St Michael and All Angels: Audio Sermon (30-Sept-2012)

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St Michael and All Angels [Matthew 18:1-11] (30-Sept-2012)

This sermon was preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram (28-Sept-2012, 2pm), St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am) and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (11am).

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

Text: (Matthew 18:1-11)

See that you do not despise one of these my little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, we come to you in boldness and confidence as your dear children, calling on you, our dear Father, and knowing that the angels you have sent to protect us are always gazing upon your face. Let your Word be taught in its truth and purity, and help us to lead holy lives according to it, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

As we celebrate the church festival of St Michael and all angels, our gospel reading today says nothing about St Michael—we have to read our Old Testament reading and the reading from Revelation if we want to learn particularly about him. And our Gospel reading is a reading which says very little about angels, except for this one verse, verse 10: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”

This is a text, which teaches us about what Christians throughout the centuries have called “guardian angels”. But who are the angels guarding? The text says: “these little ones”. So who are these little ones that Jesus is talking about?

Let’s go back to the beginning of our reading, where we read:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is [greater] in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is [greater] in the kingdom of heaven.”

Our reading begins by telling us when this conversation took place. It says, “At that time.” At what time? In the previous chapter, St Matthew tells us about the event where Peter, James and John were taken off by themselves and saw Jesus transfigured with brilliant light before their eyes standing together with Moses and Elijah. The cloud came from heaven and covered their eyes, and they heard the voice of God the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

Now just before our reading, St Matthew tells us of a very unusual event that is very rarely talked about in church. We are told about where a tax-collector goes up to Peter and asks him, “Does your teacher not pay the tax?” And Peter says, “Yes.” And then Jesus sends Peter on a very strange errand. He says: Go to the sea and cast in a hook and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.

Now at this time, after Peter, James and John had received this special privilege of seeing Jesus transfigured on the mountain (even though the other disciples wouldn’t have known what they saw), and Peter was sent on this special mission, to fish for a shekel, the other disciples were probably starting to think that Jesus was playing favourites.

So we read: At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is [greater] in the kingdom of the heaven?”

It’s a strange question, and it’s not really the right question to ask. But at the same time, the disciples know something very profound: Jesus himself knows the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. He is the world expert on the subject, and they know that he knows the answer to their question. So they are doing the right thing here, because they are asking their question in the right place.

Many people at that time thought that Jesus was bringing a earthly kingdom, in the same sense as a kind of earthly king, like Julius Caesar or King Herod or someone like that. But this is completely wrong. Jesus says to Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” I’ve come to bring a completely different kind of kingdom. Jesus says in Luke 18, “The kingdom of God is in the midst of you”, or we could translate it, “within you.” St Paul says in Romans 14: “The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

When Jesus says the kingdom of God is “within you”, it doesn’t mean that it begins in you. Remember Jesus tells parables about people that find the kingdom of heaven, like a man finding buried treasure and a merchant finding a pearl of great price. The kingdom of heaven comes when God sends you the Holy Spirit so that you believe the living words of Jesus, and live a godly life according to that those words. And Jesus is also the Word who became flesh, so that when His words are spoken to us in Holy Baptism, his words also become flesh in us, and we are united with Jesus in the flesh, we are made part of his body and we are made citizens of his kingdom, even now, before we have died, we are made partakers of the kingdom of heaven. We even eat his body and drink his blood as a real, physical participation in God’s kingdom, and Jesus gives us the Lord’s Supper for the ongoing forgiveness of our sins to give us confidence and encouragement as his citizens in his kingdom.

As you know, many Christians don’t believe in the real presence of Jesus’ body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. And it’s many of the same Christians who don’t believe that we are part of the kingdom of heaven now, and that it’s only going to be in the future. There’s something in the language of these people that means that they continually contradict themselves. They know that the Jesus is their Lord and King, but in a way that maybe he is ruling our hearts but not actually ruling the world with the church firmly fixed at the bottom of the cross.

When the angels came down from heaven at Christmas time, they sang, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.” Many people don’t believe that Jesus brought peace on earth at all, and that we’re only looking forward to it in the future. They believe that Jesus will reign for 1000 years after the so-called “rapture”, and that this is the real kingdom. People read the Book of Revelation by itself without really listening to the gospels, and then twist everything around to fit. Basically, they believe that Jesus is stuck in heaven and is simply not here on earth. They think that the church on earth in all its weakness and sin and trouble is not the kingdom of God at all. But you see: the weak, humble church is the kingdom of God, because Jesus is there, ruling in the midst of his enemies, ruling in sinners and ruling through sinners and ruling even through sin, bringing his kingdom to sinners through his powerful word and his life-giving sacraments.

And so, the disciples ask Jesus who is greater in the kingdom of heaven, who is best, who is the going to rule over others?

And we read: And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is [greater] in the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus gives a threat where he says, “You will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” He is not just talking about when we die or about the end of the world, but he is talking about now, when the Holy Spirit is given. Will you believe like a child that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead? Will you believe the women who come back from the tomb with their spices telling you that the tomb is empty? Will you believe Thomas’s testimony that he saw the pierced hands and side of Jesus, and was even invited to stick his hand in, and confess with him that Jesus is your Lord and your God? Remember Jesus reaches out and blesses you when he says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Being like a child means being humble. “Whoever humbles himself like this child is greater in the kingdom of heaven.” You can’t elevate yourself, because you would be elevating yourself above Jesus’ word. You don’t have anything to contribute to the church because Jesus has already spoken everything the church needs to hear, and he is the one who created you together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. There is simply no option except humility. May God send us the Holy Spirit to create child-like humility in us every day.

But after this, Jesus goes further not just to teach us about being like a child, but he tells us what he thinks about children themselves, and teaches us his own “theology of children”, if you like.

He says: Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.

Listen to these words very carefully. Whether people believe in the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper will effect very much how they hear these words.

People will say, “It’s impossible that Christ’s body and blood could be in the Lord’s Supper, because he’s at the right hand of God.” Not true—the right hand of God is everywhere, and Jesus body and blood can be wherever he promises it to be. People would also say, “It’s impossible that if we received a child in Jesus’ name that we would actually be receiving Jesus himself.” Not true—the right hand of God is everywhere, and Jesus can choose to be received through whichever person he promises to be received through. Here, he promises you that if you receive a child in his name, you actually receive him in his human flesh.

Children are still sinners. They are conceived and born in sin, they need to be baptised, they need discipline and training in what is right and wrong. But even so, Jesus tells you that “whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”

These words are wonderful and glorious if we really think about them, and they should encourage us to take notice and bless and nourish and love all the children in the world if only our arms were wide enough. But Jesus puts children in our own families, in our own churches, in our own towns and areas. Job says, “You poured me out like milk and curdled me like cheese.” God continually curdles “new cheese” every day. An individualistic society though hates children and will always hate children. But Jesus wants to create in us through his Holy Spirit such a love for children that is alongside the love with have for Jesus himself.

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”

Then Jesus gives a very severe warning and describes to us what people deserve who hate children, who scandalise children, and who cause them to sin.

He says: “Whoever causes of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.”

Jesus knows full well that there will never be an earthly government or a magistrate’s court anywhere in the world that will throw someone off a boat with the rock around his neck for causing a child to sin. No Christian anywhere ever brings themselves to the point where they start cutting off their limbs. Nevertheless, this is exactly what people deserve. The greatest sins in our world today are committed against children. Don’t try to escape the conviction of sin which the Holy Spirit wants to speak with you about your failures, but realise also that there is no repentance if don’t acknowledge that we deserve to punished for our sin. We say in the confession, “We deserve your punishment in time and in eternity.”

But thank God that he doesn't deal with us as we deserve: we also need to remember that through Jesus’ suffering and death, our sins have been cast into the deepest sea. Our old self has been put to death in the waters of Holy Baptism with a millstone tied around its neck, with no mercy. Micah 7:19 says: “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.”

Jesus has taken the punishment of the world with nails through his hands and feet so that our hands and feet need not be cut off in payment for our sins.

The littlest of children are so ready and willing to admit their sin and cry about it. They are so quickly ashamed when they are caught doing wrong. They don’t have the poker face that comes with years of experience. But they also love presents and love to receive gifts. Jesus gives you his forgiveness every day. He has baptised you and all your sins are done away with and cancelled. It’s the example of a child that comes running to snatch the gift from their parents’ hands and run off with it with so much happiness and joy. This is what Jesus wants us to do with the forgiveness of sins: to receive it daily like a child.

But hang on: what about the angels? I thought this was St Michael and All Angels, not St Michael and All Children!

Well, Jesus says: See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.

In all their vulnerability, the guardian angels of these little ones are always joyfully watching our heavenly Father’s face. Angels are always looking after these little ones: the children, the sick, the vulnerable, the persecuted, the suffering, the depressed, the sad, the lonely, the poor, the weak, the abused, the down-trodden, the crushed.

Their angels are always looking at the face of Jesus’ Father. Not just any old angels, but their angels.

If you want to see the angels at work, look at where the church is suffering the most and where it is the most vulnerable. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus’ own kingdom, is always a kingdom under the cross. It is always a weak kingdom in the eyes of the world, because it always has a king who is weak in the eyes of the world, with his crown of thorns on his head and his lashings on his back. But he is a king who is attended by all the hosts of heaven. He is the King of Glory and the Lord of Hosts. And we are the kingdom that rejoices when the blessed Lord of Hosts comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!

Amen.

Come Holy Spirit and impress the words of God deep in our hearts, so that we may rejoice in the presence of our risen Lord Jesus together with St Michael and All Angels. Amen.

Trinity 16: Audio Sermon [23-Sept-2012]

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Trinity 16 [Luke 7:11-17] (23-Sept-2012)

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: (Luke 7:11-17)

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, we come to you in boldness and confidence as your dear children, calling on you, our dear Father. Let your Word be taught in its truth and purity, and help us to lead holy lives according to it, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

There is a missing word at the beginning of the English translation of our gospel reading today, which is present in Greek. This word is ἐγένετο (egéneto), which translates as “it happened”, or in the old King James version, “it came to pass.”

So our Gospel reading begins today, by saying: “Soon afterward he went to a town”, but if we want to be fussy, it should read: “And it happened (or it came to pass) that soon afterwards he went to a town.”

We might think that this little detail isn’t really all that important. But it’s very important at the beginning of a passage which tells about the event where Jesus rose a man from the dead. The first thing we read is that “it happened”. “It came to pass”.

Many people today don’t believe this little word, that what happened was a real life historical event.

Some people believe that the purpose of this passage is not to tell us that Jesus actually performed this miracle, but rather it is simply there to make a point about who Jesus is. There are a lot of similarities between our Gospel reading today and our Old Testament reading which reports Elijah raising from the dead a widow’s son. Nobody had raised anybody from the dead before Elijah, not even Moses. And after Elijah, the prophets, like Isaiah, started to prophecy that the Messiah would rise people from the dead, for example, where it says in 26:19: “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.”

In the passage just after our Gospel reading today, Luke writes about how Jesus says to John the Baptist’s disciples: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up...”

And so, some people might think that the purpose of this passage about Jesus raising the widow’s son is simply to make a point: that the people who wrote the gospels believed that Jesus was fulfilling the Old Testament, and was replacing Elijah in some great way. This is true, but only half-true.

So someone might ask the question, “If this passage is so important, why doesn’t this story appear in the other gospels?” Why didn’t Matthew, Mark and John report this? Did Luke just make this one up?

We don’t know the reasons why different evangelists chose to write down various events in the life of Jesus, or not. Luke may have had some unusual privilege that gave him access to what had happened from certain eyewitnesses that the other evangelists weren’t so confident about writing. But before we start to pit one evangelist against the other, we need to remember that it was only less than 100 years later before church writers report that they were reading about Jesus’ life with these four writers together—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—as a unified and united witness to what people had seen and heard.

The first thing that needs to be preached today when it comes to these sorts of miracles of Jesus, and especially this one where he rose a man from the dead, is that it actually happened. Many people will simply hear today’s reading and say: “That’s impossible”. “It’s not possible that a person should sit up in their coffin and start speaking.” “Only simple-minded mediaeval people or fundamentalists would actually believe that this is true!”

So then we might think: Maybe the man wasn’t really dead—maybe he wasn’t dead in the sense that modern people might say. Sometimes we read about people having a near-death experience, or being resuscitated, and things like that. Maybe the people thought he was dead but he wasn’t really.

All this sort of detail is very important because if this passage is making any point at all, it is making a point based on fact, not on a whole bunch of talk, however nice the words might be.

At the same time, when we preach the Bible, we believe that it is God’s Word. We believe that it was inspired by the Holy Spirit and written down through human authors. But sometimes people make the mistake that because there were human authors involved, that this means that the bible is imperfect because it was written down by people. But God’s inspiration doesn’t allow for mistakes—and even where there have been apparent inconsistencies in the bible, Christians throughout the centuries have always sought to take up the task to defend the Scripture.

We also say that Jesus Christ is fully human: but that doesn’t mean he’s a sinner and imperfect. He’s also true God. In the same way, we could say that the bible is a fully human book: but that doesn’t mean that it makes mistakes. It’s also a word that is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

But when we first read the bible, we don’t believe that it’s God’s Word at first. We pick it up with a bit of suspicion—we come scratching our head and asking questions. And that’s fine! God gives us time and an inquiring mind to search things out and to find out if the things in the bible are true. God wants us to nitpick and ask questions.

Unfortunately, sometimes in the church there’s been a culture of silencing people who have genuine doubts and who have some genuine difficulty with the bible. People say, “God’s word says it—you have to believe it.”

This is sometimes not the most helpful thing that could be said at this point. St Paul puts it beautifully, when he says: “If Christ had not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”

In other words, test the bible. See what you think! We’re not forcing you to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. But if he didn’t, then the whole thing’s a hoax. We need to search and test these things.

So when we first come to the bible, we often don’t believe that it’s God’s word straightaway. But when we experience its power, and when we taste its goodness, then we trust in it as God’s word and then we start to have a desire to want to defend it as truth. And we say with St Paul: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”

So what happens in our reading today?

It says: Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.

The first thing we notice about this passage is the huge number of people who were there on this occasion. There were people with Jesus and people following the woman. We also read that the man was simply—dead. No explanation, no clarification: just good old-fashioned “dead”! Also, his mother was a widow—in those days, widows relied very much on their children to look after them, and he was her only son. There were no social services back then! So when Elijah in the Old Testament raised that widow’s only son, he gave her back her future and her livelihood. The same happens here with Jesus.

Then we read: And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

Notice that Jesus is called “the Lord” here: when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her. The difference between Jesus and Elijah is this: Elijah relied on God to be compassionate and prayed to him, but here, Jesus Himself is compassionate, and he felt it very deeply. The word in Greek means to felt this very deeply in his heart, in his gut. We might say, “his heart went out to her.” He also comforted her and told her not to cry, because he actually had the power to comfort her and raise her son. And so, in the presence of all these people, he touches the coffin, and tells the man to rise.

Anybody who thinks that we are saved by any contribution of our own, whether we choose eternal life by our own free-will, or whether we are saved by our works or efforts, needs to have a good think about this passage. This man is dead! He had nothing to offer Jesus. He couldn’t rise back to live by exerting his will or making a decision for Jesus.

At the same time, the man is not raised to life because of God’s immovable counsel which has been appointed ahead of time, like some sort of robotic predestination. Jesus is true God himself, but he was moved by this event, he felt for this woman, he listened to her crying, and he acted and spoke. And through the power of this Spirit-filled words, he calls this man back to life, against all scientific laws, against all our reason, and against every idea of what we might think is possible.

And so at the end of the reading we read:

Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.

These words clearly show that Jesus is both a true human being and true God. They say: “A great prophet has arisen among us!” They say: Jesus is a great man, a great prophet, and he’s one of us—he’s grown up as a little boy with his family in our midst.

And also they say: “God has visited his people!” Through this event, it hasn’t just been a man who visited the city of Nain, but God himself has visited his people.

Whether the people on this occasion believed that Jesus himself was actually true God is hard to know. But their words still apply to Jesus without their knowing! Ever since Christ took on flesh in Mary’s womb, if God’s ever going to visit us again, he’s either going to visit us in the flesh of Jesus Christ, or he’s not going to visit at all. There is nowhere else on earth that day where God should have been sought, except in the city of Nain, in the flesh of Jesus Christ, rising a widow’s son from the dead.

Because as Christians we believe that Jesus has two natures in one person: truly human and truly God. So when Jesus the man visited this city, we believe that God visited it, and that God and man can’t be separated in the person of Jesus. It was the pure compassion of God that was felt in Jesus’ guts, it was the pure words of God that comforted the widow and it was the pure hand of God himself that touched the coffin.

Jesus says in John’s gospel: Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”

This is the point of this passage today. And so, we also believe that today in our church, “God has visited his people!” Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, has spoken his living words of power and truth and love, he has visited you in the flesh and baptised you into his own body, he raises you up from the dead through his powerful absolution speaking the forgiveness of all your sins, and he even gives you his resurrected and glorified flesh and blood to eat and drink.

And so the fact that Christ visits his church today is no less real than when he visited the city of Nain 2000 years ago. And he enters into our own company today with one purpose in mind: to stand among those who are dead through sin, and to give you by pure grace alone the resurrection of your body from the dead.

A great prophet has arisen among us! God has visited his people!

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, come to us, and with compassion hear our prayers and our sighs and our tears. Raise us up from the dead, and begin eternal life in us and through us through your living and active word, and through the powerful working of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

Trinity 15: Audio Sermon (16-Sept-2012)

Sorry everyone! I forgot to record the sermon, and now I have lost my voice a bit, so it's unlikely I'll get this done.

Trinity 15 [Matthew 6:24-34] (16-Sept-2012)

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 6:24-34)

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, we come to you in boldness and confidence as your dear children, calling on you, our dear Father. Let your Word be taught in its truth and purity, and help us to lead holy lives according to it, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our Gospel reading today is a great favourite of many people. People often think of this reading when they are in the great outdoors. Jesus tells us to “look at the birds of the air” and “consider the lilies of the field”.

But what’s so special about the birds? And what’s so special about the lilies?

Our reading today begins with these words: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” – or in Greek, it uses the Hebrew expression “mammon”: You cannot serve God and mammon.

What’s significant about the birds and the lilies is that they only serve one master. We might think that birds and lilies don’t have masters at all. But that’s not how the bible speaks about them.

Psalm 148 says: “Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds!... Let them praise the name of the Lord!”

The birds have a kind of instinct where they are not taught how to live—but somehow they seem to know what to do: they know how to feed themselves, they know how to reproduce, they know how to look after their young and build a nest, and generally they do a pretty good job, sometimes even a bit better than many people! And when they do this according to God’s order, they praise the name of the Lord.

The lilies have been given great beauty, together with all the flowers throughout the world, which they didn’t have to earn and they didn’t have to work for. They simply blossom and flourish by pure grace alone, and everybody all throughout the world agrees that they are beautiful.

And human beings are created in the image of God! We should know how to feed ourselves infinitely better than the birds. We should know how to clothe ourselves infinitely better than the lilies!

And many people today think that people should just be left to themselves to do whatever they like and we would have a fair and equal society. But unfortunately, this simply doesn’t happen. There’s always someone who abuses the system.

Now why is this? Why can’t human beings live a peaceful life just like the birds and the flowers? Why can’t we all just live in harmony with nature?

There are many people who call themselves “environmentalists” today, who do a lot of looking around at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. They notice that these things are beautiful and that we should preserve them for future generations. And many of these people also come to the conclusion that the problem with our planet is human beings, and so they are in favour of preservation of the forests and wildlife, but they are against human procreation and human life, and promote abortion and euthanasia, and such like.

Now why is this the case?

The problem with our planet is not human beings: the problem is sin. Human beings are created in the image of God, but they have also fallen into sin. Human life is precious, it is valuable, it is beautiful: so beautiful that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ chose to take on our human flesh and to be born of a virgin.

The human race is a rich garden of flowers that God creates afresh and anew, day after day. Mother Teresa said: “How can people say that there are too many children in the world: that’s like saying there are too many flowers.” Adam got it right when he looked at God’s final creation, the jewel in creation’s crown, the woman, and he said: “This at last is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone!” These is the first recorded words of Adam.

Jesus says to “love your neighbour as yourself”. If we want to understand what it is to love our neighbour, we need firstly to understand what it is to love ourselves. Adam sees the woman, his neighbour, his wife, his companion, and he loves her, but he also loves himself because she is just like him!

But for some reason, human beings hate themselves and always want to self-destruct. What we don’t understand is that God created us good, but we have fallen into sin. So it is a good thing to hate the sin we see in ourselves, and that our most burning desire be to be rid of it and done with it. God hates the sin in us too, but he does not hate sinners—on the contrary, he loves sinners. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. And we are called to love our neighbour (our fellow sinners) just as we ourselves love the wonderful existence for which God has created us, under the cross, under the blood of Christ, under the forgiveness of all our sins.

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Jesus shows us our sin in our reading today, when he says: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

Jesus is not telling you here anything that you can’t basically work out for yourself. He is not talking about so-called “spiritual” matters first; he is simply talking about having a master, having a boss.

Many of you either work, or have worked in your life. Most of us know what it’s like to be in a workplace. What would it be like if you had two bosses that had completely different ideas? As an employee, you had it signed into your contract that you needed to follow to the letter everything that your two bosses said, even though they disagreed. Can you imagine what would happen?

Could you imagine this in the army? Could you imagine a platoon of soldiers, with two lieutenants, who were equally in charge, and had two completely different battle plans? Each soldier, as normal, would be required to obey both of these equally superior officers, and would have to follow their orders precisely, even though they were always receiving two completely different set of orders. Could you imagine what would happen on the battlefield? The platoon would be destroyed by the enemy, hands down! There’s no way that they could win the battle.

In the same way, Jesus says: No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

Each person in the world is set under authority. We all have masters we need to serve and respect, and we also have people under our authority. And God commands us to submit to authority when he says: “Honour your father and your mother.”

And Luther writes his explanation: “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honour them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.”

Also in the back of the Small Catechism we have the Table of Duties, where Luther writes out bible passages for us, which have to do with different structures of authority. Firstly, it says what bishops, pastors and preachers should do for their hearers, and what hearers owe their pastors. It says what civil government should do for their nation, and how citizens should act towards the government. It says how husbands should treat their wives, and how wives should treat their husbands. It says how parents should treat their children, and children their parents, how workers should treat their bosses and how employers should treat their workers, and how youth should respect older people, and how widows should behave.

So how many masters do you have? I know that in my life there’s all sorts of people that I owe a certain respect to, and sometimes these different people pull me in different directions. Sometimes a person’s parents tell them different things, some old people give young people bad advice.

So how should we as Christians behave towards those who are in authority over us? The fourth commandment says: “honour them”. Honour your father and your mother. In fact, if you read carefully the Book of Proverbs, we can see there that God gives us authority for the precise reason so that He Himself can speak his word and his will to us. Proverbs says: “My son, hear your father’s instruction.”

Jesus also commands people in authority to lead through serving. Jesus gives us this example through the feet-washing. So pastors should carry out their duties faithfully, governments should rule fairly and justly, husbands should love their wives and not be harsh with them, parents should bring up their children in the training and discipline of the Lord, bosses should treat their employees well, and so on. This is the way people in authority wash the feet of those who are placed under their care.

And so, Ephesians says: “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone forever good he does.” We should take everything that is said to us in authority as the word of God, and recognise that through earthly authorities it is God himself who is ruling his world, even through people who don’t believe that he exists.

But sometimes, in our various vocations and callings, we have a situation where the people who are put in authority abuse the authority and disobey the word of God in their calling. And this is wrong.

In these situations, we need to disobey the person in authority, and correct them and tell them what’s right. When we do this, we serve them with the truth, and we speak the truth in love. Of course, this might mean that we receive some abuse: children who rightly correct their parents might be treated wrongly by them, lay-people who rightly correct their pastors might be treated wrongly by them, and employees who rightly correct their bosses might very well lose their jobs.

This sort of heartache for us should not deter us from speaking the truth in love, and suffering for the sake of Jesus’ name. It is our duty, it is our mission to speak the truth, and it is the way of God increases and the church grows, it is the way the word of God goes out into all the world.

Often we think that it’s easier to keep quiet and shut up. But then we start to despise those who are in authority over us: we start to grumble against our pastors, our parents, our government. It’s not our duty to grumble—it is a sin to grumble. It is our duty to speak—and to speak the truth in love, no matter what the cost.

In Acts 4, we see an example of this in the apostles, when they are commanded by the Jewish high priests not to speak in the name of Jesus. And they say, “We must obey God rather than man”. What happens? They are thrown in prison. And when they are released, they go out and speak in the name of Jesus again. It says: “They left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name.”

So don’t worry about the future suffering, don’t worry about the money you might lose. Just do what’s right.

And so, Jesus says in our reading today: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air.”

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

We are gathered here to listen to the word of God and to receive the Holy Sacraments. And we pray to our heavenly Father than he would send us the Holy Spirit so that we may believe the words that we have heard. When God sends us the Holy Spirit through these means, through the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacrament, he gives us the grace to believe his word, so that we can lead holy lives here on earth and also in eternity.

That’s what it means to seek God’s kingdom. It means to listen to the preaching of the word of God. Because, as St Paul says, faith comes through hearing, and hearing comes through the word of Christ.

It is Christ who speaks to us, and it is Christ who feeds us, and it is Christ who clothes us, and is Christ who forgives us right from the depths of his wounds. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Amen.

Lord God, heavenly Father, your kingdom come. Let your kingdom grow and increase among us and within us and give us boldness and confidence to pray before your throne, and boldness and confidence to speak the truth to others. Have mercy on us, that we may never go without the necessities of life, and never be without the Holy Spirit, and without your kingdom and the righteousness of Jesus Christ, in whose name     we pray. Amen.

Trinity 14: Audio Sermon (9-Sept-2012)

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Trinity 14 [Luke 17:11-19] (9-Sept-2012)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (10am, lay reading), 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: (Luke 17:11-19)

And Jesus said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has [saved you].”

Prayer: Heavenly Father, we come to you in boldness and confidence as your dear children, calling on you, our dear Father. Let your Word be taught in its truth and purity, and help us to lead holy lives according to it, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our Gospel reading today talks about Jesus coming into a village somewhere near Galilee and Samaria, where he was met by ten lepers. And our bible passage today says that they stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

Leprosy was a very serious disease, and still exists in some parts of the world today. Basically, leprosy is a skin condition but then also effects other things like nerves and eyes. One of the main problems with leprosy is that it effects a person’s ability to feel, and a person gets all sorts of bruises and cuts because they can’t feel when they bump into something or if they scratch themselves or accidentally cut themselves with a knife. In Hebrew, leprosy can also refer to mould in clothing and mildew in a house, but in the New Testament the word only really refers to a skin disease. In Leviticus 13, it says that if a person had some symptoms of leprosy, they had to go to the priest in the temple and he would examine the person carefully, and if they were found to have leprosy, we read in Leviticus 13 that “the leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”

The lepers in our reading were calling out to Jesus and yelling from a distance. You can see that they had to call out to Jesus from a distance, because they had to live separately and were quarantined.

So we read: When Jesus saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed.

If the lepers wanted to live a normal life again and be included back into the community, they had to go the priest and make particular sacrifices in the temple. This is all discussed in Leviticus 14. And so Jesus sends these men off to show themselves to the priests as clean.

It’s an amazing thing: Jesus tells them to go to the priests before they are actually clean yet. We read that they were cleansed as they went. But such is the power of Jesus’ word: it has already done something before we can even see it. When the Virgin Mary met her cousin Elizabeth, she sang a wonderful song, called the Song of Mary, or the “Magnificat”—the first Christian song—where she says: “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.” At the time when Mary said these words, there were still many mighty people still sitting on their thrones, and there were many lowly people who were still down-trodden—and it’s still like this today! But according to Mary’s song, God had already cast down the mighty, he had already lifted up the lowly. We believe in faith that God has already made his mind up on the matter. He has already acted, and made his verdict. It’s only a matter of time now before we see it revealed before our eyes.

In the same way, we call Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” When we look into our hearts, we see a lot of sin there which hasn’t been taken away, and won’t be completely taken away until the end of our earthy life. But according to God, it has already been taken away freely, by grace alone. Your sins have already been cast into the deepest sea, even though you can’t see it yet. We receive the absolution in the church today, just as if we were standing before God on the Day of Judgment. We believe in faith that God has already forgiven us, he has already wiped away all our sins, he has already raised us up to new life, even though we can’t see it yet, and when our present life is taken away from us, we will see with our own eyes just how true this has been all along. The forgiveness of sins in this life is not pretend, it’s not a fiction—we’re not playing dress-ups like children in anticipation of the Last Day. These are the words of Jesus that we speak. He says, “If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven.”

So you see how Jesus tells the lepers to go and show themselves to the priests, and as they went they were cleansed. Jesus’ powerful, healing words already start working before they are cleansed of their leprosy.

Now we read about one particular man among these ten lepers who, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.

The fact that this man was a Samaritan, means that he wasn’t Jewish. If he wasn’t Jewish, this means that he wasn’t allowed to go to the temple, and he wasn’t allowed to go and see the priest. Nevertheless, Jesus tells him to go and see the priest, and he goes on his way following the others.

Now, there’s a little problem. He wasn’t really able to go to the temple, even though Jesus told him to go there. What was he going to do? Disobey Jesus now, just after he obeyed him to the letter?

We don’t really read about this man having a crisis over this problem half-way down the road. What we do read is that he simply did what seemed natural to him at the time. He turned around, and praised God with a loud voice. And then he fell at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.

In some sense, this was the only thing that he could do! The other nine lepers could go to the temple, and they could show themselves to the priests, and they could offer the sacrifices and perform the ritual for their cleansing, and be received back into the community again.

But Jesus says to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” In Greek, this passage could also be translated, “your faith has saved you.” And this is exactly what happens. Jesus is the only priest that the Samaritan man has got. The Jewish priest is no use to anyone unless you are a Jew. So the Samaritan goes to Jesus, our heavenly high priest. The book of Hebrews calls Jesus a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, and a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Jesus is not just a high-priest for this life like one of the priests in the temple, but he is our high-priest beyond this life, in heaven forever.

And so Jesus inspects this cleansed leper and welcomes him back into the community. He says: “Rise, and go your way.” In other words, “Go and lead your normal life again.” But Jesus also includes the man in the community of heaven, in the kingdom of God. He says: “Your faith has saved you.” Not only is this Samaritan leper made clean so that he can be part of everyday society again, but he is invited into the kingdom of heaven together with all the saints, martyrs, angels and archangels and all those who have died in the faith. This is what the Christian Church is on earth: it is the congregation of sheep which Jesus our Good Shepherd has gathered to himself to make one community with all those who have died in him and are alive with him in eternity. We say this every Sunday when we say: “With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.”

Now, in this reading, there are two very important words which come up in the Divine Service week after week. The first is where the lepers say: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” And the second is where we read that the leper was “praising God with a loud voice.” In Greek, the word “praising” is literally “glorifying”: we say that the man was “glorifying God.”

So we see that the lepers asked Jesus for “mercy”, and they gave “Glory to God”. In the same way, each week, we sing two songs near the beginning of the Divine Service, as we come into the presence of our risen Lord Jesus to hear his holy words: We sing: “Lord have mercy.” And then we sing, “Glory to God in the highest.”

We sing, “Lord have mercy”, because we are lepers and beggars who are in need of God’s gifts every day and all the time. But then we sing, “Glory to God in the highest”, because Jesus has also included us through baptism into his heavenly community together with all the angels. In Greek philosophy, people often talked about earth as down here and heaven as up there. But in the bible, in the Hebrew way of thinking, heaven and earth are always overlapping and merging where God promises to be.

You see, heaven and earth overlapped when the angels came down at Christmas time and sang “Glory to God in the highest” together with the shepherds in the fields, watching over their flocks by night. The simple shepherds (just like us) all join in and make one choir together with all the angels. The angels sing Soprano and the shepherds sing Bass! And that’s what we as Christians do every time we sing glory to God: we join in with the angels into one community choir together, because we are have been included into the same community of heaven with them. As it says in the beginning of 1 Corinthians, we are “called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus.” The word “saints” or “holy ones” usually refers to angels in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, we are made equal to the angels, because Christ has made us “saints” and “holy ones” through baptism.

But one more thing about leprosy: There’s a leprosy of the body, but there’s also a leprosy of the heart. It’s one thing not to feel anything with our hands or skin, but it’s much deeper problem not to feel anything with our hearts. And we all suffer from this spiritual leprosy. God has given us so many gifts, but because of our corrupt, diseased and leprous heart, we don’t notice half the time, we are oblivious, and completely numb to God’s goodness. People get bored in church and get sick of the liturgy. The problem’s not the liturgy: the problem is that you’re a numb leper. St Paul describes this spiritual leprosy in Romans 1 when he says: “Although they knew God, they did not [glorify] him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

Listen to those words: “futile”, “foolish”, “darkened.” That’s spiritual leprosy. But we are also told about the cure: it says, “they did not [glorify] him as God or give thanks to him”.

This is exactly what happens in our reading today. The leper glorifies God and gives thanks to Jesus. This is the cure for spiritual leprosy: to sing glory to God and give thanks to him. Sometimes it seems unnatural for us to do this, but there’s so many great hymns which give thanks to God. Sing instead, if you can’t speak! Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

One last thing: in our reading we read that the lepers cried out to Jesus from a distance. Sometimes in our life, it feels like Jesus is a long way away and that we’re calling out to him from a distance. And we are separated from Jesus because of sin, and also because we can’t see him.

But some Christians teach that Jesus is actually truly absent from his church and is sitting at the right hand of God in such a way that he is stuck up there in heaven. Now, they are right! Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God! But the right hand of God is everywhere. And so Jesus can also be anywhere where he has promised to be. He says: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them.” He says: “Behold, I am with you always until the end of the age.”

And Jesus says: “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

Jesus is not talking firstly about when we die. He’s talking about when we are baptised. Jesus is in heaven, and when we are baptised, we are made citizens of heaven, so that where Jesus is, we may be also.

So we are not calling to Jesus who is distant, and far off, we are calling to Jesus to is always close at hand wherever his words are spoken. We are calling out to Jesus who is always right there in front of us with his powerful words of healing and strength and comfort.

Amen.

Jesus, the very thought of Thee

With sweetness fills the breast;

But sweeter far Thy face to see,

And in Thy presence rest. Amen.