Mid-week Advent Service 1: Audio Sermon (30-November-11)

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Mid-week Advent Service 1 [Matthew 1:1-17] (30-November-11)

This sermon was preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon, 7pm.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (Matthew 1:1-17)

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Of all the brilliant schemes of pastors trying to get people to come to church, the first port of call wouldn’t normally be to preach a sermon on the genealogy of Jesus!

The genealogy of Jesus is not featured normally in any of the standard lectionaries – so I thought tonight might be a good idea to study this a little more closely.

Over the four Wednesday nights during Advent, similar to last year, I will preach four sermons in more of a bible-study format. Last year, we studied the hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel” – and if you want to re-read those they’re available on the Internet website. But this year over the next four weeks, we are going to focus on the parts of the bible which are historically before the birth of Jesus. So tonight, we will look at the genealogy of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew. Next week, we will look at the conception of John the Baptist and the angel Gabriel coming to Zechariah in the temple, week 3, the conception of Jesus and the angel Gabriel coming to the Virgin Mary, and week 4, the passages about Mary visiting Elizabeth.

So tonight we begin with the genealogy of Jesus. [If you would like to follow along, you can open your bibles in the pews.]

There are a couple of things that are very significant about the genealogy of Jesus. For many of us, it’s that part of the New Testament that we might skim over if we were reading it at home and not delve into it too closely. But remember: this is the first thing that we read in the gospel of Matthew. When Matthew was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write his gospel, the first thing he wrote down was a list of Jesus’ family tree. But also, because Matthew is the first book of the New Testament, it is also the first thing that we read if we open up the New Testament.

This is highly significant: imagine a person who is new to the faith, who has never read the bible before, and a Christian friend encourages them to read the New Testament. This genealogy is the first thing that they would read! (What a first impression!)

The first sentence of the Gospel of Matthew is this:

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

In Greek, the first words are: βίβλος γενέσεως, the book of the genealogy, or even, the book of the genesis.

The word “genesis” means here the “generation” the “descent” the “lineage”. And isn’t it strange that at the beginning of the Old Testament, we begin with the book of genesis, and at the beginning of the New Testament, Matthew begins with the words “the book of the genealogy”, or the “book of Genesis”. We see here at the beginning of the New Testament, a new creation, a new beginning – in Genesis chapter 1, we see the creation of the world, in Matthew chapter 1, we see the beginning of the new creation, as the Son of God comes into the world and takes on human flesh from the Virgin Mary in the person of Jesus Christ.

But in Hebrew the book of Genesis in the Old Testament is not called γενεσίς (genesis). That’s the Greek title. In Hebrew, Genesis is called בראשת (bereshith), which means “in the beginning”. That’s the first words of the book. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But in Genesis 5:1, it says “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” Then it lists Adam’s family tree, and his descendants. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it says: “This is the book of the genesis of Adam.” So that’s where the word “genesis” comes from.

Also, one more thing: Matthew begins: “the book of genesis”. Now obviously, in earlier times when these things were written, books weren’t invented. And chapter 5 in Genesis where Adam’s descendants are listed are not a separate book. So when it says, “the book of genesis”, it means “the list of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.”

Now Jesus’ genealogy has three parts to it. The first part is from Abraham to David, then David to the exile to Babylon, and then the third part is from the exile up to Jesus himself. And Matthew is quite explicit about breaking up the genealogy into three parts. At the end of the genealogy in verse 17, he writes: “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.”

Now actually, sometimes Matthew left out a couple of generations here and there, but he wants to have these 3 groups of 14 people, the number 14 being a special number. The number 7 is always special: In Revelation, we have the seven golden lampstands, the letters to the seven churches, the seven stars in Jesus’ hands. And of course, there’s the seven days of the week. Remember Jesus says that we should forgive our neighbour 70 times 7 times! And two times seven, fourteen, then is very special. It has a sense of completeness about it.

And so there’s three groups of 14. And each of these groups is characterised by a particular person or event. The first group is marked by Abraham, the second group by David, and the third group is marked by the exile into Babylon up to Christ.

Now, in verse 1, it says: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

We can see that there’s the three groups again: Jesus, David, Abraham.

So why are these two people so important? What’s so significant about Abraham and David?

Abraham and David are people who both received an oath from God about their descendants. Last year, when I went to America, I had to apply for a passport, but I had lost my birth certificate. So I had to go to a Justice of the Peace and make a statutary declaration. And it’s quite interesting, if you’ve ever looked into all this, that there’s all different levels: there’s a statuary declaration, there’s an affidavit, there’s an affirmation, and then there’s an oath.

So when a person takes an oath they call upon God as their highest authority as they make a promise. Normally, you have to take an oath when you are sworn in as the prime-minister in this country, though if you’re an atheist, like our current Prime-Minister, you might choose instead to leave out the reference to God and then this is called an “affirmation.”

I went to a citizenship ceremony recently, and there were two groups: those who became citizens by oath, and those who became citizens by affirmation. The oath people were the ones who mentioned God and the affirmation people didn’t mention God. That’s just the way it works!

So when God swears an oath, who does he swear by? He swears by himself.

So let’s have a look at these passages: Firstly, when Abraham has taken Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him, the angel calls out to stop him. And then we read: “And the angel of God called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as stars of heaven and as the sand on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

So you can see, if Jesus is going to be called the Messiah, the chosen King of God, he has to be descended from Abraham. And we read that Jesus does possess the “gate of his enemies”. Jesus says that the “gates of hell with not prevail against” the church, which is his kingdom. So this is the first oath.

The second oath we read in Psalm 132, where it says: “The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne. If your sons keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall teach them, their sons also forever shall sit on your throne.”

So you see, that God promises, he swears, that the sons of David shall sit forever on his throne.

So if Jesus is going to be our true heavenly king, and sit at the right hand of God forever, he has to be descended from David. You remember in last week’s gospel reading where the crowd shouted out to Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” So here’s the second oath.

So we see here the first two groups: Abraham 14 generations, David 14 generations. So all of the people in the second group after David are all kings: “Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Asaph, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amos, Josiah and Jeconiah.” But then what happens? The people are carried off into exile, and then there’s no more kings. That’s because all the people were all carried off to Babylon, which is in modern day Iraq, and the kingdom was ended. So Joseph, Jesus’ father, is not a king – he’s a private citizen.

And if we continue to read the gospel of Matthew with the story of Christmas, we read that there is a king ruling, but he’s not from David’s family. His name is King Herod, whom we all remember from the Christmas story. But Herod was an Edomite – and so you can imagine that the Jewish people weren’t very happy with this setup. And then after Jesus is born, we read about the wise men from the east, who come and ask “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews?” And naturally, King Herod gets a bit worried about it. God swore an oath to David and his family, but Herod is not from King David’s lineage. Jesus has a right to claim his place as the King of Judah, because Herod is not the proper king. And so naturally, King Herod panics – he tries to kill Jesus, and even kills every single baby boy in Bethlehem, to make sure that the job was done properly. You can see that this genealogy of Jesus is so important in that it tells you who Jesus is and what is promised about him. He is descended from Abraham, to whom God promised that all the families of the nations will be blessed and that his offspring will possess the gate of his enemies. He is also descended from David, whose throne (his royal lineage) will continue forever.

So we see that all the families of the nations are blessed, when at the end of Matthew, Jesus says to his apostles: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” All nations: this is a fulfilment of the promise to Abraham. Also, Jesus possesses the gate of his enemies: he has defeated the devil, death and sin.

But also, I want you to notice a couple of other things. In the genealogy, there are four women mentioned: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of Uriah. What do we know about these four women?

Well, first of all, Tamar had children with her father-in-law, Judah. Rahab was a prostitute from Jericho. Ruth was a Moabite. The wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, was the woman whom David committed adultery with and sent her husband off to the front line of battle to be killed.

There’s nothing flattering about Jesus’ family here. Ruth’s not too bad, we could say!, but she was from the “wrong tribe”, but she became part of Jesus’ family by marriage.

But if then you look back at all this history, then it makes sense when later in chapter 1, the angel says to Joseph in a dream, “She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” And if you look back at Jesus’ family history, we don’t a whole heap of perfect people. We see incest with Tamar, prostitution with Rahab, adultery with Bathsheba, David could even have been a rapist, and plenty of the kings were not faithful to God at all, but worshipped idols. Jesus is not born into a perfect, squeaky-clean family, but one with plenty of skeletons in the closest. And so it’s kind of appropriate when we celebrate Christmas, the birth of Christ, that often at family lunches and dinners people bring their family baggage to the table and there’s always a few skeletons in the closet! But Jesus is given his particular name, because “he has come to save his people from their sins.” That includes us, and our families!

One question that also gets asked about Jesus’ family tree is why Jesus lineage is traced through Joseph and not through Mary? After all, Mary is the true mother Jesus, and Joseph is not. But also, we have to bear in mind that it was God’s law that people did not marry outside of their own tribe. So if Joseph was descended from Abraham and David, Mary would also be descended from Abraham and David.

But also, the genealogy is not simply to show Jesus blood-line, but also his family history. Even though Jesus is not Joseph’s biological son, but rather was conceived by the Holy Spirit, he was his legal and adoptive son, and Jesus was part of that specific family, with that specific family history. It is the family unit, and the family of Abraham and David, where the faith was passed down from generation to generation. They were guardians of the faith, and especially of the Scriptures.

But one last thing. In the book of Genesis, where we read about the descendants of Adam, we see that the first person in the line is Adam, and there’s no one before him. In the genealogy of Jesus, it’s the other way around. The genealogy stops with Jesus. In the Old Testament, the genealogy starts with Adam and goes forward. In the New Testament, the genealogy ends with Jesus and leads up to him.

So what now? What happens to Jesus’ family? Nowhere in the bible does it mention that Jesus was married, and it has always been held that he didn’t get married, no matter what the Da Vinci Code says. Also, he didn’t have any children.

But in the Christian Church, if you want to be part of Jesus’ family, you are not married into it. You’re not born into it. You are baptised into it. You become a child of God, and part of God’s priesthood and part of his royal family together with Jesus, through Holy Baptism. Remember in the gospel of John, some Pharisees come to Jesus and say “We are children of Abraham” and Jesus replies “God is able to raise up from these stones children of Abraham”.

So we are children of Abraham and children of King David not through the flesh, through birth, through marriage, but through Baptism, through being made one flesh with Christ our heavenly bridegroom. And so, Jesus family does continue. It continues when at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: “Go into all nations, and make disciples, baptising them and teaching them.”

The Christian church of the New Testament is a new family of God, where we conceive children not through the flesh, but through the hearing of the word. That’s what happened to Mary – she became pregnant through the word of God and the baby Jesus was conceived. So also for us, we hear the word, and we are impregnated with Jesus and he grows in us. We become part of his family and he become part of ours.

And so the genealogy of Jesus comes to and end when it says: Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. But the family doesn’t end there. The family of Jesus has continued for 2011 years and we are part of it through Word and Sacrament.

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you that you have come into the world and made us part of your family, causing us to be born again into a living hope, through the water and the Spirit. You are not only the son of David and Abraham but also Abraham’s God, and David’s Lord. Fill us with your Holy Spirit, and bless us with every gift of grace from your throne. Amen.

Advent 1: Audio Sermon (27-Nov-11)

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Advent 1 [Matthew 21:1-9] (27-Nov-11)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am, lay reading), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (10am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram (2pm) and St John's Lutheran Church, Sale (4pm).

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (Matthew 21:1-9)

This took place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet saying, “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”

Cu mɛmɛ tuɔɔk, kɛ ɣöö bi mëë ca lar ɛ gök a thuɔ̱k, mëë ɛ jɛn i̱, "La̱rɛ jɛ nya Dha-yɔn i̱, 'Nɛnɛ kuääru min di̱i̱t a bëë kä ji̱ ni, kɔ̱c lɔcdɛ, kä ko̱tdɛ jɔk muɔ̱l, kɛnɛ ruathdɛ.'"

Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Behold, your king is coming to you!

The words do not say that you are coming to your king. The focus is not on you, it’s on the king! You are doing nothing, the king is doing everything. He is coming to you!

A good 500 years ago, Martin Luther got this right when he said: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him.” We often blink and miss these words in the catechism: “or come to him.”

So as we begin a new church year on this First Sunday of Advent, we don’t begin the year by making some new resolutions, some new promises, we don’t set about saying to Jesus how much better we’re going to do things this year. We don’t come to make a decision for Jesus, to dedicate our lives to him, and come to him with great ceremony and great parade and great pomp.

Because the gospels aren’t about us flying up to God. We don’t confess in the creed, “I believe in me, the creator of my own destiny, the follower of my own dreams. I believe that I’m so wonderful that I’ve got my life back in order, I’ve fixed up all my own problems, and I believe that if I were in the garden of Eden that I’d know what to say to that pesky snake. I believe in my own sense of spirituality, and my own little club of like-minded people who think that we’re so much holier than the rest of the world.”

Rubbish! When we say the creed, we say: “I believe in God.” God! Remember him? God! Do you hear? You believe in him. In fact, you believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things seen and unseen.

We say: “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.” “I believe in the Holy Spirit” – not your spirit, the Holy Spirit – “and I believe in the Holy Christian Church” – of all times and of all places and for all people.

That’s the faith we’re called to have on our lips. The Christian faith does not set about trying to impress others with our spirituality, our friendliness, and other things that make us feel that we’re worth something in our own eyes. We are called to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. In fact, we say in the creed, that he is “our Lord.”

He is our Lord. Our king. He is the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. His kingdom is not of this world. His kingdom will have no end.

And it is this king that comes to you. Behold, your king comes to you!

You are not your own king or queen. You are not your own master. You are not setting your own course in life, and you are not in charge of your own salvation. You don’t come to Jesus, and you don’t bring him to you.

There is only one who is your master, who will be your master, who can be your master. His name is Jesus Christ – he is the King of heaven, the King of glory, and he comes in through the doors.

Behold, your king is coming to you!

And look at the way in which he comes: humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt the foal of a beast of burden.

If we presume to come to God by ourselves, and this is a very dangerous thing, we come to him with nothing but pride. We come to him with the devil whispering in our ear: “You will not surely die… You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And so we eat from the tree, and we die. The people of this world spend all of their time trying to climb out of this pit, this septic tank of sin, filth, death, hell that we got ourselves into. We can’t come to God by ourselves, and we don’t deserve to. Think about the tower of Babel: the people wanted to build a tower all the way to heaven. We read that “the Lord came down to see the city and tower”. He came all the way down to see it (!), and he said: “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand.”

Christianity is not about achievement. It’s not about reaching up to God. It’s not about flying up to God by yourself. Because simply put, you can’t.

Instead, you need your Lord Jesus Christ to come down and have a look at what you’re doing. You need your king to come to you!

And funnily enough, he doesn’t do it with great ceremony. He doesn’t set about showing off to you. He doesn’t come riding on a horse so high that can’t reach him. He doesn’t bring out the motorcade with a Rolls Royce and security guards so that you can only hope to wave at him from a distance.

No, your king comes to you! And he comes to you in a certain way: humble, and mounted on a donkey.

Humble, gentle. He comes not as a tyrant, not as a proud, puffed-up cockatoo of a king, he doesn’t come as a ruler to suppress you and to keep you down and make money out of you and dress himself up at your expense! He comes humble, gentle, lowly, meek. He doesn’t come to beat you into submission; he comes as your friend. He comes as your equal to win you over, he invites you to sit around his table – and he comes a lot of the time in such a friendly, such a kind way, that most of the time you don’t recognise him.

Your king comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey.

Everything is humble with Jesus. Everything is friendly with him. Everything is accessible with him. Everything is easy to reach, because he has come to you, he has reached down to touch you, not half-way for you to reach up the other half, but all the way – he has come all the way down to meet you and to come to you in a humble, gentle and friendly way.

And Jesus simply has to, he must come to us in a humble way. If he’s going to associate with us, he has to eat a big fat piece of humble pie. If he’s going to join us to him as members of his body, if he’s going to graft us on to himself like branches on a vine, he has to sink very low indeed, he has to climb down beneath his own dignity, beneath his own worth.

Everyone knows what it’s like to meet a snob: someone who thinks that they’re better than we are. It’s a great sin to put ourselves above others, and to push other people down and shame them to make ourselves look better and give ourselves the honour. And Jesus has every right to be a snob with us. He is better than us. He took human flesh with all its weaknesses, but without sin. Imagine what it would be like to live without sin – no guilt, no regrets, no suffering, no death, no pain, no war, no arguments, no evil, no distractions, no hatred of others or ourselves. Anyone who is like this has every right to treat us with contempt and not bother associating with us. But the book of Hebrews says: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

And so, Jesus humbles himself. He is our king who humbles himself. He looks around to find out where we are, what we’re up to, what we’ve been doing, in what problems we’ve found ourselves, and then he forgives, forgives, forgives. He humbles himself because he just wants to be with us.

In fact, he plans everything for us to make sure that everything works out well for us. He says to his disciples, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them’, and he will send them at once.” This took place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet.

Now it could have been a lot easier for him to go and get his own donkey. But that wouldn’t be humble. If the Lord needed them, if he wanted them, couldn’t he have made his own donkey out of the dirt?

But you see, he wants to show us that he comes down to our level. He wants to do things on our terms. He wants to be approachable, to be friendly, he wants you to love him, not just to fear him. It’s not the time for showing off. It’s simply the time to make sure everything works out right. For us in our lives he does the same all the time, as Romans says: “all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

Here in our gospel all things work together for good too – for the express purpose that he should come to you as your king, in a humble way, in a friendly way.

And this is the way he always comes. The words of the prophets are fulfilled when he comes like this. “We love because he first loved us.” He first comes to us. And he rides into Jerusalem humble and mounted on a donkey, smiling, blessing all the children, laying his hands on them.

Behold, your king is coming to you at the beginning of a new church year, as we come together to hear the events of Jesus life once again.

Behold, your king is coming to you at the beginning of a new week, showering his blessing on everything you do.

Behold, your king is coming to you at the beginning of a new day, a new hour.

Behold, your king is coming to you, and sending out his Holy Spirit through his Holy Word, through his gift of baptism which you walk in every day, through his Holy Supper with his body and blood.

Behold, your king is coming to you, and he is humble, he is friendly, he mounted on a donkey, he comes to you with simple humble means, he comes with words, through preaching, through water, through bread, through wine.

So take off your old clothes which the devil would have you wear, and lay them on the donkey, let Jesus sit on them. Let him plant his backside on them. “Put off your old self”, as St Paul says. Strip off your old rags and put them on the road and let Jesus walk all over them. Thrown down your worries, your cares, your sin. Thrown down your self-invented spirituality. Thrown down your own righteousness, your hypocrisy, your pretenses – Jesus won’t just sit on them, he’ll ride all over them with a donkey. The victory is won! The king of glory comes in through the gates with his free forgiveness, his free grace, and there’s nothing you can do in return.

Behold, your king is coming to you!

And the church replies with the palms of victory in their hands:

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna to the Son of David! Hosanna!

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords, come to us again this day, and bless our new church year, that this new church year may be a year filled of your grace, and showered with your blessings. Hosanna in the highest! Amen.

Last Sunday of the Church Year: Audio Sermon (20-Nov-11)

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Last Sunday of the Church Year [Matthew 25:1-13] (20-Nov-2011)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (11am), and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Bairnsdale (3pm).

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (Matthew 25:1-12)

But at midnight there was a cry, “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.”

Kä wäärdär cuɛ tekɛ rual i̱, "Nɛnɛ, cɔ nyaal ɛn! Bia raar kä luɔrɛ jɛ."

Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

The parable of the 10 virgins in our gospel reading today is not really a parable first of all about 10 virgins. In the same way, the parable of the lost sheep is not really a parable about a lost sheep at all. It’s more of a parable about the shepherd who loves his sheep so much that he’s not willing to lose it even though he has 99 others. The parable of the lost coin is not really a parable about a coin, but rather, it’s a parable about a woman who scours her house up and down looking behind every cushion, looking under every cupboard until she finds her one missing coin. Even the parable of the prodigal son is not really a parable about the son, but more so, it’s a parable about the father who is waiting for him, who doesn’t even wait for the son to enter his house, but sees him from a long distance, and runs to meet him, flings his arms around him, and doesn’t even let his son finish his sentence, before he commands that the fattened calf be killed, and a banquet prepared.

And so, in today’s parable, the parable is not so much about 10 virgins. It’s rather about what these 10 virgins were waiting for. This is a parable about the bridegroom! It’s a parable about the wedding banquet, the wedding feast that the virgins were waiting to enjoy! It’s about the door that was flung wide open to and let these virgins walk in. It’s funny that most of the detail of this parable has to do with what was happening outside of the doors of the wedding banquet and what was happening before the bridegroom arrived. But really, this is not the main point. The main point in that there is a wedding banquet, that is not even described for us, we are not really told what happens at it. All we know it that it is there – it’s happening. And at midnight there was a cry, “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.”… And we read: “The bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast.”

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But there’s a certain sense in which most of us can read this parable and work out what it’s about. But it’s not a parable that we can identify with so much from first hand experience, because here in this parable we’re dealing with wedding customs that are simply not part of our culture. And so we say, what’s going on? What’s these virgins got to do with anything? What are they doing?

It’s funny that Jesus’ ministry should begin with a wedding. He performs his first miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding. And here we are on the Last Sunday of the Church Year, and we read one of the last parables that Jesus tells which is also about a wedding. This parable is written in chapter 25 of Matthew, and in chapter 26 we read about his arrest and betrayal. In chapter 21, a few chapters before, we read about Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey. So our reading today is a Holy Week reading. It’s a parable that Jesus tells after Palm Sunday, and before he goes and dies on the cross. And so in this parable which Jesus tells right at the end of his ministry before he dies, he is also telling us about a wedding. The bible starts and begins this way today. We have the marriage of Adam and Eve, and then at the end of Revelation we see the wedding banquet of heaven. We read: “I saw the holy city, coming down out of heaven from God, prepares as a bride adorned for her husband.”

And of course, weddings in all different cultures have different customs. And it’s a really great thing to go to a wedding, especially in a different culture, because you really get to see something special, something unique. But there’s one thing that all weddings have in common, and that is the joy. Weddings are quite different to funerals. There’s a joy in funerals too – the joy of the hope of the resurrection. But at a wedding, there’s the special joy celebrating a new couple, new love, a new family, a new beginning.

And we are living in very strange times, because if a visitor from another country spent a little time soaking up and enjoying our culture, they would be very hard-pressed to find a wedding. And this is a really sad thing. It’s not just sad because we’re losing a part of our culture, but it makes people sad. A culture without weddings is a sad culture. We don’t have weddings, because we don’t know why we should get married. A visitor to our country would find plenty of politicians and advocates talking about marriage – and in this current political debates, where people are seeking to change the definition of marriage in our country’s marriage act, we have to recognise something very dangerous and damaging. We have to realise that we are living in a country where many people don’t know what a marriage is. And so of course, we don’t have weddings, because people don’t celebrate something if they don’t know what the thing is. In the church today, you can’t imagine what a barrier this is to evangelism in our culture today, because if people even don’t know what a marriage is, how can people desire to enter the wedding banquet of heaven, the marriage between Christ and his church?

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So we come to this parable today about the 10 virgins and the wedding banquet, and we see all sorts of details here that are a little bit removed from our culture. Who are these 10 virgins and what are they doing?

In our gospel reading, we have described here a certain type of wedding. This is a special wedding, maybe even a royal wedding. In Psalm 45, we also have described there a wedding between a king and his queen. And we read: “All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-coloured robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king.”

So these 10 virgins in our parable today, are probably like these virgin companions of the princess described in the psalm. They are a bit like bridesmaids. And they’re waiting for the wedding party to arrive for the banquet.

And we read that five of these virgins are wise, and five of them are foolish. Five of these virgins have enough oil for the lamps only, and five of these virgins have extra oil in their vessels which they can use later on.

But let’s have a look at what these 10 young women have in common. First of all, they are all virgins. They all have lamps, and they all nod off and fall asleep waiting for the bridegroom to arrive.

As far as their virginity is concerned, all ten of them are no better or worse than each other. They are all as innocent as each other. No one is more or less pure than the other, or has anything over against any of the others.

As far as their sleepiness is concerned, all ten of them are no better or worse than each other. They all have a little nap waiting for the bridegroom. No-one stays awake more than any others.

But here comes the divide. We read: When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them. When it was time to wake up, they had no oil, and the others didn’t have enough to share. And we read: “While they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But he answered, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.”

And Jesus says, “Watch therefore, for you neither the day nor the hour.”

Now, the way in which we hear this passage depends a lot on how we view the oil. What do you imagine that this oil is that keeps the lamps burning?

We have all sorts of expressions in English about “burning the candle at both ends” and such like which have to do with expending energy and working hard. And so it can be easy for us too to hear this parable as if it has to with being energetic. “Make sure that your lamps are filled, make sure that you’re energetic, strong in the faith or you’ll be locked out. Make sure you’re fuelled up in the faith.”

But this isn’t right. Remember all of the 10 virgins fell asleep. This isn’t a parable about being filled with energy. There are plenty of people who are not very energetic or overly emotional, or whatever, and nevertheless they are still saved, they are still people who belong to the faith, their lamps are still burning.

The danger with seeing the parable like this, is that we see the oil, the fuel as something which ultimately belongs to us. We want to bring something that belongs to us to the banquet. We want to bring our own reason and strength, our own spiritual gifts, our own energy, our own sense of feeling good about ourselves, and we want to light out lamps with that. That is the sort of fuel that will run out.

It can be even dangerous to talk about the fuel as if it is “faith”, because often we want to talk about our faith just as if it’s another good work. Look at me, God, I’m so good, because I believe.

But listen to these words of St Paul: “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power to God and not to us.”

The jars of clay here are actually lamps. That’s what this passage is talking about. And the fuel that keeps them burning is nothing that belongs to us. The power doesn’t belong to us, to the lamps. The lamps are kept burning purely through Jesus Christ himself. We are baptised, and now Christ lives in us, and we live in him.

Jesus Christ himself, his words, his life keeps the lamps burning. Foolish virgins don’t recognise this. They don’t recognise Jesus Christ as the only one who can save. They don’t recognise in Christ’s death on the cross the salvation of the whole world. They don’t recognise Christ putting us to death and making us alive again in Holy Baptism.

So put your trust in Jesus Christ as he speaks to you and works through you. And watch. Expect him to come. Know that he will come. Be ready, not by yourself, don’t try to be ready without Jesus, be ready with him.

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But one last thing -- it’s a strange thing that in this parable there’s no mention of the bride. We have the 10 virgins and we have the bridegroom, but no bride.

Well, as we wait for Christ in this life, as we anticipate our own death, as we anticipate Christ’s return again at the end of time, we are like those individual virgins waiting for the bridegroom. But when we enter the door, and we are lead into the wedding feast, into the reception, into the banquet hall, we realise that we are not simply guests at someone else’s wedding, but that we, together, as one church, are Christ’s bride. We have longed and desired not just to be guests at the wedding, but Christ’s bride. We have longed to be one flesh with him, even one Spirit with him, as he has given his body and his blood to us continually in the Lord’s Supper, and given us to drink of the one Holy Spirit.

This is a great mystery. St Paul says: “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

So enter in today. The doors stand flung open for you, Christ our bridegroom is here, so come out to meet him. He welcomes you in, he lights your lamps. Because all our longing, all our desire is fulfilled in Christ. Our hearts are always restless until they find their rest in Christ. Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, our heavenly bridegroom, draw us to yourself, let us run after you and follow after you. We long to be wherever you would call us, wherever you would draw us. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, engrave our names on the palms of your hands. Fill us with longing and desire as we wait for that time when you will call us to enter the marriage feast of heaven. Inflame our lamps with your presence and with all your gifts. Amen.

All Saints [Matthew 5:1-12] (6-Nov-11)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (11am), Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Bairnsdale (3pm) and St John's Lutheran Church, Sale (13-Nov-11, 4pm).

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (Matthew 5:1-12)

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for you reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Ca yɛ poth mi kueth naath yɛ, kä muɔckɛ yɛ rik, kä la̱tkɛ yɛ jiäk diaal, kɛ ka̱a̱cni kɛ kui̱dä. Dɔalɛ to̱k, kä a lo̱ckun tɛth, kɛ ɣöö mucdun cieŋ nhial ɛ mi di̱i̱t, kä cikɛ göök Kuɔth tëë wal moc rik inɔ.

Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

What do you think it means to be “blessed?”

What do you think of if someone asked you what it means to be “blessed?”

In our Gospel reading today for All Saints’ Day, Jesus teaches his church through all time and for all ages what it means to be blessed.

“Blessed, blessed, blessed…” We hear those word ring one after the other.

Blessed are the poor in the Spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst.

Blessed, blessed, blessed… One after the other, Jesus scatters his blessings on each person, on each era of history, on different stages of life.

In the book of Proverbs it says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

The writer of the proverb here is asking us to acknowledge God in all our ways: to look back on life and to notice where God’s hand has been at work, even to examine ourselves in the present and to see where God’s hand is still working, still pushing us in one direction, still nudging us over there, still elbowing us over here. In all your ways acknowledge him.

But if we were to look at our lives and think: “Where has God worked? Where has God blessed us? Where has he sent us his blessing?”, we would get the answer totally wrong. We would think that God has most of all blessed us in all those times when things were going well for us. We would think that God has blessed us in all those times when we felt our work was easy, when it was no effort from week to week to do the jobs we needed to do. We would think that God has showered upon us his blessing the most in all those times when we were in good health, when we felt like we “spiritual” and “godly”, when we had everything that we wanted materially, when people said good things about us.

But in actual fact, the times we should consider to be full of blessing are those times when we are the most helpless. We of course always want to be self-sufficient, reliant on no-one, needing no help. But God wants us to be dependent on him. He wants to fill our cups to overflowing, and he can’t do it if we try to fill our own cups with our own cheap stuff.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

If we think about God’s blessing in this way, in terms of our times of helplessness, we would think, “Why does God do it like this?” “Does he want to push us all away from him?” “Does he want to put us all off completely?” “Don’t you think he would want to teach us something a little more attractive, a little more enjoyable, a little more fun?”

But what we have to understand is that the world was not designed with suffering. Suffering came later – suffering came when sin came. And now, God then has to do things in a new way. Now God has to bring good things out of bad things. At the beginning of the book of Genesis it says: God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. At the end of the book of Genesis, once we’ve read the family histories of people who have lied, been cowardly, murdered, envied, tricked, hated, raped, you name it: at the end of all this, then we read those words that Joseph speaks to his brothers: “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

And so, this is where we find God’s blessing: God actively, deliberately turning things around for good, turning upside-down things the right way up.

And so in our Gospel reading today, we read:

Seeing the crowds, [Jesus] went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them.

See here the sense of occasion. Jesus goes up on the mountain that was there. He sits down. He gathers his disciples around him. And St Matthew even mentions the fact that he “opened his mouth”. Everything here is so deliberate: everything marks the sense that what is about the follow are great words, life-giving words, words for the whole world, words for all times and all places. And so, what does he say?

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

These are the sort of words which need to be memorised and returned to again and again, and year after year, and there is always something new in them. It’s not to say that these words change at different stages of life, but we change so that these words are applied to us in a different way.

But one thing we need to make sure we understand. These words are not a list of prerequisites for being blessed. Jesus is not telling us a list of things which we have to do in order to be blessed. Jesus is not saying: If you want to be blessed, this is what you have to do.

At the beginning of the reading, Jesus draws his disciples to himself. His disciples talk to him. He is speaking to his disciples here. He is speaking to those people whom he has already blessed.

Now he is describing for them what this blessing looks like. He wants to draw them a picture of this blessing.

We can’t take these things as a list of prerequisites. For example, you can’t say, “If I want to enter the kingdom of heaven, I have to make sure I’m persecuted.” God will send you persecution in his own time, you don’t have to go looking for it! Some Christians almost carry on as if every time someone says something bad about them that this is a “persecution, persecution!” But Jesus says: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” Do you hear that word? Falsely! That doesn’t include being persecuted for being a stuck-up pain in the neck! And also Jesus says “on my account”. Yes: not on account of the fact that you went out of your way to annoy people or whatever. Jesus says in another place: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.”

That’s what it means to be persecuted falsely on account of Jesus. It means to be persecuted for the same reason as Jesus was persecuted.

But listen to each of these blessings:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who are not rich in spirit. Blessed are those who are helpless before God.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

We might think that this is particularly strange, but those who mourn are the only ones who can be comforted. And here we’re not just talking about mourning over people who have died, but acknowledging here a deep sense that God himself is the one who comforts us, and fills the empty cup.

And this list of blessings continues. Blessed are the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted.

Listen to each of these blessings and listen very carefully to the blessing which is found in each of these things. This list of blessings, or the Beatitudes as they are sometimes called, are a set of great, mysterious and profound truth that you will continue to fathom your whole life long, until the time when you meet your maker face to face, not with your own purity, but with the purity which God himself gives you, and you will see that God was actually right after all. There was great blessing. There was profound blessing in times when I often didn’t see it.

That’s what it means: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

It doesn’t mean that your own personal purity will allow you to see God. If that were the case, then none of us would see God. In fact, this blessing, probably even more than the others, shows us our sinful condition. We realise when we hear those words that we’re not pure in heart.

But that’s precisely what Jesus came for. He didn’t come to leave us to purify our own hearts by himself. He came to die for the sins of the world, rise from the dead, and purify the hearts of the world himself, with his own power, with his own cleansing and forgiving blood. He’s the one who does the purifying. We are helpless. He is the one who opens the door then for us through the forgiveness of sins and allows us to see God.

Then we can say: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, means trust in the Lord in all your helplessness. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. Look back on your life, and see where his hand is at work. See God, you who are pure in heart. See him, and acknowledge him.

On this All Saints’ Day, we come together as a church particularly to remember those words which we say in the Apostles’ Creed. I believe in the communion of saints. We come not just to acknowledge God and see God at work in our own lives, but in the lives of all those who have lived and died in the faith before us. Because each person who is baptised gives a distinctive witness to the faith, each person’s life is seasoned with salt in a different way, and each person receives a crown of victory in a different way, with different desires fulfilled, with different pains brought to an end, with different sins forgiven. And each person in Christian history, the great saints of history, the great teachers of the faith, the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, and even those more recently who were close to us, all give a unique witness. Each person displays the blessing of God in a unique way to them, but in a way which is united under the cross of Christ.

You notice that whenever we give a blessing in the church, we always make a sign of the cross. And the sign of the cross is a sign of such great blessing, as we know, but which we know is a sign of great suffering. Every church is marked with one. And every Christian is marked with that sign at holy baptism. It’s that cross which Christ calls us to take up and follow him with which comes out in each of these blessings in our reading today.

As St Peter says: “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time, he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him for he cares for you.” Or listen to the words of St Paul in Romans 5: “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings.”

And so, we gather together today to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and give thanks to God, and to acknowledge him in all our ways, with the angels, the archangels and all the company of heaven. We come together as a united communion of saints, we are saints who hear, they are the saints who see. In the divine service, we see God at work only by faith, but they see God at work with their own eyes. But we’re all part of the one and the same divine service. Those who have died in the faith are here with us because they are with Jesus, and Jesus is with us, in the flesh, with his body and blood, and life and death in his hands. It’s all the one and the same wedding banquet of heaven.

And so he comes into our midst, he enters his sanctuary, he walks up his mountain and sits down, and he opens his mouth and he teach us. Blessed, blessed, blessed. One blessing after another, one toll of the bell after another. Blessed, blessed, blessed. Blessed are you. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.