The Law and the Promise

In the Young Adult group that meets on Wednesday evenings, in between silly movies, we’ve been reading Galatians. And to Lutherans in the know Galatians is probably the most Lutheran book of the bible. It is a book about the proper distinction of law and gospel. And distinction is the right word. They are two separate covenants – Abraham and Moses. But the covenant with Abraham – “he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6, Galatians 3:6)” – is both prior to that with Moses and more direct. God speaks directly with Abraham. The covenant of Sinai with Israel is mediated by Moses. Exodus has Moses going up the mountain and down the mountain and up and down each time relaying parts of a negotiation. Down, I’ve met the LORD. Up, the people of Israel say you are scary. Down, tell them they are right and to back away from the mountain. Up, they’ve agreed and backed away. Let me bring down your word. You should go down first. Down, witnesses the golden calf. Breaks the law. Cleans up Israel. Up, yes, God, I’m sorry, I dropped the tablets. I’ll make a copy. Down, here is the law again, will you keep it? Up, they said they’d keep it. Down, we need to assemble the elders for a meal on the mountain. Up, a meal with the Elder and the LORD to celebrate the covenant of Moses. The covenant with Abraham is the promise – the gospel. Believe, God will do it, God has done it. The covenant with Moses is the law.

Isaiah 56, our Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, is an interesting mixture of the promise and the law. But I can’t help but hear the gospel predominate. “Thus says the LORD: Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed (Isaiah 56:1).” Paul would say something like the law was given to us as guardian (Galatians 3:24). And there is nothing wrong with the law. The law is good and wise. It is justice. It is righteousness. It’s problem is that the law cannot make us righteous. It instead exposes that we are far from righteous and injustice is what sow. Often injustice is what we sow exactly when we think we are meeting it out. And so what we need is the promise. “My salvation will come, my righteousness be revealed.” God will act. And in the act of God we shall find our salvation, even victory over our sinful selves.

And this is the superiority of the Gospel – of the direct promise. It is available to all. It is available not to the offsprings of Abraham, the pure physical descent. It is available through the offspring – Christ (Galatians 3:16). Isaiah puts this in a different key. He calls out the foreigner, that is the gentile, and the eunuch, that one literally cut off. Our lesson cuts this line out. Probably because of squeamishness over eunuch. “Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say ‘The LORD will surely separate me from his people’; and let not the eunuch say ‘behold, I am a dry tree. (Isaiah 56:3)’” Isaiah implores both to “hold fast to my covenant.”

Which covenant? He mentions the Sabbath and the sacrifices. The sacrifices are clearly part of the law. But the Sabbath goes back to the beginning. On the seventh day, God rested. The toil of the law – the guardian – is felt. But he Sabbath rest comes. And yes, the necessities of the sacrifices of the law once filled the temple. And Christ cleared it saying “my house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples (Luke 19:46).” For Christ is the salvation of God. And Christ is the righteousness of God. It is not that the law is useless or contrary. It is that the promise is stronger. The law kills us, but God is the God of life.

And he gathers us all into his house of prayer. He promises the eunuch “I will give you a house within my walls, and a name that shall not be cut off.” He promises the foreigner, “I will gather others to him, besides those already gathered.” These I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in prayer. Paul would say in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. In Christ we are heirs of the promise. And we have seen his deliverance revealed.

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The Wind and the Waves

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Biblical Text: Matthew 14:22-33

The episode is Jesus walking on the water. I probably burn too much time reflecting on how this story is told – or not told – across the gospels, but it is interesting how each of the evangelists uses is – or uses its absence – in unique ways. And Matthew’s way focuses on Peter. And by focusing on Peter he is focusing on what type of God we have. Just having a God, at least in the biblical way, means having a God who is sovereign. He can do what he wants. And Jesus walking on water is a miraculous confirmation of that. That somehow this is God in the flesh. God is doing a new thing. And Peter jumping out of the boat and walking is an extension of that. But the real revelation comes when Peter’s gaze leaves his Lord and sees the wind and the waves. When he does this, he starts sinking. And his immediate call is “Lord, save me.” And this is where we learn what type of God we have. The sermon proclaims this nicely.

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The Man of Sorrows & The Sparrow

Jeremiah is a hard book and when I first looked at the lessons for this week I wondered what they were doing pairing this reading (Jeremiah 20:7-13) with the gospel lesson. But the pairing might not be as off as I first thought.

The first thing you should put in your memory is the context of Jeremiah. He is a prophet for forty or so years. And his message the entire time is essentially “you guys are doomed.” Jeremiah is the archetype for the “The End is Near” sandwich board guy ringing a bell. He’s the archetype, but with two primary differences. That guy to us is a character of mirth. The end never comes. The end most definitely was coming for Jerusalem. That comedic guy is not self-aware. He goes ringing that bell with the pure bliss of ignorance. Jeremiah is self-aware.

And that is where our lesson today starts, with one of the most heart rending verses of the entire bible. “O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day, everyone mocks me (Jeremiah 20:7).” Jeremiah has been preaching doom for 40 years, and it has not yet come. He has been shouting “violence and destruction” for decades, and the walls of Jerusalem still stand. Everyone wants him to just shut up to the point they would be willing to kill him. “Denounce him! Let us denounce him…and take our revenge on him! (Jermiah 20:10).” It’s the guy with the sandwich board who knows how everyone looks at him. And know that his message has no effect.

This burden is enough for Jeremiah that he attempts to put it down himself. “I will not mention him, or speak anymore in his name.” But the Word of the LORD, the prophetic calling is too powerful. “There is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot (Jeremiah 20:9).” The LORD is stronger and has prevailed. The Word finds its way. Yet the question I think lingers to anyone who reads it. How can God do such a thing? Is this really how God is, a divine tyrant making us the rump of jokes?

Jeremiah works his way to his answer. Those who laugh at him now will not have the last laugh. “The LORD is with me as a dread warrior; my persecutors will stumble, they will not overcome me.” He even manages to get in a bit of bragging. They are laughing at Jeremiah like sandwich board guy, but “They will be greatly shamed…Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten (Jeremiah 20:11).” And indeed it is not forgotten. 2600 years later the book of Jeremiah is still read. 2600 years later his message continues to resonate and spread the warning to those with ears. 2600 years later, those residents of Jerusalem standing on the precipice of destruction who would not hear, who looked to kill the prophet of the LORD are held up for derision, for blind eyes and stubborn hearts. Jeremiah’s ultimate answer is that the LORD “tests the righteous and sees the heart and mind.” That this LORD justifies all who commit their cause to Him (Jeremiah 20:12). And like all hard meditations, it ends with praise. “Sing to the LORD!”

Jesus himself is a fulfillment of Jeremiah – the man of sorrows. We put him to death in the most shameful way possible. But his cause was trusted to his Father who raised him from the dead. And we disciples are not above our teacher. We can expect these things. Cause part of our message is definitely “The End is near.” If not capital T capital E THE END, we all meet our end. “Fear not those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. (Matthew 10:28).” The LORD is not the tyrant we might fear, but one who shared the temporal shame. He is one who knows when every sparrow falls. And are you not worth more than a sparrow? Entrust your cause to the LORD.

Absurdity

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Biblical Text: Matthew 1:18-25

Most things in life are predictable. Partly because we usually stay in safe zones: our homes, our ruts, our habits. But occasionally something from outside breaks into our safe zones. Something absurd shakes us up. Some of those absurdities come from sin. They can come from the sin that we desire. Even worse they can come from sin that we had no part in. The absurdities of sin are the devil attempting to cancel or nullify the good creation of God. Now the Word of God also comes from outside of us. The Word comes and shakes us up. But it shakes us up for life, for eternal life. The Christmas story in Matthew is one absurdity after another. And yet those absurdities come together to save us. God – Immanuel – comes to us to save us from those sins the nullify. The sermon is a reflection in absurdity. How it can be a sign of Satan, but also how it is God doing a new thing.

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Walls of the Heart

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Biblical Texts: Luke 19:1-10, Isaiah 1:10-18

The liturgical calendar gets more than a nod here, this is All Saints (Observed). The hymns carry the heavy load, maybe more so this year as I chose the lessons for the regular Sunday instead of the All Saints texts. The same texts tend to get skipped year after year. In this case the story of Zaccheaus and a rather harsh sounding Isaiah text. But I picked them for what I thought is an important, but often ignored aspect of All Saints. The day is usually given over to the Saints at Rest. Let me explain three terms. You have the Church Militant or the Saints Militant which is you and me if you are reading this. You have the Church/Saints at rest who are those who have died in the faith. Eventually you will have the church/saints triumphant who are all the saints in the resurrection. For a protestant All Saints is typically the day to remember those now with Christ. But these lessons were perfect I thought to meditate on the Church militant, and maybe even more specifically from a Protestant perspective what makes a saint.

Zaccheaus is an interesting view. The sermon connects it to an Old Testament story that I put forward in typological fashion. How different walls need to come down to enter the promised land. The walls that make a saint are the walls of the heart. It is the call of Jesus, when we are up a tree, that tells us to come down and invites himself in. And Zaccheaus complies and receives him joyfully. The sermon picks up from there.

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God, You Cannot Be Serious

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Biblical Text: Habakkuk 1:1-2:4

I think this longer passage – the lectionary as read cuts out important parts – is one of the most important in the bible. At least to the curious. Habakkuk the prophet has had it. He asks the question that I think many people do when things are going well, “God, where are you? Why do you do nothing?” And unlike most places, here God responds. He is doing something. He’s sending “the Chaldeans.” Now the Chaldeans are just code for Assyria/Babylon/Persia, the great power that takes Israel into exile. And God elaborates on who they are. It is what God often does, set one evil against another. But we don’t like that. The prophet doesn’t like that. He pushes back at God a second time. “Really, that is what you want me to go preach? Babylon?” And God answers one more time. And he makes clear what he is after – faith.

This sermon sets Habakkuk’s story in the light of Adam, Eve and the Old Snake. What Satan is always pitching in knowledge. “You will know.” It is not that God won’t grant knowledge, but that knowledge from God comes at the appropriate time. When we have the wisdom to handle it. Satan doesn’t care the damage it leaves. The “Violence”. The “Justice perverted.” But God does this because he is not really about knowledge. He wants us to have faith. He wants us to trust Him. And that is the second answer. Habakkuk, write the vision. It’s the same vision as always. The promise of Christ and his kingdom. And its the promise, “It will come. Wait for it. The righteous live by faith.”

On a rhetorical note, these sermon gets a little hot. To me it was meant to match the prophet’s complaint.

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Will Few Be Saved?

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Biblical Text: : Luke 13:22-30

Questions can come from the variety of places. Especially questions like asking Jesus “will few be saved?” And in Jesus’ answer to the man I hear at least two different assumptions about the purpose of the question. This sermon is structured around a 2×2 box of motivation behind the question. Are you truly asking about others, or are you asking about yourself? And then are you optimistic about your chances or pessimistic? It explores each one of those purposes of asking and how Jesus’ answer addresses it.

Others/Optimistic = In line with many of the promises from Abraham to Revelation

Others/Pessimistic = Redirects away from the fate of others toward yourself. Are you walking the narrow way?

Self/Optimistic = The danger square. Many will say “Lord, Lord”

Self/Pessimistic = You, come up here. The call of the gospel. The last shall be first.

And it is that last one that meshes with its spacial or directional metaphor that meshes with the Old Testament lesson of the day (Isaiah 66:18-23). That last box is also what Lutheranism is really made to address. When you find yourself as Wednesday’s child, you are very near the heart of the gospel.

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Through Water and Fire

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Biblical Text: Luke 3:15-22, Isaiah 43:1-7, Romans 6:1-11

The day on the church year was the Baptism of Our Lord. The theme of the readings for the day is officially baptism, but the real theme is Fire and Water. Which seemed a little on the nose for this week of the California fires. It was a week of too much fire and too little water. But what the readings would urge us to see is both what the fire manifests and the water that we have been given. All the world is on fire. We only occasionally recognize it. And when we do, we can’t lose the moment. Don’t lose the moment to ask for the living water. That’s what this sermon explores. Walking through the fire by means of the living water.

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The Flames

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. – Isaiah 43:2

We’ve probably all been watching the California fires. The reaction to these seems a bit subdued if anything. If I was taking a guess, it’s because they are somewhat unimaginable. Comprehending Pasadena burning or the Hollywood Hills is just not something that seemed possible. The search for Mrs. O’Leary’s cow will be impressive. (The apocryphal cause of the Great Chicago Fire.) So imagine turning to the assigned texts for Sunday and finding the above verse. The lectionary is way more topical than it has any right to be.

The Pacific Southwest District of the LCMS has eight (8) congregations in the area. As of Thursday morning all of them are still standing. Lots of evacuation. Some reports of members houses burned and further of students. Fairly universal power outages. But Trinty in Simi Valley’s report seems to summarize, “In ‘the eye of the storm’ with lots of wind but no smoke or fire.” Prayers are requested. But jumping immediately to a divine deliverance proclamation is too simple, even if that is what we would like. It would be nice if there was a divine hedge around us protecting us from the unimaginable. But that really isn’t what Isaiah is saying. What God is telling us here is better.

I’d suggest you read Isaiah 42 and 43 together if you have the time. Isaiah 42 is one of the “Servant Songs” which might be familiar. It starts off extolling the servant who “a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. (Isaiah 42:3).” It proceeds through a call to “Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise from the ends of the earth (42:10).” But then it turns. Israel does not accept the Lord’s Servant. God does these things and does not forsake them, but “they say to metal images, ‘you are our gods’ (42:17).” Having turned from God they receive their due. “This is a people plundered and looted, they are all of them trapped in holes and hidden in prisons (42:22).” Isaiah is prophesying to those in exile attempting to understand their situation. Chapter 42 concludes that God has “set him (the servant) on fire all around, but he did not understand; it burned him up, but he did not take it to heart (42:25).”

The servant is both Israel as type and Christ as fulfillment. Israel failed, Christ is Israel reduced to one who succeeds. He takes our deserved baptism of fire. And that is where Chapter 43 begins. “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine (43:1).” Being God’s people doesn’t exempt us from the floods and fires of this life. It doesn’t take us out of a fallen world groaning for the revelation. We still pass through the waters. The rivers still rise. Fires still blaze. But the promise is that “I will be with you (43:2).” The promise is that this life “will not consume you (43:2).” And the “you” is “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made (43:7).” We have a savior. The LORD our God, the Holy One of Israel. “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior (43:10-11).”

The disasters of this life, far from being reasons to deny God, which is what the world wants us to do, are the opportunities to realize that God has drawn near to us. That in the midst of the fires, God is with us. And we shall not be consumed. That even if everything is lost, in my flesh I shall see God. The LORD makes a path in the sea. The waters of baptism now save you. The chariot and horse, the army and warrior, the wars and rumors of war that threaten to consume, “they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick (Isaiah 43:17).” And this is done so that we might be his witnesses (43:10), “that they might declare my praise (43:21).”

Israel would not do this. “Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob; but you have been weary of me, O Israel (43:22).” Yet God is faithful. “I will not remember your sins (43:25).” Which leaves it to us. Are we willing to witness. That even in the midst of disaster God is with us. Are we willing to praise? That Christ has saved us eternally. Fear not, for the LORD shall gather all his people, “bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth (43:6).” For this we were made, to glorify God our savior.

Christmas Day

Biblical Texts: Isaiah 52:7-10, Deuteronomy 4:34

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There are two phrases that the bible uses that form this meditation: Signs and Wonders and Baring His Arm. The way they are used initially is seen in the Deuteronomy verse: judgement, war, plagues and straight ahead power. But what Isaiah announces and what Christmas Day reveals is a much different wonder. God has bared his arm in a completely new way. Instead of judgement, grace. Instead of war, peace. Instead of power, the meekness of a baby in the manger. The Chirst child is a sign and wonder of a new thing. Not God’s judgement, but His salvation.

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