Not a Bad Seat in the House

 Sermon for the 17th Sunday after Trinity
September 27^th, Year of Our + Lord 2026
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Not a Bad Seat in the House 
Based on Proverbs 25:6-7 and Luke 14:1-11

Audio of the sermon is available HERE.

   Shelee and I had tickets to a concert in Rapid City a couple weeks ago, part of the Rapid City Concert Association 2026-2027 series.  We bought our series tickets from Sue Bruer, a member in Custer, who sells them on behalf of the Hot Springs Concert Association.  There is an affiliation between four associations in the area, Newcastle and Belle Fourche being the other two.  However, in year’s past if country folk wanted to attend a series concert in the big city, one had to pay a per concert supplemental fee.  More money to attend the Rapid City concerts.  This year, the associations offered full reciprocity between all the locations.  If you have the time and the gas money, you could attend 15 or 20 concerts with tickets to just one series.  Rapid is a lot closer for us than Hot Springs, Newcastle or Belle.  So, we bought tickets from Sue and marked our calendars.

   As the first Rapid City concert, which was called “Jazz that Rocks,” drew near, Shelee and I were discussing when we needed to leave.  The tickets are general admission, no assigned seats.  Did we need to get there early, to make sure we got good seats?  Then I checked the venue, which was the Performing Arts Center of Rapid City, the Historic Theater inside the High School on Columbus St.  We had attended a concert there before, and I remembered that it is a spacious room, and there really isn’t a bad seat in the house.  From the balcony to the undercroft to the wings to the front row, every seat has good sight lines to the stage, and the sound fills the whole room.  No worries about good seats, we just needed to get into the room, get into the party.  And, we had our full-reciprocity tickets, so we could relax, and eagerly anticipate the concert.  Which was great, by the way. 

   I thought of this when I began studying Biblical texts for today, which twice discuss the
common human angst of worrying about good seats, about the prestige of sitting near the head table.  First we heard of this in our Proverbs reading, and then in Jesus’ parable about vying for seats at a wedding banquet in Luke 14.  And say, have you ever noticed how often wedding banquets play a big part in our Lord’s teaching? 

   Our access to good seats at the Historic Theater was a simple financial transaction.  But some special events are by invitation only.  You could be the biggest fan ever of Travis Kelce, (tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs), or of the pop singer Taylor Swift.  I’m not suggesting you should be their fan, nor that I understand why anyone is.  Still, they have a lot of fans.  But just being a passionate fan would not have gotten you into their wedding, held in Madison Square Garden last July.  By invitation only, thank you very much.     

   Have you ever been left out of a big event you so much wanted to attend?  Or, maybe worse, have you ever gotten into that big party, but once there, found you couldn’t get next to the star?  Getting  close to whomever you thought was the coolest kid there was a huge competition, and you didn’t compete well enough.  Nor were you someone the most popular kid thought to call over close.  Now, we may think this is just a teenage phenomenon, but the same dynamic is at play in both Proverbs 25, written almost 3,000 years ago, and Luke 11, whose events happened almost exactly 2,000 years ago.  Human nature has not really changed.  The important and popular people, those with power or wealth or perceived importance, still love to have lesser souls vying for their attention.  And people, including those same important people, still have a perverse need to get the best seats, to be seen as someone popular, important.  Or at least close to important. 

   Which is a sad commentary on us humans.  And, in regard to the most important parties, also unnecessary.  At the very best parties, at the wedding banquet that you really must get into, there isn’t a bad seat in the house.  All that matters is that you get in the door; the rest is joy and glory, no matter where you are seated. 

   Again this Sunday Jesus is waging theological combat with the Pharisees, that Jewish religious party of experts in the Law of Moses, who really loved to be seen as important and pious.  They were also terribly caught up in rule-following for the sake of rule-following, and the personal prestige they believed it gained them.  So much so that over the years the Pharisees had added hundreds of extra laws to the already long list of rules that God had given Israel through Moses.  To be sure, many of their new laws had some connection to some law from Moses.  Ritual cleanliness was a Mosaic requirement; certain washings were required before priests did certain things in the Temple.  Well, cleanliness is good, right?  So, why don’t we say that every time we eat, we must wash our hands?  In fact, let’s imply that failing to wash before eating is a sin! 

   Now, I think handwashing before meals is a good thing.  But it is one thing to encourage a healthy habit, and another thing altogether to declare that good people always do it, and those who do not are basically ungodly, on the precipice of eternal damnation.  And by the way, we shouldn’t imagine that these tendencies of the Pharisees are no longer around.  Didn’t we see similar self-righteous proclamations about a variety of cleanliness practices during the recent pandemic?  Remember wiping down the canned goods from the grocery store?  Or being told to wear a mask when you were walking by yourself in the woods?  Again, I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t choose good hygiene.  I am saying, because God the Holy Spirit says it again and again in His Word, that God’s goal is to save souls.  So, anyone who seeks to bind consciences and create fear and guilt in souls with rules that God Himself has not given is inviting the anger of the Almighty. 

   Which is what we see at the beginning of our Gospel reading.  Jesus’ anger is unspoken, but smolders under the surface in His question concerning healing on the Sabbath. Listen again: One Sabbath, when [Jesus] went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. ² And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. ³ And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” ⁴ But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. ⁵ And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” ⁶ And they could not reply to these things.

   The LORD, which is to say, Jesus, along with His Father and the Holy Spirit, gave the Sabbath for the good of people.  God, after the six day Creation, did not rest on the 7^th Day because He was tired.  No, He rested because He knew we would grow tired, physically and spiritually.  Once sin ruined us, the Sabbath rest needed more details, to help us truly rest.  God gave these details to Israel through Moses.  And healing and restoration was always the point of the Sabbath.  So the Pharisees should have answered Jesus’ question with, “Of course, healing is what the Sabbath is for.”  But they could not, because they believed the Sabbath was for impressing God.  They twisted the idea of not working, and so had added to the LORD’s Law.  The Pharisees had declared the “work” of healing to be included in the “do no work” restriction of the Sabbath.  But really, is a miraculous healing the work of a man? 

   Only if that Man is also God.  Bottom line, the Sabbath is for promoting health and life, which come from God.  So, if you happen to be able to work miraculous healings, please feel free to do so, seven days a week. 

   Now, we should note that the Pharisees allowed for other exceptions to their strict interpretation of the Law.  For example, some Jewish men and women no doubt prepared and served their fancy Sabbath banquet to which they invited Jesus. That definitely seems like it could be considered work. 

   As you can read in Matthew 23, in His famous “Seven Woes” to the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus could get really angry with Jewish religious elites who twisted God’s Word to control the people and make themselves look good.  And, in His overall plan of salvation, Jesus needs to get the Pharisees to seek His death.  So, He is more than willing to point out their hypocrisies and make them angry.  Still, at the same time, He is truly reaching out to them in love.  Jesus seeks their conversion, just like everyone one else’s.  But the Pharisees can’t see this.  They can only see Jesus as a rulebreaker, a rulebreaker who makes them look bad. 

   In the face of their silence, Jesus tells them a parable, trying to shine a light of truth to free them from their legalistic blindness.  “Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor,”  You probably noticed how Jesus is paraphrasing and expanding on Proverbs 25:6-7:  Do not put yourself forward in the king's presence, or stand in the place of the great, ⁷ for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.”

   Jesus gives good practical advice.  It is better to not obsess over popularity and personal honor; if you join in that game, sooner or later you’ll end up getting publicly shamed.  But if you lower your self-importance and just enjoy it when you get invited to a nice event, your life will be better. 

   Jesus gives good practical advice, but that is not all that He is teaching.  There is a reason Jesus specifically uses a wedding banquet as the special meal in His parable.  Jesus is always trying to penetrate dull, proud hearts.  He wants everyone to understand that He, Jesus, is talking about getting souls into the eternal wedding feast that is heaven.  And, that Jesus Himself is their entrance ticket. 

   This is the deepest meaning of the last sentence of our Gospel reading: For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.  Again, Jesus is giving good day to day advice: live proudly, and sooner or later you will get knocked down a peg or two; live humbly, and you may be surprised when you are unexpectedly honored and blessed.  Certainly, when the party you are praying to get into is hosted by the LORD God Almighty, sinners like you and me necessarily need to be humble, confessing our sins and throwing ourselves on the infinite mercy of the Judge. 

   But even more than this practical truth about living humbly, Jesus is proclaiming Himself and His Cross.  For Jesus is the Christ, the anointed Savior sent from heaven, the eternal Son of the Most High.  God in His essence, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is definitely exalted, lifted up, worthy of honor and praise forever and ever, Amen.  And yet, Jesus humbled Himself.  The Exalted One humbled Himself; this is the ever-surprising central act of God’s eternal plan to fill His wedding banquet with souls.  Jesus humbled Himself, taking on the form of a servant, a man, born of a woman, born under His own Law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons, that we might be true heirs of God’s kingdom.  

   Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and He who humbles Himself will be exalted.  Jesus used the pride and jealousy of the Pharisees, and the contempt of the chief priests, and the nervous fear of the Roman governor in order to reach the nadir of humility, death on a cross, death under the wrath of God.  And so, because Jesus humbled Himself in this way, God the Father has exalted Jesus, raising Him from death and shame.  God has revealed in the Man, Christ Jesus, all the glory of heaven, as He seated Him at His right hand in glory, forever and ever, Amen. 

   Shelee and I enjoyed the concert we recently attended, it was a great show.  But there has never been a show, never been a spectacle, like the One Jesus put on in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.  A crucifixion was a public spectacle, intended by the Romans as a warning to anyone who might think to exalt themselves against their power and authority. 

   But Jesus transformed the Romans’ horrible crime-and-revolution-deterrence tool, making it both eternally awful, and eternally wonderful.  Awful, truly dreadful, because there Jesus took into His own body and soul all the true rule-breaking, all the sin ever committed against God and His Way.  Wonderful, because this means your sins and mine are washed away!  All of them.  By this greatest act of humility ever, Jesus has made Himself our ticket to the eternal wedding feast, the eternal celebration of God with all His beloved adopted children, gathered around His throne, forever and ever, Amen. 

   You are invited, your ticket is secure, in the resurrected Son of God, Christ Jesus.  Believe it, the Father is looking forward to having you seated at His side, in a seat of honor.  Rejoice in this invitation, this gift, this future guaranteed by Jesus’ forgiving blood. 

   Rejoice, and rehearse for the upcoming party.  Rehearse by receiving the foretaste of the feast to come that is God’s Word and Supper.  In the Word, the Spirit teaches you again and again how Jesus is your Host, your Best Friend, your Savior.  In His seemingly simple and unimpressive Meal, Jesus gives you His Body and Blood, for forgiveness and for the strengthening of your faith in His promises. 

    Believe, rejoice, rehearse.  And recount.  Recount, tell again, this surprising story.  That is, let the great reversal that Jesus has completed for you be on your lips.  Give thanks to God for this Good News; speak it to one another, sing it out.  Maybe you could even take  Sue Bruer’s approach.  Sue is a big fan of music and of the concert series.  So she talks it up, every year, encouraging people to come and hear for themselves. 

   You and I are big fans of Jesus and His Good News.  So, you and I can speak this way about God’s Gospel.  You and I can simply invite people to come and hear.  You and I can be ready to give the reason for our hope to anyone who asks us how we can be so hopeful and happy, even when life hands us humble pie. 

    How humbling, and how wonderful is the thought, the truth, the promise that sinners like you and me have guaranteed seats to the greatest celebration anyone could ever imagine.  Do we care if we are seated at the head table, or in the corner?  No, of course not.  For every seat in God’s house is good, for Jesus’ sake, forever and ever, Amen. 

Freed from Death, Freed to Love

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
September 20^th, Year of Our + Lord 2026
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
Freed from Death, Freed to Love
Psalm 30, 1 Kings 17:17-24, Luke 7:11-17

Audio of the Sermon can be found HERE.

   You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth, and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.  O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

   Each week our lectionary suggests an Introit, which consists of Psalm verses that serve as our entrance into God’s Word, often providing the theme for the Sunday.  A full Psalm is also suggested, along with a short responsive reading we call a Gradual.  One of these is to be sung or recited after the Old Testament reading; we usually use the Gradual.  Today, I decided to replace the lectionary’s appointed Introit, from Psalm 86, with a few verses from our appointed Psalm, Psalm 30.  I did this because Psalm 30 matches up so well with both our Old Testament and our Gospel readings. 

   Two widows passed through great tragedy, one almost nine centuries before Christ, and one during the time Jesus visibly walked this earth.  But, praise be to God, both were lifted out of their sorrow and given joy, just as Psalm 30 recounts.  Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.  O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.  Sing praises to the Lord, O you, His saints, for His anger is but for a moment, and His favor is for a lifetime.  

   This is our second Sunday in a row with the Widow of Zarephath.  Last week we heard that she and her son were facing starvation, but the Lord gave her a miracle through the Prophet Elijah, a jar of flour and a jug of oil that never ran out, until the drought and famine were over.  I assume she was overjoyed with this miraculous blessing.  Which had to make her fall at the start of today’s Old Testament reading that much harder: God had provided food, but nevertheless, her only son fell ill and died.  What good is all the flour and oil in the world when you lose your only family member, your beloved only son? 

   The Widow from the village of Nain similarly lost her only son, a young man.  His tearful funeral procession collides with the joyful parade of Jesus and His followers.  Jesus has been teaching, speaking God’s truth like no one ever had, and miracles were coming fast, healing the sick, casting out demons, rescuing hurting people everywhere He went.  Happy, expectant people followed Jesus around. 

   Life from God collided with the death we all dread, and life won!  Elijah cries out to the LORD, and performs a very up close and personal miracle, stretching himself out over the dead boy three times.  Funny how the number three is always coming up in the Bible. 

   Jesus runs into the funeral procession and tells the widow, “Do not weep.”  Now, every once in a while at a funeral I hear a well-meaning person say something similar to “do not weep” to family members who are mourning the death of their loved one.  I try not to get too upset, but I do try to intervene and correct these very unhelpful words.  Feeling very sad and crying at a funeral are normal, and often very necessary. 

   Death is an enemy, not part of God’s original plan for us.  So, console mourners with the promises of Christ, and please do not tell them to not take it so hard, to not cry.  Don’t say this, unless of course, you are then going to go up to the coffin to call the deceased back to life! 

   The LORD turned the sackcloth and mourning of these two widows into dancing and gladness.  These two miracles foreshadow the promise of resurrection that God has made to all His children, and that Jesus guaranteed by His own suffering, death and third-day resurrection.  We rightly pray for healing and life when death threatens, especially if death threatens a young person.  And yet we know that not even death can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus.  We walk by faith, not by sight, and our path through this dying world will include great sadnesses.  But the Righteous and Resurrected One walks with us, and because He lives, we know that all who are joined to Him by faith will also live, even though we die physical deaths.  Death has lost its sting, because Jesus was pierced, for us, and rested in the tomb, and rose on the third day. 

   These two wonderful reversals for the widows also give us a good opportunity to talk about Christian freedom, about what it means to live in the liberty that Jesus has won for us. 

   It is interesting to note how the LORD seems to break a lot of rules in these two death and resurrection stories.  Yahweh is the God of Israel, but He sends Elijah to live with a foreigner.  Do you suppose that the local gossips had much to say about the Widow of Zarephath providing lodging to this Israelite preacher who showed up at her door?  At Nain, Jesus not only dares to tell the widow not to weep, but then He breaks Moses’s prohibition against touching a dead body. 

   The pallbearers at a Jewish funeral were not just bearing a heavy physical and emotional load.  By their service, which required them to come into contact with a dead body, they were made ritually unclean, and would have to go through a purification process, before they could enter the synagogue or Temple again, before they could fully rejoin their community.  But Jesus walks right up and touches the bier, the litter on which they carried the young man, and so He made contact with the dead body. 

   You might know that such rule breaking was pretty common for our Lord.  According to the rules, a pious Israelite did not hang out with Gentiles, that is, with pagan foreigners.  A righteous Jew did not associate with tax collectors or prostitutes.  Lepers were not to be touched.  And yet Jesus did all these things, and more.  He broke the rules, and that is o.k.  Indeed, in this we see a hint of the freedom that Christ has won for us.   First and foremost, freedom from sin and its punishments by God, and also freedom from the many detailed rules and restrictions God gave through Moses. 

   We should remember that, even though in general He submitted to the Law, Jesus as God was not actually bound by the rules He had given to Moses.  They were given because of human sin, and Jesus had no sin of His own.  And the purpose of God’s Law has always been to guide sinners to salvation.  Saving lives, saving souls, is God’s goal, not just that rules be followed.  Rule following is important for us, but Jesus understands better than anyone that His Father’s ultimate desire is to save.  So, when it helped Him heal and save, Jesus broke some of the rules, in particular the added-on rules of the Pharisees. 

   In His mission, Jesus also fulfilled and set aside all the special ritual sacrifice rules of the Temple, the numerous detailed demands that He had placed on Israel through Moses.  All these ceremonial laws had the same purpose: to point forward to the work Christ would do for us, on His Cross.  So, after the Resurrection, the detailed requirements for worship in the Temple, all the required sacrifices, none of these ceremonial laws apply to Christ’s Church.  We are under the New Covenant, and so are freed from the demands of the Old Covenant. 

   This does not mean there are no rules, no laws for Christians to follow.  There is an order, there is a way that God intends human life to be lived, a way for His children to interact with each other, and with the world.  We find a lot of this order in Genesis one and two: In His own image God created them, male and female.  Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.  Exercise dominion over the earth, and all living things.  A man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 

   We also learn much of God’s order for our lives in the Ten Commandments.  And here, in regard to the 3^rd Commandment, we also learn about Christian freedom.  God commanded Israel to remember the Sabbath Day, the 7^th day, by keeping it holy.  In Third Day Freedom, the Christian Church obeys the principle of the 3^rd commandment, but not the detail.  For Jesus has perfectly fulfilled the Sabbath, by His rest in the Tomb, for us. 

   God does command all people to worship Him, but the specific requirement to do it on the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath for Israel, Saturday in our calendar, no longer applies.  To stop, rest, hear God, receive His gifts and give praise and thanks to Him, this is built into the order of God’s creation from the beginning.  But the specific day that Moses designated as required, along with a bunch of other detailed requirements about worship, these no longer apply under Christ.  To celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus, the Church established the tradition of worship on the first day of the week.  But in truth, every day is a good day to worship.  The foundational principles are to let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, and Do not give up gathering together, as some are in the habit of doing.

   What other rules apply to Christians?  Well, proclaiming God’s Word is not optional.  As the resurrected Jesus said:  Preach the Gospel to all the Creation, to all the Nations, from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.  And, when the Gospel creates opportunities, the Church is to baptize, to make disciples by applying plain water combined with the three-fold name of God revealed by Jesus: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. 

   Huh, there’s that number three again. 

   Anything more?  Take and eat, this is My Body, says Jesus.  Take and drink, the New Covenant in My blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.  Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.  Also, as we heard from St. Paul last week, So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. 

    In essence, the freedom of the Christian is to live out the two great commandments, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”   Christian wisdom knows that loving God starts, and can only continue, by first receiving His love, which overcomes our sin, and empowers our love.  We love, because He first loved us.  And so gathering around Christ’s Word and gifts, weekly and daily, to receive again the love and the wisdom of Christ, this is built into the order of God’s Church.  The exact details of how we organize our worship, the shape of our spaces, how we dress, what our music sounds like, these things are not specified in the New Testament.  We have the truth of Christ, His Law, His Gospel, His mysteries of Baptism and the Supper.  With these always before our eyes and in our ears and hearts, in Christian freedom, we seek to worship in ways that best deliver Jesus’ saving Gospel. 

   Loving our neighbors is also not optional.  We are of course warned many times in the Bible not to be corrupted by the sinful world.  At the same time, we are to seek to love both friend and enemy, and be ready to give the reason for our hope, that is, to speak of Christ and His love.  As we were reminded a few weeks ago in the parable of the Good Samaritan, when God puts people in our path with needs, we are to love them, as God in Christ has loved us.      

   Now, you might be thinking, “Wow, this Christian Freedom doesn’t sound all that free.” And there is a lot of shape and detail to the way God calls us to live, a rightly ordered life that God really cares about.  So, besides the number of rules, is there a difference between living under the Law of Moses and living in the Freedom of Christ? 

   Absolutely, the difference between death and life.  First and foremost, loving God and neighbor are a fruit that flows from saving faith, not a requirement for salvation.  Note how the Psalmist ordered his words: You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth, and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.  O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever! 

   First God rescues us, first God saves us, and then we are set free to sing His praise and thank Him, in our worship, and in our lives.  The Old Covenant said: Do these things, sinner, and you will live.  But we cannot, and so death threatens.  The New Covenant does not command, but rather delivers:  Here is Christ, who has fulfilled the Law, for you, living in perfect love, and dying under infinite punishment, in order to forgive you and set you free.  His resurrected life is your new life.  His Good News renews your heart and mind, and creates in you the desire to pursue the life of love, the desire to pass on the love you’ve received, for this is who you are, in Christ. 

   In Christ Jesus, you are free.  Free from sin, for He has washed it away.  Free from fear and guilt, for you are covered with His righteousness.  Free to love, to pursue the life of love that God created you to live.  Free to reject the temptations of Satan.  Free to flee to the Son Who died too young, but rose again on the Third Day, for you, and every sinner.  In good times and bad, flee to Christ, for He is always ready to receive you, to rejoice with you, and as you need it, to restore you again, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. 

 

Freedom from Worry

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.
September 13^th, Year of Our + Lord 2026
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
Based on Matthew 6:24 - 34, 1 Kings 17:8 – 24

Audio of the sermon can be found HERE.

Don’t worry. 

   Today Jesus tells us not to be anxious.   But, you have to talk to a good friend about a real problem, and it’s keeping you up at night.  But your finances are really tight, and you don’t know how you can pay all your bills.  Or perhaps you know that you need to confront a loved one about something that’s threatening to ruin their life and the lives of others, but you don’t know how to do it.  Sometimes we have worries on our minds and it drives us crazy, and it’s all we can think about.  

   If your married, your wonderful spouse will kindly tell you, “Honey, just stop worrying about it.”  And that fixes it…   

   But actually, no.  That’s kind, but it doesn’t help much. 

   Last Tuesday Caleb Schewe, the new senior pastor at Divine Shepherd Lutheran Church in Black Hawk, preached on today’s texts at our circuit meeting.  This was a real gift.   He did a fine job unpacking the Word for us.  And, he told me about something I’ve never heard of.  He said that Jesus suggests something similar to a common psychological tool called “the blue elephant and the purple dolphin.”  The idea is that if there’s this big blue elephant in the living room of your head, distracting you and it’s all you can think about and it’s driving you crazy and you need to be able to get around and get past it, you should simply think about a purple dolphin, instead.  That is, you should think about something completely different to get your mind off the first thing making you anxious.  Stop thinking about the blue elephant; instead, think about the purple dolphin.  Voila! Worry gone.   

   I’m not sure how broadly this technique works in real life, but Jesus does say something fairly similar.  Our reading starts with Him telling us that we can’t serve both God and money.  Either we will hate one and love the other, or we will be devoted to one and despise the other.  As the lectionary summary in our bulletin put it so well, the worship that money demands is our worry and our envy toward others.  The worship God seeks is faith, that we trust that He is our loving Father who will take care of us, body and soul, now and forever. 

   We are all susceptible to trying to serve God and money.  But, I think we can understand why we don’t want to make an idol out of our money and our stuff. That’s a miserable life. 

   But Jesus takes it further, moving on to tell us not to worry.  Don’t worry about what you’re going to eat. Don’t worry about what you’re going to wear.  Instead of worrying, look at something else.  Look at the at the birds of the air.  They don’t plant crops or harvest and store up grain, and yet the Father provides food for them.  Don’t worry, think about something totally different.  Don’t worry about what you’re going to wear; instead, consider the flowers of the field.  Even King Solomon in all his glory wasn’t dressed as beautifully as the plants with their flowers, which today are alive, and tomorrow are thrown into the fire.  To help you not worry about material goods, Jesus suggests we consider how His Father provides for the natural world, and trust that He will take even better care of us.

   Pastor Schewe just moved here from Iowa farm country, and so he went on to talk about sparrows, which are apparently a big deal there, and quite a problem for the farmers.  Maybe the next time he preaches on this text, the Black Hills will have shown him a few more interesting birds to consider.  I certainly have a more interesting list.  Our back deck overlooks Spring Creek, then out to tree-lined ridges, with Humbolt Mountain dominating our northern skyline.  Our skies are filled with soaring vultures, noisy osprey, cooing doves, swarming blackbirds, bald eagles, mallards, geese, goldfinches, house finches, swallows, pine siskins, and yes, also sparrows.  Shelee and I do spend a fair bit of time watching them, and we love it. 

   If I had to pick my two favorite birds from this summer, they would be the largest and smallest.  For a few weeks, we had a pair of golden eagles frequenting our skies, including landing in our trees and screeching at a bald eagle who happened by.  Huge, amazing birds.  On the small side, we have also had lots of hummingbirds, zipping around, chasing each other, hunting bugs, and sucking the nectar out of Shelee’s flowers.  The physics of a hummingbird do not seem possible to my eye, and I sure like watching them. 

   And, while I’m gazing at the birds, I’m not worrying about things.  I’m too busy being amazed. 

   But.  But, we can only spend so much time watching birds, right?  And while we want to obey Jesus’ command to not be anxious, indeed, we love the feeling of not worrying, the truth is most of us worry, maybe all of us.  Considering the birds and the flowers may distract us from our worries for a while, but if that is all Jesus’ has for us today, it isn’t very helpful, a psychological band-aid for profound human problems. 

   Because our problems are real, and have bad consequences.  Which is why the widow of Zarephath is included in our readings this morning.  She had problems.  Widowhood and death by starvation, not just of herself, but also of her son.  That’s terrible.  Starvation is not much of a threat to us, and our lives are awash in material blessings, especially compared to the lives of most people of most times and places.  But we have other terrible problems that afflict us and our loved ones.  A sudden cancer diagnosis.  A chronic and debilitating condition.  Broken relationships.  Addictions to alcohol, drugs, gambling or pornography.  All precursors to the final enemy, which is death. 

   We need something better than a pious version of the “Blue Elephant/Purple Dolphin,” distraction technique.  We need to face our real problems, our real enemies. 

   Thankfully, our Lord knows this.  Better than we do, actually.  Most people have some idea about God and good and evil, and almost everybody is afraid of death.  But we can’t understand the truth about God and sin and righteousness and life and death, unless the Lord sends us His Word. 

   Which He did for the Widow of Zarephath.  Foreshadowing the good news that God’s desire to save and bless extends to all nations, the LORD sends His Word to this foreigner, this Gentile widow, because He wants to save her and her son, use her to care for His prophet Elijah, and because He needs to teach all of us how He works, and about the true nature and incredible depth of His love for mankind. 

   The Bible doesn’t tell us how she came to recognize that YHWH, the God of Israel, is the true God.  But when His prophet Elijah (whose name happens to mean ‘My God is YHWH’) asks her for water and a cake of bread, she has enough faith to trust and obey his word.  Now, maybe it was easier for her to give away some of her last bit of flour, since she knew they were about to run out anyway.  What does it matter if their final meal is even smaller than she thought?  Starvation was at the door, either way. 

   Regardless of these unanswered details, the LORD through His Word enabled her to trust and obey, then be convinced, and then to rejoice in God’s miraculous provision.  In the midst of want and encroaching death, a miracle of bounty and life, in the never exhausted containers of flour and oil in her cupboard.  Through this, the widow of Zarephath, and her son also, I assume, learn to trust the Word of the LORD. 

   Still, this is still just an earthbound story about material blessings, so far.  Believing the Word of the LORD is a wonderful and necessary start, but like Jesus feeding the 5,000 from five loaves and two fish a millenia later, only physical hunger has been addressed.  That’s important, but sin and death are still looming.  Which, spoiler alert, we will hear about in next Sunday’s Old Testament reading, which is the continuation of the Zarephath story in 1^st Kings 17.  And this is the real blessing of believing in the Word of the LORD.  As much as the LORD loves to give us food and clothing and shelter, and speaks of them often, the Bible is not primarily focused on material blessings.  Which brings us to the critical phrase in Jesus’ little sermonette this morning. 

   As lovely and true as all His poetry about the birds and the flowers was, Jesus cuts to the point with this sentence: But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things (the material blessings we need for daily life) will be added to you.  Life, the Bible, God’s desire for you and every person, these are all centered on this goal: that you should be in God’s Kingdom and have His Righteousness, that is, that you should live under His blessing, protection and rule, holy, sinless and pleasing to the LORD.   

   Sin is not bad primarily because it ruins life in this world, although it does and that is truly bad.  And death is not bad primarily because it is the end of our physical lives on this earth, although that too is true and bad.  The greater problem with sin is that it cuts us off from God.  The more serious death we should be worried about is not the cessation of biological life, but rather eternal death, which is not nothingness, but rather a continuous, never-ending miserable existence, totally and eternally separated from God. 

   If we do not have God’s righteousness, we cannot be in His Kingdom, we cannot have the life He wants for us.  God is the almighty giver of every good thing, and He is also Holy.  We cannot live under His loving rule unless we are righteous, that is sinless, holy, good, without blemish, just as God is. 

   And, just as we cannot rightly understand our problems without God teaching us the truth, neither can we solve our problems and win our way back into God’s good graces.  We can’t buy citizenship in God’s Kingdom; we cannot generate the righteousness needed to qualify for entry.  On our own, sin defeats us, utterly. 

   And so, because He wants you and me and many more souls, God through His Word has been bringing His priceless gifts to His people since the beginning.  The Widow of Zarephath got a glimpse of God’s generosity and His pursuit of souls.  Jesus is God’s generosity and His pursuit of souls, sent to us from heaven, righteousness made flesh. 

   Seeking God’s Kingdom and Righteousness would be just as impossible for us as never worrying is, except for the reality of the Man who told us to do all these things.  All the demands that Jesus puts on us that we cannot fulfill, and there are many, these demands He fulfills in our place, and then delivers the fruit of His work to us, through, as always, His Word. 

   The glory of God’s heavenly kingdom is beyond our understanding.  But God in His Word has revealed where we can see His Kingdom and Righteousness.  We can see with eyes of faith the Kingdom and Righteousness of God hanging on a Cross outside Jerusalem, 2,000 years ago.  And, we can see, hear, feel and taste God’s righteousness coming to us today, as Jesus comes to us, delivering His forgiveness, washing sinners into the Kingdom, feeding souls with bread even better than the Widow baked, the bread and wine of salvation, through which Jesus feeds us with forgiveness, through which Jesus shares His Righteousness with us, week after week.  Through Christ’s forgiving blood, you are covered with the Robe of His Righteousness, which makes you a member of His Kingdom. 

   The miracle at Zarephath led the newly believing widow to rejoice, and to provide for Elijah, along with herself and her son.  So also, God’s Kingdom Gifts to us should give us joy, and overflow into care for others.  As Paul exhorts the Galatian Christians: Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches, and as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

   The world and our own fallen natures daily call us to seek fulfillment, joy and peace in things of this world.  Many of these are good things, gifts from God.  Other things we are taught to chase after are not good.  But none of them can truly satisfy.  No earthly gift can truly remove worry and give joy like the Righteous Kingdom Life which is yours in Christ Jesus.  And so that you can enjoy it, your Jesus comes to you, every time you hear His Word, every time you seek His gifts, every time you gather with the Church family He has made you part of. 

Let us pray:  O Holy Spirit, as every rainbow reminds us of Your promise to Noah, so also, grant us to see in every feeding bird and every budding flower the eternal banquet and the eternal robes of righteousness that the Father has given to us in Christ Jesus, today, and forever and ever, Amen.               

 

The Why and the Where of Worship

Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
September 6^th, Year of Our + Lord 2026
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Based on Luke 17:11 – 19

 Sermon audio available HERE.

   Last week, we talked about vocation, our various God-given callings or roles in life, using the Good Samaritan as background.  It was a little complicated.  First, we had to distinguish between the world’s idea of a calling and the Bible’s perspective, then identify various challenges we face today concerning understanding, choosing and fulfilling our various vocations, all with the uncaring priest and Levite and the super-generous Samaritan as examples, negative and positive.  It was a lot to take in, I suspect.  

   Our topic today is simpler: We will use the story of the Ten Lepers to talk about why Christians worship, and where Christians worship.  The Why and the Where of Worship.  Pretty straightforward.   

   Jesus is journeying toward Jerusalem for the last time before His Cross and Passion.  On His Way, in between Samaria and Galilee, out on the fringe of Jewish lands and culture, 10 very much out on the fringe souls cry out to Him for help.  They are following the rules given by God to mitigate the plague of leprosy, which is a terrible and contagious skin disease.  Lepers had to live apart from society, in their little segregated group, until they should be healed of their disease.  Every moment they deatl with chronic, painful and ugly skin disease, and they were deprived of home and family and community.  The life of a leper was very difficult, hard for us to imagine, unless perhaps you spend time in nursing homes, or delivering meals on wheels to shut-ins. 

   As their last hope walks by, the 10 lepers cry out: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!  A couple Sundays ago we heard how Jesus got way too up close and personal when He healed the deaf-mute man, fingers in ears, touching tongues, spitting, moaning.  Today, a more antiseptic sign, which Jesus uses to teach a different lesson.  Jesus commands the lepers: “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. 

   The trip to a priest was the requirement laid out by Moses in Leviticus 13 and 14.  Every healing from leprosy had to be verified by one of the sons of Aaron, before the healed leper would be let back into the camp, let back into the community.  Then there were washings and ritual animal sacrifices to make, to put God’s liturgical seal on the miracle. 

   As they went, walking to see a priest, they were healed.  Try to imagine that moment, if you will.  “Praise the LORD, we’re healed!”  I do not know much about how 1^st Century Jews expressed emotion, but it is easy to imagine shouts of joy, laughter, jumping up and down, maybe even some hugs between the cleansed men.  And then what?  Nine healed men, it seems, continued on their way to the priest, perhaps in obedience to the Law, or perhaps because their return to family and society would not be realized until after they finished inspection, the washings, and the sacrifices.  Whatever their reasoning, on they went. 

    But one of them, a Samaritan, was not obligated to fulfill the details of Moses’ Law, not in the same way as the Jews, at least.  Samaritans, the left behind remnant of the 10 northern tribes who were defeated and carried away by Assyria 800 years earlier, had, as they intermarried with their pagan neighbors, developed their own version of Moses’ Law.  I do not know what they had done with the rules for leprosy, but they did not worship at Jerusalem, and in fact, the healed Samaritan would not have been welcome there.  No non-Jews, and especially no Samaritans were allowed on the Temple grounds. 

   So, without us knowing his exact reasoning, we see the Samaritan do the right thing, the righteous thing.  The righteous thing, not according to the Law of Moses, the Old Covenant, which was being fulfilled and superseded, but the righteous according to the Way of Christ, the New Covenant, built on the Man Jesus, built and empowered by God’s amazing grace.  The Samaritan, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; ¹⁶ and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks… ¹⁹ And [Jesus] said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.”  In thankfulness, the Samaritan directs His thanks and praise of God toward the Man Jesus, and Jesus affirms his actions as faithful, and salvific.  A very good day for the Samaritan.    

   Jesus calls out the nine Jewish lepers whom He cleansed.  They are healed of their leprosy, but they do not come back to give God glory.  Our Lord, in one of His most painfully pointed rhetorical question, asks, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? ¹⁸ Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

   Jesus, the Holy One of God who knows all things, and also loves the world, including all sinners, more and better than we can understand, is free to speak bluntly about the nine healed lepers.  But we might consider cutting them a little slack, given our imperfections.  Certainly we shouldn’t look down on them, not for their disease, nor for their imperfect reaction to the miracle.  They were following the Law of Moses, and Jesus’ own words of instruction.  But what our Lord wanted for them, and still wants for us, is for souls to realize that His life and ministry changed everything.  Most especially, the Son of God becoming a human being and walking this earth changed everything about salvation and worship.  Jesus changes the ‘why’ of worship, in the most wonderful way. 

   I think the nine healed Jewish lepers were probably very thankful.  But, Israelites had been going to the Temple in Jerusalem to worship for a very long time.  And according to the covenant they received from Moses, they had an obligation, to follow the law and have a priest check their cure.  They were trying to obey, worship rightly, but they were missing the main event, the new thing God was doing, the new and better covenant.  Now, the one thing needful is to fall down at Jesus’ feet in thankfulness and praise. 

   But, to misunderstand why we worship is part of our fallen nature; we all tend to the same error.  Not just Jews with their Temple rituals, but we all are susceptible to think of worship as only an obligation, as command, not loving invitation.  Worst of all, we can fall into seeing worship as a task we must complete to gain or retain God’s favor. 

   The Israelite perspective on worship in the Temple had already gone wrong, almost from the very start.  Now, certainly, God does command His people, ancient Israel as well as the Church today, to worship Him.  It is a rule, a command: “Remember the Sabbath day, by keeping it holy.”  Stop, rest, and let Me serve you has always been the Lord’s desire, and also His command.  But, in its essence, right worship of the true God is a gift. 

   Old Testament worship in the Tabernacle and later the Temple was a gift, the LORD coming to His people to bestow forgiveness, righteousness and every blessing, so that they could be His people and live with Him, forever.  Yes, it was obligatory, and yes, the rules were very particular and demanding, with a dizzying list of festivals, sacrifices, and offerings.  But still, the heart of the sacrificial system was gift. 

   God accepted His people’s gifts of animals, grain, wine, oil, etc., (all things the Lord had provided to Israel in the first place).  By these, God reckoned Israel’s sins to be forgiven and their relationship restored, for the sake of the blood of bulls and goats.  This was a very good deal for sinful Israel.  But they often viewed it as a burden, and neglected it to their own harm, more often than not. 

   Such twisting of God’s gift of worship is still going on today.  I attended Roman Catholic masses in Spain quite frequently, to hear how they handled Scripture, see their visual tradition, and listen to their music, all to help me better prepare worship in our Lutheran mission.  And for the small fraction of Spaniards who attended mass, it very much seemed like they were checking a box.  The congregation rushed through their parts of the liturgy, never staying together, speed-mumbling the Kyrie, Gloria in Excelsis, Creed and Agnus Dei.  Since I was not communing, (and because I’m Lutheran), I would usually sit toward the back.  And so, I would also observe the steady flow of folks who would step into the back of the church from the street, cross themselves, stand there a few moments, maybe a minute or two, and then leave.  It looked like they were showing up, not for God’s Word and gifts, but rather so that they could tell themselves, or maybe their family, that they “went” to mass.  

   But let us not just pick on our Roman Catholic friends.  We have plenty of what Maria, my first church secretary, called “Cheasters,” members who showed up twice a year, once around Christmas, and once around Easter.  Christmas, Easter, Cheasters.  Get it? 

   And I cannot move on from exposing our own misconceptions of right worship without mentioning “confirmation as graduation.”   You’ve seen it.  Parents, often driven by guilt, force their children to attend Catechism and meet whatever requirements the pastor establishes for worship attendance.  The incredible gift of learning the Faith and gaining access to the Medicine of Immortality that is the Lord’s Supper gets perverted into a burden, a punishment to be borne.  So much hypocritical effort, all so that, once confirmed, the confirmands, and maybe their parents too, can disappear.  We pray not forever, but who can say?  What a sad misunderstanding of what worship and faith are all about.    

   The Samaritan Leper shows us a better ‘why’ for worship: thankfulness for the cleansing healing received from Christ Jesus.  Like the Samaritan, God grant us to be thankful that we have been cleansed from the leprosy of sin and made part of the Father’s family.  This is what Jesus came to do, not with the blood of bulls and goats, which in their essence could only point forward to His sacrifice.  The main event, where all our healing is founded, is the Cross, where Jesus poured out His Divine and Human blood, the only sacrifice that can truly wash away our sins, forever.  This is what He has done, for you, for me, and in truth, for every human soul.  When this glorious truth penetrates our hard hearts, the why of worship changes from obligation to thankfulness.  

   The Samaritan Leper also shows us a better ‘where.’  Both before his healing, with the other nine, and especially after, the Samaritan Leper shows us that the right “where” for worship is at Jesus’ feet.  Like Martha’s sister Mary, like the Canaanite mother, like so many souls brought to trust in Jesus, faith teaches us to do whatever it takes to get to where Jesus is present with His cleansing, healing gifts.  For in and by these gifts, we are saved.   

   Which then leads us to the necessity, and the Good News, of the Means of Grace.  We cannot travel back in time to find Jesus walking between Samaria and Galilee.  And thanks be to God, we do not have to, for Jesus comes to us, through His chosen means: Words, written, spoken, sung, translated into art.  Words, combined with plain water, and with bread and wine. 

   Now of course, there is no “there” where Jesus is not present, for He is God, and God is everywhere.  Indeed, in Him we live and move and have our being.  But the important location question for us sinners is “where is Jesus present to save and bless?”  And according to His promises, that is in His Word, including His Word combined with regular elements to create the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.  These are the places where, when we approach in reverent repentance, we have Jesus’ promise.  We know His message to us will be: “Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.” 

   We are all prone to think of worship as an obligation, a burden, a work done to gain God’s favor.  This is actually a sin, because it denies the Truth of Jesus, denies the sufficiency of His Cross, denies the One who invites His children to come to given Him their sins, and in exchange receive His love.  And so normally we start worship with forgiveness, with Confession and Absolution, to have the Holy Spirit give us thankful hearts, ready to worship, and receive more of the Father’s grace and mercy through the rest of the service, all given to us by the Spirit, through Jesus Christ. 

   The better we understand with the healed Samaritan leper the right reason and location for worship, the better our lives will be, now and forever, lives with less guilt, and more desire and commitment to gathering regularly to get the greatest gifts we can receive in this life.  Knowing the true why and where of worship might also help us to be more effective in drawing others to Christ’s Church.  We all know people, family, friends, neighbors, or co-workers, whom we would like to see sitting in a pew next to us, receiving forgiveness, life and salvation, just like us.  We all also struggle to effectively communicate about Christian worship; it is so easy to fall into the command side of things:  You don’t want to go to hell, do you?  You really ought to get off the couch and get to church! 

   A true question and a true statement.  But are they attractive?  How much more attractive would it be to communicate, through words and actions, that you attend worship because you are thankful, and you are eager to receive more and more from your crucified and risen Savior? 

Let us pray:  Heavenly Father, please forgive us for all the times we have considered Your invitation to worship as a burden, as a bother, as an obligation we must fulfill so that you will not be angry with us.  Forgive us for the sake of Jesus, Your crucified and risen Son, who washes us clean from the leprosy of sin, and calls us to come, to gather for the celebration.  Fill us with Your Holy Spirit, that He may keep ever burning in our hearts the fire of faith, that knows the only Source and Power of salvation, which is Jesus Christ, present to bless, in the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.