Teaching with Authority

Sermon Epiphany 4
(National Lutheran Schools Week Sunday)
Sunday, January 29, 2012
“Teaching with Authority”

This week we celebrate with all are other Lutheran congregation our Lutheran schools. This year we are celebrating our 68th year of operating a Lutheran school here in the community of Whittier. We give thanks to the Lord this day for our schools our teachers our students and the families that avail themselves of it.
Perhaps it is the scriptural doctrine of vocation that has made Lutheran schools such an integral part of Lutheran congregations. The teaching that our Lord delivers to us His daily bread, all that we need to support this body and life, through the means of various vocations. Still this could be accomplished and is accomplished through the public schools.

I believe the greater reason that education has been a hallmark and characteristic of Lutheranism is our Lord Jesus Christ’s command to “baptize and teach.” Members of Lutheran congregations were not just interested in an education that would help their children be successful in society but in the saving knowledge of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.Their children were baptized but now they strove to ensure that their children would be able to use their baptism and benefit from this awesome gift that their Lord had bestowed upon them. They made sure that no one else, some other false teaching would take it away.

This was certainly true of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod that led all other Lutheran Synods in the United States in operating schools. In the nineteenth century there were public schools available but LCMS families would rather have in, some cases, their teach their children a liberal arts education than send them to the public school where they may be influenced by the teaching of the enlightenment and rationalism.

As Christian parents today we too and rightly so, should be concerned regarding the influence of our postmodern relativistic culture. A culture that claims you cannot really know anything. Reality is what you feel it is. What is real and true for you may not be real and true for someone else. This would seem to make education a challenge if you can’t know anything. But postmodern education has risen to this challenge by emphasizing the subjective perception over the objective fact. Perhaps post‐modernism isn’t so new, did not the Roman governor Pontius Pilate ask Jesus in a cynical fashion. “What is truth?” Perhaps the same sort of relativism plagued the educated and elite of the Roman empire and was cause for its moral decline. But even further back to one of the darkest times in Old Testament Jewish history after they settled the promised land and before the judges it says that “the people did what was right in their own eyes” and with it a grisly and horrible murder was described. It is not my intention to go there this morning but suffice it to say we do not have to go any further than watching the news to hear similar stories today.

In our culture, absolutes and natural law based upon Biblical truths are denied. The absolute rule and natural order has been discarded as judgmental. But it has been replaced with a truly judgmental and arbitrary standard of public opinion. When it comes to social and moral norms we are divided nation. Who’s to say who is right? This sort of moral uncertainty and ambiguity has also crept into the church. Churches that ordain women, also allow ordination of homosexuals and same sex marriage have substituted God’s perfect and order and law for the chaos of postmodern culture. Church’s and Pastor’s that are faithful and hold to God’s law are considered unloving, judgmental, intolerant and wrongheaded in “their” interpretation of scripture. Even though Jesus says to the church of those who preach His Word, “He who hears you hears me.”

I can tell you faithful Pastor’s do not warn to be unloving, or to be intolerant. They do not follow God’s order because they are misogynists and hopelessly patriarchal. They preach God’s Law not to harden hearts but rather to break them to bring about repentance so that hearts and wills may be made captive to our Lord’s instead of this culture’s which leads to eternal death, for our Lord’s Words are the words of eternal life.
The teaching of the scribes of Jesus time were not much different than the church that was influenced by the culture. The teaching of the scribes had to do more with the rules and regulations for keeping the Sabbath. The Jews had expanded on the law of Moses with many manmade traditions and laws. In their zeal to follow the letter of the law they lost the spirit of law.

When man dilutes God’s law with his own modifications and changes it moves further away from having the backing of the true authority. It is like a government that continues to print currency with nothing of value behind it. Moses had promised that God would send a prophet even greater than He as we read in our Old Testament reading this morning. “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” This prophet is revealed to us as God himself made man in the person of Jesus. What a shock it must have been for the people to hear such teaching that brought out both the law and gospel in the Old Testament promises of God, that they were now being fulfilled, that the Kingdom of Heaven was now coming to them and that the Law was being fulfilled by the Messiah the Son of Man.

Jesus preached with 100 percent certainty because He preached what the Father the author of the scriptures told Him to say. Jesus’ teaching is absolute truth and it has the authority the backing of the Father behind it.
Our Gospel text reads, “And they (the disciples and Jesus) went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he (Jesus) entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.” Jesus was certainly a teacher, He was a Rabbi, a Pastor of that time. The Sabbath meeting in the Synagogue for the Old Testament period is like our gathering today in the church of the New Testament. Jesus teaching and preaching as I said before was shockingly
bold, confident and certain. Jesus was preaching with authority and the people were astonished.

Then the most remarkable thing occurs. It’s like a scene from a Hollywood movie. A man with an unclean spirit, a demon, enters the service. He creates quite a disturbance as he interrupts Jesus and cries out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” This is not a statement of saving faith this is a statement of fear. Evidently, word had got out in the demon world that the Son of God was walking the earth. Just prior to the beginning of Jesus ministry He had been tempted by His adversary Satan in the wilderness for forty days. In this encounter Jesus was victorious. He had defeated Satan and not succumbed as the first Adam had to the temptation of glory.

The devil’s knew the score and the promise that these fallen angel’s at the end of time would be defeated and thrown into the lake of fire. In fear they cried out, is now the time? They may have certain powers, like possession, but their powers are limited and they certainly do not know the future. What they do know and what they do see spiritually that which is hidden from the people but is now revealed is that Jesus is the
Holy One of God, that He is the Christ. And this is further revealed by Jesus rebuke and command, “Be silent, and come out of him!” If only the first Adam who was standing next to Eve had told the serpent to be silent or told Eve not to listen to him. Jesus is now silencing Satan and casting him out. With a Word Jesus defeats Satan, and in the process releases man from his captivity. This possessed man was not only exorcised but he was forgiven, and released.

If you sinned this week and transgressed God’s law this is evidenced that you are not acting freely rather you are captive to the devil’s influence. So it is for you that our Lord’s teaching and Word is proclaimed this day. Jesus died on the cross for you serving the sentence for your sin. Justice was satisfied so His sacrifice was accepted by the Father resulting in Christ’s resurrection. By Jesus institution, command and word You were baptized into the name of God. You were baptized into both His death and resurrection, born from above so that the old Adam may be put to death in you and new man may come forth. Satan can no longer accuse you of your sin for Jesus has cleansed you of it by His blood. He is silenced and He is cast out. And with
that word of Christ He is defeated. Yes, Jesus teaches with authority and power and this is good news. And it is by this same power and authority that I can say to you this day, your sins are forgiven.

There is much knowledge you will gain here at Trinity Lutheran School in order to serve your neighbor according to your future vocations but you will also learn to know your Savior who releases you from your sin. Amen.

Repent and Believe in the Gospel

Sermon Epiphany 3

January 22, 2012

“Repent and Believe in the Gospel”

Mark 1:14‐20

Typically, in our lectionary, the Old Testament reading and the Gospel reading are correlated in some way. They usually have a similar theme. They reinforce each other. While the epistle reading simply marches us through the letter in consecutive readings each week. This week however the themes of all the readings match up. They all convey a sense of urgency, of immediacy.

In our Old Testament reading we hear the prophet Jonah call out in the God defying city of Nineveh, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” In our epistle reading we hear the Apostle Paul’s warnings, “brothers: the appointed time has grown very short” and “the present form of this world is passing away.”

In our Gospel reading we hear the Savior proclaim, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” All three of these acclamations call for and even cause an immediate change. They are a wake up call and they do just that they wake you up.

Most of us like to run at an even keel. That nautical idiom which means calm and not likely to change suddenly, in a steady and well‐balanced situation (the keel is the bottom of a boat or ship and when the boat is on an even keel it is balanced). It does not sway to much to the left or port side or to the right the starboard side. This is usually the case on a sail boat when you are sailing with the wind. The wind pushes you forward and you glide along.

However, for you to turn around and go in the opposite direction, that is to sail into the wind requires much more effort. One must tack back and forth at 45 degree angles to the wind. As you tack the boat rocks to port or to starboard depending on your direction sometimes the angle of the boat is such that the edge of the deck almost touches the water. We have seen dramatic pictures in the news of the cruise liner Costa Concordia in Italy off her keel. Suffice to say to sail against the wind requires more effort than sailing with the wind. One could be motionless and rudderless and still sail with the wind.

Our baptismal liturgy, in particular, Luther’s baptismal prayer following the analogy of St. Peter, identifies the church with a boat, with Noah’s Ark and so even today nautical terms are still used to describe church architecture. As you look up from the Nave, where you are seated one can imagine the center beam to be like the keel at the bottom of a ship.

To go along with wind requires very little effort or no effort it is the default direction. In fact everyone on the boat could be lifeless and the wind will carry it along. In reality we are not on a boat and unless there is an earthquake our church here does not rock or move. However spiritually there are forces at work. For us it is not the winds that blow us in one direction or the other but it is influence of culture and the world, a culture and world that is spiritually dead and in decay, a culture and world that goes the opposite of its Creator’s intention. When God’s law says that we are subordinate to one another (Ephesians 5:21), the culture and our sinful flesh says that you are number one and are accountable to no one.

Where our Lord has established vocations in order to serve one another, the culture tells us to use them to serve ourselves. Where God establishes natural orders that respect the distinctions between men and women the culture blurs those distinctions promoting egalitarianism and ambiguity. Where God institutes marriage between a man and a woman, the culture creates chaos and uses self centered passions and lusts to promote same sex marriage. What is called love is really justified self‐centeredness.

The spiritually dead church recognizes no head is without the rudder of the scriptures. Everyone does what they feel is right in their own eyes. The morals and practices of the church are indistinguishable from that of the world. So with little effort it goes lifelessly the path of the world.

The message of Jesus still rings true for the church today, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

“The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand,” there is a sense of urgency in this proclamation. The promised Christ has entered the world and He is changing the direction of those He has created. Jesus’ call to repent turns His church from a lifeless path to one of life.

This is not the path of least resistance. Rather it is a path that goes against the wind, that flies in the face of the wisdom of our time. Jonah’s proclamation caused the proud citizenry of Nineveh to put on sackcloth and humble themselves before the Lord. They were turned from their naturally sinful ways to the way of the Lord. They did not wait to start repenting. It happened immediately.

So much more does our Lord’s call to repent and believe the Gospel cause the new man, the new spirit given to you and in your baptism to come to life. Jesus’ call to you is like the call to Lazarus dead in the tomb to come out, to change the direction from into the tomb to out of the tomb. The pious and religious old Adam within us urges caution. It says don’t change or turn to fast. Don’t rock the boat. Stay on an even keel. But Jonah, Paul and Jesus’ call, requires an immediate change in direction. The stakes are too high your very life eternal is at stake. “Repent and believe in the Gospel!”

Jesus calls His apostles then and the office of the ministry now to join Him in this proclamation. The apostle’s response is immediate they leave their fishing boats to become fishers of men. The proclaimed message of the Gospel serves as a net to pull those spiritually dead to life in the boat of the church, where they are nourished by God’s Word and Sacraments. The old Adam believes it can wait to turn, it procrastinates. God’s Word is clear: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left” (Heb. 10:26).

To believe in the Gospel is to hear His Word that He, Jesus has been sacrificed for your sins, for your disobedience. His one sacrifice has turned your verdict from guilty to innocent. This frees us to follow Him to follow His word, all of it, to walk in the newness of life, immediately against the winds of the culture.

This is message we cannot hear just once but continually because daily and continually we sin. We need the discipline of regularly hearing of God’s Word which causes us to turn to Him and cry out in prayer. It turns us from our own selfish interests to those of our Lord who wishes for all to hear the Gospel and to be gathered in around His table to receive His Sacrament and hear His words “given and shed for you.” Now is the time to repent and believe in the Gospel.

What will you do with the Body?

EPIPHANY 2, JANUARY 15, 2012
Sermon
What Will You Do with the Body?

“May God the Father, who created this body; may God the Son, who by his blood redeemed this body; may God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be his temple, keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh.” These words are, of course, the words spoken at the committal in the Service of Christian Burial. At that most sober and somber moment they proclaim the truth about the body of the believer; it is a body created by the Maker of heaven and earth, purchased with the blood of Christ, and hallowed by the washing of the water with the Word. It is not a leftover carcass to be tossed aside. Quite the contrary, YOUR BODY IS GIVEN BY GOD AND IS RENDERED BACK TO HIM.

The body is yours; it is uniquely you. Yet it does not belong to you. You did not create yourself. While we read of the wizardry of post-human futures with synthetic parts that replace worn-out limbs and organs, we finally cannot transcend the reality that we are flesh and blood that will perish. We may view the body as a pod that houses our creative (and free) will. We may treat the body as an instrument of our hedonism, as a plaything for our pleasure. Then we need not be surprised that once the toy of the flesh breaks down we seek ways to be relieved of the burden. Enter assisted suicide and euthanasia. If we can’t finally master the body and control the suffering of disease or old age, we will put an end to it at the time and place of our own choosing. We speak of people committing suicide as “taking their own lives” as though it were theirs to take. We think, at least, that we will be done with the burden of the body.

What do we do with the body? That’s a question faced not just at the time of death but here and now as we live in the body. When the spirit of the age is mistaken for the Holy Spirit, the body will be thought of as incidental to spirituality. Such was the case with the super spirituality of the Corinthians, who apparently thought that something as bodily as sexual intercourse could not affect life in the Spirit. Freedom in the Spirit translated into a life unhampered by restrictions, boundaries, or limitations. Homosexual practice, prostitution, and even incest were fair game. Perhaps they reasoned that the bounds of Christian liberty were wide, expansive, and permissive since “food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food—and God will
destroy both” (v 13). It could be that they mistakenly thought that the Gospel is a message of liberation from the body. (That’s what Greek philosophy taught, after all—that the spirit was good, while the body was evil. Death, then, they believed—as do those many today—meant a welcome escape from the fetters of the body.)

The glue that binds us together, we are told, is the Gospel, Baptism, and mission. Something as mundane as a sexual ethic should not get in the way of these! We need an ethic that is more relational and less “physicalist” was the argument advanced by one of the proponents of change in the debates within the ELCA leading up to that church body’s adoption two years ago of novel policies that run counter to the Sacred Scriptures. The apostle takes a position and asserts an ethic that is physicalist, indeed: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (v 13). What you do with your body does matter. Listen again to Paul: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (v 14). It is a matter of ownership. You can’t take the body that belongs to Christ—bought with his blood and washed by his Spirit in Holy Baptism—and join that body to a prostitute. To do so, Paul says, is to sin against your own body. Hence, he says, “Flee from sexual immorality” (v 18), for every other sin a person commits outside of his body—but this sin is against your body—the very body that God has created, redeemed, and sanctified.

Christ Jesus will not have the body that belongs to him rendered unclean, desecrated by fornication and enslaved by a fleshly union to one who is not your spouse. Christ Jesus would not have you live in bondage to another lord, for he has made you his own. He has “purchased and won [you] from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that [you] may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness” (Luther’s explanation of the Third Article).

Your body will not simply be discarded, even at death. It is neither evil nor irrelevant, but will be raised again to live in glory with Christ for all eternity. Then as now it belongs to the Lord, so that for this life already the apostle says “glorify God in your body” (v 20). Your body is the place of his Spirit, and it is destined for the resurrection of the flesh. So now present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is your spiritual worship (cf Rom 12:1).


(1 Rev. John T. Pless, assistant professor, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana)

The Baptism of Our Lord

Sermon Baptism of our Lord
January 8, 2012
A New Beginning
Mark 1:4-11

Today the readings point us to a new beginning. New beginnings are on our minds. We have been enculturated to think about making a new beginning in the New Year. We wish to put the previous year 2011 behind us and make a new beginning in 2012. Some will make resolutions and set goals to do better to improve their situation. After being encouraged to buy in excess and eat in excess for the Christmas season, we are made to feel guilty about our excesses. Back to eating right, back to the discipline of going to the gym, time to measure your performance on the bathroom scale. The season of Epiphany for the world is a season of repentance, of fasting and rigorous discipline until the feast days of Superbowl, Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s day.

This January 2012 issue of Real Simple Magazine sums up our culture’s liturgy and its priorities. The lead article is how to break your bad habits which is closely followed by reducing your debt, losing weight faster, clearing clutter, learning to say no, cook smarter, reenergizing your style and finally be happier now. I think that about covers it. Would we not all want these things for our life. There are even preachers who are the presiding gurus in these areas such as Oprah, and her galaxy of stars including Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz.
These are not in themselves bad things to strive for especially for the sake of our families, our employees, our neighbors. These things we refer to as civil righteousness. But one does not need to be a Christian to practice these things. In fact many have replaced true religion with this civil religion. If one can show discipline and self‐control, if one has control finances, if you are slim trim and healthy already, if you are able to say no, well then why do you need religion you are already being God pleasing, right?

The church itself under the guise of attracting through the meeting of felt needs, glorifying God with one’s life and boosting attendance have mis‐named this functional form of work’s righteousness, sanctification. Some of the most popular evangelicals including Rick Warren and Joel Osteen make their living off of this form pseudo-sanctification. The titles of their best selling books say it all Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life” and Joel Osteen’s “Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential” and his follow up “Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day.” So I have to ask, “What is the difference between these titles in purpose and content than the ones on the cover of my Real Simple magazine?”

Recently, Rick Warren has started his new diet plan that he calls the Daniel plan that is based on the healthy eating of the Old Testament prophet Daniel and his followers. Additionally Joel Osteen has preached against the eating of pork. Once again these ideas may promote some healthy eating habits but what do they have to do with the Gospel. And how is this information any different than what we hear from Oprah, Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz. What do they have to do with preaching repentance and forgiveness? Perhaps this is what you came to hear today some tidbits on how to acquire your best life now. The old Adam is us wants to be reformed. It wants to be given a to do list but without the Gospel it is an exercise in futility. And if this is our self-centered works righteousness idea of sanctification or what we want to hear in a sermon then we need to repent
and die to self. We need to turn away from this futility that leads to despair and turn to Christ remembering our
baptisms and confessing our sins.

The truth of the matter is that in order for there to be a new beginning that it does not have anything to do with us and everything to do with God. He is the one who was at the beginning of all things, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit. They are all mentioned in the first three verses of Genesis with the pre‐incarnate Christ hidden in the Word, “Let there be Light.” When Job in the midst of his suffering cried out to God did not God say, “Were you there when the foundations of the earth was laid, when the seas were given their limits.”
It is God who does the creating and the making of new beginnings and we are the objects of His benevolence of His unmerited grace.

The baptism of Christ is a new beginning revealed. For Christmas the revelation is that in Jesus God became man. The revelation of Epiphany is that Jesus the Man is God. And the revealing of God’s new name Father, Son and Holy Spirit which will play prominently in the Christ’s institution of baptism. This is a new beginning because in the old beginning heaven was shut to Adam and Eve. But, with Jesus heaven opens for God to become man and now in His baptism, as the gospel writer Mark puts it, the heavens are ripped open. And Jesus the Man is revealed to be God the Son as the voice from heaven identifies Jesus saying, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” This He does not say about any other man but only Jesus. He does not say that about you or me or Oprah, Joel, or Rick but only about Jesus.

I heard a sermon last week at a non-Lutheran church. Basically the content was based upon the story of David and Goliath. Essentially the message was for the coming year to discern not your will but God’s will for your life in the coming year. The preacher did a very fine job of preaching the law and there was perhaps one mention of Jesus dying for their sins. The sermon culminated with the members coming forward and kneeling before the altar praying for forgiveness but not hearing it. You see righteousness is not found in ourselves but the one whom God the Father is well pleased. The Father is pleased because the Son is obeying the Father. Even though He himself is sinless, Jesus did identify with those repenting and confessing their sins. So much so that He would take upon himself the sins of world. He would take what we deserve to the cross and give to us what we do not deserve His righteousness.

In our epistle reading we see how this past reality comes to us today, “we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” So true sanctification means that we die, we die to ourselves, to our schemes for righteousness and self‐improvement to please God. God in Christ Jesus is already pleased with you. And this beginning started with your baptism where heaven was opened to you. You were made the Son in whom the Father is well pleased not because of your doing but because of God’s. And so what good works you do you cannot take credit for Jesus does them through you as you show love and care for your neighbor as you bring family members to Jesus through teaching and baptism.Without Christ, all you are left with is civil righteousness which alone will condemn you. But it is Christ who saves.

For God water plays significantly in new beginnings. We have the Spirit who hovers over the face of the waters in the second verse of Genesis. We have God’s use of the flood to save Noah and his family from the unspeakable evil of the world. We have deliverance of the Israelites through the Red Sea from the Egyptians. We have the new beginning for the gentile Naaman when he is cured of leprosy bathing in the Jordan. And now we have Jesus sanctifying all waters for His use to bring His fallen creation into the Kingdom. In the future we look forward to the River of Life that flows through the new Jerusalem our heavenly home. As you can see our Lord has the past, present and future covered. He is the one who says, “I make all things new.” For us baptism was the new beginning for us, the source, the Genesis and it continues to be a source of renewal as our Lord presently in this place washes with His forgiveness using His very blood flows from His altar.

There is nothing wrong with setting goals for the New Year. There is nothing wrong with having optimism for the New Year for our Lord does not change. He will continue to serve you in His Divine Service cleansing you of your sins. Through the Son the Father says to you, “You are my beloved with whom I am well pleased.” Amen