Pastor Ron Jansen

God has a Controversy with us.

Fourth Sunday a. Epiphany 1999 Collinsville, Micah 6:1-8 *

            Famous trials have abounded through the years.  1925, the Scopes trial in Dayton Tennessee, featuring Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan.  1934 Bruno Hauptmann is convicted of kidnapping and murdering the Lindberg baby.  Nuremberg, the site of Nazi war crime trails.  Julius and Ethel Rosenberg made headline news during their espionage trial in 1951.  The 1970’s trial of heiress Patty Hearst.  Finally, the trial O.J Simpson comes to mind.

            All of these trials pale in comparison with the trial in our Old Testament lesson from Micah.  The prophet, acting as bailiff, calls the court to order; “Hear what the Lord says.” The legal proceedings are between God and whole nation of Israel.  The courtroom is the cosmos.  God calls his witnesses jurors, “Hear you mountains.  Let the hills hear your voice.  Listen you everlasting foundation of the earth.” The heights and the depths of creation are called to witness God’s controversy with his people.

            The Lord gives his people an opportunity to lodge their charge against Him.  “Stand up!” Plead your case.  Bring your complaint.”

Israel has been complaining against their Lord for some time.  They’ve lost patience with God.  They are exasperated.  The Lord promised that a ruler would come out of Bethlehem, David’s city.  He would stand up and take care of God’s people.  This ruler would bring security.  He would be respected to the ends of the earth.  Peace would come with his reign.  Israel would be like refreshing morning dew or a shower of rain that revived the grass among the nations.  They would be a lion among the nations.

            But the reality was that they were under siege from an enemy.  Their king was weak, struck across the face with a rod.  Therefore, Israel refused to answer this God who promised much but delivered little.  They would maintain their stubborn silence.

            In the face of silence the Lord presses his case.  In words that will be sung on Good Friday, he asks, “O my people, what have I done to you.  In what have I wearied you?  Answer me?”  In the middle of their peril, the people cannot remember anything good which the Lord has done for them or whether God is simply an illusion after all.

            How is it with you in the middle of some peril?  When in the middle of some day, some week, some problem as work; in the middle of some disagreement at home, sometime of being pulled three or four different ways by family schedule; in the middle of some class or some day at school; in the middle of a traffic jam or a checkout line, waiting, waiting, inching along; in the middle of some valley where the shadow is creeping across the landscape and the shadow could be death.  Who can remember the Lord and all he has done?  Who can give thanks to the Lord in any and all situations?  Who can love your fellow human being too?   

            Consider Psalm one.  “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.”  Though the Lord says that the wicked are like chaff that the wind blows away; instead, the wind seems to blow the wind into our faces.   We are beset with many and great dangers to our faith and trust in god on every side.  We are under siege.  By reason of the weakness of our fallen nature we cannot always stand upright.

            Yet, God wants us to stand up and defend ourselves.  But what does God know of my daily life?  Why doesn’t God do something to show that he cares about me; vindicate me as I strive mightily to live an upright and honest life?  No, it’s not so much a matter of what God has done to me as it is – what God hasn’t done for me.  Why bother to plead my case?  Israel was right after all.  Just suffer in stubborn silence.

Though God’s people were too disheartened, too burdened with their own problems, to communicate with God, the Lord does not cut off communication with his stubborn forgetful people.  Israel is his people and the Lord refreshes their memories concerning what he has done for them.  “I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery.”  “I sent you leaders, Moses the law giver, Aaron the priest and Miriam the prophetess.  My people remember how king Balak conspired with Balaam to place a curse on you.  I blocked the curse and Balaam spoke a blessing instead.  I was with you in the crossing of the Jordan as you entered the Promised Land.  I did all this that you might know my saving acts and know me as the God who saves.”

            The Lord says to you and me, “I brought you up out of the spiritual bondage.  I gave myself as the price to buy you back from slavery to sin.  I transferred you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I have sent to you pastors and teachers and leaders who speak my message to you continually.  I have blocked the curse of eternal death and turned death into the doorway to eternal life.  I have been with you even as and ever since you crossed the waters of baptism and was delivered into the promised land of grace and mercy.  I did all this that you might know that saving acts which I performed for you through Jesus Christ.”

            Now, finally, the people in Micah’s time speak.  “What does god want from me?  Shall I bring a week old calf or maybe a yearling and burn it all up on the altar?  Will that satisfy God?  Or maybe, like Solomon, sacrificed thousands of rams.  Perhaps ten thousand rivers of oil would appease God.  Do you want me to be like Abraham and cut off my future by sacrificing my son for my sin? 

            Or we might say do you want me to give 20% of my income?  Do I just turn over my whole paycheck and maybe borrow some money for good measure and put that in the offering plate?  Will that make you happy God?  Maybe to make up for my terrible of not paying God enough attention I should cash in all my savings and retirement, sell my house.  Would god then be satisfied?

            Now the prophet speaks again.  “Man, the Lord has already shown what is good.”  God doesn’t want some THING.  God requires nothing of you.  NO THING AT ALL.  God wants you.  God wants me.

            What God wants is patterned on what He has already done for us.  God gave his firstborn son as a sacrifice to our sins.  God has acted justly toward us.  Through Jesus Christ god has blessed us with forgiveness and salvation.  God has brought the world back under the order he established.  He has lifted us up who were poor in spirit and given us kingdom.  God wants his justice to glow through us that we too lift up the lowly that they might be saved and served.

The Lord has shown us his continuing love in Jesus Christ.  Marie Von Ebner-Eschenback wrote, “Most people need more love than they deserve.  God gives us more love than we deserve every day.

Finally, the Lord directs us to act justly and love mercy as we walk humbly with our God.  Walking humbly is living our life keeping our attention on God.  Be attentive to the path that Jesus took, the actions he did, the words he spoke, to his passion, his silence, his suffering and his dying.  Then we will be living according to God’s wisdom, boasting in what the Lord has done for us.

                     *I had the sunday off and offer the above sermon gthis week.

Drawn to the Light

Third Sunday in Epiphany 2011, Immanuel Chapel, Psalm 27

            The sun will rise this afternoon in Barrow, Alaska.  Sunset will occur one hour and seven minutes later.  Today marks the first sunrise in Barrow since it was up for 6 minutes on November 19.  We are people created to be drawn to the light.  When I attended Concordia College, St. Paul, I regularly worked as a campus night watchman.  Especially in the summer I would begin to look to the east about 4 am waiting, for the first hint of dawn’s light over downtown St. Paul.  Musician John Ylvisaker has written a hymn that expresses our need for light entitled “Drawn to the Light.”   “Dawn is in sight!  Gone is the night, drawn to the light and the morning.  Glorious and bright, oh, what sight to be drawn to the light of God.”

            Yes, drawn to the light of God. The author of Psalm27  knew what it was to be drawn to the light of God.  “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  For the psalmist the Lord was his security light and his safe haven.  The presence of the Lord his is light, dispelling all fear and fright.

Epiphany is about the inbreaking of the light.  The inbreaking of light began when the creation was a formless chaos, enveloped in darkness.  God said, “Let there be light and there was light.”  There is no darkness in all creation or in our lives which is beyond God’s power to claim and shape into that which serves the purposes for which he created it and glorifies him. The psalmist confesses in psalm 139, “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”  In creation, God separated the light from the darkness and thus began the first day of the lord and it was good.  He created servants of light, the sun to light day and the moon and stars to brighten the night.  These heavenly bodies are not only intended to serve him but to serve you and me also.

  We are unable to live long without the light. Cormac McCarthy’s novel, “The Road,” tracks the journey of a father and son in the aftermath of a disaster which has clouded the sun.  All vegetation died.  It snows, not snowflakes, but flakes of ash. The father and son are seeking light, warmth and people who have not turned to doing the most unspeakable things to one another in order to survive.

  When human beings fell so deeply into the darkness of rebellion against God, “that every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually,” God regretted he had made humankind and he was grieved over the darkness that clouded men’s souls.  But one man, Noah, found favor in God’s eyes.  Noah still trusted in the Lord as his security Light and safe haven and lived accordingly.  When the sun was blotted out by clouds, the pouring down of rain and up welling of water from deep of the earth, Noah and his family and representatives of all the species of the earth were in the safe haven of the ark.  After the waters subsided and the skies cleared, God showed Noah a spectrum of the light in a rainbow as a sign of the covenant of the full favor of the Lord toward his creation.  God, the Lord of creation, would show himself forever as the God of salvation, the God who is our Savior and the One who rescues when we are in over our heads.

About three years ago I was walking under Luther’s Tower at Concordia Seminary.  Dale Meyer, seminary president, was talking to someone.  He called out, “Ron Jansen, I’m in over my head.”  Since I had just started to fill another vacancy, I said, “So am I.”

            Whether it’s a seminary president, a pastor failing retirement, a mother struggling to keep her sanity, a small business person facing overwhelming challenges, all of us being squeezed by the economy or pressures and setbacks in our personal life, we are able to understand that it is the Lord who is our light, salvation and strength.  In the dark times of life I am able to see what Jesus means when he says, “I am the light of the world.”  When I am weak, then I am able to boast in the Lord’s strength shown on the cross.  When I have no defenses left, then I can look to Christ as my true fortress and protector.  When illness brings me down, then I am able to confess that I will again see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living.

 Without light we stumble and fall.  The psalmist confesses, “For evils have encompassed me beyond number, my iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see, they are more than the hairs of my head; my heart fails me.”  The full spectrum of God’s light broke into the world and into our lives in Jesus Christ.  John tells his Christmas story in terms of light.  “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”  No, rather Christ overcame the darkness and in a renewal of creation said, “I am the light.”  The Lord who was the light of the life of the psalmist had taken on human flesh.  Jesus was the radiance of the glory of God. He upholds the creation by the power of his word.  He made purification for our sins and took his place at the right hand of God.

  Tuesday, the church remembers the conversion of St. Paul.  As a young man he had sunk into darkness of defending a tradition that rejected Jesus.  He was present when the Deacon Stephen, “full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”   Paul, then known as Saul, was among those who cried out against Stephen, stopped up their ears and dragging him out of Jerusalem, they stoned him to death.  Not even Saul was beyond the light of Christ.  On his way to Damascus, with arrest warrants in his hand, the light which is Christ knocked him to the ground and changed his life. Only days later, he began proclaiming that Jesus was the Son of God.

No wonder the psalmist proclaims, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid.”  With that hope and confidence he faces life in the face of Christ who will be faithful to him even if his own parents forsake him.  The Lord will take him in.

Finally he confesses, “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  During my freshman year at Concordia College, St. Paul, Prof. Harold Otte directed the Choral Club choir.  Every weekday afternoon I sat in the 2^nd tenor section in the renovated basement of a pre-20^th century building.  On July 31, 2007 Dr. Otte died.  According to his son, a treasured friend visited him that day and read Psalm 27 to Dr. Otte and his wife.  During the reading, Dr. Otte simply closed his eyes and stopped breathing.  Robert Holst the school president, who in his student days also sang under Dr. Otte’s direction wrote, “Quietly and peacefully, God transferred him from time into eternity…We who still wait and watch continue to find peace and can express our faith in the words of that ancient hymn , “I am still confident of this: I will see the Day of the Lord in the land of the living.  Wait for the Lord: be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”  

 

       

 

A Light for the Nations

2nd Sunday after Epiphany 2011 Isaiah 49:1-7

Isaiah 49:6b, “I will make you a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

            Our theme during epiphany is “Christ be our light.”   To fulfill our mission as a light for the nations it behooves us to begin with prayer, “Christ be our Light. Shine upon us O Light for the nations.  Extend through us the word of salvation.”

            In our text the servant of the Lord complains, “I have toiled in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.”   He had been chosen while still in his mother’s womb to be God’s messenger.  God equipped him with a tongue sharper than a sword; hid away for just the right time like a polished arrow in an archer’s quiver.  With that powerful message he had called to the ends of the earth urging God’s scattered people to come back to God.  God had called him “My servant;” and promised that through him “I will be glorified.”   But how could he be a light to his people when they lived in exile by the waters of Babylon?  Jerusalem was destroyed.  The temple demolished.  How was God to be glorified when his sharpened word had no effect in the time of darkness and gloom?  The people fell further into the abyss of sin and God’s judgment.  How could he proclaim joy and restoration?  It seemed outrageous. 

God’s response to his complaint is ludicrous.  “It is too slight a task for you to restore the tribes of Jacob…I shall appoint you a light to the nations so that my salvation may reach earth’s farthest bounds.”

In the order of baptism we used for several years the congregation welcoming the newly baptized into their midst.  “We receive you as a fellow member of the body of Christ…to work with us in his kingdom.”  That last phrase was striking, “to work with us in his kingdom,” when addressed to an infant only a month out of its mother’s womb.  “Hey kid, stop lolling around.  Stand on your feet and get to work for the Lord.   We need every one to pitch in.” Impossible?  Ridiculous?  Of course. 

Think of being one of the disciples on the mountain in Galilee after Jesus’ resurrection.  Their numbers depleted by the loss of Judas. Still painful was the memory of panicked running following Jesus’ arrest.  Peter’s three-time denial that he even knew this guy named Jesus lay only six weeks in the past.   Matthew comments, “They worshiped him but some doubted.”  As in our Old Testament reading God, that is, Jesus ignores their depleted numbers and deficient faith saying, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them everything I have commanded you.”  In other words “It is too slight a task I have given you so far.  I shall appoint you a light to the nations so that my salvation may reach earth’s farthest boundaries.”  What good is it to give such a global job description to a bunch of inadequate and embarrassing followers?  Ludicrous, preposterous.

Yet, they went, made disciples baptized and taught.  Because here we are today, Immanuel Chapel, our name taken from the final promise given to those less than stellar disciples, “I am with you always.”

Those disciples went forth as a mighty light in the power of the Holy Spirit and making followers of Jesus, who in turn made another generation of disciples who baptized and taught still another generation of followers for Jesus.  They were the light for the nations through whom God was reaching out with his salvation to the end of the earth.

            For many of us that light came among our forefathers in northern Europe.  It must have seemed the ends of the earth to those missionary monks who came upon our ancestors, descendants of the Vandals, Franks and Visigoths.  For others the light shined in the darkness of slavery giving a hope of being free at last.  For still others the gospel light broke forth into homes in West Africa.  And all of us have been led by the light of Christ to be here, where now he commissions us to be as a light for the nations.  It really is as St. Paul writes, “Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth”…Yet we are, “Called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to be end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

However, even with all the grace we have received from God through Christ we can begin to think, act and speak as if our work is all in vain, our strength spent for nothing and the task impossible.  After all, our numbers are depleted.  Worship attendance is down by half of what it was six years ago.  We have a large loan to repay.  Immanuel, exists in a different culture than it did even thirty years ago.  How are some of us old German types of Lutherans going to make the shift?  Maybe, our mind tells us, it’s even wrong and unlutheran to do so.   There is something from Isaiah, I haven’t shared yet today.  The servant in Isaiah follows the expression of his doubts with these words, “Yet my cause is with the Lord and my reward with my God.”  Those words sound very much like words spoken by another Servant of the Lord as he sprawled in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.  “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass by.  Yet not my will but yours.”

In our Gospel lesson, John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples when an ordinary looking Jew from Galilee passed by.  John called out, “Behold, the Lamb of God.  He it is who takes away the sin of the world.”  So it began.  Do you know what happened next?  Two of John’s disciples followed Jesus.  With those two, Jesus began gathering his church.  Jesus invited them to come and see where he was staying, they did and they remained with him.  One of two was named Andrew.  He went and found his brother Simon Peter telling him, “We have found the Messiah (which means Christ).”  Amazing.

However, it was not a case of onward and upward for Jesus and his buildingless church.  Dark days would lie ahead.  It would be in the darkness of a Friday afternoon that the light for the nations would announce, “It is finished” and the light of his life would wink out.  With that he proved to be the Lamb of God, who had indeed taken away the sin of the world.  Wonderful.

Now, we are called and empowered in his resurrection to tell the glad news of deliverance among ourselves and to speak of his faithfulness and salvation to the nations.  For we shine forth as lights to cast the spotlight on none other than Jesus, God’s Savior, the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world.  Glory to the Lord. 

We end as we began, with a prayer, “Christ be our Light.  Shine upon us O Light for the nations.  Extend through us the promise of salvation. Thank you, Lord for choosing us as your servants.”                                   

Walk in Newness of Life

Baptism of Jesus 2011, Immanuel Chapel,

            Romans 6:3 -5, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death?   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.  For if we have been united in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

            Do you ever think about attending your own funeral?    Sit on your coffin listening to what people say?  Well, you have attended your own funeral.  This is what was said.  “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  Everyone said, “Amen.”  With those words and in the water you died.  You were baptized into the death of Jesus Christ.

            Therefore, we were crucified with Christ.  We hung on the cross with him.  When he hung naked for the world to see, our sinful self hung in full public view. When Jesus was taken down from the cross, the nails screeched as they were pried from the dry wood. Those nails tore back through our dead sinful flesh.  When he was carried to a borrowed tomb, we were buried with him. Jesus pallbearers, were Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.  Our pallbearer was whoever baptized us into Christ death and burial

In the Good Friday, song we ask, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”  The answer is, “Yes, I was there.”  “Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?”   “Yes, I was there.”

            In baptism we died the death we inherited from Adam and Eve.  So it really doesn’t matter what people say about us when our body is stretched out in a coffin.  It simply means that our body, which has participated in sin during our lifetime, has finally succumbed to the wear and tear of such a life.  What is important is what was said at our first funeral, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  Then the Spirit descended and rested upon us.  And the heavenly Father announced, “This is my beloved Son.  This is my beloved daughter, with whom I am pleased.”

            Jesus died as a criminal.  In baptism our old criminal-law- breaking -self was judged and destroyed.  That made a new resurrection life possible.  In the act of our baptism Jesus Christ engineered a hostile takeover of our life.  It was a hostile takeover with positive results for us.  He replaced the management team of sin, and the devil which bankrupted our lives and left us with nothing but ruination, destruction and death.  Now, Jesus Christ is the owner and manager of our life.

             Witness to our new owner and manager is provided throughout history.   The seventeenth century preacher and poet John Donne, “Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe….One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death thou shalt die.”  In the words of the hymn, “God’s own child, I gladly say it; ‘I am baptized into Christ.’”   St. Paul asserts, “Death is swallowed up in victory…O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?”

            Our Baptism is about more than our first funeral.  “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we SHALL certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”  Baptism is also about resurrection and a new life.  However, being united with Christ in his resurrection lies in the future.  We SHALL certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  St. Paul says of Christ’s resurrection He, “will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  For the death he died he died to sin, once for all.” Christ’s resurrection changes and determines our whole existence, now and in eternity.  What controls, governs, manages and directs our life now is that we SHALL live. Since we don’t owe sin and death anything, like Christ, we are able to live our life for God and to his glory.

But St. Paul knows something about human nature.  Our old self still is able stir up trouble.  “If I am saved by God’s grace, shouldn’t I help God give more grace away by sinning more?  If God has a super abundance of grace, well, let me give you a hand in taking it off your hands God.  God, here’s a whole bushel basket of sins.  Look God, here are times this week I put other people down.  You’ve got grace enough to cover that, right?  Here are some judgments I made against about people even though I didn’t know much about their situation.  Your abundant grace can take care of my prejudices, can’t it?   Oh look, here is my tendency to over eat, or to see others in the worst light, or to foul my lips with profanity or criticize parents who can’t seem to control their kids.  God, this grace of yours is great.  I don’t have to change any of my behavior, because you will forgive me all my misbehavior.  Isn’t that what Jesus died to do, to forgive me?  God, tomorrow I’ll be back with another bushel basket full.  God, the hymn is right, it is amazing grace.”

“No, no, no,” replies St. Paul.  “You’ve got it all wrong.  You have died to sin; Christ is now in control of your life.  So how can you keep on living in sin?  You’ve been united with Christ in his death and shall be united with him in a resurrection, why would you now want to separate yourself from him?  Rather ‘walk in newness of light.’”

 Walking denotes action.  It means getting up out of our lounge chair and taking action that benefits another person.  As we read in Old Testament lesson, the servant of the Lord is one who does not break a bruised reed or put out a burning wick.  Who do you know that is bruised by life and left weakened in spirit and body?  Who do you that know could use a word of encouragement?  It might be as simple of “letting your fingers do the walking,” as you punch in their telephone number or send them a text.  Who do you know whose faith is a “faintly burning wick?”  Contact them and give them a listen ear, rather than a piece of your mind.  We have parents who have to work Sunday morning.  Children need a ride to worship and Sunday school, so that they too hear and be grounded in the newness of life.  It won’t happen unless we take action.

  The last Saturday of this month we have a day in which we will gather to offer ideas for ministry here at Immanuel and in the community in which we are located.  We have a vision of “Providing God’s House as a Home.” Walk in the door on January 29^th and offer your thoughts and your time and effort.  The next evening we have Room at the Inn.  Walk in the newness of life and offer to stay overnight.

Pastor Fleming Rutledge writes, “The last word for us is not death, but life.  Human life, in and of itself, is of infinite value because eternal life is what God intends for all his children.  The honoring of life, therefore, is proper for all Christians at all times…”  Therefore, “Yield yourself to God as men and women who have been brought from death to life.”       

 

 

 

                   

Providing God's House as a Home

2^nd Sunday after Christmas, 2010 Immanuel Chapel

Luke 2:48b – 49, His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

  The song, “I’ll be home for Christmas,” written in 1943, expressed a yearning of a nation whose troops were abroad in Europe and the Pacific, fighting on two fronts.  That song still catches a longing in nearly everyone for a place to call home.

            Today, the Lord Jesus, the Christ of God, goes home, not for Christmas, but for Passover.  It was in the season of spring that the group from Nazareth made pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate God’s great act of salvation in freeing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt more than thousand years before. Within that contingent, were Joseph, Mary and twelve – year- old Jesus.  It was during this journey that Jesus came home to the temple in Jerusalem, His Father’s house.

            In the weeks ahead we will move forward in our Mission Revitalization Initiate toward providing God’s house as a home.  What does it means for God’s house to be a home?

            God’s House is for all people.  Thursday, the twelfth day of Christmas, is Epiphany.   We remember God’s providing a star to lead wise men from the east to worship the child Jesus.  They fulfilled the word of Isaiah that “nations shall come to your light.”   Like the Wise Men, we are Gentiles.  We are among the nations upon whom the light of Christ has shined and the glory of the Lord has dawned. Isaiah adds, “Look around and see…Nations are assembling.”  The nations are assembling right here in north St. Louis County from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Liberia and from around the world.  We don’t even have to go outside our community.  

We only need to heed Jesus words from later in this epiphany season, “You are the light of the world…don’t put your light under a bushel.”  Another week our Lord will call disciples to, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  On Trinity Sunday Jesus command us, “Go…and make disciples of all nations.”  Everyone, no matter what age, color, nationality, economic or social status is a candidate for finding a home in God’s House.  After all, you and I are not natural born citizens of God’s household.  We were adopted into God’s family that we might be at home in the house of God and make God’s house a home for others.

            People in our society are searching for something or someone upon which to build their lives.  On a foggy Christmas Eve one year a man showed up at a pastor’s office.  The pastor and the man talked for awhile.  Not long after the visitor left, the police appeared asking the pastor if he had seen any strangers.   A man claiming to be Jesus had escaped from a mental hospital. The pastor related his experience and the police left.  That evening while the congregation celebrated the birth of Jesus, Son of God and Savior, the police were out in the fog searching for Jesus.

            People are searching in a fog for meaning to life.  Some are even searching for a church home.  Such searching does not easily find success.  It certainly didn’t for Mary and Joseph.  Think of the advantages they had.  The angel of the lord had appeared to both Mary and Joseph telling of their Savior son.  Elizabeth had stood in awe that the mother of her Lord would visit her.  Shepherds visited them and told them of the angel’s message, that a Savior, Christ the Lord had been born to Joseph and Mary.  Wise Men worshiped him.  When at about forty days of age Jesus made his first visit to his Father’s house Simeon took Jesus in his arms blessing God and saying, “My eyes have seen your salvation.”  Anna appeared and began praising God telling everyone of the redeemer.  How could it be that after living with Jesus for twelve years Mary and Jospeh did not know where to look for him?  They didn’t know where to look because they didn’t understand, even when he told them.

            We too, have this great gift of God’s love in Jesus Christ.  We were assured once again this morning that through his death and resurrection our sins are wiped out.  We bear the name as a congregation of Immanuel, a constant reminder that God in Jesus Christ is always with us.  We have the assurance of his presence in our baptism.  We dine with him and of him in Holy Communion.  We carry the hope in faith that one day in the resurrection we will be in His presence forever and eat at the banquet table of his eternal feast.  We have found that in this house, God has provided us a home.  As St. Paul wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”

            Our calling is to discover through prayer, discussion, planning and taking action, how to provide this house of God as a home where people of the community are welcomed into the household of God.  God’s word guides us.

            How old was Jesus in our text?  Yes, 12 years old.  God’s house and God’s family is a place where young people are welcome to come, ask questions and find answers.  It’s a place where young people are welcome to worship, learn, listen, and have their voice heard.

            It’s a place where infants and children are welcomed, finding a home in this house, washed in baptism and received into God’s family.  It’s a place to begin life in Christ and to grow in that life throughout the years.

            When Simeon took the infant Jesus in his arms he sang, “Now let your servant depart in peace for my eyes have seen your salvation.”  Immanuel carries the promise in its name that God is with us from the cradle to the grave.  What better place to be brought when we have departed this life, than to the place where life in Christ began, at the baptism font.  What a great memory and comfort it was at my Dad’s funeral in March when children, grandchildren and great grandchildren gathered around his coffin in our little country church and sang in four part harmony, “I know that My Redeemer Lives.”  We had also gathered around the baptism font at which my parents and many of their descendants have been baptized.  

            It’s here in God’s house that Jesus is welcomed by the faithful as Jesus was at his first comings to His Father’s house.  It’s here in God’s house that we come for prayer and thanksgiving, for Jesus declared his Father’s House was a house of prayer, not a Wal-Mart or Walgreens.  It’s here in God’s House that the Holy Spirit works through God’s word and his sacraments.  It’s here in God’s House from which we go to tell of God’s redemption in Jesus, carrying out Jesus command to love our neighbor as our self in word, thought and deed.

            The challenge before us is to focus on “Providing God’s House as a home” a place of welcome to the world assembled around us where they can say, “Come and see,” Jesus. “Find a home here.”