Lent 5

John 8:46-59 - Judica Sunday - March 22, 2015
Vindicate Me, O God

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Today is called Judica Sunday.  The name comes from the first line in the introit, where we sing, “Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation.”  Judica means vindicate.  It’s where we get such words as judge or adjudicate.  To adjudicate is to settle a dispute.  This is what God does.  He settles disputes.  He decides who’s right and who’s wrong.  He vindicates the one who is right.  And condemns the one who is wrong.  He pleads the cause of those who confess his word against those who deny his word. 

But who likes to dispute?  Isn’t it kind of rude to argue?  Would we not rather have peace – especially with people with whom we have to spend time and whose company we otherwise enjoy?  But Jesus tells us that he did not come to bring such peace.  No.  He warns against it.  He says:

Lent 4

John 6:25-35 - Laetare Sunday - March 15, 2015
Jesus is the Bread of Life

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Our introit this morning is where we get the name for this Sunday in the church year: Laetare.  Laetare means rejoice, as in that portion of the introit that is taken from Isaiah 66:

“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all you who love her; that you may feed and be satisfied with the consolation of her bosom” (Isaiah 66:10-11). 

As I preached last Sunday, and as we heard in this morning’s Epistle lesson, Jerusalem is the Holy Christian Church.  She is our mother.  She gives us birth through Holy Baptism.  But like any mother who cannot give birth without there being a father, so also the Church cannot give birth to us apart from our Father in heaven.  The mother bears.  The Father begets.  St. Peter writes concerning the new birth of Baptism when he says that we have “been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23).  The power of Baptism is the word of God.  What our mother gives us she first receives from our Father.  So likewise, we feed at our mother’s bosom by hearing and keeping the word of Christ, which he gives to his Church.   His word sets us free from our sin and ignorance.  St. Peter writes about this in the next chapter of the same letter:

Lent 3

Luke 11:14-28 - Oculi Sunday - March 8, 2015
Keeping the Word of God

And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!” But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” 

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If God is our Father, the Church is our Mother.  St. Paul in Galatians 4 calls the Jerusalem above the mother of us all.  The Jerusalem above is the Church in heaven.  But it exists here on earth.  There is one Church – just as there is one Lord and one Faith and one Baptism.  We have communion with Christ.  We therefore have communion with everyone who has communion with Christ.  This means that those who have died and gone to heaven continue to have communion with us below because they continue to have communion with Christ who serves us here. 

Lent 2

Matthew 15:21-28 - Reminiscere Sunday - March 1, 2015
Faith Desires What God Desires

The doctrine of justification is the chief article of the Christian religion.  This means that it is both the most important thing for you to know, and, in fact, the center of everything that God reveals in Holy Scripture.  The Bible teaches that God forgives the sinner, not because of any merit or worthiness in the sinner, but freely – by grace alone through faith alone. 

·       By grace alone means to say that the sinner is accounted righteous before God, not because of what he has done or left undone, but by sheer, undeserved grace.  God loves us.  Grace excludes all works of man. 

·       By faith alone means that the sinner receives this gracious reckoning of God when he believes that God accepts him into his eternal favor solely on account of what Christ his Son has done on the cross to make full satisfaction for all the world’s sins.  This is what it means to be justified by faith alone.  And so we see that faith also excludes all works of man – because faith relies on grace. 

Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 - Ash Wednesday - February 18, 2015         
Where Our Treasure Is

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  “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

There’s something about wise sayings that if you say them enough times and really think about them they stop sounding all that wise and begin to sound painfully obvious.  Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  A treasure is what you love.  You love with your heart.  So: Where what you love is, there is where you will love it.  It really is that obvious: Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  But this is what makes it so wise.  Because it isn’t readily obvious.  It needs to be told to us again and again before it sinks in.  Such a simple truth to which any child can say no kidding needs to be drilled into our heads because of how hardheaded we are.  The enigma of what Jesus says is not in the words themselves — Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also — No, the enigma is in the fact that sinners are so foolish as to think that they can treasure something without that something claiming their love and stealing their heart. 

Sinners think they can serve two masters.  But they can’t. 

Quinquagesima

Luke 18:31-46 - Quinquagesima - February 15, 2015         
Hide & Seek

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“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”  These words of St. Paul, which we heard in our Epistle lesson, have a very simple meaning.  He’s saying that just as one grows up from being a child who knows very little about the world to becoming an adult who knows much more, so also our understanding of God’s love in Christ in this earthly life is but a shadow of what we will know when we are glorified in heaven.  In other words, just as grownups know more than children, so also, Christians in heaven who live by sight know more than Christians on earth who live by faith and hope.  Paul’s analogy is a simple one.  When adulthood comes, childhood passes away.  So also, “when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.”  Now our knowledge of God’s love is partial.  In heaven it will be perfect.  Faith and hope will cease and give way to sight.  But love, which we know even now, will endure forever. 

Consider what we sing in the hymn:

Now I may know
Both joy and woe,
Someday I shall see clearly
That He hath loved me dearly.