Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 27^th, Year of Our + Lord 2021
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, SD
Into Death, for Life

   The newly ordained pastor, a whopping seven days into his ministry, had survived his first Sunday sermon and service.  No lightning bolts had torn through the sanctuary, and the congregation, relieved to have a new pastor after more than two years of vacancy, weren’t in a mood to pick nits about the new guy’s preaching and liturgy.  The pastor felt glad, and a bit relieved, as he greeted the members at the back of the nave.  And then Florence came up. 

    “Good morning, Pastor,” she said, introducing herself.  Over the top of his “very pleased to meet you” handshake, Florence continued: “My husband is in the hospice wing at the nursing home.  Can you please come see him?”   And so the Good Shepherd Jesus ensured that his new undershepherd would be exactly where the Lord wanted him to be, in the midst of death.  Instead of a leisurely dinner with his family and a nap, the pastor ate quickly, and headed to the nursing home to meet Florence’s husband, and bring him the Gospel, as his life drew to a close. 

    Death is wrong.  It is an affront to God’s good plan for His Creation.  This is one reason why the feeble attempts made by some Christian theologians to synthesize the Creator God of the Bible and the evolutionary theory of Darwin always fall flat.  In Darwin’s vision, death is a helpful friend, difficult for the individual organism, to be sure, but ultimately necessary and even good for the advancement of the various species.  For Darwin, the death of the weak makes the species stronger, somehow. 

     In God’s vision, death is the tragic consequence of our rebellion against the Source of Life, rebellion against Him, the LORD God Almighty.  In God’s vision, death, the consequence of human sin, must be resisted, and eventually reversed.  Trying to straddle the fence between Biblical Christianity and materialistic evolution will eventually result in you getting torn in two.  Theistic evolution is the name given to this foolish attempt to blend Darwin and the Bible.  Theistic evolution and the Gospel of Christ are essentially and radically opposed, because death is the enemy of the life God gives. 

    Death is an enemy, rightly feared by sinners.  The driving motivation of human life, from the baby’s first cry, is to live, to avoid death as long as possible.  And so it is a surprise to consider how this man Jesus runs to death.  He has come to defeat death, and not from afar, but rather up close and personal.  Normal people try to avoid death.  But Jesus again and again gets up close and personal with death and its prequels, like sickness, injury, birth defects, debauched living and demon possession.  We avoid, and teach our children to avoid, things that threaten their well-being.  But Jesus seeks them out, again and again.  

   “What’s that you say, there are dozens and dozens of sick people, trying to get in the house?  Bring ‘em in, even through the roof if you want.  Wow, there’s a demon-possessed man living out amongst the tombs, continually injuring himself and frightening the townspeople?  Let’s go talk to him.  Oh, there’s a prostitute who wants to see me while I’m attending this fancy dinner?  Please, have her come in and wash my f eet with her tears.”     

    Again today we see Jesus, rushing towards death.  Jairus, a bigwig at the local synagogue, was taking a risk, going to Jesus for help.  But a dying child makes for desperate parents. Jairus seeks out Jesus, falls at His feet and begs Him to come and save his daughter.  “Let’s go, says Jesus, that’s what I’m here for.”  On the way, another daughter of Israel approaches the Lord of life, trusting that if she could only touch the hem of his garment, she would be healed, her 12 years of suffering and loss and shame would be washed away in an instant, by the power of this Nazarene.  She wants to do it secretly, without attracting attention to herself, and that’s understandable. 

But Jesus will have none of that.  Even though Jesus is trying to keep His most spectacular miracles under wraps, her faith is too good not to celebrate.  “I felt that! cried out Jesus, who touched me? I need to bless the one whose faith made them so bold.”  And so He does, and so this woman goes away doubly blessed, with physical healing, and a personal benediction upon her faith from the very mouth of God. 

   Having dealt with one sign of death, Jesus continues on His pilgrimage to the bedside of the little girl, the daughter of Jairus.  But wait, death has arrived.  There’s no undoing that, so, no need to bother the Teacher any further.  Have you seen enough death in your life to imagine how Jairus felt, his heart crushed, his hope destroyed?  “Do not fear,” says Jesus, “just believe.”  How did that sound to Jairus?  Maybe like a cruel promise, setting him up for another fall?  Or was he bold to cling to Jesus’ words?  Hard to say.  But whether his daughter was living or dead, Jairus had to return home, he had to bear the yoke that had been placed upon him.  Besides, Jesus has taken over, he is leading the way now. 

   So Jairus continued on, with Jesus, into the valley of the shadow of death.  And there, in a cold room where all hope had died, the great faithfulness of the Lord was revealed. 

Flowing down from the hills of heaven, help came from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.  Jairus and his wife, heads helplessly bent down, lift up their eyes to see the steadfast love of the Lord revealed in the resurrection of their 12-year-old daughter.  

And so two daughters of Israel are rescued from death and dying.  One, at the cusp of womanhood, is returned to her parents, and to her life as young woman.  Another had been suffering for the entire 12 years of the little girl’s life, suffering from a disease which, among other curses, prevented her from bearing children.  But now she is healed.  All because Jesus runs into the midst of death, in order to give life. 

    Jesus runs into the midst of death, in order to give life.  Believe it.  That is the sum and total of Jesus’ ministry: The Lord, the fount and source of life, running into the midst of death, in order to give life to dying people.  Jesus did not prevent or reverse every physical death that threatened the people around him during His earthly ministry.  He healed and saved many, but not all, not physically.  Because that would have been an insufficient victory.  No, as wonderful as this earthly life can be, Jesus wants more for you.  He wants to give you and everyone an eternal life, spiritual and physical, with Himself, in His Father’s glory.  And so, at a certain point, Jesus stopped doing healing miracles, and instead performed His Dying Miracle of Forgiveness.  You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.  Well, we can say the same thing another way: You know the grace of Jesus, who, though he was the source of all Life, yet for your sake he became dead, so that you by his death might become truly alive. 

   As with the Christ, so also is patterned the life of Christians.  We who have been baptized into Jesus, but not yet called home, are in this world.  We are not of the world, and so we seek to avoid the many ways that people in our world continue their rebellion against God, sinning and being sinned against, choosing again and again things that draw one closer to death.  We are in this dying world, and yet we are not, for our true life is hidden with God in Christ.  Trusting in the great faithfulness of the Lord, we can enter into the midst of death, without fear.  We can sit down with a notorious sinner and seek to serve them, and to tell them about Jesus and His life-giving death.  We can do this, because we are sinners who know God’s forgiveness.  And by faith in Jesus, we are already residents of glory, simply waiting our call home. 

   Florence’s husband was named Marvin.  She had not exaggerated to her new pastor; Marvin was near the end.  One month after his first sermon as a pastor, he preached Marvin’s funeral.  Which was pretty easy, because it was a beautiful death. 

   There were only a few visits when Marvin was awake and communicative enough to meet and listen to his new minister.  Just one more Lord’s Supper.  Then there were regular visits with the family gathered around Marvin’s bed.  One afternoon, the new pastor entered a full room; Marvin’s breath was coming very raggedly.  A bit of liturgy, a reading, a few words, and then Pastor said: let us pray together the prayer our Lord has taught us.  Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, ... There was a little pop, and Marvin stopped breathing.  As his family around him was praying for the coming of the kingdom of God, Marvin was welcomed into the nearer presence of His Savior.  There were a few seconds of silence, a bit of crying.  And then with one voice they continued, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven...

   Death is our enemy.  The gift of life the Lord has given us is ours to protect and enjoy and use for the benefit of others for as long as He allows us.  Death is our enemy, but it is a defeated enemy.  We can run into the midst of death, we can go to those who suffer from disease, we can meet with and speak about Jesus to those whose own sinful choices are destroying their lives.  We can do these things, not because we are so strong or holy or brave.  No, we can face death and its precursors, because Jesus has already faced them for us, and because He goes with every believer, every day, ready to do all the heavy lifting.       

   Seeing Jesus run into the midst of death, we discover the truth, that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is His faithfulness. It is good for us that the Man Jesus bore the yoke in his youth.  He sat alone in silence as our burden was laid upon him; He put his mouth in the dust, so that we may have hope; He gave His cheek to the one who strikes, and was filled with insults.   But the Lord did not cast him off forever.  Jesus suffered grief, in order to have compassion on us, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.  Jesus ran into the midst of death, so that you could have life.  Glory be to Jesus, Amen.   

Third Sunday after Pentecost                                          
June 20, A+D 2021
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Shipboard Life         

   Boats is boats.  Back when I wore short hair by obligation, not by choice, we had a saying about the Navy:  Boats is boats.  Ocean-going bus drivers is how we kindly referred to our sailor friends.  I won’t get into the less kind names we had for them.  No matter how impressive the vessel, in my Marine Corps, boats is boats. 

    So it was a bit humbling for me to consider today’s texts, which are full of nautical and oceanic themes.  Really, the whole Bible is full of stories about boats and rivers and seas and the ocean, all tied up with God’s plan of salvation.  Lots of boats, but not an amphibious assault to be found.

    Lots of sea stories in the Bible.  According to Genesis 1, the whole earth started out covered in water, until the LORD caused dry land to appear.  Then there’s the most famous ship of all, when the earth needed to be cleansed of human evil, and God started over with faithful Noah and his family.  God rescued eight souls from His well-deserved wrath, a rescue through water, upon which they safely floated in the Ark.  We most often turn Noah’s Ark and the Rainbow into decorations for babies’ rooms, which is great, because in the end it is a story of renewal and promise, that points us to our Baptisms.  But we usually skip over the frightening parts of the flood account, such as the wickedness of mankind, and the destruction of so much life. 

    There´s also plenty of fright for the Twelve Disciples in our Gospel today.  They are caught by a terrible storm, far from shore, in a small boat.  The ferocity of the storm is revealed when we consider that many of the Twelve were professional fisherman, experts in small boat navigation, not prone to panic.  But every sailor knows there are limits to what any boat can withstand, and being tossed into the sea during a violent gale is usually a death sentence.  Imagine the fear of Matthew, the tax collector, when he realized that even Peter, Andrew, James and John, all fishermen, were terrified.  And meanwhile, where is Jesus, their new rabbi, the miracle worker sent from God?  He’s asleep, in the back of the boat, perhaps lying on the sails of the boat that they took down to try to survive the storm.  

    These stories of different groups of God’s people, stranded in boats, afraid for their survival:  Do you suppose we should learn something about Christian life from them? 

   If we consider the Church through the lens of a ship at sea, what would we say about her?  Are we enjoying smooth sailing?  Hardly.  There have been times in the history of the Church when being a Christian was seen as a positive by most people.  Not so much today.  Churches and Christians today are still free to do their thing, read old books, sing hymns and whatever, as long they remove and renounce any teaching or idea that isn’t popular or politically correct.  But if we stick to Biblical values and practices, as handed down by the Holy Spirit, well, better sound battle stations.  What happens if we argue in the public square for the sanctity of human life, from conception to natural death, and God’s design for family and marriage?  What happens if we confess the Truth, that there is no salvation outside Jesus Christ?  Well, get ready to take some broadsides.  Now, it’s better to take the broadsides from enemies of Christ than to abandon His teaching, which gives us life.  When the ship of the Church rejects God’s Truth, she may avoid attacks from external enemies, but she rots away from the inside out.        

    So, we must sail in stormy seas, and in enemy waters.  How’s our ship doing?  Are we charting a steady course, or are we taking on water and in danger of sinking?  Really, since the Church is the people of God, not the structure in which we meet, it makes more sense to ask how the crew is doing.  That’s the focus of our Gospel reading this morning, the Apostles, who were panicking, afraid of drowning.  How about us?  Do we face the increasing opposition of our culture calmly and with confidence, or are we cowering in dread of the next salvo, fearful that our church won’t hold up, and we might be cast into the sea? Are we quietly confident, and full of peace?  Or are we more afraid than anything?    

    Would you feel better if Jesus were sleeping in the back of our boat?  Or does the idea of God’s Son taking a nap while you fight the storm seem to fit the way things are going today?  Do you feel like God is not listening, not caring for us, somehow not available, dozing away as things get worse and worse?   And what was that about, anyway?  What does it mean that Jesus napped in the back of the boat, while the waves and the wind rose and began to threaten?  Why was Jesus sleeping? 

    Jesus was sleeping ... because He was tired. 

    Leading up to today’s Gospel, Jesus, as reported in Mark chapters 3 and 4, is fully engaged in His Galilean ministry.  He is casting out demons, debating with Pharisees, teaching the 12 privately, and healing the sick.  He is traveling around on foot from village to village, teaching in synagogues, in the countryside and in the streets, telling parables to the crowds, which He later interprets for His disciples.  Jesus has been hard at the work of ministry.  And so, as He enters into a boat one evening, with the Twelve, to cross to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus is tired.  Which is magnificent Good News.  Jesus is tired, because ministry is hard, and He is a man, who gets tired.  We tend to focus on the end of the story, when, after the terrified twelve wake Him and beg for rescue, He gets up and saves them.  “Peace, be still,” He cries out, and the wind and the waves obey.  Notice He doesn’t speak like a prophet, calling on the Name of the LORD for rescue.  He doesn’t say:  Oh Lord, please calm the storm.  No, rather Jesus speaks on His own authority, and the creation obeys.  Jesus shouts “Peace, be still,” and it is. 

   “Who is this guy?” wonder the Twelve.  Well, He’s God.  Which is stunning.  But the wonderful Good News is that He is the God who gets tired, because He has now become also a human being.   As LORD God Almighty reigning in heaven, the Son has never grown tired.  Almighty God never slumbers nor sleeps; He is the ever-vigilant Shepherd of Israel.  But now something utterly new and unique has come to pass, called the Incarnation: in Jesus, God has been born of a woman.   

    Mark in his Gospel skips over the birth narrative of Jesus.  He doesn’t tell us about angelic choirs announcing that the Son of God has been born in Bethlehem.  But it’s super important to the story.  So Mark makes that point here.  Jesus is clearly a man. because the hard work of ministry tires Him, and He needs to rest.  And yet He is also God, the Creator and Sustainer and Ruler of the Creation.  And God becoming a man is essential, absolutely critical, to the Good News of free salvation.  Because a man who becomes tired is also a man who can suffer, who can be crucified, who can die. 

    It often seems the Twelve Disciples are slow learners.   But from this point on, the fact that their friend Jesus is truly God begins to penetrate their brains.  Of course, understanding that Jesus is God in human flesh may well have made it more difficult for the Twelve to understand Jesus when He three different times plainly foretold His suffering and death.  After all, how can God die?  Surely, He will simply use His power to destroy anyone who gets in His way, no matter if they be Pharisees, Priests, or Roman soldiers.  Which of course Jesus could have done, if His purpose were only to destroy evil. 

   But the Christ came not just to destroy evil, but also to save evil people, sinners,
trapped by their sins under the power of Satan.  Utterly destroying evil would have been easy for the Almighty.  But saving sinners would be hard.  Because our sins could not just be overlooked.  Jesus hates sin.  He is radically opposed to evil.  Justice must be done, evil must be corrected, not just overlooked.  The debt of sin must be settled.   

   And we could never work off our debt.  To even begin to pay for our own sins, first we’d have to stop sinning.  Good fruit cannot come from a bad tree.  Even we who have been brought to faith still sin, every day.  The Christian does not want to sin, and fights against it.  But sadly, we do sin.  So the way of works righteousness, the idea of us earning God’s forgiveness by our good behavior and our good works, is hopeless. 

    And yet the justice of God requires that sin be paid for.  This is why it is such marvelous Good News that Jesus fell asleep in the back of the boat.  Because it shows Jesus is a man, the man who is also God’s Son, who came down from heaven and got into our sinking boat, in order to die in our place.  He took on human flesh to take away the sins of the world, to take our sins upon Himself.  He came to rescue us from Satan, to destroy the power of evil to harm us, now and forever, by paying our debt in full, on the Cross.  To do that, the Son of God had to become the Son of Man, the child of the Virgin Mary.    

    Jesus, resurrected and ascended into glory, is still a man, but a new, glorified man, and so He no longer gets tired.  But it is the very best news that He did get tired, and suffered, and died, in our place.  So when the devil, or some false preacher, or your own doubting heart roils the water of your soul by telling you that you must earn God’s favor, or else, well, don’t listen.  You, as a Baptized crewmember under Captain Jesus Christ, can rebuke them and reject their lies.  You can and should cry out, “Be still, in Jesus’ Name, for He has made peace with God, for me.” 

    The ship of the Church still passes through choppy water, and it may seem from time to time that Jesus must be asleep.  It sometimes seems like we are under fire and in danger of sinking, but God is not aware.  But fear not.  Though you and I be of little faith, Jesus is faithful.  Whether we feel it or not, He is with us, for He has given us His dying Word, and then rose from the depths of death on the third day.  The Church cannot sink, because her resurrected Captain is Jesus Christ.  We will make it to harbor, to finally rest in perfect peace with all the sailors... I mean all the saints, who have gone before.  Jesus is with us, even when He seems silent, even when He tests our faith, to strengthen it.

  So no matter how fierce the storm, the eternal truth is that we are sailing on glassy smooth seas, with our Captain firmly at the helm.  The Spirit of God fills the sails with the breath of life to carry us along, as Jesus guides us home to His Father.  

    So enjoy the cruise.  And along the way, let’s not forget to throw a life preserver to the souls we see in the water, in danger of being forever swept away.  Because our Savior is the Savior of all. Amen.                  

Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 13^th, Year of Our + Lord 2021
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
Automatic Wheat and First Causes

Why does your heart keep on beating?
 
   Today we have the parable of the automatic wheat:  Jesus says, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. ^[27] He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. ^[28] The earth produces by itself, ‘automatically,’ first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. ^[29] But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." 
 

   The Holy Spirit likes growing things, and so from Genesis to Revelation there are scores of parables, psalms, histories and allusions that connect farming and forestry and horticulture to saving faith and the Kingdom of God.  Which is great!  We live in the Black Hills, and so all of us have a daily visual and physical connection to a beautiful variety of plants and trees and growing things.  But the mystery of life is not just out there in front of us.   It is also within us, beating away, and we know not how.  Our life is a mystery. 
 
   Modern science has learned a great deal about life, and can tell us a lot about our heartbeat, our circulatory system, and our life, especially about what things can end it.  But the ongoing spark of life, how it started, and why it is that our hearts keep beating and we keep living, until we don’t, well, there is still profound mystery there. 
 

   Eli Urbaniak was my high school science teacher.  Isn’t that an excellent name for a
science teacher?  Eli Urbaniak just sounds like a slightly crazy scientist, puttering away in his lab, occasionally teaching his students something.  Well, Eli had some philosopher in him too.  One lesson he taught has stayed with me since 9^th grade.  We were sitting in class, early in the year, and Mr. Urbaniak was up at his overhead projector.  (For the younger members, an overhead projector is like a prehistoric smartboard.)  On the plate of the projector Mr. Urbaniak put a petri dish, in which were three or four ants.  He commented on their movement, which we watched up on the screen, movement which grew more and more frantic as the heat from the projector’s 300-watt bulb built up.  Then our esteemed teacher smushed an ant with his thumb.  He looked up at us and asked: “Where did the life go?” 

 
   His point, which I only sort of understood at the time, wasn’t about how the ant died.  Obviously, it was crushed, and its life processes ended.  Rather, Mr. Urbaniak was asking something deeper, namely, “What is life?  Where does it come from, and where does it go when it ends, however that end might come?” 
 
   For all our 21^st century knowledge and confidence about biology and life, about how a beating heart works, with the electrical signals from the brain that cause the various parts of the heart muscle to contract in just the perfect rhythm to move the blood in and out, and the chemical processes in the blood to carry oxygen from the lungs to the cells, which then use that oxygen to burn calories and put cells in motion, for all that we know, there is still an amazing array of mysteries in our physical and biological world. 
 
   For example, we all understand that gravity is a thing.  We can measure it and predict its effects quite precisely.  But how and why one mass pulls on every other mass around it, across space, without any physical connection, well, that’s still a mystery.  Kind of like the grain of wheat that sits in the ground and, with moisture and time and heat from the sun suddenly sprouts and grows into a plant. 
 
   We can describe, manipulate and even predict many physical and biological processes.  But where does the spark of life come from in the first place, and what causes it to go on and on, as long as it can?   Science has given us many blessings, and a great deal of knowledge.  But many befuddling mysteries about first causes remain. 
 
   First cause mysteries remain for modern, materialistic science, that is.  Christianity has its mysteries, to be sure, but it knows the First Cause.  Ironically, the Church provided the educational context in which modern science developed.  But where modern science today struggles in many areas to identify and explain first causes, the Christian faith knows the Lord God Almighty, the creator and the sustainer of the universe.  God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the First Cause, the Uncaused Cause, the Source of all light and life.  Modern science doesn’t like that explanation, because God can’t be measured with human instruments.  But just because God is beyond our ability to measure doesn’t mean He isn’t who He says He is.  And without God, without an almighty power, who exists outside the physical and biological world we live in, there remain a lot of unsolved mysteries for which modern materialistic science has no answer. 
 
    Materialists continue to try to argue these problems away, but without success.  God is the Source and the Sustainer of all things.  As St. Paul says: In Him we live and move and have our being.  I AM, says the Lord God, and all other things happen and exist because I make them. 
 
   Modern science over the last 200 years has allowed an atheistic principle, a “there is no God” idea to insinuate itself into the conversation, and this atheistic materialism has become quite dominant in the public square.  Those who propose a Creator are quite regularly ridiculed and rejected.  It is not unusual to hear materialists argue that parents who teach their children to believe in a Creator are committing child abuse, and should lose their parental rights.  We surely live in challenging times.  But we do not need to shy away or be afraid of confessing what the Holy Spirit through the creation and through the Word teaches us. 
 
   Today the tension between Christianity and modern science is often fraught.  Often it becomes a fight, because modern materialistic science has for many morphed into “scientism.” Scientism is to make a religion of science.  And modern secular scientism might seem invincible.  But there are many chinks in its armor.  Scientism struggles with many problems and mysteries that in public they try to hand wave away.  For 200 years scientism’s common response to these challenges has been “We’ll be able to explain that, soon.”  And yet the mysteries not only remain, they deepen.  Modern science long argued that the idea of a Creator was impossible because it would break many immutable or unchangeable rules of physics.  And scientism still argues that way.  But then along came quantum physics, physics at the subatomic, infinitesimally small level.  There, it turns out, the laws of physics that science thought were immutable don’t seem to apply.  Huh. How about that?  I wonder in what other contexts the laws of physics are changeable? 
 

   And of course DNA has long been hailed as the final proof for Darwinian evolution, except for the small problem that even in the simplest living creatures, DNA turns out to be an incredibly complex code, or language, like a computer program, but much more complex, and made from proteins.  Without DNA there is no life as we know it.  But how did such complex code or programming language first appear in a physical world that, by scientism’s definition, lacks an intelligent designer, a programmer, to write the code?  What is the mechanism for the random production of complex information? 
 
That silence you hear is the only answer that materialistic scientism has to offer.   
 
   So we can confess the Creator, not just within these walls, but everywhere.  It might get us in some trouble; but that’s o.k., the Lord has our back.  Even more, we can rejoice not only in His constant care for our physical lives, but we can also marvel and rejoice at His intimate and active role in our spiritual lives as well.  For the Creator made us physical/spiritual beings, body and soul united, physics and biology and faith, all working together. 
 
   Jesus is making that body and soul connection for us this morning with His parable of the automatic wheat.  Just as in physical, earthly life, where we understand a lot, but also know that there is no life without God’s ongoing care, so also in spiritual and eternal life:  everything depends entirely on the will and power of God. 
 
   Just as in farming, where we know the necessary steps and how to recognize and encourage growth and how to harvest, so also in the spiritual harvest of souls. We know a lot.  We have the Word, the Word of Christ, that promise of a tiny sprig of cedar that will grow into a great tree, or the mustard seed growing to provide shade and shelter for many birds.  We know that our role in the Kingdom of God has to do interacting with the Word of God, the story of salvation.  It has to do with learning and meditating upon and sharing the message.  We know that God will use that Word to save souls, ours souls, and the souls of others, just as He causes the seed to sprout and grow and provide a harvest of wheat.  We don’t know exactly how God does it, or when.  The internal action of the Holy Spirit, working on the soul through the ear, is invisible to us, even more invisible than the sprouting of a seed.  But we know God is in the midst of the work, and that we get to play a role, in planting, cultivating, and harvesting recreated souls, sinners snatched from death, redeemed and renewed to grow into new seed spouting believers, who speak the same Truth from which they received new life. 
 

   And of course the mystery is even greater.  This new life, received and experienced
today, is concretely connected to the New Life of Jesus, springing from the tomb.  His new life is our new life.  And that life is empowered by His once for all death, now almost 2000 years in the past, but still effective for forgiveness and salvation today, through the power of God’s Word.  The miracle of growing wheat or a beating human heart is tremendous.  But the miracle of God’s sacrificial and saving love is far greater; it is the greatest thing of all, the revelation of the very heart of the Creator, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in whom you have life, and peace and joy, today, and forever and ever, Amen.           

2^nd Sunday after Pentecost, June 6^th, A + D 2021
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches                                                Custer and Hill City, SD                                                                                            Blasphemy, Love and Redemption

    “Pastor, I’m afraid I’ve committed the eternal and unforgiveable sin.  I think I blasphemed the Holy Spirit...”  To be precise, I haven’t heard these exact words from many Christians.  But I have been asked many times about this unforgiveable sin against the Holy Spirit of which Jesus speaks.  And these people’s tone of voice usually tipped me off that the question wasn’t theoretical, but a personal worry.  Out of the depths the Christian cries, hiding their worry under a “what if” question.  But the truth is that we cringe and worry, every time we hear Jesus say, “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”   We cringe, which is good; we should be frightened at the thought.  But we should also take a few minutes this morning to clear up our confusion and our doubts, because Jesus has come to give you joy, not to leave you worrying.    

    We need to start with some definitions, because, while the word ‘blasphemy’ sounds bad, I’m not sure we are completely clear what it means.  We live in a world where holiness is largely unknown.  Everything is seen in a materialistic, common way, and God is ignored.  Understanding blasphemy is pretty difficult if we don’t first understand that God is holy, utterly different, pure, righteous, without sin.  As well, we need to know that some things are holy to God, that is to say, chose by Him and precious, set apart for His special use.  One needs to understand that God is holy and also makes some things holy, because blasphemy is the sin of speaking sacrilegiously toward God or sacred things. 

   But one definition requires two more, since “sacrilegious” is also a dying word in today’s English, and “sacred” is probably getting a little iffy.  Sacrilege is the action that goes with blasphemy, not just speaking against God or something holy to God, but violating or misusing something that is sacred.  And sacred is very close to holy, that is, something set apart for or connected with God, something dedicated to the right worship of God, something that calls for our respect, reverence and even awe. 

    Speaking evil about the mother of God or vandalizing a church altar are examples of blasphemy and sacrilege.  So it’s easy to see that speaking evil against the Holy Spirit, which the Pharisees were doing by saying that Jesus had an evil spirit, is obviously worthy of damnation. 

   And yet with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.  Jesus does speak with exceptional harshness to the Pharisees.  But He is doing it to try to save their souls.  Which goes to show that the Lord hasn’t changed since the beginning. 

   Adam and Eve, who brought the horrors of sin and death into God’s good creation, were clearly deserving of damnation.  But, while God would rebuke them and declare the curses that would come as result of their failure, first He gave them a Word of Hope, embedded in His word to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” 

   This is the proto-Gospel, the first declaration of God’s eternal Promise to rescue the man and the woman, and all their sin-stained descendants, through a violent confrontation.  Satan, who had possessed the serpent, would strike a blow, at terrible blow.  But in the end he would be crushed by the Seed of the Woman, the promised Savior.  This Savior would be sent from God, but would also be a man, the New and Holy Man, the Promised Messiah, sent to rescue God’s people from their sins. 

   This final battle announced by the Lord to the serpent in the Garden was drawing very near when the Pharisees confronted Jesus in our Gospel reading this morning.  The Seed of the woman had now been revealed to be Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Mary, and Son of God.  Satan, who tempted the first woman through blasphemy, that is by twisting and misusing God’s Holy Word in order to draw her into sin, now cannot help himself.  I don’t know if Satan understood that, by striking out at Jesus, he would bring about his own destruction.  But it doesn’t matter.  Satan hates this Seed of the Woman even more than he hated Adam and Eve.  He cannot resist trying to destroy Jesus, so he drives the hypocritical Pharisees to join in his blasphemy.  And so they proclaim that the Holy Spirit of God, who had descended on Jesus Christ at His Baptism in the Jordan, was actually an evil spirit sent from Satan. 

   So Jesus destroys those blaspheming Pharisees, right?  No.  Yet again we see that with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.  The Lord rebukes and warns, but He also shows the way of escape, in a mystery that we struggle to comprehend. 

   Matthew, Mark and Luke all give us a version of this declaration of Jesus about the unforgiveable sin against the Holy Spirit.  In Matthew and Luke, we get this added detail: Jesus says, Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, (Luke 12:10). 

   Think of that.  God is willing to forgive blasphemy against the Son of Man, who is Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah, the Holy One of God. 

   And the Pharisees are not only speaking against Jesus, they are trying to kill Him.  They are committing both blasphemy and sacrilege.  In word and deed they are rejecting and attacking God the Father’s holiest and most precious possession, His eternal Son, the very image of the Father, reigning in glory with Him from eternity.  And yet, that blasphemy and sacrilegious execution will be forgiven. 

   In fact, while we can never play down how evil it was to crucify Jesus, it was necessary, and foreordained according to God’s own plan. Jesus is the Lamb of God, slain from before the foundation of the world.  To crush Satan’s head and rescue humanity from eternal condemnation, Jesus willingly suffered blasphemy and sacrilege from the very people He was dying to save.  So we rightly proclaim that with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. 

   But to speak against, to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, is an unforgivable sin.  Why?  What is that all about? 

   Well, let’s come at the question from another, less frightening angle.  We know that saving faith in Christ comes by hearing the Word of Christ.  That is to say, the Holy Spirit, the Author and User of the Sacred Word of God, testifies, He proclaims that Jesus is God’s Son, the promised Savior.  Jesus and His blood bought salvation is really all the Holy Spirit talks about.  And by that speaking, by that proclamation, the Spirit of God creates faith in us sinners, faith which trusts and receives the forgiveness Jesus won on His Cross.  And when forgiveness has washed us clean, then death and condemnation are also gone, swept away in a flood of love and grace.  To blaspheme or speak against the Holy Spirit is to reject His message of forgiveness and grace, found only in Christ.  Without faith in the Spirit’s message, there is no forgiveness, and no salvation.    

   There are frightening degrees of unbelief, which we will touch on in a moment.  But in the end, plain garden variety unbelief and knowing rejection of Christ are both eternally condemning, because we were all conceived under condemnation.  Only by faith in Jesus can anyone be returned to the Father’s loving family.  So, if you are worried that you have committed the unforgiveable sin, scared that you have blasphemed the Holy Spirit, hear this: your worry is actually a sign that you have not.  For only the believer in Jesus worries about losing the salvation He offers. 

   Your worry is a sign that you have not blasphemed the Holy Spirit, you have not rejected His message about Christ and His salvation.  You may be struggling with sin and doubt, but you are in the fight.  Your faith is alive. 

   Which is not to say you have no reason to worry.  You have been baptized, declared holy unto God, made into a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.  Whatever sin or doubt that causes you to worry about being cut off needs to be dealt with.  The condition of the Pharisees is a warning to us.  They knew God’s Word, frontward and backward.  They knew the prophecies about the coming Christ, so they had to see that Jesus was fulfilling all of them.  They had to know He must be the Christ, the Savior, but they hardened their hearts against the Truth, and rejected Him anyway.  They are practically begging God to cast them out forever, and if they get their wish, their fate will be worst of all.  Because of their deep knowledge, they will be condemned most harshly of all, unless they are brought to repentance. 

   Which can happen, because with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.  As long as a human being lives, the Holy Spirit is seeking to break through hardened hearts and rescue them from the eternal suffering they are headed toward.  And because of the sin that lingers in us all, we cannot ignore the risk of falling away, because everyone is at risk.  Consider Mary and Jesus’ brothers, who thought He had lost His mind, and sought to stop Him from His path.  Saying that Jesus was insane is not the same as saying He has an evil spirit, but it is too close for comfort.  But they were turned from their error, because the Lord’s love and redemption are so plentiful.  Even plentiful enough to rescue the Apostle Paul, who, when he was still called Saul, committed both blasphemy and sacrilege, again and again, as he persecuted the Holy Church of God.  But Christ intervened on the road to Damascus, and brought Paul back from the brink. 

   So when your doubts and sins worry you, and you maybe even wonder if you have committed an unforgiveable sin, do take it seriously.  But do not despair.  Do not give up hope.  No matter how far you fall, do not listen to the satanic voice that says you are cut off from God.  Instead, repent of your sin, and remember, Jesus has paid for all your sins, in full.  There is steadfast love and plentiful redemption for you, in the Good News of Jesus, in His blood which washes you clean, in His forgiving love, which gives you His eternal life.  Come running to Jesus, to confess your sins and ask for His mercy, for He rejoices to give it to you, by the power of His Holy Spirit, and in the Name of His Father, forever and ever, Amen.