God Is Near to Us - Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Trinity

Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity
October 6^th, A+D 2024
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
God Is Near to Us – Genesis 28:10-17 and Matthew 9:1-8

Audio of Readings and Sermon available HERE

   Nearer, my God to Thee.  Our Lutheran Service Book is a tremendous resource for Christian faith and life, and for the adoration of the One True God.  But it is not perfect.  One weak spot that I have noticed over the years is a lack of hymns that relate Old Testament stories.  Like today’s reading from Genesis 28, Jacob’s Ladder, which is foundational for understanding of how God relates to us.  Also, because of its importance, this is also one of the Biblical accounts most attacked and twisted by Satan, who always seeks to confuse and confound our faith.  Nothing in LSB directly references, let alone tells the whole story of Jacob’s dream.  Nor did I know of any hymn in any other Lutheran Hymnal that interprets Jacob’s excellent night. 

   There are plenty of songs, way too many really, that teach Jacob’s Ladder completely wrong.  “We are climb, climbing, climbing Jacob’s ladder, making our way to heaven, step by step.”  This is the basic misinterpretation you will find.  Jacob’s dream fits perfectly well with the Good News that, because we cannot climb our way to Him, God in Christ descends to us, and not to punish us, nor to exhort us to climb better.  No, God’s eternal Son descends to us, not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.   Jacob’s dream is prelude and foreshadowing of this main event of the whole Bible.  But as far as I knew, we have not had a decent hymn to help us get the story right.    

    Then Elma DuChateu asked that “Nearer, My God to Thee” be sung at her funeral.  I know it well.  I grew up singing it out of The Lutheran Hymnal, old red reliable.  But either I forgot, or maybe never noticed that this hymn is about Jacob and the Ladder from Heaven.  Not until I was preparing Elma’s service, and read the words closely did the lightbulb go on. 

 1. Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee.  E’en though it be a cross, That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God to Thee…

   Jacob and the Ladder really are not mentioned in this first stanza, which simply proclaims a pious and faithful Christian desire to be near to God.  And what a nice touch: “Even though it be a cross, that raiseth me.”  Is the hymnwriter referring to the Cross of Christ, or the crosses that Christians bear in this life?  Both, I think, for the Crucified one brings us through cross and trial to Himself in heaven, in His perfect grace and timing.  We don’t climb to Him, but rather, through His Cross, Jesus raises us to Himself.  Even when struggles and trials come into our lives, as they will, the Spirit of Christ carries us through, by keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, who reigns on high, his nail-scarred hands and feet testifying to our acceptance by His Father.  

 Jacob’s story appears in stanza two: 

2. Tho' like the wanderer, The sun gone down, Darkness be over me, My rest a stone,
Yet in my dreams I’d be, Nearer, my God, to Thee.

   It’s helpful to remember the background of the LORD’s appearance in Jacob’s dream.  Things were dark for Jacob, a self-imposed darkness caused by his sinful swindle of his brother.  He was sleeping out in the open countryside, by himself, because he was fleeing the wrath of his twin brother, Esau.  And Esau had reason to be angry.  You remember, don’t you, how Jacob, with their mother Rebekah’s devious assistance, stole the blessing his blind father Isaac had intended for Esau?  Esau was waiting for their father to die.  Then he planned to kill Jacob. 

    So, the remarkable revelation God gave Jacob, and His appearance by his side, and the repetition to Jacob of the promises God had made to his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham, all these amazing things did not happen because Jacob was so faithful and righteous.  The LORD appeared to Jacob in spite of who Jacob was and how he behaved towards his family.  The LORD had chosen Jacob and promised to work through him, and so He would, despite Jacob’s sinful character.   

3. There let the way appear, Steps unto heav’n; All that Thou sendest me, In mercy giv'n;
Angels to beckon me, Nearer, my God, to Thee…

   O.k., that’s a little weak.  This stanza may well be the reason “Nearer, My God to Thee” has dropped out of our hymnals.  To sing that the “way” is “steps unto heav’n” leans heavily in the direction of the lie that “I can, and I must climb my way into heaven.” 

   As Christians, as forgiven sinners, we are placed on Christ’s Way and called to walk it, to live the life of faith and love to which He calls us.  And a future in heav’n, living in the visible presence of God forever, is our goal.  But we cannot and do not have to climb our way up by our efforts.  Life forever with Jesus is a free gift, given to us unworthy sinners through the shed blood of Jesus.  Stanza three does not quite proclaim that we must save ourselves.  Bit it misses the directional purpose of the ladder, that God comes down it, to save us. 

    The hymnwriter does preach faith in God’s mercy in this stanza: All that Thou sendest me, in mercy giv’n.   Again, this is a true and right Christian understanding that everything we receive, the good and the bad, is a gift of God’s mercy.  God is always merciful with His People, even when life is hard.  It does not seem Jacob understood this, at this moment in his faith life.  Ultimately, Jacob would trust in the LORD for everything, and most especially for the promise of eternal life.  But it is not clear from Genesis 28 that Jacob in that moment understood.  Indeed, after our reading, Jacob goes on to make a conditional promise to God.  The LORD put no conditions on His promises to Jacob.  But Jacob says: LORD, if you will take care of me and bless me, and bring me back home, if all this comes to pass, then you’ll be my God, and I’ll even give you tenth of all I have. 

    Think of it:  God visits Jacob, gives him a vision of a ladder connecting heaven and earth, and stands beside him.  Then He repeats tremendous promises to Jacob:  "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. ^[14] Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. ^[15] Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."  God promises all this to Jacob, freely, without conditions.  Jacob responds with a conditional promise to make the LORD His God, and even to give Him a tenth of everything he has, if the LORD first takes care of Jacob. 

     This is not how it works between us and the LORD.  We sinners are in no position to bargain.  Jacob does not express true faith, for true faith trusts and rejoices in the promises of God, even when they are not fully apparent in this life.   

   The LORD does not give Jacob all the details of His Salvation Plan.  He does not explicitly tell of God’s Son becoming a human, living the perfect life in our place, and dying the sacrificial death that reconciles us sinners to God.  He does not quite speak of the resurrected Jesus sending the Eleven out to build His Church by preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins.  But He does promise to be with and protect Jacob, and all his descendants, forever.  This sounds just like the way the resurrected Jesus would commit Himself to be with His people, His Church, always, to the end of the age.  All the details of the Gospel are not present at Jacob’s Ladder, but the essential Promises are there.   

4. Then with my waking thoughts, Bright with Thy praise, Out of my stony griefs, Bethel I’ll raise, So by my woes to be, Nearer, my God, to Thee.

   Our assigned reading today stops before Jacob’s disappointing conditional promises to God, and also before his better moment, when he responded to God’s presence by establishing a place of worship: Bethel, the House of God.  Jacob realizes that God had come to him, that God had been in that place, where he was sleeping.  Immanuel, God with us!  So, Jacob takes his stone pillow and builds a pillar, a shrine to commemorate the event and give focus to his thankful praise.  When God comes to you bearing gifts and making promises, the right reaction is awe, followed by praise and adoration. 

   Which is what those scribes, experts in the Jewish law, should have done when they heard Jesus declare the paralytic’s sins were forgiven.  Instead, they take offense that a mere man was forgiving sins.  They really misunderstand the Hebrew Bible.  God had been forgiving Israel for centuries.  The entire sacrificial system was given to create and strengthen Israel’s confidence that the Lord was loving and gracious, quick to forgive, by His nature.  But when the miracle worker Jesus forgives the paralytic, brought to Jesus by his faithful friends, the scribes think He is blaspheming.  “Who can forgive sins, except God alone?” 

   Well, God can forgive, and so can and so should anyone who knows and trusts in the forgiving LORD God.  Each of us, within our vocations, within the relationships and responsibilities the LORD has called us to, should be forgiving others.  Jacob would eventually be forgiven by his brother Esau.  Jacob’s son Joseph would forgive his 10 brothers, for selling him into slavery.  Speaking for the LORD, the prophet Nathan forgave King David after his horrible sin with Bathsheba, his murder of her husband, Uriah, and his deception and selfishness against the entire nation of Israel.     

   Forgiveness is what God has been aiming at, ever since sin came into the world.  So, when we are united to God by faith in His forgiving love, it is our great privilege, and responsibility, to forgive others.  Forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

   Jesus went on to make it very clear that He was God, by healing the paralytic, in an instant:  But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"—he then said to the paralytic—"Rise, pick up your bed and go home." ^[7] And he rose and went home.  Everyone was amazed, and marveled that God had given such authority to men.  They were so close!  They should have built a stone pillar and worshiped Jesus, right there, like Jacob did when he awoke.  For truly, God was in that place.  That house in Capernaum truly was Bethel, the House of God.  God had once and for all climbed down the ladder, and joined us in our struggle against sin and death, by becoming a man, the Christ, the Savior. 

   God is in this place!  I don’t know if Reverend Uecker and friends had Jacob’s cairn of stones in mind when they built this altar and pulpit and baptismal font.  But these beautiful chancel furnishings remind us that the same LORD who came down to Jacob is still coming to us.  Whenever and wherever Christians gather in the Name of Jesus, He, as He promised, is present, invisibly, but truly present, to bless and forgive.  Christian worship is the way it is because of this most wonderful truth.  We gather around Jesus, with reverence, and with joy and thanksgiving and a sense of comfort and peace.  Because we are still sinners, meeting the Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, there is still a measure of fear.  But God is quick to dispel our repentant fear with forgiveness.  And so Christian faith trusts that our meeting with God is going to turn out well, because Jesus has risen from the dead, with forgiveness and new life for all who believe.  We are reverent, and we also rejoice!      

   Jacob took a lot of convincing, before his words and actions began to show forth his trust in God’s forgiving love.  So, God kept after him.  God blessed Jacob through cross and trials, as he labored for his uncle Laban, in order to win his beloved, Rachel.  God came and met Jacob again, years later, when he was headed back to the promised land, back to reconcile with his brother Esau.  On the way, an all-night-long wrestling match with the pre-Incarnate Christ helps Jacob finally believe that the LORD would never leave him or forsake him. 

   The Lord God Almighty is still coming to us, to convince us of His love and forgiveness.  Some days we get it, we feel it.  We embrace a godly fear, and we can also rest and rejoice in the Gospel.  Other days we are drawn to gaudy things of this world, and our faith grows dull.  Still other days we do something terrible, and we are convinced the LORD could never forgive us.   Our confidence in the forgiveness of Jesus waxes and wains.  But God is a rock of faithfulness.  He has promised to be with us, to come to us, with just the Word we need, a word of correction and conviction, and a word of grace and mercy.  The Holy Spirit moves us to gather together around the Word of the Cross, around the gifts delivered through Water, Wheat and Wine.  Jacob’s ladder truly touches the earth, everywhere baptized believers meet. 

   Our understanding and confidence in God’s mercy waxes and wains, and most of us have been receiving His gifts our whole lives.  Whether people fully understand or not, it is the reality of God’s presence in the midst of His people that makes coming to church so hard for so many.  Whether a person is a wandering sheep, who has stopped coming to Church, a baptized child of God with just a smoldering wick of faith, or whether a person has never known and believed in the forgiveness Christ comes to deliver to repentant sinners, all of our excuses for not coming to Church mask a fear of being exposed to Almighty God. 

   Does this mean we should downplay the awesome reality that God Himself in present, that this is Bethel, the House of God?  No, not at all, may it never be!  Jesus says He is with us, and that each believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit.  Why would we lie to ourselves and the world, when God Himself desires to meet and bless sinners in this place?  Why would we ignore the wonderful news that the Holy Son of God comes to us, not in the anger we deserve, but rather in mercy?  Truly, we cannot change the reality of what God is doing.  Faithful Christian worship will always include godly fearfulness, along with relief, and joy, and exultant thanksgiving. 

   And so, knowing how fearful and marvelous it is to meet Jesus, we can show mercy and patience and give a clear explanation of God’s plan to those who are staying away, for whatever reason.  We can speak of the joy that comes with the dawn of forgiveness, delivered to sinners, in this place, by the LORD Jesus Himself.  And in this reverent joy, the peace of God finds us, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, and will keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, unto life everlasting, Amen.     

The War for Peace - Sermon for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

Feast of St. Michael and All Angels
September 29^th, Year of Our + Lord 2024
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
The War for Peace 
Daniel 12:1-3, Revelation 12:7 - 12, Luke 10:17 - 20

Audio of the Sermon available HERE.

   Combat boots?  Web belt?  Camouflage trousers?  I’m not much for using preaching props, but last Wednesday, when I celebrated the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels with the students at Bethesda Lutheran School in Hot Springs, I actually wore these props.  I led chapel in a clerical shirt, as I would normally.  But for pants I wore my last set of woodland camouflage trousers, paired with my combat boots, from my days in the Marines.  I couldn’t quite bring myself to wear cammie trousers today, and, frankly, walking around in combat boots doesn’t work very well with my 58-year-old feet.  But I do want to get the same point across as I tried to teach the kids in Hot Springs.  And putting my old combat boots and cammies out for you to see during the sermon is helpful, I think.  Because they really don’t fit here.  Or do they? 

    We have gathered here this morning to seek the opposite of combat, no?  Peace is our goal, after all.  Every day, my go-to final greeting in emails and texts is “Peace in Christ to you.”  I’ve suggested, so far to only minor effect, that when we greet each other before the start of the service, we should do so not just with “good morning” but with a peaceful blessing, such as “The Peace of the Lord be with you!,”  Paul’s prayer of blessing for the Philippians is that “the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard their hearts and minds.”  This is the “Peace” that Jesus declared to the Eleven Disciples, as He appeared to them, when they were hiding behind locked doors on Resurrection evening.  It seems the Church is all about peace, not war.   

   But then along come our readings for this morning.  From Daniel we heard, “At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time.”

    And then, from Revelation, “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, ^[8] but he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. ^[9] And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world— he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.  And so, “woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

    Finally, from Luke’s Gospel, “The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!" ^[18] And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. ^[19] Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.” 

     Those are not very peace-filled passages.  And it’s not just these readings.  When I asked the kids in Hot Springs what angels look like, they colletively described a smiling grandmother with wings.  But throughout the Bible, in the Old and New Testaments, angels are mostly depicted as warriors, powerful fighters, who strike fear in the hearts of mankind, even when they come bearing Good News.

   So, which is it?  Is Christian faith and life about war, or peace?  Are we to fight and struggle, or are we to comfort and care and rest?

   Peace, true and lasting peace, eternal peace, these are Christ’s goal for us, and so they are also our goal.  But the Peace of God which passes all understanding was not achieved just through patient reasoning or good will.  God achieved peace through warfare.  Salvation is a battle against Satan and sin and death, a war that God both fights for us, and calls us to pick up our weapons and engage.  On this Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, we see that the heavenly hosts are also at war with the Devil, on our behalf.  Peace, eternal peace and joy, this is God’s goal for us.  But achieving that peace requires a fight.  God and His angels deliver us to safety and security through struggle.  There is a war to win our peace. 

   When I asked the students at Bethesda Lutheran School if we are supposed to fight in Church, they quickly said no.  And certainly, we should not be fighting against each other.  But if we fail to understand that there is a war on, we are misunderstanding reality, and we will not be well equipped or prepared to hold our place in the line.  Gentle and loving, kind and serene, these are all fine descriptors of Christ, and so also of the Christian.  But so are strong and fierce and brave.  All these true words about Christ and His Christians need to be understood in the light of God’s Word and His Work, so that we can both rest in His victory, and fulfill our callings as members of His army, His Church militant, still engaged in the fight, here on earth. 

   Warriors need to know their enemies, and understand their tactics.  They must also understand and be proficient with their own weapons and tactics.  And they need to constantly train, in order to be ready to fight when the time arrives.  What is true for earthly armies is even more important for God’s forces, since the stakes of our battle are not just life and death.  Rather, the stakes of the war we are engaged in are eternal life and eternal death.  Forever and ever victory, or defeat.   

   So, who is this enemy we are fighting?  Well, clearly from our readings, enemy #1 is Satan, or the Devil, the great Accuser of mankind before God.  He is that great fallen angel, a rebel against the LORD God.  Impotent against God Himself, he can only take his hatred out on us.  Because God loves us, the Devil hates us, and seeks to separate us from the LORD. 

   Knowingly or unknowingly, the unbelieving world is Satan’s big ally.  The Church’s relationship with the world is tricky.  Concern for our own souls and for the salvation of unbelievers means that we must do two things at once.  We must be vigilant against the temptations to evil that the world offers us on the devil’s behalf.  At the same time, we are called to look for opportunities to speak God’s truth in love to the world, because Christ shed His blood for the sins of all.   God desires that the wicked should turn from their ways, trust in Jesus, and be saved.  And He uses His Church, you and me, in that effort.    

    Most difficult for us in this war is the sad fact that we all have an enemy within.  We are not saved because we have conquered sin in our lives.  Indeed, God in His wisdom does not entirely remove sin from us when we are converted to Christ.  Baptism both washes us clean from our sins, and leaves us living in this world as sinners. 

    As sinners, we do not naturally nor easily understand the truth that Christ has given us in His Word.  As sinners we do not want to accept God’s Word.  This both relates to the original tempation to sin, when Satan successfully took down our first parents, and it helps us recognize the Devil’s #1 tactic, his primary weapon. 

   God’s revealed Word to the first man and woman seems to have been pretty short.  In fact, amidst all the freedom and blessing and dominion God gave Adam and his wife, there was only one limitation: Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

    “Did God really say?”  This was Satan’s opening salvo, and he succeeded in planting in the woman’s mind a seed of doubt about God’s Word.  The rest is tragic history that affects us all.  And all these millenia later, the Devil hasn’t really changed his playbook.  Instilling doubt about the truth of God’s Word is his go-to.  And God’s revealed truth is now much broader.  The Bible now covers thousands of years of history, must address so many different kinds of sin, and it also speaks of the mysteries of salvation.  Satan tries to twist all of it. 

    Wherever the Word is hard for us to grasp, or says harsh things about us, or simply tells us no, our flesh recoils.  Working with and through the world, the Devil has enjoyed a couple centuries of increasing success in making God’s people doubt His Word, and in building a disdain for the Bible in the minds and hearts of unbelievers.  This Bible hating perspective dominates in our education system and popular culture.  Sadly, many people who claim to be Christians have entirely embraced the denial of God’s Word that Satan began promoting in the Garden.  We will not be saved denying the Truth of God’s Word, for it is His means, His tool, for saving us.     

    As sinners, we have a desire to have our selfish tendencies be served.  Greed and laziness and pride threaten us all.  And of course, sexual infidelity has no place in the life of any member of the Church, which is the Bride of Christ.  But the lie of free sex without consequences sounds good to the sinner inside each one of us.  And, initially, it is a much easier choice than pursuing God’s way.  God’s way, of treating sexual relations as only rightly pursued between one man and one woman, commited to each other in marriage, is truly among the most precious and worthy to be protected parts of life.  

   Where our enemies preach that sex is free and easy and no big deal, the LORD says it is a sacred gift, through which the He desires to create more human souls to love.  Insofar as we believe and pursue the LORD’s way, we avoid much pain and heartbreak.  And, we will better understand His great love for us, because marital love, childbearing and family are among the Holy Spirit’s favorite metaphors to teach us about God’s love for His people.  So, it is no surprise that the world pushes back so ferociously against Biblical sexuality and morality.  All of us Christian soldiers are called to daily examine the sexual purity of our lives, for our own good, and for the good of the world.  Because the sexual revolution is an ever-worsening disaster for men, women and children, and makes it hard to believe the Gospel. 

   And by the way, while we are training our souls in this area, we should also vote no on Amendment G, which seeks to enshrine into our South Dakota constitution a right to abortion throughout nine-months of pregnancy.  Vote no on Amendment G.  This is an easy good work that God has prepared for you.    

   In whatever part of our life Satan seeks to destroy and enslave us, his primary weapon is the denial and twisting of God’s Word.  He mounts a combined arms attack against us by leveraging the lusts and selfishness and laziness of the world, in every arena of life. 

   So, how would we rate our battle performance?  The final victory is won, it is finished.  Now there is just the mopping up operation, our journey home, a path that still leads through enemy territory.  We will have to cross enemy lines.  Do we cross them to to tell the world the Good News of God’s testimony of forgiveness for them, revealed in the Lamb?  Or do we cross over to enjoy their sinful pleasures, without ever speaking a Word of Truth and forgiveness? 

   Are we drilling with our weapons, staying sharp in our accuracy and skill with the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God?  Or do we neglect the Word, and find ourselves defenseless before the lies of Satan?  Do we make peace with the fallen world, but find fault and fight and bicker within the Body of Believers? 

   As Christian soldiers, we must daily repent of our sinful tendency to desert ranks from the LORD, and join the enemy.    

   Good thing the archangel Michael is fighting on our side.  Good thing that, as Jesus teaches us, all of God’s children have a heavenly angel looking out for them. (Matthew 18:10)  And what weapons do the angels use?  They are described as warriors in the Bible, and they do fight many battles.  But do they really use swords and pikes, as we like to depict their battles in our artwork? 

    Well, no, not very often, anyway.  The word angel simply means messenger.  A holy angel is first and foremost a spirit sent from God who speaks His Truth.  A wicked angel, a demon, even the Devil himself, is a spirit who rebelled against God, and who always speaks lies, seeking to draw people away from God’s grace.  From time to time, we get accounts in the Bible where the angels do concrete things in the physical world.  But mostly they come and announce the Truth of God, and through their message, souls are protected. 

    Indeed, while a clearer understanding of the spirit world as the Bible describes it would be good for all of us, in the end, the weapons of the angels and the weapons of God’s people are just the same:  Victory is won by the blood of the lamb, and by the testimony, the bearing witness, to God’s great work, completed by Christ Jesus.   

    It is surely a strange victory, that time of trouble, when the dragon was conquered by the blood of the Lamb.  But we remember that Revelation is a book chock full of symbolic descriptions of spiritual realities.  The casting down of Satan, the removal of all his power to accuse sinners, truly and finally occurred when God’s Son suffered for and paid the entire debt owed by every sin of every sinful human being.  The Cross was the ultimate battle, where Jesus robbed Satan of his ammunition against us, by winning forgiveness for all our sins. 

    Now, our primary task, with the angels, collectively as church, and individually as Christians, is to repeat the testimony, the Good News trumpeted by the shed blood and innocent death of Jesus: Satan cannot accuse anyone who is in Christ.  His power over us sinners is gone, because all our sins have been atoned for.  Through Christ’s execution by the Roman soldiers, and even more by His acceptance of His Father’s wrath against our sin, everything Satan could ever accuse you of is now taken away, paid for in full and forgiven, by Jesus.  This is the testimony, and this is love, that God gave His Son for the sins of the world: Victory through the Blood of the Lamb.

 Let us pray:  Mighty Lord, you have conquered our enemies, and opened to us the way into your heavenly peace, through the Blood of the Lamb.  By your Holy Spirit, increase our understanding of Your testimony, so that we will be strong in faith, fervent in love toward our fellow Christian soldiers, and prepared to engage the ongoing battle of salvation.  Help us to speak of your Good News to the world around us.  Drive Satan away from us, give us wisdom and strength to reject the ways of the world.  Embolden our hearts by the promise that all the evil one’s power to accuse us before you has been washed away by the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.  Send your holy angels to walk with us on the daily battlefield that is Christian living, so that together we can make the good confession of your Son Jesus, our Warrior, our Champion, our Savior, our Lord, and our eternal Peace, Amen. 

Seven Keys to a Glorious Dinner Party - Sermon for the 17th Sunday after Trinity

Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity
September 22^nd, Year of Our + Lord 2024
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Seven Keys to a Glorious Dinner Party

Sermon Audio available HERE

Seven Keys to a Glorious Dinner Party

    Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all  humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.   ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

      Jesus went to many dinner parties.  St. Luke especially likes to tell us about these meals.  Our Lord ate with sinners and tax collectors, and also with Pharisees, those teachers of the Law of Moses, very serious Bible scholars, who like to exalt themselves, and who tended to obsess about the rules, and feel self-righteously superior to everyone else.   

      Today a ruler of the Pharisees invites our Lord to eat on the Sabbath, a day filled by the Pharisees with rules about what you can’t do.  At the meal, Jesus heals a man with dropsy, that is, water retention within his body, a disease we call edema.  As He did many times, Jesus ignores the Pharisees’ made-up rules, trying to get them to see that God wants to serve mankind on the Sabbath, not be served by them. 

      Jesus then uses the Proverbs to teach the Pharisees about proper dinner etiquette for God’s people.  Jesus’ warning against self-promotion reminds me of an earlier dinner, in chapter 7 of Luke, when a prostitute came in and washed Jesus’s feet with her tears and her hair, anointing them and kissing them.  According to the Pharisees’ rules, she was not a worthy guest.  And again, the Lord didn’t care.    

      The Lord does care about getting dinner parties right.  Both our Old Testament and Gospel readings this morning teach us about how to behave when invited to dinner.  And very helpfully, these two are matched with the famous unity passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  This works, because one of God’s goals with a dinner party is unity, that all the guests are well fed and enjoy each other, and end the dinner party closer to each other and Him than when they arrived.  

      Paul gives us seven “Ones” of unity, which help us better understand these two Pharisee dinner parties, one with a prostitute, and the other with this man who suffered from dropsy.     Ephesians 4 calls us to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, which is a gift from God, who is One.    

For there is One Body:  At a glorious dinner party, there is just One Body, sitting around the table together.  Is Paul referring to the Body of the Man, Jesus Christ, or to the Body of His Church, the congregation of believers?  Both, of course, for they are united.  Being united to Jesus by faith also means we are, each one of us, joined together into His mysterious Body, the Church.  We are members, of Christ, and of one another.  God’s dinner parties are intimate affairs. 

     Do the Biblical descriptions of this intimacy in the One Body make you uncomfortable, as they do me?  Remember Elijah and Elisha stretching out their bodies over the tops of those two dead sons as they brought them back to life?  Remember Jesus, spitting and touching mute tongues and putting fingers in deaf ears?  And there are these Pharisee meals.  Who wants to get close to a swollen person, suffering from edema, or accept the touch and kiss of a a woman whose life has been shot through with sexual sin? 

     Well, Jesus does, and thank God for His intimacy.  As He has drawn close to us, Jesus calls us to get close to other sinners.  As much as it pains me personally to say it, hugs and kisses all around, that’s the New Testament way.  This was a big problem for the Pharisees, so focused on purity and decorum.  They didn’t really want the sick, swollen man at their party, and they certainly would never let a prostitute wash their feet. 

     In the One Body, the first key to a glorious dinner party is to embrace the messiness that Christ invites to the table.  We are all a bunch of messy, unattractive sinners, whom Jesus has called beloved, precious, redeemed.  And so, the first key is to treat each other as He treats us. 

One Spirit: There is One Body, and One Spirit.  Everybody wants a spirited get together.  But a glorious dinner party requires some spiritual discernment.  For there are many spirits who oppose the Holy Spirit.  There is the spirit of self-righteousness, of claiming to be holier than thou, holier than the riffraff.  This is not the Spirit of Christ. 

     There are opposite spirits, who entirely reject the holiness and order of God.  Jesus welcomes sinners, who approach His table in repentance for their sins.  A spirit that says “anything goes,” that nothing is to be called sin, is equally demonic as a Pharisee, consumed with his self-imagined holiness.  This sin-denying, anything-goes spirit seems to dominate our world today. 

     The One True Spirit speaks the Truth, the truth about God’s will for our lives, the truth about our fallenness, and the glorious truth of Christ, stooping down to lift us up to where He is.  The Holy Spirit, telling us all that the Father has given us in Christ Jesus, His Word is the heart of glorious dinner conversation.   

One Hope:  You were called to the One Hope that belongs to your call.  Christian life is not a game of “choose your own adventure” where you get to choose your own ending.  Rather, the Christian sings out: “I am but a stranger here, heaven is my home.”  Unity with Christ means we are aliens and pilgrims in this world; our ultimate and greatest Hope is above, in Christ. 

     We all love a good meal, and thank God for good food.  But we also know there is a better menu to come.  Lord willing, every good meal here on earth will point us toward e heavenly banquet that has no end.  We have worldly goods, and receive them gladly, and with thanksgiving.  But, we hold them loosely, because Christ our true treasure awaits us.  We seek to live well and rightly, but we know are not going to live our best life now, not in this broken world. 

     And so, as Proverbs teaches and Jesus repeats to the Pharisees, we are not to strive for the best seats at earthly feasts.  Pridefully seeking the honor and glory of this world will ruin your dinner party, and your life.  Prideful self-promotion by sinners is pitiful.  It is also a danger to the faith which receives entrance to the eternal banquet hall as an undeserved gift of forgiveness.  And so, with the Spirit’s help, we live day by day in this world, rejoicing in every good gift, and at the same time honest about our personal lowliness.  We confess our sinfulness by choosing the lowest seats, and we look forward, longing for the best gifts, at Jesus’ heavenly table, where every seat is perfect.  

One Lord:  The Pharisees’ ultimate problem with Jesus is that He made Himself out to be equal with God, to be God in the flesh.  We might want to cut them just a little slack.  We must reject their self-righteousness and hard-heartedness.  But we can also recognize that grasping the mystery of God is hard. 

      The Lord, Yahweh God, who is One, is also Three.  Perfect Unity in Trinity, between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  This reality of God is beyond our full comprehension.  But we can grasp it in a simple way, and we rejoice in the Good News that the teaching of the Holy Trinity proclaims: for God loved the world in this way, by sending His only begotten Son, to take on human flesh, in order to save us.  The Holy Spirit brings us to God the Father by joining us to His Son, who in turn presents us to the Father as welcome dinner guests. 

      The One Lord is incarnate, made man.  And the One Lord is present.  The real presence of the fleshly Christ in the midst of His people is also hard to grasp.  The man suffering from edema, from water retention and painful swelling, seems to be a pawn, a prop brought into the dinner by the Pharisees, to trap Jesus.  Luke does not tell us if he was a disciple of Jesus.  Did he recognize before it happened that the LORD God Almighty was present to heal?  Hard to say.  But once Jesus took him and healed him and sent him away, now he knew: God had visited him to heal and rescue.  Alleluia!  Praise the Lord.   

      The prostitute whom Jesus forgave knew that the One Lord God Almighty was at Simon the Pharisee’s party.  So. she brought expensive ointment and sought her Lord.  Who cares if people curse her for entering?  What can the stares and murmurs of the Pharisees do to her?  She knows her LORD is present, and she knows He lives to forgive her and set her free from her sin.  So, she worships the LORD, and ignores the angry, contemptuous stares.  Because she knows her LORD is there. 

      Come Lord Jesus, be our Guest.  So we pray, and so the Lord is present.  The LORD is always at our meals, because God is everywhere, over all and through all and in all.  In Him we live and move and have our being.  There is no where we can go to escape Him.  And, for the faithful, there is no reason to run from Him, because we know He loves us.  Even more, the LORD is also at our meals because He is always with His people, dwelling in their hearts by faith, present to guide, correct, forgive and encourage.  God grant us to know and trust His presence.  Like the prostitute, let us rejoice to worship and serve Him, in joyful response to His great service to us.   

One Faith:  The prostitute who washed Jesus’ feet knew in Whom she trusted.  Through His Word, and perhaps through His miracles, she had grasped that God’s Son had been born into this world, not to condemn her, but to rescue and restore her.  Her tears of thankfulness overflowed, because she knew she could trust in Christ alone for all her needs, now, and forever.  For He is the Savior of all sinners, including her, including me, including you.   

     Hypocritically, the world praises the value of inclusiveness, in the abstract.  But always without regard for faith.  It can be glorious to host a meal for all kinds of different guests.  But if some gorge themselves and riot like godless barbarians, while others behave like self-righteous Pharisees, elbowing each other out for the best seats, the dinner will be ruined for everyone. Our Lord is the God of order, not chaos.  Only Jesus can save, and He only saves His way.  It is not for spite or bigotry that we insist on preserving and proclaiming that Jesus is the exclusive Savior.   We maintain this Truth because Jesus does, and because we seek to truly love our neighbors.  For there is no other Name by which we can be saved.  There is only one saving faith, the faith that trusts in Christ alone.   

One Baptism:  Did you hear the water flowing in these two meals?  Water is everywhere.  Water can be dangerous, like the Flood, or as it was for Egypt at the Red Sea, or for Jonah’s shipmates, as that prophet fled the Lord’s call.  The water swelling the limbs of the man with dropsy was debilitating, not regenerating.  Until, that is, Jesus applied His Word of grace. 

     Without the Word of Christ, water is just plain water, necessary for life, but also potentially harmful.  But with the Word of Jesus, water is God’s chosen instrument for the eternal cleansing of body and soul.  There is only One Baptism, Jesus’ washing of regeneration and renewal.  But the Baptized echo this Baptism in their daily lives. 

     As a sinner, now cleansed by Jesus’ Word, the prostitute responded by washing Jesus’ feet with streams from her thankful eyes.  Once her tears were filled with bitter shame.  Now, she cries tears of the highest praise and devotion.  She loved much, extravagantly, shockingly, because she had been forgiven so much.  God grant us to understand and rejoice in His amazing grace, which has forgiven each one of us, so much, and washed us clean.        

One God and Father of us all:  Our Father.  Because Jesus has become our brother, we can call His Father “Our Father.”  Jesus entered into the human race, becoming like us in every way, except without sin.  Now, we who know and trust His forgiving love are adopted children of His Father.  The One God and Father rejoices to give all authority and dominion to His Son.  The One eternally begotten Son rejoices to submit to His Father’s will, and give Him glory in all things.  The Holy Spirit rejoices to teach us all things about the Son, through whom we see and know the Father. 

     I was incredibly blessed to have an earthly father who led our family with love and discipline.  My dad was imperfect, but he raised us kids well.  I have powerful, wonderful memories of dinner, all seven of us enjoying Mom’s cooking, meals provided and presided over by my dad.  Did you have a dad who did that?  I know not all of us did.  All earthly fathers fall short, but by God’s grace, they can also reflect the love of God the Father. 

     Well, whether you have memories of glorious dinners with your earthly father, or not, hear this Good News:  Your God and Father, who sent His Son to the cross to save you, is providing and presiding over every meal you eat.  He rejoices to draw you to Himself, ever closer, through the Truth and Mercy of Jesus, especially here, at this Table.  And He looks forward to hosting you, face to face, at the heavenly banquet.  One God and Father of us all.  Alleluia, what a glorious dinner party, forever and ever, Amen.