Pastor Ron Jansen

The Day the World Quaked

Easter, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Matthew 28:1-10

  Let me begin by speaking to those of us who were here at church on Good Friday evening.  We shudda taken cover.  My wife commented this morning, “net time we should pray less and run more.”  I could speak this morning about the mighty storms we have had the past week.  However, Matthew reports another powerful force that affects lives, as we have seen in Japan in March.  “And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.” 

            It was before the crack of dawn on the first day of the week that two women were walking toward the tomb.  They had been on Golgotha where Friday Jesus had been crucified between two robbers.  The women were present that evening when Joseph of Arimethea laid Jesus body in the tomb and rolled a stone in front of the entrance.  Now the women were on their way back to Jesus tomb.  But they would be too late.

            Before dawn’s rosy red fingers reached above the horizon, three things occurred.  An earthquake, an angel and a rolling stone.  Friday evening as the church darkened during the Tenebrae service the sky lit up with lightning and rumbled with thunder.  Early that first Easter morn, rumbling did not emanate from the sky, but from the quaking earth.  Lightning did not flash in the sky but in the appearance of the angel.  The grating of stone rolling over stone rasped the air. 

 The guards Pilate posted to secure and seal the tomb also quaked in fear and fell down like dead men.  All the security measures to ensure that Jesus body stay in the grave failed. Neither stones, nor guards nor seals nor death itself could keep God from fulfilling Jesus promise that on the third day he would rise.  With the guards fainting dead away and the women still on their way, the only one who witnessed the resurrection was the angel sitting on the stone, flashing bright as the heavenly host had the night Jesus was born.

            This was the dawn of the first day of a new creation, and it was good.  It was very good.  Now, the age of resurrection began burst forth.  Now, is the age of life breaking in..  Now, the age of forgiveness was breaking forth.  The reign of death was broken.  Now the Holy Spirit energizes life through the water of baptism, in the name of Jesus Christ.  It was the day of the resurrection of the Lord and the hope for our day of resurrection also dawned.

            When the women arrived at the grave, they too were filled with fear.  The angel spoke the same message that calmed shepherds abiding in the field the night of Jesus birth, “Do not be afraid.”  Now Christmas and Easter are brought together.  To shepherds watching their flocks by night the angel announced, “Unto you is born…this day, a Savior Christ the Lord.”  To the women the angel said, “You seek Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here…he has risen.”  A Savior born is now the Savior risen.

             On Friday, God had given a preview of things to come. Even as Jesus cried out and yielded up his life, the earth quaked and the rocks split, the curtain of the temple was torn in two.  And the tombs of many who had looked forward to the coming of the Christ were opened and their bodies raised.  As life in our gardens bursts out of the ground in the spring, so life could not contain itself on that Good Friday.  It could not wait until Sunday.  The power of God’s resurrection burst forth among the saints who trusted God’s promises as it will for us one day.

            The English writer C.S. Lewis gives us a picture of the resurrection in the “Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”  Aslan the lion had been hoisted up on the Great Stone table bound and muzzled.  Susan and Lucy the two girls in the story could not bear to watch from their hiding place in the bushes as the witch killed the bound lion with a knife.    It was still quite dark when mice began gnawing of the ropes.  While the girls were looking out to sea as the edge of the sun was rising over the horizon, “They heard from behind them a loud noise-a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s plate.”  In the growing light they saw, “The Great Stone table was broken into two pieces…and there was no Aslan”   Suddenly they heard a voice behind them.  They saw Aslan alive.  Overcome by joy the girls romped, ran and rolled in the grass as they burst forth in laughter.  But Aslan said they had further work to do.  With the girls on his back he raced to the castle of the White Witch where hundreds of beings had been turned into stone statues.  In the presence of Aslan, life returned as the statues turned from stone to flesh once more.

            There have been countless earthquakes and aftershocks around the world,   but none as powerful and life changing as the resurrection of Jesus.  The aftershocks continue to this day.  They started with a few women at the tomb.  The angel told them, “Go quickly and tell his disciples.”  Filled with fear and great joy they ran to tell the disciples.  However, Jesus met them on the way saying, “Good Morning!”  They grabbed hold of him and worshipped him.

But Jesus knew there was work to done.  Stony hearts needed to made alive again and set to beat to the rhythm of a new and eternal life in Christ.  He would see his disciples in Galilee.  From there the aftershock of the resurrection spread to Samaria, Galilee, and the Mediterranean and beyond.  It has continued to vibrate in you through your baptism.  In baptism a tsunami of God’s grace flooded your life destroying sin and death, bringing instead, the forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit and promise of life and eternal salvation in Jesus name.

  Psalm 114 predicted, “Tremble, o earth, at the presence of the Lord.” Someone has written, “The earth which trembled with sorrow at the death of Christ has, as it were leaped for joy at His resurrection.”      We also read this morning, “Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ receives forgiveness of sin through his name.”  We have work to do in enlarging the joy that comes in the seismic event of Jesus resurrection.

A plane had just taken off when a man pulled out his pocket New Testament and began to read.  Eventually the man sitting next to him remarked:  “I don’t go much for religion.”  Oh?” said the other.  “Well, I surely feel you’re missing something.”  “Well,” replied the man in a nettled tone, “I don’t see much reason in believing in a Christ that’s been dead 2,000 years.”  “What’s that?” replied the other.  “Christ-dead?  Why, that can’t be!  I was just talking to Him a few minutes ago.”

Do you still feel the earthquake of Christ’s resurrection rumbling through your life?  You too have been raised with Christ and your life is hidden in God.  Through your Christian life, through your baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, through your communication with God in prayer, through the life of Immanuel Chapel, the earthquake continues to rumble and spread.  The world looks at our lives as evidence for Christ’s reverberation.

The earthquake will continue until it is ended with a trumpet call when our life will be revealed and we will live with Christ in glory.                

We Cannot Walk Away

Good Friday, 2011 Matthew 27:24-26

Steve Thayer, in his mystery novel Saint Mudd, writes a scene set in rural St. Cloud Minnesota during World War I.

            The German immigrant family, was sitting down to supper when the screen door was torn off its hinges and five neighbors burst in.  The intruders were yelling, “…Kaiser lover” and “German scum.”  They did not know, and did not care, that the man they were wrestling from the house had a son serving in America’s elite Rainbow Division fighting in Europe.

            His daughter Roxanne was nine.  Her mother grabbed her and hurried her through the broken door.  Outside, her father had his hands tied behind his back, with a rope around his neck.  He was being led, sometimes dragged down the dirt road that led to the railroad tracks.

            It was a hot muggy summer night of the kind when the skin burns until late and the mosquitoes are thicker than dark.  Tears were streaming down her mother’s face.  Roxanne remembered the terror, repeating “Daddy” over and over again as they ran down the road after him.  They stayed a stone’s throw behind the sordid parade.  In his broken English her father kept shouting over his shoulder, “Go back home.  Take Roxy and go back home.”  But they never went back to the farm house.  They followed their man to a clearing by the track where more men and a bucket of hot tar were waiting for him.

            Her father was stripped naked, thrown to the ground, and beaten.  He pleaded to the sky, “Bitte, Gott, nicht vor meinen Frauen.  Please, God, not in front of my women.”

Her mother held her close and tried to cover Roxanne’s eyes but she witnessed everything, she watched others dip sticks in the potbelly bucket and coat his skin with tar.  She stared bewildered as they sprinkled blood stained feather over this fallen body.  They laid a splintered railroad tie across his shoulders and strapped his arms to it.  Then he was stood up and pushed over the sharp cinders to the tracks.  To nine year old Roxanne he looked like the pictures on the Sunday school walls, his arms forming a cross, the blood and sweat trickling down his face, his sad eyes begging for help, knowing there was no help.  The St. Cloud dirt farmer was chased down the tracks with sticks thrashing his buttocks until they bled.  This went on for a half-mile before he finally collapsed.

            We’re across the line,” one of the men declared.  “Don’t ever come back to Stearns County, sauerkraut.”   It was finished.  The men walked away.

            Mother and daughter helped their man to the edge of a swampy lake and tried their best to clean him up.  They dressed him in his underwear as he lay on the soggy back, crying, blood running out of one nostril. Mosquitoes hummed and large black flies buzzed about his wounds.  It was the first time Roxanne had seen a grown man cry.

The Gospel of Matthew is not a mystery novel but is the account of the mystery of God’s steadfast love revealed in the very real life and death of His son Jesus.  The people who manhandled and abused him did not know nor did they care that the one they were pummeling and leading to his crucifixion was God’s love for humanity and God’s salvation of humanity from all the atrocities committed by humanity.

            Like the men who walked away from the German immigrant dirt farmer, so those who participated in the atrocity of Jesus crucifixion walked away from it.  It was over and done wit, as far as they were concerned and as far as God was concerned.  Ironically, they had just celebrated Passover the evening before, where they praised and thanked God for saving them from bondage, slavery and death.  They walked away from God’s Son dying on the cross in order to get ready to worship the heavenly Father that Friday evening at sunset.  But they could not walk away from it.  They had called out during Jesus’ trial that his blood be upon them and their children.  They were guilty of the blood of Jesus who was God’s sacrifice for the sin which they had perpetrated.  In TV cop show speak, they were the perps.  Pilate could not wash his hands of his responsibility.  Though he refused to take part in Jesus’ crucifixion, by doing nothing to stop it, he too was guilty of Jesus’ blood.  The water that washed his hands did not cleanse his heart.  That he allowed the atrocity to proceed in order to restore peace would not wash.  His innocence was compromised by the actions of his soldiers who beat Jesus, and mocked him before running him out of the city to Golgotha, the place of the skull.

            Who is able to claim innocence for the blood of Jesus?  Who is able to walk away from the responsibility for his death?  Not Peter who denied him.  Not Judas who betrayed innocent blood.  Not the rest of the disciples who fled.  Not the religious leaders who held council meetings on how to get rid of him.  Who is innocent?  No one.  Not you.  Not I.  The Reproaches we will sing cut to the heart as Christ speaks to us, “What have I done to you, O my people, wherein have I offended you?  Answer me?”

            We have much for which to answer.  Every time we have let evil be done and have done nothing we become responsible for Jesus’ blood.  The sin of omission is as serious as the sin of commission.  Every time we have mistreated another person in word, thought or deed, Jesus blood is upon us.  Every time we have done anything to hinder his ministry, we have crucified him again.  Every time we have made fun of one of the least of our brothers and sisters we have mocked Christ.  Every time we have fled Jesus rather than confess him, every time we have denied being one of his disciples either by our silence or by our tongue, his blood is on us.

            Here is the Good thing about this Friday.  The blood of Jesus shed this day is also good for us.  For living in faith under the cross of Christ, every time we do something against Christ the blood of Christ covers our sin.  Every time we do or say or think something hateful, the steadfast love of God forgives us because of Jesus’ blood.  In the end we who watch all the going on this day can do nothing other than confess with the Centurion, “Truly this was the Son of God.”  And in humble and hearty thanksgiving follow Jesus to his resurrection.     

 

The Drama of Salvation

Palm/Passion Sunday, 2011, Immanuel Chapel

Phil. 2:5, Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…

            This week, in the drama of our salvation, Jesus stands at center stage.  Jesus arrives in Jerusalem hailed with Hosannas.  Jesus teaches in the temple. Jesus institutes Holy Communion at the Passover meal.  Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus on trial.  Jesus stumbles under his cross.  Jesus crucified.  Jesus dies.  Jesus buried in a borrowed tomb.

            However, we also see minor characters out on the edges of the stage that move in and out of the story.  These curious characters are purposely placed to point us to the crucified Christ.

            I draw your attention to the Betrayers: Judas and Peter.  An odd couple.  Both disciples of Jesus.  Both were at Jesus last supper.  Both betrayed him within hours of that meal.  When the test of their faithfulness was most severe and the cost of their discipleship was highest, both Judas and Peter failed.

            Look at Judas over there in the colonnade of the temple, meeting with agents of the high priest, while his Master teaches openly in the temple courts.  He’s about to strike a business deal.  “What will you give me if I deliver him to you?”  To Judas, his Savior was worth thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave.  To the woman who anointed Jesus with expensive oil he was worth everything.  Jesus said of her, “She has done a beautiful thing to me.  She has prepared me for burial.”   To Jesus, you are worth everything.  He gave his all for your sake.  He paid the price not with gold or silver but with his holy precious blood. What is Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, worth to you?  

            Listen to Peter, at the Last Supper, “If I must die with you, I will not deny you.”   See Peter in the courtyard of the high priest, declaiming with curses and oaths, “I do not know the Man.” Listen, to the slap delivered to the face of our blindfolded Savior, “Prophesy to us, you Christ!  Who is it that struck you?”  Listen, to the rooster crowing.  See Peter weeping.

            Judas and Peter, both betrayers of Christ.  Both deniers of Christ.  Both deeply regretful.  Judas spoke for both of them when he said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.”  But from there their paths diverged.  Judas went and hanged himself.  Peter’s sorrow led him to accept Jesus forgiveness.  When we succumb to betraying the Lord for far less than thirty pieces of silver do we take the path of despair or the path of repentance leading to God’s forgiveness?

Look over here, Caiaphas the high priest, and Pilate, the Roman governor, behold power and corruption, weakness and dereliction of duty.  See Caiaphas, the spiritual leader of God’s people, leading the show trial.  Hear the irony in his demand of Jesus, born of the Holy Spirit and of Mary to save His people from their sins, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”  He wants God to swear on a stack of bibles that he is God.  And when Jesus answered that he would see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven, Caiaphas tore his robes.  When God declared that He was God, Caiaphas, called it, “Blasphemy.”  His coconspirators agreed, “He deserves death.”

But Caiaphas must turn to the Roman governor for the death penalty. Cast your attention on Pilate.  What is Pilate to do? The man brought to him is guilty of nothing.  However, a riot is about to break out.  The keeper of the peace of Jerusalem has a way out.  Offer them the choice of the notorious criminal Barabbas or Jesus, who is called Christ.  But the crowd chooses the wrong man.  Jerusalem, city of peace, prefers a disturber of the peace over the God’s Prince of Peace.  “What shall I do with the Jesus?” pleads Pilate. “Let him be crucified.”  To save the peace he released the criminal and sent the innocent One to a criminal’s death.  He washed his hands of the man’s blood, while the people chanted, “His blood be on us and our children.”

 Jesus, blood was indeed on the people, their children and on Pilate, as well as on us and our children.  With Jesus’ blood upon us, we the guilty, are washed clean.  His blood is shed, even for those who called for his crucifixion.

Now look at Barabbas, walking away a free man, while the Man who could free him from the prison of his sins is held prisoner, and delivered for crucifixion.  See Simon, a tourist from North Africa, standing along the way as Jesus carries his cross to the place of the Skull.  When Jesus stumbles, the soldiers conscript Simon.  “Hey you, pick up the cross.”  We don’t know how the passion of our Lord affected Simon or Barabbas.  Whether as an innocent bystander or a jailed criminal, the path of God’s Son may cross ours at the most unexpected moments.  How will we react when freed from our prisons?  How will we react when we are drafted to carry a cross?

The psalmist writes, “Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.”  How true, how true.  His disciples had eaten his bread and then betrayed, denied and fled from Jesus.  In their place two other condemned men, robbers become his close companions.

  At the end of his life, Jesus dies alongside two convicted brigands who mock Jesus with their last gasps of breath.  At the end of his life, Jesus faces a virtually unanimous public shaming, a veritable consensus of his guilt.  We however know how the story ends.  We know that Good Friday becomes Easter Sunday, that death does not have the final word but that life reigns through the resurrection.  On Palm Sunday, all indications are that Jesus is guilty, that Jesus deserves the shame of the cross.  Easter is the great proclamation of Jesus’ innocence and of God’s mission fulfilled, finding us not guilty.

Does anyone among all the actors on the Holy Week stage have the mind of Christ among themselves?  Jesus is not wholly bereft of friends in the moment of darkness.  A number of women looked on from a distance.  They had followed him from Galilee.  Even now they ministered to him with their presence in the midst of the violence.  Other witnesses emerge upon whom the light of recognition has shined in this dark hour.   Roman soldiers, ones who would have played a role in his crucifixion, see that Jesus is no mere criminal.  Filled with awe they confess, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

As Good Friday concludes two more enter the scene.  Joseph of Arimathea gives Jesus body a temporary home, in his unused tomb. “He rolled a great stone over the entrance…and went away.”  As if this wasn’t enough, Pilate dispatched soldiers to guard the place.  They sealed the tomb and stood guard.  It all sound so final.

  The stage is set for the dawn of the first day of the week and the events that caused an earthquake that changed the world.   Have this mind among yourselves which you have in Christ Jesus.                                 

      

 

Hung on a Tree

Lent V II Samuel 18:33
 In 1971, just prior to the Lenten service a call came to my office at church.  A wife and mother in her early 40’s had just died of a heart attack.  After the funeral her mother commented, “You just don’t expect that your children will die before you do.”
 Consider Oscar, a burly man in his 80’s who had been a boxer, a police officer, and a county sheriff.  By the time I got to know him he ws a shut in.  A photo of a young man in uniform sat on a side table.  One day Oscar talked about his son who had fought in North Africa during World War II.    Oscar’s son had apparently died in action.  However, they never found his body.  With tears in his eyes Oscar said, “You just never get over the loss of a son.  You just never get used to the idea.”
 This evening we visit David after his son Absalom died.  Our text informs us, “The king was shaken.  He went up to his room over the gateway and wept.  As he went, he said, ‘O Absalom, my son!  My son, my son Absalom!’”
  Though Absalom rebelled and sought to have him killed- David continued to show the depth of love that a parent has for a child.  It is hard to kill that love.  When David’s forces went out to battle Absalom and his troops, David knew his more experienced and better-trained army would win.  Still he made it clear to everyone, “Be gentle with the young man Absalom.”  However, Joab, David’s right hand man, found the fleeing Absalom caught by his hair in the branch of a tree.  Joab overrode David’s fatherly love.  He did the politically necessary thing.  He put three darts into Absalom’s chest.  When he heard the news of Absalom’s death, David cried, “If only I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son.”
 St. Paul wrote to the Roman Christians, “Rarely will anyone die for a righteous man; though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.”  David was willing die for a son he loved who was neither righteous nor good.  Yet, even if David had placed himself in the tangled boughs of that tree;  even if he taken Joab’s three darts in his heart; even if, he allowed himself to be hacked and thrust through by Joab’s armor bearers, it would have all been in vain.  Absalom would still be a rebel and David would still be dead. 
 Absalom died a rebel and was buried a rebel.  “They took Absalom and threw him in a pit in the forest and piled a large heap of rocks over him.”  Anyone who was killed and hanged on a tree was to be buried immediately, for God cursed anyone hanged on a tree.
 What does this ancient story have to do with us?  As we have found in the past weeks, these stories touch our lives too.  Just as David needed to take Absalom’s rebellion seriously, so God had to take our rebellion against his rule and authority seriously too.  Our rebellion is not simply the sins we do in disobeying God, but it is also our own rebellious nature against which we need to fight our entire life.  Likewise, God not only directs His wrath against our acts of rebellion, but also against our continuous tendency to join in rising up against him, his law and even his saving grace.
 Therefore, God out of his great fatherly love for his children had to find a way to satisfy his wrath against our rebellion so that we could live.  Otherwise, God would simply need to wipe us off the face of the earth.  Helmut Thielicke, one of the 20th century’s great theologians, puts it this way, “God the judge wrestled with God the Father and God the Father won out.”  What David, you, and I could not accomplish, God accomplished when he put himself in our stead.
 In a great reversal, God the Father showed how much he loved us by sending his own son into human flesh.  However, Jesus, Son of God, was unlike Absalom, son of David.  Jesus did not try usurping the place of his heavenly Father.  He did not regard his equality with God as a thing to grasp for himself.    He did not seek his own will.  Rather he made himself nothing, gave up all the benefits and power which were his and being an obedient Son obeyed his heavenly Father to the point of even dying on the tree on the cross.
 In the story of Absalom and David we read only of the grieving words of the father.  We hear nothing of the words of Absalom. In the story of Jesus and his heavenly Father we hear nothing of the Father while his son hangs dying on the tree.  However, we do hear the word of the son. 
We heard them this evening.  He speaks seven words.  “Father forgive them…” From the Father we hear, Silence.  “Today you shall be with me in Paradise.”  Silence.  “Woman, behold your son.  Silence.  Behold your mother.” Silence.  “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me.”  Silence.  “I thirst.” Silence.  “It is finished.”  Silence.  “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”  From his heavenly Father, Silence.
 Perhaps Jesus’ words, as he hung on the tree of the cross, express what Absalom thought and felt as he hung caught by his hair in the tree.  In a sense, they died alike.  Absalom was the rebellious son.  Jesus was the obedient son who took upon himself all the rebellions of humankind against God , including Absalom’s and including yours and mine.  Thus, both died as rebels.  Absalom was given an ignominious burial in a pit, never intended as his grave.  Jesus was buried in a borrowed tomb intended for someone else.  He too went down into the pit, the pit of hell.  However, there he announced his victory over all the rebellious ways of humanity.
 Therein is the essential difference between Absalom, son of David and Jesus, Son David and of the heavenly Father.  Jesus did what David could not accomplish.  He died in behalf of all the son and daughters of God who had rebelled against Him.  We might even dare to say that God the Father loved you and me more than he loved his own Son at that moment on the tree.  Jesus took on the curse of those hung on a tree and the curse of the grave and satisfied the wrath of God the judge.  Thus, we can have confidence that God does not hang onto his anger forever, but delights in steadfast love.  It is as the prophet Micah wrote, “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives transgression…You do not stay angry forever, but delight to show mercy.”   The centurion said of Jesus on the cross, “Truly, this was the Son of God.”  He was truly the obedient Son  of God, even unto death. His obedience wipes out our rebellion.
  

 

No Condemnation

Fifth Sunday in Lent, 2011, Immanuel Chapel, Romans 8:1-11

Rom. 8:1 & 11, “There is, therefore; now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he…will also give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in you.”

             Pastor Eldore Messerschmidt, with whom I served for a couple of years at Immanuel, in Marshfield, Wisconsin, had a license plate which read, Rev. EFM.  Someone said, it may have been his wife Lucille, those initials stood for “reverend every few minutes.”   Whether he was reverend every few minutes or reverend all the time did not determine his salvation.  Eldore Messerschmidt, like you and me had been buried in baptism into Christ’s death so that as Christ was raised so we might live a new life in expectation that we too shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

 It’s not that those who are in Christ don’t do things worthy of condemnation. Last Sunday we prayed in the Collect,”Your mercies are new every morning…though we deserve only punishment.”  As I read that prayer I asked myself, “Do we really believe that ‘we deserve only punishment’?”  Not when one considers how much time we spend rationalizing our actions and blaming others, even when we know we are in the wrong, do we believe it.   St. Paul writes in the previous chapter that there is a war going on between our mind in Christ and our members who are captive to the power of sin.  We have the desires to live according to God’s law but we have not the ability.  The good I want to do I find myself not doing and the evil I don’t want to do find myself doing.  So how do we get out of this wretched body of death that keeps betraying us every day?  Then he suddenly exclaims “Eureka”, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  Which Paul to declare, “There is, therefore; now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

 In an age in which seemingly the only absolute truth is that one opinion is as good as another someone one may say, “Well, that’s just your opinion.”   In Christ that is not what we believe.  Therefore, after the confession of our sins early on in the service the pastor says words to the effect, “I forgive all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  The appropriate response to that declaration is not, “Well, that’s just your opinion.”   To which the proclaimer of forgiveness could respond, “No, we’re not dealing with human opinion here, this is the Word of God.   The pastor might continue, “If I were to give my opinion concerning you it would likely be something other than the forgiveness of all your sins.”  The only proper response to hearing that our sins are forgiven is “I believe” or “I don’t believe.”

Though we do things worthy of condemnation, in Christ, God never pronounces the verdict, “Guilty.”  In a court room drama the intense and tense moment is when the jury returns with their verdict.  In some dramas each member of the jury is polled and the answer comes one after another, “guilty, guilty, guilty.”   In Christ, there is no, will I be pronounced guilty or not guilty?  If the three persons of the Godhead were polled, the Father would say, “not guilty,” the Son would say, “not guilty” and the Holy Spirit would pronounce us, “not guilty.”  For all who are in Christ, not one is condemned.  For all others, its complete condemnation for all of their life.  Even the good they would do is not credited to them, because they cannot balance out what sin power has done in their lives.  And if the three fold Godhead of the Trinity were polled, the Father would say, “guilty,” the Son would say, “guilty” and the Holy Spirit would say, “Guilty.”

Why, this difference?  Christ Jesus wipes out sins committed by those who are justified and regenerated through his life, death and resurrection.  Daily and richly he remits all their sins, now.  The connection is faith in Jesus Christ.  Through faith in Jesus Christ we are under a different operating system.  The Spirit of life has set us free in Christ Jesus from the operating system of sin and death.

The operating system of the law demands obedience.  But it has been weakened by the sin power in our flesh.  So it cannot accomplish what it demands of us.  Yesterday morning I was taking Boomer, our Newfoundland for a walk.  A Sunset Hills police officer was setting up one of those portable electronic traffic signs that show you your speed.  We chatted a while he pettted Boomer.  I said, “I wish you had been out a couple of days ago when two kids were racing down the street.”  The officer said, “I’m not sure how much good these signs do.  Some people use them to see how fast they can go before they pass the sign.”  Yes, I responded, “We always use the law for our own benefit.”  Our conversation identified what Paul is talking about here.  We use sin power to break the law, which is lawlessness. We use God’s law not to be saved, which it can’t do, but to condemn others and pile guilt on others and to get our own way, at great cost to everyone else and ourselves.

So God had to find a different operating system, a different law, if you will.  He did this by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. That is, Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh, but his flesh was not sinful like our flesh.  However, God condemned sin in the flesh.  He did this by condemning his own Son for our sin, though he had no sin of his own.    In that way we who follow the Spirit of the life of Christ, are not condemned as guilty, but declared innocent and having done what the law of God requires.  Only Christ did it for us in our stead.  It’s the only way we can please God.  So we prayed today in the collect that “Almighty God would look upon your people that we may be governed and preserved evermore in body and soul through Jesus Christ.”

It is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Life in Christ that now operates in us.  Even if our body is dead due to sin power, the Holy Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us and will also give life to our mortal bodies.

Thus though sin power had led to Lazarus death, as we read in the gospel lesson, Jesus, who is the life and the resurrection, overcame death through a three word sentence., “Lazarus come out.”  There he emerged from the tomb, with the burial linens still wrapped around his face, hands and feet.   Jesus commanded, “Unbind him and let him go.”  Lazarus was a preview of Jesus death and resurrection.  More than that, in Christ, the unbinding the freeing of Lazarus is a preview of our resurrection as well.

Because of that, the words of Paul are my favorite bible passage, “There is therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  Thanks be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”                    

 

Light in the Lord

Fourth Sunday in Lent, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Ephesians 5:8-14.

            More than 35 years ago the imposing figure of a State Highway patrolman filled the doorway to my office.   He had a question, “Should I wear my gun?”  I asked, “Do you usually wear it?”   “It is part of my uniform” he replied.  “Then I guess you should wear it,” I responded.  He was one of several members of the congregation I had asked to participate in a Thanksgiving service wearing their work clothes as a way of expressing thanks for their jobs.

In our text, St. Paul asks us to wear Christ along with our everyday work clothes, giving thanks that we are part of the body of Christ   Elsewhere, Paul writes, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal. 3:27)   From that moment, Christ is a uniform we wear for a lifetime. Though we may forget that we are wearing it, ignore our Christ clothing, and think it of less value than a ripped T shirt, our Christ line is not so easily shed nor does it go out of style or lose value.   It has a life time guarantee through God’s Holy Spirit to be wearable from now unto eternity.  One day, this mortal body will wear out due to its participation in the things that are not of God.  It will die.   Christ, who gave us the victory over sin and death, will raise us to new life dressed in the immortal and imperishable body received in baptism.  This new self is “created in the likeness of God in true uprightness and holiness.” (Eph. 4:24)    We are God’s workmanship in Christ created for good works.  “Therefore,” writes Paul, “be imitators of God…walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us.”

On Tuesday, Randy, Victor Kamanda, and I attended a meeting at the district office arranged by Pres. Mirly.  Pastor Ron Rall from Timothy Lutheran and Rev. Allan Buckmann from Christians Friends of New Americans, Dr. Stu Brassie who is working with us on our Mission Revitalization Initiative (MRI) attended as well as Dr. John Luom from the seminary.  As you probably know Dr. Luom is from West Africa.  He said that in the United States we are defined by our work.  That’s true isn’t it?  We ask, “Where do you work?”  We tend to take our work home with us.  But Dr. Luom said, among the people of other societies, West Africans among them, you are defined by what group you belong to.  So if you belong to a religious group, you do not leave your religion at the church door.  You take it home with you and you take it to work with you.

That is what St. Paul is after in this section of his letter to the Ephesians.  Take your faith with you wherever you go and whatever you do.  Wear Christ as your daily garment, for now Christ defines who you are and whose you are.  You are a member of the Christ group, dressed in the uniform of a saint, which is who you are in Jesus Christ.

But being saints was not always the case.  Paul sets up some stark contrasts to drive home what we were before we believed the gospel of our salvation.  “You were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked.  But God, being rich in mercy…made us alive with Christ.”  At one time you “were separated from Christ,” “having no hope and without God in the world, but now in Christ Jesus,” you are reconciled  to God, “through the cross.”  Finally, in our text, Paul asserts, “At one time you were darkness.”    Paul is not simply writing about the society in which we live, but ourselves.  Before Christ came to dwell in your heart through faith, you and I were darkness itself.  But now, “you are light in the Lord.”  You didn’t somehow discover a light that has always been flickering within you.  Christ Jesus arriving in your life in baptism replaced the darkness with himself.  The man in the gospel lesson who had been blind from birth did not suddenly regain his sight on his own.  Jesus gave him his sight so that for the first time in his life he could see the light.  And Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.”  Jesus gave the man much more than his vision, he gave him eyes to see who Jesus really was, “a man from God.”  He confessed, “Lord, I believe” and began to worship Jesus.

Now Paul continues to use contrast as he clues us in on how to live as children of the light and what is “good and right and true.” We use the gift of the Holy Spirit to examine and test out what is pleasing to the Lord.  In other words, give this Christ life a try and you will find what the Lord likes in the behavior of his children.  Put it into practice.  We were created in Christ Jesus for good works.  We don’t have to even guess what we should be doing; God has already prepared ahead of time the works he wants us to do.

Instead of holding on to bitterness, resentment and anger refusing to be reconciled, which then leads to noisy discord and speaking evil of one another; rather be kindly inclined toward one another.  Rather than hard hearted be tender hearted, leading to freely forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven you. As beloved children of God, walk in the way of love, imitating Christ’s love for us demonstrated when he gave himself as a sacrifice to God for all the hatred that we might harbor in ourselves.  Sexual immorality and coveting are not part of living in Christ.  We are members of the body of Christ, we belong to the household of God, we are wearing the Christ line of clothing, and therefore, sexual impurity does not fit into our life in Christ.  As we well know today, sexual immortality, and abuse are often more about demonstrating power of position and money, than about anything else.    Later in Ephesians Paul writes of marriage and the relationship of husband and wife.  It stems out of a reverence for Christ who became the servant of all submitting even to death on the cross.  The headship of a husband in marriage is not about power but about loving ones wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.  He summarizes that relationship, “let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Paul continues by addressing the misuse of alcohol.  Don’t get drunk on alcoholic spirits because that leads to moral corruption and incorrigible behavior.  Rather, be filled with the Holy Spirit, because this does not lead to filthy language, crude jokes and foolish talk, but to thanksgiving.  The Holy Spirit leads us to speaking to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  It leads to singing and making melodies to the Lord with all your heart.  It leads to giving thanks to God always and for everything.  Such joyful singing is not in the name of Seagram’s Seven or In Bev Anhauser Busch, but in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We, who are light in the Lord, possess the light of Christ, not merely for ourselves, but also to expose and call attention to the darkness of sin that pervades the lives of those who not believe in Christ and may also be invading the lives of fellow saints.  However, our task is not simply to expose the darkness, but bring to it the light of Christ.  Because then, just as God was able to call light into being at the very beginning of creation and thus dispel the darkness  so in Christ we have the Spirit- empowered word to announce to our community, “Arise, O sleeper and arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.”  Then all might say along with the formerly blind man of the gospel lesson, “Lord, I believe.” 
               

                          

The Plan

Midweek Lent 3, II Sam. 16:23-17:4; John 11:45-53
 It has probably been 20 years since we heard the advertising slogan that, “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen.”
 Ahithophel was such a man and more.  People not only listened, but they equated his word with the word of God.  He was one of David’s long time advisors.  He may also have been the grandfather of Bathsheba, which may help explain his actions and advice.
 Ahithophel had betrayed David.  He joined Absalom’s rebellion.  Perhaps he saw Absalom as the new blood needed to replace the old king.  Perhaps he wanted a measure of revenge on David for taking his granddaughter, Bathsheba for himself and engineering the death of her husband Uriah.  We do not know his reasoning and motivation; however, we do know his actions and his words.
 Absalom held him in high esteem too.  Ahithophel advised, “Take the concubines whom David has left in charge of the palace and have sexual relations with them.  Then all Israel will hear that you’ve become odious to your father and everyone on your side will gain strength.”  So on the very roof from which, years ago, David had spied Bathsheba bathing, Absalom took for himself those who belonged to David.  Once again, a smoldering memory ran amuck in the present.
 Meanwhile, east of Jerusalem David and his forces approached the Jordan River worn out and exhausted.  Absalom could have trapped David and his men before they crossed the Jordan.  However, Ahithophel had a plan that would save shedding the blood of many.  “I will surprise David when his guard is down and kill the king alone.”  All he needed to do was kill one man, David, and then all the army would be brought back to Jerusalem like a bride returning to her rightful husband.  Ahithophel, would be God’s instrument in uniting all Israel under Absalom.  Shed one man’s blood and there would be peace.
 A perfect plan, except for one fatal flaw.  He forgot about God.  He advised the death of God’s anointed - God’s chosen king.  If there is one lesson to be learned in following the life of David - God frustrates anyone who seeks to harm His chosen one.  There is both comfort and warning in that statement.
 We too are God’s anointed in baptism.  Therefore, we take comfort when we read Psalm 27, “For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling, he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me on a high rock.”
 However there is warning too lest we, like Ahithophel, forget who we are, to whom we belong and who is in control.  To forget that God is in charge is to become wise in our own eyes.  The Lord says through the prophet Jeremiah, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom or the strong man boast in his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.”  God is working in and through all that happens to us and about us.  He has chosen us to be his instrument to unite people under his rule in Jesus Christ.
 In our personal daily lives, we do well to heed the words from James, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’  Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”
 Ahithophel had a plan to save the nation of Israel through the death of one man, David.  A thousand years later there was another man in Israel who had a plan involving the shedding of one man’s blood to save the nation.  He also was a man who spoke for God.  His name was Caiaphas, the high priest.  He thought he knew exactly how God was working in his world.  He too underestimated the working of God.  He too advocated the death of the One whom God had anointed as king, the Chosen of God.  His name was Jesus.  Jesus had just shouted into the tomb of his friend Lazarus.  “Lazarus, come forth,” he called.  Lazarus did indeed come forth.  Because of Lazarus’ resurrection, many believed in Jesus.  However, others were tattle tales.  They told the Pharisees what Jesus had done.  An urgent meeting of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council in Jerusalem, convened.  Jesus was the only item on the agenda.  “What are we going to do?” they asked.  “If we don’t deal with him soon, everyone will follow him.  He will lead a rebellion and the Romans will come and destroy the temple and the nation.” In the midst of much hand wringing and worrying about the religious and political crisis facing the nation, Caiaphas offered a plan.  “It’s better for you that one man dies for the people than that the whole nation perish,” he counseled.  The Sanhedrin listened to him.
 Caiaphas was correct.  The death of Jesus would save the nation from destruction.  Yet what Caiaphas did not know was that Jesus would die not only in behalf of the nation, but also in place of the nation.  Caiaphas was saying more than he suspected.  God used Caiaphas’ plan for the salvation of his people Israel, not from the Romans, but from their sins - even the sin of plotting the death of God.   More than that, Jesus was the means by which God would bring in all people and nations, scattered over the face of the earth, like a bride returning to her husband.  Jesus was the chosen and anointed King to be a ransom for many.  When he was lifted up on his throne of the cross, he drew all people to himself.  He is the payment for our sins, not ours only, but also those of the world.  As Paul writes to the Romans, “For as by ones man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
 Jesus is the One to whom we are called to listen.  His word is the very Word of God, in truth and in grace.  The power of God is such that he is able to take the best and the most sensible plans that Ahithophel laid out against David, God’s anointed, and to frustrate and bring those plans to naught.   God is also powerful and so loving toward us people here on earth that he used the plans that Caiaphas laid out for the saving of the nation - to save the nation of Israel and indeed the whole world from our rebellion against our king and ruler.  The death of the one man, Jesus Christ, was able to accomplish all that we need to live in forgiveness now and in the glory of eternity.