Palm Sunday - Confirmation Sunday

They say that life is full of choices. Each day presents you with a new set of choices: what to do, what not to do, things that you have opportunity to get involved in, things that probably would be best for you to avoid. Our lives are really made up of those choices. Every thing you do, from the moment you wake up in the morning and decide what to have for breakfast and what shirt to put on with what pants you have decided to wear, to what radio station you want to listen to while you’re driving in the car, to what time you go to bed, ever day is made up of choices.

Of course some of those choices are bigger than others. Choosing whether to have Wheaties or Corn Flakes for breakfast is not the same as choosing a career or choosing a spouse. Selecting a pack of Tic Tacs at the check out counter is not as big a decision as what kind of car you want to drive or which house you want to buy. Some choices stay with you longer.

Well, for these young people who are sitting up here today, it would seem that they are preparing to make a choice. When they were younger, their parents brought them to church, presented them for Holy Baptism, words of faith, the confession of the Apostles Creed was made by the congregation on their behalf, the pastor took them, poured water over their heads and spoke the words of Christ’s command, they were named with the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Since then they have been taught, they have learned Christian Doctrine from Luther’s Small Catechism. And now today, is their confirmation day. Their instruction has lead them up to this point. Today is the day for them, as it were, to make a choice – will they confess with their own mouths the words that were confessed for them? Will they pledge themselves to be faithful to that confession even unto death? Or will they set that confession aside in their own self interest, in the interest of the freedom to make other choices. It would seem that they had a choice…

It would seem that Jesus also had a choice. It was Palm Sunday. Jesus had been on a path that was taking him right into the city of Jerusalem. Right into the city of his father David, it was the city of the Temple, the city of Sacrifice, But it was also the city that was under the influence of the Chief Priests the scribes and the Pharisees. It was the city that was under the influence of those who had sworn to find a way to condemn Jesus to die. Jesus knew what would happen if he went to Jerusalem. He knew the plans that had been laid. Jesus knew what would happen if he climbed up on that donkey on Palm Sunday. He knew that the procession into the heart of the city of David would be the beginning of the end. He knew that he would tested and verbally assaulted during his week teaching in the temple. He knew that he would be arrested and forced to endure a mock trial. He knew that he would be falsely condemned. He knew that he would be beaten and abused. He knew that he would be sentenced to die on a cross. Yet Jesus climbed up on that donkey. There was no one forcing him, there was no one telling him he had to, Jesus chose the way of suffering. Jesus chose the cross. He chose the cross for you.

The irony of today is that this day will look to all the world like you are here making a choice. You are here because of the choices that you have made. Confirmation Sunday is after all the day that each of you with your own voice speaks words of commitment to Jesus. “Do you renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways” I Do renounce them. “Do you believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?” Yes. “Do you intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it?” Yes with the help of God. No one is going to twist you arm. No one is going to make you say those things. You will say them on your own, according to you own free will.

a) But maybe you are not so free. When Simon Peter made that same confession of faith, Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16: 17) And likewise Paul writes that “No eye has seen no ear has hard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him, but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit.” (2 Cor 2:9-10)

b) The reason that you are here this morning to confess your faith is definitely the result of a choice – but it has not been your choice. The reason that you are here today is because of the fact that God chose you. Why God chose you is not a question we can answer. Why it is you standing here today ready to confess your faith and not someone else we can’t say for certain. Yet God according to his mercy decided that he would call you to faith.

i) That call to faith came a long time ago. It did not come today. The process that brought you here to this day began years ago.

ii) Your confirmation instruction began two years ago, three years for some of you. You began learning to understand God’s Word as it is explained in Dr Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. You began to receive instruction in Christian Docterine to prepare you for today. But even then, your faith did not even begin when your confirmation instruction began.

iii) Your faith began when God called you to faith. Every single one of us has a birthday – the day that we first saw the light of day. Our infant eyes first opened and blinked in the light. For the first time we could look into the eyes of our mother and father. We could see them for the very first time. That was a day that was planned by God from the beginning of the world.

But each of you has a day that is even more important, a day that also was planned by God from the beginning of the world. That was the day that you were called to faith. That was the day that God gave to you eyes to see him. On the day that you were baptized, your parents brought you to the baptismal font where God’s Word of promise was spoken to you and you were renamed with the name of the one true God. You were baptized into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

For the first time on that day your spiritual eyes were opened and you were able to look into the eyes of your savior. You saw Jesus for the first time and came to know him as your Lord. Just as an infant grows in knowledge and strength and maturity, spiritually you have grown. You have been fed a regular diet of God’s Word that has strengthened you and energized you, that has caused you to grow in faith and maturity. It has brought you to this day that you stand ready and prepared to make a choice as it were

That faith has grown up in you, as you have been taught to confess the creed, as you have been taught the Ten Commandments, as you have been taught the Lord’s Prayer. In the commandments you see and you understand your sin. In the creed you have been taught the Christian faith so that as you speak those words the faith of the bible is your faith. You have been taught to pray the prayer that God himself has given to us. Having received this instruction you are ready and prepared to stake your life on the truth of that faith. The faith of the scriptures is in your heart. God the Holy Spirit is in your heart. You are prepared to make the choice to deny the Devil who would tempt you to sin and to renounce the faith and to trust in your own righteousness for your salvation. You are prepared to choose to face the world and suffer death rather than fall away from this faith. You are prepared to face even the sin that lives in your own heart, to deny yourself and your own sinful passions and desires all to obey Jesus. Those choices are significant choices, life changing choices, even potentially dangerous choices.

But you do not make those choices alone. Before you were even born, before God called you to faith, before God placed into you the gift of the Holy Spirit, God the Father sent His only Son, born of a woman – his mother Mary. Jesus lived his life faced with many of those very same choices. Do I obey the commandments? Do I honor my Father and mother? Do I devote myself to Worshipping the Father and do I read the Bible or do I entertain myself with all of life’s many other distractions. Jesus was faced with those same choices and every single time he made the choice to obey the will of his father in heaven.

When Jesus reached the appropriate age he went to John to be baptized. The heaven’s opened up and the Father said this is my beloved son, with him I am well pleased. Jesus according to his will chose the baptism of John. This choice was not an easy choice for Jesus. This choice was not a comfortable choice for Jesus. This choice led him out of the care of his mother and father, his brothers and sisters, The choice led him into a life of poverty. The son of Man had no place to lay his head. This choice led him to a life of scorn and rejection. The crowds doubted him, the chief priests and teachers of the law hated him and wanted to get rid of him. Knowing full well that the journey to Jerusalem would cost him his life Jesus said that “The Son of Man must go to Jerusalem where he will suffer many things at the hands of the chief priests and teachers of the law, be killed and on the third day rise.” The trip to Jerusalem was certain death. Jesus knew it, yet that was the path that he chose.

Never once did Jesus turn aside from that choice. Certainly there were many times that he could have. Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah points ahead to that choice. “I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.” Jesus had the choice – he did not have to endure the suffering but he did it anyway.

St Paul writes in our epistle lesson, “Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

As we read the Gospel from Matthew 27, Jesus is revealed to be in complete control of his entire passion. When he was in the Upper room with his disciples he had full knowledge that he would be betrayed and handed over to the Jewish authorities, yet instead of slipping out the back way and running off to preserve his own skin, Jesus made the choice to remain. When the guards cam to arrest him, Jesus commanded Peter to put away his sword and allowed himself to be led off like a criminal. When he was on trial there was no charge brought against him that would stick so Jesus gave them a charge that their unbelieving hearts could agree on – he claimed to be God. In their unbelief they rejected that claim and falsely accused him of blasphemy. Jesus chose the way of the cross. Jesus chose to die. He chose to suffer. Jesus chose this way of suffering for you and for me. He chose this path of death so that we could have life.

The reality of the situation is that if God simply left the choice up to you, you would not be here. If God left the choice up to you and to me we would run out of here and never come back. But God chose us. He chose us for faith. He chose us for baptism. He dragged us kicking and screaming in the water of Baptism to be drowned, to have our sin-filled will drowned but then to be resurrected, to be renewed, and to be recreated. And now, for these 7 young people God’s choice has led them to the opportunity to confess and affirm that faith in their own lives, to confess and affirm God’s choice in them.

God knows us. He knows the choices that we make, When we are left to ourselves we make the wrong choices. In spite of your faithful confession that Jesus is Lord that you will make today, there will be many times that you by your own words and by your actions will deny that confession. You will live your life like you are the Lord, like you are God, you will live your life like there is no law that matters but your own, your own choices, your own freedom to make those choices. You will condemn yourself with your choices.

But you will not die. The Jesus who chose death has chosen you. He will not lose you. He will not let you fall away. He will keep you in the faith. He will preserve you in your faith. He will redeem all of the poor choices that you will make. He will buy you back from certain death and hell as he has already done with his precious blood and his innocent suffering and death.

Today you will stand here and with your own lips you will confess Jesus is Lord in heaven and on earth. This is a faithful confession and it is one that we should not take lightly. But take comfort, not that you have chosen him but that he has chosen you.

Series A - Lent 4 - John 9:1-41

It is hard to imagine what life would be like without sight. Those of us who can see have a tendency to take it for granted. When you open your eyes, they work. When you want to watch television, read the news paper, see a sunset, look into the eyes of someone you love – you just do it. Your eyes do the work that they were designed to do. We don't think about it, don't stop even to appreciate it, our eyes simply accomplish the task that God gave them to accomplish.

If we didn't have our eyes the story would be quite different. In addition to improving the quality of our lives by enabling us to see and appreciate the beauty of God's creation, eyes are also quite useful. Because our eyes work we can drive to work or to church. Because our eyes work we can do our taxes, read a book, shop on the Internet. We can cook dinner, pour a cup of coffee. Change a diaper, write a letter. Something as simple and as everyday as our eyes are a wonderful gift from God and if we did not have them our lives would be changed drastically. Our quality of life would be diminished. And we would miss out on many of the wonderful aspects of God's good creation that he intended for us to enjoy.

These days modern technologies and conveniences have opened up a whole new world for the blind. Braille has made it possible for blind people to read books, order from a menu and ride an elevator. Systems of organization have helped those who are blind get dressed, prepare meals, go to work and hold regular jobs. This was not the case 2000 years ago. There were no such technologies in place. There were no helps, guides, programs to assist anyone who had any sort of handicap. There was only poverty. The man in our text today who was born blind who found himself in the presence of Jesus did the only thing that he could do – he was a beggar. He was dependent solely and completely on the good will and generosity of others.

It was because of his hopeless plight that the disciples were inclined to ask the question of Jesus that they did – “Who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It must be one or the other – there must be some sort of punishment at work here, after all, in their minds, (and in ours) everything happens for a reason.

The disciples were enslaved to a very human way of thinking – they were enslaved to seeing everything in the world in terms of its cause. They knew that God was all powerful and that he could do anything. But they assumed that God used that power for good only when we deserved it, only when we had been good enough to earn it. Therefore if something bad happened God caused that bad thing so that he could punish the sinner. This man was blind. He was a beggar. In their minds they had it all figured out. It was the Lord's doing, and he did it to punish this man. The disciples in their casual arrogance asked whose sin the man was being punished for.

The disciples were not alone in their error.

Often we are guilty of the very same wrong headed thinking. Often we are guilty of making those very same assumptions. Often we look for the answers to questions about how God feels about us based upon the quality of our lives. If things are good, God is blessing us. If things are bad, God has cursed us. Jesus tells a different story.

We live in a world that is corrupt and sinful. We live in a world that is plagued with suffering and death. That suffering touches the lives of God's people with an amazing and often an alarming frequency. So often it happens that God's people have to suffer with physical ailments and even death. Our prayer list is constantly filled with the names of people who experience this suffering all the time.

Just like the disciples, we try our hardest to figure out why. Why did this happen? Why did this occur? What did I do that God singled me out to suffer? We think that God works the way that we work. We think that God works by rules, by the law. Tit for Tat. Good on good and bad on bad. Therefore, when we suffer, because of our sin-filled hearts and minds, we assume we have done something wrong. We stepped away from what we were supposed to do and this event is simply a natural consequence for our error. “If only I would have appreciated my mother more while she was alive God would not have taken her away from me at such an early age.” “If only I would have taken better care of my body, God would have kept me from getting cancer.” We make our selves responsible for things that are beyond our control. In so doing, we pretend that we can figure out our suffering. We pretend that we can figure out God.

Ironically, we often do the very same thing when good things happen. Often there are times when some un-anticipated blessing comes along and we are convinced that this is how God works to show his love and his grace. A front row parking spot at the grocery store – it must be God. Green lights on the drive to work. It must be God. An extra discount coupon off our final bill, It must be God.

Why is it that we are so inclined to look for God's punishment in things that are beyond our control? Likewise why is it that we look for grace only in the places where it does us a minimal amount of good?

Jesus turns this cause and effect thinking on its head when the disciples tried to pigeon hole him into it. When the disciples wanted to know who had sinned Jesus responded with the truth. Jesus responded with the truth that sets us free from having to earn God's Love in a chaotic and sin filled world.

Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

What a relief! Wow! What a refreshing message to hear and believe. Jesus has come to us, has come for us, to make know to us the Word of God. Knowing and understanding this truth totally sets us free!

That man who had been born blind was forced to sit, unable to work, unable to provide for himself some means of making a living. He was totally dependent upon the mercy of others. There was nothing that he could do to provide for himself and to care for himself. There was no hope for him and for his life.

As if his blindness were not enough, this man faced the judgment of the disciples, he faced the judgment of his neighbors. When they looked at him they saw a man who was nothing more than a sinner. He got what he deserved, he must have, after all he was born blind. No one knew what his sin was, but it must have been bad if God would curse him so severely. After the man had been freed from his blindness by Jesus, the townspeople who refused to believe in Jesus condemned this man saying to him “you were born in utter sin.”

People today have made the opposite mistake. We would want to come to his defense. WE are so intent on defending the victims and emancipating the oppressed that we want to make out like no one is a sinner. “It's not fair to condemn this man as a sinner – he's no different from anybody else. There must be a reason. He's just got to believe that God has a purpose for his suffering.” What we don't understand is that every single one of us should suffer what this man has suffered. Every single one of us should suffer blindness, cancer, slavery, death, torture, disease, every “injustice” known to man is exactly what we should receive exactly what we deserve to receive yet is what we have not received only because of God's mercy.

When we see those who suffer, when it seems to us to be unjust, our first response should be a prayer to God thanking him for his unending mercy that has spared us from receiving the same thing.

This mercy of God is no more clearly revealed anywhere in all of creation than in the cross of Christ. If we truly want to see injustice and unfairness, if we truly want to see a victim. Likewise, if we truly want to see suffering that has a reason and a purpose than we can look no place but the cross. There God in the name of Justice committed the worst act of injustice that could have ever been committed. Jesus who had done no wrong who had committed no sin was found to be sin for us. He was punished in our place for sins he did not commit. His cross, his hell was ours. We deserved every ounce of suffering that was heaped upon Jesus. He suffered for us.

And now the suffering of Jesus changes our suffering. We do not suffer because we deserve it. We do not avoid suffering we do not receive some blessing because our righteousness has earned some sort of respite from suffering – it all moves to one point to one purpose, the purpose that Jesus himself identifies in these words.

“It was not that this man sinned or his parent but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

The question of course is what are the works of God. It would be easier for us to assume that the Works of God would be some sort of exercise of power. Jesus would show those Jews who was boss, who had power. Jesus would show them once and for all that he was God – they would have to believe when they saw the miracle that he would perform, right?

Wrong! John made certain to tell us what the work of God is. In chapter 6, where Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life Jesus told us that they work of God is this, “That you believe in Him whom God has sent.” The work of God is faith in Jesus. The work of God is that the disciples, the Jews, the blind man, his parents, Nicodemus, the Pharisees, you and me – that we believe in Him whom God has sent. That we believe that Jesus is the Christ.

What is so ironic is that the Jews saw the miracle. They saw the man who had been born blind. They had seen this man in their market place every day. They looked down on him and felt a arrogant pity for him all the while assuming that he got what he deserved. After he had been healed they refused to believe it was him. There is no way it could be the same man. It must be someone else. They could not believe.

Even this man himself, he had been healed by Jesus and he did not know Jesus. He did not know who Jesus was and why he had come. As he argued with the Jews that he was indeed the man who had been born blind, as he argued that it had been Jesus who healed him, he did not know who Jesus was. It was only when Jesus came to him, talked to him, told him who he was that this man believed. It was only when this man fell at the feet of Jesus and worshiped him that the work of God had been done, that the work of God was complete.

God works with us exactly the same way. Our condition and quality of life takes wide swings back and forth. There are days when our health is good our comfort level is high and we fell good about ourselves. God is with us. There are days when we feel awful, when we are sad, lonely depressed, sick, mournful, aching and in pain. God is with us. God never leaves us. God never sets us aside. God never wanders away.

When you are blessed is it God? Absolutely. What about when you are sad and in pain? What about when to all the world it looks as though you have been cursed and God is angry, when it looks like God has despised you? It that God? Yes! Yes! Especially yes! God is there in your suffering! He is right beside you and he will not leave you. He is pulling you along, picking you up, carrying you all to display in you the work of God. You have been given Faith. Jesus has come to you. HE has cared for you. He will care for you now and for ever.

Amen.

Now may the peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Amen.

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