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

“Are only a few people going to be saved?” What was the point of this question? How did it concern this man? Maybe his mind was wandering, trying to explore those mysterious things that we will never know on this side of heaven. Perhaps he was trying to trap Jesus on what He would say next, like the Pharisees were always trying to do. Or maybe he was genuinely concerned for his own salvation, wondering if he was among those people who are saved, the chosen few that Jesus was talking about. It seems like he was sincere. He must have read all those prophets saying that God’s wrath would let loose and many people will be swept away by fire—the chaff will be incinerated, even the grain a little scorched, but still spared. The end times have some scary moments ahead, so this man asks Jesus about it.

Now if that is the case, then the man in the Gospel story asked the wrong question to Jesus. This question, “Are only a few going to be saved?” it tries to probe into the depths of divine knowledge and it’s as inappropriate as asking why some people are saved and others are not. It’s also like those who try to calculate the year when the world will end. And they’ll keep on trying! But if this man was so troubled over his own salvation, then why didn’t he come right out and say it?

However, does Jesus simply dismiss this poor soul for his bad question or point out his faulty logic? No, the Lord saw this man’s true need. He is the loving, caring Teacher—the Word of God in human flesh. He was sent by the Father, not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved. One day He will be a judge. But right now, He’s a Physician sent to bring healing to souls, letting them drink from the wells of salvation. What God revealed through His Son wasn’t the inside scoop on perplexing questions but rather His divine plan of rescue for the whole world through faith in Jesus Christ.

So, in answering this question, our Lord says to all those listening to Him: “Strive—struggle, you may even say—to enter through the narrow door. For many… will seek to enter and will not be able.” Notice that Jesus makes the question personal, the way it must be. This is not a hypothetical situation, and so He doesn’t treat it that way.

Instead, He tells you that it’s a life and death struggle, as you may be aware of already in your life. That’s why His words sound somber, not too comforting at their first hearing. He doesn’t avoid the original question either, as He basically says: No, many will not make it, few will be able to enter the door—because it is actually impossible for you to reach for the perfection of heaven. Your Lord’s words are harsh because the consequences are harsh: “The wages of sin is death.”

But what is this struggle? It involves some truly vicious enemies, such as the devil, the world, and your sinful nature within you. Throughout your life you will face this “unholy trinity” of enemies, locked in a struggle with eternity on the line. Since the world began, Satan wishes you to be lost forever in sin and death. He is powerful and will stop at nothing to undo you. And left to yourself, you cannot resist the devil. But it’s true as the Church sings you have a Champion on your side, whom God Himself elected. As for the devil, one little word can fell him. Christ has already defeated Satan and the victory is yours.

The world is against you as well. Now, people have had to face natural disasters as long as history has been recorded. But in addition to fire, flood, hurricane and tornado, you also struggle against materialism, greed, lust and so on. The phrase “save money” has almost entirely lost its literal meaning, thanks to the common spending lifestyle. The accumulation of wealth, fame, political power, the ever-fantasized sex life, who’s “coming out of the closet” today—all this screams at you from every direction to find happiness and excitation now and pay for it later, and you are tempted to believe those voices of the world. But Jesus answers your anxious hearts in this greedy playground world with words He spoke in the Gospel a few weeks ago: Seek ye first the Father’s kingdom, store up your treasures in heaven.

And besides the devil and his present kingdom, the world, you are engaged in a bitter struggle against your own sinful nature. Every day of your life since your baptism you have undergone a civil war in your very being between your reborn New Man, who has complete trust in God, and your Old Adam, the doubting and rebellious part of you that is in league with the devil and the world. That is the part of you that would have nothing to do with your heavenly Father.

Your Christian life is perfectly summarized by St. Paul in Romans 7 & 8: “I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh.” Your sinful flesh cannot be taught a lesson on how you can reform and renew yourself. You as a sinner can only be killed—crucified, dead and buried with Christ—so that the New Man may arise. In your daily remembrance of your baptism, the Old Adam is drowned through confession of sin and you arise forgiven and reborn, again and again.

So this is your struggle against the devil, the world and your sinful nature, but you see that really it is Christ who fought the battles and by God’s grace you overcome these enemies—not by your own effort. But as long as you are with Christ you know that those terrible enemies will be against you while you are still on this earth. That is why you hear that we all are part of the Church Militant—the Church fighting the battles, though you are also united as one with the Church Triumphant, those souls who are already in the safe-keeping of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus. They’re not two churches but one.

What is your role in this struggle? A good word for it would be repentance. It is a turning around, a reversal. It is a drastic change that God performs upon your heart when you hear His Word and eat and drink Christ’s true body and blood. It’s not a superficial change of mind, like you could simply think a different way all of a sudden. No, it is a change of your real being, from the Old Adam to the New Man. You are being transformed into the likeness of Christ, and He lives His life in you. Your life as a believer is automatically patterned after His life. You gladly take upon your shoulders the burden of suffering that He places on you. You go with Jesus all the way to the cross. You crucify your sinful nature with Him and rise victorious with Him in your baptism. Your life has never been, nor will be, the same.

That is why repentance is not one-time, but constant: because every day God has you face the harsh consequences of your own sinfulness: that you don’t deserve a seat at the banquet with the narrow door. Day by day you give in to the devil, the world, and your own sinful desires. You hide your sinfulness behind the wrong questions, and you pursue your own pitiful party as a substitute for the great, heavenly feast.

Once you are faced with this harsh reality in all its seriousness, then you can know that you trust in nothing else but Christ your Savior. That is true faith, that is how you receive forgiveness and new life. And the only way it is possible is not because God suddenly changed His mind, but because your rightful punishment was directed to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. You see, as Jesus was walking about and teaching all these people, He was on a specific mission. His mission then was to invite all who would hear to believe in Him and feast with Him at His heavenly banquet.

His mission now is no different, for He continues His mission of salvation through the Church. He at His death became the Door through which you enter, and no one comes to the Father, He said, but by Me. For you, that narrow door stands open by grace. He commanded Holy Baptism to wash away sins and clothe you with the garments of His righteousness, so that you and I and all who believe in Him, and publicly confess the Truth may feast on His Body and Blood given and shed for you in Holy Communion.

But although the whole world is invited, it still remains as Jesus said: not all will make it. Even with those who heard Jesus in their own streets, or ate with Him in their homes—if they ask, isn’t it enough that we heard you teach, isn’t it enough that we ate with you? Or the questions you may ask: Isn’t it enough that we come to the important meetings and social events? Isn’t it enough that we give more than our fair share around here? Those, again, are the wrong questions because they are self-righteous, they lack repentance, those questions reveal a lack of true faith.

Once again, it’s a personal issue. Put simply, a life of repentance that you must have is a life of faith in Jesus, trusting that He died for your sin. The narrow door is closed to the unrepentant who refuse the free grace of God in favor of their own good deeds. Truly those good things you do for your sake are what the Bible calls the “filthy rags” of unrighteousness.

However, since your Savior is the master of the house, your unrighteousness is covered by His righteousness. The narrow door to the never-ending feast stands open to you. Where Jesus makes clear that you can’t be totally sure about the faith of other people or grasp some of those difficult questions of life, He assures you that you can be certain of your own faith that He gives to you. You today can know of salvation because He knows you—He has called you by His name, given when you were baptized. His trustworthy promises are given every day as you remember your baptism and live a life of repentance. That’s the answer only Jesus can give, even when you didn’t ask the right question!

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

Readings:
Is. 66:18–23 I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see My glory.
Psalm 50:1–15 Every beast of the forest is Mine, And the cattle on a thousand hills.
Heb. 12:4–29 For our God is a consuming fire.
Luke 13:22–30 Strive to enter through the narrow gate

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

Could this be the Prince of Peace talking? He says: “I have come to cast fire on the earth.” Someone forgot to tell that to the multitude of the heavenly host of angels when Jesus was born. It looks like they were mistaken when they announced to the shepherds in the field, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, goodwill to men.” Instead of that, you heard it right out of Jesus’ mouth, He said as clear as day that peace on earth just isn’t His thing. “I have not come to bring peace, but division.”

Are you upset? Are you disappointed that you were led to understand that believing in Jesus was going to change your life for the better? Maybe at one time you were convinced that since God loves you, He wants you to be happy. That your family would be free of conflict. That your job would be secure and more than adequate to support you. That your plans for education or retirement would be well-financed. That people would give you the respect you deserve. You tend to follow the desire of most American Christians who long for a God who believes in you, who takes you for who you are and blesses your life. You want your church-going experience to improve your attitude and outlook for the rest of the week; you know, make you look on the bright side of things. Develop a deep relationship with God and grow closer with other people who feel the same way that you do. You are led to believe that these things are the best of what Jesus can offer to our hurt and broken world.

So Jesus simply is not helping His cause at all when He claims that He’s the cause of division and strife. When your Lord claims not to bring peace on earth but division, it really sets back the success of the Christian Church and puts it farther from its goal of reaching out. How can you market your message if you promise that this message will be so controversial? It’s going to offend too many people… why take the risk? If you are worldly-wise, you know already that it’s best to “choose your battles.” Don’t go out and ruin your prospects by nit-picking over details. Zero in on some common ground, and forget about all the other stuff that causes disagreements. Someone should tell Jesus what a grave mistake He’s making. Someone should rush the latest survey results straight to the Son of God so that He stops all this talk about tearing up homes and families. People want peace! It’s a very appealing and popular message. They’ll pay handsomely for it, and they’ll even come to Church in droves to get it. Leave well enough alone. You’ve got plenty of the Bible that you can use to say what you want, and then just ignore the rest of the Bible that seems to contradict it.

But suppose for a moment that Jesus is not making a mistake. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that He isn’t the bad guy, and that all this division and strife is really for your good. If that is true, then the peace of God is different from the kind of peace that you have in mind. If a family is at peace, without any contention or division, and yet at the same time does not have Jesus, then whatever peace that family does have is false and misleading. God is not blessing them, rather, the devil is deceiving them. And he may be deceiving you. It’s easy to fall for. It’s easy to have false peace.

It’s tempting to make false peace look as if it were the kind of peace that Jesus was sent from heaven to win for the world. But Jesus simply won’t let you do that. There’s too much at stake. Your eternal salvation is more important to Him than your temporary comfort in a pleasant state of false peace. Your heavenly destination takes greater precedent than your worldly success. “I came to cast fire on the earth, and I wish it were already kindled.”

And boy, can that fire burn you. While your conscience is scorched with the difficult task of keeping true to God’s Word, everybody else throws fireballs at you, saying you are unloving, Pharasaical, legalistic. They say you aren’t acting like Jesus would act when you point out the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin against God. The fire of division stings with the rejection and dirty looks that you may get at school or work because of your faith. In your own family, the issue may come up that a couple is living together without the protection and blessing of marriage. You thought they were raised better than that, but you hold your tongue because you don’t want to start a fight. It’s not my place, so you reason with yourself, while the whole time God’s command remains ignored and despised. Your kids resist coming with you to church. It gets harder and harder to make it happen like it did when they were small. So you relent and give in to them for the sake of peace at home and rationalize to yourself that, oh, well, the Church isn’t giving them what they like anyway.

If that’s the peace you want, then you aren’t going to get it from Jesus. For the peace of God, that passes all understanding, is a peace that burns like fire. It hurts you because it also hurt your Lord. It burned Him on the Cross with the furnace of God’s wrath against your sin, and He took on Himself the punishment that divided you apart from the Lord your Creator. The peace of God ripped open Jesus’ side with the centurion’s spear, so that the cleansing flood would wash away your sins and offenses. This peace divides the church because after all it was a group of church leaders and teachers that pushed for the passion of the Christ in the first place. This peace even divides you within yourself, as St. Paul describes of his own Christian life in Romans 7: “What I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, that I do.” That’s truly what the victorious life is like for all of us this side of heaven!

For though you have often rejected God and His peace in favor of your own, though you have done wrong against your neighbor and your family, you have the promise of God’s true peace because the blood of Jesus paid the price for you to get it. He is the author, founder and protector of our faith because He took the fire of your judgment in your place. He doesn’t promise you the success and creature comforts that false peace offers to you, but He does guarantee suffering now, and glory later in heaven. This isn’t to say that if you aren’t going through strife and struggle right at the moment, that you should go out of your way to pick a fight. No, like any good soldier, always be prepared to fight, but stay true to your orders laid out in God’s Word, remain faithful to Him in whatever your vocation is, and let your Almighty General Jesus choose the battles. As you run with perseverance the race marked out for you, don’t change lanes on the track and covet some other calling that hasn’t been given to you. Look to Jesus, who has gone ahead of you. Listen to the cheering of saints surrounding you, for He helped them along and gave them the same assurance of forgiveness that He gives you.

Give thanks that your Lord and Savior came to bring you not the worldly peace you want, but the heavenly peace that you need. Realize that it is for your good that the worship of the church is not merely entertaining and attention-grabbing, but instead it is a solid deliverer of the precious, divine gift of forgiveness. Be grateful that you have not empty success at home, school, work or church, but rather the painful fiery cross to bear in your life. For although Jesus has destroyed the false peace that you had at one time come to love and cherish, He replaces it with the real peace that the world cannot give, a peace that is sealed with this promise from the Prince of Peace: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Dearly baptized children of God, you have already lost your life for the sake of Christ. Welcome to true peace.

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

Readings:
Jer. 23:16–29 What is the chaff to the wheat?
Psalm 119:81–88 Revive me according to your lovingkindness
Heb. 11:17–40; 12:1–3 so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight…
Luke 12:49–56 how is it you do not discern this time?

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

Two times in the Scripture lessons just read God tells us that we are not to be afraid. Well, that’s awfully easy for God to say, isn’t it? It seems as if God always saying things like that. He’s always telling you that we are to believe with all your heart – that you are to trust in Him for all your needs – and that you are to rely on His strength when you have no strength of your own. But how can you follow the Word of the Lord, “Don’t be afraid” when it’s clear that this isn’t always possible.

In every stage of life – whether young, old, rich, poor, confident or halting – occasionally we all have to stand face to face with the nemesis of fear and worry. In childhood it might be the monsters who are hiding in the closet or under the bed. As adults it might be concerns about children, a job, or the future of your days of retirement. And certainly the approach of death – a universal experience – causes everyone to fret and worry. Is it really possible to shore up your faltering faith enough at times like these? The answer is absolutely, “Yes!” For the God of Abram – the great I AM – has come to you yet one more time with the familiar words: “Do not be afraid!”

Sure, it’s easy for God to say these words. Now what does He do to make it possible for you to do them? A prime example is found in today’s Old Testament reading, where God was engaged in conversation with Abram after what was most certainly a frightening experience. Chapter 14 recounts an awful battle between a number of kings in the area who eventually sacked the city of Sodom, pillaged its residents, and took Lot, Abram’s nephew, into captivity. Abram had to take his own men into battle against them in order to rescue Lot and retrieve his possessions. So, when God came to Abram with the news that he was not to be fearful in the face of death, you might have expected him to recognize God’s providence and rejoice in God’s mercy. But that isn’t what happened.

Instead of responding in joy with thanksgiving, instead Abram replied with an answer that revealed the anguish and apprehension he was feeling. He questioned the Lord about how He would make good on a promise He had already delivered to him twice – that Abram and his wife, Sarah, would bring forth a son – an heir – who would carry to the people of the world the blessing Abram was destined to receive from God.

Though Abram trusted God, he was growing weary of waiting to receive what he yet had no evidence of – he was longing to see what had so far been hidden from his sight. Hebrews 11 begins, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Yet, even though Abram is praised for having just such a faith, it certainly wasn’t always evident. It’s important to see this shortcoming in Abram, because as you look at your own life you’re going to have to admit that there many times when, like all of us, you have a tendency to doubt God’s promises or question God’s actions – and this in spite of the fact that you may know full well that just as God established a relationship with Abram, He has also established a relationship with each one of us.

This isn’t something we like to talk about simply because it sounds good and pious, but rather because it’s a reality to which each of us must cling, and on which we must place our hope. In Baptism, dear Christian, God adopted and made you His child. And in those blessed waters God gives His children faith in His Son as their Savior from sin – a miracle He performs even with tiny infants who would otherwise have no way of believing in Christ as Savior, or of receiving the blessings such faith bestows. In Baptism the righteousness of Christ is imputed to you. It’s given to you. It’s placed over and on top of you, if you will – so that God might count you – like Abram – as righteous and holy. God established an eternal, everlasting peace between you and Him through the shared merits of His Son. And through His Son, God has forgiven you all your sin, and bestowed upon you an everlasting habitation with Him in heaven.

Because of all this you are now able to count on God as your Shield and Exceedingly Great Reward. His loving activity toward you in Christ is what enables you to trust Him completely – even though at times – when judged merely by outward appearances – there would be no logical reason for you to do so. Since we know from God’s Word that He’s already made good on His promise to save you in Christ, you can now also trust in Him to provide for you in all other areas of life as well. In other words, what we find in these passages – and throughout Scripture – is that God is constantly in the process of moving you from fear to a stronger and steadfast faith.

And He does this because He is the great I AM – the First and the Last, the One and Only True God, the All Sufficient God, the One who is truly our Shield and Exceedingly Great Reward. But what exactly is this faith God gives you? Some have tried to assert that if you have enough faith you’ll never be fearful of anything, you won’t suffer any setbacks or difficulties, you’ll be healthy, wealthy and wise – and life will be a veritable bed of roses. But if that’s really what faith is, we’d all be in trouble – and as you may recall from the first part of this reading, so would Abram.

But the faith God gives is a faith that can see the invisible, believe the incredible, and receive the impossible. It can see things unseeable and trust in things too amazing to seriously consider. That’s because faith doesn’t have to see something to believe it. How many of you were there when God created the heavens and the earth? How many of you were witnesses to Jesus’ birth, where He took on our human flesh, lived, suffered, died and rose? Yet you confess these truths every time you speak the words of the Creed.

Our Lord Christ said to Thomas after he insisted on seeing proof of the resurrection, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” If you can believe God has already done the things He’s done, how much more should you not also then cling to His promises to care for you and have concern for the daily affairs of your life? Even though you can’t see the fulfillment of God’s promises, through His holy Word and blessed Sacraments, He is here just the same to strengthen you so that you might learn to trust in Him for all things.

God once promised Abram that he would be the father of a great nation, and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky – even though at the time Abram was 100 and Sarah was 90 – well beyond child-bearing years! So, how’s that for an incredible promise? But even though our Lord attributed to Abram the greatest of faith, what was his reaction? Was it not something like: “How can that be?” Yet in the end, in spite of the fact that God’s promise was contrary to human reason and experience, Abram believed God, the promise came to pass, and Abram’s faith was counted as righteousness.

Dear friends, God is also calling you to trust Him for your future, and to firmly believe His promises even though you may never see their fulfillment in your lifetime. Does it not seem incredible that God can actually love you with an everlasting love, especially knowing how sinful and unclean we all are? Does it not also seem incredible that God would give His Only Begotten Son unto death for you so that you might be forgiven and live with Him forever – even though there’s not a one of us who is deserving of so great a gift? Yes, those things and more are incredible, but the fact still remains that no matter how bad things get – or how far you might stray by reason of the weakness of our flesh – God’s promise is still firm and unshakeable.

He is still your Shield and Exceedingly Great Reward. It seemed impossible to Abram that he could ever have a son, or be the father of a great nation at his age. Even so, it seems just as impossible to us today to know that even though we daily sin much, God still forgives us in Christ – and is even pleased to use us for the work of extending His kingdom. Do you see “impossible” hurdles before you? Do you have what seems like “insurmountable” problems? Do you have fear, anxiety and worries that won’t go away no matter how hard you try to get rid of them? Dear children of God, our Lord has already given you the faith to trust in Him in every conceivable circumstance.

And His mercy is what enables you to receive His assurance and courage, even in the most hopeless of situations. Remember, this is the same God who made the heavens and the earth and even now sustains them – the same God who sent His Son to save you from your sin and grant you the blessings of forgiveness and life eternal – the same God who sent His Word among us to keep and sustain you in times of trial and hardship. Would the God who has done all these things now turn away – leaving you lost and hurting after bringing you so far? Of course not! He is our Shield and our Exceedingly Great Reward. Through Him you have been given faith to see the invisible, believe the incredible, and receive the impossible. By His mighty power working through Word and Sacrament He has given you faith in the face of fear.

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

Readings:
Gen. 15:1–6 he believed in the LORD and He accounted it to him for righteousness
Psalm 33:12–22 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD
Heb. 11:1–16 faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Luke 12:22–40 Consider the lilies, how they grow

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

Faith is often understood as something heavenly, personal, invisible, hard to pin down. Money is concrete, earthly, neutral and absolute: you either got it, or you don’t. Even with credit, which to many of us just looks like a number on a statement, even credit translates into a real, often uphill, battle to pay off debts. It may be obvious that faith and money themselves are in opposite categories, neither has anything in common with the other. Money by itself can do absolutely nothing to your faith—Martin Luther said buying indulgences does nothing for your salvation, and he was right. However, the Bible speaks in many places about a certain relationship, a relationship between faith and money that uses a third thing as a bridge between them.

Jesus once told a disciple to cast out a hook and catch a fish, and then that disciple discovered a temple tax coin in the fish’s mouth. He asked someone in the crowd for a coin with Caesar’s picture on it, a coin that you and I might see as a hundred dollar bill, and then said “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.” So what does Jesus say is that bridge, that third item that links your faith and what you own? The wisdom of King Solomon as it stands recorded in Ecclesiastes is the same wisdom spoken from the mouth of God Himself, Jesus, the One Greater than Solomon: the issue is the attitude of your heart toward money and earthly things. Your faith in Christ either is in control of your attitude toward money, or that attitude follows your sinful human desires and becomes a love of money, which St. Paul said is a root of all kinds of faith-destroying evil. Money itself is lifeless, merely a representation of energy and work. Most importantly, it is a gift.

So, what is your attitude toward money and possessing things? Is it true that you just can’t wait till Christmas or your birthday so you can get all kinds of stuff? Perhaps you’re like that man who confronted Jesus and you have your heart set on an inheritance or some other windfall to get you where you want to go in life. Are you lured in by the possibility of taking advantage of your dependence upon others? Ask yourself if deep down you have dreamed of having all your problems solved, plus a little extra to keep, if you just go to the casino resorts or Las Vegas or play a lottery ticket. Again, things that are neutral and harmless by themselves, become deadly weapons against your faith when these inert things are combined with your lust after wealth. Do you get depressed at the low figures in the church announcements, or do you carefully search for the minimum requirements or the least you gotta do to receive certain perquisites?

Then this is why Jesus tells this parable. He’s not condemning bigger barns or huge grain elevators; the real issue lies in how the man in His story used two types of gifts that he received from God. The first gift is the combination of the land, which God made, and its abundance on one occasion, which He alone gave. As Jesus said, the man laid up treasure for himself and was not rich toward God. His greed and covetousness turned him inward so that, miserable miser that he was, all whom he could talk to was himself! The second gift from the Lord was the man’s own life. It was a gift that he also wrongfully assumed was his to do with as he pleased. “I can make my own choice with what belongs to me. No one has any say over what I think is right!” Does that sound familiar to you? And the combination of hoarding the extra gifts that were beyond what he needed, turning away from others and focusing on himself, and taking for granted the years of his life, leads this story character to the terrifying sentence of the almighty Judge over heaven and earth.

Jesus is a judge, a judge over heavy matters of faith; He’s not a mere arbiter of small claims, as He Himself objects. He will render a verdict and require an accounting of all of us as to how we used the gifts God the Father gave to us. And your sins and covetous attitudes of your heart are convincing evidence that you deserve punishment now and forever. You don’t know when it will happen, when it will be when your Creator will require your soul from you. You will not be able to escape it or argue your way out of the sentencing; when the end of the world comes, this one’s for keeps. No appeals.

But the Almighty Lord is not only a judge, most of all, He is a giver. That is God the Father’s true disposition and attitude: to give and to provide. The greatest of His provisions was the precious gift of His only Son Jesus. He was the only one living who was perfectly rich toward God. He put up His own life even to the point of death on the cross as collateral to pay the debt you owed because of your disobedience. As Jesus said on Good Friday, “It is finished,” your debt was erased, paid in full by the Son of God who paid the price. The judgment is still imminent, you will appear before that Great Throne on the Last Day, but from that Baptismal font, you have already heard your verdict, and it’s a favorable one, as God promises you in His Word. When He rose from the dead on Easter, He declared that the riches of His forgiveness are your eternal, permanent possession. Thanks to your Savior alone, you have treasure in heaven laid up, where thief cannot steal and moth or rust cannot destroy.

Your heavenly Father forgives you, you are His baptized child. He recreates you into the image of His Son and gives you a new spiritual and physical life day after day. Every time you confess your sins, you return to Baptism, when you first crossed over from death to life, out of the clutches of the devil and into the embrace of the Father, out from under the staggering debt of sin and into the riches of His kingdom. And while you are here on this earth, God the Holy Spirit plants within you the Christian desire to help your neighbor out of your surplus gifts. After rescuing you constantly with His liberating Gospel, He places you within a community of believers so that together you may receive God’s gifts, and by grace alone do God’s work, not merely with your money, but also in worship and prayer together, in serving side-by-side, and sharing all joys and sorrows as a family.

It would be too easy to cast blame on the neutral, material objects themselves—as if it would be the barn’s fault or the dollar bill’s the culprit—when the real problem is in your heart, in your attitude toward those material things. And that is what often happens. But be not afraid, your sinful heart is drowned every day in remembrance of your Baptism and you rise anew, ready and willing to give, in whatever way God has blessed you. You are already rich toward God, because of one simple thing: you believe in Jesus, without doing anything. Just remember, your giving, your coming to church, your love for your family and neighbor, these are not meant to please God or anyone else, but you are living out naturally what God has created and re-created you to be and do while you live in this earthly kingdom; as you prepare for and partake of the gifts of Christ’s heavenly kingdom which will have no end.

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

Readings:
Eccl. 1:2, 12–14; 2:18–26 all is vanity and grasping for wind
Psalm 100 We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Col. 3:1–11 neither Greek nor Jew…but Christ is all and in all.
Luke 12:13–21 take heed and beware of covetousness

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

“Jesu Juva” or the letters J.J. That simple Latin prayer means, “Jesus, help me.” Whatever the musician Johann Sebastian Bach wrote, whether it was a composition for a wealthy court patron, or simply a liturgical complement to the pastor’s sermon, he included those two letters at the beginning of his work. “Jesus, help me.” It says, in whatever we do, all assistance comes from our Savior through the means of the Holy Spirit, and, all glory of our accomplishments completely belong to Him and Him alone. But more on that later.

The Church commemorates Johann Sebastian Bach today because it was the day in 1750 on which he was “born into heaven,” that is, departed this life and entered the eternal life that was promised to him and given in the water of Baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Bach was never really popular as a person or through his music while he was living. He was known only as the organist and choir director in Leipzig, Germany, a position he held over 25 years. His most enduring works were specifically meant not for performance in a symphony hall, but to fit right in to the church’s liturgy. Bach wrote a full cantata based on the hymn of the day for every Sunday’s (and holy day’s) Divine Service. It would follow the assigned readings, just like our hymn of the day does, and it prepared the congregation members of St. Thomas Church for the hour-long sermon that would follow, and the Lord’s Supper that would be served after that. His Passion oratorios, St. Matthew and St. John, were intended to be sung as part of the Vespers services on Good Friday. Bach made his music for a specific purpose: it was not to draw attention to his skills or to make a dramatic show over the themes and subjects of the Bible. The St. Thomas Lutheran Church kantor wanted his music to preach God’s Word and bring the Gospel of forgiveness and everlasting life to those who would hear it. And it does that to this very day, as witnessed by a revival of Bach’s music in Japan that happened late last century, leading many people to hear the Gospel and believe in Jesus. It wouldn’t be the first time that this man was called “The Fifth Evangelist!”

The words of Saint Paul in our reading from Colossians would have been central to the thinking of a musical theologian such as Bach. Week after week, the people who attended his church, as the same with all of you who attend here, were not coming to church in order to consume a product, to get a theological lesson, or even to be urged into world-changing action for the Lord. You have come because God has called you with His Gospel voice. He has washed you clean in the water of Baptism, buried you with Christ and raised you up from death with Him through faith in the powerful working of God in your life. He takes care of the rest. The record of debt that you owed to God because of your sins? That’s been canceled. It was nailed to the cross and set aside because Jesus paid the price for you. No more legal demands hold their sway over you. As an heir of righteousness set free from sin’s slavery, you now are released in the confidence of Christ’s perfection to be Christ’s light simply by being who you are.

How come it isn’t as simple as that sounds? What gets us discouraged? Do we desire recognition, praise, accolades? Perhaps it’s success, results—we’re frustrated with the difficulties and the cross, in short, the thorns and thistles that we encounter as we live our Christian life. Our sinful human nature opposes us and gets in the way of the good that we know from God’s Law that we ought to do. The letter to the Colossian Christians doesn’t sugar-coat it: “you were dead in your trespasses.” This death did not come to you merely because you committed certain sins—you already had this death in you from birth, and your trespasses against your heavenly Father just affirmed the obvious. When you realize this, its impact certainly weighs heavy on your conscience and you are not going to find yourself in a very happy state of mind. Soon you start to believe that you don’t know how to pray. You lose sight of the blessings that your heavenly Father has promised to you each and every day. Because of this, we all could too easily become disqualified because people whom we respect may try to shake us to our senses and insist on the law’s strict demands. They promise success for us if we are just a bit more committed, a bit more organized, a bit more intent on our purpose of what we are supposed to be doing.

Paul says these are not the answers. The substance belongs instead to Christ. He is the head, from whom the whole body of the Church—that is you—are nourished and held together as with joints and ligaments, growing with a growth that is totally from God. Yes it is true, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, there is no getting around that. Even your so-called righteous deeds were worthless rags, yet your Lord still made you alive in Christ, He has forgiven all your sins against His laws. You are declared righteous and perfect because God doesn’t look at you and see your sins on you anymore. He sees Jesus’ perfection instead, and He counts it in your favor by faith. In the Lord’s Supper, the Sacrament of the Altar, the fullness of deity that dwells in a human body, the Body of Christ, is put into your mouth for the forgiveness of your sins and His Blood is poured down your throat as a testament to the full confession of the one true faith that you believe in unity with one another.

These are the gifts that are handed out to you here in the Divine Service. This blood-bought forgiveness will help and sustain you from day to day and assure you of the life everlasting that you know you don’t deserve, but God wants you to have it at the cost of Jesus’ suffering and death. And because Jesus knew that you needed His constant help, He gave you the privilege of prayer. Jesus was taking a lot of time to pray and His disciples took notice. They also knew that John the Baptist had taught his own disciples how to pray. When they asked Jesus, they then received a very precious gift from Him, a gift that you also have in your possession as a redeemed, forgiven, Baptized child of your heavenly Father. You have the Lord’s Prayer, and every Christian prayer that may be built on its solid foundation of faith. In the Lord’s Prayer you see every attack that comes at you from the devil, this evil world, and your own evil flesh, the sinful nature inside you.

Jesus has conquered all those enemies for you, and provided your spiritual needs and your physical daily bread even before you have asked Him for it. He will strengthen your faith, though it may waver due to struggles and trials. Of all the countless blessings you receive each day from Him, only a small percentage of your prayers might have a slight delay to their answer, or they may not be right for you to have at the moment. Those are only the earthly things that you are asking for, requesting something from God that you can see and touch. It’s not wrong to bring every request to your heavenly Father, but also don’t neglect the fact that many, many more blessings, most of them the spiritual blessings that you cannot yet perceive, are being lavished upon you every second.

If you need more of your Lord’s strengthening through His Word, you might try music. Paul’s letter to the Colossians continues a little further on from today’s reading when he says: “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Whether you are listening to a Bach cantata by yourself, or singing a Christ-centered hymn with fellow redeemed believers in Church, that music can convey the Scriptural words in a way that simple speaking can’t quite accomplish. Bach himself understood that, and Martin Luther praised the value of good music as a servant of God’s Word. This is also a good gift from your heavenly Father to help you and prepare you for the day when you will be born into heaven, and leave this sinful world of suffering behind.

Johann Sebastian Bach was largely forgotten by most people soon after his death. He was remembered only as someone who did his job, his Christian vocation week after week, without needing the thanks of the people who heard God’s Word proclaimed through his music. In fact, no one paid any attention to his music until the 1820s, when fortunately enough, the people of Germany were entering a revival of Lutheran theology that many people call a second Reformation. Felix Mendelssohn, a man who was born a Jew but became a devout Lutheran, discovered Bach’s works and conducted his St. Matthew Passion for the first time in almost 100 years. But Bach himself was never concerned with popularity or the accolades of men. He wanted to make it abundantly clear that all glory in whatever we do belongs to God alone, since He is the giver of every good and perfect gift, including our talents in music or any other useful art. That is why at the end of each of his musical compositions, Johann Sebastian Bach included another prayer, this time writing it in three letters, S.D.G, standing for the Latin phrase, Soli Deo Gloria: To God Alone be the Glory. At the top of the page he asked Jesus for His help, since nothing we do is worthy without Him. But with Christ’s once-for-all death for sin and the power of His resurrection, that’s how you, too, can be sure that you are rooted and built up in Christ Jesus the Lord, knowing that He has done all the work of your salvation, so that all thanks, praise and glory be given in the Church to God alone.

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

Readings:
Gen. 18:17–33 I will not destroy it for the sake of ten.
Psalm 138 I will praise You with my whole heart
Col. 2:6–19 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him
Luke 11:1–13 Our Father in heaven

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

I don’t know how much “shock value” Jesus had intended when He began telling this famous parable of the Good Samaritan. He may have captivated His hearers with a violent opening scene, a matter of life or death, not unlike a TV crime drama of today. We see it all the time now, that’s the thing. It’s so normal that the news broadcast seems to have something missing if there isn’t a stabbing or shooting. The violent scenario that Jesus describes can happen anytime, anywhere. So the sad fact of nobody stopping to help one who becomes in desperate need is probably just going to continue getting worse. If you’re dying on the side of the road, the most likely thing you may find is someone wanting to get a picture of it on their camera-phone! Does our world have any more Good Samaritans, those helpful, caring types of people?

Try looking at the story this way, though: What if the bleeding, dying man had waved off the Samaritan? “No thanks, you don’t need to bother. I’ve got it all under control, thanks for the thought, though.” You would have thought the guy was nuts! No one in their right mind, (once they have stopped to help, that is) no one would listen to him, but instead would care for his wounds despite his protests. It would just be the right thing to do.

That may just be how Jesus is seeing it too. Based on what He says and does in this Gospel, we find the Lord actually tending to the spiritually fatal wounds that he finds as He encounters the delusional victim. And who is this victim? It’s the Law expert who brought the question to Him. This religious Lawyer in the Gospel reading wants to know how to keep the Law in order to inherit eternal life. But that is impossible. The Law, even God’s Law, doesn’t save. It kills. There is no nice way to preach the Law. You don’t take the edge off of the statement: “You are going to Hell” by saying it nicely or by smiling. You would only give the impression that either you don’t care or it is a joke. There is another option. You could avoid the Law altogether. Don’t say, “You are going to Hell.” Instead you try holding out the Law like it’s a promise. Pretend that the Law is obtainable. Mankind loves that. The Law still won’t save you, but it will gain you friends. It allows men their delusions for a time, until the wolf sheds his false, sheep’s coat and devours them. Despite the fact that it seems right to us and it can make you prosperous and successful, the Law cannot save. If there had been a law given which would have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the Law. But the Scripture has confined all sons of Adam under sin!

Besides this the lawyer who talked to Jesus could not do anything to inherit eternal life. It does not matter how hard he tries, how good he is, or how much he wants it. Inheritance is not earned. Even if the lawyer did keep the law perfectly, so what? God wouldn’t owe him anything. They’d just be even. Do you go to the police station to get a reward from them for obeying the speed limit and for not stealing from your neighbors? Those things are what you are supposed to do. What must you do to inherit anything? What must you do, for instance, to inherit the crown to England? That sounds good. I might like to be the Prince of Wales, you say? Too bad. You can’t be. You must be born of the right father and mother. There is no other way. You cannot earn it. You cannot buy it. You cannot even steal it. Inheritance is a birthright, an accident of genetics. It has nothing to do with your skills, abilities, personality, charm, or desire. You can make all the decisions you want about who you want to be but none of them will make you the Queen of England. Heaven is inherited in a similar way. To inherit eternal life you must be born from above by water and Spirit. You must call God Father and Brother. You must be emptied of yourself and filled with Him, adopted by Grace that you did not earn but which He bestows from His mercy. Righteousness comes through the promise by faith in Jesus Christ. It is given to those who believe.

Which brings us to the Good Samaritan parable. The lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And the answer, of course, is: “Everyone.” That is what the Law expects. That is what the world wants. All the world loves this parable. For they think Jesus is only telling us to be nice to one another. This parable is thought to be just like Aesop’s fables. It is a call to good works, a religion of effort, morality, and motivation. But if that is what Jesus means with this parable, if He is simply cutting the Lawyer off from his loophole, saying everyone is his neighbor and he must love everyone perfectly, then He leaves the questioner, and all of us, condemned! For the Law does not save. The Lawyer was looking for a loophole because of his frustration with the Law, because he knows that he has not kept it. If this parable is all about what we’re supposed to do for others, then it’s just like Jesus telling the Lawyer that his case is hopeless, and that there’s no where else for him to go but to Hell. For no matter how good the Lawyer is, no matter how many people he helps, he will never be good enough. He cannot justify himself, try as he might.

But notice that Jesus turns the lawyer’s question around. The Lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” That is, “Who must I love?” Jesus asks back, “Who proved neighbor to the man in need?” That is, “Who is the one who loved?” Jesus made the questioner realize he was left in the ditch. He did not call him to do good. He needed to receive mercy from the hand of our Lord. The Lawyer is caught in the ditch of the Law. He is dead on the side of the road, whether he knows it or not. The Law goes marching by. The helpless priest and Levite skitter past not because they do not care, but because they cannot help. They, standing for the Law, can only kill. The Lawyer must find a Neighbor who can lift him out of death, the one Neighbor who is merciful, who will bind up his wounds, pour on wine and oil, walk beside him as a servant while he rides, take him to an inn of recovery, pay for everything, and promise to come back. That Neighbor is an outsider, an ethnic enemy, despised, scorned, betrayed, and killed on a cross. He has no obligation to help. He is moved by compassion. That Neighbor can make the Lawyer a son of the heavenly Father and obtain the inheritance of heaven, to be handed out when Christ returns again on the Last Day.

So the answer then to “who is my neighbor?” is not “everyone.” It is instead Jesus. Jesus is my Neighbor – not for me to serve, for me to love, for me to do good things for Him, but for me to be served by, to be loved, to receive good, from Him. Jesus, the Merciful One, is my Neighbor. He loves me as Himself. He keeps the Law for me. Here is eternal life: not in a call to do good works, to be the Samaritan, but rather in receiving the good services of The Samaritan, our Savior. Jesus finds us broken by the Law, helpless in the ditch, dying. We wound up there because in our sin we hated Him. But still He loves us. He intervenes. He provides. If you want to say oil stands for Baptism, wine for Holy Communion, the Inn for the Church, then go ahead. This is, after all, a parable.

Now, why did you come here today? We all have bad reasons. We like to try and justify ourselves. Maybe you came to Church because you felt guilty and hope your attendance will please God. Or maybe you are just lonely and don’t have anything else to do. You come out of habit or because you have friends here and want to see them. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter much. Here is the significant thing: You are here and Jesus is here. He is not here to judge and condemn you. He is here to heal you, to restore and refresh you, to love and forgive you, to be your Neighbor and your Brother. It is not that your sins are not significant or that He is enabling you, winking at your sins or looking the other way. Your sins are destructive and shameful, but He forgives them from His mercy. God is love. He loves to love you.

In that mercy you have the power to resist and overcome. You do not have to remain desensitized to sin like our culture is to violence. You do not have to live in drunkenness and lust, in lewdness, anger, and covetousness. You do not have to keep making the same mistakes. He has provided a better way, a good way, the only way. It is the way of the cross, the mortification of the flesh in daily drowning and dying, in emptying and brokenness, in dependence upon Him and His mercy. In His death and resurrection all things are new, all things are clean and pure. But most significantly, in His death and resurrection, you are His and you are perfect. Submit to that; receive it as a gift. Give up. Die to self. Live to Christ. Rest in grace. Wait in hope.

Whatever reason you may have thought you had for coming to this service, or even if you came without any reason at all, the real reason in the end is that God led you here. Your presence is of cosmic significance. The angels see you hear God’s Word and they rejoice. The Lord has not forgotten the promise He made to you when you were Baptized. He claimed you. He put His Name on you. No one steals from Him. This is where He wants you because this is where He is present according to His mercy and grace. He has a surprise for you, for that law expert that is inside you. You do not have to keep the Law. You do not have to be good enough. You do not even have to understand it all. He gives Himself to you. He will lead you. This place is but an inn of rest and recovery. It is temporary, a shadow of the real thing to come. Jesus has paid for everything and He is coming back. He will take you home.

In the meantime, in this humble inn of grace, this spiritual hospital that will not last for eternity, eat what He gives: His Body. Drink what He sheds: His Blood. In Him and in these gifts there is strength to wait and there is strength to believe. In Him there is a promise and a foretaste. Soon, dear believer, soon, your Lord will return.

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

Readings:
Lev. 18:1–5; 19:9–18 keep My statutes and My judgements
Psalm 41 Blessed is he who considers the poor
Col. 1:1–14 strengthened with all might according to His glorious power
Luke 10:25–37 The Good Samaritan neighbor – the one who showed mercy

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

Sir Thomas More, the “Man for all Seasons,” described his perfect land of virtue and harmony and called it “Utopia.” He employed a little witty irony in choosing that title, because Utopia is taken from the Greek words that mean, “No place.” He was implying that it doesn’t exist! This theoretical land is unattainable, but yet he could still describe it as an embodiment of enlightened Renaissance humanism. Utopia possesses all the ideals of good and peace and tolerance of others, but the catch is, you’re not going to get there! That doesn’t stop people from trying, nor does there seem to be a limit to philosophies and offers to make it a reality. The revolutionary says, “Let me take over everything in your life, and I will usher in a golden age.” The Muslim says (either with a drawn sword or without), “Submit to Allah, live as we do, and there will be peace.” The Mormon religion can be simply summarized as, “Follow the laws and ordinances that are laid out in the teachings of Jesus and perfected in Joseph Smith, and you can become more like they are and enjoy the rewards of righteousness that they enjoy.” The politician says, “Give me your money and your vote, and I will turn society into a wonderful place to live.” Our nation’s citizens have heard them say everything from, “A chicken in every pot” to “No child left behind.” Utopia. The wonderful place we would love to find someday is really No Place.

But you can’t convince the prophet Isaiah of that. You sense an uncanny optimism here in a man who was called to warn of God’s coming judgment. He seems to be raving about a future Utopia as he concludes his book in the last few chapters. Zion, the symbol of the New Jerusalem, will bear children instantly, without labor pains, and feed them as a new mother nurses her own children. Her citizens will return from exile and drink in her abundant and constant goodness, better than any welfare program could ever dream or claim to provide. The lion will lie down with the lamb, and a little child will lead them. Peace will overflow like a river floods its banks after a downpour. No one will go away hungry, distraught, or without comfort. All will rejoice in the Lord.

How is this possible? What is going on, Isaiah? Don’t you see what the world is like out there? There must be someone else stealing your identity and writing all this cool stuff in your name without your knowledge. Isaiah was sent to preach to his people words of law about their idolatry. The want, the hunger for better crops, a better life, better birthrate, better weather— these were the forces that drove the Israelites and specifically the people of Judah to try their luck with other gods. They used idols to attempt to reach their Utopia! It’s no different from what our society tries to do now. The Utopia is basically the same; the idols and their worship practices are only slightly different these days. God’s prophet rightly condemns all of it for most of the book that bears his name.

Then Isaiah changes tone suddenly. So significant is this change that skeptical academics have actually theorized that somebody else must be writing the rest of Isaiah’s book. There is comfort and peace on the way! Salvation offered to all. A glorious, perfect and holy Servant will appear and earn this perfect bliss for all who believe in Him. He will be the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, stricken, smitten and afflicted. All we like sheep have gone astray, everyone to his own way, but the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Once that happens, then Isaiah turns loose a triumphant song of praise to the God of Israel, full of promises for eternal happiness for His people, like we read today in the Old Testament reading.

That’s the answer to those who wish to bridge the gap between the real world and No Place, the Utopia that the human spirit seems to keep longing for, deep down inside every beating heart. The answer is, there is no bridging the gap! True, the Lord’s Paradise, the home of righteousness, the dwelling place of the whole heavenly host, that really does exist, but your efforts to try to get there or elect a candidate to recreate it here will always be fruitless. Sin has infected and corrupted all that you and I do so much, that even what appears good and righteous to us is actually hideous in the holy sight of God. I know that sounds judgmental, hateful and closed-minded to the world, but it is the truth from our Lord’s Word.

Your thoughts, words and deeds betray the self-worshiping idolatry of your heart, which afflicts you with conflict and anxiety in one moment because you want to do God’s will instead, while at the next moment you forget it all and plunge back into the sinful life that is all too familiar to you. The evil world and its dark prince hold out the hope of a Utopia in which your every selfish desire will come true without any effort or work on your part, and you fall for the trick yet again.

There may be no bridging the gap, yet it is also true that there is now no need to bridge the gap! The advent of a Suffering Servant that Isaiah had predicted long ago before Babylon, came true in the coming of Jesus 700 years later. God had the plan all figured out from the very beginning! Jesus is the One we have been waiting for, not some big name living in our nation’s capital. He is the only Messiah worthy of the Name, since His is the Name that is above every name. Our Lord and Savior began the New Age of Salvation because He was the Man of Sorrows that Isaiah predicted. He went to the cross to suffer, to be shamed, to be punished, without a single sin to His Name. If there ever was a clean and ideal candidate, Jesus was it! If the Church is to avoid prattling on about utopian ideals or principles for a fulfilled life, then we must never give up the Biblical truth that her Lord was born of the Virgin Mary—not because we like quaint Bible stories, not because we merely vote in some Church Convention that we’ll go along with it, but it’s because God’s Word says it is true, and Christ’s utter perfection as historical fact is absolutely essential to His role as Redeemer. We would still have an entire lifetime of sins on our hands if Jesus had begun His earthly life with sin, the same way we did.

Because it is ludicrous to question whether or not Jesus really existed, because there is voluminous historical documentation that Jesus claimed to be God, said that He would rise from the dead, then He did, that is the true strength of the Christian faith. That tells you that being a Christian is much more than just following a certain set of rules. The rules are part of it, and we cannot downplay the rules simply because more and more people in our world won’t accept the rules anymore, but the bigger part of the Christian message is the forgiveness of sins that is free by faith in the Name of Jesus Christ. That tells you that the joy of Isaiah that we read today is not a con game designed to deceive us.

The paradise of eternal life, the promise of resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come—these are real gifts and they are yours, guaranteed by Word, by Baptism, by the Sacrament of the Altar. You will find empty, worthless promises all over this fallen, sinful world, just like you might think that the only freedoms people cherish anymore are the freedoms to be morally reprehensible. But the genuine promises are the ones that come from God’s Word, and the only freedom is that which releases you from your own sinful desire to satisfy your lust for anything that your Creator has not given you. Heaven’s riches now belong to you, because you belong to Jesus.

Here, the far-away, impossible Utopia, becomes a “Topia,” if you will, a certain place that does exist and is within your grasp, simply because God has come to you in Christ. He knew that the blessings of righteousness were going to remain out of your grasp until He came to give you forgiveness and life. The angels sang with joy along with Isaiah that upon Jesus’ coming, that meant peace on earth, goodwill toward men had finally arrived. You have access to all the blessings that God has promised for you, not in your theoretical thoughts, but in your hearing the Word, in eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Christ, even going back to the day when your sins were washed away in the water of Holy Baptism. Utopia was impossible for man, but for God, all things are possible. That’s not a mere slogan! You who were far away have been brought near to your heavenly Father, and were reconciled to Him and to one another, as unlikely as that seemed.

Come to New Jerusalem, your mother the Church, who has given you the new life that Jesus Christ earned for you on the cross and proclaimed from the empty tomb. Drink deeply from what the Church has to offer you for nourishment in the faith. Study the Word, learn it, pray it, and get to know all that your Lord has done for you. Don’t look for worldly kingdoms and Utopias on earth that promise you success and growth and an easier way. Because even the Church can get discouraged and impatient when good things don’t seem to be happening. But Isaiah says, Rejoice with Jerusalem, bask in the peace of forgiveness that flows over you today like a river. God will relieve your fears and comfort you as you mourn. Whether or not things will ever be great again, God’s hand will be known to His servants, because it is from His hand that you receive precious gifts today, and you are invigorated for service to your neighbor in His name.

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

Readings:
Is. 66:10–14 The hand of the LORD shall be known to His servants.
Psalm 66:1–7 Come and see the works of God; He is awesome in His doing toward the sons of men.
Gal. 6:1–10, 14–18 let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith
Luke 10:1–20 the harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few … but rather rejoice because your names are written…

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

The demons acknowledge the eternal, almighty Son of God, even though He was hidden in our frail human flesh. They acknowledge Him, as the Apostle James tells us, and they shudder. They shudder not at the mere threat of divine punishment at the hand of Christ, they cringe and backpedal because that judgment is absolutely certain. Everlasting torment and hellfire is all too real, and it is about to be unleashed on all enemies of the Lord God, including all unbelievers, as their inevitable end. That is what Legion fully realized. Those demons who possessed the man and made him live among the tombs saw Jesus and immediately they saw their almighty Judge.

But that final judgment will come only in the Lord’s good time. As Jesus Himself said to Nicodemus, God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. The mission of Jesus in His first coming was not the same as it will be in His Final Coming. Jesus is demonstrating to these people in the Gerasenes, the region on the other side of the lake, just as He is speaking to you today: He is here to have mercy on all, and to save those in the world who believe in Him. Even when that means having temporary mercy on demons.

Can you believe your ears? Jesus is taking the time to hear what devils are saying through a possessed man! What a twisted conversation is taking place—those demons wouldn’t have had a chance if they were actually to approach God in His absolute majesty and glory to say the same thing. That legion of evil spirits would have been immediately destroyed. Probably because they already know this, they are making a begging request, not to mention something so pitiful as “Don’t send us to the abyss!” And what is more, Jesus is here granting that request! What is going on here?

Let it never be said that the Lord does not give everyone, and I mean everyone, a fair hearing. Rather, it must be perfectly clear that Christ the Son of God who made everything in the beginning, wants nothing to perish. He takes no pleasure in the death of a sinner, nor apparently in making demons suffer before their appointed time. It is true from the rest of the Bible’s witness that there is no promise of salvation for the devil and his angels; they have permanently rejected God as committed enemies, and on Judgment Day they will ultimately suffer the fate that they were pleading with Jesus to hold back. As they enter the pigs, they even forecast for the people nearby to see a picture of what that latter-day condemnation will look like—those demons send unclean animals into an unclean mode of death—by drowning in the sea-depths. But what your Savior is making clear to you today in this strange, other-worldly conversation that the Bible records, He makes this central point: you can count on Jesus to have mercy upon you, a sinner.

And yet, how many times have you followed your sinful, inner human nature like some demon-possessed pig and responded like the people of that country where Jesus preached? They responded to the fearful things concerning Judgment that they saw, rather than the words of grace they were hearing or had the chance to hear from Jesus’ mouth. Remember how they responded? They begged the Lord to leave them. Now, it is true you may not at the moment be frightened with future doom and gloom scenarios; you may not overtly ask Jesus to leave you as those people did, but look closely. Examine your heart, as Martin Luther says, in comparison with what God requires in the Ten Commandments.

Do you take offense at the mercy God has toward miserable sinners? Is the life under suffering and the cross just too much to handle? You get frustrated with all the negative things that happen around you, yet when it comes to the time to make a difference about it, you find yourself sitting on your hands, paralyzed with the false notion that you have nothing to offer. Fathers, you’ve now had your day—but it’s time to be honest—have you or your wife exasperated your children or used harsh and unloving words, perhaps convincing yourselves that your kids deserved such sins that you commit against them? There are times when all of you have blamed others, or you have even blamed God in your heart, when all along the person who needs forgiveness and renewal is the one who looks at you every day in the mirror.

You have tried to “chain up” these sins when you try to put your best face forward. You have let those pious and wonderful things that happen to come through in your life endear you to others and they seem to be successful at covering up your miserable inner condition. There are chains of God’s Law that you may like to use, that if only you made more sincere commitments to the Lord in certain areas, then your problems with sin will go away. Another popular man-made chain is to let issues go unresolved and replace the true mutual reconciliation that you need with tense silence, drastic and immature action, or just avoiding the issue altogether. But as you can see with the actual chains that were put on that demon-possessed man, your variety of chains that you use are no match for the struggle you have going on within you as a baptized Christian. Your sinful nature and the devil who constantly attacks you are driving you out to death and self-destruction, just like that man had broken himself free from his chains, yet he was a prisoner still —a prisoner to Legion, and was dragged out to the tombs and the wilderness in all his naked shame.

But remember, Christ is here to have mercy on all, including you. His almighty power that He demonstrates in driving out demons and healing the sick and lame, all of this miraculous power comes with the flip side, too. That flip side is this: every sin He forgives, every spiritual and physical illness He takes away, doesn’t just disappear in mid-air. Your Lord and Savior chooses to absorb all this evil into His own flesh, just like He took your sin when He was baptized and carried it as His burden. It would be a burden that actually became heavier on His shoulders with each healing He performed and every absolution He would speak. Finally, He bore the burden of the world’s sin up until the last burden was added to it, and that was the cross itself. On that cross He would be nailed, on that cross He would suffer even more and die a cursed, shameful, even unclean death. And that death would be the end of the power of Satan and his demons. It would mean forgiveness and life to you, just as the Risen Savior spoke peace to His forgiven disciples before His ascension.

The Jesus who had momentary mercy on the demons, speaks His permanent forgiving Word of healing to you today in the liturgy. Your sins, your infirmities, your complacent attitude, your shortcomings are absorbed into His flesh. Another way to say it is the way St. Paul the Apostle talks about it: that you have been, and are being crucified with Christ—drowned in your own baptismal water—but you are risen again with your Lord and His free forgiveness. Like the demon possessed man, your life was wrapped up in death and the devil, formerly chained up with all the false remedies of the law, and you only appeared to have broken yourself free. In Jesus Christ, however, you truly are free, not naked in shame but clothed in His perfect righteousness, and God has done great things for you. When the man was rescued and back in his right mind, there was nothing he would rather do more than talk about what Jesus had done. It’s precisely the same for you in your daily life and calling.

The Judgment Day that the demons fear will instead bring to you the full salvation that you taste at this altar. Though all the legions of Satan will be commanded to be tormented eternally in hell’s abyss, you will be invited by Jesus Himself to come and partake of the loving richness of the Heavenly Father above all fathers. For He was the one who brought you out of the tombs and wilderness of sin and death to live in the house of the Lord forever. And all your loved ones and the saints who have already departed this fallen world are cheering you on as you run the race, as you fight those difficult battles with your own sinful flesh. Just as all of us here, seen and unseen, are looking forward to the day when we will finally receive the crown of eternal glory that will never pass away.

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

Readings:
Is. 65:1–9 I was found by those who did not seek Me
Psalm 3 You, oh LORD, are a shield for me
Gal. 3:23—4:7 when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son
Luke 8:26–39 Gadarene demoniac

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

If you don’t realize how necessary it is for us as Christians to be clear when we confess our faith in the Holy Trinity, then it would also be difficult to understand why those Jewish teachers pushed themselves to the verge of stoning Jesus to death. It was certainly more than a power struggle or that they felt threatened by a new guy on the block; those leaders were not merely jealous of His popularity. These Jews were hardened heretics, anti-Trinitarians. They could not accept the mystery that no one can explain, but we all must believe anyway. Their ears were shut to the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the Bible that clearly proclaims to all generations the One God in Three Persons. Therefore, they and all who even down to today reject the Trinity, it’s no different from rejecting God. That is why the Athanasian Creed, as it stays true to what the Bible says, condemns anyone who will not keep the catholic faith, that is, the faith of the whole Christian church, whole and undefiled, faithfully and firmly.

It’s not a rule that we must follow just because God is all-powerful and we’ve got to play the game of life His way. He knows that your eternal life with Him is impossible unless He takes care of it all from start to finish. And the way that salvation is delivered to you is through the faith in Christ that He plants within your heart in Baptism, the faith that believes everything the Bible teaches and reveals to you about God the Holy Trinity. The moment you have something you need to do to take away your own sins, that’s the moment you are lost forever. Likewise, if there is any modification to what the Bible teaches about the Trinity, then it most certainly means that man’s futile way of trying to save himself is working its way in, and the spiritual damage would be widespread and devastating. It is that important to know this doctrine and believe it, even though it is impossible to understand it completely.

But God does not leave you clueless and bewildered about His mysterious identity, either. He wants you to know Him as He has revealed Himself to you, nothing more than that. And the Bible’s way of revealing the mystery of the Holy Trinity includes something you desire and crave as one of God’s creation. That is this simple, yet unfathomable sentence: God is love. He certainly demonstrates the qualities and actions of love, that is, we can surely say God loves us. But it’s more than that. God Himself is love. He didn’t even create love, like He created everything else, including human emotion. Love is who He is and has been for eternity. This is much deeper than our concept of love that we describe merely in emotional terms.

For God to be love, He then cannot be isolated or singular. For the fullness of love to exist, there must be a lover, one who is loved, and there needs to be the love they share with each other. Three elements are needed. Though it cannot be grasped or explained in our human minds, God is all three of those, yet He is not three different deities, contrary to what the Muslims and others claim we Christians say, but He is one God in three distinguishable persons. These three persons match up with what is required for love to exist, but we’re still talking about One God who is Love Himself. The Father loves the Son. This is an eternal relationship. The Father has always been the Father, because the Son has always been the Son, and the two of them together have always been and always will be One God. Finally, there’s the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, or the Love that the Father and the Son share. This Holy Spirit has the same relationship with both the Father and the Son, and that relationship that is found in the Bible, is defined in the three Creeds as “proceeding.” The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, because He is the love between the Father and the Son.

Clear as mud, right? Well, that is almost as good as we can do as human beings in talking about it. But thankfully, when God reveals Himself to us, He desires more than just for us to understand it and try to speak about it. The Holy Trinity, complex as He might be, perfectly defines what love is, yet He wishes to include you in that perfect, complete love relationship. The Lord is not satisfied with being love all to Himself. You see, it was God’s design from the very beginning of creation: “Let Us make man in Our image, in Our likeness.” It’s the reason why God said that it was not good for the man Adam to be alone. Because God Himself is not alone; He loves and He wishes to share that love with His most precious creation, and He wishes His created human beings to share that love in a most intimate way with one another as male husband and female wife. Therefore you were created to love, even as you and the entire human race was brought into existence so that you could be drawn up into the Love that God is. The Father loves the Son, remember? Well, the Father desires to include you into that same love, so that He loves you in and with His Son.

Now wait a minute… you are not God, nor are you equal with God the Holy Trinity. You have a definite beginning to your existence. It would be ludicrous to suggest that God would create someone, and then that being would be equal to Him. The Father did not create the Son, as one ancient heretical teaching imagined. So how is it possible for God to bring you into the eternal Love that He is? It was accomplished when God the eternal Son took your human flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. He joined Himself to you and you would be in communion with Him, taking part in God the Father’s love for the Son, so that it is also God the Father’s love for you. This is the divine plan into which Adam and Eve were placed together in the Garden of Eden, before there was sin, before there was death.

Sin and death disrupt the love that God the Holy Trinity wishes to share with you, His creation. He cannot allow sin to exist in His presence. He must cast it away forever, or else He would cease to be God, He would cease to be Love. But sin was what Adam brought in, through the help of the serpent and of his own wife. And for that, Adam and all his children (including you and me), excluded themselves from the Love and life that God is and that God gives. And when you exclude yourself from the Holy Trinity, you have nothing in your future but everlasting death. This is what you do every time you look out for yourself for personal fulfillment, when you seek out your own benefit, when you disregard your family and your neighbor. In this rebellion against God and the Love that He is, your life has instead been better described as a life of hate. You have deep down hatred for God and for each other and were it not for the force of law to hold back your sinful nature, this world would have been engulfed in eternal death eons ago.

Your sin, death and hatred that are seated within your human nature had to be destroyed, if there were to be any hope for you to be together in communion with the Holy Trinity and the Love that He is. And so God’s love for you expanded, as love often does. The Son who in God’s eternal plan would come to take on your flesh, would be the same Son who would die for your sin. And when Jesus Christ, the God of Love, died on the cross, He murdered sin, death and hatred. He brought life back into the dying world when He rose from the dead on the third day. And He continues to bring the Life and Love that He is back to you, even though you had lost it.

You cannot explain the mystery, the unexplained reality of the Holy Trinity. You cannot adequately describe even the Love that God is. But, even better, you have become a part of that mystery, and the Holy Trinity alone made it happen. As the water of Baptism into Christ’s death that was poured over you took away your sins, as the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” were spoken, as the Holy Spirit, new life and salvation entered into your body and soul, you were then included into the Love of God the Father for God the Son. You have Holy Communion, meaning you and all those baptized Christians who publicly believe this, take part in this Love that God is, right here at this altar. The Body and Blood that God the Son lived in, died in, and ascended in, that Body and Blood is what brings you into that Love. Yes, it forgives your sins, and that remains the most important thing. Above and beyond that fulfilled promise, that Body and Blood brings you in close contact with the Holy Trinity.

It can get uncomfortable at times when you get cornered and you’re asked to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. Aside from what the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds say, there’s little more you could possibly explain, especially to an unbeliever. The best would be to say that God the Holy Trinity loves you, to describe what Jesus has done for poor, miserable sinners like you, and point to Holy Baptism as the point of contact we as God’s redeemed people have with the Divine, Trinitarian mystery. The confession of faith concerning the Trinity is really telling the good news about Jesus. It is not some disconnected, obtuse doctrine that we would be OK without. It is the Love of God within His own threefold unity and that Love extended toward us that it took a whole Bible to reveal, after thousands of years it hasn’t been fully understood, yet it is a reality that you who confess it eat and drink at this communion rail.

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

Readings:
Prov. 8:1–4, 22–31 Does not wisdom cry out
Psalm 8 O LORD our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!
Acts 2:14a, 22–36 Men of Israel, hear these words:
John 8:48–59 before Abraham was, I AM.

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

Three of the greatest, most important days of God’s activity in the world’s history were Sundays. First was the day that began created time—that was a Sunday, the first day of the very first week, when God through His Son the Word spoke light into being. Then there was Easter Sunday, when the Son who took human flesh and died in order to destroy sin, death and Satan—He then rose from the dead, and handed to the world the victory He had won. That leaves the final, fulfilled “great Sunday” in human history, and that was fifty days later, the first Christian Pentecost Sunday. It has sometimes been called, “the birthday of the Church,” even though the Church has actually been made up of believers in Christ ever since Adam and Eve were given the promise of a coming Savior. It seems every time the first day of the week comes around, there’s yet another commemoration of the designated day when our Lord creates all things new.

Back in the shadows of the Old Testament, Pentecost was a Hebrew holiday connected with offerings and gifts that the people presented fifty days after the Passover Sabbath. When Jesus fulfilled everything that the Old Testament said, His light revealed the true offering and cast away the shadows. Instead of an offering coming from the people, the true Pentecost reveals a gift from God the Father and the Son. On this Pentecost comes the gift of the Holy Spirit, who as the creed says, proceeds from the Father and the Son, and together with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is worshiped as Almighty God and glorified.

This is a big day. The world, and especially the Church, has never been the same since Pentecost. Sinful human beings like you and I are have acted in coordination with the devil to mess up ourselves and our world. God Himself is breaking in to bring life, forgiveness and renewal to a crumbling creation that desperately needs it. Though He will ultimately destroy this present world and create a new heavens and a new earth to be our eternal home with Him, He is still here, wherever you hear His voice and His Word, converting and re-creating within you that which sin had torn down and turned against the Lord.

The most striking example of this renewal is laid out for you in the readings for today. Witness what happened so long ago, as recorded in Genesis 11. This was not long after Noah and the flood, and the world had a fresh start. But sinful people took God’s gift of a common language and misused it for their own selfish gain. They wanted to build a fabulous city with a high tower that would make them unified, and give them an identity all of their own. Already they were tired of the unity that God provided as His gift to them; they were sick of being content with His identity that He had already given them. They were going to put all their trust in their building project, in their own works and deeds to give them the blessings they enjoy, rather than turning to the Lord who created them, who saved them through the Great Flood and brought them together in one language.

And the Lord didn’t have to do much at Babel. He simply let their sin, and the chaos that it naturally produces, take over these people. They sincerely desired to proceed in their plans with God totally out of the picture. Often God answers the sinful intents of people by giving them precisely what they want. In many cases, there is no worse punishment possible! That is the frightening thing for you, isn’t it? You may want something so bad, you can’t imagine life without it. You don’t think you’re going to get it, until you do, and you wish you had never even thought about it. That’s when you finally figure it out that whatever you desired actually became for you your god, just like the citizens of Babel made their own god out of building that tower. Out of their disdain for the Lord and their high praise of themselves, God mixed up their languages and scattered them—the result that they had feared the most. This is one teaching you gain from this: You inevitably see that there is always something missing in your hunt for things, fame, identity, power, popularity, and the good life. What is missing? In a word: peace is what’s missing.

And Jesus offers you not the fake peace that the world cherishes and bombards you with like annoying commercials, phone sales calls or Internet pop-up ads. Jesus gives you a Pentecost gift when He simply says: Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. The peace comes not as some light-hearted feeling that makes you tingle inside. The peace of Jesus is actually His gift of the Holy Spirit. This is something real, and truly powerful. Note what the gift of the Holy Spirit does to those frightened, bewildered apostles in the upper room: He fills them with joy, gives them boldness to preach in the face of certain resistance, and certainly not the least spectacular, He gives them the gift of speaking in other, clearly distinguishable languages.

Do you see now the great fulfillment that took place? The confusion and scattering due to a multiplicity of languages has now at Pentecost been undone. God is at work uniting His dispersed people, but it’s not by wiping out all those diverse tongues and creating one language. Instead He accomplishes the reversal of Babel’s curse by preaching the Gospel in the mouths of His first pastors in many different languages—the specific languages of the very people who were visiting Jerusalem at that same time! The judgment of God handed down so long ago in Genesis was finally turned on its head in Acts. And all of this was thanks to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, as Jesus promised.

For Jesus Himself had said the Holy Spirit is the Comforter, the Helper. Why would your Lord give you a comforter if He did not know that you will be needing comfort? He says let not your heart be troubled. Then that must mean He must know that you constantly face fears and uncertainties and temptations to sin. You who could never have helped yourself any day of your life, be assured that Jesus has not left you as orphans. His Holy Spirit helps you as you struggle in this time known as the Christian’s life on earth: a time of trouble, hardship, and evil, but because of your Savior Jesus Christ it is a life full of true Holy Spirit-filled joy. You have His Word and His promise that you are forgiven. The blessed eternal inheritance has been yours ever since the water of Baptism placed the Holy Spirit into your heart.

On this big Sunday of Pentecost, your prideful, crumbling, self-centered Babel heart is rebuilt and re-centered, thanks to the death of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. His gift of the Holy Spirit comes to you only one way—from His Word. From the Word you hear and read, from the Word with which you are washed, the Word you eat, the Word you drink. And the renewal of your life, the renewal of the world, the renewal of the Church, leave that up to Him. Put your trust not in the promises or personalities of men, nor in slick gimmicks or sales pitches, nor any fabulous tower-building projects to preserve the Church, for those are sure to crumble sooner or later. Rather secure your trust squarely on Jesus Christ by the help of the Holy Spirit. It is a promise on which your Lord always comes through; He will never fail. Come, O Holy Spirit, and lead us every day to Jesus.

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

Readings:
Gen. 11:1–9 Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth
Psalm 143 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Your works
Acts 2:1–21 how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born?
John 14:23–31 the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things