Pastor Ron Jansen

Carved on God's Palms

Eighth a Epiphany, 2011 Immanuel Lutheran Chapel, Isaiah 49:8-16a

 49:15-16a, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.  Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”

            I vicared in Oshawa, Ontario in 1965-66.  A large portion of the population was “displaced persons,” from Europe after World War II.   The church secretary, at age 16, had hid in a barn for three weeks for fear of the Russian.  Her husband said, “I never want to be hungry again.”  Another young man fled East Germany with some friends.  Some did not escape the guns of the border guards.

            Violence and exile are a common theme across the world.  Some here have experienced it.  Some here are descendants of those brought to this country by force.

 Israel of old knew violence and exile.  Listen to Jeremiah’s lament spoken through the voice the city of Jerusalem, “How lonely sits the city that was full of people!  How like a widow has she become.  The Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions…all the people groan as they search for bread.  Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?  A comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit.  Infant babies… cry to their mothers.   Their life is poured out on their mother’s bosom.  The children beg for food but no one gives to them.”

            Terrible are the injuries that humanity afflicts upon the earth and one another. They are rooted in the “multitude of transgressions” that every human being commits against God and against his fellow creatures.

 St. Paul quotes Isaiah, “In a favorable time I listened to you and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”  Paul continues, “Now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”  Despite the ways of the world, despite our own sliding back into sin, in Christ we are a new creation.  The old has passed away and the new has come.  Through Christ, God has changed our relationship with himself from alienation to reconciliation.  Indeed, “God put the world square with himself through Christ, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he has done.” (Eugene Peterson).

Yes, God has an assignment for his people, whether it’s Israel of old or the new creation in Christ gathered here this morning.  The Redeemer, so deeply despised and abhorred that He was hung on a cross makes us a light to the nations.  We beckon those who exiled from God to “Come out,” of the prison of sin and live in the new life God has created in Christ through the forgiveness of transgressions.  God assigned us to call those who live in the dark despair of unbelief to claim the changed relationship with God that is brought about through Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as we pass through life that we have no reason to be anxious and filled with worry.  Isaiah pictures us as a flock of sheep traveling home from a long distant barren pasture.  As God had done for Israel in the time of the exodus, so He will do again to the scattered flock of God.  He will feed them and provide springs of water to quench their thirst along the way.  God will take care of the redeemed.  In our gospel lesson Jesus says to the newly created people, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink.”  In fact, don’t worry about tomorrow.  We have enough trouble today.  Your heavenly Father knows what you need.  Seek first his kingdom and his uprightness and everything will be added to you.  St. Paul writes to the Corinthians that as a servant of Christ and steward of God’s mysteries it’s of little matter whether they judge him or not.  It’s the Lord’s judgment that counts. He and his companions aren’t bothered by being regarded as the scum of the earth and garbage. What is important is that the people to whom they minister become rich in grace, wise in Christ and strong in Him.

We live in a day of victory.  Therefore, the whole creation sings for joy.  Heavens and earth, birds and lilies rejoice because God has comforted his people and have compassion on his afflicted.

But God’s people can’t let go of their doubt, “You have forsaken me.  You have forgotten me.”  How many times have we not heard and said, “If God were God he would not let such and such happen.”  Despite the forgiveness we receive every week, despite the good news of salvation preached and read, despite the body and blood of Christ present in the bread and wine, despite the promise to be present with us always, despite our daily food, when the circumstances of life turn against us we wonder about God.  We wonder what we have done to deserve loss, turmoil and loneliness.  We wonder whether God cares and knows about us in our life whether we are teens, or parents or elderly.  We put our sense that God has abandoned us above the comfort and compassion he shows us daily and once and for all in the cross of Christ.

Our text has one of the most beautiful expressions of God’s love for us.  “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?” Such a thing is unthinkable, yet when Jerusalem was under siege mothers cannibalized their own babies to stay alive.  “For God such forgetting and forsaking is not even a possibility, for the Lord’s commitment and compassion are stronger and more intense than that of any nursing mother.” (Bruegemann)  God cannot forget his people even when they are in exile, from him in sin or from other human beings.  God abandoned a human being only once, when he forsook his own Son on the cross.  The only words from the cross   in the Gospel of Matthew are, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”  God refused comfort and compassion for Jesus Christ so that he could show comfort and compassion to us.

God also told his people, “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” God carved us into his hands so that he cannot forget.  If we have a scar from some surgery and injury, we need only look at it to be reminded.  Might we even say that the scar on God’s palms is that of a nail driven through the hand of Jesus Christ?  God cannot forget us, nor abandon us. Rather he cares comforts and has compassion upon us in our afflictions, that we might have comfort those who are afflicted.  Elsewhere Isaiah writes that God’s people have written on their hands, “The Lord’s.”  We belong to the Lord.  When two people get married, they exchange rings as a pledge and token of wedded love and faithfulness.  All either spouse needs to do is look at their left hand and be reminded whom and whose they are. In Christ, God committed himself to us from now unto eternity.  We belong to God from now unto eternity.  God is ours.  We are God’s.

                      

God's Temple

Seventh Sunday a Epiphany, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, I Cor. 3:10-23

I Corinthians 3:10b-11, Let each one take care how he builds upon it.  For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid.

 My name is Paul.  On behalf of Temple Tours I welcome you to God’s Temple.  I was the managing architect of this project.  Sometimes people call me St. Paul.  Actually, I’m simply a person whom God called to preach Christ crucified.  Through Christ you are as much of a saint as I am.  Before we start the tour, you should be aware that this tour will be unlike any temple tour you may have ever taken. God’s Temple is not like any other house of God.

Our first stop will be to consider the detailed drawings that the architectural company of Father, Son and Holy Spirit developed for God’s Temple.  The outline of the drawings forms a cross.  The lines of the cross are drawn with grace and peace.  Grace is God showing favor to people who don’t deserve God’s favor.   Grace is God showering forgiveness upon people who don’t deserve forgiveness.  With grace comes peace.  Peace is well-being, oneness, reconciliation and salvation with God through Jesus Christ.  Christ not only made peace but in him peace is found.

The Chief Architect gave me the great privilege of laying the foundation for God’s Temple.  God designed the temple according to his own wisdom.   I laid the foundation according to God’s vision.  The foundation is not concrete or stone, but the Stone that all other temple builders rejected.  God’s material was Christ crucified.  God chose what was weak and considered foolish to build what is substantial and long lasting.   He chose, His Son, Jesus Christ who died on a cross as a criminal and as one who blasphemed God’s name.

  You heard in the Old Testament lesson, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”  In The Gospel lesson Jesus says, “You…must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  As you sometimes say, “good luck with that.”    We are marred by the imperfection of sin.    Sin means that we don’t dare get anywhere near God lest we be annihilated.  It would be like throwing a sheet of paper into a roaring fire. Remember those three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who were foolish enough to worship God even though the king had forbidden it?  They were bound and thrown into a fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than usual.  Yet, when the king and his people looked in what did they see?  They saw four men walking around in the furnace without as much as a hair of their beards singed.  You were bound in sin and headed for the fire of God’s judgment.  God sent Christ into the world to rescue you.

Christ crucified is the only foundation upon which to build God’s Temple.  In fact a temple of God, not resting on the foundation of Christ crucified is not God’s Temple.    Furthermore, anyone building on the foundation of Christ must take care how he builds.  Christ crucified is the standard.  In the day when Christ returns God will judge whether what is built measures up.  Whether the work endures depends not on the test of time, but on the test at the end of time.  If anyone builds God’s Temple on the foundation of Christ crucified with anything other than the message of Jesus Christ, he builds with flimsy material.    Success in worldly terms is not the measure.  Making things exciting for people is not the measure.  If a temple is built around someone’s personality, it is a shaky temple.  If a certain style of worship, whether traditional or contemporary is the building material it is a building of uncertain material.  If survival is the goal, it will end up short of God’s standard for His Temple.   The builder will be saved, but he will see what he thought was God’s Temple perishing.  He built on the basis of what he thought wise and not the powerful message of salvation through Jesus Christ.  This is what I wrote to the Christians in Corinth, Greece, ”to the church of God…made holy by Christ Jesus and called to be holy, with all who anywhere call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  These words were not read to a congregation of 10,000 meeting in a grand worship center.  God’s Temple was a small group of people crowded into believers’ homes.   God’s Temple in Corinth was not much to look at, “Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”   Built on the foundation of Christ crucified, God’s Holy Spirit called them to faith and made them wise unto salvation.  God had given them the power to be God’s children and live forever.  God’s Spirit had united them as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, the king on the cross and victor over death.

As we continue our tour of God’s Temple, I want you, Immanuel Lutheran Chapel to take a look at yourself.  You are God’s Temple.  God’s Spirit dwells in you.  I’m not talking about you as individuals; I’m talking of you as Immanuel Lutheran Chapel, God’s Temple in whom God’s Spirit dwells.  Your baptism did not simply make you one with Christ, but one with one another in Christ.  God’s Temple is not merely me and Jesus, but all who gather here at 11100 Old Halls Ferry Road.   God’s Temple is more than you who meet at this location. God’s Temple is you plus “all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.”   Martin Luther in his explanation to the third article writes, “even as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”  The Holy Spirit is not only operating among us as individuals, leading us to believe and follow Jesus, but he works among us together as brothers and sisters in Christ.  It’s the Holy Spirit who has bonded us together with God’s Son, Jesus Christ and our heavenly Father.  It’s the Holy Spirit who has bonded us together as God’s Temple, present anywhere the goodness and the good news of Christ crucified is preached.

Therefore, woe to anyone who destroys this temple.  You, Immanuel Chapel, are God’s Temple in whom God’s Spirit dwells.  Once again, I’m not speaking of this building but you as God’s Temple built upon the foundation of Christ crucified.  To destroy the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit is to sabotage faith and trust in Christ’s promises and thus drive out the Holy Spirit.

“But this temple is holy and you are that temple.”  You are built of the wisdom and power of God.  The Holy Spirit dwells in God’s Temple giving us the grace to understand God’s grace in Christ.  The Holy Spirit works among us leading us to see and belief that in the piece of bread and the bit of wine we receive at the communion railing is the very body and blood of Christ.  The Holy Spirit works among us, in spite of our sins and the undermining work of Satan, to enable us to see in one another God’s Temple built upon the foundation of Christ.  Only Christ Jesus will keep us guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We can count on God who has called us into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ.  He is faithful.

Immanuel Lutheran Chapel, God’s Temple,  you don’t lack anything, because God has given you every spiritual gift while we carry out his ministry, even as we wait for the day of the Lord to come.  You are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.                 

          

 

    

 

Only God Gives the Growth

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany I Corinthians 3:1-9

 I Cor. 3:7, “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”

Three declarations:

 1.  A person cannot be a Christian without the Holy Spirit.

2. The best thing that ever happened to you is death.

3. Those whom God calls to preach Christ crucified are nothing.

 

1. A person cannot be a Christian without the Holy Spirit.

           Before God began creation He had a plan for our glorification.  Following our inglorious take charge of our own lives plan, everyone dies.  We all, like Jack and Jill tumble down, breaking our crowns.  We all in Humpty Dumpty fashion, have taken a great fall.  The entire king’s cavalry can’t put us together again.  No matter how much we try to straighten up and fly right, the glide path of our lives is that of a dump truck.  We may be able to patch ourselves up and make some temporary repairs, but the pot holes in our lives will keep breaking open.

           God is not into the patch up and repair business.  God is in the salvation business bringing into being a new creation where Jack and Jill wear the crown of life, Humpty Dumpty is made whole and dump trucks soar to glory.  God revealed his hidden plan in this present age, not in the brilliance of our minds, nor in the power of our strength but in the weakness of Jesus on a hill far away on old rugged cross, upon which was fastened the crucified Christ.  Through Jesus crucifixion, God provided eternal salvation in place of eternal condemnation.  In Jesus crucified, God overcame our wisdom and our power to take charge of our own lives, resulting in death.  God put Jesus in charge of our lives, resulting in life.  The only way to grasp God’s wisdom and power of the cross is by faith.  We believe “Jesus is Lord,” through the Holy Spirit.  Thus God makes us spiritual.

2. The best thing that has ever happened to you is death.  Now death doesn’t sound like a good thing let alone the best thing.  When you are dead you are completely helpless.  You are unable to contribute anything.  You are a descendant of the ones who thought God really didn’t mean it when He said, “Don’t eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil lest you die.”  You said, “I’m in charge now God, just watch me control my destiny.”  God says, “The soul that sins shall die.”  We prefer Greek philosophy’s immortality of the soul, that way we aren’t really dead.  Paul writes that you are dead in trespasses and sins.  You have stepped over the line where God told you not to go and you can’t get back on the right side.  You have missed the target that God set up for you in the Ten Commandments.    You must be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.  Death rules.

          Therefore, the best thing you can do for yourself is to listen to the Holy Spirit talking to you and admit you are dead.  You must become nothing so that God can create a new you.  After all God started out with nothing and ended up with a universe filled with life and wonder beyond imagination.  What were you, say, in 1811?  Nothing.  You didn’t exist.  Yet, God managed to bring you into existence without any help from yourself.  You are dead in trespasses and sins, you have a soul that sinned and therefore will die.  Our forbearers the fruit of the tree of good and evil only to discover that its fruit poisoned everyone’s life and you are dead.   Alcohol Anonymous advocates, “Let go and let God.”  After all, nothing is all God needs to accomplish anything.

The good news is that you have already died and were buried and Jesus met you in your death.  It happened at your baptism.  In the waters of baptism you were “buried with Christ in his death’ then and there.  Therefore, you’ve been dead since you were born, but that is what has given you life.  One day Jesus healed a paralytic on the Sabbath.   Jesus declared that whoever believes in him has eternal life and has passed from death to life.  He continued, “An hour is coming, and now is here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and live.”  This promise is not for those who think they have life through their power and wit.  The promise is for those who are dead and know they can’t do anything about it.  The dead will hear Jesus voice and live.  Jesus meets you in your death of trespasses and sins, in your dead soul, and gives life.  Jesus does this because on the cross he entered into your death with life. In baptism you enter into his death and life.

3.  Those whom God calls to preach Christ crucified are nothing.

          The problem in Corinth was one to which the church still succumbs.  We concentrate on the one whom God sends to preach that message.  But who are these people whom God calls to fill his pulpit.  St. Paul calls himself and the whole lot of us, nothing but servants through whom God’s people believe.  We are field hands in God’s field.  We are nothing.  Listen, “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”  Those us who enter the field of Immanuel Chapel may till the ground, plant the seed and irrigate.  But it’s God who will bring the growth and provide the harvest. 

To concentrate on the person of the pastor is to lose our focus on the person of the cross.  It’s to abandon acting like spiritual people and act like mere humans.  For anyone who occupies this pulpit must admit with you “I am a poor miserable sinner deserving God’s punishment now and forever.” He is like any man or woman in the congregation who has been angry with his brother or sister and is guilty of murder.  He is like any man or woman in the pew, whose eyes have caused him to sin and deserves to be thrown into hell.

It isn’t only members of congregations who like to compare pastors, but so do pastors.  At a conference of Missouri Synod pastors held in Brainerd, Minnesota more than 35 years ago, Martin Lieske of the Minnesota South district said, “We have thousands of good and fine pastors in our church.  There are only two bad pastors in our whole church, the one who precedes you at your church and the one who will succeed you when you take a call elsewhere.

Whether we occupy the pulpit or the pew we are unworthy of God’s grace.  Yet how marvelous is his love.  I share with you an adapted section of a sermon preached by A.E. Hageman more than sixty years ago.

Alone, without any help from us, the Son of God fought to the death to rescue all mankind from death.  Yet, He chooses humans to distribute the spoils of his victory.

Alone the Son of God drank the bitter cup of suffering to redeem mankind from sin and death.  Yet He gives to sinful mortals, the high privilege of offering the cup of salvation to a dying world.

Alone the Son of God labored with bloody sweat for the salvation of a fallen world.  Yet the wages of his hard labor, are offered to sinners by saved sinners.

Alone the Son of God, under great shame, sorrow and provocation poured out his blood on the barren cursed field of humanity and transformed it into fertile field to bear fruit of eternal life.  Yet he gives the honor of planting, watering and reaping the harvest to you and me.

What more need be said, except, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.”  Amen. 

           

      

  

 

                 

 

Let your Light Shine

Fifth Sunday a. Epiphany, Immanuel Chapel Matthew 5:14-16

            Last Sunday, when storm predications threatened power outages, Becky and I stocked up on supplies at the nearby Johnnies Market.  I also checked our supply of batteries and Becky bought candles.  We did not want to be like the people of Israel described in Isaiah 59:10, “We grope like blind men along a wall, feeling our way like those who have no eyes.”

            Israel is groping like blind men because they have lost the light and are stranded in darkness.  It isn’t that they were short on candles.  They had lost the light of God’s grace and mercy.  They had been taken into exile in Babylon.  “We hope for light, and behold, darkness and for brightness but we walk in gloom.”     God’s mercy has not caught up to them.  They were stumbling at noon like it was nightfall.  They were under God’s judgment for their failure to do what was right toward those who needed deliverance and mercy.

            Our Old Testament lesson lists the acts of grace and mercy.   Share your bread with the hungry.  Bring the homeless poor into your house.  When, you see the naked, cover him.  Don’t turn your face away from your own flesh.  “Then shall your light break forth like the dawn.”

It isn’t that their deeds will cause God’s light to dawn upon them.  God’s light long ago dawned on them when he chose Israel as his own, and accompanied their forefathers in the desert as they made their way to the Promised Land.  God’s glory led them by a cloud by day and stood guard in a pillar of fire by night.  Israel, was poor in spirit when God brought them up out of the land of slavery, leading them to sing, “The Lord is my strength…he has become my salvation…the Lord will reign forever and ever.”

  God’s blessings go hand in hand with doing deeds of grace and mercy toward those poor in spirit who need to be uplifted to see God’s light of hope at the end of the tunnel.  It does not compute that those who have received God’s deliverance from their own poverty and slavery to sin should then leave those in need stranded like motorists this week on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.  Those blessed by God become sources of blessing to others.  That was Israel’s purpose extending all the way back to Abraham.        

It is not God’s will that anyone live under his judgment forever.  Therefore, we soon read, “Then his own arm brought… salvation, and his righteousness up held (His servant).”  God promises that a Redeemer will come to Zion.  In the very next chapter the prophet announces, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”

 Israel’s story is our story.  We are the poor in spirit who have been blessed with the kingdom of heaven.  We are the blessed ones who hungered and thirsted for God to deliver us from the dominion of darkness in which we were bound as slaves to sin.  We are the ones of whom Jesus spoke as he opened his ministry, that those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.

  Last Wednesday was the Day of purification of Mary and Presentation of Jesus.  That day the Lord came to the temple of His heavenly Father carried in the arms of his earthly father.  In his Father’s house he was met by Simeon who sang a song we sing often after Holy Communion.  Simeon was ready to walk into the “shadow of death” because his eyes had seen God’s salvation in the person of the 7 week old Jesus.  Simeon declared him to be “A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”  What Israel of old had seen in the cloud and the pillar of fire in the wilderness is now contained in the flesh of Jesus, the presence of almighty God in all his grace and mercy.

The Almighty God contained in the flesh of Jesus stumbled to Calvary under the weight of his cross.  Though, more than the weight of the cross pressed him down.    God had added our sins to that instrument of execution.  As he hung on the cross, those around him stumbled at noon as if it were nightfall.  That was a symbol of our sins that separate us from God as we stumble through life.  As a result, justice was far from him, but near to us.  Righteousness did not overtake him, but it was coming to us speedily.  No one would rescue Him from death, but he would rescue us. He was the promised Redeemer.  He was light and the glory of the Lord, that dawned upon us.

Jesus, crucified and arisen, turns to us in our gospel lesson this morning and says,    “You are the light of the world.”  The Greek here is emphatic.  It should be “You, you, you are the light of the world, because you are my disciples.”  You can’t get away from it. It won’t do any good to duck behind a pew because you are like a city set on a hill, and the light can’t be hidden.  You are light because Christ has made you the Light.  He has made you the light that gives light to everyone else around you.  We hear it said of certain people, “When he or she walks into a room they light up the whole room.”  That’s you.  You are that person, because you are a disciple of Jesus.   When a light is lit it lights up the whole room.  That’s you.  Peter, Andrew, James and John were by the shore of the Sea of Galilee when Jesus called them to be his disciples, his lights.  You were by the shore of the sea of the baptism font when Jesus called you to be his disciple, his light.

So how are to be lights in the world?  It’s as simple as the song we will sing a bit later says, “This little gospel light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”  In Jesus words, “Let your light shine before others.”  You are light and the sole purpose of light is to light the way for others. We are lights in the ordinary course of events in the day.  For instance, Jesus interprets murder to include anger toward a brother that leads to insulting the person.  Well, if you are about to put your offering envelope in the plate and remember that there is something between yourself and another person, first go and be reconciled to that person and then bring your offering.  Since you have been blessed with mercy, be merciful toward others.  When you come upon someone grieving in some way, comfort them with the comfort by which God has comforted you.  Is there trouble brewing where you work or in church or among your friends or in your family?  Since you have been blessed with peace from God in Christ, act like a child of God and be Christ’s peacemaking disciple.  Are there people around who are acting in devious ways, deceitful and dishonest?  Be pure in heart in any and all circumstances.  Where did I get all these suggestions of how to behave in the presence and company of others?  I took the words right out of Jesus mouth.

You see, the goal of being a light of the world is so that folks will see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.  The Holy Spirit uses   your word and your works to lead others to believe and thus become lights of the world themselves.  In the brightness of Christ’s light, our light will shine for the blessing and salvation of the world.  You don’t even have to check your batteries or turn your light on, you are light.

“You, you, you, let your gospel light shine.  Let it shine, let it shine, all the time.”