The Location of Security

Biblical Text: Luke 2:22-40
Full Sermon Text

If you ask the question How do you know, the vast majority of answers come down to some form of “internal” knowledge. Whether that knowledge is feelings or intellectual or sensory it depends upon you. Yet all of those things are highly suspect. Which is part of the good news. The acts of God come from outside of us. Christ came into the world, to us, but remained what he was. Jesus himself is the light of revelation to the Gentiles as Simeon sings. Part of what he reveals is our salvation. And that doesn’t depend on us or anything in us.

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Divine Necessity & Our Necessity

Text: Luke 2:40-52
Full Sermon Draft

The first words of Jesus recorded in Luke contain what the ESV translates as “must”. It is a little word, that signals big things – the divine necessity. This is why Jesus came, to take care of the things of his Father. The extra file here looks at all the uses of this word in the Gospel according to Luke.
Must in Luke

I think what you can see is exactly what the things of the Father are. You can also start to see what the things we “ought” to do are. And you can see the conflict as at one point the Synagogue tries to put an ought on Jesus rejecting his. The switch from must to ought in translation is revealing. Jesus must and can, while we ought to but can’t. Good think the one covers the other.

The last note really is one the attitude of the heart, captured by Mary, that allows for the reception of wisdom that we can’t receive by natural means from simple piety to learned study.

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Baptized with the Spirit and with Fire…

Biblical Text: Luke 3:15-22
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On the Christian calendar, this 1st Sunday after Epiphany is given over the Baptism of Jesus by John. We are reading from the Gospel of Luke this year, and Luke’s account is unique. First, the actual baptism is short, just two verses. Second, what captures the attention and imagination is John the Baptist’s phrase – “he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. It seems pretty clear from the text that John was thinking of fire in terms of judgment. And that is a valid scriptural use or allusion of fire. But, there is a second use as well, that of the refiner’s fire. (Mal 3:2) And given Luke’s use of the Spirit and fire in Acts at Pentecost (Acts 2:3), it is that second usage that Jesus’ baptism points toward – a purification that does not consume.

Jesus, standing in those Jordan waters, stood with us and for us. He underwent the baptism of the Spirit and fire in the first sense. On the cross Christ received the fire of the wrath at sin for us. As a consequence, when we receive His baptism, we are not consumed but purified. The Spirit is placed within us which then kindles our hearts with faith and reforms our wills to follow the will of God best expressed in His law. Jesus’ baptism, Christian baptism, is full of power.

Now our adversary will try his best to deny that and get us to think it not so, but this is the thing about baptism. It is a promise of God – Father, Son and Spirit – all present at Jesus’ baptism where he set out on this course of standing for us. God’s promises are true. We just need to grab them with faith. The same faith that is kindled by the Spirit. It might not be an exciting emotional experience. We might not even remember it. But baptism is God’s promise. Our faith rests not our anything in us, but on what God is pleased with. God is please with His son, who underwent and commanded baptism.

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Birthrights

Bible Text: Ephesians 4:1-16 (background Gen 25:25-34, Luke 15:11-32, baptisms)
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The US has a famous list of birthrights: all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This sermon is not about those, but we as a people might talk about rights, but we rarely talk about either where they came from or how. The most precious ones are grants. And even more precious are the ones backed by the divine account. Governments may say that we have certain rights, but if the government gives it can also take away. Hence even Jefferson – extreme deist at best – rooting life, liberty and pursuit in a creator.

But turn from the political realm for a second. Salvation has come to us as a birthright. Baptism now saves you (1 Pet 3:21). The Christian has been born of water and the spirit (John 3:5). There is one body and One Spirit, one lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all (Eph 4:5-6). That is the good news. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Salvation, forgiveness of sins, is our birthright in Christ. And nothing external, not even the devil himself, can take it from us. The sermon recounts two biblical stories: Jacob and Esau and the Prodigal Son. Two stories of Fathers and Sons. Two stories of despising the birthright. That is the only way we lose our inheritance – to despise it.

The American Founders were wise people. They understood this also. They lived in a society that was schooled by the church’s teaching. Even the deists and Harvard Unitarians quoted and studied scripture. Asked of Franklin: What kind of government have we? A republic, if you can keep it. Also Jefferson’s quotes about the tree of liberty and blood. Our tendency is to despise things that we have been granted. They knew it in the political realm. How much greater in the spiritual?

So Paul starts with an exhortation – “I a prisoner of the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling (Eph 4:1).” Don’t despise your birthright.

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Offer what Moses Commanded, for a witness to them…

Biblical Text: Mark 1:40-54
Full Text of Sermon

Bonhoeffer called it cheap grace. A taking of the cleaning, the grace of Christ, without also taking on discipleship or the Lordship of Christ.

If you read this biblical text, you can’t help but think that cheap grace has been around for a long time. The leper is cleansed. But Jesus gives him two instructions. One we know he didn’t follow, and the second we get no report about. That second stern warning Jesus issued was, “offer what Moses commanded, for a witness to them.” We Lutherans would call that the 3rd use of the law. The law can’t save. What Moses commanded leads first to our death, but the law of Moses is still how God intended us to live. The moral law is God’s understanding of how to live a truly human life. And that is as far from cheap grace as possible. It is living that tough life, trying to live a clean life, that is a strong witness. And this is what Jesus sternly warns the healed to do.

The cleansing is grace. It is free. Christ has restored you. Do you settle for the cheap grace, or do take on the yoke of the disciple, the Lordship of the Christ who has made you clean?

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This Well is Deep…

Full Text

We had a double baptism this week. Yes, it breaks a liturgical rule about lent, but the text was perfect – living water, John 4:5-26. The entire segment of John from Nicodemus through the Samaritan Woman and the well with a picture of actual baptisms(!) in between is full of baptismal images and recognition stories.

Many of my metaphors or ways of thinking come out of the business world. One of the clearest to me is a business/tax term called a safe harbor. Many tax laws create safe harbors where if you do your accounting in this way – you are safe. Lets just say those safe harbors are usually the common sense way you would recognize revenue or cost. Many businesses operate outside of those safe harbors. They are not necessarily breaking the law, but if the IRS pursues them and wins in tax court, the business will owe taxes and penalties. They were not operating in a safe harbor. Businesses do this because: a) they might not get caught, b) their accountants and lawyers say it is within the law as written, c) it allows them to keep and report more income usually and sometimes more cash flow when they don’t have to send money to uncle same, d) it might make sense for their industry and laws move slower than business.

The sacraments are how God wants to deal with us. They are the only sure way that God has given for his grace. Baptism is objectively when the Father puts his Spirit in us and claims us as His children. But we all have our subjective stories to tell. We might practice faith outside of those safe harbors – however risky that might be. Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman are paired stories about recognition of God and how he works. Nick comes in the dark, and leaves in the dark. He doesn’t recognize the birth of water and the spirit. The Samaritan woman comes at noon. At the start she is as far apart from Jesus as, well, as a Jew and a Samaritan. By the end she has embraced the jewish term messiah and hesitatingly applied it to Jesus. She has started to see her subjective story in the light of God’s objective story revealed by Jesus.

This sermon ponders the multitude of layers between our subjective experience of God and how God has revealed himself. The text itself, playfully, in a Romantic Comedy banter, deals with the Bridegroom meeting the Bride at the well. That is a stock OT image. That is what is going on at that Samaritan well. That is what is going on in baptism. If we have been given eyes to see.