This is Love!

May 13th, 2012

Easter Sunday 6B, May 13, 2012
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA

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This is love!  What is?  This!  What… this?  All of this!  The fact that we are actually here on a Sunday morning, gathered around God’s  Word hearing about His love; the love of the Father for the Son, the Son for the Father, and God’s love for us!  What?  I don’t get it!   Exactly, and that’s why we sang the hymn, “My Song is Love Unknown.”

How could we ever truly understand a God who is love, loving each of us who are loveless?  How can we understand a God who comes  to us in our flesh, lives, suffers and dies so that we will not only know love, but be love just as He is love?!  Oh who am I that God should  not just die for me, but invite me into life, His life of love unknown?  Who are you that God should love you that intensely?  And yet He  does!  This morning let’s look into this relationship of love that the Father has invited each of us into.

First there is the model love itself, which is God!  “God is love”—perfect and eternal love.  This is the love the Father has for the Son and  Spirit, and the Son and Spirit have for the Father.  This kind of love isn’t reciprocal or growing, it is real and abiding love that is simply  the nature of God, one God who exist in three persons who are each equally love!  And it is this love of God that sent the Son of the  Father to reclaim sinful man; to bring all of mankind back into God’s relationship of love!

The Son comes to sinful man because of His love for His Father.  He becomes one of us, so that He can teach us love, by demonstrating  love; love that the Son has for the Father!  Love that keeps God’s commandments of love!  There are only two commandments of love,  and Jesus came to teach us that they are not burdensome. [1 John 5:1-8]  He came to demonstrate what love for God and for neighbor is.  The Son loves the Father—and that means that He keeps the commandment that Father gave Him.  He loved His Father by coming to us, and He loves His brothers, you and me by dying for us!

So love is obedience; doing the will of the Father simply because God is love.  “This is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” [1 John 4:10] He came to die for us!

Jesus was obedient to the Father’s will because God is love and God loves those that He has created in His image.  God loves you!  God created you in His image but your sin has destroyed that image.  So God the Father sends His Son to become your brother so that He can save you; redeem you through the suffering and death of His Son.  Only Jesus, God’s own Son could do this great thing for you because only God is love, and Jesus is God!

Jesus comes to us because of His love for us.  Just as Jesus alone chose who would be His apostles, it is Jesus who chooses you, because Jesus is God and God is love!  So Jesus comes to us not as an angry God who will order His servants to serve with fear and trembling, but as a loving God who calls us friend, so that we will trust and obey; so that we will love.

Think of this for a moment.  You did not choose God, but He chose you; while you were a loveless sinner, Christ died for you!  And because your sinful flesh always wants to ask how and why, Jesus lived to die so that you could learn the how and why.

Jesus alone stoops down to us to serve us His slaves.  The Creator of the universe stoops down to wash the feet of His creation.  The Master of all creation becomes a servant by taking on our flesh and dying in our flesh.  In the upper room, on the night of His betrayal, knowing that soon He would be betrayed by those He loves; knowing that He would be attacked and killed by those He loves; “knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, (He) rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” [John 13:1-17]

On the cross, Jesus would give one last example of this precept of love.  He would teach that love is demonstrated in obedience; His obedience to the will of the Father; His obedience to suffer and die for the world… for you!

This is love, not that we love God but that He first loved us.  And because He loves us by coming to us we love Him!  We love our Master who became our servant in death, and because we love Him, we remain in His love.  We abide in His will, in His church, in His Word and Holy Sacraments.  We learn simply as we are taught, we learn to abide in God’s love by turning to Jesus and trusting in Him alone.

We abide in His love through Jesus Christ by admitting first that we need His love.  We need His love because we do not deserve His love.  We don’t deserve His love because we are sinners.  That is who you are… that is who we all are!

We abide in His love when we confess our sinfulness and receive His undeserved love and forgiveness.  We abide in His love when we celebrate the fact that He is an on time God, who always meets our needs.  We abide in His love when we rejoice in a love that has found us; a love that is greater than all things, even our sin, our death, and the devil!

We abide in His love but we also keep His commandment to love one another as He has loved us!  Because God’s love through Jesus Christ has overpowered our sin, and because He has recreated us in our baptism back into His image, we celebrate by becoming the servant of all, just as our Master has done.  We go out of our way to meet the needs of others and the needs of God’s church.

I guess, our love is a little like a tennis game.  We give our love to each other, back and forth like the ball is volleyed back in forth during a tennis match.  In tennis, however there is always a winner; so maybe the analogy falls short, but then again maybe not.  I mean, couldn’t we think of our match of love ending with no winners.  In tennis, when you finish with no score, they call that love.  You might hear a report of a tennis match like this: “He won that round, 40/love.”  So we could say that our match of love ends as love/love.  God’s love for us and our love for each other wins the day!

Dear friends, our love for God and each other is unknown to the world.  But we know that it is a love that can only be realized, taught, and learned through Jesus Christ.  And that love  comes to us from heaven to the cross, to the empty tomb, through the Word of the Gospel, the waters of baptism, and then into our hearts.  Yes Lord, our song is love unknown, our Savior’s love to us.  Love to the loveless shown so that we might also love.  Oh who are we that for our sake our Lord should take frail flesh and die for us, for even me?  In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost AMEN!

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Baptized to be a blessing!

May 6th, 2012

Easter Sunday 5B, May 6, 2012
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA

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The movie clip we just watched was from the animated Christmas movie, The Polar Express. In that scene, the train had just jumped off the tracks and ended up sliding across a frozen lake. With no track to guide it, the challenge for Tom Hanks’ character was to work with the engineer and get the engine and cars lined up at the point where the tracks reemerge from under the frozen lake on the other side.

As Christians, we have been put on God’s track; we call it our walk of faith.  We were first put on that track in our baptism, but our challenge is to stay on that track, as God guides us on our journey of faith. As we stay on that track, God promises to use us as a blessing to others; He does this as He gets them back on track just as He did for us.

In the beginning, each of us needed someone to guide us, and help us stay on track. In other words, we needed someone to help us understand God’s will as declared in Holy Scripture.  So, the very first thing God helped us with was our confession to Him that on our own, as little sinners, we were completely helpless unless God intervened.  As we matured in our faith, God continually enlightened our minds to receive and understand His Word, all so we could continually appreciate that we are forgiven; we are on the right track!  This principle becomes clear in our first reading this morning (Acts 8:26-40).

In verses 30-31, the Ethiopian is struggling to understand what He is reading in the book of Isaiah.  Now I think each of us can put ourselves in the Ethiopian’s shoes; who of us has not felt confused at times while reading our Bibles?  So it’s quite understandable that the Ethiopian could not understand what he was reading; no one can unless God allows it.  The Spirit must enlighten us through the Gospel; that is, we must be given faith!  You see, concerning salvation, the prophets who foretold the coming of God’s work of grace that was to be yours, searched and inquired carefully, wondering when Christ would come and suffer as God had predicted, and then be glorified as a result of that suffering. And they were shown by God that they weren’t just serving their own generation, but also every generation that came after them, including you!  They did this by proclaiming the gospel; a message of forgiveness, empowered by the Holy Spirit, as sent from heaven.  They knew that the things they wrote, which you hear proclaimed, were things that even the angels couldn’t truly understand. [1 Peter 1:10–12]  Why even the apostles didn’t understand until Jesus opened their minds (Luke 24:45).  The truth is, the natural mind, our sinful minds can never understand the things of God until He allows us to understand (1 Corinthians 2:14).

And that is precisely why the Holy Spirit sent Philip to the Ethiopian.  It was God’s desire that his mind would be opened through Philip’s preaching.  And how did God do this?  He gave the Ethiopian a new way to read scripture; He put Jesus Christ in the center of all of God’s Word (vv 31–33)!

This morning, we discover along with the Ethiopian that what Isaiah and all of the other prophets are writing, is a witness to us, about Jesus!  They are predicting the birth, life, death, and resurrection of our God who is with us, as one of us! Yet even the clearest truths about Jesus Christ in the Scriptures can only become evident through the work and guidance of the Holy Spirit.  This was true for the Ethiopian then and it is still true for us today!

The Spirit is still guiding the true Church’s proclamation about Jesus, Him crucified and resurrected; Him alone who has fulfilled each of the Old Testament Scriptures for us (vv 34–35)!

It was Jesus who must come to be the Suffering Servant in Isaiah’s prophecy who, even though He was deprived of justice, He was vindicated by God.  Listen: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth.   In his humiliation justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” What a vivid picture of the atoning work of Christ Jesus on the cross!  And  yet, as clear as this message about salvation through the work of Christ alone is, we ignorant sinners still fight to make salvation something we obtain through our own wisdom and effort!

But Isaiah’s own words declared long ago, make it clear to everyone, that salvation can come only through Jesus Christ, who willingly laid down his life for our salvation!  Without the work of God’s Spirit, we pitiful sinners could never receive this message!  And yet, you are here and you have heard!  You have heard and believed the message in the same way countless sinners have for thousands of years.  How?  By the same work the Spirit did long ago for the Ethiopian; God has sent you preachers, faithful pastors who have declared His Word in the power of the Holy Spirit!

And that same Spirit continues to send missionaries, evangelists, and pastors to bring light into hearts that have been held captive in the darkness of sin.  And when the message of forgiveness through Jesus Christ is not rejected, those same sinners discover God’s forgiving love; they discover that it’s true, God does not desire the death of the wicked, but instead, He desires that all of us who have gone astray would repent, turn to Jesus and have everlasting life!  He did this great work for you, by giving you the gift of faith, which in turn has brought you back on track.  Your life on track with God began the same way it did for the Ethiopian; you were baptized and filled with God’s message of forgiveness through Jesus Christ!  And like the Ethiopian, God saw to it that you heard and believed in his Son, so that your sins would be forgiven.

Because God loves you, he sent the Spirit of his Son into your heart, and He is determined to keep you firm in the only faith that saves. Because God has made you his child, his Spirit continues to equip you as you live out your calling as a Christian.  And what is that calling?  Simply this, God wants you to remember that you have been baptized to be a blessing to others; you are a blessing to others when you share your faith with your neighbors.  You are blessing when you demonstrate the same love and forgiveness that you received from God!

Now, I know, this is where many of us can get a little nervous.  You might be thinking that it all sounds so good now, in church while pastor is explaining it, but when you’re on your own, who’s gonna guide you and help you give a good witness about Jesus!

Well who guided Philip?  He was in the middle of the desert, and no help within miles; he was all alone, …but not really!  If it had not been for God’s Spirit, Philip wouldn’t have even found the Ethiopian, let alone been able to witness.  No, here God is reassuring each of us that all things, even distance, time, and fear, are under His control!  What we must remember is that God chooses who He will use to witness and He equips those He chooses.  We simply are to observe and respond when those “God” moments happen in our lives.  All we are asked to do is to honor Jesus as our Lord and Savior within our hearts, and always be prepared to give an explanation to anyone who asks us for the reason we have hope.  And when we give our witness to Jesus, through the work of the Spirit, we will do it with gentleness and respect.

Oh, and here’s another thing that we’ve learned about witnessing this morning; as Philip was led away from the safety of people that he knew and was comfortable with, in order to witness to a foreigner (v 27), so too God may be asking you to willingly step out of your comfort zone and get to know people you wouldn’t normally associate with.  But why?  So that you can be blessed with the knowledge that God really can use you; knowing that others are blessed as God uses you!

What is important for us to remember is this.  God doesn’t need us to help Him reach people lost in sin any more than He needed Philip to help!  If God wanted to, He could have used the same angel that spoke to Philip to bring the gospel to the Ethiopian.  But God chose to bless Philip by speaking through Philip, so that both Philip and the Ethiopian would be blessed together!

So remember, whether you are at work, at school, in the market, away on a trip, or at home in your community, God choses to bless you by using you.  Whether you respond or not has no bearing on the good news; it doesn’t change the fact that Jesus died for you and washed you clean by giving you new life in your baptism!  No, instead, God’s invitation to be His witness is an invitation to receive His blessings by being a blessing to others!

The Ethiopian may have thought at first that it was pure coincidence that Philip was traveling the same road that he was on.  But God wanted him to know the truth about Jesus, and so He brought the two of them together to achieve his glorious purpose. That same Spirit is working in you and among us; He is working through your life’s events to keep you on track and to help others get on the same track; the way to eternal life, through Jesus Christ! As he has guided you so far, let him continue to guide you to grow in faith and use the opportunities He creates to witness about Jesus.  I pray that we will do this as one in Jesus Christ… AMEN!

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You’re one of Jesus’ little lambs?!

April 29th, 2012

Easter Sunday 4B, April 29, 2012 (Good Shepherd Sunday)
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA

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“And I have other sheep that are not of this fold.  I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.  So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” [John 10:16]

So you’re one of Jesus little lambs are you?  You’re a Christian?  Really?  You guys are just as messed up as I am; why would I want to  follow you?  What have you got to offer that’s better than what I already have in this messed up life?

Have you ever had someone say something similar to you, or have you ever been afraid that they would say something like that if you  tried to share Jesus with them or invite them to church?  Did you know that fear of rejection and humiliation are two of the biggest  reasons Christians give for not sharing their faith?  Did you know that not sharing your faith is a lot like being a fruit tree that won’t bear  fruit?  And what should we do with a fruit tree in our yard that takes up space, uses valuable resources like water and fertilizer, but year  after year it refuses to do the very thing we bought it for?  That’s right, we’d  chop it down, dig it out, and plant one that will give us  fruit!

Did you know that every day you give a witness to your neighbors, family, and friends, whether you want to or not?  The real question  is what kind of witness are you giving?

Let’s look at the hypothetical questions that I started our message off with and see if you could give an answer and a witness to our antagonistic neighbor.

“So you’re one of Jesus little lambs are you?”  Yes, I suppose I am a lot like a lamb, or maybe even a goat.  Neither one of them are very smart.  They are dirty and not the brightest animals in the world.  They wonder away from the group and their shepherd whenever something catches their eye or draws their attention.  And that’s not a good thing, because the wolf is just out of their line of vision, waiting to kill them and eat them.  Oh yeah, and like me, sheep don’t see very well either.  But that’s just talking about sheep when they are outside of the sheep pen.  You see, I’m also a lot like a sheep who is supposed to be resting safe and sound within the pen.  Their shepherd is standing at the gate protecting them.  He’s the door and will never let any wolves enter and hurt the sheep while they are in the safety of the pen.  But their pen has little escape areas in it, and a dumb sheep could be tricked by another dumb sheep to think that it would be cool, fun, entertaining, and exciting to sneak out and try something new, without the care of the shepherd!

Yeah that’s me.  I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.  You see, I keep doing the very things that I know I shouldn’t do, that’s called sin by the way.  And the things that please God, well that’s called keeping His commandments, and they’re the very things I can’t seem to do consistently.  Because of that, I can get into a whole lot of trouble; I can get dirty, sinfully dirty, just like a sheep.  If it wasn’t for my Good Shepherd Jesus Christ, I would wander away from His love and the love of my family at church, and I’d end up just like the sheep who gets eaten by the wolf; I’d be destroyed by the devil who hates Jesus and all of His little sheep.  You see, as I told you I don’t see very well, and what I mean by that is, I can’t see and recognize all of the dangers that are around me because, well they’re spiritual dangers.  There are spiritual threats in this world that can destroy my faith and love for God and my neighbor.  But Jesus sees them, and if I stay close to Him, He’ll protect me from those things I can’t see.  And that brings me to how I follow Jesus and stay close to Him.  You know, just as the sheep hear their shepherd’s voice and follow Him, I also hear Jesus, my Good Shepherd’s voice and I follow Him.  I hear His voice in the Word of God; in my Bible.  Every day I try to find time to read His Word and listen to Him speak.  I hear Him, but thank God, He also hears me, and that’s why I talk to Him every day; we call that prayer.

Now let me tell you a little something about the flock that I’m resting in.  That flock is simply the church, and the fence that protects Jesus little lambs is simply the Word of God that tells me how I should live my life.  Now remember, I told you right up front that like the sheep I just can’t seem to do what’s best for me.  I am prone to wander away from God, so He gives me commandments that guide how I live my life as I am following Jesus my good shepherd.  The only problem is, like I said I am prone to wander off; like those dumb sheep, I am really good at finding holes in the fence and following false teachers, or as Jesus calls them, hired hands.  Those false teachers act like pastors and well, they can really fool you, but when trouble comes, when the devil comes, boy they’ll light out of there real fast, because they are only in it for the money.  Yeah, those kind aren’t real pastors because they don’t hear the Good Shepherds voice, and if they can’t hear it, how are they supposed to lead and teach me?  No thanks, I’ve learned that new and exciting things aren’t always what they seem to be.  I’ve learned to find rest by staying in the flock, where I listen to and follow Jesus voice as He preaches and teaches through my pastor, who is a real under shepherd, loved and led by the same Good Shepherd that I follow, Jesus Christ!

So there you have it, a way to witness without arguing or backing down.  If someone asks you if you’re really a Christian, one of Jesus little lambs, don’t get intimidated by the question, just answer it.  Now I know that many times those questions can be a little more like accusations; like they’re calling you a hypocrite and that very possibly is what they’re saying.  But that’s alright, because you see, they’re right!  We really are hypocrites in the world’s eyes; God calls us saints and yet we still sin.  So if they ridicule your faith, simply agree with them and say you really are a lot like a dumb sheep doing the things and going to places you shouldn’t.  You really do get angry and say hurtful things sometimes; you do think about yourself more than others; even more than God.  Agree with them, but tell them that you still hear your Good Shepherds voice teaching you and changing you.  He speaks through His law and tells you what you did was wrong; that it was sinful.  That voice, that Word from God causes you to confess your sin and ask for His forgiveness.  But then you hear Him speak again, you hear His good news, that says that He still loves you and forgives you.

And then, after you’ve gotten the hypocrite accusation out of the way, it’s time for you to demonstrate that you really are a Christian; ask them to forgive you for anything you’ve done or failed to do that has hurt them.  And if they have hurt you, well then it’s time for you to tell them that you forgive them just as your Good Shepherd has forgiven you.  Now, I know it can seem a little intimidating doing these things, but just keep reminding yourself that it is Jesus speaking and acting through you.  You are simply hearing and following His voice!

So now, the scariest part of witnessing is over.  You’ve identified yourself with sinners, even sinners like the one who is calling you a hypocrite; so now all that is left is to extend the offer to that person to become a saved sinner like you.  How?  Invite them into the safety of the flock!  Invite them to come to church with you.  Explain to them that what you experience every week, they can experience too!  They can know real safety and peace, even joy and fulfillment by getting to know the Good Shepherd’s voice.  Tell them right up front that at church, it is God’s Word, preached and taught, that saves and changes everyone equally; tell them that in that Word they too will hear the Good Shepherd speak. And if you like, you can let them know that God takes that same Word and applies it with water in baptism and he converts sinners into Christians.  Why you could even tell them that God’s care doesn’t stop there; He also feeds and nourishes our spirits with His Holy meal, where He combines simple bread and wine with His Word as He feeds us His very body and blood, all so that we will by faith know that we really are forgiven.

Oh, and don’t forget to tell them that there is safety in numbers!  If they will come into God’s flock, they won’t be alone.  Not only will the Good Shepherd Jesus Christ be with them, but so are all of us!  Make sure they understand that each of us knows that we’re no better or worse than they are.  We’re just lost sheep who’ve been found and are trying ever day to love each other as the Good Shepherd loves us; tell them we are learning to forgive each other too, just as God forgives us.

Now, I suppose you might still be a little nervous about this witnessing thing.  You might be worried that they’ll laugh at you and ask how all of this can be true.  And if they do, then all you need to do is point them to the very thing that saved you… the power of God!  Jesus said, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life (for my little lambs) that I may take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have authority (and power) to lay it down, and I have authority (and power) to take it up again.” [John 10:17,18]

Where do you point them to see the power of God?  To the love of God, Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected for them.  Point them to Jesus who is God in human flesh, come to save us; Jesus who paid for the sins of the world, even their sins, so that they would not have to pay; Jesus, their Savior who like a Shepherd wants to lead them along with us to life everlasting.  Christ is risen; He is risen indeed! AMEN!

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Crazy Love!

April 22nd, 2012

Easter Sunday 3B, April 22, 2012
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA

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OUR TEXT: 1 John 3:1–7 & Luke 24:36–49

Just think about this, God loves you so much that He actually became your Father.  “See what kind of love the Father has given to us  that we should be called children of God; and so we are!” [1 John 3:1b]  Paul doesn’t say that God is like a Father to us, He says that He  IS our Father because we ARE His children!  God actually made us His children.  But why?   Because of His love!  Isn’t that something?!    That’s what I call crazy love!

Think about that for a moment.  Even though you sin a lot, every day; even though you don’t love Him like you should, He loves you  more than you can ever imagine.  I mean, just take a look at His love for you: While you were still a sinner, He gave His one and only  Son to die for you, so that you could be His son or daughter.  Jesus Christ paid for your sins with His very life so that you could know  His Father’s love!  But that’s not all, you see God made all things work together perfectly so that you could either come or be brought to  the waters of baptism where He washed you clean and recreated you into the image of His Son; so that you could also be His sons and  daughters.  Now that’s crazy love!

So what should our response be?  We should be willing to give up everything and do anything to show our own love and appreciation to our Heavenly Father!  We should be moved to fall on our knees in worship and adoration to our Savior Jesus who made us right with His Father.  We should be willing to give all that we have to Him who saved us, and shout Alleluia to our King!  And is that what we do?  Is that how we live our lives?  You and I both know we fall far short!  The truth is that most of the time we live our lives in a way that pleases ourselves.  We usually live our lives in such a way that no one would ever know that we are children of the Heavenly Father unless we tell them.  And then, we’re afraid to tell them about God’s love because our walk and our talk don’t match; we’re afraid that we’ll be called a hypocrite.   And because of that fear, we usually avoid giving any kind of public proclamation of faith.  So why is living as a child of God so difficult at times?

Because we haven’t yet become fully, all that God has declared us to be!  We aren’t yet fully like the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  You see, we still live in our sinful bodies in a sinful world that is ruled by the father of sin, the devil.  We still live among our other enemies sin and death; we’re afraid of them, and it’s that fear that can cause us to fight becoming who God says that we are.

A. In our gospel lesson, the disciples were huddled together in fear.  They were hiding behind locked doors because the enemy was out to destroy them.  And as they gathered together in fear, BAM! Jesus appeared in the middle of them and said, “Peace to you” He said.  ‘Don’t be afraid.  Why are you troubled?  Didn’t I tell you that I would always be with you?  Look, here I am.  I’m skin and bones just like you.  Touch me and see.  You can’t touch a ghost, right?  “And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”  They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and at it before them.”

OK, now that you aren’t afraid any more, will you listen to Jesus?  Why are you finding it so hard to believe that He’s come back from the dead?  Isn’t that the very thing He said He would do?  Doesn’t God’s Word tell you that Jesus had to die and on the third day be raised in order to fulfill all of the promises of scripture?  Maybe if we see how Jesus helped the apostles believe we can be helped in the same way.  So how did Jesus help them and the disciples understand and believe?  He opened their minds.  But how?  Well the same way He does it today, He speaks and we listen! “Then (Jesus) said to them, “These are my Words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled,”  Then He opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” (Luke 24:44-45)  It’s through His Word that God opens our minds and gives us the gift of faith.  It’s through the preaching of the gospel that faith and understanding comes.

Did you know that there’s a right way and a wrong way to hear and read the Bible.  The wrong way is thinking that we can make sense of His Word on our own.  The right way to read God’s Word is by faith, knowing that every word is written to show us Jesus; to show us God’s crazy love.  Listen to Jesus explain it:  “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Now this is huge; its critical and it is unique.  Jesus is telling all of his disciples, He’s telling you and me that the only way to understand the Bible is through His life, death, and resurrection.  He is telling us that the only way to be right with God, to have forgiveness of sins, all sins is in His name.  No other way or method is available to become God’s own child outside of Good Friday and Easter!

Do you want to live a life of meaning and purpose; a life full of God’s love?  Good, then read God’s Word with the expectation of seeing both the cross and the empty tomb of Jesus and you will find both of those things.  Now that doesn’t mean that every Word in the Bible or every page of the Old Testament is about Jesus life and death; clearly that isn’t true.  But what it does mean is that only the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus can bring meaning and purpose to every word that God has preserved in scripture. It means that God has preserved His Word in such a way that when you read it, you can know for sure that not only does He love and forgive you as a Father, but He does it unconditionally!

But why is it so important to know that God loves us as a Father?  So that you will believe and receive His Son, Jesus Christ as your Lord and God.  But why must we believe Jesus is our Lord and God?  Because if you will not receive Him as who His Word says He is, you will never know forgiveness of sins and the love of your Heavenly Father!  Unless Jesus is your Lord and God, you will never know true peace; you will never experience real victory!

Several years ago, a barbers’ supply company held a large convention in a metropolitan city.  To show the world how good their products were they organized a publicity stunt. They went to the worst section of town and brought back the dirtiest and most helpless drunk they could find. They presented him on the stage. Everyone saw how dirty and unkempt his hair and beard were. Then they took him out and cleaned him up. They shaved him. They shampooed and styled his hair. They sprayed him with cologne. They washed him with a new kind of soap they were trying to sell. They bought him a new suit, a new shirt, new tie, and shoes. He looked great. He looked and felt like a new man. They brought him back to the stage to show him off, saying to all the world, “This is what our barber supplies can do for you.” The audience could hardly believe that this was the same man they had seen earlier that day. Looking at the man on stage no one would ever have guessed that he was living in the streets just a few hours before. He was completely changed.

The very next day the organizers of the convention went looking for this man again. Would you like to guess where they found him? That’s right — lying in some gutter, filthy and drunk! They changed him on the outside, but who he was as a person was left unchanged.

Friends that is not how God works.  When God’s Word is received by sinners it doesn’t just clean them up, it converts and changes them.  When God’s Word is active in our lives it reminds us each day that we have His crazy love; a love the world will never understand.  It reminds us that through the cross our sins have actually been paid for.  And in the waters of our baptisms we really have been recreated and each day we are being renewed in that recreation!  When we confess our sins to God each day, His Word reminds us that we are His actual children and that it is His joy to forgive us.  When we come to His table for His Holy Meal, He tells us that the bread and wine are in fact His body and blood, and that when we eat and drink of it, not only are we remembering His sacrifice for us, we are truly eating and drinking God’s crazy love, His forgiveness of all our sins!

This morning, God is declaring to each of us that we are His children.  Through His Son, Jesus Christ we have all of His gifts; gifts that are guaranteed to change us and sustain us through all trials and temptations.  This morning God is assuring us that if we will continue to use His gifts of love, then on the day when Jesus returns, we will all become like Him!  When Jesus calls our name as a true child of His Father, each of us will see God as He actually is!  And it is this promise of God’s forgiving love and grace that sustains and purifies us each day as we wait on our Savior’s call!

Let me close our message this morning with a bit of a challenge.  You know, during each Easter season, we love to say, “He is risen!  He is risen indeed!”  But this year I want to ask you to really  think about what that means.  Does the resurrection make a difference in your life or are you still living in fear?  Are you willing to stand up against the sin that is within you and around you?!  If you do that, God promises you that your unbelieving neighbors, family, and friends will take notice and be forced to give Him glory!

This morning, God’s crazy love is calling us to stand up and fight the enemy within us an around us as long as we still have breath in us. God does not want us to hide behind closed doors while the war against sin, death, and the devil is raging around us.  This morning, God wants you to know that to give in to sin is to turn away from His love, His crazy love for you!  In your baptism, God not only recreated you but He also clothed you with His power from on high, power that enables you to not just fight against sin, but eventually enjoy complete victory over it.   And as you fight the good fight of faith, others will notice and ask you why you do what you do.  And when they ask, you can tell them that it’s all done because of God’s crazy love for you and for them.  What’s His crazy love?  Simply this, while we were still no good sinners, Christ died for us… He saved us, and now invites us into His love. AMEN!

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Posted in 1 John 3:1–7, Acts 3:11–21, Luke 24:36–49 | Comments Off

Come to be Faith-filled!

April 8th, 2012

Easter Sunday B, April 8, 2012
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA
Click here for audio of this message

Why are you here?  I mean really, what was your reason for coming?  That’s a fair question, and it really doesn’t have a right or wrong answer. For those of you who are here faithfully every week, I know why you have come.  You’ve come to hear God’s Word and experience the forgiving love of your resurrected Lord.  That’s why you come every week.  But others may have come for other reasons; valid and important reasons.  Here are some of those reasons I’ve heard over he years: I’ve come to be with family;  It is our tradition to go to church on the important days like Christmas and Easter; or, I’m here because I was invited to come.

While I don’t know your personal reason for being here, I do know why God wants you here; He wants you here to hear His Word and to receive His gift of faith… He wants you to believe in the Easter miracle.  God wants you to know that “Christ is Risen!”  And once you know this truth, then He wants you to keep coming back to His house of worship often and be filled with faith; in other words, He wants you to be faith-filled!

This morning, Christians around the world gather together to hear about a miracle that has saved the world.  We gather to receive the gift of  Easter hope.  We gather together around the very same proclaimed Word of God and the same Sacraments that the ancient Christian church has received since the very first Easter celebration.  These are Christ’s gifts to His church and to you, gifts which bring you free and complete salvation centered entirely upon Christ’s death and resurrection.

As part of Christ’s church, each of us have one thing in common, we are sinners; sinners gathered around a new covenant; a new promise of forgiveness from God, as were Mary, the apostles and all of the disciples who were there with Jesus that first Easter morning.  Each of them, as us today were confronted with the good news.  The good news of course is that Christ not only suffered and died to pay for the sins of the world, but He also rose from the dead!  Christ is risen!

Let’s look again at the hymn we just sang, “Come, You Faithful, Raise the Strain” (LSB 487).  This hymn is a wonderful example of how our powerful Christian faith has been nourished since that first Easter Sunday.  It’s a Faith that comes to us through God’s Word about the risen Christ.  Let’s hear this good news proclaimed again in the 4th verse: “For today among His own Christ appeared, bestowing His deep peace, which ever-more passes human knowing.  Neither could the gates of death nor the tombs dark portal, nor the watchers, nor the seal hold Him as a mortal.”

This is the message of Easter.  Christ our King, our brother and Savior came to us as our champion and through the cross and the empty tomb defeated sin, your sin.  But that’s not all, He also defeated death, and your greatest enemy of all, the devil.  He set you free from bondage just as He set the Hebrews free from their bondage of slavery in Egypt long ago.

Jesus’ death and resurrection has freed the entire world from sin and death.  Jesus death upon the cross and His resurrection gives hope to people, be they yellow, black, white, rich, poor, straight, gay, single, married, old, and young.  But in order for Jesus’ gift of eternal life to become your gift,  it must become personal; it must become your good news!  And God does this very thing through His Word and the waters of your baptism.

In your baptism, God draws you into the one, holy, Christian, and apostolic faith.  In your baptism, God allows you to glimpse by faith, the deliverance of your soul from bondage to sin and deliverance into a promised land of eternity where all of your sins are forgiven.  If you will simply agree with God that you have sinned against Him, and then turn to Him for forgiveness; if you will confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus alone is your Lord you will be saved from this bondage.

Through the miracle of God’s mighty Word attached to the water each of us by faith, can see our Old Testament lesson come alive in our own lives.  Through the triumphant victory won by Jesus our Lord we have been delivered from the oppression of our old masters, sin, death, and Satan.  Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our salvation is secure and our future is certain if we will just rest and trust in Jesus alone!

We heard in our Old Testament Reading (Exodus 15:1-11), about the people of Israel being delivered from Pharaoh’s army through the waters of the Red Sea.  God, through His might parted that sea so that His people could pass through the water, from one side of bondage and death , to the other side where freedom and a new life waited for them.  And as God’s children of faith passed through the waters, their enemies pursued them.  But the same mighty power of God that saved with water also destroyed his people’s enemies with water, by allowing it to fall back upon them.  This is like what happened to you in the waters of your own baptism.  God called you through the water by His Word and brought you out of your bondage to sin, death, and the devil, and with that same water, He put to death those enemies, and then brought you into eternal life with Him.

So together with all of God’s saints we can proclaim our faith as individuals and as part of a large whole, the church of Jesus Christ.  Listen to this truth as its proclaimed in the first and second verses of our sermon hymn: “Come, you faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness!  God has brought His Israel into joy from sadness.  Loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters; led them with un-moistened foot through the Red Sea waters.  Tis the spring of souls today: Christ has burst His prison and from three days sleep in death as a sun has risen; All the winter of our sins, long and dark, is flying from His light, to whom is given laud and praise undying.” [LSB 487:1-2]

This is the Easter hope, the very truth that God wants you to be filled with not just this Easter day, but every day for the rest of your lives.  He wants you to see that your salvation, your eternal life and happiness is all His work through the life and death of His Son Jesus Christ, and the power of His saving Word.

And yet when we leave this place, we’ll be tempted by a sinful society to see ourselves as more enlightened than those ancient people that made up the first church.  Our society will tell us that their science and technology is far superior to our antiquated Christian faith.  They will tell us that we are not in a position to judge anyone, but instead we must accept and empower all people and celebrate our great differences.

This morning, God wants you to see that there are only two differences that He cares about, and they are life and death!  There are only two kinds of people, forgiven and unforgiven!  In our Epistle reading (1 Corinthians 5:6-8), St. Paul warns us about looking down on God’s Word and truth and approving of what He calls sin.  He says, “Your boasting is not good.  Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?  Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.  For (Jesus) Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.  Let us therefore celebrate the (Easter) festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

In your baptism, God separated you from the sin that will condemn the unbelieving world.  This morning He is telling each of us to continue living out that baptismal gift and turn away from that sin.  He is not asking you to judge others; that is His job and not ours.  Instead He is asking you to examine yourself; He’s warning each of us to quit boasting in the philosophy of enlightened minds and trust in His truth for us.

In your baptism you were made clean and sinless, so now he’s telling you to live that kind of life and quit embracing and celebrating sin; your own sin and other people’s sin.  He simply wants you to confess your sin, receive His forgiveness, and then celebrate as one who is truly saved and loved by God!  This is the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth… Christ crucified and risen for you!

In our gospel lesson this morning, we encounter dear and faithful Mary, who physically walked and talked with Jesus on a day to day basis.  She witnessed so many miracles performed by Jesus.  But even her “enlightened” status was not enough for her to see and believe in her risen Lord.  You see, her own sinful nature prevented her from seeing Jesus that morning at the tomb.  It was only when her risen Lord spoke to her and called her by name that her doubts and fears were replaced with faith and joy!

Remember this hymn from your youth?  “I am Jesus little lamb, ever glad at heart I am.  For my Shepherd gently guides me, knows my need and well provides me.  Loves me every day the same, even calls me by my name.” {LSB 740]  Mary’s faith was rekindled when she heard the voice of her Lord.  She became faith-filled and excited about the resurrection of Jesus.  Mary was made alive again by the Word of her Savior God.  You too were made alive in your baptism.  It was there in those waters that Jesus called your name.  You are being made alive also this morning, because your resurrected Lord is calling you by name again; He’s calling you out from a society enlightened by sin and He is asking you to once again take your Christian faith seriously.  He calls you out of a faithless existence and He calls you back into His grace; His forgiving love.

And as His children called by faith, we gather together as one body and partake of the Easter feast of victory in His Holy Supper.  Just as it takes many individual kernels of wheat to be crushed into flour to make one loaf of bread, so we too this morning gather as one loaf in our proclamation of faith and our need of forgiveness.  We need to receive Christ body for the forgiveness of our sins.  And in this eating of His body, He gives us faith to see that He is mysteriously and really present in the bread.  And just as it took many grapes to lose their individual importance and become one drink of wine, so too are we all gathered this morning to receive the precious blood of our Lord and Savior in, with, and under the wine.  “Here (is) the true Paschal Lamb we see, whom God so freely gave us.  He died on the accursed tree—so strong His love—to save us.  See, His blood now marks our door; faith points to it; death passes o’er and Satan cannot harm us.  Alleluia!  Then let us feast this Easter day on Christ, the bread of heaven.  The Word of grace has purged away the old and evil leaven.  Christ alone our souls will feed; He is our meat and drink indeed.  Faith lives upon no other!  Alleluia!” [LSB 487:3,5]

We all know, truthfully how small and insignificant we are without Jesus; without the Easter truth. We know how faithless we can be without God’s work in our lives.  For those of us who are still being moved to walk with and trust in Jesus real presence in our lives, we can truly say that we find our strength and our meaning in Him and His Word.  It’s His Word that’s our shield and our strength.  It’s His Word that gives our lives purpose and meaning.  As we live our lives here among people who we love but who are dying without faith in Jesus, we can only wait and trust that God will do the same work within them that He is doing within us.  And as we wait, we remember that we are the Lord’s little lambs and His servants.  We hear Him call out to us and we follow.  He faithfully leads us and feeds us with His Word as we repeat only what He speaks to us.  We hear His voice and we trust in none other.  And that voice faithfully gathers us to this place so that we can come to be faith-filled.  Thanks be to God!  Christ is risen, He is risen indeed… Alleluia!!

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Posted in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, Exodus 15:1-11, John 20:1-18 | Comments Off

But For the Grace of God…

April 1st, 2012

Palm Sunday B, April 1, 2012
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA

Click here for audio of this message

If you were in Jerusalem on the day Jesus made His triumphant entry, would you have been part of the crowd that gathered to greet  Him with loud Hosannas?  Probably so; you see it was the simple everyday people like you and me that were attracted to Him.  They  liked the idea of Jesus being the Messiah, the son of David, because He was a simple man; one of them.  He was the underdog, and you  know how we all like to support our underdogs!  But they also were attracted to the mysterious side of this son of David; they were  attracted to the miracles He performed, and the fact that the Sanhedrin, the ruling religious party couldn’t explain or refute the  miracles.  Yes, I think we would have been there that day.  I believe that God’s Spirit would have drawn each of us out to shout loud  hosannas!

But there was another group that went out to see Jesus.  They weren’t there to cheer for Him and admire Him; no they were there to  plan His death.  You see, they had a man on the inside so to speak; Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve that made up Jesus inner-circle.  He  would be the tool they would use to trap Jesus and arrest Him in the dead of night, when all of these crowds weren’t around.

So that we can understand all that was getting ready to happen in that first holy week, we have to go back a few days in time; back before Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem.

Lazarus has already been raised from the dead in the little town of Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem.  The entire town is alive with the exciting news that Jesus raised one of their favorite son’s from the grave.  So they wanted to have some kind of recognition for this great day; there must be a formal celebration.  A man named Simon, who Jesus cured of leprosy offered his spacious home as party central.  There must have been a lot of people at this party, and while we don’t know everyone who was there, we do know through all of the gospel accounts, especially John chapter 12, who some of them were.  There gathered around the dinner table with Jesus, was of course the host Simon the Leper, Lazarus who was raised from the dead, Martha and Mary his sisters, and of course the twelve apostles, including Judas Iscariot, the mole, the Sanhedrin spy!  I think that we can easily identify with each of these people.  Let’s see if I’m right.

You are like Simon because as He was healed of his physical leprosy, you too have been healed of your spiritual leprosy, your sins.  You are no longer an outcast, separated from God’s love for His people; you are one of His people, one of His children who are invited to the Lord’s Table..  Because of all of this, you gladly open your heart and home to Jesus!

You are like Lazarus, because you too were once dead in your sins; lost forever to the living, but by the grace of God you are now alive and no longer lost but found, and because of that you are eternally grateful!

You are like Martha and Mary too, because you can celebrate new life for someone you love.  We all have someone we love who has been saved in baptism!  Because God is faithful in providing, you too have resolved to be faithful in your service towards Him with your time, talent, and treasure!

And you are also like the apostles.  Sometimes you feel so blessed to be a part of Jesus inner circle.  You see God working so mightily among us and within you that you just want shout glory!  You want to praise Him and get lost in worship.  But other times, in the dark times you can get confused and discouraged.  Like the apostles, when Jesus talks about suffering and death, carrying the cross and humbling yourself as a servant of all, you can begin to feel lost and frustrated; maybe even terrified. And when these moments come, all we can do is gather around God’s gifts, His Word and Sacraments and let go of everything else, all of the distractions, fears, and worries, and just worship Jesus.

Mary, the sister of Lazarus knew how to worship Jesus.  She opened a very expensive bottle of ointment and poured it over Jesus body.  This anointing she performed wasn’t some empty ritual performed to impress  others.  No, it was an act of the heart; an act of worship and adoration.  But Jesus tells us that it was also much more than this; He tells us that it was also an act of prophecy, because Mary was anointing His body for burial.  Mary alone recalled the many times Jesus said He was going to Jerusalem to die; that He was going to be lifted up high on the cross so that by His stripes, by His death we may all be healed.

What a beautiful act of worship; it was an act that was not understood by the others at that party.  And if it were not for the grace of God, Mary would not have understood either, but God made sure that she did; He made sure of this understanding because Jesus proclaimed that from that point on her story would be told wherever the gospel is proclaimed, and so now you too understand the significance of her act of worship!

The others at the party must have been confused  by what Mary did, but because Jesus allowed this act of adoration to proceed they were silent, everyone that is but Judas!

And now I must point out that we are all a little like Judas as well.  I know you would rather see yourself in Mary’s place, because she is the picture of pure worship.  But the truth is we can be a lot more like Judas.

When Leonardo da Vinci was painting his masterpiece The Last Supper, he looked long and hard for someone to model for his Christ. At last he located a man from one of the local churches in Rome who was very handsome, a young man named Pietro Bandinelli.  Well years passed, and the painting sat unfinished. All the disciples had been painted except one—Judas Iscariot. Da Vinci looked many years for a man whose face was hardened and distorted by sin—and at last he found a beggar on the streets of Rome with a face so villainous, da Vinci himself shuddered when he looked at him. He hired the man to sit for him as he painted the face of Judas on his canvas. When he was about to dismiss the man, he said, “Can you tell me your name.” “I am Pietro Bandinelli,” he replied, “I also sat for you as your model of Christ.”

Yes each of us still carries around with us our sinful nature just as Judas did.  We love it when the crowds run to our church on Easter Sunday and pack the pews.  We love to see the potential of a large and successful congregation.  We love to see money coming in during the offerings, because not only will we be able to pay the bills but we can do oh so much for God with it.  We can help Jesus build His church!  But when the crowd is small, or the offerings on Sunday seem insufficient, we can become discouraged.  When the worship time doesn’t meet our expectations, when the experience doesn’t meet our needs we will either run away or manipulate events so that we can make Jesus church serve our needs and desires.  And when we go down this road of self-service, we are doing the very thing Judas did.  We are ignoring the example of our Savior Jesus Christ who being God took on the form of a servant, and humbled Himself by putting others first, even sinners.  And He was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Mary I think had a glimpse of this, but Judas could not understand because he would not!

Instead, Judas saw this simple act of worship from Mary as a lavish waste; he saw it as an unnecessary ritual.  As the sweet smell of the perfumed ointment filled the room, there was another odor that overwhelmed it; it was the vile odor of Judas’ poison.  “Why was the ointment wasted like that?  For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denari and given to the poor.”  And as Judas’ poison filled the room, the sweet aroma of worship for the great “I AM” was replaced by the stench of “I want!”  One by one, the other apostles began to be overcome by this poison as they agreed with Judas.  The hour of worship was over for them; it was disrupted by the demon of greed!

Then Judas Iscariot got up and went and found the chief priests in order to betray Jesus.  Judas would latter, because of his betrayal take his own life.  He would die in his sins and pay the eternal penalty for them.

Now, if you are feeling guilty at the truthfulness of these words, please take time to thank God right now.  You see, your guilt is the very proof that you are not like Judas at all; you are not a child of sin but a child of grace, forgiven and loved by God because of your faith in Jesus.  Guilt is the one thing that Judas did not feel, because He would not allow God’s Word and the Holy Spirit to bring him new life.  He had no remorse because he had no faith, and because he had no faith, he would never know the forgiving love of God!  And because Judas could not experience God’s forgiving love through Jesus Christ, he would never understand why Mary worshiped Jesus the way she did!

But you know God’s love because like Mary, you can see the need for Jesus to go to the cross for you.  You know that while Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt, in His heart He was already experiencing the agony of the cross, and you know that He does it all for you!  You know and have tasted His forgiving grace.  And because of this grace, you know what Good Friday and Easter mean.  They mean that on God Friday when Jesus died, He died for you and your sins.  And on Easter morning, when He rose from the dead, He rose for you… He rose so that you would know that one day you too will rise from the dead.  He rose so that you would know and trust in Him alone.  And that is why you will never be a Judas!

A man once asked a pastor, “Why did Jesus choose Judas Iscariot to be his disciple if He knew he would betray Him?” Rather than explaining all of the theological significance of the act, the pastor simply replied, “I do not know, but I have an even harder question: Why did Jesus choose you and me?”  But for the amazing grace of God, when we see Judas we can say that could have been me!  I could have been the one to betray my savior.  Forbid it Lord and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil… in Jesus name… AMEN!

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Posted in John 12:12-19, Mark 14:1-16, Philippians 2:5-11, Zechariah 9:9-12 | Comments Off

How’s Your Heart?

March 25th, 2012

Lent 5 B, March 25, 2012
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA

Click here for audio of this message

So how’s your heart?  Have you been getting regular checkups?  Are you eating heart healthy food?  Getting regular exercise?  Do you  take your medications as prescribed by your doctor?  Good!

So how’s your spiritual heart?  Are you paying even closer attention to it?  You should you know; that heart will be around a lot longer  than your physical one.  The physical heart will eventually fail from sickness or old age, but your spiritual heart, the essence of who  you are, will last for eternity.  Your Great Physician, the one who created your bodies, has prescribed medicine and treatments to care  for your spiritual hearts as well.  If you follow His care and rest in His work, then you are absolutely guaranteed to have a blessed  eternity.  Listen: “For this is the covenant that I will make with (them)… declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will  write it on their hearts.  And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each  his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.  For I will  forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.” [Jeremiah 31:33-34]

So there is God’s prescription for you; a new covenant!  But why do we need a new covenant?  Well, its because the old one can’t save  you!  Why; is there something wrong with it?  Well no; its just that sin-sick people, people like us tend to misuse it; we want to use it in  ways God never intended.  You see, in our sin-sick condition we don’t want to believe that we have spiritual heart disease.  The people  in the prophet Jeremiah’s time didn’t want to believe that either!  In fact, every time God tried to treat His people’s disease of sin with His Word, they came up with all kinds of excuses to avoid getting the treatments.  And if they didn’t like the message, why they would just attack God’s prophets, who were kind of like His spiritual paramedics.  So like a child throwing a tantrum in the doctor’s office before receiving an injection, they refused to listen.

We aren’t much better today really.  It’s getting harder and harder to even mention God’s name in public without someone being offended and trying to silence God’s wisdom.

Did you hear about what happened to the Christian fraternity and sorority on the campus of SDSU?  They had a very simple code of conduct based on God’s Law; a set of rules that you must agree with in order to be a member.  They required all perspective members to sign a pledge promising to avoid sex outside of marriage and agree that marriage as God defines it is between a man and a woman.  Well, as you may have guessed, the state of California determined that they were discriminatory and not eligible for any of the state’s support that all of the other fraternities or sororities receive.  Well both the fraternity and sorority sued in federal court and lost.  The U.S. Supreme Court refused to even hear their case.  So what does this case tell us?  Well, you can’t force people to live God pleasing and moral lives.  No, I’m afraid that before God’s can be received and follow we need something more than rules and pledges in our lives; we need something new and powerful that doesn’t depend on us.

Like the true and faithful children of Abraham in the prophet Jeremiah’s time, we’ve also discovered that on our own we can’t keep God’s law and rules of conduct.  We’ve all learned by experience that the old covenant, can never bring us God’s peace and salvation.

So this morning God wants us to admit that try as we might, we will never please Him by being good.  He wants us to see that on our own, we are by nature sinful and unclean.  We love to look at the trouble in our neighbor’s life and feel superior, while ignoring the big problems and sin that dominates our own lives.  This is why we need a new covenant; a new prescription from God.  In truth we need a new heart.  So this morning, God is telling us that right now, He’s doing that very thing, and He does this work through the new covenant.

This new covenant is “not like the old covenant (He) made with (our) forefathers.”  It contains no laws, rules, or regulations that have to be kept.  It has no priesthood that limits the right of who may approach God.  In fact, this new covenant invites everyone, regardless of nationality, to believe in God’s love and presence with them personally.  It sets aside ethnic, racial, and other man-made boundaries.  The prescription or invitation of the new covenant is for the entire world.  This new covenant invites everyone to worship the Lord in spirit and truth—“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.”  This is God’s miracle of conversion or new life.  How does He deal with our old diseased hearts?  He rips them out in baptism and replaces them with new hearts.  With these new hearts, we see God’s holy and perfect righteousness and instead of being afraid, we call out to Him through the work and presence of the Holy Spirit, with the words,  “Abba, Father.”  We no longer look at God as angry and threatening, instead we see His forgiving love!  This change in heart is something that the old covenant could never give to us.

So how did God do this mighty work?  By showing us Jesus, His own Son upon the cross.  In God’s Word, we see  Jesus there upon the cross, high and lifted up as the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world.  Through Jesus’ obedience and death we see the once-and-for-all sacrifice that pleases God and removes the guilt of sin from the entire world.  He offered Himself freely; He willingly shed His blood so that all could be saved from their sins and be given a new heart.  Now there is nothing that can prevent anyone, including you from knowing the forgiving love of Jesus Christ.  When Jesus shouted from the cross “It is finished” he said those words for you.

This new covenant is sealed upon your very flesh in your baptism.  It really does not matter whether you can remember the day you were washed clean or not, because it was God’s work and not yours or any other man.  In your baptism God took the sacrifice of Jesus blood, blood shed for the entire world as payment of their sins and He made it your personal payment.  In your baptism God sealed you and gave to you His very Spirit and the forgiveness for all of your sins.  But that is not all… He also gave to you the gift of faith to believe in this new covenant.  In our baptisms, the Words God spoke by the prophet Jeremiah come true: “No longer will a man teach his neighbor… saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me.”  We know Him through both the gift of faith and the promise of forgiveness that was given to us in our baptism.  In both the cross and the baptismal waters, you hear God’s continuing promise to each of you: “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

But the work of the new covenant does not stop at the baptismal font.  Every day God feeds us with His Word; a word that can be read, spoken, and declared.  He calls us to His table and shares the meal of the new covenant within Holy Communion.  In this meal He draws us to Himself and feeds us His supreme gift; with the bread, we receive His body given on the cross; with the wine He gives us His own blood poured out upon that same cross.

Within each of these sacred gifts, God gives us complete forgiveness, and He removes all doubts about His love for us.  With these gifts He comes to us personally and works within us, strengthening our new hearts; hearts that beat to please Him.  When we keep God’s law and do what is right, we glorify and please Him!   When we fail, when we sin He wants us to confess these failures and turn to Him for forgiveness.  This is the rhythm of living in God’s Kingdom of Grace; this is the rhythm of our new hearts beating within us.  It is a life that God wants us to demonstrate to others.

Now, it might seem dangerous following Jesus and sharing God’s forgiving love with your neighbor; it might make you feel uncomfortable and vulnerable to shame and ridicule.  But if you will follow Jesus and the path of sacrificial love that He walked, after a while you will begin to grow in faith and learn to rest in the protecting presence of the Holy Spirit.

Before we close our message this morning, I want you to look up; look up at the ceiling of this church.  Do you see how high those lights are?  I would say that they are about 45 feet at the highest point.  How do you think those bulbs get changed?  That’s right; someone has to climb up there on a ladder, and that someone in usually Dwain and me.  The first time we went up there, we were pretty afraid.  Each rung of the ladder created more fear, but we went up because it had to be done.  Once we got up to the top, we felt every wiggle and jiggle of the ladder.  But something happened as we began to work; we became comfortable with the height because we were comfortable with the strength of the ladder, so comfortable in fact that we had to remind each other to be careful because it’s a long way down!

Well, that’s sort of like our walk of faith.  God has given us a new heart and a new covenant to live out and to share.  He’s assured us that if we trust in His presence and work within us, then we will be alright.  It might seem a little scary at first as you begin to share God’s forgiving love and Word with your neighbor.  But once you start walking with God and letting Him work within you, your fear will leave and God’s peace will take its place and you will be amazed at the good He can do through you!

Just as Jesus obediently walked to Jerusalem, He wants us to allow Him to lead our new hearts governed by a new covenant.  He wants us to go out into this world of sin and share His forgiving love and Word with others.  It can seem intimidating and even a bit threatening, but remember you have a new heart beating within you… and that heart is saying, “You’re not alone… not alone… not alone… not alone!”

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Dead Man Walking!

March 18th, 2012

Lent 4 B, March 18, 2012
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA

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“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the  air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of  the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” [Ephesians 2:1-3]

Can you imagine being there at Mt. Hor, under attack from thousands of poisonous snakes, and knowing that God is really the one who is punishing  you for your despicable, sinful life.  The song you just heard is called “You’re Gonna Pay” by Jim Johnston.  The first few words apply to each and  every one of us, including those no good sinners who died in the Old Testament lesson.  “Dead man walking!  You’ve done it now.  You’ve gone and  made a big mistake.  I can’t allow you to think you can just walk away.  So turn around and face the piper you’re gonna pay; cause the end is now,  this is gonna be your judgment day!”  Dead men and women walking; that’s who the Hebrews were that day at Mt. Hor and that’s who we were;  sadly, that’s who many people still are today; Dead men walking.

You see, God can’t allow sinners to just walk away from their sin and sinners can’t help but to sin; it’s in their broken nature to sin; to choose to  satisfy their wants and desires over the desires of their God and their neighbor.  They’re broken; fallen in sin, and because of that, they have to pay.    On the day they die, that will be their judgment day.  Not only will they die in the flesh but the punishment for their many sins will be an eternally  painful spiritual death, forever separated from God’s love and the love of others.

What are the sins that they’re guilty of?  Well the very same ones we heard mentioned in our Old Testament and Epistle readings.  They grumble against God by complaining about their life.  They let the circumstances of living overshadow the presence of their creator God who is with them in the midst of their troubles.  But they are not alone.  Throughout this world there are plenty of other dead men and women walking who look down upon God’s means of grace, His real presence with them.  They don’t discern His spirit in His Word which is being read and even right now preached to you.  They find it impossible to believe that God can promise to take simple water and wash away a person’s sins.  They laugh at the idea that a pastor can speak forgiveness from God, and they completely dismiss Jesus’ real and sacramental presence in, with, and under the bread and wine.  Because of these many sins, God calls them sons and daughters of disobedience.  They are more comfortable following the desires of their flesh than the will of God.  In other words, they are controlled by the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in this sinful world instead of the Holy Spirit.

That is the painful truth about everyone out side of faith in Jesus Christ.  They are lost in a world of sin controlled by the father of sin, the devil.  They are dead men and women walking, and all of them are a breath away from judgment day.  Whether it be poisonous snakes, a car accident, disease, sickness, or death of old age, eventually they’re gonna pay!  Unless…

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” [Ephesians 2:4-7]  I once was lost but now I’m found.  I once was condemned and about to pay for my sins, but God, BUT GOD… He forgave the iniquity of my sins!  But God; if it had not been for God who made a way out of no way, all of us… would have been goners… a dead man walking!

At Mt. Hor, the way out for the sinful Hebrews was a bronze serpent on a poll, high and lifted up so that everyone could see God’s remedy to their sin and the way He chose to remove their punishment.  In that symbol came the promise of God to save and the faith to believe in that promise of salvation.  And where there is faith in God’s promise of life, there is salvation… there is forgiveness of sins.

Today this same God calls out to you with the same mercy and grace; He is telling you that He has created a way to take away your sins.  But the call of His Word does not direct you to look upon a serpent on a pole but upon His Son on a cross.  His Word promises that if you will see Jesus the very Son of God high and lifted up on the cross for you, as a payment for your sins, you shall not die but live.  You will not be a dead man walking, but a reborn, spiritual man or woman, who no longer has to pay for sin!  Oh it’s true, someone has to pay for your sins, and someone did; it was Jesus.  He paid it with His very life, in order to show us the immeasurable riches of His Father’s grace, which He has given to us through Jesus’ suffering and death.

You know, we use the words, justice, mercy, and grace so much in the church, that sometimes I’m afraid that the words lose their meaning.  Listen to what these words mean and let the realization of the work of the cross hit you like a thunderbolt from heaven.  Justice is getting what we deserve.  Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we do not deserve. Through Jesus death upon the cross, God’s justice was satisfied.  You deserve to die for your many sins, but Jesus took your place.  Through Jesus death upon the cross, God showed you mercy by not giving you what you deserve.  Instead, He gave you what you don’t deserve, grace.  He gave to you all of the riches of heaven, His riches at Christ’s expense through Jesus suffering and death.

In His Word, Jesus shows you the Father’s love for the whole world; “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)  He shows you the death of His one and only Son.  In His Word, He also gives you a wonderful gift called faith.  Through this gift, God opens the eyes of your heart so you can believe that Jesus death is for you.  By faith you can read His Word and know that God is speaking to you; He has made a way out of no way for you to enter into His forgiving love.

In His Word He allows you to see His real presence with you even in the worst circumstances of your life; in His Word you know that you are never alone.  In His Word He has convinced you that He’s taken a simple thing like water and attached His promise of eternal life to it and washed away all of yours sins.  So in essence, your baptism has taken the objective promise of the cross for the world and made it your personal gift.  In His Word you hear the absolution, the Word of forgiveness and you know that God is really talking to you; forgiving you!  Because of His Word you take and eat the bread and wine and you know that you are also receiving the very body and blood of God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your many sins!

By faith you receive all of this and you know it is entirely a work of God.  To think anything else would be ridiculous.  To see yourself playing any part in your salvation would be absurd; it would be like the man who tried to sail around the world trusting in only the wind.  When the wind died out he thought He could get out and push the boat while he swam.  When that didn’t work, He tried blowing air into the sail.  When that didn’t work, he began to take a seat cushion and fan the air next to the sail trying to create enough wind to move.  As he was franticly fanning the air, a soft ocean breeze picked up.  As the breeze began to slowly fill the sail, the man thought of how ingenious he was to come up with a solution that provided some progress until the weather changed.

Friends, what do you put your hope and faith in?  If it’s anything but God you will be disappointed.  Don’t you know that people will let you down every day, but God… but God, He is always with you; always on time.

The story is told of an elderly woman who was standing in the checkout line ready to pay for her groceries. She opened her purse. No money was there; neither was her checkbook. As she was about to ask the clerk to put her things back, a gentle voice said, “Don’t worry.  Today I want to treat you. Take your things with you; I’ll pay your bill.” Then the man wrote a check and paid for her merchandise and his own. A week passed by, and the woman came back to the store. The checker knew about the incident and recognized her. She approached the woman and whispered, “Ma’am, maybe you’d be interested to know. That gentleman from last week, well his check bounced!  We need to be paid for your groceries.”

What are you trusting in?  Is it people?  I’m telling you, eventually they’ll let you down.  Are you trusting in your own goodness?  I think we all nowhere that will get you, right?  No; listen, why go back to being that dead man walking when you can continue to follow and trust Jesus and His cross.  I know that it is tempting to want to play a part in your salvation; but you can’t.  Your good works won’t do a thing for you.  But if it’s good works you want, then God says relax,  He’s got you covered.  Those good works will come naturally to you and through you as you look to Jesus on the cross; as you look at God’s solution to your sin and the attacks of the little serpents or devils that surround you.  As you continue to look to Jesus, you will begin to see God’s work in your life; good works that He’s already prepared for you to do.  The only difference is, it will be Him doing them perfectly and not you doing them sinfully.

So just keep walking that way of faith.  Keep following Jesus and His means of grace; then you will see those good things, God’s good things coming out of you.  He wants that to happen, because he wants other dead men walking to notice Him working in you so that they too will look to Jesus high and lifted up on the cross for them and know that God has made a way out of no way for them too!  Yes, God has big plans for you if you will keep trusting in His way.  And if that old dead you keeps following, remind him or her that they’re just a dead man walking; they have no future!

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Who’s Fool Are You?

March 11th, 2012

Lent 3 B, March 11, 2012
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA

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1 Corinthians 1:18-31

“The Word of the cross (really) is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the (very) power of God (unto salvation).” [v. 18]

One of my favorite “evangelism” stories is the one about the man in Chicago who wore a sandwich board sign on Milwaukee Ave.  Every day for  months during the lunch hour, he walked along the busy sidewalk wearing his sign.  As you approached him, you read : “(1 Cor. 1:18) I am a fool  for Jesus Christ!”  As you approached him, he would make eye contact and say, “God bless you!”  After you passed him though, if you bothered  to turn and see what was on the other side of the sandwich board, you would read this question, “Who’s fool are you?”

So that’s the question that God wants us to answer.  Who do you want to be a fool for?  If you choose the world’s wisdom over God’s wisdom,  beware, because you just may hear these Words from your Savior, “You fool, today is the day God requires your soul!”  You see, in our reading  this morning we have ample warning that ultimately, all wisdom that does not find its source in the cross of Jesus Christ will be laid low, “For it  is written, “God will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning He will [frustrate].”

“Where is the one who is wise?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the debater of this age”  Or we could imagine God saying, “Bring me the talking  heads from CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, PBS and all of the other highbrow agenda seeking news celebrities, and see how they fair against my Word!   Bring me the legal activists that publicly attack my people’s faith and see what will happen to them on judgment day!  Bring out the double  talking politicians who tell you what you want to hear, saying one thing to this group of people and another to that group of people just so they can win votes along with earthly treasure and fame, and see if I do not destroy their lying and self-serving tongues!”

The truth is that many of these people have forgotten the God who gave them their wisdom.  They forget that each one of us was created to glorify God through the talents and gifts that He’s given to us.  Sadly, many not only forget about God, why they even attack the very thought of God!  They belittle anyone who professes faith in a Creator-God as foolish and weak.  They insist that we believe that we evolved out of swamp scum!  And what’s God’s response?  He takes the very idea of a Creator that the world dismisses as folly and makes it even more foolish; He comes to us in power in ways we would never imagine.  And because of our sin, He comes in ways we can never accept.

God comes to us this morning in great power.  It is power that even the strongest nuclear weapon created by the greatest human minds can’t even come close to.  It is an argument that confounds the keenest minds because of its simplicity.  God comes to us in the spoken Word.  The Word of God spoken by sinful men!  The very same Word that was spoken in the beginning of all things, that created all things, is speaking to you even now!  But if it were just the words of a preacher, why they would be just as hollow as the those know-it-alls who call us foolish.  No, this Word that is speaking to you now is the very power of God unto salvation simply because it is the message about the cross of Jesus Christ!

There’s an area in London, England that’s the geographical heart of the city.  It’s called the Charing Cross.  All distances in the city are measured from this location.  One day a London police officer found a lost child wandering the streets of London, alone, frightened, and crying.  No matter what the officer tried, he couldn’t get the child to remember his address.  Finally, in the middle of his sobs, the little boy said, “Sir, if you will take me to the cross I think I can find my way back home.”  And that is God’s plan for us.  If He can get us to the cross, He has made a way for us to get back home; back into His forgiving love.  At the cross we find God.   But not just any cross will do; no, it has to be the bloody cross of death that the Son of God suffered and died upon for the sins of the world.  It is at the cross of Jesus where the message about His love, suffering and death opens our eyes of faith, so that we can see the love of God.

This message of the cross is the only one that God has given to sinners so that they will know and return to a God who not only created them but also wants to recreate them back into His image.  But in order to have a cross, you have to have the Savior who died upon it.  You have to have the very Son of God in our flesh.  And it’s this very thought of God becoming one of us, and dying for us that causes men wise to the world to turn away from their Creator and Savior.  They will accept the cross as a metaphor of something greater and higher for each of us to strive for, but if you put a suffering and dying Savior God on it they will laugh in your face!

In 1959, Thomas Hoving of New York’s Metropolitan Museum purchased an ivory cross from a Yugoslavian art collector, who had stored it in a Swiss bank vault.  Hoving noticed that it lacked its central figure—the body of Christ.  Because of the missing body, the value of the cross was significantly less.  But on the other side of the world, a figure of Christ carved out of ivory lay in Norway’s Oslo Museum.  In 1969, Florens Deuchler discovered that the seven and a half inch figure of Christ in the Oslo Museum fit perfectly into the five holes drilled for it on the New York museum cross.  But the like the cross, the figure’s value is small without the cross.

You see, the cross without Jesus Christ, the Son of God is only a cross; a symbol.  And Jesus, without the cross is only a historical figure with no power from God.  It is only through the crucified Jesus Christ that God’s plan of salvation centered around His wisdom, power, and glory can be seen and understood by sinners like us.

Sadly, the world sees the cross and a crucified Savior as foolishness, and it uses its own wisdom, power, and glory to create a god in its own image.  But in the cross, God prevents us from making Him into our sinful image.  He does it through the foolishness of the cross.  If you won’t surrender all of your wisdom, glory, and power at the foot of the cross, then you will never see God’s glory.  At the cross, we are bewildered and confounded, but we are bewildered and confounded for a reason.  God wants each of us to see that we all fall far short of God’s demand of perfection.  He wants us to see that our only hope for eternal life in glory is to confess our complete emptiness.  Then and only then can God fill us with the mystery of the cross, which is His message about our salvation.

Do you want God’s wisdom?  Then be prepared to have the world call you a fool, because only the cross can make you wise unto salvation.  Only through the message of Jesus’ cross are you given wisdom from God to see your sin and your Savior who suffered and died to forever take that sin away from you.  In the message of the cross you are given faith to receive God’s promise of righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.  These three gifts of God are all that you need to be assured that you have peace with a God who loves you and wants you to be with Him forever.  Together with wisdom, these gifts are given to you within your baptism, where you were killed and reborn through the washing of simple water and the unfathomable power of God’s Word!

The righteousness of God is something only He can give to you.  It is the very identity of His Son who suffered and died upon the cross for you.  It is a righteousness that is imputed or injected into you when you were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Your gift of sanctification is the very promise of God that He who began the work of salvation within you will complete that work.  No one can take this promise from you; in your baptism, He recreated you to live a life of good works centered on the love and sacrifice of Jesus and His death upon the cross for you!  And finally, through the cross of Jesus and the waters of your baptism, God gives you redemption.  He gives to you the promise that if you will not turn away from the death of His Son for you, you will one day join Him in His heaven, which will become your home forever.

Now the world will have no part of God’s plan of salvation.  They can’t admit that they fall short of any glory.  They will insist that man’s glory is real and tangible while God’s glory is a fiction for weak minds.  They see no need for divine righteousness, sanctification, or redemption.  In their minds, anyone who clings to these things above the vision of a man-made utopia that science and political order will one day provide is a fool, and they have no time for fools.  But it is the fool who says in his heart there is no God!  Sadly, without the cross of Jesus, they will one day hear God say, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. [Luke 12:20]  Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” [Matt. 22:13]  Who will be the fool then?  But for now, we are not to celebrate what we have at the expense of others.  Instead, God calls us to live for Him as we live out His Word of the cross for our neighbors.  He calls us to share His gift of wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption with the world that comes only through His Word about Christ’s suffering and death upon the cross.

As Paul says to us this morning, we repeat among ourselves and to our neighbors. “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” [1 Corinthians 1:31]  In other words, “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD. [Jeremiah 9:23-24]  May God give each of us faith and  strength to continue being fools for Jesus Christ… AMEN!

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Let Me See Your Peace!

March 4th, 2012

Lent 2 B, March 4, 2012
Pastor Brian Henderson-Trinity Lutheran Church, San Diego, CA

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Romans 5:1-5

Do you have peace?  If you do, may I see it?  Show me your peace!  This is really the silent, yet always present demand of our unbelieving community that  surrounds us everywhere we go.  They will quickly tell you that they aren’t really interested in hearing about your Savior Jesus Christ, but if believing in  Him works for you, then they’re happy for you.  While they don’t care to hear about what you believe, they are watching to see if what you believe makes a  difference in how you live!  They want to see how you’ll stand up under the pressures of life as compared to them and their circle of friends.  In other  words, does what you believe make a difference in who you are?  And in order to evaluate your belief system they want to see your peace.

Now, whether we want to admit it or not, we Christians are prone to demand this same thing from God whenever troubles and tragedies strike our faith-  filled and grace centered lives.  It’s really a little rude and inconsiderate when we consider all that God has done to provide us with His peace throughout  our lives!  Did you notice that I said His peace and not yours?  That’s the way that it should be.  The objective is first and then the subjective.  That is  always God’s way.  In other words, you can’t know real peace without first having God’s peace!

The world teaches that peace is first personal and then corporate.  Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me!  The problem with this kind of  peace is that it is very self-centered and dependent on however you feel at any given moment.  This is a strange idea, because it assumes that you live for  yourself.  Not that this is anything new, William Shakespeare said long ago, “To thine own self be true!”  The problem with this kind of thinking is that it  leads to a personal peace at the cost of other peoples’ peace.

In the 1940’s Three Stooges skit called “I’ll Never Heil Again” the boys start their war council meeting with the chant, “Peace, peace, we want peace.”  And to this Moe rises and says, “Yes we want a piece of this, and a piece of that.”  And that, I am afraid is always the cost of our individual peace… it comes at the expense of others.  Like money, we can never have enough peace.  So, our natural tendency is to surround ourselves with as much of whatever we think will bring that peace, at the exclusion of other people’s peace.

But there’s another kind of peace, God’s peace.  Listen to the Son of God offer and describe this peace:  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” [John 14:27]  So what is this peace that Jesus says that He has given to us?  Well we know it isn’t the kind of peace that the world wants, and we also know that it’s the kind of peace that brings comfort and security in times of trouble and fear.

In verse 1 of our epistle reading, Paul shares these words: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  So the kind of peace that Jesus gives, which Paul is telling us we already have, begins first and always with faith that justifies or makes us right with God.  Now knowing this, there are a couple of questions we must ask to completely understand this peace that comes from God.  The first question is, “Faith in Who?”  The Who is Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God who is the Savior of the world.  The second question is “Faith in what?”  The what, is the completed work of Jesus Christ; His birth, His life, His suffering, and His death, His resurrection and ascension.  In these things, which are recorded for us in Holy Scripture we are shown God’s work for us; a work that has taken away our sins, atoned for our evil and made us right with God!  Or as Paul says it, “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Through Jesus we have been reconciled; made right with God.  Through this work, God addresses the one great obstacle that separates us from His love, and that is our sin.  He alone does what we could not do, and He does it through the atoning death of His Son.  In Jesus, God put forward His love for us by putting Jesus in our place; by having Him suffer and die for us, because of our sins.  In God’s self-sacrifice He points our troubled and sinful hearts to His solution for our sins, and His Word tells us to be reconciled; made right with Him!  In Jesus God assures us that we are reconciled; we are at peace with Him!

This proclamation of peace with God through Jesus Christ is the gospel!  If you will receive this truth by faith, then you will see God’s justice performed on the cross for you, and you will know peace!  This is the blessed assurance that saves the worst of sinners and then recreates them and gives them not just peace, but the ability to live out that peace, and even experience it.

What is assurance?  Well here’s the concise theological definition: It is the firm persuasion of faith that you are in a state of grace.  In other words, by faith you know that no matter what may happen around you, it is well with your soul, because God is with you and for you.  It’s the God-given ability to move from the cross of Jesus to the waters of your baptism and say with all certainty that “Jesus died for me!”  It’s hearing the promises of God to the world, and knowing that all of those promises were given to you when you were washed clean with the water and the Word in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  In other words, as St. Paul says in the fifth verse of our epistle lesson, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  Why has God’s love been poured into your heart?  So that you would know and experience His peace!  But aren’t we now talking about feelings?  Isn’t our salvation independent of feelings?  Yes, that is the objective work of God’s gift, a gift to the world.  But in your baptism it became very personal, very subjective.  You see, your salvation is something that is done and complete, but it’s also something you experience as you live it out!  Every day, come what may, Jesus is with you!  He is with you in trials, trouble, and tribulation.  Every day God asks you to experience His presence and then learn to rest in His comfort, care, and love for you.

Several years ago one of the astronauts who walked on the moon was interviewed and asked, “What did you think about as you stood on the moon and looked back at the earth?” The astronaut replied, “I remembered how the spacecraft (that I had to go back home in) was built by the lowest bidder.”

We as Christians can rejoice that the work of our salvation didn’t  go to the “lowest bidder” but was provided by an eternal and infallible God. There will never be any problems with His gift of salvation. Your salvation is as sure as the Creator of that salvation, Almighty God!  And because it is sure, we can learn to trust in Him and not our current experience or feelings.  We know by faith, that not only do we have peace with God, but we’re gonna keep on having that peace.  This peace, which now becomes very personal, becomes an experience that God gives to us.  An experience that reminds us that no matter what may or may not be happening in our lives, ultimately it is well and will be well with our souls!

What does this experience of peace mean to you and me?  Well, if you remember earlier, I mentioned the challenge from our unbelieving neighbors who want to see our peace, which now we know is really God’s peace in action.  This peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, not only keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, but it also directs our hearts and minds outward to the people who live in our community; people who are dying without knowing the peace of God, which comes through the cross of Jesus Christ.  As they see us weather the same storms of life we all go through, and still able to rejoice and praise God in the middle of those storms, they will begin to notice that we are not giving up hope.  They will discover what you already know; your suffering produces endurance and endurance produces a Christian character of faith in the presence and work of God on earth and hope in the promise of an eternity in heaven.  All that’s left, is for you to give an answer to anyone who asks for the reason you have this great hope.  The reason is of course God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, who takes our faith and hope, and then assures us that no matter what we may be going through, no matter what we may be feeling, in the end it will be well with our souls; we will never be put to shame!  And because it will be well with our souls it is well with them right now!  This is our blessed assurance!

I’d like to close with a final thought that is based on the background of our sermon hymn.  It was written by Horatio Spafford.  In 1870 Spafford, a Christian attorney from Chicago, suffered a great financial loss.  Shortly afterwards, his only son died of scarlet fever.  A year later, the great Chicago fire destroyed his family home and all of the family’s investments.  In 1873, after seeing his family at the verge of a breakdown, Spafford used what little money he had left to pay for a family vacation and a missionary tour to Europe in order to help his family refocus on God’s peace.

As he was preparing to board the ship with his family, some last minute business came up, so he was forced to stay behind while his family headed to Europe.  He promised them that He would be on the next ship and would join them there.  So Mrs. Spafford and their four daughters sailed east to Europe, while Mr. Spafford returned to Chicago.  Just nine days later, Spafford received a telegram from his wife that informed him that the ship his family was on sank and everyone in his family, accept his wife had died.

Upon hearing the terrible news, Horatio Spafford boarded the next ship out of New York to join his bereaved wife. As he was traveling near the area where his children died, the captain called Mr. Spafford to the wheel house and said, “A careful reckoning has been made, and I believe we are now passing the place where the ship your family was on sank.” Mr. Spafford then returned to his cabin and penned the lyrics of our hymn, “It is well with my soul”.

It would be very difficult for any of us to predict how we would react under similar circumstances, but we do know that the same faith in the grace of the same Savior who sustained Mr. and Mrs. Spafford would also be with us.  No matter what circumstances overtake us, and no matter what fleeting emotions and feelings may come and go within our lives,  we can know for certain that God’s love, which He has poured out within our hearts will enable us to say along with Horatio Spafford… it is well with our souls!  In Jesus name… Amen!

Let’s sing that first verse one more time together:
It is well … with my soul! It is well, it is well, with my soul.
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.

It is well … with my soul!

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

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Posted in Romans 5:1-11; Lent 2B | Comments Off

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