Sermons

What is preaching? St. Paul writes in Romans: “Whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14-15)

Therefore our Lutheran Confessions state: “It is also taught among us that one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel.” (Augsburg Confession VII:1-3)

There are 256 posts filed in Sermons (this is page 29 of 86).

The Sunday of the Great Banquet ’12 – Luke 14:15-24

16. June 2012
The Sunday of the Great Banquet
Luke 14:15-24

Repentance is an act of humility. Repent. Confess the sin that plagues your conscience or at least admit your name is Sinner. Say it. Lay open your shame and guilt before God. There is no more humble thing to do that to take off the fig leaves and tell God who you are and what you did. Adam and his wife Eve couldn’t do it. They hid and made God come after them, so ashamed they were.

Come to think of it, we’re little different. We’re completely indifferent to the true God and His Holy Word. We hide in our homes, in our cars, at work, at the park, anywhere. We hide from Him for shame and guilt. We cover ourselves with all sorts of clothing of our own making, inadequately covering our sin and never quite able to avoid the piercing stare of Jesus. He is the Light that no darkness can avoid, escape, or overcome. You cannot hide from God. Your sins are known. Your old name of Sinner is spoken.

Adam and Eve feared God, hiding in the bushes. You cower in fear, unwilling to confess the secret shame. Why? Repent! But Pastor… I’m too busy. I don’t have time. It’s not that big of a deal. No one was hurt. I’m over it. I can work it out. I just need time. I’ll try harder next time. Excuses, that’s what they are. Excuses to exalt yourself over God. Excuses to love yourself. Excuses and lies. As the saying goes: You can run but you can’t hide.

Fear of judgment isn’t going to work, at least not by itself. No one repents because they know they’re wrong. No one repents because God’s slaps them on wrist or chastens them with the rod of iron. But that’s not God’s final word. It’s not His ultimate work.

“Properly speaking, repentance consists of these two parts: one is contrition, that is, terror smiting the conscience with the knowledge of sin, and the other is faith, which is born of the Gospel, or of absolution, believes that sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, comforts the conscience, and delivers it from terror.” [The Augsburg Confession, XII.3-5]

It is true, the Law terrifies you, shames you, and lays guilt upon you. God lays us low in the sorrow over our sinfulness. But the second part of repentance, faith, is the result of the Gospel. We hear of God’s love and sure promises for us, and we rejoice in His gifts and believe His promises. “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Promises and gifts. Good things!

Our God loves us but not with some generic kind of love. Not with heart shaped Valentines, a pat on the back, or even nice stuff. No, He loves us in a way that cannot be repaid. He loves is in a way that is completely outside the realm of our possibility. He loves us as with generosity undeserved and gifts unmerited. He loves us with a great banquet, no cover charge, no secret invite, not special status. He gives to those who have nothing to give in return.

Jesus tells us a parable: A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, “Come, for everything is now ready.” Do you see? Repent and believe the Gospel. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Come, for everything is now ready. Your sin is atoned for in Jesus death for you. Your death is destroyed by His cross. Your life will never end at resurrection of the just. Come, for He has gifts for you. Drop your self-appointed works. Destroy your idols. Forget about pulling up the bootstraps. Come, for everything is now ready. Come, and be fed with food and drink unlike any other.

Ah, but this sounds to good to be true. But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, “I have bought a field and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.” And another said, “I have five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.” And another said, “I have married a wife, and therefore cannot come.” 

Excuses. All good sounding ones, too. I have stuff to do at home. I have work. I have family needs. These are all the sorts of excuses I hear as pastor why people don’t come to church, or arrogantly leave before Bible study, or complain about “extra” services. Pastor, I have stuff to do. I’m too busy. I need to work. I need a vacation. I’ve enough Jesus to last me a little while.

How does Jesus respond to this? The servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry. That’s right, Jesus is angry. Many are called. Many have the invite in hand, baptized into His name. Many though, spurn the invite and refuse to come to the banquet. He hates their excuses. He is angry at those who think vacation is more important that receiving His blessings in the Divine Service. He is mad as hell at those who think the study of His Word is optional to the Christian life, even when He sends a man to you to do this very thing. And while He is patient for a time despite His anger, but that patience will run thin. Eventually He will move on and have enough of the invitees hard-hearts.

So He said to His servant, “Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.” Do you see? There is no entitlement in the Christian church. Calling yourself Christian does not make you one. Your membership is this congregation does not mean a lick if you ignore the gifts. Saying you are Christian, all the while opening spurning the gifts of faith is rejecting the invite to the feast. Your neglect of God’s gifts—the Divine Service, Christ’s Absolution, your Baptism, and the Holy Communion—treating God’s gifts like they are some kind of optional thing. This is a denial of the God’s gracious invitation. You are saying “no thank you” to the rich man, the king who has plundered Satan and wants to give you His great gifts. Come, for everything is now ready and you say, “I’ve got better things to do, places to go, and people to see.”

Repent! You have not loved God with your whole heart, mind, and strength. Otherwise you’d be beating down those doors every day of the week, begging to hear Jesus’s invite again, and come like the poor, crippled, lame, and blind that you are. Repent, and come out of hiding in the hedges. Repent and stop the busy travels on the highway, your hustle and bustle and all the stupid excuses.

Repent and receive. Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight. Our Lord desires to feed you from His table. He has laid out a banquet spread before you, with His succulent Word prepared as rich liturgy, sweet hymns, satisfying proclamation. He wets your parched lips with the water of life. He gives you the finest wine of His blood for the forgiveness of sins. He feeds your hungry soul with bread of life. He even sets in His stead a steward of this food of mystery. This steward calls Come, for everything is now ready so that you are never tempted to neglect the feast. The Lord and master of the feast is here. You are fed and nourished. And not just today but day in and day out.

You are invited by the Word to the great banquet. You are carried by the Word made flesh to the banquet hall. You are Spirit-compelled by the Word of promise to come. Receive rich food and drink. Receive the Bread of Life come down from heaven. Drink deeply from the wells of salvation, from the river of life that flows through the new Jerusalem. Taste and see that the Lord is good.

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana

The Sunday of the Rich Man and Lazarus 2012

10. June 2012
The First Sunday after Trinity – Baptism of Vincent Nowaczyk
Luke 16:19-31

Every single person who walks through those sanctuary doors has the wrong idea. Every single one, every single week. You came this morning with wrong ideas about life. You have the wrong ideas about death. You think wrongly about faith and church. Your mind is confused by the many whisperings of worldly liars. Your heart is torn from its true love to instead lust after guilty pleasures and false idols.

Perhaps you think I’m harsh. Jesus begs to differ. He says, “there is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins” (Ecc. 7:20). He also says, “All men are liars” (Ps 116:11). This knowledge is absolutely necessary. Without believing in this real defect, the magnitude of Christ’s grace cannot be understood. “Those who are well have no need of a physician”(Mt 9:12; Mk 2:17). “All the righteousness of man is mere hypocrisy before God unless we acknowledge that of itself the heart is lacking in love, fear, and trust in God” (Ap II 33).

Jesus has some harsh words for you. Yet, just as loving Father disciplines those whom He heals, so Jesus doesn’t leave in the pit, in the Sheol of despair. You cry out “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” That’s not the wrong idea. That’s precisely the right idea of faith. That’s why you’re here. To have God’s Word wreck, destroy, and utterly demolish your wrong ideas about life, death, church, God, love, and stuff.

“How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” And God, by the way, it seems like its taking an terribly long time. Life sucks. Death stinks. The church is full of hypocrites. I don’t much understand you. I have so little to love. And stuff, well, I ain’t got any.

Wrong. Wrong ideas. The lies of sinful men. The idolatry of yourself. Stop listening to your rotten soul. Stop grieving all the day for the treasures that moth and rust can destroy. Call upon the Lord in the day of trouble. Let Him lighten your heart, to consider and answer you. Let Him light up your eyes with the truth, lest your enemy Sin overtake you, lest Death prevails over you, lest the Devil rejoice that you are shaken. “O Lord, I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.” Turn to the Lord and live.

So it goes in our Lord’s parable. There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linens and who feasted sumptuously every day. In other words, the 1%. He’s got it all, not a care in the world. Every luxury provided for. Health–good. Wealth–plenty. Prosperity–abundant. But he is a beggar, utterly poor in the things of God. He does not call on God in a time of need, for he has none. He does not need the Great Physician since he’s seems healthy. He needs not be dressed in the robe of Christ’s righteousness. His purple and fine linen of his own making are comfortable and stylish.

This man is rich in the things of this world and yet poor in the things of God. Who needs to pray for daily bread with the perfect capitalistic market society gives him everything he wants? He trusts in doctors and not in God’s providential and protective hand working through them. And really, when you look as good as he does, why should he even fear what God sees? He’s a beggar without even knowing it.

At his gate was a laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.Here’s the 99%, the suffering majority. Poor in body and spirit. Suffering in his body. Needing even a small bite what the 1% greedily is enjoying in his banquet hall unto gluttony. Poor, miserable, pitiable. He is even despised by men, cared for only by dogs. They are this man’s only friend. Truly a beggar but as history will show, rich all the same.

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. This poor worm of man was carried by angels to rest in the loving embrace of his patriarch Abraham. Where is his father Abraham but seated at the eternal feast, with rich heavenly food and a cup overflowing with divine grace. This man who was poor in this life and yet received a wedding garment washed in the Lamb’s own blood. His body was covered with sores for a time and yet received a resurrected body for eternal life. His mouth longed to be filled with the crumbs from the rich man’s table but this hunger was forever satisfied with the crumbs that fall from our dear Lord’s table.

The rich man also died and was buried. His resurrection was unto Hades, and being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. Why? While He feasted sumptuously, clothed himself like a GQ model, and set himself up for a life of luxury he neglected the truth. He was actually a beggar. A rotten sinner. A liar. A hater of God. When it comes to His standing before the judgment seat, he looks little different than the sore-infested beggar laying at his gate.

You and I all come from radically different backgrounds. Some are given much. Some have little. Some have never been sick in their life. Others can’t seem to shake the last sickness before the next one strikes. Some come dressed in fine suits and others with barely the polo shirt to their name. And yet, we do well to heed Luther’s final words: we are all beggars, this is true.

Not one of us has anything to contribute to salvation. Not a good work, an act of charity, a loving embrace, or even a faithful prayer. Not one of us has decided for Jesus, chosen to follow Jesus, or even accepted Jesus into our hearts. We are all beggars, this is true. “How long, O LORD?” is the cry of poor Lazarus. “How long, O LORD?” is the cry of every beggar.

There is not one righteous (Romans 6:3). Everyone of us is a liar. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Sinners. Yet, even sinners are not without good things. Good things? Like what? Clothing? Shoes? House? Home? Nope. Jesus did not build your hotrod. Jesus does not give you your perfect life now. Jesus gives you truly good things—your perfect life into eternity.

Abraham said [to the rich man in Hades], “Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.” Trust not in princes, they are but mortal. Trust not in wealth which is here today and gone tomorrow. Trust not in health for all men die. Trust not in clothing for it rots just like the flesh. We are all beggars, this is true. Trust in what, then? How are we to know that God loves us?

All you who are unrighteous in thought, word, and deed—liars and haters of God—why are you here? You have heard the Word of God and want to live. You don’t want the just punishment for your sins, the suffering you deserve, nor the death of the wicked. You desire God—His love, His salvation, His grace, and His mercy. You are hear for you know you are beggars; this is true. “Consider and answer me, O Lord my God, light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.”

You know there a great chasm fixed between Abraham, Lazarus, and the whole heavenly host—and the rich now poor man and the whole host of the damned in torment of Hades. You know and fear this righteous judgment. For truly we are all beggars, deserving nothing but the same sort of death and punishment.

Unlike the “rich” man, we know that true joy, true happiness, indeed true love and salvation are in the riches of heaven. There is no amount of health, wealth, or good things in this life that prepares for the life to come. Only the riches of God’s grace given only in Jesus Christ’s shed blood can take even you, poor Lazarus, unto Abraham’s bosom. Only God’s own salvation given can take you into heaven.

All the wrong ideas, the lies, and the idols are confiscated at the font, forgotten by the voice of Christ, exorcised from the pulpit, and healed through the medicine of Christ’s own body and blood. Only by these means of grace, daily and richly received are you rich for heaven. The light of Christ illuminates your heart with the bright radiance of His glory, glory of the only-begotten of God, crucified, dead, risen and ascended for you!

Receive the heavenly riches just as little Vincent. We are all beggars, this is true. Receive the robe of Christ’s righteousness in your baptismal waters. Receive healing of body and soul in the resurrection of the dead. Receive life everlasting in heaven. Receive the rich food of your salvation. Receive, trust, rejoice, and sing!

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana

The Feast of the Holy Trinity ’12

3. June 2012
The Festival of the Holy Trinity – Octave of Pentecost
Isaiah 6:1-17; Romans 11:33-36; John 3:1-15

Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity. Let us give glory to Him because He has shown His mercy to us. Amen. Today is the conclusion of the festival half of the church year. We have come from Advent, through Christmas, and Epiphany, into the Gesima Sundays, and Lent, finally to Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost. It is fitting then to reach the culmination of this journey with a festival dedicated to “the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Spirit incomprehensible, the whole thing incomprehensible” (Dorothy Sayers).

This does not bode well for the sermon. All this talk of eternals, incomprehensibles, and uncreateds will make your head hurt. You might think its the kind of stuff for academic theologians, too heady for common folk. We pastors delight in this day even if you secretly hate it. For some of us, the Athanasian Creed is our favorite. We love the detail which the confessor of this creed refutes error and believes the truth of God revealed in Holy Scripture. The word games it plays delights our inner theologian. It is even fun to confess.

Not only that but every Christian pastor vows it is true. I said at my ordination “Yes, I believe and confess the three Ecumenical Creeds [Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian] because they are in accord with the Word of God. I also reject all the errors they condemn.” Our congregation, according to Article III of our constitution,  “acknowledges and accepts without reservation… all the confessional writings of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, contained in the Book of Concord of the year 1580, to be the true and genuine exposition of the doctrines of the Bible.” These “Confessional Writings” include the three Ecumenical Creeds.

Both the Lutheran church and your congregation believes, teaches, and confesses this creed. But maybe not for you? This creed so infrequently confessed is just something you suffer through each year, perhaps to fit your pastor’s fancy or because its just what-you-do-on-Trinity-Sunday. Maybe your agreement is just a token assent, a nudge-nudge-wink-wink acceptance. When have you taken the time to confess this creed? Do you even say the Apostles’ in your daily prayers?

For all their complexity, these creeds, especially the Athanasian, are not simply verbal exercises and wrote repetition. The many confessors died for the sake of what the Creed says. The swore to uphold this faith even unto death because they are true and genuine expositions of the doctrines of the Bible. In other words, to deny the creeds is to deny the faith. There is no middle ground, no wishy washy confession that is suitable for the Christian. Its the whole Trinity or nothing.

As a friend of mine wrote: “Confessing [the Athanasian Creed] is like jumping into the deep end of the pool for the first time as a child: at first you are somewhat timid, but once you jump in you can’t wait to do it again and again and again, exploring the depths, swimming in its sonorous life. A new world—indeed a new life—has been opened up to us, revealed for us in this name. For it is the life and Name of the very Triune God—who is love in Himself—that we come to know and worship whenever this creed it confessed.”

If this is true, then it is a pity we only confess it publicly once a year. For it presents to us in a comprehensive way what God himself has revealed in the Scriptures. For who could imagine a God like the God of the Scriptures and the God of the Creeds who would assume human flesh and blood in time and history, not by conversion of the divinity into the flesh but by the assumption of our humanity into God? No one. Everyone’s mind is blown. He’s not the God we want nor one we could ever dream of. He is the God who is real, merciful, loving and revealed to us.

The old appointed Gospel for the festival of the Holy Trinity was from St. Matthew chapter twenty-eight. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen (Matthew 28:18).

This familiar Gospel is the locus classicus, the central quoted passage for the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus shortly before He ascended to the right hand of the Father spoke for the first time the complete Name of God, that is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity was revealed to us in Genesis (as the Spirit hovered over the face of the deep and the Father breathed Jesus/the Word calling all into being and life) and further throughout the Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets. The full Trinity was revealed at the baptism of Jesus, when the Father spoke: “This is my beloved Son” and the Spirit descended as a dove. Yet, now the Name is given, not just to be heard but to be placed upon you.

Our Lutheran fathers chose to retain the old eighth-day-of-Pentecost reading of Nicodemus and Jesus.  Perhaps you were wondering why a text about Holy Baptism was chosen for a Sunday celebrating the Holy Trinity? At the center of the old reading was not simply the Name of God but the verb of the name, baptizing. Its one thing to know God’s name, as mind-blowing as a God who is one, indivisible and yet three persons is. Its another thing and far beyond our wildest dreams to know what God does for us. God’s name is given so that God’s name does what the Name loves to do.

His Name loves to drown the sinner until he is dead, just like He drowned hard-hearted Pharaoh. His name loves to give new life, to be born of water and the Spirit. He loves to give entrance into the kingdom of God. His Name is placed on the forehead and heart to mark you as one of His redeemed. The Name is given so the Name does what the Name loves to do.

Even in the third century, St. Tertullian reports on how beloved the name of the Trinity was to the Christian. “In all our undertakings—when we enter a place or leave it; before we dress; before we bathe; when we take our meals; when we light the lamps in the evening; before we rise at night; when we sit down to read; before each new task—we trace the sign of the cross on our foreheads.”

Baptizing into the cross, baptizing into the Name is what our Tri-une God loves to do. Its not a one-off event but is a daily dying and rising into the life of the Holy Trinity. This is why the daily remembrance of Baptism is described in detail by Augustine and commended to us by Dr. Martin Luther, of blessed and holy memory. Each day, when we rise, when we receive our food, and when we go to sleep, Christians make the sign of the cross, the sign of our redemption, with three fingers for the Holy Trinity on their foreheads.” Later, it was added upon their hearts with the words “In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

Our daily life is confessing our baptism and thus the Name, remembered as we make the sign of the cross. How is it that we born of this Spirit and thus have a new life in this Name? Jesus tells us: this is not an earthly birth, of our earthy mother. He is speaking of heavenly things and thus of a heavenly birth. This birth comes by water, Word, Spirit, just as the waters were collected by the Word of Jesus as the Spirit hovered at creation. So again, the Spirit of God hovers over the font, the Father speaks Jesus with the Word over the water, and new life is given where the Spirit wishes.

How can these things be? Nicodemus asked. We probably will ask ourselves the same thing as we witness Vincent receive this new birth next week in Holy Baptism. We don’t have to nor cane we understand our Triune God. We don’t have to solve Him. We can’t plumb His depths, not the riches, the wisdom, or the knowledge. How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! No doubt, St. Paul. That does not mean that we ignore Him. He is the giver of every good. He is the author and perfecter of our faith. For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

We are given the Word of Jesus to speak, the Spirit to grant faith to believe, and adoption as Sons to call God Father. We only say what we have been given to say. We have been given the Holy Scriptures and confess the Athanasian Creed not because its easy or simple but because it is true. It is the testimony of Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit. Truly, truly, I say to you, we [the Holy Trinity] speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen.

But don’t just take my word for it. Nor ought you believe it because the confessors including Athanasius, the councils at Nicea and Constantinople, or even the Apostles’ believed it. Even if you think the Bible is authentically an old book, you don’t believe it because it seems probable. No, belief does not come by seeing, or by mind, or by reason. Believing comes by the Name doing what the Name loves to do.

The Name loves baptizing. The Name loves giving new birth. The Name loves you. How do you know this is true? No one has ascended into heaven except Him who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.

There’s proof positive Fact. “It is simple religions that are the made up ones… If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course, anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book Four, chapter 2.)

The Scriptures and by relation, the Creeds and Confessions, are far from easy to understand for they are Word given by the Holy Trinity. When Isaiah saw the Word incarnate in heaven, heaven barely could contain even the train of His robe. His Spirit fills the heaven and the Earth. These are heavenly things, incomprehensible, unbelievable apart from the Spirit. Thanks be to God He has come to us, just as He wishes and granted us the confession of the true faith by the power of the Divine Majesty, one God, now and forever. Amen.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen (2 Cor 13:14).

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana