Sermon for February 23rd, 2020

The sermon below was proclaimed on February 23, 2020 at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, Rock Valley, IA.

Grace and Peace to you, from the one who is, who was, and who is to come, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.  

Today we celebrate the Transfiguration of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We remember Christ going up the mountain with his disciples, his face and clothing, shining like the sun. We remember God speaking from the cloud, echoing the words from Jesus Baptism, Behold, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him. 

But, Why here? Why now are we celebrating this odd event in Jesus Ministry and Formation? What is its purpose in our church calendar, and in our lives?  

Epiphany is ending, Christmas is well past. In three days, we mark Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday loom heavy on the horizon. 

Jesus knew when he took the disciples up that mountain what would be coming in the near future. Immediately before this week’s gospel reading, Jesus has told his disciples that he must die, and that anyone who would follow Jesus will also have to pick up their cross. 

Death is drawing near. A time of fear, uncertainty, and sorrow waits for the disciples. Just like when God called Moses to the mountain in Sinai. God knew that the Israelites had a long, dangerous, frightening road ahead of them before they would reach the promised land. 

There is nothing that we can do to stop the fate of Christ. There was nothing that Peter could do when in Matthew 16:22 after Jesus had spoken of his death and suffering to come, “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’”  

For many people, myself included, Lent is a difficult time of the Church year. It is a time we are reminded of our own mortality, and the mortality of those we love. When we are reminded of the fact that we too are dust, and to dust we will return, we remember loved ones who have died, recent and long-standing wounds of grief are reopened. In Lent, we are called to remember our sins, our brokenness, and our broken relationships. In Lent we are reminded of the myriad of ways that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.  

Neither Moses nor Jesus needed these mountain top experiences to know who God was or how God continued to work in the world. They had a strong relationship with God, they regularly experienced God’s presence in their lives. They spoke with the God who creates and sustains. They knew the ways God worked in the world, they understood that God was an ever-present source of life and love. 

This moment of transfiguration on the mountain top is a moment in which the witnesses, and we as recipients of their testimony, recognize that God is just as present in suffering and sacrifice as God is present in the promise and potential of our lives. On one hand, the transfiguration affirms Jesus’ divinity, on the other, it begins to give the disciples eyes to see God’s light in the chaos to come: death, loss, fear and resurrection, the work of the early church. The challenge for the disciples and for us is to live in a world without Jesus’ physical presence. The transfiguration invites us to live in the light of the glory of God seen, experienced in the radiant face of Jesus on the mountaintop. As this light shines in our hearts, the incarnate God, Emmanuel, God with us is made real every day. 

God prepares us with these sorts of divine encounters so that we can endure the world here, the world of the cross, the world that is broken and breaks us, but that same world is not beyond God’s redemption. 

These encounters still happen today. For some of us they are truly mountaintop experiences, events that shine a blinding light on the very real presence of Christ in our lives. For most of us the experiences of God’s presence come in more mundane ways, in ordinary moments at work, in school, in nature, or the city. They happen anytime and in any place that we have made time and space for the Holy Spirit to speak to us. These are moments of awe and wonder at the work God’s hands have wrought. They are moments of beauty we experience in nature, in the grand canyons of cities, in the eyes, the spirit, the soul, of other people that we encounter. These are moment of awe we experience in houses of worship, in hospital rooms, or holding a newborn.  

Then, in this experience, this incredible, awe inspiring and awful experience of God’s presence, God majesty, the disciples are filled with fear and fall to the ground. Christ comes to the men touches them, and tells them, “Get up, do not be afraid.”  

The same God who is so great, so majestic, so vast that the heavens above and the earth below are unable to contain God. The God who is so terrifying that we can do nothing be fall to our knees in God’s presence, is also the God, in Jesus Christ, who is willing to become human, to reach out to us, to touch us, to sooth our fears, to heal our wounds, to take our sins on God’s self, and suffer death on the cross to save us. This is the God who reached out, and gently, lovingly placed his hand on the shoulder of the disciples and told them to get up and do not be afraid.  

God is willing to give up his glory, to shed the power, and the light, to experience weakness, vulnerability, and death so that we would be able to experience God’s love and gentleness.  

This then is why we celebrate the Transfiguration here and now. We need to see and hear God’s majesty and power. We need to see the blinding light shining from Christ’s face and hear the voice from the clouds. We need to be reminded of the greatness of God to understand God’s love for us, shown in Christ’s death and resurrection. Transfiguration prepares us to suffer through the long days of Lent, it prepares us for the journey we each have ahead of us in our lives. Transfiguration reminds us of both God’s unsurpassed glory, and God’s willingness to reach out to each of us, to touch us and tell us, do not be afraid. 

Gracious God, loving Parent. We thank you that you have decided to show us your glory from the mountaintop, in light so blinding to behold. We thank you that you choose to show your glory all the more clearly through the love that led your Son to die on the Cross to save us from our sins. Be with us, reminding us that though many things must come to pass that are too difficult for us alone, you are with us, a hand on our shoulder bidding us to get up and do not be afraid. We thank you that you sent the Holy Spirit to comfort, to teach, and to be with us, while we wait your Son’s returning in Glory. In Jesus name we pray, Amen. 

Sermon For February 16th, 2020

This sermon was delivered on February 16th, 2020 the sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, Rock Valley, IA

Grace and Peace to you, from the one who is, who was, and who is to come, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.  

I am going to be honest. When I saw this week’s texts and the harshness of Christ’s words, I was very glad we were celebrating with the youth and particularly our sister Emilee’s first communion. I had, if I choose a way out of preaching about Christ’s and Moses’ hard words. I could have written a nice little sermon on the meaning of communion, building on the message the youth shared this morning.   

Communion is important. In it we receive God’s grace and the new covenant in Christ’s blood. Christ is with us, in, with, and under the bread and wine, supporting and sustaining us. But it is particularly important for us to remember that in baptism and in communion, we have entered into a new covenant, a relationship of trust and promise with God, through Christ and the Holy Spirit. 

Last week, our Gospel reading came from the verses immediately before this week. Last week, we heard Jesus say:  

 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-20)  

The scribes and the Pharisees and other righteous people of the time were following the letter of the law. They presumably were not murdering people, committing adultery, and lying to everyone they met. But Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Today’s text is an intensification of the law. It points Jesus followers to more than the letter of the law, but more importantly the spirit that rests behind the law.   

It is easy to say, well Jesus didn’t actually mean that we need to do (or not) do these things, the point of making the law more strict, was to reveal to us that we are not capable on our own to be righteous, sinless people. That instead we are in need of God, through Jesus death and resurrection, to begin to become righteous people, or at least people that God will “reckon” as righteous. And in part that is true. Luther talked about two uses of the law. The law can serve as a restraint to human nature, pointing us to follow the law and work towards the common good of all of creation. The second use of the law, the spiritual / religious use, is that the law reveals to us that we are incapable of meeting the requirements of God to be righteous people. It brings us despair when we recognize that we will always fall short.   

I am not sure about all of you, but I regularly become angry. I don’t always react and say something. After just spending a couple of moments on facebook, twitter, or news websites, I am cursing the messages or people involved. I wish that all I thought about some people was “you fool,” my mental language, and often times spoken words are a bit more earthy and colorful.   

Heck, Friday I went to the ministerial association, a weekly gathering of pastors from Rock Valley to raise up an organization, or other prayer concerns of the community. It is a time of prayer and fellowship with the clergy of the community. Afterwards, some of us met for a meal and conversation. Friday was one of those days. When I left the meal, I most definitely had some anger and less than pleasant things in my mind about the other pastors. They are good people, but some of their thoughts, values, and beliefs are substantially different from me.   

Maybe for you it is the traffic here in our busy little town of Rock Valley. I too occasionally have choice words for other drivers. And I know that this might not apply to some of you, but I have never gotten behind a manure spreader that is dropping its contents on the road or throwing it on my truck and thought, “oh, how wonderful that they are doing their job feeding and fueling our country and the world.” I am definitely thinking something, but it isn’t anything positive or that I ought to repeat from the pulpit. They might be throwing actual manure, but I am throwing mental and spiritual manure right back in their direction.  

The law, when it points out our inability to be righteous people on our own, drives us to the foot of the cross and the Gospel message. That we are saved by grace through faith. It isn’t anything that we have or could possibly do that makes us saved or reckoned to be righteous, it is through the mercy and grace of God through the death and resurrection of Christ that we are able to say with Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians:  

 “Where, O death, is your victory?   

Where, O death, is your sting?”  

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)  

That is the easy reading of this text. We cannot do these things that Christ commands us, so we should just trust in God’s grace more. This reading of the text tells us that belief is all that is required, and actions are unnecessary. But that is cheap grace. It doesn’t cost us anything, it makes no demands on us, and it changes nothing. It isn’t what Luther taught and it isn’t what the Gospel truly means.  

God’s grace and mercy changes us. We are transformed through grace and not to conform to the world. Jesus death and resurrection calls us to live out the coming kingdom. Daily we must make the decision, which is only possible because of God’s grace, to be God’s people, to show God’s love and Grace to a world that desperately needs to hear and see it. Daily we are called to say yes to Jesus.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in 1938 a sermon for a confirmation service. Bonhoeffer left the safety of New York City where he was teaching at Union Theological Seminary, and the safety of London. He returned to his home in Germany, because as a pastor he was called to be with God’s people while they suffered, and he was called to proclaim the truth to one of the most oppressive and destructive governments in the world. In the sermon for the confirmation students, Bonhoeffer wrote:  

 "You have only one master now...But with this 'yes' to God belongs just as clear a 'no.' Your 'yes' to God requires your 'no' to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and poor, to all ungodliness, and to all mockery of what is holy. Your 'yes' to God requires a 'no' to everything that tries to interfere with your serving God alone, even if that is your job, your possessions, your home, or your honor in the world. Belief means decision."  

That is what this week’s gospel text and our reading from the Hebrew Bible sets before us. It is a choice. Are you going to believe and be changed, or are you going to give lip service and just do the minimum required? It isn’t an easy decision, but thankfully God is with you, supporting you, and guiding you.   

God calls us Christians and God’s Church to be radical and non-conforming to the world. God call us to see the injustice around us and to work to end it. God calls us to see the people that it is easy to ignore, the poor, the homeless, the disabled, the people who are different from us, the people that we are told to hate or fear. We are told to see them for who they are, a part of God’s beautiful creation and children of God. We are called to be the body of Christ in the world. We are called to use the gifts, talents, and the privileges we have been given and have benefited from for the benefit of the marginalized.   

 God of Justice, we tremble before you, knowing that we deserve nothing less than your righteous judgment and justice, we pray for your mercy and forgiveness. Your people and your Church repent of the ways we have benefited from systems of injustice. We repent that we have not been a voice for the weak, the vulnerable, and the marginalized. We have valued our own safety and prosperity and remained silent when we were called to speak truth to power and comfort to the oppressed.  Strengthen our resolve to be your faithful people. Calling evil what is evil and lifting up the good. Help us to use our positions of privilege to the benefit of those suffering injustice, marginalization, and oppression. Be with these, your beloved. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, we pray, Amen.