to be in the boat (please see the church). We are meant to be with each other. And yes the boat is sent out on rough seas, but God sees it. And Christ comes and is with us and the winds cease. When we see God at 3 AM, we know. He has not sent us out alone, and He Is.

Abundance

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Biblical Text: Matthew 14:13-21

Do we go out to the desert anymore? I don’t think so. I think we do everything in our power to avoid time in the desert. Of course we just end up in a desert of distraction then. That’s part of the meditation on the familiar passage of the feeding of the 5000. This sermon is a meditation on the abundance that God provides and the ways in which He provides it. It looks at three images from the scene: the location, the rarely provided inner thoughts of Jesus, and the provision of abundance.

I’ve learned over the years that trying to grade sermons is impossible. Oh, you can grade them as pieces of rhetoric, but then they aren’t just pieces of rhetoric. Your worst sermon I guarantee is the one someone walked out with their lives changed. It isn’t you. Whatever scraps you brought the Spirit worked. I’ve come to two ways of thinking about grading. The first is preaching intent crossed with baseball. The every Sunday preacher has a variety of things they have to do. Not everything is going to be a homerun. Sometimes you climb into the pulpit with the intention of a single, of moving along the runners. (This is usually a teaching sermon.) Some weeks the text is obscure enough that getting a walk is good. And some weeks you better get that extra-base hit. Of course, like in baseball, unless you are Barry Bonds on PED’s, you might not get on base. And the reception in the congregation is probably everything from HR to K. The second thing is always did you find the core of emotion in the text. If you didn’t the best you’ve got is a walk. I say all that merely to say, I liked this one. I think it is workman-like as a piece of rhetoric. There is only one phrase that feels more than average and even then it is probably one of those darlings that you are supposed to kill. But as a sermon, it touches the bases.

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Bread in the Wilderness

The Introit for this Sunday comes from Psalm 105. Specifically verses 39-43 with verse 1 as the antiphon. (What is an antiphon I hear someone ask? Think of it as the chorus. After every verse detailing the works of God you could sing: “Oh give thanks to the Lord; Call upon His name/make known his deeds among the peoples.”) The fullness of the Psalm is a remembrance of the history of the covenant, the promises of God, and those deeds starting with Abraham and culminating in the Exodus. The specific time the verses of the Introit are recalling is Israel’s days and years in the wilderness.

Why would we be recalling that? The wilderness, or the desert, is the place to do two things. In the worldly sense, rebels and renegades gathered in the wilderness. If you are gathering an army to overthrow the current ruler, you went into the wilderness. The other thing you went into the wilderness to do is draw near to God. In the absence of the delights of the World, the hope was connection to God. Why did God lead Israel into the wilderness after the Exodus? In the hopes that they would draw near to Him. Of course if we remember that physical Israel, they longed for the meat and fullness of Egypt, and they gathered in rebellion against the God who brought them out of Egypt. It would be Jesus who would go out into the wilderness and turn down the temptations of the devil and the world.

The Psalmist remembers the Works of God in the wilderness as three things. First, God draws near to his people – “a cloud for a covering, and fire to give light by night.” This is the fire-y cloudy pillar that would see Israel all their journey through. After drawing near, God provided abundant sustenance, bread from heaven and water from the Rock. And the last work is that God remembered his promises. While Israel would still be rebels in the wilderness, even while God drew near, He remembered his promises and provided in abundance.

So why would we remember this let alone sing about it or make these deeds known among the peoples? The first reason is that God again drew near, but this time not as fire and cloud, but as man, as Israel reduced to one. And when Jesus went to the desert, this Israel was faithful. When tempted to make bread from the stones, he pointed at the true bread – the Word of God (Matthew 4:4). And He came to give us this true bread, himself. God drew near to us with his abundance.

The second reason is how we might recognize this life. We are like Israel in the desert. We know where we have been. We vaguely know where we are going. And we know who leads us. We walk though this world to learn that God draws near to us, and to learn how God gives us bread in abundance and water in the desert. We walk through this world to learn that God remembers and keeps his promises.

The question to us is do we follow? Or do we go back to Egypt; do we prefer rebellion? Does the bread of heaven satisfy, or do we long for what the world would offer?

Treasures Old and New

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Biblical Text: Matthew 13:44-52

Recording Note: This recording is done after the fact. Our equipment glitched on us this morning.

This sermon is the completion of Jesus’ Parable sermon. It is a string of parables of the Kingdom. And I think we often miss the gospel in these. The way we immediately try and understanding them betrays the “Yes” that the disciples give to Jesus when he asks if they understand. Because we almost always take ourselves as the main character, when the main character is God. This sermon attempts to preach the good news of that before how it relates to the Christian Life.

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One Thing’s Needful

I probably have to issue an apology for the hymn chosen as the office hymn. It has a tricky rhythm change. And I can’t even really blame it on modernity. It is just my observation that modern hymns – and by modern I mean anything written after roughly 1960 – often fail not because they aren’t good in a doctrinal sense, but because you can’t sing them. They are set too high, they have large gaps in the melody or they use complex rhythms; all of which just mean they are meant for soloists or trained singers, not congregational singing which is supposed to include everyone. But “One Thing’s Needful” (LSB 536) is from a text in the 17^th century, translated in the 19^th century, paired with a tune from the 17^th. The Companion to the hymnal observes, “the unusual metrical structure of the text is representative of the more soloistic style of hymns found at the end of the 17^th century.” So these things go in and out of style. We are not alone.

So, why am I afflicting you with this hymn? I’d like you to ponder the juxtaposition of the first verse of the two rhythm parts. The flowing 4/4 time is serene and restful and presents a doctrinal truth. “One thing’s needful; Lord this treasure teach me highly to regard/All else though it first give pleasure is a yoke that presses hard.” The truth it communicates is something that most Christians would assent to mentally almost immediately. Christ is our only true need. We don’t acknowledge this enough. Instead our hearts chase other gods. All of them turn out to eat us alive, to place us under heavy yokes. And in our serene space of contemplation this is all very easy to accept.

But then the rhythm changes to 3/4 with its driving “bum-bum-bum, bum-bum-bum.” Gone is the serene time of contemplation. We are in the very midst of life. “Beneath it the heart is still fretting and striving/No true lasting happiness ever deriving/this one thing is needful all others are vain/I count all but loss that I Christ man obtain.” Whatever our head says in contemplation, the heart often desires other things. The heart, part of this flesh which Paul has been pondering in our Epistle lessons, has a problem with sin. It is constantly fretting and striving. Oh, I might lose this, including my life. No, I’m going to claim that and get it, I don’t care who I have to kill to do it. And we are driven along “bum-bum-bum” by things we do not know or even stop to ponder.

Our only help in that midst of life is often the “Jesus Take the Wheel” prayer. Jesus, I know there is no happiness in this way. I know that I need you. Save me. And then the hymn returns us to that moment of contemplation. Our frantic prayers are turned into communion with God or the consolation of the Spirit. And in those moments we start to learn the basics of wisdom. “Wisdom’s highest, noblest treasure, Jesus, is revealed in you/Let me find in you my pleasure, and my wayward will subdue.” I know this, teach me your way so that I might follow it all my days.

All our days we are thrown back and forth. Luther called the Christian life: “Prayer, Meditation and Trial.” (He of course used Latin – oratio, meditation, tentatio – snob.) And like Luther’s last recorded words, “We are all beggars”, we end in the trial of death. Our hope is completely outside of us. “Through all my life’s pilgrimage, guard and uphold me, in loving forgiveness O Jesus enfold me.” And we only find our rest in faith that “this one thing is needful, all others are vain, I count all but loss that I Christ may obtain.”

I’ve included it because I think it is a masterful work in both word and song of this current life and our one hope in the midst of it. (If you do not have a hymnal at home, this particular hymn can be seen online here: https://hymnary.org/hymn/LSB2006/536 )