Epiphany 4

Matthew 8:23-27 – Epiphany 4 – January 29, 2017
The Wind and the Waves Obey Him ♫♫♫

                                           +

He whom the world cannot enclose
In Mary’s bosom doth repose;
To be a little Child He deigns
Who all things by Himself sustains. Alleluia! (ELH 136:3)

What a marvelous thing to ponder.  This beautiful hymn stanza was written by Martin Luther for Christmas Day.  With it we consider the marvel of the incarnation and the humility with which the Son of God chose to become true man.  Nothing was made without him.  He sustains all things he made.  He cannot be contained or limited by anything in all creation.  And yet to save us he submits to extreme limitation.  He joins his creation in the truest, most literal sense by becoming a real human being.  Taking both human body and human soul he is made true man.  He contains himself in the womb of his mother.  He who is himself the source of life relies for a time on Mary for the life he needs.  He sweetly rests in her lap.  Thus he deigns to visit man and rescue us and serve us in our greatest need.  Hidden in his weakness is the greatest power in heaven and on earth.  In a helpless display of infant slumber, he is at the same time preserving the entire universe.   

Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12 - Epiphany - January 6, 2016         
Christ Is the Light of the World

                                                                                 

+

Today is Epiphany.  Epiphany comes from the Greek word for “manifestation,” or “bringing to light.”  And so we celebrate today how Jesus made Himself known, not only to His chosen nation Israel, but also to the Gentiles.   

What are Gentiles?  Well, it’s a word that is simply translated straight from the Greek word for nations. That’s all the word means.  It’s someone who’s not a Jew – who’s not from the chosen nation of Israel.  It was God Himself who made this distinction when He called Abraham out from among the nations to be His own special people.  He did this when He said to him, “In your Seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”  Think of that!  God gave Abraham a promise – a promise that concerned and benefited all nations.  But it was given to one nation.  In fact it was this promise itself that created him as a nation.  After all, Abraham was childless when this promise of Christ was made.  This goes to show how much cooperation is required of sinners in order for God to set them apart as His own.  None. 

Epiphany 2

John 2:1-11 - Epiphany II - January 18, 2015         
Jesus Honors Marriage

+

This morning I’d like to talk about marriage since our Gospel lesson certainly lends itself to such a discussion.  In fact, the entire Epiphany season lends itself to the discussion of marriage.  Consider what we’ve been celebrating during Epiphany and how it speaks to marriage:

God became man and wed himself, so to speak, to our flesh forever – not just to Jewish flesh, but to all human flesh.  The divine Christ will never divorce himself from his humanity.  He remains God and Man forever.  He did not borrow his human nature the way a man borrows the company of a woman to meet some fleeting desire.  No, he assumed a human nature the way a man is permanently joined to his wife and becomes one flesh with her in marriage.  In this way he fulfills his enduring desire to save us.  Through this union of God and Man, this divine marriage of two Natures, Jesus creates new life.  As a faithful Head and honorable father, he cares for the life that his Church gives birth to through Baptism even as he remains with his Bride until the end of the ages.  Since he lives forever, the two shall never be parted, and he will never cease to care for his spiritual children. 

Jesus honored marriage. 

Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12 - Epiphany - January 6, 2015         
A Light to Lighten the Gentiles

+

When God’s people were unfaithful to God’s word, God punished them.  He punished them in the worst way imaginable.  He didn’t rain fire or send plagues.  He sent the Babylonians to come and destroy the city of Jerusalem and the Temple that had once housed the glory of the Lord.  The Babylonians forced God’s people out of the Promised Land and made them move hundreds of miles away to the land of modern day Iraq.  This was known as the Babylonian captivity. 

Epiphany 2

John 2:1-11 - Epiphany Two - January 19, 2014           
Jesus Gives Joy to Marriage

Marriage is a divine institution, not a human institution.  Proof for this is that it is still around.  How many human ideas – as good as they were in their time for arranging society – have since grown obsolete?  Take for instance the feudal system of Medieval Europe.  And how many social conventions – as useful as they once were for guiding people’s behavior for the common good – have simply outworn their usefulness?  Take for instance the food rationing of the 1940s.  But marriage is different than these.  Marriage has been constant in its essential form and purpose throughout culture and time.  And that’s because it wasn’t invented by man.  It was invented by God. 

Epiphany 1

Luke 2:41-52 - Epiphany One - January 12, 2014           
Whose Children Are We

I remember when Monica and I brought our oldest child home from the hospital after he was born.  As far as anyone could have assumed, we were totally prepared for it.  We had fixed up his room; we had a bunch of diapers and stuff; and his car seat was all strapped in.  But once we were actually on our way to our apartment, it struck us how crazy it was that they were actually letting us take him home.  Did they know how little experience we had being a mother and a father?  Did they actually trust us to take care of this child?  Certainly, he would be better off in the hospital where the inevitable blunders of his parents could at least be offset by ready access to medical attention.  Well, of course, we were just nervous.  And as it turned out, he was much better off in our home.  And seeing as he’ll be turning six in a month, our inexperience wasn’t as dangerous as we thought. But besides all this, it’s not like they “let” us take him home at all.  He was never theirs.  God gave him to us, not to them. 

And this is the greater mystery to ponder: not that nurses and doctors let us go home with a baby, but that God commits to our care little children whom he loves.  They are his.  He gives them to us.  They are his before they are ours.  He gives them to us so that we might take care of them.  He loves them before we know them.  It is therefore our chief responsibility as parents to teach our children of the great love their Father in heaven has for them.  That is why we bring our children to be baptized according to Jesus’ command and promise. 

Epiphany 3

Matthew 8:1-13 - Epiphany III - January 22, 2012

God’s Will, God’s Word

The leper said to Jesus, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  Everything depends on God’s will.  If God doesn’t want to do something, it won’t be done.  It’s that simple.  But Jesus was willing.  He touched this man and healed him.  This is what the leper had counted on. 

The centurion said to Jesus, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.”  Everything depends on God speaking.  God says it and so it is.  This is how He created the universe.  God’s word is powerful.  Jesus didn’t have to go anywhere in order to heal this man’s servant.  He only had to say the word.  The centurion relied on the power of God’s word. 

These are the two things that our faith is concerned about:  God’s will and God’s word.  Everything depends on these.  In fact, since we’re not able to know God’s will apart from His word, as far as we are concerned, these two things are really the same thing.  We can’t know what God wants without Him telling us what He wants?  We have no access to God’s thoughts toward us apart from where He makes His thoughts crystal clear.  Nowhere else does He do this than in the words that He inspired His prophets and apostles to write.  We call this word Holy Scripture, or the Bible.  These are the two things that faith trusts in: God’s gracious will, and the power of God’s word. 

Epiphany 2

John 2:1-11- Epiphany II - January 15, 2012 

Miraculous Mercy

 

The word miracle is generally defined as something that we can’t explain by natural cause.  But that’s not always how the word is used.  At the birth of a child, for instance, people say, “What a miracle.”  But babies are about as natural as it gets.  Sure it’s amazing, but if that’s the standard for what we call a miracle, then we should just as much call the germination of a seed a miracle.  Or the growing of a little sprout into a full-grown vine.  Or the ripening of a grape, the fermentation of its juice into alcohol, the perfection of a fine wine. Amazing! Yes.  But all of this is perfectly natural; so it’s technically not miraculous at all.  In nature, God turns water into wine every day. 

But outside of nature, God did this only once.  When we talk about miracles in the New Testament, we’re talking about specific things that Jesus did that go beyond God’s normal activity in the natural world around us.  These miracles, which the Apostle John calls signs, serve three purposes which we’ll consider this morning: 1^st - Jesus’ miracles reveal His glory as the Son of God, 2^nd - they were performed for the benefit of others, and 3^rd - they teach something still today about His mission as the Savior of sinners.