Trinity 4

Luke 6:36-42 - Trinity IV - June 23, 2013 

Be Ye Merciful

Almighty God, merciful Father.  That’s what we call God when we bow down to confess our sins.  We don’t appeal to justice.  We appeal to His boundless mercy.  We ask that He would mercifully spare us from our punishment, which His Son endured in our place, and that He would graciously give us that good, which Jesus has earned in our place.  Grace and mercy go hand in hand. But we see here in the relationship between the two that there is also a distinction worth noting. 

When we say that God is gracious, we are saying that He gives us what we don’t deserve to have.  Take, for instance, everything that we need to support our body and life.  All this God gives to us by grace alone without any merit or worthiness in us.  We don’t deserve what good things we have.  What do we deserve?  Well, this is where mercy comes in.  We deserve God’s temporal and eternal punishment for how we have lived.  We have treated our bodies as though we own them, and everything God gives us as though it were here to serve our own desires.   We act as though we deserved the things God so graciously bestows.  But we don’t.  We deserve wrath.  And yet it is in mercy that God declines to be wrathful.  In mercy, God chooses not to condemn us, but to forgive and acquit us. 

Trinity 3

Luke 15:11-32 - Trinity III - June 16, 2013 

The Father’s Love for His Son 

Fathers’ Day 2013

Jesus receives sinners.  He seeks the lost sheep who has soiled his life with sin, and fallen prey to the roaring lion who seeks to devour him.  Jesus seeks and finds him here in church by calling us all to repentance.  Jesus sweeps clean this house, like an old lady searching for a coin she lost.  He sweeps away all pride and delusion in our hearts and makes sinners out of each one of us.  Only then are we found.  Here in God’s house, Jesus seeks us and finds us though the preaching of His word.  And when He finds us here, when we are found to be in dear need of His mercy, Jesus gives us His mercy.  He absolves penitent sinners of their sin, because that’s what His Father sent Him to do.  When Jesus receives sinners, God receives His children, and heaven swells with unspeakable joy. 

The parable of the forgiving father follows the same theme as these first two parables.  It’s usually known as the parable of the prodigal son.  And I suppose that makes sense, since the theme is repentance.  The son repented, not the father.  But what’s great about these stories is that, although the theme is on repentance, the main character is not the son who turns back, but the father who waits for and receives with joy his wayward child.  Repentance seems like something that we do.  And yet true repentance doesn’t begin with us at all — no more than a coin initiates the task of being found under the rug.  No, repentance always begins with the work and will of the Father.  As Jesus says in John 6, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44).

Trinity 2

Luke 14:16-24 - Trinity II - June 2, 2013 

Come Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest

“Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed.  Amen.” 

That’s what we pray before we eat.  It’s known as the common table prayer.  We invite Jesus to join us as we sit down to enjoy what He Himself has given us.  We usually don’t think of such things as coming from Jesus.  Of course, we know that there is one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three Persons in one divine Essence, and that Jesus is God.  And all good things come from God.  But we tend to talk about the Father, not the Son, as being the One who blesses us with our material things, don’t we?  Well, it’s true.  It’s proper to speak this way since that’s how Scripture speaks.  The Father is the source of all things.  That’s why we call Him our Maker.  It is God the Father almighty who daily and richly provides us with all that we need to support this body and life.  This is what we confess in the Creed.  And all this He does only out of fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us. 

Trinity Sunday

John 3:1-15 - Trinity Sunday - May 26, 2013 

We Speak of What We Know

“You shall have no other gods before Me.”  By this commandment, it is obvious enough that there is only one God. There is none beside Him.  Of course, even natural man is able to figure this much out by thinking about it.  But that isn’t what makes Him our God.  By using our mind, we can conclude that God exists.  Sure.  But it is not by thinking hard that we come to fear, love, and trust Him. 

Jesus was once asked by a Scribe, as recorded in Mark 12, “Which is the first commandment of all?”  Jesus answered by quoting from Deuteronomy 6: “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.”   Jesus almost quoted from Deuteronomy word for word.  But He added something – not like He added to Scripture – No, but He clarified the meaning of Scripture.  He who Himself fulfills all of Scripture summed up what it means to love God with your heart, and soul, and strength by including the phrase, “and with all your mind.”  

See, it’s perfectly accessible to human reason that there is one God. 

Pentecost

John 14:23-31 - Pentecost - May 19, 2013 

The Holy Spirit Clears Confusion by Giving Peace with the Father through Jesus Christ

After God had rescued Noah and his family from the destruction of the flood, God told Noah and his children to spread out and fill the whole earth.  They didn’t.  Admittedly, they couldn’t have done so right away — and God didn’t expect them to.  It would take a few generations for three women to have enough children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to begin filling the earth.  They’d have to wait for God to bless them.  Well, their numbers grew.  They had big families.  God told them to be fruitful and multiply.  And they did, because God blessed them.  But instead of looking at their increase as a blessing come down from God, they looked at their increase as something to raise up to God, to show Him what they had become.  They got it all backwards.  They were proud.  And in their pride, instead of spreading out, like God told them to, they settled in the valley of Shinar and sought to make a name for themselves. 

The reason God gave them children was in order that He might bless their children. 

Easter 4

John 16:16-23 - Jubilate, Easter IV - April 21, 2013 

80^th Anniversary of Trinity Lutheran Church

A few months ago, the idea was suggested that we celebrate our 80^th anniversary this spring.  December 11 marked 80 years since this congregation was first founded.  That’s a long time.  And yet it’s young enough to be remembered by several of our oldest members.  There is a lot to celebrate here.  How many of you, and your children have been baptized here and confirmed here?  How many of you were married here?  How many of you, in sadder times, looked at the face of a beloved husband or wife or mother or child for the last time here – and yet received here the certain consolation that you would see them again?  And this is all because here it is that we hear the word of God.  We celebrate 80 years of God doing what God does.  He calls us, gathers us, enlightens and sanctifies us – by His word.  He fills our greatest need.  How many of you having been burdened by sin, or having been stiff-necked and bitter at God, or perhaps filled with doubt and unanswered questions – how many of you, having been reproved by the law and persuaded of your sin, were then compelled to confess them here to a gracious God, only then to be served by that gracious God through the preaching of your crucified Savior Jesus Christ?  How many of you, having been fed with His very body and blood have received what Jesus secured for you in His resurrection?  —How many of you have thus been strengthened and preserved in the one true faith?  That’s what God does here.  That’s what we celebrate.  He forgives your sin and gives you life everlasting. 

Joy, O joy, beyond all gladness!
Christ hath done away with sadness!
Hence, all sorrow and repining,
For the Son of grace is shining.

Easter 3

John 10:22-30 - Misericordias Domini - April 13, 2013 

Good Shepherd Sunday

Jesus Christ is Lord.  This is the most fundamental confession of the Christian faith.  In Luther’s Small Catechism we confess in the second article of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary, is my Lord.”   Immediately once we confess who Jesus is, namely, that He is true God and true man, we also confess what He has done.  This is important.  The two confessions always go together.  And so we continue, “who has redeemed me a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.”  It is not possible to separate who Jesus is from what He does for our salvation.  By calling Him Lord, we always confess both.