Advent Midweek Evening Prayer - Week of Ad Te Levavi (The First Sunday in Advent)

(Audio)

John 1:35-42; Romans 10:8b-18; Ezekiel 3:16-21

 

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

They say that seeing is believing. I believe they have that backwards, and that it is truly by believing that we are able to see rightly. Many people saw John the Baptist, but they did not see who he truly was or understand what he was truly doing until the Holy Spirit opened their eyes to see him aright. Most of them saw a wild man, a lunatic who lived in the dessert eating bugs and raving about the end of the world and the need to be prepared. However, those whose eyes the Holy Spirit opened through John’s preaching and Holy Baptism, those who believed, they saw in John the promised Elijah who was to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. They became disciples of John the Baptist, one of whom was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter.

One day while John was baptizing at the Jordan, Jesus was amongst the crowd. John pointed directly at Him and proclaimed in the hearing of his disciples, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” What did John see when he looked at Jesus? Clearly, he saw something that most others could not see. By the inspiration and enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, John could see that his cousin and boyhood friend Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Son of God, and the sacrificial lamb Abraham prophesied of whom God Himself would provide to take away the sins of the entire world. It was John’s prophetic calling to point Jesus out to the world and to prepare men’s hearts to receive Him and believe in Him. John preached both Law and Gospel as he called men to repent of their sins and promised them forgiveness. That forgiveness was to be found in Jesus, who would shed His blood on the cross for the sins of all men. Andrew and another disciple of John, perhaps John the Evangelist, the writer of this Gospel, heard John’s preaching and the Holy Spirit opened their eyes to see Jesus for who He truly was and for what He was sent to do. They left John, whose preaching had prepared them to receive Jesus, and they began to follow Jesus.

Jesus asked them, “What are you seeking?” You should know that these are the first words of Jesus in John’s Gospel; therefore, they are addressed to all who will follow Jesus even still. These words beckon the faithful to see with their ears the story of Jesus presented in the Gospel. The disciples answered Jesus, addressing Him as Rabbi, which means teacher, and they asked Him where He would be staying so that they may truly follow Him and His teaching. Jesus said to them, “Come and you will see.” Those whose eyes the Spirit has opened are invited to follow Jesus and His teaching into ever greater and greater light and sight, forgiveness, mercy, love, and life. And, as living things grow and flourish and bear fruit, so Jesus’ disciples grow and flourish in Him and bear His fruit and good works in word and deed.

Andrew began to bear Jesus’ fruit in his own life. Unable to keep this new life-giving teaching to himself, he went and found Simon his brother and told him, “We have found the Messiah,” and he brought him to Jesus at once. That is what faith does: Faith shares. Faith tells. Faith invites. Faith welcomes. And this begins at home, between parents and children and siblings. Charity begins at home. At home is where we learn to love and to forgive each other, and to bear with each other, to sorrow with, celebrate with, and to give thanks with each other. Only when this is practiced in the home can it be carried out to your church, your job, your community, and the world. It was through the simple act of Andrew telling his brother Simon about Jesus and inviting him to come and see for himself that Simon was made to be Peter, the rock, one of the pillars of the Christian faith and Church.

A little more than six hundred years before John the Baptist, the LORD called Ezekiel to preach a word of repentance to Israel to warn them of the peril of their sinful apostasy. The LORD charged Ezekiel with the task of warning Israel, and He warned him that failure to preach was not an option: “If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning…, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.” Truly, once the Holy Spirit has opened your eyes to truly see, bearing the LORD’s fruit in your life, words, and deeds is not an option. Jesus taught, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” He promised, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you, and you will bear much fruit.” You WILL bear fruit. In fact, you WILL bear MUCH fruit, Jesus promises. Likewise, James instructs us in his epistle that “faith without works is dead,” which is to say it is not faith at all. Faith is living and it is always bearing fruit and good works.

However, do not fret over this, what you will say or what you will do. For you have this promise from the LORD, “the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim).” The Holy Spirit will equip you to bear His fruit. He will give you the words to say and the people to say them to. What did Andrew do? He went and told his brother Simon and brought him to see Jesus. Tell them what you have heard. Show them why you believe. Let them see Jesus in you. And then bring them to see Jesus that they may see for themselves and receive His gifts.

For, the Gospel message is this: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” What, are you going to keep this good news to yourself? That, dear Christian, is not an option. However, neither is it a daunting task to which you have been called. You do not need a special degree, a strategic program, or even instruction. Simply go and share and tell and invite. Share with others what you have received yourself. For, “how will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?”

Faith in Jesus comes only through hearing His Word. Apart from it we can neither believe in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to Him. But when the Word is proclaimed, then the Holy Spirit is at work in the heart calling, enlightening, sanctifying, and keeping us in the one true faith. You have been called out of the darkness of sin and death to live and walk in the light of the Lord.

Heavenly Father, give us eyes to see Your Son as our Lord and Savior by the power of Your Holy Spirit through the Word alone.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Ad Te Levavi (The First Sunday in Advent)

(Audio)

Matthew 21:1-9; Romans 13:8-14; Jeremiah 23:5-8

 

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

At this time of the year, situated as we are in the northern hemisphere, the prevalence of darkness and the scarcity of light can, at times, be oppressive, depressive, and draining. And, if you are one of the millions of Americans, like myself, who are negatively affected by the absence of sunlight, you know what I’m talking about. And, if you are not so affected, perhaps you can sympathize with us as we march day by day toward the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

That our Advent preparations fall during this time of the year fortuitously serves as a powerful symbol of the oppressive darkness of our sin and death in which we live, a darkness from which we need deliverance and encouragement to not give in to. In fact, this very deliverance we prayed for but moments ago in our Collect for the Day, “Stir up You power, O Lord, and come, that by Your protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by Your mighty deliverance….” For, struggling, as we are, in the darkness of sin and death, we are in peril: We are in peril of not seeing our sins as perilous. We are in peril of drowning, perishing, and suffocating in the hopeless darkness of sin and death.

Part of our Advent preparation, then, is to hold out a beacon of hope, a guiding light in the darkness to lighten our path. That hope is that the night will soon be ending, that the darkness will soon withdraw and pass away. Now, worldly speaking, each day we move closer to December 21, the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. That day is coming, a day of deep darkness that we all must pass through. But, after that day, the days will progressively grow longer as light increases, so that’s something for us to look forward to, something that gives us comfort and hope. Now, spiritually speaking, though we continue to walk in the darkness of sin and death, and though we see that much darkness is all around us, we are comforted in the remembrance that the Light of the World, Jesus Christ, has come. And so, we wait, in hopeful expectation, for His coming again to take us out of the darkness forever. Further, we are comforted and hopeful that even now He comes amongst us, so that, even as we dwell in darkness, we are not of the darkness, but we are children of the Light.

Rescue is coming. Rescue has come. And rescue comes to you now. But it’s not the Marines, it’s not the FBI, it’s not even your favorite political party that is coming to your rescue. There is no great war horse, tank or armored truck, there is no powerful political sway, might, or power as men count might and power. Those things are too obvious to our fallen flesh, too easy to place our trust in, they don’t demand anything of us in the way of change. But your Savior came in humility, “mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.” He comes to you now through veiled means: His Word preached and read, prayed, and sung; common water; tasteless bread and simple wine. But He is coming on the clouds, with power and great might that no flesh can imagine, and the darkness of sin and death will pass away forever.

It is this three-fold “coming” of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Son of Man, that we reflect upon during Advent: He has come. He comes. And He is coming. But do you see how the coming of Christ enfolds and permeates your entire life and existence? Christ came before you. Christ comes to you now. And, Christ is coming again for you, to receive you to Himself. Do you believe that He came as the Babe of Bethlehem, born of the Virgin Mary? Then you can believe that He will come again just as He has said. Do you believe that He will come again at some time in the future? Then you can believe that He is present with you now just as He has said. Christ has come. Christ comes. And Christ is coming. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning, and the End, and He is everything in between. He is your life, for He has laid down His life in exchange for yours. Thus, He promises you that if you remain in Him, He will remain in you and that you are not a slave, but a son of God, and if a son, then also an heir with Him of the kingdom that He brings, then, now, and for eternity.

Still, we dwell in darkness, for a time. But “the hour has come for you to awake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” St. Paul warns you against a litany of sinful behaviors that make most of us squirm uncomfortably in our seats: Things like orgies, drunkenness, sexual immorality, and sensuality. It’s easy for us to justify ourselves and feel a little self-righteous because we don’t participate in such dark and seedy behaviors. But notice how Paul concludes that list with quarreling and jealousy. Quarreling and jealousy, for Paul, are every bit as sinful and dangerous for you as are the other sinful and immoral behaviors.

These works of darkness are dangerous because they serve to separate you from the body of Christ, the true Vine that enlivens and fortifies the branches. They are the fruits of unbelief in the coming of the Christ past, present, and future. Cast off these works of darkness. Do not dwell in them or be tempted to by them to become drowsy as you watch and wait for the coming of the Lord. Cast off those works of darkness and replace them with good works? No, the works of darkness are not replaced by other works, but the Apostle writes instead, put on the defensive armor of light, the light of Christ.

For, you have been called to change your ways and to no longer walk in darkness, for you have been changed by baptism and faith from a child of darkness to a child of light. So that, you are not darkness, but you are light, therefore, walk in the light of Christ and do not return and submit yourself to works of darkness.

From where we stand today, the New Year is just around the corner. After the Solstice, when the days begin slowly to grow longer, the New Year begins. The New Year is a time that people have chosen to reflect upon the blessings, challenges, and failings of the past year and to make resolutions for change in the New Year to come. Well, The First Sunday in Advent is New Year’s Day for the Church of Christ. It is a time for God’s people to reflect upon another year past lived in the grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness of God our Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord. We may be tempted to believe that nothing has changed, that everything continues just as it has before. But one thing has certainly changed: You have lived one more year and you have one less year left to live when the New Year comes along. Truth be told, you are never the same again. When a year has passed, it has done something to you – you have either come closer to God through faith in Christ Jesus or you have drifted farther away. So, as you begin this New Year, ask yourself, “Has your faith grown, or has it withered?” Have your words and deeds served your brothers and sisters in Christ so that their faith might grow and increase, or have your words and deeds inflicted injury upon others so that their faith is damaged or that they might fall away from the Church and from the Lord?

If you have done these things or any others, do not despair, there is Good News for you! Your Rescuer is here, now. In fact, today your salvation is nearer to you than when you first believed. Happy New Year! A New Year in God’s grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness begins for you today! Repent, cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Walk as in the daytime, not in darkness, drunkenness, or slumber. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. For the Lord has come. He is coming. And He comes to you now to rescue you from the threatening perils of your sins and to save you by His mighty deliverance.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Eve of the National Day of Thanksgiving

(Audio)

Luke 12:13-21; 2 Corinthians 9:6-15; Deuteronomy 8:1-10

 

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

And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. (Deuteronomy 8:10)

Eating and being full are rarely much of a problem for most people on our National Day of Thanksgiving. However, blessing the Lord our God for the good land he has given us is quite another matter. In the Hebrew way of speaking, to bless God is to thank Him, to acknowledge Him as the “Giver of the gifts” and the “Source of every blessing.” "Thank you" is one of the very first things we learned to say as children, and hopefully, one of the first things we teach our children to say. It is the language of “being given to,” the response to “gifts received.” Most of us still have that parental reminder ringing in our ears from our youngest days: "Now what do you say?" "Thank you."

God teaches us to say "thank you" to Him. The psalms are a veritable cornucopia of praise and thanksgiving: "It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to thy name, O Most High." "Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, bless his name!" "O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever." "I will give thanks to thee, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to thee among the nations."

Tomorrow is our National Day of Thanksgiving, established by President Lincoln in 1863. Lincoln originally intended Thanksgiving Day as a day of national repentance and prayer because he feared that the ravages of the Civil War were God's punishment on the nation for our presumptuous sins and ingratitude. Lincoln wrote: "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own."

Thanksgiving Day as we have come to observe it is more of a holiday than a holy day. From what I've been able to gather, most Lutherans in America did not participate much in national days of thanksgiving in any organized way until the turn of the last century. Harvest festivals were common among the rural churches, though these were “regional” days of thanksgiving not “national.” Our contemporary observance of Thanksgiving Day is much more an exercise in American civil religion with semi-apocryphal stories of Pilgrims and Indians, a ritual meal of turkey, dressing, cranberries and all the fixings, various expressions of gratitude to various gods, and a common liturgy supplied by the National Football League or Hallmark, depending on who's controlling the remote after dinner.

The Church hardly needs to be reminded by Caesar and the state to repent of our ingratitude and to render thanks and praise to God for His gifts. Each week in the Liturgy we acknowledge that it is "truly meet, right, and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks...." One of the traditional names for the Lord's Supper is the "Eucharist," from the Greek word eucharisto, meaning "to give thanks." The life of the Christian is “eucharistic life” - a life lived in thanksgiving for the gifts received through Jesus Christ.

The Small Catechism teaches us to bracket the daily meal with thanksgiving and prayer. "The eyes of all look to you, O Lord, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing." “Lord, God, heavenly Father, bless us and these your gifts which we receive from your bountiful goodness, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” And then after the meal, "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever...." "We thank you, Lord God, heavenly Father, for all your benefits, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen." For the Christian, every day is a day of thanksgiving.

The act of thanksgiving acknowledges the Giver. When we give thanks to God, we are confessing that God is “the Giver” and that we are on “the receiving end” of all that He gives. God doesn't need our thanks; we need to thank Him. "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagles." Thanksgiving is for our benefit, not God's. It is a reminder that God is our strength, and that it is by the power and might of His merciful hand, not our hands, that we receive all that we have.

At the time that Moses preached the sermon in Deuteronomy, Israel was standing on the threshold of the promised land. The rich land of Canaan was God's gift to His people, the fulfillment of His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was a land too good to be true, especially after 40 hard years of wandering in the wilderness. It was a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which the people would eat bread without scarcity, in which they would lack nothing, a land whose stones were iron, and out of whose hills they would dig copper. "And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you."

God knew the fickle hearts of His people. He knew how self-centered they were by nature, how curved inward the human heart is unbuckled from God. He knew they would forget to say thank you. "Beware," Moses said, "lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth...."

Remember. That's the key word in Deuteronomy. Remember the God who remembers you. Remember that God is the giver of the gifts. Remember to thank God for His gifts. Jesus taught His disciples to pray daily for daily bread, but we often forget that daily bread comes from God. Most of us are fairly certain from whence our next loaf of daily bread is going to come. It isn't likely to drop like manna from the skies onto the middle of the dining room tables after we say the "Amen." No, daily bread comes through far more mundane channels than that. We must get up each day and go to work and earn a paycheck and use our hard-earned money to buy our bread which someone else has worked through the night to produce and put on the grocery shelves. Or, if we are resourceful, we might knead the dough with our own hands and bake the bread in our own ovens. However it comes, daily bread still comes with our work, by the sweat of our brows.

The sweat of our brow sometimes gets in our eyes and blinds us to the fact that daily bread remains God's gift. And God works through such everyday and mundane instrumentalities as a job, a paycheck, the baker, the grocer, and whomever else He might choose to provide us with daily bread. God has people at work right now supplying our daily bread. Our vision blurred by the sweat of our own labor, we start to see things in terms of rights instead of gifts. We begin to think that we've somehow earned what we have. We forget to say thank you. Who says thank you to the boss for the paycheck? Thanksgiving is a foreign word on the lips of those who feel that they have a right to be fed, to be prosperous, to be healthy. The "self-made" person has only himself or herself to thank.

Much the same attitude lurks just beneath the surface in American civil religion. It is the idea, often dredged up at Thanksgiving, that our nation somehow has favored nation status with God, that we are God's chosen people in a promised land singled out for special favors for our being the great guardians of democracy, freedom, capitalism, and Christianity. Such work deserves its wages. There isn't much room for thanksgiving when you figure that God pays out on a merit system.

Another reason some forget to say thank you is abundance. It's difficult to count your blessings when your blessings overflow into landfills. When bellies are full and bank accounts are brimming, the incense of thanksgiving tends to rise a bit thinly, or not at all. "Watch out," said Moses to the people of Israel, "lest you forget the Lord, your God. When you've eaten and are full, when you've built wonderful houses and live in them, when your silver and gold are multiplied and you are rich, then watch out, lest in your bounty you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." Israel was much more in tune with God's hand when He fed them by hand in the wilderness, than when they ate from the good of the land in Canaan. Abundance as a way of life tends to snuff out the flames of thanksgiving.

But the chief reason we forget to say thank you is that we attempt to live by bread alone, instead of living by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We try to have daily bread without the Word, and so thanksgiving fails. The ultimate bread is not the bread we make by the sweat of our brow, but the Word of God through which all bread is made, Living Bread, Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, the Bread of Life come down from heaven. That's what God was trying to teach Israel in the wilderness, when he let them go hungry and then He fed them manna from heaven.

Thanksgiving, if it is to be thanksgiving to God, begins with our receiving Living Bread, Jesus, and the gifts He died to give us - Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, the Holy Supper, God's Word, the Church and Holy Ministry, the forgiveness of sins, the promise of the resurrection of our bodies on the Last Day, eternal life. Without these, there can be no thanksgiving to God, for no one can come to the Father except through the Son by the Spirit whom He sends. Thanksgiving flows out of faith in Jesus Christ and His perfect life of thanksgiving lived in our place, His atoning death on the cross, His victorious resurrection that means our rising from the dead on the Last Day, our inheritance of eternal blessing.

At Jesus' feet is where true thanksgiving to God is rendered, for it is through Jesus' sacrifice, and not our own, that our thanksgiving is made holy and pleasing to God. At the feet of Jesus we receive our daily bread as a gift: food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, a good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors. The list is long. There is much more that you can add for yourself. The Lord is gracious and generous. There are more gifts to be received than can be acknowledged in a single day. There is more to be thankful for than can be contained in a single day of thanksgiving.

And so, we will give thanks to God, tonight and tomorrow and every day. We will do it on behalf of our nation, as priests to God that we all are, anointed in Baptism to pray on behalf of our neighbor. We will give thanks for every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God, for the Word made Flesh, our Savior Jesus Christ, for the good land he has given us, and for the greater land to come in the kingdom that is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us give thanks unto the Lord our God. It is good and right so to do.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Sunday of the Fulfillment (The Last Sunday of the Church Year / Trinity 27)

(Audio)

Matthew 25:1-13; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Isaiah 65:17-25

 

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

Each year, on the Last Sunday of the Church Year, you hear today’s lesson from the Gospel according to St. Matthew – Jesus’ parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Though there are many interesting points of discussion and many layers of meaning in this parable, truth be told, there are only two things that you really want to know: “What is the oil?” And, “Where do I get it?”

That Jesus prefaces this parable by saying that it describes the kingdom of heaven, and that the protagonists in the story are virgins, waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom, this indicates to you that this parable is told to the Church, to the body and to the Bride of Christ, and that the virgins are, in fact, you, His faithful Christians. All ten virgins believe in the Bridegroom and trust that He is coming as He has promised. They have their lamps, lit and ablaze with the light of faith, and they wait, patiently, for the Bridegroom to come. However, this is when the crux arises: The Bridegroom is delayed, and as they patiently and faithfully wait and watch for Him to come, the virgins become sleepy, and all ten of them fall asleep.

Now, to this point there has been shown to be no difference between the virgins – all are forgiven by grace through faith, all are robed in the whiteness of baptismal righteousness, all are filled with faith, burning and shining with the light of faith. But, five of the virgins brought extra oil with them, and five did not. This fact hardly mattered when the Bridegroom’s arrival seemed to be imminent; however, now that He has become delayed, there is a crux, a crisis – literally, a crisis of faith. Yes, the answer to the first question, “What is the oil?” is faith – the oil in the lamps, and the oil in reserve, is faith: faith in the Bridegroom, faith in His promised coming. What distinguished the five wise virgins from the five foolish virgins was not that the wise were somehow better Christians than the foolish, or more faithful – remember, all ten of them fell asleep – but the five wise virgins had oil, they had faith to spare, to keep their lamps burning even through the delay of the Bridegroom.

Now, I know that your reason wants to credit the wise virgins for their having a surplus of oil, and that you are tempted to think of them as better or more faithful than their foolish companions, however, Jesus’ teaching will not permit this. For, oil, like faith, is not something that you have naturally, or that you can choose or develop on your own, but you must purchase oil from a dealer, that is to say that you must receive faith, not from within you, but from outside of you. Faith is a gift; it has to be given to you, sown within you, created within you ex nihilo, out of the nothingness of your soul in sin and death. Only if the Lord sows faith in you is there hope that it will grow; only if the Lord, by His Holy Spirit fills you with the oil of faith, not once, but again and again throughout your life, will you have oil sufficient to wait and to watch for the coming of the Bridegroom whenever He may come.

And, when the Bridegroom arrived, at an unknown day and hour, the wise virgins with their extra oil entered into the marriage feast, while the foolish virgins – whose lamps were going out and who realized that they could not produce for themselves the oil of faith – pleaded for the wise to give them some of their oil. But, of course, that is impossible, for no one can believe for another. This is why you confess in the Creed “I believe”, and not “We believe”. Indeed, we may, and we do, believe and confess together the same faith; nevertheless, each of you, dear Christians, must believe and confess for yourself. You must have the oil of faith within you. Therefore, the wise virgins had to reply to the foolish, “Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.” And 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. “What is the oil?” The oil is faith. “Where do you get it?” That is the question we must answer next.

Jesus uses the language of commerce – “Go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.” But, you cannot buy faith, can you? No, of course you cannot. Therefore, you should consider some other instances in which the Prophets and our Lord Jesus used similar language of commerce in regard to things you cannot buy. For example, from the Prophet Isaiah: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Jesus repeats the same in the Gospel According to St. John, and then again in the Revelation saying, “let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” Your Lord Jesus invites you to come and buy faith, eternal life, and salvation without cost and without price, for He has paid the price in full for you and for all men, “not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.”

It should be clear by now who and where “the dealers” are: The dealers of the oil of faith are those servants of the Lord whom He has set apart to give to you, free and without cost, the gifts that your Lord Jesus purchased for you at great cost – forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation. You will find them where Christ has promised to be, wherever two or three are gathered in His Name around His faith creating and sustaining gifts of Word and Sacrament. Here, in this place, through these humble means, Christ your Lord creates faith ex nihilo, out of nothing, in the hearts of sinful men by the power of His Holy Spirit through His proclaimed Gospel Word and the washing of Holy Baptism. Here, in this place, He nourishes, feeds, strengthens, and keeps the light of faith burning brightly by replenishing the oil of faith in you as you confess your sins and receive His absolution, hear His Word and inwardly digest it, eat His body and drink His blood and commune in Him, and He in you. When God made you a Christian, He gave you a new life. Yes, you were born again, but your spiritual rebirth was no more by your will, reason, power, or choice than was your natural birth. God alone creates something out of nothing. God alone raises the dead to life. God alone creates and sustains faith in the hearts and souls of men conceived and born in sin, meriting only death.

The Church of Jesus Christ is the place where Christians come to replenish their faith so that they may continue to wait and watch in patient perseverance for the coming of the Lord. And, despite Her warts and wrinkles, the fact that She is composed entirely of sinful and hypocritical men, the Church is the holy and virgin womb in which faith is conceived and the children of God are born. She is bosom of Abraham from whence God’s children are suckled and nourished. That is why the Divine Liturgy is something that we must take great care to preserve and to keep and to do properly. That is why, no matter what the world throws at the Church and Her Christians, no matter what else our failings and foibles might be, Jesus Christ will be present amongst us with His Words and with His Wounds just as He has promised. And, blessed are you when you are humbled to see the Church and Her worship, not as something that you are compelled to endure, but the very location and means of your receiving the one thing needful – faith, which receives all the gifts and blessings of the Bridegroom Jesus Christ.

Still, there is another aspect of Jesus’ Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins that you must consider: When the foolish virgins returned from their search for more oil, they found the door to the marriage feast shut. They cried out to the Lord saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But He answered, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.” Hours ago, these were His holy virgins, waiting in faith for His coming, but now He says that He does not know them! Such harsh words from your Lord should cause you to wrestle with them to determine their meaning and how this can be, what has changed. This much is certain, what has not changed is the Bridegroom. Your Lord Jesus has paid for the salvation of all people, without exception, regardless of their faith. When He died on the cross, it was finished, for everyone. That truth will never change – thanks be to God for His grace and His mercy! Moreover, His Holy Spirit creates faith when and where He pleases, as a sower sows his seed, in hearts and souls that do not refuse Him. That is to say, His grace is not irresistible, and it is not true that we are “once saved, always saved”. Men who once believed can fall into unbelief. Faith that is not nourished, kept, and replenished will grow weak and die. That is precisely what occurred with the five foolish virgins. They neglected their faith; perhaps they took it for granted. They did not nourish it and keep it full and aflame, but they permitted it to slowly fade away, diminish, and burn out. Then, the Bridegroom came, at a day and an hour no one could know, and it was not that they fell asleep that caused them to be outside the gates, but it was that their faith had grown weak and had died. The Bridegroom Jesus pronounced the judgment that they had chosen for themselves, “I do not know you.” I loved you with my Father’s love; I did everything that was necessary to make you right with Him; I died for you and shed my blood for you that you could live; but you have rejected me. I knew you once, but now, I do not recognize what stands before me. You were flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, but now you are something else, something other.

“But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. […] For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with Him.” Whether we are awake or asleep, that is not the issue, for it is not what we do that matters, but it is what Christ has done. You cannot buy it, choose it, reason it, or merit it, but salvation by grace through faith in Christ Jesus is yours at no cost, right here, and right now. A foretaste of the marriage feast to come is here for you now that you may be well prepared, having sufficient oil of faith, whenever the Bridegroom should appear. The feast is prepared; “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

The Second-Last Sunday of the Church Year (Trinity 26)

(Audio)

Matthew 25:31-46; 2 Peter 3:3-14; Daniel 7:9-14

 

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

What Jesus describes for us in today’s Gospel is not the judgment so much as it is the sentencing of all humanity. What I mean is that the judgment has already been rendered: Each and every soul has already been judged to be either a sheep or a goat, a disciple or an unbeliever, righteous or unrighteous. At Christ’s return, when we are gathered before His throne, the sheep are already sheep and the goats are already goats, all that remains is their sentencing and their sorting: sorting them to the right into eternal life in the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world, or sorting them to the left into eternal punishment in the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

But if this is the sentencing and not the judgment, when did the judgment occur? The judgment occurred on a Friday afternoon around two thousand years ago in the Holy City, Jerusalem. Then, it was not a sheep or a goat that was judged, but it was their Shepherd, Jesus – The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. However, Jesus was judged in place of all sheep and goats, in place of all men, for, indeed, before Jesus’ crucifixion and death, we were all goats! But now, the sheep are sheep through faith and trust in Jesus for forgiveness, life, and salvation. If you are a goat, that is because of your own obstinate, goatish rebellion and unbelief.

I suspect that some of you live in terror of that day, and for many reasons. But I say to you that you need not be terrified. Why? Again, you need not be terrified of the Last Day because the judgment has already happened. God judged Jesus guilty in your place, and, because of Him, you go scot-free. God has made you all sheep in Jesus Christ; He became the goat, even your scapegoat. However, you are not a sheep in yourself, on your own, but you are a sheep in God’s eyes in and through Jesus Christ alone. When you believe and trust in Jesus, you are clothed in sheepy clothing, so to speak: Jesus’ righteousness which covers all your goatish sins. Therefore, to God, through faith and baptism into Jesus, you are a sheep. You look like a sheep, you eat like a sheep, you talk like a sheep, and you act like a sheep. Sheep do, well, sheepy things.

What kinds of things do sheep do? They feed the hungry and give refreshment to the thirsty, they show hospitality to strangers, clothe the naked and the vulnerable, and visit the sick and the imprisoned. And ninety-nine point nine times out of a hundred, they are not even aware that they are doing these things! Sheep just do sheepy things, the same way apple trees produce apples and grapevines produce grapes. So, don’t go trying to count all your sheepy works, and don’t get suckered into “how to be a better sheep” programs, because you are sheep by grace, not by works! Just say, “Thank you Jesus for counting me as a sheep. Help me by Your Holy Spirit to be the sheep you want me to be.” And the best way to do this, the only way to do this, is to keep following your Shepherd. Listen to His voice, His Word. Be cleansed in the forgiving waters He showers you with in humility and repentance. Eat the good food He serves to you. Keep focused upon Him and close your ears to the voices of false-shepherds and wolves in sheep’s clothing.

What are these voices saying? Who are the false-shepherds, and how can you know? Well, you heard a bit about them last week: “If anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ Do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. So, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms’, do not believe it.” Then, today, you heard in the Epistle that “scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” These false-shepherds and false-christs will blatantly contradict or rationalize away the Word of God. They will try to convince you that His Word is not trustworthy or that it is merely the work of primitive, unenlightened, prejudiced and bigoted men. But they deliberately overlook the evidence of creation and the voice of their own conscience which testifies to the truth of God’s Word. Human reason is good and useful until it meets its end and its origin in the Word of God, the source of all things, apart from which no thing exists.

These are the last days. They were ushered in with Christ’s Ascension, and they will end with His Parousia. These are the days in which Christ’s sheep must be on the move, in action, clinging not to earthly possessions nor being distracted by material things. These are the days in which Christ’s sheep must be vigilant, watching, and waiting, for He is coming quickly on a day and an hour we do not know, like a thief in the night. These are the days in which our ears must be tuned to our Shepherd’s voice and our eyes fixed only on Him. But don’t worry about what you’re doing, if you’re doing it right, or if it will be enough. You’re a sheep. Just be a sheep. Do sheepy things. If you remain in your Shepherd, He will remain in you, and you will bear sheepish fruit.

When our Shepherd King comes, He will say to you, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed Me, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me.” And you will rightly ask, “Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? And when did we see You a stranger and welcome You, or naked and clothe You? And when did we see You sick or in prison and visit You?” And the King will answer, “Truly, I say to You, as You did it to one of the least of these my brothers, You did it to Me.”

You are Jesus’ sheep when you do sheepy things. Those sheepy things are, first, to be fed, cared for, nurtured, and protected by your Shepherd, and second, to feed, care for, nurture, and protect your brother as Jesus has done for you. This is not your work, but His work, His fruit borne in you and through you. You must love your brother, not because he is loveable, but because you have been and are loved by your Shepherd King, who loves your brother as well and laid down His life in death for him as much as for you. To fail to love your brother whom Jesus loves is goatish behavior, unbecoming of a sheep. Jesus’ sheep live in the love and service of their Shepherd. Remain in that love and service, and you need not fear whether you have loved enough or done enough, but you will do sheepish things: you will love and serve your brother, because that’s what sheep do.

For, Jesus came, not in power and glory as a mighty king in the eyes of men and the world, but in lowliness, humility, and in service to men. He came as our brother, in flesh and blood, body and soul like us. Truly, in the Beatitudes we heard read on The Feast of All Saints, Jesus was describing Himself, for, upon the cross we see the Beatitudes fleshed out in our Lord’s Passion: Jesus was impoverished of spirit; Jesus hungered and thirsted for righteousness; Jesus was naked, humiliated, mocked, reviled, and persecuted unto death. Likewise, when we see and minister to our brothers in these states, we see and minister to Jesus, our brother, our Shepherd, our King, and our God. This is why C. S. Lewis could write: “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” In serving your neighbor, in loving your brother, you serve and you love your Lord, your Shepherd, your King, and your God.

This is why we prayed in the Collect: “O Lord, so rule and govern our hearts and minds by Your Holy Spirit that, ever mindful of the end of all things and the day of Your just judgment, we may be stirred up to holiness of living here and dwell with You forever hereafter.” This is a prayer that God would keep us in remembrance of the judgment He has made in Christ upon us – not guilty – and increase in us true faith by His Holy Spirit that we may not only serve our brothers in merely a perfunctory manner, but in true holiness and love that we may be received into His Kingdom when our Lord returns as King. The Lord has heard your prayer, and He answers you now, “Yes, I will,” serving you with His Word, His Washing, His Absolution, and His Meal, that you may be found a sheep, living sheepily and holy on the day of His return. Until then, Lord bless us and keep us.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

The Feast of All Saints (observed)

(Audio)

Matthew 5:1-12; 1 John 3:1-3; Revelation 7:2-17

 

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

“Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. And, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”

When Jesus said these words, He was not describing you. Neither was He giving you a new law commanding you to be poor, mourning, or meek, hungry, merciful, pure and peaceful, or persecuted. Don’t make Jesus out to be another Moses. Your Jesus isn’t a new lawgiver, but your Jesus is the Gospel incarnate. Your Jesus is the Good News of your reconciliation with God in human flesh. No, Jesus isn’t describing you in these Beatitudes, but He is describing Himself, and, thus, He is describing you when you submit yourself and are willing to die to yourself and to live to and in Him and He in you. For, while poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger, mercy, purity, peacefulness, and persecution do not earn you blessedness, or anything else for that matter, for blessedness can only be given, never, earned, merited, deserved, or taken, there is, nonetheless, blessedness in being poor, mourning, meek and hungering and thirsting for righteousness, there is blessedness in being merciful, pure and peaceful, and there is blessedness even in being persecuted for Jesus’ sake and reviled on account of Him.

That is what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian is to take up your cross daily – and, not a cross of your choosing, but the cross the Father has chosen for you – to be a Christian is to take up your cross daily and to follow in the path and footsteps of Jesus through poverty, mourning, hunger and thirst, being merciful to all and pure in heart, and peaceful even in the face of suffering, reviling, and persecution. To be a Christian is to die with Jesus to the desires and the passions of the flesh, to the values and the virtues and the idols of this world, to amass treasure in heaven, not on earth, to live in this world while not becoming a part of this world that Christ may be proclaimed in your words and your deeds and that all may know that you are His disciples, not because you are pious and perfect, not because you go to church a lot, not because you wear religious jewelry, not because you listen to Christian music, but because you love the unlovable and you forgive the unforgiveable and you show mercy to those who don’t deserve it just as you have been loved and forgiven and shown mercy by God the Father for the sake of Jesus Christ His Son.

No, dear Christian, the Beatitudes do not describe you. No, they are not a new law for you to obey. But the Beatitudes describe Jesus, and, thus, the Beatitudes describe all disciples of Christ as they are baptized into Him. Thus, the Beatitudes describe most perfectly those who have died in Christ and are now with Him, the Saints and holy ones of the Lord that we commemorate this day. They are the ones who have come out of this life of great tribulation and are now before the throne of God and the Lamb. Like you, they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb in Holy Baptism.  But no longer are they poor and mourning, no longer do they hunger or thirst, no longer are they persecuted and reviled, but they are before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple. You are the saints and holy ones of the Lord who still walk through this valley of the shadow of death, but they, they are those who have passed through and out of this valley and they dwell in the Father’s house for evermore.

For, the saints in heaven are everything but dead. In fact, they are more alive than you or I! The LORD is not the God of the dead but of the living. Jesus taught that whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Him will save it for eternity. The saints in heaven truly live because they died to this life and world. Even while they lived here on earth, they died to selfish desires and passions, they died to the values and virtues and idols of this world. And, because of this they suffered persecution and reviling in this world and were considered the very least of men. But now, they truly live and worship the Holy Trinity in His presence without fear, and they enjoy His favor and comfort and joy and peace that no one can take from them. No, the saints in heaven are not dead examples of piety and of how to live the Christian life, they are not dead examples of how to fulfill the law, but they are living examples of God’s promises kept and secured for you in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who died and who lives.

These living saints are in heaven, gathered around the throne of God and the Lamb. But you saints are still here on earth, gathered around the throne of God and the Lamb. For, indeed, there is but one place in this veil of tears and the valley of the shadow of death where the entire body of Christ is gathered as one, where heaven condescends to and penetrates this earthly sphere, and we, dear saints in Christ, are there now. For, called, gathered, and enlightened by the Holy Spirit of God through His Word and in and around His Holy Sacraments, we kneel at this festal board in communion with those saints who, though we cannot see them, are surely present with us now, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, for they are with Jesus and Jesus is surely present with us now both in His divine spirit and in His true, resurrected, and glorified body and blood to forgive, renew, and strengthen our faith until we come out of this great tribulation into the fullness of God’s glory and life in heaven. And so, this day in which we commemorate the saints of God who are with Him in heaven, we celebrate, not merely the great example of faith and works they provide us, but we celebrate and give thanks and praise to God for the promises He has fulfilled for them and for us in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. To Him alone be all praise, honor, glory, and thanksgiving with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forevermore.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.