Notes

The Lord be with you!
Hear my prayer, O LORD; give ear to my pleas for mercy! In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness!
This is the second Sunday after the festival of All Saints’ Day and the End Times or eschatology themes continue with a spotlight on our works and the attention that they are given in the last judgment. Our faith has renewed us in the image of our Savior Jesus, so our works for our neighbor, given to the glory of God also reflect that renewal that has started in us and the faith that will be perfected and completed when He comes again.

Let us pray:
Almighty and ever-living God, You have given exceedingly great and precious promises to those who trust in You. Dispel from us the works of darkness and grant us to live in the light of Your Son, Jesus Christ, that our faith may never be found wanting; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Zephaniah 1:7–16
Can you find Zephaniah in your Bible? He’s one of the minor prophets, so called only because the volume of writing that the Holy Spirit inspired through his pen does not take up as much space as do the likes of Isaiah or Jeremiah, who are two of the major prophets. But don’t let the word minor mislead you—Zephaniah’s message about the coming Day of the Lord is anything but minor! God’s prophet still gives God’s message, however short or long it may be: The Day of the Lord is coming quickly! He will bring the justice that He has promised. He will punish those who are complacent in their hearts and who refuse to receive the forgiveness that He has paid for through the Blood of Christ. In short, Zephaniah reminds us to be ready with faith and joy in the Lord, so that the coming Day will be for us not wrath but salvation instead.

1 Thessalonians 5:1–11
The Apostle Paul acknowledged that the members of the Christian house churches in Thessalonica already knew the basics about the glorious return of Jesus Christ on the Last Day. He and the preachers after him had already taught them what was necessary to know. But Paul also knew that the Thessalonians had others around them, influential people it would seem who conducted their lives in a way that betrayed the fact that they had no regard for Jesus and the Way to everlasting life that He is. How did these others act? They spiritually slept, drunk on the things of darkness of this present world. They felt secure in their worldly existence, saying to one another, there is peace and security. But the children of the Day know better, for they look for true peace and security not in themselves or this world, but to the Lord who has given us the gift of true peace in Christ.

Matthew 25: 14–30
How do our good works figure in the final judgment following our Lord Jesus’ glorious return on the Last Day? Our works do not save us, because the death of Christ and His resurrection on the third day already accomplished that. Instead, our works are outward signs, the fruits of our saving faith. That which He has already given us, we put to use in our lives for the good of our neighbor until the time of our work for the Lord is done. Whether we are given much or little, it is a stewardship to which we are called to be faithful, confident that whatever we have been given will produce the results that are pleasing to God, and the reward will be ours in Jesus Christ.

Here’s hymn 508, stanza 7:
    O Jesus Christ, do not delay, / But hasten our salvation;
    We often tremble on our way / In fear and tribulation.
    O hear and grant our fervent plea: / Come, mighty judge, and set us free
        From death and ev’ry evil.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the Second Sunday after All Saints’ Day: November 15, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Remember when the workers in the vineyard were paid their wages at the end of the day? No matter how long they worked, or how much of the heat of the day they endured, they all received the same coin. That parable meant that no matter how great our differences of abilities and service in God’s kingdom, we’re all granted the same salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

Today’s parable of the talents has a notable difference from that, doesn’t it? Here Jesus teaches from the opposite angle. Here, the master of the household doesn’t give equal shares to his servants. One gets five talents—a huge amount—of money. One gets two and the last gets one. He gives according to their ability. They’re all equally his servants. They’re all equally in the household. But while the master is away, they have different abilities and responsibilities; so the master has different expectations for each one. Our Master, Jesus Christ has ascended into heaven and He’s coming back in glory at the end. As Christians, you are all equally His servants, and equally in the household of God. You are equally forgiven, because the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all your sin. In the meantime, as you await His return, He has different callings and plans for each of you. And because He gives you certain callings and responsibilities, He entrusts you with talents, what you need to get the job done. It’s all part of the plan to keep the world in order and the body of Christ going until the Last Day.

Different people will have different callings for the good of all, by God’s design. This applies to all sorts of things. Some will have more money and others will have less. Some will have more talent and others will have less. God doesn’t make us identical, but He gives us various gifts. Together, we make up the body of Christ.

We sinners take this truth, however, and it discourages us. We sum it up this way: life isn’t fair. Yes, if you must push me to admit it, life isn’t fair, and people are different because God made them that way. This is hardly profound, but it’s part of the parable. Jesus adds this, too: to whom much is given, much will be expected. If God has given you much, then you are a steward of much and you’re called to exercise that stewardship faithfully. If you are blessed with abundant wealth, then it is given to you to use that wealth wisely. If it is abundant talent, then it is given to you to make use of that talent according to God’s will. It’s given to be used within your callings in service to others, and in service to God.

This should be good news. This should all be a great comfort from this parable. For one thing, you’re already in the house—you’re not trying to earn your way in. You’re part of the family of faith, not because of what you’ve done with what you’ve got, but because Jesus has already redeemed you. That’s Good News. God has given you what you need to accomplish what you need to do. This doesn’t always mean that things will go easily according to your plan. Life might be very difficult, as the Lord teaches you to trust in Him, and not in the abilities He’s given you. There will be failures along the way, there will also be times when you learn what you’re not suited for, how God’s gifts to you don’t match up with what you were hoping to do. Frustrating as it can be, it’s part of discovering what God has shaped you to do, and not to do.

What matters is, you belong to the Lord. Until Christ’s return on the Last Day, He has plans for you. And because He has different plans for different people, He gives different talents and gifts to different people. All of this is designed for the good of all, as each uses what he has—and who he is—in service to those around him. Here’s the problem, though. As sinners, we don’t see God’s careful planning and entrusting as wise or good. Instead, we often resent it and we resent God. We, or the people we are trying to impress, are seldom happy with who God has made us to be.

Rather than give thanks for what you are by God’s design, you’ll be tempted to focus on what you aren’t. Dissatisfaction and discontent are two big temptations for the devil. And not only will you be dissatisfied with who you are, but in jealousy you may also resent who God has made others to be.

And when people find something about themselves that they do like, what is the temptation? Self-centered pride. Rather than give thanks to God for the gift and use it in service to others, the big temptation will be to use it in service to yourself, to gather recognition, power, wealth and a sense of superiority.

Or you may not want to use the talents that you have, reasoning that to do so would take too much time or be embarrassing or below your status. Or, another of the devil’s tricky temptations: you’ll be tempted to covet especially what the world glorifies, which may not be at all the greatest gifts for service in the household of faith. Physical beauty and strength are well-known idols. Riches are another attractive god, yet even some who have amassed a great amount of things are not content with them. You and I will also be tempted to covet those showy things every day. All of this is true, and it’s not good. But none of this pride or resentment or jealousy or discontent or coveting is the worst part.

For when you resent who you are, or resent what God has entrusted to you to take care of, you actually accuse God. It’s more serious than a self-esteem problem. You are saying God is messing up in what He has given. By thoughts, words and actions, you say that He isn’t wise, that He doesn’t know what He’s doing, that He’s untrustworthy. That is where discontent leads—to the accusation that God is not to be trusted, that He’s not compassionate like He tells us He is. What next? When a sinner thinks that God is not compassionate, then he concludes that God is a hard master. A sinner isn’t going to want to serve a God who reaps where He didn’t sow. Resenting all that God has done for him, he’ll harden his heart and deny that God has given him anything. That’s what happens to the servant with the one talent in the parable. He’s the only one who thinks the master is a hard man, and so he does nothing with what the master has given him. By failing to use what the master has entrusted to him, he’s effectively saying, “I don’t want to be your servant anymore.”

That is where the devil’s temptations ultimately lead. That’s his goal, to get you to resent God’s gifts for you and others until you say, “This is a hard God. I don’t want to belong to Him.” It would not be God who has become hard, but your heart instead. You would be opting for the outer darkness, for weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So, what’s the solution? It’s not just telling yourself to try to be more thankful and helpful. It’s repentance. Repentance begins with confessing the resentment that your heart feels toward God for what He hasn’t given to you and for what He has given to others. It includes confessing envy, jealousy, coveting, thanklessness and discontent, along with all other sins that would lead you to doubt God’s mercy, to portray Him as a hard master just because He opposes your sinful will.

But then there’s more. When you realize that staying out of His household is not a good idea, then your repentance is met with the Lord’s absolution—you are assured as you are today that you are forgiven for all of these sins all because of what Jesus has done. And here is what Jesus has done for you. For you and for your salvation, He came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. According to His human nature, He became a specific person with a specific appearance—and, says Isaiah, a plain and unremarkable appearance. According to His human nature, He took on weaknesses and frailties of man. He could be weary, hungry, sad…bruised and wounded. But rather than resent those limitations or envy others, He remained without sin, using His humanity fully in service to those around Him—and fully in service to all the world.

That service led Him to the cross. There, He was the object of anger, wrath and resentment. They sought His death by the cruelest of means. He submitted to that—not because He was powerless against them, but because He was there to suffer God’s judgment for sin. For theirs and yours.

Risen from the dead, your Savior comes to you. By His Word and Supper, He continues to forgive you all of your sins, keeping you clothed in His righteousness and strengthened in the one true faith. Because of His cross and His grace, you can be sure of this: it is God who made you to be who you are. It is God who has entrusted you with gifts and abilities for service, and it is God who still preserves you and your stewardship. He uses your strengths and your weaknesses for your good, as well as the good of others. Because of the cross, you can be certain that God works this for your good, and not for evil. Because of the cross, you’re set free from resentment and envy and discontent and the rest of those temptations that would harden your heart toward Him. And when you’re tempted again, you repent again; and His grace is sufficient for you.

Dear friends, rejoice. The Lord has made you who you are for service where He has placed you. Until He comes again, that means there will be inequality in the eyes of man. But what the world calls inequality, unfairness, discrimination, the Lord calls suitability—indeed, He has suited and equipped you for the things He would have you do in service to your neighbor and in service to Him. And while those gifts may be various and unequal in our eyes for service in this world, His grace is the same for all. In other words, no matter what the Lord has entrusted to you for this life—great or small, you can be sure of this: you are a saint in the household, sealed with baptism’s forgiveness.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Zeph. 1:7–16 Be silent in the presence of the Lord GOD
Psalm 90:1–12 a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday
1 Thess. 5:1–11 the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night
Matt. 25:14–30 to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one

Notes

The Lord be with you!
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost is also the first of the Sundays that follow after the festival of All Saints’ Day. These last few Sundays in the Church Year have readings that focus on some aspect of the Last Things. Since the Greek Word for last is eschaton, the usual theological category for last things is eschatology, or the subject is described as eschatological. To put it simply, the End has many things to consider, like the Last Judgment, the Glorious Return of Jesus, the Resurrection of the Dead, the New Creation, the Life Everlasting, and so on. This season’s teaching gives us a proper viewpoint of what all these Last Things mean for us, since in our day there are many opinions about the Last Things that may attempt to distract us from the one thing we must always treasure, whether the Last Day is tomorrow, or centuries still to come: that One thing is Christ our Savior, who has claimed us as His beloved bride, the Church.

Let us pray:
Lord God, heavenly Father, send forth Your Son to lead home His bride, the Church, that with all the company of the redeemed we may finally enter into His eternal wedding feast; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Amos 5:18–24
Is the coming Day of the Lord a good thing or a bad thing? God’s answer, which Amos gives us here in strong language is, both! For those who despise God’s Word, who think little about sin and forgiveness and eternal things, the Last Day will be a fearful, bitter day of sadness and gloom. For those who are despised by the world, who suffer at the hands of evil persecutors of the truth, those who through their struggles hang on in faith to the divine promises that have been fulfilled in Christ, for them the Last Day will be justice rolling down like waters, and a flood of righteousness whose stream will never fail.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
We miss our loved ones terribly. They have fallen asleep in the Lord Jesus and are with Him, so that blessed truth is comforting for us to know that they are with Him and no longer suffering here. But there is something even more comforting than knowing that the saints who have died are in a better place! Even more comforting than that is knowing that we too shall join with them. “We shall always be with the Lord” says our reading. If it should happen that Christ returns and the world ends before our death, we still won’t miss out, for then we shall be caught up in the air to greet our Lord, with the blessed saints rising from their graves to meet Him with us. All of us caught up together, not in a secret rapture but in a majestic parade of triumph with a never-ending joy that is just getting started! That’s truly comforting.

Matthew 25:1–13
“Oh, where are ye, ye virgins wise?” That’s the call from the watchman singing his song from his post at the fateful moment when the Lord returns in glory. We want to be wise, to have oil in our lamps and plenty on hand so that we are ready for Jesus the Bridegroom when He comes. Jesus tells this story to impress upon us the importance of our faith in Him. This is not a lesson on when and how much we should share with others. We cannot believe for others’ sake. If they continue to refuse to believe in Jesus Christ their Savior for themselves, there is little more we can do for them spiritually than pray for them to realize their need to repent. But for us, we need not worry whether we are fully prepared for the Lord’s great Coming, because we hear His Word, we receive His forgiveness, we eat the Supper of His Body and Blood in Holy Communion. These precious gifts that we receive as often as we can, at the times when He comes in a hidden way every week, they are the oil in our lamps, that is, they fully prepare us for the Last Day, when He will come in an impressive and visible way.

Here’s hymn 514, stanza 2:
    There shall we see in glory / Our dear Redeemer’s face;
    The long-awaited story / Of heav’nly joy takes place:
    The patriarchs shall meet us, / The prophets’ holy band;
    Apostles, martyrs greet us / In that celestial land.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the First Sunday after All Saints’ Day: November 8, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Saint Gregory many centuries ago read Jesus’ parable about the wise and foolish virgins and then warned his congregation, “You should be very fearful and circumspect about the good things you do.” Of course, he didn’t mean that you should refrain from doing good to everyone, especially to those who are of the household of faith, for that is what St. Paul in fact urges us to do. And surely, it’s not that you should live as you please and so gratify the desires of your sinful flesh. On the contrary, the Apostle clearly instructs us, “Do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Gal. 5:13) And finally we are comforted in our doing good for others with these words from Galatians: “Do not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

So even though we have been given some time-tested advice to be careful about the good things we do, we still should not be discouraged from letting our light so shine before men that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven. The warning, however, stands as Gregory gave it: “You should be very fearful and circumspect (that is, deliberate and mindful) about the good things you do.” Why should you be fearful in doing what is good? The reason is that in doing good you might take comfort in the good that you do. The fear is that you might even take pride in what you do, and then expect to be rewarded somehow because of it. The fear is that you will dwell on those gracious works that the Holy Spirit has produced in you, to the point that you believe in yourself and some inner ability to do what is right. But above all, the greatest fear is that your opinion about the good you do will produce a false confidence within you. That as you approach the Almighty Lord on His judgment throne you may be tempted to present your good works and nice qualities as noble and worthy before the Lord, expecting that He will praise you for what you have done.

Now, if we are to learn nothing else from today’s Gospel, which is the story of the wise and foolish virgins waiting with their lamps for the bridegroom at the wedding feast, if you take nothing else home with you, learn and take to heart that the good you do cannot hold a candle to the brightness of Our Lord’s arrival or to the good that He has accomplished within you. In fact, compared with glory of the Lord and the living Light He is, what you do on your own that looks so good to you is as blackest night. In comparison against Christ’s works, your works that you do in hope for a Divine reward deserve to be thrown away into the darkness.

But you as a baptized child of God are not of the night nor of darkness. Christ has rescued you from the weeping and gnashing of teeth that you deserved. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. That means that Christ works within you, and the good you do is really the good that Christ does. It is pleasing to the Father not because you did it, but because God the Father is pleased with Jesus who is standing in for you, which is really a much better arrangement. So as we follow the direction of God’s Holy Word, may we who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.

For that is what the wise virgins do in today’s Gospel. Although they do something good and commendable, that is, prepare and wait for the coming guest of honor, they still place no confidence in themselves or in their good deeds. Rather, in their waiting they rely solely on the bridegroom, that is, the Lord Jesus and the good that He has planted within them. That is why they have oil aplenty. And that is why they are wise. Not because they were clever enough to stock up for the future. And not because they were shrewd in their dealings with the foolish virgins, refusing to let them have their extra oil. The point of this story is not supposed to be how nice it is to share with others. This is a matter of faith, not of Christian love. The wise in Christ’s example here are wise because they have the wisdom of the Lord. And with that wisdom, they trust not in what they have done but in what the Lord Jesus has done for them and they’re humbly thankful for what He accomplishes through them.

So whatever good the wise virgins do, they do not call their own good. Rather, the good they do they trace back to the Spirit of Christ who lives within them, since they stand for those who have been baptized into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They do not wait for the Bridegroom in this parable with the hope that they will be in the right place at the right time. They await the Bridegroom’s arrival with the expectation that He will make good on the invitation He has already issued. They wait with the confidence that they already share in His joy, even while at the moment they are standing in darkness with only a little lamp light in their hands, and they simply look forward to the full brightness of that joy in the near future.

The foolish, however, are those who hang around hoping to edge in with the others. Their hope is that they will be caught up in the crowd and swept inside with the others. And so these hangers-on pin their hopes not on the Bridegroom and His arrival, but on their own cleverness and their ability to make it happen. For this reason, they do not strain, like the wise, to hear the proclamation of the Lord’s coming. Instead, they chatter away, listening to their own self-motivating speeches, believing that in the end everything will work out for the best all by itself, without the Lord’s mercy making it happen.

I urge you today from this pulpit that you avoid your inner desire to live according to the flesh even while you do good to others and work hard for the betterment of your fellow man. For the desires of the flesh are not finally the debauchery and depravity that is so evident outside our doors. Ultimately, the desire of the flesh is pinning your hopes on anything you say or on the good deeds that you fervently believe will make things better. And the desire of the flesh is not to hear the proclamation of the Bridegroom’s Gospel, but to hear and believe in and rely on the feel-good self-improvement lies of this world.

Romans chapter 8 says, Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, set their minds on the things of the Spirit. Therefore, my beloved, I urge you to live according to the Spirit by imitating the faith and constancy and perseverance in hope that the wise virgins exhibit in today’s Gospel. Live not by the dim light of your own good deeds, but live always by the bright light of Christ.

For it is His light, His Spirit, His faith, His righteousness which you received in the waters of Holy Baptism. And it is the lamp oil which He supplies you in the Blessed Sacraments that keeps His light burning within you. And upon the confession of your sins and inner desires, it is His declaration of absolution together with the proclamation of His arrival that enkindles your hope and raises your expectation to be united with your loved ones who have already fallen asleep in Him.

Let this light of Christ illumine the darkness of your heart, even as it illumines the darkness of this world’s night. Let this light, which is Christ dwelling in the Word that you hear and meditate upon at home, the Word planted within you by His Spirit, allow it to kindle in you the fire of love for God and for your neighbor. Let this light, which Our Lord Jesus Himself fuels and tends by His Sacraments, burn ever brighter unto the perfect day. Finally, and with circumspect fear, let this light of Christ so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

Then, by God’s grace and grounded in His mercy, shall we behold and rejoice in the day, the hour “when we shall be forever with the Lord, When disappointment, grief and fear are gone, Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored…all safe and blessed we shall meet at last.” Yet at the same time, before our heavenly Bridegroom’s great second coming, we may by His grace meet here as often as we can around His blessed table of the Holy Communion.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Amos 5:18–24 Let justice run down like water
Psalm 70 Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You
1 Thess. 4:13–18 the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout
Matt. 25:1–13 the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins

Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Dearly Beloved:
We know that on this earth we do not have an abiding city. You could probably think of the names of several saints whom God has called home to final rest in Him, awaiting the resurrection at the Last Day. At All Saints’ Day one thinks of not only the so-called “heroes” of Christian history, but also those who humbly and quietly believed in our Savior and trusted in His forgiveness. They are here no longer, while you and I are still here on earth. Their suffering is over, their pain is gone. They join with the departed saints of all the times past, the famous as well as the unknown, who lived and breathed only by God’s mercy, who have confessed His name and received His forgiveness for all of their sins. And now they have and enjoy to the fullest what you hope for yourself—they have the final release from this valley of sorrow where we have temporarily taken residence. These saints are truly blessed by our Lord, and we have been blessed because of their witness and their life of faith while they were still here with us.

How easy it is for us, then, to apply to our departed loved ones what Jesus says in these Beatitudes, the opening words of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” and so on. The saints who have died believing in Jesus could be seen wearing white robes and singing the praises of Christ the Lamb of God on the throne of heaven along with the angels, elders, living creatures and everything else in St. John’s vision as recorded in Revelation. But while they were living on earth, Jesus describes these saints down to a “t” when He speaks of who God’s blessed ones are. God’s saints are not the powerful ones, or the self-satisfied, or the successful, nor are they even the ones who always insist they should get a fair deal. They are the meek, those whom the world has called pushovers, submissive, and it wants nothing to do with them. But in the eyes of God, they are truly blessed.

Is this blessing, though, just for the do-gooders? Are there really only a few real saints out there? At first hearing of these Beatitudes out of the mouth of Jesus, you may think that this is the way you have to live in order for God to love you and assure you of His blessing. You have to let the world walk all over you and just turn the other cheek; you have to be the one who is out there making peace instead of creating the fight. In order to be blessed, so it seems, you first have to be nice and merciful to everyone who has ever sinned against you, to say nothing about being absolutely pure in heart. If these are the true, Biblical requirements of being a saint, then as a sinner you are not as sure that you have done enough for God to bless you.

For if you actually receive from God what you deserve, it would certainly not be blessing. God does not bless those who curse, He does not smile upon anyone who despises his neighbor or grumbles about doing their duty. There is no place in the kingdom of heaven for lawbreakers, and our Lord absolutely despises anyone who might think that he has a holy, virtuous, godly life all figured out and that they are better than everyone else. God’s curse, rather than blessing, rests upon all of sinful humankind. It is a curse of death, an eternity of separation from His kingdom, that you and I ought to receive. Who, then, is worthy of God’s blessing? Is there anyone who is truly a saint?

Listen now to the one who speaks the blessing. Is it not Jesus Christ your Lord Himself? He is truly the Blessed One because He is God’s own Son. He was sent from heaven to earth to perfectly obey God’s law and earn God’s blessing for you and all of mankind. A saint is someone completely holy, or sanctified, and that is precisely what Jesus is, down to a “t”: perfect, righteous in every way! And out of love for you, He hungered and thirsted for you to receive the gift of His righteousness. There is nothing you could do to earn such a gift, but He gives it freely when you trust in Him for your salvation. He alone is worthy of God’s blessing, but He wants nothing more than to share that blessing with you!

It is Christ’s greatest desire to become one with His faithful people, the lambs of His flock who hear His voice. He intimately joins Himself to you in the waters of your Baptism—when He made you His own and gave you His Holy Spirit to sanctify you, to make you a saint just like He is. He takes your sins and nails them to Himself on the cross where they were paid-for once and for all. He invites you to become joined together with Him even as you eat His holy, saintly Body and drink His precious Blood. This is what it means to be the Church, the mystical body of Christ, meaning you are in a hidden but real way connected with Him in His death on the cross and in His resurrection from the grave, all right here at this altar.

As you are joined to your savior Jesus, your sins are taken away, and so is the curse of death that plagues you and your loved ones every day of your lives. You are blessed, you are holy, you are saints. God’s salvation, otherwise known as the kingdom of heaven, is yours because you are poor in spirit. That means you say, “No merit of my own I claim, but wholly lean on Jesus’ Name.” God made peace with you, the sons of God, through His Son, and so you now bring His peace to your neighbor even as you pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And He speaks His blessing especially for you when you are persecuted and falsely accused on His account, for the same persecution happened to Him. All these Beatitudes that Jesus speaks to you today are not your requirements for getting God’s blessing. Rather, they describe the blessing that you already have because you believe in Him, you were baptized and because you hold on to His promises.

There is something else that happens because you are joined to Jesus. You as God’s saints still here on earth are also united with all His saints “who from their labors rest.” This includes you not only with those whom you remember today, but all people who by the Lord’s merciful hand have finished the race and kept the faith. You may be thinking about them even now, and you miss them. Everywhere else on earth, the chair at the dinner table, the pew at church, the spot in the family photo, these are noticeably empty. But since you and they are all joined to Christ, here as you kneel at the Lord’s Table you are closer to them than you ever were before. You might as well be in heaven right now along with them! Hebrews, chapter 12 tells us we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses—this cloud includes the saints who share with us the one true faith, and who on earth modeled for us the faith that trusted not in self but in God alone.

You as God’s saints, still here feebly struggling on earth, and they as God’s saints who now shine in His glory, are together as one Body of Christ, the Church. Together we pray for our Lord to come quickly and rescue us and our dying world. We eagerly await along with them the Great Judgment Day when we all will at last in our resurrected and renewed bodies see our living Lord and Redeemer, even as the Old Testament saint Job cried out while still in the anguish of this world, “I know that my redeemer lives.”

We are gathered here on this day as those who mourn. It’s just a fact of life, a result of the sin that is in the world that we miss our departed loved ones. But remember Jesus also says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Blessed are you on this day for you are God’s saints, not because of anything you have done or earned but because you trust in Christ, who is truly the Blessed One. Let Him comfort you this day while you are still on earth and forever because you are His honored guest at the marriage feast of the Lamb at which all saints in heaven and on earth have dinner together with God.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Rev. 7:2–17 I heard the number of those who were sealed … a great multitude which no one could number
Psalm 149 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth
1 John 3:1–3 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us
Matt. 5:1–12 Blessed are the poor in spirit

Notes

The Lord be with you!
The week of the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost concludes with the 503rd Anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, so along with the regular week’s readings we celebrate that milestone this Sunday, then next Sunday will be All Saints Day. Next year, Reformation Day will fall on a Sunday.

Let us pray:
Almighty and gracious Lord, pour out Your Holy Spirit on Your faithful people. Keep us steadfast in Your grace and truth, protect and deliver us in times of temptation, defend us against all enemies, and grant to Your Church Your saving peace; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Leviticus 19:1–2, 15–18
God’s holy people lead a holy life, so this excerpt from Leviticus is a summary of the holiness that is described in the Ten Commandments. But since God’s people fail to lead a perfectly holy life, these laws also describe the life of Jesus the Messiah as He lives in and through His purified saints. We have been remade in the image of the true Holy One, Jesus Christ, and His holiness is what we bear in our relationships both to God (Commandments 1-3) and to our neighbors (Commandments 4-10).

Romans 3:19–28
After we have just heard and read a portion of the Law, it is fitting on this Reformation Sunday that we read that the Law could not bring us justification. Justification is a pronouncement from the throne of Almighty God that our righteous heavenly Father has accepted the payment of Jesus Christ our Savior in our place. For His sake, we have been forgiven and what we have fallen short of the glory of God has been totally made up and more because we have been given faith in Christ for our everlasting life.

Matthew 22:34–46
Today we follow the Gospel reading that continues through the Gospel of Matthew, and in it Jesus Himself poses a question to the religious leaders who were constantly questioning Him. You know the Law, you experts and teachers, but do you know the Christ? You see, they fell into the trap of thinking that the Old Testament was only about God’s laws, but the truth is that the Old Testament also contains the promises of God, and the Law would be misunderstood if it is studied apart from those promises that have been fulfilled in the Messiah, Jesus. They couldn’t speak when Jesus pointed out that the Messiah was at the same time son of David (true man) and also Lord of David (true God). But for you and me, our Lord has opened our lips, so that our mouth may declare His praise.

Here’s hymn 656, stanza 2:
    With might of ours can naught be done,
        Soon were our loss effected;
    But for us fights the valiant One,
        Whom God Himself elected.
    Ask ye, Who is this?
    Jesus Christ it is,
        Of Sabaoth Lord,
        And there’s none other God;
    He holds the field forever.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for Reformation Sunday: October 25, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Our Lord responded to the lawyer who was trained in God’s Law, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'” He then goes on to make this remarkable statement: “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Mt. 22:37-40).

Jesus was declaring at this critical moment that love of God and love of neighbor are the two greatest commandments. These are the two greatest laws, for indeed they sum up the Ten Commandments. This is the whole thing about God’s Law. It’s all about love. We read in Romans 13:10, “Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law.” What is the purpose of the Law? It is not to save us, for we can never love enough. The purpose of the Law is to accuse us, to show us our sin (remember learning that it’s like a mirror?). Its purpose is to demonstrate that we in our sinfulness cannot save ourselves, but remain lost and condemned in our efforts. When Jesus commands us to love, He does so to show us how much we can’t love. He’s telling us that we are neither loving nor righteous.

If you want practical examples of this love, look to what Jesus said before He was made man, when He speaks to Moses as recorded in Leviticus 19: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” If you want to love others, you don’t live by emotion or class warfare. You work hard to clarify the issues and make the true judgment, no matter who’s up for discussion. “You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people,” because gossip hurts your neighbor while it inflates your pride that you would know scandalous secrets that may or may not be true. “You shall not hate your brother in your heart,” even if your brother or your neighbor really is a jerk by the way, but you’ll work hard to take care of him anyway. “You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, reason with him frankly, lest you incur sin because of him.” Love doesn’t excuse wrongdoing and pretend it didn’t happen; it calls people to repentance and forgiveness. If the offence concerns a misunderstanding, then letting it go is much worse than a bumpy road leading toward reconciliation. “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Vengeance is selfish, seeking to inflict harm for personal satisfaction. Love works hard for good, even for the wellbeing of one who has done harm to you.

That’s a pretty good list of examples in that reading from Leviticus. That lawyer who questioned Jesus would probably be able to tell you too: love isn’t easy. It’s hard work. But then again, good things don’t come easy in a sinful world; and you have to admit that the more people work hard at love, the better off this world would be. There is a real danger of love growing cold, of Christians failing to love their neighbor as they should. If we stop working hard in our love of neighbor, the neighbor who is in need will suffer while we look only to our own interests. Furthermore, our failure to work hard at love for others is a bad witness to the faith that we confess—for if God is love, how can His people not be loving? Finally, your faith delights to love and do good works for others; this happens by God’s design in you as a new creation. If you hold back your faith from being active in love, then you’re doing your faith great harm.

Dear friends, it is important that we love, for God has commanded us to do so. And sadly, you and I cannot end any day saying that we have truly loved enough. Martin Luther’s evening prayer was written assuming that everyone who prays it will need to say “…and I pray that you would forgive me all my sins where I have done wrong,…” praying those words at the end of every day of your life. Check it for yourself: there’s no footnote in the Catechism giving you a different prayer if you just happened to be perfect that day. There will always be times when we gave into selfishness. There will always be more people who needed love than we were willing or able to give. That’s the harsh truth of God’s Law.

Notice then what happens in the conversation Jesus has with the lawyer and the other Pharisees with him. After they test Him with a question of the Law, Jesus then asks them a question about the Christ, the Messiah who was promised in the Old Testament Law and Prophets. What do you think about the Christ, whose son is he? They were stumped! These scholars were so caught up in parsing out the Law and how to keep it perfectly that they totally excluded the big promise that sums up all of the Bible: Jesus the Savior! Son of God and Son of David both, all in one. They would hear something like what St. Paul said in Romans 3 “The righteousness of God has been revealed,” and they could think no further than those two tablets of stone that Moses took down the holy mountain in his hands.

Without Christ Jesus, true God who came into real human flesh for you, the Law would always and only be pointing out where you’ve gone wrong. That’s what Martin Luther discovered in his moments of terror prior to discovering Christ as the fulfiller of the Law, as the one who died in place of the sinner in order to give His perfect law-keeping righteousness as a free gift to the sinner to make you a saint instead. This is why we celebrate the Reformation every year—if you don’t understand that forgiveness is the point of God’s love toward you, then you’re not going to obtain true and lasting joy and peace. Without forgiveness, there is no good news for you in the Bible. Instead there would only be the condemnation of the Law that all sinners deserve.

This, however, is your Good News, your joy which will not depart this Reformation Day or ever, your hope which will not disappoint: you are not saved by your love and loving, but by God’s love for you. By God’s love, we mean His hard work. We mean His sacrificial service. As in “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). As in Jesus’ words to His disciples at the Last Supper, just hours before the nails are driven into His hands: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). That’s the love, that’s the hard work and sacrificial service that has achieved salvation for you.

Love is the fulfillment of the Law. In perfect love for you, Jesus has fulfilled the Law in your place. Look again at those examples of purity in Leviticus 19. Where you have done injustice, He has been perfectly just. Where you have unjustly favored the poor over rich or rich over poor, He has dealt with all men mercifully, regardless of what they have or don’t have. Where you have spread tales and gossip and groundless speculation, He has only spoken the truth. Where you have borne a grudge against others, He sacrificed Himself to save even His accusers. Where you have failed to rebuke your neighbor and call him to repentance, Jesus proclaimed His Law and called all to repentance. He did not take vengeance upon those who hated Him, but prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they were truly forgiven.

And having perfectly kept all of the commandments, He then suffered God’s judgment for every sin and every lack of love that was committed by all mankind. He laid down His life as the Sacrifice, the propitiation for the sins of the world. He laid down His life out of love for you, to redeem you from sin for eternal life.

Your Savior still works hard in love for you today. He sits at the right hand of God not to rest, but to continue to deliver grace and faith and life to you. In love and service to you at the baptismal font, He declared, “I baptize you. I have kept all the commandments in My life, and so I share that life with you. I have died for your sins, and so I join you to My death so that you don’t have to die for yourself.” In His Holy Absolution, He declares, “I forgive you all of your sins, because I have already borne them to the cross out of My love for you.” And when He invites you to His Supper, He is the host who serves, giving you His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. That’s why it is called Divine Service, because first and foremost it is the divine Son of God and Son of David who serves us. It is His love that matters, not ours. And because He first loves us, we are then set free to love others.

So as we the Church celebrate yet another year since the Reformation, we gladly and joyfully proclaim Christ and Him crucified, for that is the message of God’s love for your salvation. I can truthfully say that it is a privilege and joy to declare Jesus’ love for you—His love which saves all sinners for eternity. This is, after all, why “all the Law and the Prophets” depend on these commandments of love. All the Law and the Prophets, that is, the whole Bible points to Jesus, your Savior who has justified you by grace as a gift. It all comes down to love, and that’s the kind of love we could truly use more of each day that God gives us life. Happy Reformation!

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Lev. 19:1-2, 15-18 you shall love your neighbor as yourself
Psalm 1 Blessed is the man
Rom. 3:19–28 a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law
Matth. 22:34-46 which is the great commandment in the law?

Notes

The Lord be with you!
October 18th is the Church’s celebration of Saint Luke the Evangelist.
We thank God for giving His Word to us through the Prophets, Apostles and Evangelists and writing it down for us in Scripture. Luke wrote the third Gospel as well as the book of Acts. He recorded many teachings of Jesus and the unique accounts of the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to Zechariah and to Mary, as well as the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and the announcement of the angel host to the shepherds abiding in the field. The Collect of the Day recites our reason for commemorating this day.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, our Father, Your blessed Son called Luke the physician to be an evangelist and physician of the soul. Grant that the healing medicine of the Gospel and the Sacraments may put to flight the diseases of our souls that with willing hearts we may ever love and serve You; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
For the rest of the week, we are still observing the 20th Sunday after Pentecost. This is what the LCMS worship committee has prepared as a summary of the regular readings for this week in the Church Year:
  Isaiah 45:1–7
  1 Thessalonians 1:1–10
  Matthew 22:15–22

We Are Recreated in the Image of God by the Cross of Christ

Plotting against Jesus, the Pharisees attempted “to entangle him in his words” by asking about the payment of taxes to Caesar (Matt. 22:15). The Lord pointed to coins required for the tax, and He answered that we should “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21). But if coins bearing the image of Caesar should be rendered to him, then man — who is made in the image of God — must be rendered to the Lord. That tax is paid for us by the Lord Jesus, the image of God in the flesh, by His self-offering on the cross. And from His cross, as the Lord’s anointed, He reigns as the true Caesar over all nations “from the rising of the sun and from the west” (Is. 45:6). The Lord once called and anointed Cyrus “to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings” (Is. 45:1). Now by the preaching of the Gospel, “in power and in the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:5), foreigners from all over the world are “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thess. 1:9–10).

Once again, the theme gleaned from these readings is:
We Are Recreated in the Image of God by the Cross of Christ

Here’s hymn 518, stanza 26, in observance of St. Luke’s Day:
    For that belov’d physician / All praise, whose Gospel shows
    The Healer of the nations, / The one who shares our woes.
    Your wine and oil, O Savior, / Upon our spirits pour,
    And with true balm of Gilead / Anoint us evermore.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the Festival of Saint Luke: October 18, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Where’s the peace? We talk about peace, we wish it for our world, we hear at Christmas “Peace on Earth, goodwill to men,” but still, complete peace at all times, seems to evade us. It can be very frightening now to step out into our world from which peace has fled. Violence has made our streets unsafe, as we see the horrible images on the news. Europe is currently being overrun by an invasion that had been dreaded even back in the days of Martin Luther. In the US, state after state is on the one hand strict on Covid regulations, but then on the other hand they allow and promote one degradation after another. It’s hard to tell which card in this hellish deck does the worst damage to peace: is it gay marriage, assisted suicide, insurgent Islam, rampant divorce, abortion, which way you should wear your mask, or the outright persecution left and right of Christian beliefs and values? Peace and goodwill to men are hard to find, so that we question whether it really does exist after all. Where is this peace we so love to talk about? Where are we to look for it?

Saint Luke was a Christian like you and I; he also, like us, desired the peace that God had promised to the Church. He probably did not himself get to see Jesus during his lifetime, but in spite of that, the Holy Spirit moved him to make a diligent search for accurate historical testimony of our Lord’s ministry, and then to write it down in masterful order so that believers themselves could travel along with Jesus, hear the actual words from His mouth that established a heavenly kingdom, and then commune together with other baptized Christians in the same faith and be filled with a purified, holy love for God and each other. Simply put, Luke found peace. He knew it came from Jesus, and he was inspired by God to write it so that all people of all times would receive this lasting, permanent peace.

The mission of our Lord’s seventy-two servants, other than the Twelve disciples, and divided into 36 teams of two, is a part of the grand Jesus history that you’ll only find in the Gospel of Luke. These heralds had a specific, narrow job description: first they proclaim peace to the house where they’ll stay, then they eat whatever they’re given. Once they heal the sick with the powerful Word of Jesus, then they finally are to announce: “The kingdom of God has come near.” Did Luke include this event just for us to listen to it, then say: “That’s interesting. I wonder why Matthew didn’t write about that.” No. There was a specific reason, and the Holy Spirit wanted you to see yourself and your role in Christ’s holy Church as you reflect and meditate on this passage. We are to consider how the Kingdom of God has also come near to us, today, here in this place. Where are the “sons of peace” in Yucaipa in the year 2020? How do we have the same peace among us now, as those 72 heralds had in their lips and in the towns where they went?

If we are going to face the facts, we will have to acknowledge that there is going to be no peace without violence. The very Son of God Himself had the power to say, “Let there be peace!” and there would have been peace, right then and there. But just like in the human world, peace will not reign until evil is defeated. At first, Jesus’ battles didn’t look bloody and violent. They were very one-sided. He would appear, the demons would shriek, but they had to leave upon His command. Sicknesses and disabilities had to obey His bidding and instantly go away. Bread and fish even had no choice but to multiply themselves once the Savior broke the bread and prayed. Hunger was banished. Yet Jesus was very clear with His disciples, especially with the Twelve closest to Him: the Son of Man will be handed over to be killed, then rise again on the third day. That’s the violence that would bring peace. It had to be that way. The sacrifice of Jesus’ precious blood was necessary because mankind, including you and me, violently turned against our God and we have sinned against Him in thought, word and deed. We tired from hearing the Word, and neglected to hold it up for ourselves, our family, or our world as the Holy Word of God that it is. We exalted ourselves and lifted our desires ahead of God’s or our neighbor’s.

When you hear your pastor’s word of forgiveness, however, you are hearing peace in the face of violence—both the violence of sin that you suffer from others, and the violence against God that you have done. The kingdom of God has come near to you, not that you see anything different, but it still is here, announced and handed out in this very place. You say Peace be with you to your neighbor, that means you forgive them, too. And so, Jesus has promised to be right here, building His kingdom, even though we look around and on a given day we tend to see more distance between us in these pews than just social distance. Be not discouraged, for whether we are only a few, or the Lord blesses us with many more friends to join us, Jesus still has won the violent battle that guaranteed you peace. Will He heal you from what is currently bothering you, or will He allow you to suffer some more? Be not afraid, for His precious Word is all that you need, and the rest He will provide according to His loving will. Remember, Luke was a physician, yet with all his scientific learning and knowledge of the body’s abilities, he had to know that the most important healing was a healed heart, forgiven and made clean and new by the Blood of Christ.

Beware that you simply take it easy, though, because forgiveness doesn’t work like that. Temptations to sin will constantly attack and entice you. The Church is always going to be a lamb among wolves in this world. There will be opponents to the truth who will succeed at doing you great harm—like what happened to Paul. But they will never succeed in reversing Jesus’ victory or His peace. Paul’s confidence is the same as yours; he said: The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into His heavenly kingdom. To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. He also said, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness. What a comforting thing that will be for you, too, since you will get to say that for yourself! Jesus fought the good fight, and therefore peace, true and lasting peace, is yours. You didn’t have to prove yourself worthy of it, you did not have to make yourself good enough. You simply loved Jesus and hated your sins. He did the rest.

How did you get this healing? Where’s this peace for you? Just ask Saint Luke. The Peace of God that passes far beyond our human understanding is found and actually obtained when you hear the announcement from Christ’s appointed man, the pastor: The Kingdom of God has come near. You may recognize that announcement better as: Upon this your confession, I by virtue of my office as the called and ordained servant of the word, forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That’s where your peace comes from: forgiveness. In Baptism you are bonded with Him. In Communion you eat together with Him as well as with all who are bonded together in one, unified and agreed confession of faith. In a common mission, you the entire church have a role to play as you are sent out in your own callings into the world to serve your neighbors, loving them in place of and instead of yourself. Is this going to instantly make our world a safe place and shield us from suffering of all types? No, but we are assured that our Lord of peace will be with us always, and at the very end, that is, at the final appearing of Jesus at the end of the world, all this that has gone awry in our world will be set right. The present world, with which many unfortunately are in love with all its temporary pleasures, will one day pass away and we will finally see the great kingdom to which right now, you and I belong as permanent citizens.

Like Luke, and Saint Paul too, be filled with eagerness to get more and more familiar with the Bible, the Holy Scriptures. Notice the interesting detail in Paul’s letter to Timothy—I think it is fascinating. You can understand why he would want Timothy to bring his cloak when he comes to meet him in prison, since he is bound with chains as though he were a criminal. There would have been no other way he was going to keep warm. Paul also wanted his books, and then this—above all the parchments. The animal skins that have the more recent writing on them. These are by all accounts truly one of a kind documents. I have wondered whether or not this tidbit might be mentioning the first records of Jesus and His disciples that would eventually be written as the Gospels. Maybe Luke, who is there with Paul, would be interested in including what Paul has in mind in his two volumes that would be preserved up to this very day. But whatever those precious writings were, you have writings just like them preserved and translated for your use right there in your own Bible. Thanks be to God that He gave faithful, dedicated disciples like Luke and Paul to write the Lord’s words down for us to heal us with forgiveness and give us unending peace. To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Reading:
Is. 45:1–7 I will go before you and make the crooked places straight
Psalm 96:1–13 Give to the LORD the glory due His name
1 Thess. 1:1–10 remembering without ceasing your work of faith
Matt. 22:15–22 Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?

Is. 35:5-8 then the eyes of the blind will be opened
2 Tim 4:5-18 do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry
Luke 10:1-9 the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them

Notes

The Lord be with you!
The Lord has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.

This is the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, the theme of which employs the Biblical image of a wedding feast. Our Lord created and honored marriage right from the very beginning in Eden, and it fittingly pictures the close relationship of faith with Him. The robe of righteousness that is spoken of in our Introit is the forgiveness that grants us the wedding ring of unity with Christ as His bride, the Church. Everything that belongs to Him is ours, and everything that we had as our sinful burden is now His.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, You invite us to trust in You for our salvation. Deal with us not in the severity of Your judgment but by the greatness of Your mercy; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Isaiah 25:6–9
A large feast in the Old Testament presumes the fact that a harvest has just taken place. We need to remind ourselves every once in a while that there was in fact a time when there were no Staters stores or Costcos! The Lord has invited all peoples to a rich feast of salvation upon completing the great harvest, the end of time itself. And while you and I and all those whom God has called to faith in Christ are feasting, the Lord has promised to swallow up death forever! He will gobble up our shame that had covered us like a shroud. We have much to look forward to when it comes to this great feast—let us rejoice!

Philippians 4:4–13
What is this strange, upbeat tone from this prisoner Paul? Rejoice in all circumstances! The Lord is at hand! I can do all things through Him who strengthens me! He sounds crazy! Even though Roman guards may be watching over him in his cell, the Lord is the one who is guarding his heart and mind, watching over him with peace. The reason why the pastor says verse 7 of this chapter as a closing blessing to every sermon is so that the words that the listener hears from God’s Word may produce the same rejoicing faith that gave Paul reason to endure even the greatest suffering for the sake of Christ. He alone strengthens us, and with Him, we have no other need—all has been fulfilled.

Matthew 22:1–14
In Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast there are two requirements for the wedding guests who attend the feast. The first requirement is the king’s invitation. Without this invitation, they would not have been let in the door. It had to be the king’s own will and generous desire to reach out to the invited that enabled them to come. When the invited chose to reject the invitation, that justly enraged the king to punish them severely and revoke their invitation and give it to others. The other requirement needed to attend the wedding feast, once the invitation has let you in the door, is a wedding garment. Again, this is solely due to the will of the king, and it is through his generosity alone that the guests receive the required garment. Through the Holy Spirit, we the members of the Kingdom of God have received both of the required gifts: the invitation and the wedding garments. The invitation was our call to faith in Christ and the wedding garment was our baptism into His name that purified us from our sin.

Here’s hymn 636, stanza 8:
    Jesus, bread of life, I pray You, / Let me gladly here obey You.
    By Your love I am invited, / Be Your love with love requited;
    By this Supper let me measure, / Lord, how vast and deep love’s treasure.
    Through the gift of grace You give me / As Your guest in heav’n receive me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost: October 11, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Did you know that God loves planning a wedding? He is probably the only Father who doesn’t dread the expense that looms on the horizon. He doesn’t roll his eyes when He looks at the ever-increasing guest list. In fact, a wedding was the first thing God had arranged, right after He created man and woman. Our Lord is THE specialist in setting up a relationship that is based on unconditional love, without a hint of fear, and, there’s no requirement of paying Him back. No reality TV show producer comes close. God is most pleased when a man obeys His divine command and leaves father and mother to be joined to his wife. Such an activity proclaims to the world that the Son of God, true God and true Man, wants to join Himself to us in an eternal spiritual marriage. Such an invitation is precious, and ever since the world fell into sin, the invitation has gotten all the more valuable, because now the alternative to the heavenly wedding is everlasting punishment, you know, the weeping and gnashing of teeth Jesus talks about. It is a totally free invitation to the Lord’s wedding, and it would be ludicrous to turn Him down.

The prophet Isaiah sings about this wedding feast that the Almighty Lord is putting on: the rich food, the well-aged wine. Nothing will be left out. It is truly going to be perfect. It is set on scenic Mount Zion, which is a favorite Old Testament symbol for the dwelling of God with men, and it is a fitting description that the Old Testament prophets have of the Christian Church, which for them was still to come. This banquet is not an empty symbol, it doesn’t merely stand for some future, heavenly happiness, but it also describes the gift you have standing before you this day in the worship service. Not only is this a wedding banquet, but a royal wedding banquet, and that if you’re invited to this event, you have just been given the highest honor that you’ll ever receive. And if you ever get to read through the whole Bible, you’ll find that it is all about this royal wedding banquet, about all the invitations that went out, the many and repeated rejection of those invitations, then the invitations were given to other people, and finally what will happen once the Royal Host of the wedding finally visits face-to-face with His guests. So Jesus, in telling this parable, is actually giving you the entire history of the world, from God’s point-of-view, in the form of this little story.

So, since this parable is a summary of the world’s history, where do you and I fit in to it? Now, the first invitation already went out: Adam and Eve were given the promise of a Savior immediately after they fell into sin. Many other generations after them received the same invite anew. The dinner has already been prepared, the animals have been slaughtered and everything is ready: this refers to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection. Plainly speaking, the way of salvation is complete, otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have said “It is finished,” while He was hanging there on the cursed tree of Mount Calvary. Those who were invited first and rejected Him have already been themselves rejected, meaning the old Jewish way of Temple sacrifice and the many detailed preparations for the Messiah are over. You can therefore find yourself in the final invitation: where the King’s servants went out to the roads all over the world to gather all people, good and bad, so that the wedding hall of the Church would be filled with guests.

I can understand if this identification hurts your pride a little bit. No one wants to take an invitation merely out of charity. If you weren’t first on the list, then it’s a slap in the face, even if there’s free food. At first glance, it looks from this story at least like you were God’s second-thought guests. Like it was all by chance that you ever came to faith and received the forgiveness of all your sins. Just so you know, that is all cleared up in other parts of the Bible that speak of your eternal election, that your heavenly Father had it in mind from before creation to save you and make you His own. What is emphasized here, though, is that those guests who were last invited, they relied totally on the generosity of the Host. That you can identify with. In the exact same way, you had nothing about you that made you worthy to receive the Gospel invitation; it was all by grace that you got in to the banquet of the Lord’s salvation.

But remember from this Gospel parable, getting in the door is not where it ends. There is a wedding garment to put on; house rules. Mind you, this is not something those guests had with them before they arrived. They were fresh off the street. The wedding garments were handed out as the guests walked in. These clothes meant something very important. They were a sign that the guests belonged inside; a sign that the Master of the banquet had done everything to make it possible for them to attend the banquet. If they refused these garments, they would be no different from the other guests who had outright refused the earlier invitation. Which also means that they would suffer a similar retribution of destruction, complete with weeping and gnashing of teeth.

For each and every one of you, your heavenly Father has set aside a wedding garment for you to wear. It is the pure white gown of Christ’s perfect righteousness that clothed you when you were baptized. Though you were completely soiled in sin ever since your conception within your mother’s womb, it doesn’t matter anymore to God. He has washed away your sin completely and you are clean. You are presented to the Lord in radiant white wedding clothes that you did not earn or work for, but were given to you by God’s free grace, which is the main reason why many families pass along a baptismal gown from one generation to the next as a family heirloom. Since you are dressed in the forgiveness of all your sins, which was paid for by the Blood of Jesus Christ, you are most certainly welcome to your heavenly Father’s wedding banquet.

And yet, for the rest of your life you will face the constant temptation to throw this all away. You remain a sinner, and sinners reject the Lord and insist on their own way. They want to be independent from God; a sinner often falls for the alluring, but empty promises of the devil. Like others before you who rejected the Master’s invitation and one preferred to tend to his farm, another to his business, the pattern continues today: one to believe it’s more important to watch the football game, one to take the weekend off to relax, and another, she may be worried about what she’ll see in their next retirement fund or social security statement. All sinners, that is, all human beings, face these opportunities to gratify their sinful flesh. But for you, your Lord offers to strengthen you through these temptations and take away your sin, clothing you over and over again in the perfect wedding garment that you inherited when you were baptized.

And yes, there will be some, some even within the Church itself, who will continually refuse to receive this forgiveness. There are those who will insist on their own way of trusting in themselves rather than in Christ and what His Holy Word clearly says. A few will listen only so far as they agree with what the Lord has to say. In fact, God has promised that there will be such guests appearing for a time at the banquet. You might recall a similarity between this parable and the story Jesus tells about the weeds that grow in the field of wheat. False Christians will indeed look very good to others in this world, they may even stand as religious examples. Unless they make a clear denial of the faith in word or in action, you would probably never realize it.

But the Lord, the Master of the Banquet Himself, He will know when He personally appears to meet with His guests who heard His generous invitation and got inside. This refers to what will happen at the Last Judgment following the resurrection of everyone who has ever died. Then, all people, good and bad, will appear before His throne. Those who wish to continue independent of the Lord and refuse His forgiveness, will be instantly ushered out of the banquet hall and into utter darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. That is no symbol either, that is chillingly literal. But those wearing the wedding garment of Christ’s righteousness, even though they did not deserve it, they will dine at the never ending feast, and forever enjoy the presence of God in the new heavens and new earth.

That baptismal wedding garment is still available to you. Repent of your sin, including your worries and concerns. Believe that as the called and ordained servant of the Word speaks it, you have actually received full forgiveness; then extend that forgiveness in the day to day life of your particular vocation, and forgive those who sin against you with the same Divine power that God gives to the pastor in his vocation. Believe that the heavenly banquet is here laid before you on the Altar, only for now it is hidden under bread and wine that truly is the Body and Blood of Christ, just as He says. You are worthy of this feast because Christ Your Savior bestowed His perfect worthiness upon You by faith. Be assured that your heavenly Father loves to put on His Son’s wedding feast to end all wedding feasts, sparing no expense, and that He and the myriad host of angels rejoice to know that they will one day also welcome you in face-to-face.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Is. 25:6–9 He will swallow up death forever
Psalm 23 The LORD is my shepherd
Phil. 4:4–13 whatever things are true
Matt. 22:1–14 all things are ready. Come to the wedding.

Notes

The Lord be with you!
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

This is the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and in the Gospel for this week Jesus refers to the necessity of His suffering and death for the forgiveness of our sins. Our Epistle identifies our salvation as the most valuable thing in the Christian’s life, even counting all other good things as though they are rubbish. With the confidence that has been granted us through our baptism,

Let us pray:
Gracious God, You gave Your Son into the hands of sinful men who killed Him. Forgive us when we reject Your unfailing love, and grant us the fullness of Your salvation; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Isaiah 5:1–7
A vineyard is truly a prized possession. It is also a hobby that completely consumes your time. You just don’t care for a vineyard casually because if you do, it will not produce the grapes that you want. Following the analogy from the lesser to the greater, how much more has God invested in the salvation of His precious possession, the kingdom of believers who are purchased by the blood of His dear Son, Jesus Christ! When the Lord looks for the fruits of righteousness in us, He looks for what Christ has produced in our hearts. Without the Holy Spirit’s work of cultivation of gifts, we would not have been the productive vineyard of our Father’s pleasure that we are in Jesus.

Philippians 3:4–14
What is gain? What is loss? What is the prize for which we sacrifice all in order to win? When it comes to knowing Christ our Lord and Savior, all that the world values as gain and all that the world despises as loss has been flipped around and stood on its head. With Christ, suffering and cross become valuable prizes. Likewise, earthly riches and fame become despised rubbish. All of this is because our heavenward call to faith far surpasses the allure of this world, and Paul encourages us to follow his example in leaving them behind, if not in reality, at least in our attitudes toward the temporary earthly things. Instead we strive for the ultimate prize, our resurrection from the dead, which very thing has been assured by the resurrection of Christ the firstfruits from the grave.

Matthew 21:33–46
Jesus told a parable that builds off the vineyard analogy that He gave to Isaiah to write about in our Old Testament reading. The vineyard of the Lord is His chosen believers and the workers were the religious leaders to whom He had entrusted their care through Word and the system of sacrifices that foreshadowed the Cross. When prophets were sent to set right what had gone wrong in the teaching of God’s Word and the life was not lived according to it, those messengers were treated shamefully and most of them suffered and died because of the Word of truth. Finally, the Son Himself was sent and He was crucified and thrown out of the vineyard, that is, excommunicated from the congregation that He was sent to save. Yet this very act of defiance and violence and murder was what God used to give us the ultimate salvation that Jesus paid for us to receive. There will come a time of judgment and reckoning for those who reject the name of Jesus, but for now, there is the opportunity for all sinners to be crushed by the cornerstone and resurrected as a forgiven, redeemed heir of everlasting life with Christ.

Here’s hymn 566, stanza 6:
    By grace! On this I’ll rest when dying; / In Jesus’ promise I rejoice;
    For though I know my heart’s condition, / I also know my Savior’s voice.
    My heart is glad, all grief has flown / Since I am saved by grace alone.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost: October 4, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Whenever a prophet comes on the scene, it means that it is a critical time for God’s people. It is a critical time because that prophet’s message is basically this: “God’s judgment is just around the corner, and time is running out for you to repent and turn back to Him.” It is not a happy message. Rather, it is dark and foreboding and it stings you with the fear of the Lord. Its weight is meant to crush you so that there is nothing left for you to claim. If you had happened to live during the time of one of God’s prophets, he would usually tell you that God is about to punish His chosen people for turning away from Him. There is no comforting word that ever comes from the mouth of a prophet until God’s people have heard that harsh message: stop your sinning! They don’t preach the Good News of God’s mercy until the Law has cut the hearers’ hearts in pieces and condemns them for the sinners that they really are.

Isaiah certainly had that message for the people who lived in and around Jerusalem over 700 years before Christ. Like in Jesus’ parable, he said that they were God’s vineyard, which He had planted with care. This vineyard was as perfect as the Garden of Eden in His sight. And yet these people were bad vines: instead of good, ripe, sweet grapes perfect for wine, they produced wild grapes—the bitter kind that do nothing but set your teeth on edge. They did violence to God’s Name by worshiping other gods that they themselves have made up. They rejected the righteousness that God gives, turned their noses up at the help the Holy Spirit gives to live a holy life, and they preferred shedding the blood of God’s prophets instead. And so here is God’s Word for this critical time in the history of Israel—you will soon be destroyed. A foreign army will cut you down and trample you underfoot. If you don’t end up killed then you will be deported with almost no chance of ever coming back again. Your carefully watered and fertilized land will soon become dry, weedy, thorny wasteland. This is none other than God’s judgment and you will not escape it. That was what Isaiah had to preach.

Obviously, no one in the Old Testament would have liked to be a prophet. Their message is never easy to proclaim. Moses had pleaded with the Lord, using one excuse after another and then finally saying, “Please send someone else!” before he actually went to Egypt in obedience to God’s command. Jeremiah complained that he was only a child and that he didn’t know how to speak in front of God’s people as a prophet. One man after another is thrown into the task of going to sinners and telling them that the time of God’s judgment is near.

But not only is proclaiming the message a difficult task for a prophet to do, the response to that message usually makes it even worse. People with itching ears who want to hear only what sounds good have a real problem with hearing about their sin. Deep down, whether you realize it or not, you also don’t want to be stung with the fear of the Lord. For that would mean that you have failed, that you are not better than those other “hypocrites” and “sinners” whom you know. That would mean that the good things you do contribute nothing to your standing before God. To hear and believe God’s Word spoken by His prophet is nothing more than giving up on helping yourself and trusting in Christ instead to save you. Nobody is ever ready for a prophet’s harsh message, and some may even try their hardest to keep that message quiet.

And so, prophets will be persecuted for the sake of God’s Word. Isaiah was said to be murdered by being sawn into two pieces, as mentioned in Hebrews 11:37 but Hebrews itself doesn’t say who in particular that was. God sends one servant after another into His vineyard, and the workers continue to beat, kill and stone them. But not only did God not stop sending preachers at crucial times pleading with His people to repent, He then sent Jesus! His death, and the deaths of every prophet who preached before Him, these deaths were none other than the Lord’s doing. Every time we remember it, it is marvelous in our eyes. Isaiah himself says about Jesus: “It was the will of the Lord to crush Him.” (Is. 53) As it happened to the prophets, so it also happened to Jesus.

For our Lord, just like the prophets, appeared at a critical time, too. According to God the Father’s own design, just like in the parable, He sent His Son. The message Jesus preached sounded like that of the prophets through whom He preached in time past. He also preached that God’s judgment was right around the corner. And yet here was the difference: God’s final, once-for-all judgment was not going to fall on His sinful people, but instead it would destroy Jesus as He stood in their place. With His crucifixion only days away, Jesus spoke with urgency in His voice to call sinners to repent of their own ways, to stop sinning, and instead trust in Him to take away their sins. He wanted them to give up on trying to please God by their own good deeds and instead receive His free forgiveness and absolution. It was truly a critical time for God’s people—it was indeed the fullness of time. For God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that He would get the punishment and we would have God’s righteousness and good favor.

Fellow citizens of heaven, this is a critical time for you! God’s judgment is right around the corner, and time is of the essence. The day of God’s final verdict is at hand. All those other times when God handed out punishment, those were really the first installments of the great Last Day, the Second Coming of Christ that will soon be here. I tell you now, be ready for that day! Stop your sinful thoughts, words and deeds that test the patience of your heavenly Father. God’s punishment is still very real and we have every reason to fear His wrath. Why? Because it is all too easy to reject God’s Word. It is all too easy for you to say, “I know all this stuff already.” But do you believe it? Can you defend it if someone challenges you? All who refuse to believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins will be deported to the permanent punishment and damnation in the everlasting fire of hell. This would have been your future were it not for Jesus, who took your place and He already suffered hell for you.

So if you are crushed under the weight of your own sin and you realize that there is nothing within you that pleases God, then the sight of Jesus despised and rejected, hanging on the cross—this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in your eyes. Your sins are all paid for, and your guilt is taken away. The coming day of God’s judgment is a day when you will finally see your Lord face-to-face and He will welcome you with open arms.

Though you were torn down and destroyed by the law and God’s condemnation, you are now replanted as a new vineyard by the Gospel. You are an heir of eternal life, a citizen of heaven. You as a fruitful branch are connected to Jesus the true Vine, and He uses you to bear good fruit in His vineyard, the Church. The very body and blood of Christ feeds you and waters you, and you are grafted into Him. Jesus has planted you Himself and you are the vineyard of His good pleasure. He gives you His Holy Spirit, so that by His power working in you, you can then, instead of sinning, serve others whom God has put in your path and so bring glory to Him. You had no ability within you to do good things, but it is Jesus and His Holy Spirit within you that bears the good fruit, in whatever responsibility in life or calling that God has given you.

Hear God’s Word from the mouth of His holy prophets and receive what it gives. God’s judgment is right around the corner—so do not reject His message. Recall Isaiah’s words about the vineyard of the Lord. Believe in Jesus Christ, His Son, who was sent to tear you down and destroy your sinful pride and replant you as His own vineyard, a Garden in which He delights. For the Son who was sent to the vineyard and killed—He is no longer dead. That is the happy Easter message, your punishment is gone. And joined with Christ, you too shall rise from the dead to be with Him on that last judgment day. Until that time you have your Lord and Savior here in front of your very eyes, giving you His life-giving body and blood and proclaiming forgiveness to you. You are the vineyard of the Lord, and He has promised to take care of you until the great harvest day.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Is. 5:1–7 a song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard
Psalm 80:7–19 visit this vine and the vineyard which Your right hand has planted
Phil. 3:4b–14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call
Matt. 21:33–46 a certain landowner who planted a vineyard

Notes

The Lord be with you!
The LORD lifts up the humble; He casts the wicked to the ground.

This is the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, and the repentance of the heart lies at the heart of this Sunday’s theme. In no way does God make His forgiveness contingent on our repentance, rather, He grants us the gift of repentance so that we may partake in faith of His gracious gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, You exalted Your Son to the place of all honor and authority. Enlighten our minds by Your Holy Spirit that, confessing Jesus as Lord, we may be led into all truth; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Ezekiel 18:1–4, 25–32
God reveals His true desire toward sinful human beings and it runs counter to mankind’s typical experience. From the perspective of man, God punishes the wrong people. Good children seem to suffer on behalf of their evil fathers. But in reality, God’s true desire is for the sinner to repent and be saved. He wants all to be saved, but sadly, some reject that salvation. When those who reject God complain about His lack of justice, He turns it around on them and asks them plainly, Why will you die, when repentance and turning to Me will give you life?

Philippians 2:1–18
Paul continues his letter to the Philippian Christian churches with a full spotlight on Jesus Christ, the author of our faith and forerunner of every Christian’s journey through life. The description of Jesus’ work and mission in verses 4-11 is most likely an ancient Christian hymn that these new believers would have sung in their churches. These verses outline for us beautifully the two states of Christ’s glory as the eternal Son of God began to dwell in human flesh and to this day continues to do so. When He suffered to the point of death on a cross, we describe this as our Lord’s state of humiliation. When He rose from the dead and resumed the full use of His divine power and exhibiting His majesty, that is termed His state of exaltation. It is in this latter state that Jesus remains for us today, and guides us by His Spirit as we live in the pattern of the cross for the remainder of our earthly lives.

Matthew 21:23–32
When God gave us the Commandments, He expected us to follow them. When we reject His Commandments, we also reject our heavenly Father and His loving gifts to us that are also implied in each of the Ten Commandments. When we promise to obey our Lord, then later refuse, that also is an offense against God. What matters to Him the most, however, is the sinner’s repentance while the opportunity exists. In this point we have a tie-in with today’s Old Testament reading from Ezekiel. God does not desire that anyone break His Commandments, but He does desire that the law breakers change their ways and believe in Jesus. This is why those who are undesirable and undeserving in the eyes of the world are the ones who are the precious heirs of eternal life in the eyes of God.

Here’s hymn 512, stanza 3, which draws from the ancient hymn to Christ that Paul quotes in our Epistle:
    Humbled for a season, / To receive a name
    From the lips of sinners / Unto whom He came,
    Faithfully He bore it / Spotless to the last,
    Brought it back victorious / When from death He passed.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost: September 27, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Jesus told the parable of a father talking to his sons. He said to the two of them, Go and do your work. To our ears that means God our heavenly Father orders us in His Law, Go and follow my commandments. Go, believe in me, which are commandments one through three, and Go, love your neighbor, four through ten. There’s more detail about that in your catechism. Everybody receives this Father’s command because everybody is created in the image of God and our Lord never wanted anyone to be lost but for all to believe the Gospel, and be saved. It doesn’t matter whether you were part of the Jewish nation, the natural children of Abraham, or even if you’ve been a member of the Lutheran church since birth, or whether you have just heard His Word for the first time today. The Father simply says to everyone, Go. The different responses of the sons tell us a lot about what is on our hearts and minds and how we approach our God and His holy command.

That first son really annoys us, doesn’t he? This disrespectful child immediately says, “I will not do what you say!” Very defiant, very difficult to deal with. It’s easy to see this son’s attitude at home or in school or at work or on the highway and hey, we’re trying to drive here! Our wrath rises along with the hair on the back of our necks against those who are like this first son. What a disobedient, spoiled child, to refuse God’s holy Word like that! How shameful. Surely, he needs to be punished by parents, given detention in school, fired by the boss, or sent to jail by the police. Yeah, he goes back and does the work after all, but how can you depend on hypocrisy like that?

The second son says, “I go, sir.” Oh, now there’s a response that will make a parent proud, a teacher thankful, a boss pleased, and a nation grateful. We have here a law-abiding citizen and member of the church promising to be obedient. Just take a look at those two sons. One is a disgrace while the other is an up-standing example to us all.

But then you consider the second son a little more closely, the one whose mouth merely speaks obedience. The father calls him and says, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” The second son replies, “I go, sir,” but did not go. Who might this son be like?… Think of the little child who says “I’ll get ready, Mom”, the friend or family member or coworker who made a commitment to you, and then dropped the ball, some emergency came up or they outright refused to come through for you. Maybe you did that to someone else. Pastors, US Presidents, farmers, doctors and delivery drivers have all done this, said they’d do it and they didn’t. That’s not so good after all. Actions need to follow our words, and we have all failed.

But you know what? There is a third son! Yes, there were two in the story, but the third Son is the One Who is telling the story, the One speaking the Word, that is Jesus, of course. He’s the third Son, who is at the same time similar to and vastly different from each of the first two sons. From eternity the Father said to Him, “Son, go and work in My vineyard today.” Christ the Son of God said obediently, “I will go,” and He went and did exactly, completely and perfectly what His Father wanted Him to do! Our Epistle from Philippians sings of the Savior who said He would go, and He went and came through on His promise.

Jesus, the Son of God kept His own holy Law for the world and for you. He atoned for all the sins of the world and that includes all of your sins. He poured Himself out for the life of the world and for you, even as he cried out to the world and to His Father Who sent Him, “It is finished” (John 19:30) and to the One Who said to Him, “Go”, Jesus said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit” (Luke 23:46). On the cross He defeated this world’s deceiver for you. He humbled Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. And the Father glorified Him when He rose from the dead. Actions perfectly followed promises, and He has saved all humanity.

Because He had said it would be so, the Counselor has come, that is, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, to inspire the apostles and evangelists to write down the very Word of God, and to work repentance in every believer. The Spirit causes the inscription of the Words of Jesus, the Son of God, in the Bible and in your heart. What do these Words of Jesus do in your Christian life? Well, something like this …

‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he repented and went.” Yes, just like that first son, that terrible, rotten sinner whom we thought was no good. That person couldn’t possibly be a good enough Christian. He is told to come into the vineyard to work and he replies that he will not. But then, afterward, he repented and went into the vineyard. What an amazing transformation! It’s an about-face. Even though he said he would not, he had a change of mind, which is what the word repentance in the Bible actually means.

Maybe that has happened to you, or one you know, one you thought could never change, that the mess they made with their life could never turn around. Everyone may have given up, but as you found out, God did not give up; He turned their heart in repentance in order to reconcile with God and with other people, perhaps also with you. It may have taken a night or two of terror once the horrible effects of the wayward sinful life had ultimately caught up with them. Whatever God used to bring you or the one you’re thinking of to their knees, He was immediately there to feed the hungry soul and stick that hand out to rescue the one who, like sinking Peter, finally said, “Lord, save me!” And He did! Yes, it is true: the one who was like the first son did commit a sin by saying No, but following the repentance and forgiveness, the Lord Himself led them to be forgiven and restored to the family, eager and equipped to do the Father’s will once he had been set free.

The third Son, Jesus, finished telling His parable and then asks the religious experts a question concerning the other two sons, namely, the first son who said he wouldn’t go and then repented; and the second son who said he would go but didn’t. Surely there is but one answer and it is an easy answer. “Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” What other answer could there be? Certainly no other, for Jesus constructed and told the parable in such a way that the answer was clear for everyone who heard His Word that day and this day. The first was the correct answer. And Jesus then said to the exposed hypocrites, ‘Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the Kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him.”

And why is this so? Because, even though those most notorious breakers of God’s Law are by nature sinful and unclean and have sinned against God in thought, word and deed, they have also received the gift of repentance and they look to Christ for forgiveness. Surely, this is why John came, to call people to repentance and this is why Christ came, to call and welcome them into His Kingdom, doing so gladly and with great joy. Their sin, however bad it was, is totally gone, it doesn’t matter anymore, and they have been made pure and holy in God’s sight, just like you.

For those who say they’ll follow God’s commandments, who claim that they have not sinned against Him at all, the Law has not yet completed its work on these seemingly upstanding people, so they will hear no Gospel. They are not to the point where they admit that they have not kept the Law. Though they may be truly exemplary in the eyes of the world, Jesus says that without repentance, when they say No to confessing their sin, they are not in the Kingdom of God. They are not yet thirsty for His Living Water.

Still, it is most certainly true that the Lord wants the Good News to be proclaimed to them and they enter the Kingdom of God. For Christ truly wants all, including the hypocritical and stubbornly unrepentant, to hear the words that, after the Law has fully convicted them, these words promise to bring them eternal life and salvation. These words were the promise that the third Son made long ago and came through on it with the actions of His death and resurrection, all of which He has done for you. What are the words that will do all of this for you? They are the words of the Gospel, of course. But what words specifically? Well, you who are in the Kingdom of God know them well and you have heard them in the Absolution, namely, “Dearly beloved, believe this as absolutely certain: you are forgiven.”

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Ezek. 18:1–4, 25–32 “The fathers have eaten sour grapes…” … I have not pleasure in the death of one who dies
Psalm 25:1–10 Do not remember the sins of my youth
Phil. 2:1–18 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus
Matt. 21:23–32 The baptism of John–where was it from?

Notes

The Lord be with you!
I will offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the LORD.

This is the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and the theme emphasizes the one-sided love of God that saved us. He reached out to us. He acted first and He acted alone to bring us to Himself. We should put away our feeble human attempts to offer our works and status to replace or somehow complement the abiding grace that’s been given to us. We may rejoice because we stand before the Lord relying fully on Him instead.

Let us pray:
Lord God, heavenly Father, since we cannot stand before You relying on anything we have done, help us trust in Your abiding grace and live according to Your Word; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Isaiah 55:6–9
God’s love for us is so great, and it goes so beyond our ability to reason, that when we with our human minds try to grasp it, the logic seems to be contradictory to us! His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are far above our ways. And yet at the same time, this far-away God has chosen to come near and so invites us: Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. This means He has designed a way for us puny and sinful human beings to seek Him, even though He is way beyond us! He came near to us in Jesus, and is available to us through the flesh of the Christ who came and continues to come for us.

Philippians 1:12–14, 19–30
Our Epistle reading leaves the book of Romans and opens with the first chapter of Philippians. The Apostle Paul now is writing from prison and is comforting the spiritually youthful congregations in Philippi. This city was where Paul and his traveling party first landed on the continent of Europe. Lydia, the Philippian merchant woman who sold purple cloth, was the first European to be baptized a Christian. Even from prison, Paul speaks encouragingly about the joy for baptized believers to live in their Lord Jesus and apart from the world which is passing away. Likewise, when Paul hears that his fledgling congregations are living their lives full of faith, he also is encouraged and strengthened, even though he’s living in chains.

Matthew 20:1–16
Jesus told the parable of the workers in the vineyard, not to describe heaven as a reward for those who work, but to highlight the generosity of God’s love to the utter exclusion of works. Who else bore the burden and heat of the day with regard to our salvation besides Jesus Christ Himself? He does not begrudge the heavenly Father’s generosity toward us that came at His expense. Instead He rejoices along with us in our rich and undeserved reward, and likewise calls for us to rejoice with others who are just as undeserving and share God’s gifts also with them, even though our reward for such love may very well have to wait until the very Last Day.

Here’s hymn 827, stanza 2, which applies our Gospel reading to the Lord’s task of sending laborers into the harvest of souls out of the field of this world:
    Some take up His task in morning, / To their Lord responding soon;
    Some are called in heat of midday, / Others late in afternoon;
    Even as the sun is setting, / Some are sent into the fields,
    There to gather in the bounty / That God’s Word so richly yields.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost: September 20, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Life isn’t fair. Not everyone gets a trophy. Participation trophies are for the losers. Only the winner gets the one trophy that counts (and that’s what St. Paul says, so take up your grievance with him). Who’s offended now? Deep down, we know it’s true, but when we’re on the wrong side of “fair,” it’s a miserable truth to bear. It’s something we’re tempted to condemn as simply “unjust and wrong.”

Look again at Jesus’ story in the Gospel. Keep in mind that Jesus is teaching this parable to His own apostles, who firmly believed that they deserved greater heavenly treasures and better treatment from God because they gave up everything to follow Him, and they had been with Him from the very beginning. Jesus had just got done saying that the littlest children—the newcomers who’ve contributed nothing to the cause—will inherit the kingdom of heaven and it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter into heaven. The disciples were troubled by all this. Peter pipes up: “What about us? We’ve left everything to follow you. What are we going to receive? Don’t we deserve better?” Jesus responds with this parable. Talk about troubling. Everybody gets the same reward? Is this only a spiritual participation trophy? Everybody gets the same wage, even though some worked all day, from the beginning, and some barely did any work? Anyone who has ever had to earn a paycheck, you know how offensive that sounds. Same wage, same grade, for everyone, even though some work hard and some don’t. That’s not fair!

Human nature says, life isn’t fair, so now is this our Lord’s lesson to us, that God isn’t fair either? Well… hold on. Jesus Himself says that the Master in the parable very plainly tells the disgruntled workers that He most certainly was fair in His dealing with them. That is to say, He gave them exactly what He told them He would. He didn’t cheat them. He didn’t change the rules or move the goal posts. They knew what they were getting into before they even began. The Master was fair to everyone involved. After all, He’s free to do what He wants with His money, and He agreed from the onset to give everyone a denarius coin, whether they worked all day or just a few minutes. He was fair. He kept His Word, from start to finish. Yet the reaction persists…it’s not fair!

The whole history of the Old Testament teaches us repeatedly about how God, in His mercy and grace, dealt fairly with His chosen people Israel, in spite of their wicked and undeserving ways. He was “unfairly fair” with everyone involved, unfairly because they actually deserved His punishment, but He kept preserving for them the promise of the Messiah instead. Through Moses, God brought each and every one them—not just the “good” ones or the “deserving” ones—out of Pharaoh’s bondage through the cloud of His glory; through the Red Sea, giving them food and water, and not just any food and water, but His heavenly food and water—manna from heaven and water from a rock. Each and every one of them were recipients of His undeserved grace and love. And still…many of them complained. Many of them lamented how they had it better back in Egypt. They even went so far as to worship a golden calf, a god of their own making.

Through all of this rejection, God “unfairly” showed His love and grace to everyone…and still so many rejected Him all along the way. You need to think about that. The waters of His divine cloud; the passage through the waters of the Red Sea; the manna; the water from the rock… it wasn’t the mere act of receiving these gifts or simply participating in and going through the motions that made salvation a sure thing for His people. They all participated, but so few finished the race of faith and won the prize, as it were. So few held fast to God in faith, they gave up believing in Him, which is why so many perished. “You are not saved by works, lest anyone should boast. You are saved through faith alone in God’s grace alone.” Them’s the rules. Faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone. Anything else would make God unjust and unfair.

And it is precisely here that we can rightly speak in terms of fairness; fairness for everyone, no matter who you are, what your family is, what you did in the past, what your attendance record says, or what you put in the offering plate. St. Paul tells us in Romans 3 that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages for that sin is death.” All means everyone; across the board; every man, woman, and child—even the littlest lives still dwelling in the womb. Everyone is a sinner and everyone justly and fairly deserves temporal and eternal punishment for that sin in the eyes of God. Remember: Sin isn’t just what you do; it’s who you are, by nature. As children of Adam, we are all sinners. We’re all dead in our sin.

Then, the “unfair fairness” of God bursts through into the wonderful Gospel reality that He freely gives His grace and forgiveness to everyone, even and especially to those who don’t deserve it (which is everyone). Isn’t unfairness what mercy and grace are really all about? If you remember, mercy is defined as not receiving what you do deserve, and grace is understood as receiving something you absolutely do not deserve. When you think about it, there’s nothing fair at all about mercy or grace!

You want to talk about unfair? Jesus Christ, the innocent and perfect Son of God; the blameless, the sinless Son of God, died for the sins of the entire world; not just for the “good” or even just the elect. Remember: God so loved the whole world—not the “good” or the “deserving” few—that He sent His only-begotten Son to die for the world. That means that Christ died for EVERYONE. The innocent One—singular—died in place of the guilty… all of us. The undeserving One unfairly suffered our justly-deserved wrath and punishment. In the words of today’s Gospel story, Jesus worked the whole day and gave us the wage! His life-giving, life-saving blood and water poured forth from His pierced side for everyone to partake for everlasting life. Our heavenly Father gave to Jesus all that we deserved, and He gave to us all that we don’t deserve. That’s God’s mercy, grace, and love for you.

When you really think about it, God’s not fair, and that’s a good thing. All are equally damned sinners in His eyes, and all are equally saved and redeemed in His eyes because of saving faith alone in Christ’s death and resurrection alone. And still…so many reject and doubt and turn their backs and their hard hearts on Him. He made His Son take the fall and punishment for the whole world so that all of us could have eternal life with Him. And still…people reject Him, but still want His heavenly prize because they are, as they themselves would say, “good people.” They “deserve” to go to heaven. How sad! No one was left out or excluded from this divinely unfair display of wrath and love on the cross. God died for us. That’s not fair at all. Thank God that He doesn’t operate with our notion of fairness. Thank God that He is lovingly and mercifully unfair to us because of Jesus Christ.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ: Rejoice that our lives with Him are not fair at all! May this same sense of true Christian unfairness be the font and source, the rock and anchor of your faith, your hope, and your peace. Be in Church. Be with Christ, right where He calls you to be; right where He promises to be…unconditionally. Hold fast to Christ, even as you run your race and make your way through this hostile, even unfair wilderness we call “life,” for here is Christ, in your midst, His life-giving Water and Blood still flowing forth from His victorious side to you as He graciously and abundantly pours out His love for you in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. Take hold of the wage Jesus earned in your place. Run the race He has set before you. Run in faith until God mercifully says your race is finished, and you depart to be with Christ, which is better by far. Run and rejoice and ever hold fast in faith to this Rock and Trophy—your Rock and Trophy of Salvation.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Isa. 55:6–9 My thoughts are not your thoughts
Psalm 27:1–9 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
Phil. 1:12–14, 19–30 to live is Christ, and to die is gain
Matt. 20:1–16 landowner went out…to hire laborers for his vineyard

Note

The Lord be with you!
Deliver me from my enemies, O LORD! I have fled to you for refuge!

This is the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and forgiveness is the theme of the day. We are given a positive example in the story of Joseph forgiving his brothers, and a negative example in Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant. Both readings highlight the ultimate source of forgiveness, and that is the boundless love of our heavenly Father, who sent us Jesus Christ His dear Son. The Collect of the Day reinforces the fact that forgiveness of our sins is the guarantee that we will receive from the generous hand of God whatever we ask for in faith.

Let us pray:
O God, our refuge and strength, the author of all godliness, hear the devout prayers of Your Church, especially in times of persecution, and grant that what we ask in faith we may obtain; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Genesis 50:15–21
Joseph’s brothers needed forgiveness, but they had assumed that they were not going to get it from the brother they themselves had despised since childhood. They hated him, envied his favored status in the eyes of their father Jacob, and sold him to slave traders when Joseph was a teenager. They robbed him of life as he knew it at the time, and sent him to Egypt, where he nevertheless fulfilled God’s ultimate plan not only for himself but also for his brothers and their children. When they begged Joseph for forgiveness, they realized that they had nowhere to turn, but to the sheer mercy from their offended brother that they didn’t deserve. What joy they felt when that forgiveness came to them full and free!

Romans 14:1–12
Human beings can be very quick to pass judgment on one another, because it is ever so tempting to kick God the Almighty Judge out of His seat and occupy that seat of justice ourselves. And if we can’t find anything from God’s moral law by which we may find fault with our brother, we might as well use a human tradition or pious observance as our club to pummel his head. But our only judge is the Lord and whether we live or we die, we are the Lord’s. We owe the debt of love to our neighbor, yet we also must keep in mind that at Judgment Day we all stand the same before Him. Thanks be to God that our sins are forgiven, so that we are assured of where we will stand on that glorious Day!

Matthew 18:21–35
Forgiveness is boundless, seventy times seven-fold, as Jesus tells us. And if we truly understand our own forgiveness and what it truly means, then we will as the Lord’s Prayer says, forgive the trespasses of those who trespass against us. If we refuse forgiveness from one another, we not only sin against God and what He wants us to do, we most importantly have just demonstrated that we never actually believed in our own forgiveness in the first place. Stated in a positive way: Forgiveness received leads to forgiveness given out and shared, and both are given in abundance, thanks to the all-sufficient payment that Jesus made through His death and resurrection from the dead.

Here’s hymn 602, stanza 6:
    All glory to the One / Who lavishes such love;
    The triune God in love / Assures our life above.
    His means of grace for us / Are gifts He loves to give;
    All thanks and praise for His / Great love by which we live!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost: September 13, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

Joseph had quite a life. His brothers hated him when he was younger because their aged father loved him more noticeably than he loved them. Joseph was the first-born son of Jacob’s wife Rachel. And it was Rachel he loved more than his other wives, including Rachel’s sister Leah. Grudges, revenge and spite were common threads in this family—it’s clear that this story is not included in Scripture to make it a moral example for us to follow, in the slightest!

Now that we’re at Genesis chapter 50, these older brothers are well into their grandparent years, but they could not put out of their minds what they did to Joseph at least 35 years before, out of their hatred. The decades-old guilt could not be quenched. They had sold him into slavery and he was taken down into Egypt. Joseph was ripped away from his loving father Jacob at the age of 17. He was later thrown into prison for a crime that was fabricated by his master’s wife.

Now look at Joseph! He’s the one in charge of the whole Egyptian kingdom. All the riches and fame that Joseph had now as the most powerful man in the land, second only to Pharaoh, still couldn’t reverse what his brothers had done to him (so they reasoned). Ironically, the brothers were by this time also living well in Egypt. Joseph was providing for them and their families, and that despite the widespread famine. Joseph had forgiven them, but the brothers were still leery. They assumed that Joseph harbored the same hatred that they once had against him, even after all those years. Now that their father Jacob died, they feared that Joseph would seize the opportunity to take revenge.

They knew well the language of our sinful flesh, which does not allow for love and forgiveness. It just doesn’t make sense to the world. The guilt these brothers had inside made them afraid of Governor Joseph, much like Adam all of a sudden became afraid of God walking in Eden’s garden, once in his sinful act he became aware of good and evil. Joseph’s brothers thought they were protected by the life of their father, and now that shield was gone. What they had done against their little brother was quite an injustice, and they knew that he had every right to pay them back—that was what they feared.

We often fail to realize that God Himself had undergone the grossest injustice, and that’s from us! He created us in His image and gave us the ability to love Him and each other. Along with that great privilege comes the responsibility to obey Him, to live in harmony together as His creatures. He requires us to have no other gods, to obey and give honor to our parents, he requires us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Have you lived up to those requirements? The words in our liturgy that we pray, “…I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment,” put it about as nicely and truthfully as it can be said. You are guilty, as am I, guilty of committing great injustice, not against any particular person, but against God Himself! This guilt we may want to forget and we might succeed at burying it for a while, but sometimes it may linger around a long time in our hearts, much like it did for Joseph’s brothers.

Then what’s this we keep hearing about a loving God? We would like to think that since God has promised to love us and forgive us, then our sins would no longer be a problem. But what do you see around you every day? It sounds good in theory, you may say, but in reality, my household can sound a lot like Joseph’s brothers, with threads of grudges, revenge and spite. If God is so forgiving and so loving, then why does this still happen to me? Why do I feel I have to keep looking over my shoulder to see if God is punishing me for my sins against Him? We also ask with Peter, How many times do I have to keep on forgiving my brother who sins against me?

Sin is real, utter treachery against God, not some petty mishap that you can forget about later. The guilt that comes from sin is also real—the Bible has a name for it—it’s iniquity. We’re not talking about just an uncomfortable feeling in the gut. It rules over our very being. The truth is that each one of us is completely enslaved by sin from birth. Standing before God on our own merits, we are like the servant who owed the king 10,000 talents, approximately 350 tons of silver, due immediately. Yet we still think we can get by. “Be patient,” the servant in Jesus’ parable said, “and I will pay back EVERYTHING.” Does that sound like you? Do you think that you can “strike a deal” with God?

Sin must be paid for. Its guilt must be quenched. It cannot be set aside and forgotten. As Joseph’s brothers could tell you, this kind of guilt is persistent. Your conscience may remind you about something you did, even if that sin was already forgiven. Something as real as sin needs a real solution to address it. Our huge debt that we owe to God can be forgiven only by an act of His marvelous grace.

And that is exactly what He has done! When Jesus told the parable of the merciful king, He was speaking of Himself. Our debt was taken off our shoulders and put on His. He took care of our sin once and for all by shedding His blood on the cross. His resurrection proved to all creation that the bill has been PAID IN FULL by our merciful King of Kings. God did something very surprising. He did not take revenge on us, like we deserved, but He punished Jesus instead. It wasn’t fair to our Lord at all, but out of that gross injustice came the saving of many lives.

Peter preached a sermon in Jerusalem that sounded a lot like Joseph’s reassuring words to his brothers. This is what he said in Acts chapter 3: You killed [Jesus] the author of life, but God raised Him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. And here the similarity was implied: What you intended for evil, God intended for good, for the saving of many, many lives- your life and mine included this time! Our loving Father has this way of turning evil on its head, of reversing the grim reality of death we have to face, and instead bringing forth life—life that is offered to you today. As Jesus breathed His last on the cross, He pronounced total victory over sin and death. You, as one crucified and buried together with Christ, also died to sin, and you are raised each day with Him, through your baptism, to new life.

Because Jesus died for you and was raised from the dead, God now speaks words of forgiveness to Your hearts and cancels your massive spiritual debt. The righteous demand of full payment for sin has been met; as real as sin is, it has been overcome by the greater and fuller reality of God’s forgiveness. We become the creatures He had made in the beginning, taking on Christ, the image of God. We stand confidently before His presence without blame or spot.

Jesus says to us: Do not be afraid. All has been forgiven. I have taken your sins to the grave with Me and they have no power over you any longer. Rejoice in the new life you now share with Me because I have won the victory over sin and death forever.

It’s true that an assurance like that cannot come from inside you. No amount of self-encouragement can improve your eternal standing. Peace within your heart can only come from God. To know that peace, the peace that comes from God’s forgiveness, acknowledge your utter debt and poverty, that you don’t come before God on your own terms but at His invitation. Confess your sins before God. Plea your case for the sake of His mercy, and you will be assured.

You see, Joseph’s older brothers first tried to approach him on their terms. They turned their guilty conscience’s confession into an indirect order to Joseph. They invoked their sainted father, Jacob, putting into his mouth a last dying wish, as it were, that Joseph would forgive them. You may have given an apology like this: “I’m sorry, BUT this is why you OUGHT to forgive me, it’s only the Christian thing to do…” Human pride can have no part in any confession of sin.

You can tell the brothers completely lost hope when they finally reached Joseph’s presence. There they were in his courtyard, with nothing between them but the unresolved guilt. No longer did they sense having the upper hand to work out a deal for their forgiveness. They were ready to give up and become Joseph’s slaves, because they were so crushed with guilt. Quite a different attitude from the time when they sent the message, isn’t it?

Joseph forgave them. He told them repeatedly: Do not be afraid. He wasn’t going to take revenge; he wasn’t even going to take them up on their offer to make them his slaves. He assured them by saying God turned this evil that they had done into something good. He didn’t say it as though they were right to sell him into slavery 35 years before. He did say that God is in control, as He always is. He spoke tenderly to their hearts; what was broken has now been made right.

God speaks to your heart today, and to your brothers and sisters in Christ. He is here today forgiving you, feeding you with His Body and Blood, that you may have full assurance despite any doubts that might return to you later. You don’t even have to come up with your own apology—He gives you the perfect words to say! Meditate on the words from Psalm 51 that are in the liturgy: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with your free spirit.

You acknowledge the forgiveness that comes from Christ and what He did for you. It’s not that you repeat certain words like a magic formula, but rather you’re trusting the promise that backs these words up. Believe that God is actually saying to you: I forgive you all your sins, and you will be confident in Him.

As you are confident that your heavenly Father will not take revenge against you, now you are free to abandon revenge against those closest to you who have done you wrong. Instead you may say: “Do not be afraid. What you did hurt me, yes, and I forgive you. God can now make something good come out of the situation.” There is great healing and a great future for our church today- it all starts with forgiveness.

God has come today to give you His forgiveness, and He follows it up with the love that binds us to each other in Christ as His Holy Church. Do not be afraid; confess your sin to God and to each other. Trust in Jesus and He will provide for you and your family, even making good come sometimes out of bad. Do not be afraid.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Gen. 50:15–21 you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good
Psalm 103:1–12 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy
Rom. 14:1–12 Who are you to judge another’s servant?
Matt. 18:21–35 Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?