Behold the Man - Sermon for Good Friday, based on John 19:1-42.

Behold the Man                                                       
Good Friday 2024
Our Redeemer and Our Savior's 
Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
John 19:1-42

Sermon Audio available here:  

   Behold the Man.  This is what it's come down to: Pilate, the Roman governor, is trying to avoid a riot.  He's afraid to commit the injustice of executing Jesus, because of the crowds of Palm Sunday, the followers and friends of Jesus.  They might rebel if He executes Jesus.  Because they know, like Pilate, that Jesus is innocent.  At the same time Pilate fears angering the Jewish leaders, for he knows they could stage a riot just as well.  So, trying to walk the line between justice and appeasing Jesus' enemies, Pilate has Jesus scourged, that is whipped, and mocked, dressed in royal purple and crowned with thorns.  Hoping he had done enough, Pilate brings Jesus out for display:  Behold the Man.  Look at what I've done to Him, isn't this enough? 

   Behold the Man.  Like Balaam's donkey, (Numbers 22) and Caiaphas the high priest, (John 11:49-52), Pontius Pilate is an unlikely candidate to speak God’s Word, an unlikely prophet.  The governor’s proclamation is not just a few random words, filling in a blank in the story.  Nor are these false words, inserted in the Biblical text, only to be refuted.  No, these words of Pilate are profound.   They are true words. 

Behold the Man. 

   Jesus is the Man. He is the Archetype, the finest and best man, in every respect: in His miraculous birth, His sinless life, His humble service.  In His authoritative teaching, and perfect loyalty to God, in His faith and practice, Jesus is the Man.  And now He is the Man in suffering.  Loving His own to the very end, Jesus does more than simply wash their feet.  He begins to pour out His cleansing blood. 

   Jesus is the Man whom God accepts, the Man who fulfills all righteousness, who does the will of the Father, and keeps the Law.  He is the Beloved Son. 

   He is also the Man who suffers.  He stands in for all the rest of mankind, beaten, mocked, crowned in thorns, royal purple covering His blood-red body.   

   That this Jesus is the Man says something very bad about us.  About mankind.  This must be the Man because all the rest of us, men, women and children, do not live well.  We are not the finest and best.  Jesus stands there because of us, because we do not fulfill any righteousness, let alone all of it.  We do not do the will of the Father.  We do not keep the Law. 

   Many reject the Man Jesus precisely because of what His suffering says about us.  Who wants to be called a poor, miserable sinner?  We may protest: I’m a good person, aren’t I? 

   Well, we may be fine citizens, maybe even the best of people in the eyes of our neighbors.  But before God, whose standard is perfection, perfect holiness, inside and out, before God, we are lost in sin, and cannot free ourselves.  Whether personal righteousness has never really been our priority, or we have done our utmost to walk the walk, either way, none of us is the perfect man, or perfect woman.  Despite all our efforts at greatness and goodness, Jesus' suffering reveals that we are not worthy.  For if there were any other way to save us, God would have chosen it.  But there is no other way.  Jesus must suffer, for who we are. 

   This is a very difficult, a very harsh message.  And so, many reject it.  Some turn completely against Jesus, joining in the cries of the crowd to crucify Him, albeit in modern day language.  Listen to the poets and great minds of our age, who tell us to leave the superstitions of religion behind and embrace the brotherhood of man.  Jewish priests of the first century and modern intellectuals of the 21^st are joined in their desire to leave Jesus on the ash-heap of history.   

   Others try to keep Jesus, but only if they can change Him.  They focus on His teaching and healing and service to the poor, and ignore or downplay the suffering and cross, because of what His suffering and cross say about them.  About us.  Often we only want a Jesus who builds our self-esteem, and tells us how to live a little bit  better.  Not one who points out our inescapable sinfulness.   

   You and I could choose to reject the Man, standing beside Pilate, shamed and suffering.  But our choices do not change reality.  And the reality is this:  Jesus is the Man.  Jesus is the only Man who could reveal the depth of God's displeasure with our sin, and the only Man who could accept God's full punishment.  Every injustice you've ever suffered, and every injustice you've ever inflicted, multiplied by the billions of sinners who have gone before you, all of these sins have been answered for, paid for, suffered for, by the Man Jesus.  For He submitted not just to Pontius Pilate, but also to His own Father's righteous anger.

   And most amazingly, He did this willingly, for the joy set before Him.  For the promise of a heavenly congregation of redeemed sinners, Jesus is the Man.  In order to deliver to His Father a people, holy and righteous in His sight, Jesus meekly stands as the Man beside Pilate.  In order to prove the love and mercy of God, Jesus wears the purple robe.  In order to have you for His very own, Jesus accepts the crown of thorns. 

   It is only the great reversal of the Resurrection that makes it even possible for us to consider the utter darkness of Good Friday.  We live in hope because we know Jesus rose from the dead, showing us that His suffering was not for nothing.  Not at all.  In the light of the Resurrection we learn that His suffering was for everything, for the forgiveness of all sins, for the life of the world, and for the glory of His Father. 

   And so tonight we confess again that our sin made Him stand there.  We confess that we could never pay even a fraction of our debt.  We confess that the Man Jesus is our God.  We confess that there was never love like this.  Jesus, our Suffering King.  Behold the Man.  Amen. 

  

Perfect Certainty, a sermon for Palm and Passion Sunday

Palm and Passion Sunday, March 24^th, A+D 2024
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Perfect Certainty – Matthew chapters 26 – 27, Philippians 2

Audio of the sermon is available HERE.

      What is He doing?  What does Jesus intend to achieve with these controversial words and works?  Is He certain this thing is going to end the way He wants?

      All the people around Jesus are full of worry and doubt.  Jesus accepted the
anointing with highly valuable perfume by the woman in Bethany, a flagrant waste of money, or so it seemed.  He portrayed Himself as the Son of David, the coming Messiah King, by orchestrating the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday.  By this, Jesus enraged the Pharisees and Priests, and gave them concrete accusations with which to denounce Him to the Roman governor.  Already before Monday of this most fundamental week, Jesus had totally confounded human wisdom.  Is He sure all this is a good idea?

      During the week, it got worse: arguments in the Temple and verbal attacks against the leaders of the Jews, apocalyptic teaching, radical claims of coming destruction.  Finally, Jesus displays the certainty and confidence to redefine the Passover of the Jews.  He tranforms the perpetual institution of Moses, annuls the Law’s prohibition against drinking blood, and eternally remakes the Passover, with reference to His own death.  Are you sure, Jesus?   

      He rejects the fervent desire of many of His followers, the urge for Him to foment a rebellion against the Romans.  Instead, Jesus submits to the arrest, torture and humiliation of the Priests, and the Romans.  He calmly goes to Calvary, facing without hesitation the worst that human beings could do.  But the deepest stroke that pierced Him was the stroke that Justice gave, the justice of God, the wrath of His own beloved Father against human sin.  In the moment, it all seems like madness, a terrible waste.  Who can understand His goal, His plan?  Where does Jesus find His certainty?

      Four Palm and Passion Sundays ago, in April of 2020, the whole world suffered from an extreme lack of certainty.  In February “lockdown” had been a term used mostly to refer to confining inmates in their cells, to prevent a prison riot.  By April, lockdowns were for everybody. 

      In much of the world, freedom of movement was suddenly restricted.  Only “essential workers” moved about normally.  Loved ones in hospitals and nursing homes were on their own.  Schools and churches were shuttered.  We all need to submit; the science is certain, don’t you know?  When and how would we escape this health crisis?  What was the real danger of COVID19?  What measures protect me and my family?  Who knew, for sure?  No one.

    Isolated in our homes, interacting through screens, the same internet, which gave us some precious contact with friends and loved ones, also flooded us with conflicting information, fantastic stories, opposing theories.   Page after page fed our minds with doubt and fear.  Many of us became amateur public health researchers, seeking the truth, seeking certainty. But the deeper we dug, the more certainty escaped us.  Oh, how we wanted to know for sure!  But no. 

    But, that was four years ago.  Today, we are all relieved that life has completely returned to normal, that we again enjoy a high level of certainty in our lives.  No longer are the internet, the coffee shop, and our own minds roiled by constant doubts. 

     Oh, that such were the case!  We are no longer in a worldwide health crisis, unless you count Type 2 diabetes, loneliness, substance abuse, obesity, or widespread gender disphoria as crises.  In April 2020 we in the United States were locked into a presidential election with the combined age of the two major candidates setting a new record, raising doubts about their fitness for the office.  This year, the same two men shatter that record by 8 years.  AI generated images, video and text may eventually teach us the wisdom to doubt everything we see on our screens.  But at this moment, certainty, and the peace that we gain from a sense of certainty, are just as far away as ever.  Maybe farther.      

     And so, brothers and sisters in Christ, I thank the Lord that, in the midst of these uncertain times, we are celebrating Holy Week.  What a priceless blessing to gather together, in the flesh, to rehearse, and remember, and celebrate the most important week in all of human history.  There is no better Word, no better Way to help us regain Christian certainty, than by meditating once again on the holy work of Jesus Christ, His work of perfect certainty.

     Before the foundation of the world, the Holy, Holy, Holy LORD, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, knew, without a doubt, the date and the events of the first Holy Week.  God also knew all about today, our celebration of Holy Week in A+D 2024.  From before time began, the plan was set.  The Creator, the eternal God, in the person of the Son, was with perfect certainty going to unite with His creation, taking the essence of the guilty man into his spotless, perfect being.  Jesus became like us in every way, except without sin.  And for what?  Certainly He did not come down and enter into human history to lead us to a victory according to our expectations.  Jesus did not ride a donkey into Jerusalem to restore David's earthly kingdom, nor to make America great again, nor to achieve social justice.  

     Restoring the ancient splendor of Israel would not have helped anyone, because King David was the problem.  Israel’s greatest leader, and everyone else, every person except Jesus, including you and me, we were and are the problem that creates our uncertainty.  The only thing constant and sure about us is our frailty and fallenness. 

     Jesus had to reveal the weakness of everyone, even his own disciples and friends, because the truth about all the sons of Adam is that, as the Psalmist declares: “they have been corrupted, they have committed abominable acts; There is no one who does good… The Lord has looked down from heaven on the children of man to see if there is anyone who understands, who seeks after God. They have all turned aside, they have all been corrupted; there is no one who does good, there is not even one.” (Psalms 14 and 53: 1-3)  There was no real certainty, and so also no real hope among mankind, because all of us were corrupted.  All of us naturally deceive, and fall for deception.  We are all victims, and perpetrators, from our conception, from our very first breath.

    Nevertheless, Jesus was perfectly certain about His plan.  Not because it was easy or pleasant.  Rather, being God Himself, the eternal Son of the Father, Jesus knew the Truth that is greater than our sin and corruption.  Jesus knew the Truth that is even greater than the hatred and envy of satan: Jesus knew with perfect certainty that God is love.

      When we go through trials and tribulations, when we face uncertainty, suffering and evil, we want nothing more than to be with our loved ones, to experience the love we first received as babies.  We desperately want to receive and share love, like the unexpected love that flowed from us who became parents.  Not always, but often, by God’s grace, human parents and children still feel and give great love.  Even without knowing its Source, children and parents normally still share a profound love.  Our family love is not perfect, far from it.  But it is the best we have in this world.  We are all sinners, but God in his goodness has left this imperfect love in our lives, to give us an idea, a shadow of the love that exists between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the love God seeks to share with every soul.  

     The love of family is wonderful.  And yet, even if we could multiply a thousand times the intensity of the best love we have experienced with family and friends, God’s love is still greater.  God’s love, unattainable for us, is the source of the perfect certainty of Christ.  Jesus is sure of His plan, because He knows love, the love that is God.

    This is why Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, endured everything, suffered everything, calmly, and with hope.  He completed His aweful work with certainty, for the sake future joy.  For the joy of revealing to the world, of revealing to you that, although you deserve His rejection, God has loved you in this way: He sent his Only Begotten Son to take away all your weakness and doubt, all your sin, all your punishment and shame.  Jesus has destroyed them all in His own body, in His own suffering and death on the Cross.  Jesus did it all with the perfect certainty that, after three days, a new creation would be revealed, a new reality in which you can know the real love of God Himself.

     This was the certainty of Christ, which gave him the strength to do and endure everything that happended during Holy Week.  And Christ’s certainty is also your certainty.  This is God’s guarantee to you, signed, sealed and delivered at your Baptism.  There the God who is love, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, united you with the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, making you a member of the family of God, perfectly safe in His love.  This is the certainty which Christ feeds us, from His altar, His holy Body and Blood, the forgiveness of sins that Christians are invited to eat and to drink.  This is the certainty that the Spirit pours into your heart, through your ears, every time you silence the stream of the world’s doubt-filled noise, and listen once again to the voice of Truth, the voice of certainty.  This voice of God sometimes thunders, sometimes whispers, sometimes sings, and is always seeking to speak peace to you, in Jesus’ Name. 

     The certainty of Jesus is for you.  Uncertainty, confusion and doubt are the tools of satan.  They give the evil one great power over us, if we are not firmly resting in the surety that is Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and risen, for you.  When we fall into doubt about God’s love, we also lose our reason for fleeing and resisting the darker tools of evil.  The short term thrill of feeding my sinful appetites seems like a sure thing, in the moment.  If I am not sure that God is actually on my side, what does it matter if I give in to temptation?  Only knowing the love of Jesus can truly help you and me reject the temptations of the devil.   

     So, certainty about God’s love, poured out for us in Jesus, is critical for our lives, today.  And you and I being sure of God’s grace, mercy and power is also critical for our neighbors.  When I am tempted to doubt God’s love, your certainty makes you God’s preacher to bring me back to the Truth.  For precisely this reason St. Paul exhorts us to have the mind of Christ.  And what is good between Christians is also good for those of our neighbors who live without faith in Jesus.  The calm certainty of the Christian resting in the love of God is the greatest attraction the Church has for people lost in doubt. 

      And so, this Holy Week, we take time to hear and meditate upon the sure and certain work of Jesus.  And we pray to the Holy Spirit, that He help us live in this certainty, for ourselves, for each other, and for the life of the world, Amen.

  

The Truth Is - Sermon for Judica, the Fifth Sunday in Lent

Judica - Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 17th, A+D 2024
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
The Truth Is 
Genesis 22:1-14, Hebrews 9:11-15, John 8:42-59

Audio of this sermon is available HERE.

   The Truth is, everything the Lord has ever said to us is true.  God cannot lie.  So, understanding and living within His Word should be easy.  We have the Word of God, we have ears to hear, eyes to read, and wills to follow the Truth.  But of course, it is not easy for us to discern, accept and live within the Truth of God.  This morning we will reflect a bit on understanding the mission of God from the perspective of knowing the Truth, the Truth of Christ, which is true for the Black Hills, and for Bangladesh, true for everyone, everywhere. 

   A bit before our reading, Jesus spoke these famous words to the Jews who had believed in Him.  “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”  Through the centuries, many speakers have borrowed the end of our Lord’s saying, “The Truth shall set you free.”   Many have used it for their own unique purposes.  And this is understandable, since even in this broken world, truth is better than lies. 

   It is remarkable the varied range of voices who have appropriated this saying:  Antislavery crusaders and civil rights leaders from the 1830s through the 1960s used it to fight against slavery and racism.  Today’s Constitutional Conservatives use this saying as they seek to revive the principles of America’s founders.  It has been appropriated by boxers, and door to door salesmen, by communists, by anti-communist freedom fighters, and by Hollywood stars.  So many different voices have appropriated Jesus’ words; they cannot all be referring to the same truth. 

     We are Lutherans, excommunicated cousins of Roman Catholics.  We were thrown out because we did not accept the idea that the “truth” was whatever the Roman Pope declared.  Most people in most places have suffered under similar delusions, the idea that the Truth is determined by what some fallible human told you.  Maybe it was a King or Queen, maybe a high church official, a presidential candidate, or the U.N. Panel on Climate Change.   It doesn’t matter if you agree, or if the math adds up.  The truth is as they say, or else. 

     The demand by the powerful to be obeyed without question is a perennial problem.  But much worse for all of us has been the assault on Truth itself.  The very idea of Truth has fallen on hard times.  It is a widely accepted “right” that any person can demand to define the truth however they want.  If you dare to object, you risk being shouted down as a bigot, or worse.  Whatever you do, don’t point out contradictory facts.  And so, a boy is a boy, and a girl is a girl, unless they feel their truth is the opposite, or something in between.  The truth about God is whatever you want it to be, just so long as you don’t say your truth about God is more correct than anybody else’s version.  Take care if you dare to defend the Truth today, lest they pick up stones to throw at you.  

      Well, I have good news.  Bracing news, but good, in the end.  And my good news is that the Truth is.  Period.  Truth is real, and Truth is not malleable; it is not subject to our whims.  The Truth has unchanging content, and substance.  We poor miserable human beings can rail all we want about our truths, but the Truth is not going away.  Because the Truth is a Person, who meets us in the Liturgy, that is, in the assemblies of God’s people gathered around His Word, and His Font, and His Table.  This Person who is the Truth has revealed His Truth to us through His Holy Word, recorded for us in the Old and New Testaments. 

      Hence, we are not free to interpret that Truth however we would like, twisting God’s Word to suit our preferences or to deflect the criticisms of the world.  When we misuse and twist God’s Word, we do not really change the Truth, because the Truth is Almighty and Eternal.  If we reject the truth, all we are doing, sadly, is separating ourselves from Christ and His Life.  We need to accept Jesus at His Word, because at the heart of that Word is the Truth made flesh, Jesus Christ, come to save, lifted up for the Life of the World. 

      But oh, how we struggle to accept God’s Truth, because it is full of so many hard truths. 

      The Truth is, the Lord’s demand that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac was not unjust.  From the moment of our conception in sin we are naturally enemies of God, and each time we sin, we demonstrate our rebellion.  We deserve nothing but wrath and punishment.  Abraham and Isaac deserved nothing but wrath and punishment.  No one is just, no one is without sin, and the wages of sin is death.  This is the harshest of Truths, too hard to bear, except that God intercedes, providing a substitute sacrifice, for Isaac, and for you. 

      The truth is, God has no eternal use for our sacrifices for sin.  Isaac’s death would have served no purpose.  Neither the blood of Isaac, nor the blood of bulls and goats in the Tabernacle and Temple, nor your resolutions and efforts to amend your life, none of these can make up for your sins and your sinfulness.   The Truth is, justifying, that is, making you right with God, and also sanctifying, making you holy, both of these do require blood.  They do require death.  But a much better blood and death, a blood and a death of infinite holiness and power.   

      Abraham told Isaac the Lord would provide the sacrifice.  And He did.  The Truth is, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, has been provided.  He has made the necessary sacrifice, once and for all.  God was using that strange encounter we heard in our Old Testament reading to prove the power of the faith He had created in Abraham, and to provide a picture of His ultimate salvation plan, the plan to provide a better Sacrifice, the Lamb of God, similarly trapped in thorns.  Jesus was lifted up, for Abraham, and Isaac, and even for the men who drew His blood, nailing Him to a cross.  The Truth is Jesus was lifted up, for Custer and Hill City, for all the world, even for those who want to twist His Truth and declare a way of salvation that leads to nowhere.  This is especially Good News for us, that Jesus’ sacrifice is for all those who have sought to follow and declare a different truth.  Because all of us have, at one time or another, maybe just yesterday, all of us have twisted God’s Truth to suit our sinful desires. 

      And so, truly and humbly confess your errors, your sins, your falsehoods, your guilt.  Confess it all before the Truth of God, and the blood of Jesus will cleanse you from all sin.  This is not some mere conceptual cleansing, restricted to the realm of ideas.  The Truth will not set you free abstractly, somewhere, someday, but rather you are set free right here, right now. 

      The Truth is that blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sin.  It enters your ears, regenerates your heart, and cleanses your soul with the Word of Forgiveness.  This gracious Word even enters into you in the Holy Supper, to give you strength for the road ahead.  

      This is the Mission of God, here in the Black Hills, and all around the world.  You and I by grace through faith are caught up in God’s Mission, as the Lord goes with us, and even in us.  Through our vocations, through the efforts of our congregations, and through your everyday life, God is at work, through His forgiven children.  This is the truly blessed life, that Christ goes with you, to speak His Truth to a world trapped in errors and lies. 

     God grant His Truth to sound forth, in South Dakota, across America, and around the world, for the salvation of many, in the Name of Jesus, Amen.  

Bread King, or Eternal King? Sermon for Laetare, the 4th Sunday in Lent

The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 10^th, Year of Our + Lord 2024
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Bread King, or Eternal King?   
Exodus 16:2-21, Acts 2:41-47, John 6:1-15

Audio of Sermon available HERE.

   Jesus could be your Bread King, but His goal is to be your Eternal King.  Which is to say, our relationship to bread is complicated. 

   I suppose that today, in our age of remarkable food abundance, some people may not
like bread.  But not many.  Certainly in many places in the world still today, and everywhere a century ago, not liking bread would seem suicidal.  Ever since the LORD expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden, we have been raising grain to make bread.  “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.  ¹⁸ “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; ¹⁹ By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”

   God connects bread to death, but also to life.  No longer could Adam and Eve simply walk around the Garden, pick yummy fruit, eat, be filled, and live forever.  Now staying alive would be sweaty, frustrating work, a reminder that starvation and death are never that far away.  And yet, bread is wonderful, evidence of God’s great desire to bless us.  For along with the struggle for daily bread comes the delight of bread, the way it tastes, the joy of being filled with baked goodness.  A Pharisee once rejoiced to Jesus: “Blessed is he who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God!”  (Luke 14:15)   What seems more heavenly than freshly baked bread?  So comforting and delicious, by itself, or serving as the foundation for some almost miraculous meal.  Bread makes pizza possible.  And cinnamon rolls.  Rueben sandwiches, and honey toast. 

   Fresh bread is wonderful.  But it’s wonder fades, quickly.  A slice of bread, no matter how good, quickly becomes hard and disgusting if left out in a hot, dry place.  Too much moisture, and nasty mold ruins your appetite quickly.  Bread plays a leading role in the Bible, certainly in the passages assigned for this Sunday.  Today is called Laetare Sunday, which means “Rejoice!”, the first word in Latin of our Introit:  “Rejoice!”  But the Israelites in our Old Testament reading weren’t rejoicing. 

   Just rescued from bondage in Egypt, the first pang of hunger in the wilderness leaves Israel grumbling, complaining against the LORD.  God had just freed them from slavery under Pharaoh, redeeming them by His mighty arm, performing through Moses never-before-seen wonders and signs.  Despite this, their grumbling stomachs quickly made them long to be slaves again: better to be well fed in captivity than face starvation in freedom, they whined.  Didn’t it occur to them that the Mighty One, who had made a dry path through the Red Sea and struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, might also happily provide food for them?  But instead of praying humbly and faithfully, Israel grumbled.  Which angered the LORD.      

   I think we would be better off if our desire for God were connected to our stomachs, instead of our hearts.  Sinners do desire God.  Despite our fall, their remains in the human heart a question, an interest, to find and draw near to God.  But this good urge, this conscience, this God-shaped-hole in our hearts, fails us.  Our desire for God is weak, and easily overcome by other bodily appetites.  But imagine if, when we had not heard the Word of God for a few hours, we felt hunger pangs in our stomach! 

   Despite His anger at His people, God responded to their grumbling with the Manna, bread from heaven.  Both a blessing to fill their hunger, and a test, a daily discipline to teach them faith.  God would send manna every morning, daily bread, to fill their bellies.  Israel was to collect just what they needed for each day, then double the amount the morning before the sabbath, the day of rest.  Storing up bread because you doubted that God would give the manna tomorrow was forbidden.  A daily reminder of God’s providence and faithfulness.  And a daily test of obedience and attention to the Word of the LORD. 

   Man does not live by bread alone, but on every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. (Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:4, Luke 4:4)  But the threat of hunger is more than our hearts can resist.  Jesus, the Word made flesh, knew his guests.  The congregation of Jews who had followed Him out into the wilderness, seeking His teaching and His healing, would soon lose heart.  They might even faint on the way home, for lack of bread.  So, the same God who had compassion on Israel, back when Moses led them in the wilderness, now has compassion on the crowd.  There’s a lot going on in the feeding of the 5,000, not least that the wonder-working God of Exodus now revealed Himself to be the Man, Jesus of Nazareth. 

   God usually gives the gift of daily bread through a long process of sowing seed, raising grain, harvesting, milling and baking.  Jesus short-circuits this process, and delivers a bounty of fresh-baked loaves, in an instant.  The Creator-King of the Universe, the power behind all the good things we receive, is more than capable of achieving the same blessing in a moment.  The One who created the laws of Physics shows Himself to not be bound by them.  Yes, Jesus could easily have been their Bread King.  But His goal was to be their Eternal King.  

   Jesus’ goal was that the crowds, and the disciples, and you and me, would hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness.  He is more than happy to provide our daily bread and every need of the body.  If only we would understand that having righteousness is better.  Indeed, if we have righteousness, if all that went wrong in the Garden of Eden, and all that has gone wrong since, were set right, then all the needs of the body would always be satisfied as well.  God our Heavenly Father will not let His holy children starve. 

   But our appetites, for food and other bodily satisfactions, preach much louder than even the miracle of bread in the wilderness.  God, in the Man Jesus of Nazareth, had come to His own people, in order to give them the righteousness that is truly the first need of every descendent of Adam.  But the people can’t see past the loaves.  Whatever hunger for righteousness Christ may have stirred in them is overwhelmed by the possibility of filling their stomachs with endless, bountiful bread.  So Jesus, perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself. 

   Jesus withdraws because the blessing of eating bread in the Kingdom of God is not a matter of supply and demand.  Rather, gaining entrance to the eternal feast is a matter of sin, and satisfaction.  Of sacrifice, and trust.  The ingredients for this righteous loaf are not in our pantry; the only thing we have to offer to the recipe is our sin.  Plenty of sin.  Sin so pervasive in us that the Creator can appear, right in front of us, and we still quite naturally ignore Him.  Jesus can be standing right in our midst, and yet we are still prone to bow down to worship the created things He gives us. 

   Our greatest need is to receive God’s forgiveness, His guidance and correction, His grace and mercy.  Along with these gifts of righteousness, the LORD promises also to provide for our bodies.  Jesus promises: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and then all your worldly needs will be filled as well.  But how do we divide our time? 

   How faithfully do we seek God’s righteousness?  How much hunger or want, or simple boredom with the things we have, how much does it take does it take for us to ignore God’s Word and the righteousness He offers?  How quickly do we forget the Spirit’s voice, and instead expend all our energy satisfying our earthly appetites? 

   We could learn from our friend Kim.  His cancer has damaged his body’s ability to receive nourishment.  Lately, it has taken away his appetite, for food.  But His appetite for God’s Word, his hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Christ has never been stronger. 

   The crowd of 5,000 didn’t hunger and thirst for righteousness, and we continue to struggle in much the same way.  Jesus, knowing us better than we know ourselves, and yet still loving us, filled this need as well.  God’s-Son-made-man spent every moment of His life seeking righteousness, for us.  Forty days He went without bread, in order to reverse our enslavement to Satan, relying perfectly on His Father’s Word, trusting that all His needs would be fulfilled in due time.  Thirty-three years He journeyed steadily toward His goal, a Cross of Wood, a dead tree, where He would re-open our access to God’s Tree of Life.  Knowing that earthly bread could not feed our greatest need, He gave His own sinless body to be the True Bread from Heaven, that we might eat it, and never die.

   See your Savior’s hunger and thirst, for you.  See His love, and hear His promise, the menu He has prepared for you and me, the heavenly sustenance that reverses the curse, which has plagued us since Adam’s fall.  Hear the Word of Life, the Apostles’ teaching, which reveals  all that God has done and continues to do to give you the righteousness, the holiness, the forgiveness that brings you into God’s Kingdom. 

   Rejoice in the simplest meal, the breaking of the bread, earthly bread and wine, transformed by Christ.  Satisfy your hunger and thirst for God, by receiving His body broken and His blood shed, for the forgiveness of all your sins.  Take, eat, take, drink, and God’s meal will fill your conscience with peace.  Confess your sins and come to the table of Jesus, so that He can feed you for life.  Be fed with the love of God, in Word and Sacrament, so that in you and through you, God can love your neighbors, in body and soul.  Ponder the mystery of the Bread of Life, so that you will be ready to give an answer to those who will ask you the reason for the Hope that is in you. 

   Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God.  And so we are.  We are blessed to eat the Bread of God, trusting in our Creator and Redeemer, invisible, but truly present for us, today.  He transforms our hearts and minds, to be reminded of the heavenly banquet every time we sit down for an earthly meal.  And so, we give thanks for daily bread, and for the Bread of Heaven, our forgiving Savior and Eternal King, Jesus Christ, who is the same for you, yesterday, today, and forever and ever, Amen.          

Seeing God’s Mercy With Our Ears: Sermon for Oculi, the Third Sunday in Lent

Third Sunday in Lent, Oculi                       
March 3^rd , Year of Our + Lord 2024
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches, 
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Seeing God’s Mercy With Our Ears
Exodus 8 and Luke 11

Sermon audio available HERE. 

   See with your eyes, hear with your ears, and turn to the mercy of God.  That sounds right. 

    But it doesn’t work that way.  God has revealed and declared His Kingdom, His merciful plan to rescue us from every evil of body and soul and bring us to live with Him in perfect happiness, forever.  If only we will see with our eyes and hear with our ears.  But our eyes deceive us, our ears are stuffed up with the noise of the world, and we too often seek relief anywhere but in the one place God has promised to deliver His mercy. 

    Some fools make themselves deaf and blind, because they don’t really want mercy.  Submitting to God and begging for mercy clashes with their self-image.  Pharoah is one such wise-fool.  As are the opponents of Jesus in our Gospel reading, who accuse the Lord of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the Devil.  These are really the same people, even though almost 1,500 years lie between them.  And such proud souls are still easy to see, all around us in the world today.  Intelligent, well-informed people who can see the evidence, but refuse to acknowledge the presence of God, doing His mighty works.  God’s mercy puts a big crimp in our plans for personal greatness and self-actualization.  There’s a reason that many elites don’t just reject Christianity, but rather they hate and attack it.  Such wise fools, ancient and modern, make up lies and false accusations, denying the truth they can see.  Instead of acknowledging God, they instead promote lies that serve their selfish desires, for the short term, at least. 

    Other souls recognize their need for God’s help.  And Jesus is attractive to them.  But when they see what God’s mercy truly looks like, they avert their eyes.  It’s too hard to look at it.  God’s plan of salvation is such a downer.  Except when it’s worse, when God’s mercy looks downright terrifying.  Such folks want to maintain a connection to Jesus and His mercy, but without really looking too closely.  They avert their eyes, and point out some side show.  They nod a bit toward the finger of God in their midst, but prefer to shift attention, their own and everyone else’s, away from the stark realities of mercy, to focus on softer, secondary things.  We can see this view displayed by the woman in the crowd. 

    This dear woman has just seen and heard a preview of the great drama of salvation, the final conflict between God and Beelzebul, between the Creator and that fallen angel who had  enslaved humanity.  Somebody’s house is about to fall.  Jesus is about to engage in the final battle with the strong man, in order to plunder his kingdom. 

    Which is to say, Jesus is about to fight unto death in order to win sinners back from the power of death, and hell, and Satan.  ‘Fix your eyes on Jesus’ is the proper cry; ‘watch Him fight and die, for us.’  But no, that’s too intense. 

   At just this moment, to change the subject, our unnamed woman in the crowd decides to sing a hymn of praise to Jesus’ mother, Mary: “Blessed is the womb who bore you and the breasts at which you nursed!”  This woman redirects us to Mary.  Other misguided souls might encourage us to treat Church as just a social club, or to elevate doing good in the community above repentance for sins and forgiveness.  The desire to focus on anything but Christ crucified is still strong.    

    And yet this woman’s words are true enough.  There’s nothing wrong with celebrating the amazing and mysterious fact that God chose an unknown Jewish girl, Mary from Nazareth, to conceive and give birth and nurse His eternal Son.  A sign from heaven, indeed.  We should marvel that the Christ entered into His eternal battle, through Mary’s womb.  In fact, we have a big holiday every December, to celebrate just this event, through which Mary is truly the most blessed woman, ever.  But Mary’s big role in the Divine Drama is part of the opening act, not the climax.  As Jesus approaches the final battle, it is not time to sing praise to Mary.  It is time to open our eyes and unplug our ears, to see and hear clearly what God is doing.   

    In fact, even in the middle of her opening act, there was just a little praise for Mary.  From the beginning, the focus was the finger of God.  The focus was always on God’s saving acts, performed in this world, within our human calendar.  Just listen to Mary herself.  Mary gave us a great song of praise, the Magnificat, which she sang in response to the words of her cousin Elizabeth.  Elizabeth had first celebrated Mary, the mother of her Lord, because Mary in that moment carried God’s Son, Elizabeth’s Savior, in her womb.  Quite right. 

    In response, Mary sings.  And, in all of her magnificient song, Mary says just one thing that could be understood as self-praise: “All generations will call me blessed.”  But the rest of her song reveals that even that statement gives all the glory to God.  For Mary goes on to declare her blessing is that the Mighty One did a great thing to her.  She sings of God, fulfilling all His promises to reverse evil, to cast down the self-important and mighty, and to show mercy to the lowly. 

    All this God was doing by sending the Savior, who, two millenia earlier, He had promised to Abraham.  The long awaited Seed, the Savior of the whole world, was the Baby growing in Mary’s womb.  And she is truly a great preacher, because her song points us to Christ.  Mary never teaches us to praise her, but rather consistently tells us focus on Jesus, and to listen to Him.    

    Following His mother’s example, Jesus gently redirects the woman in the crowd, turning her away from celebrating Mary, and calling her to hear God.  Jesus corrects this woman’s focus on His mother’s maternal service by proclaiming,  “Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!”  Like Mary did. 

    But, we don’t hear so well.  Our hearing is very imperfect.  We prefer to see things with our own eyes.  Still, as precious as our sight is, we are so easily deceived by images.  Today many worry about the power of Artificial Intelligence to create pictures and video so good that our eyes can hardly distinguish from reality. But, this is just the latest iteration of an ancient problem.  We innately believe what we see, even though time and again events teach us that our eyes are easily fooled.  People are worried that AI will mean we won’t be able to tell what is fake on the internet.  This overlooks the fundamental reality that everything we see on the internet and television is fake.  It’s a copy, an image of the real thing.  To one degree or another, what we see on screens is at best a copy of reality.  That copy that may be more or less accurate.  But what we see on our screens is never the real thing. 

    Screens with their flickering and flashing light can intensify the fakery, transfixing our eyes, and our minds, and our hearts, like cattle at a feed trough.  And the digital feed we are given is often very unhealthy.  Screens also isolate us from the real world and real people. 

    But remember, the real world is full of deception too.  Just consider how big trucks are sold as the way for men to look really rugged.  Or think about make-up, hair dye, girdles and push-up bras, high heels for women and lifts in men’s shoes.  False-fronts on downtown buildings, and manufactured ‘stone’ siding on the front of our houses.  The world is full of visual deception, because we so much want things to look better than they really are. 

    Our propensity for and susceptibility to visual deception can create real difficulties in our daily lives.  Being fooled is humiliating.  And maintaining a fake image is exhausting.

    Much more serious, however, is our natural tendency to view the things of God through the same faulty lenses.  Seeing with our eyes ought to work.  But we cannot see the things of God rightly.  And we do need to see them rightly.  No matter how intelligent, anyone who refuses to submit to God and seek His mercy is a fool.  And, however warm our feelings for the young woman who bore and nursed the Son of God, nostalgia will not save us from the power of Beelzebul.  So Jesus calls us to ‘see’ in another way. 

    Our Savior is mercy incarnate.  He is the infinite compassion and love of God revealed in the flesh and blood Son of Mary.  To deliver His mercy, Jesus decrees a temporary re-wiring of our senses.  He institutes a new way for us to see.  Christians are to see with their ears, until that great Day when He will bring us fully into His Kingdom, when we will finally see God with our own eyes, face to face. 

    What does it mean to see Jesus with our ears?  In matters of salvation and Christian living, Jesus tells us to distrust our own eyes, and to disregard every voice except His own.  Without the Word of God, without the Word of Christ, without the voice of Jesus our Shepherd, our eyes are blind to God’s mercy.  So, in mercy, Christ declares the difficult truth that is behind the finger of God.  We are called to rightly understand what our eyes see, but only through the Word which reveals the hidden truth of God’s mercy. 

    The Exodus of Israel from Egypt, with all the mighty wonders God did through Moses, the long history of Israel, full of great battles, the selfless and heroic service of Mary and Joseph, called to care for God’s Son, from conception through infancy, childhood and adolescence, all these wonderful stories of God’s faithful people are prelude.  None of this history has any lasting value apart from the final act.  The great finale of God’s Drama of Deliverance, the Story of Salvation, reveals the King who was born to die for His people.  The Cross is the final revelation of the finger of God. 

    Hidden in the painful sight of Christ crucified is the love of God, poured out to take away the sins of all people.  But then the glorious risen Christ, the ever-living victor over Beelzebul, only showed Himself to a few disciples, from time to time, over just forty days.  Christ chose to deliver to the world the Good News of His forgiving love only through the Words of His Apostles.  No blazing bright victory tour, no slick and dazzling media blitz.  Just a few transformed souls who heard and finally understood the mystery of God’s hidden display of forgiveness and love and new life. 

    The Apostles and the Early Church imitated Jesus by forgiving each other, as God in Christ had forgiven them.  So also, we forgive one another.  As Peter and Paul made people see the true Savior through their simple words, so also we walk by faith, not by sight.  We live by faith in Him whom the Holy Spirit has revealed to the eyes of our heart, through the vision of our ears, which have been opened by God’s truth. 

    These sins which Paul warns against today, sexual immorality and impurity, covetousness, filthiness, foolish talk, crude joking, these are all tools of deception, tempting distractions that seek to take our eyes off the saving finger of God, the great work of Jesus.  Imitating God starts by hearing daily the Good News of Jesus, which sets us free from sin and unites us with God, today, and forever.  The sins Paul warns against are all part of the natural darkness of this world.  But the light of Christ has dispelled this darkness.  The pleasure and distraction sin offers do not last.  Sin brings pain and destruction into our lives.  But even more, sin seeks to deceive us into wandering farther and farther from the true and eternal victory, Christ’s victory, hidden in defeat, the new life that was taken out of death, the new life, which He won for us. 

    And so we pray:  Holy Spirit, shine the light of Your truth in our ears, that our hearts may ever be fixed where true joys are found, in the mystery of Christ Jesus, risen from the dead and reigning on high to prepare our place in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Guard us by Your Word in this true faith, until that great Day when we will see the Father face to face, with You and the Lamb, Christ Jesus, reigning in glory, forever and ever, Amen.