Lent 2

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My son has been called a miniature version of me. It will happen that Will does something, reacts to some situation in some particular sort of way, displays a certain aspect of his sense of humor and Julie will turn to him and say, “Will, you’re just like your dad.”
I suppose that happens a lot. Kids pick up on the character traits of their parents. Some of it is how they look, their physical features, their build and body type, eye color and hair color, even the sound of their voice, but as they grow and mature it is obvious that kids mimic even more of their moms and dads than just the way they look. They act like their parents. They think like their parents, and for our purposes today, kids believe like their parents. That is to say, kids pick up on their practice of the Christian faith as they observe the way that faith is practiced at home with mom and dad.
What practice, what habits of faith, are you teaching your children?
But maybe you don’t have children. Or if you do, maybe they are grown. If that’s the case, consider your parents, every one of us has parents, how has your faith been influenced by the faith practiced by your parents? By your mom and dad?
The question of legacy is one that is important here at St Paul Chuckery. We value the faithfulness of previous generations. After all, consider our practice. There is a placard out in narthex with photographs of our founding fathers – the original members of St Paul Chuckery. We have produced a genealogy book that traces our relationships back to these individuals, that traces our interconnectedness to each other. We have great sense of pride in the institution that we have inherited from these original members. These are all good things.
Our Scripture lessons have a thing or two to say about legacy and inheritance today. Our Old Testament text is from Genesis 12. The call of Abram. God’s promise made to Abram and to his offspring or heirs. The Romans text further elucidates this doctrine. God promised Abram that “his offspring would inherit the land.” God promised Abram that through him, that is to say, through his offspring, all nations of the world would be blessed. God granted Abram a legacy, children, heirs. And through this legacy, according to this legacy, God has accomplished great things for all of his creation.
The legacy of Abram is faith.
Our Epistle lesson says as much. Vs 13 of Romans 4 says that the promise to Abraham and his offspring, that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. That is to say that God gave Abraham a very specific promise, a promise of a great and grand inheritance, a promise of land and blessing and honor for him and his children and his grand children and his great grandchildren. This promise had everything to do with faith.
We this clearly in the Old Testament text and again in Romans. God came to Abram with a gospel call, a call to leave his family, his father and mother, his life in the land of Haran. These days it has become more common for us to relocate and change jobs and pick up our lives pack up what we own and move across the country or even around the globe. It was highly unusual in Abrams day. But God called him to do it so he did. We are told that Abram did it because of faith. Romans says that Abraham believed God and God counted it to him as righteousness.
As Abraham found his way to his new home God showed him the land and God appeared to Abram and said to him, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So Abram built and altar and there at Shechem he worshipped the Lord. So this is the legacy and the inheritance of Abraham; faith, belief in and worship of the true God.
And God made good on his promise. A quick review of through the Old Testament reminds us that God kept this promise to Abraham. He had a son, Isaac, a grandson, Jacob, 12 great grandsons. And from that family was born a nation – Israel. The Jews, all who trace their heritage back to this man, all of whom count their lineage according to this promise. All of whom take great pride in the fact that they are heirs and descendants of Abraham.
By the time Jesus came around, the nation of the Jews was very proud of this legacy. They made sure to remind Jesus on several occasions that they were descendants of Abraham. They had come to misunderstand what they inherited. They had come to believe that Abraham’s legacy was made up of dirt and real estate, a city and a temple building. They needed to be reminded that the thing that made them heirs to Abraham’s estate was not ethnic and genetic. It wasn’t who your earthly father was, it had to do with your spiritual father. The Jews were spiritual children of Abraham and the greatest thing he left for them to inherit was the faith in the true God.
Much of the new testament then is written to deal with this very issue. Who are the true descendant of Abraham? Who are his true heirs? The Jews thought they had a corner on the market because of their genetic connection to the man. Paul would have us understand that the true connection isn’t found in your family tree, rather it is found in your baptism.
Or, as Jesus puts it in our Gospel text, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. You must be born again.” We need a new birth and a new inheritance, not one of dirt and a temple building. We need one of faith. Of baptism. Of the Spirit.
So what then is it that makes us true “Chuckeryites”? Is it the dirt? The farm? The family? The building?
We have similar sort of a legacy here. Photographs on the wall, family relationships, generations and inheritance. All good things. All good gifts of God. Apples don’t fall far from their trees. The question is where is the root? The question is what waters the root?
The root is the Gospel. The root is Jesus. The root is faith. Remember, Abraham believed God and God counted it to him as righteousness. Abraham was as good as dead. God gave him the promise that he would be a great nation when he was 75 years old. Abraham’s wife didn’t have her first child until he was 100! A great nation? At 100?
But that is hardly the most miraculous thing.
If Abraham was as good as dead physically, then what of his condition spiritually? He was all the way dead. The Lord tells us in Joshua 24 what Abraham was busy doing prior to his call here in our text. “Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah the father of Abraham and of Nahor and they served other gods.” Abraham was a pagan, a man of the world, an unbeliever, tied up in the fog and the confusion of sin and having no knowledge of the true god until the Lord came to him and interrupted his life of unbelief and set him on a course of new life and new faith. Or, to put it the way Jesus puts it, Abraham was born of the flesh, the Lord came to him and gave him a new birth, a re-birth into a life of the Spirit.
And so it is with us. And so it was with the Loschkys, the Burgers, The Vollraths the Burnses the Gaulkes, Nicols, Strengs, Rausches, Theirgartners, Bishops, Scheiderers, and Schmidts. Not to mention the Schlueters, the Spragues, Dillahunts, Thrushes, Underhills, Headings, the list could go on and on and on. We are all children of Adam, heirs of sin and unbelief. But we have been reborn as heirs of the Spirit of God, washed in the water of Baptism and granted the promise of an inheritance that won’t ever perish or spoil or fade kept in heaven for you for ever for all eternity. (1 Peter 1:4)
For us today, the question is one faith. There are many things in this world that tie us together. Many different sorts of associations that create all kinds of different communities.
I was creating an online collaboration group for our marketing committee at Google Groups, a way of keeping in touch and sharing ideas over the internet – very useful. There are literally hundreds of thousands of different groups and associations that one could join. But the say blood is thicker than water. They say family, family bonds and family ties are more lasting and more permanent than all of these peripheral associations and friendships and communities that you could join. Well, if blood is thicker than water, if family ties are tied tighter than friends, that faith is tied tightest of all.
Look around you today. Look at those who are seated here in our worship space this morning. These are not just your friends, not even just your family members. See here, fellow believers in Christ. Fellow Christians. Fellow heirs of an eternal inheritance. These are people that you will be spending a lot of time with, an entire eternity together. You are tied to one another in faith, in baptism, in service and in love. God has tied you together. God has re-birthed you in baptism, given you a new life of faith, and together you are children of the heavenly Father.
So they say Will is a lot like his dad… (Poor kid) If he gets anything from me let it be faith. .
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.

Lent 2011 Midweek Sermon

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our text for today is the Gospel text from Luke 22

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Never the less, not my will but yours be done.”
Have you ever prayed that prayer? Have you (or perhaps has someone you love) ever been face to face with intense and dire suffering? Suffering to the extent that you know there is nowhere to turn, no one who can help, there is only faith, and with faith, there is only prayer.
“Father remove this cup. Father remove this suffering. Father preserve me, spare me, I have nowhere to turn but to you. I am yours. Save me.”
Have you ever prayed that prayer?
Jesus did.
Tonight, the image that guides our meditation is the work of Italian artist Sebastiono Ricci. This particular work in entitled Christ on the Mount of Olives and it was painted in 1730. Here Ricci depicts that scene in our Gospel from Luke 22.
I encourage you to examine the image as I read and see the details of the text depicted in paint and canvas.
[41] And Jesus withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, [42] saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” [43] And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. [44] And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. [45] And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, [46] and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”
(Luke 22:41-46 ESV)

As you look at the painting, the artist uses color and light to draw your eye to the figures in the foreground. First to Jesus. He is solitary and alone, kneeling in prayer, his eyes fixed on the ground. His expression is humble and acquiescent, his right hand is draped by his side in pleading, his left hand raised in submission. Jesus is willing to receive the leading of his Father.
But he suffers. He suffers the same way you would if you were in his shoes.
Have you ever suffered? Have you ever had the weight of the world on your shoulders? How have you carried a load too large for you to bear? Where have you turned and what have you done? Our Lord would have us turn to him in faith, to turn to him in the same way that Jesus turned to his father in prayer.
There are times when that is all you have left. Jesus knows what that is like… to be abandoned. You can see it in the painting. Jesus’ friends, his close friends and confidants who should be supportive, who should offer their shoulders to lean on and who should lend sympathetic ears to listen have drifted off to sleep – too self-absorbed to lend that sympathetic ear. Jesus had to go it alone. Perhaps you have too.
And as much as we feel the weight of the world, it is hardly the weight of the world. It may be the weight of your world, the world as you know it or as you want it to be. But your world is hardly the whole world. Not so with Jesus. He literally carried that weight, the whole world and the sin of the whole world on his shoulders, and he knew it was heavy. He knew and fully grasped the size of that burden. And it was intimidating. So he asked that it be taken from him.
“Lord may this cup of suffering be taken from me.”
Lord may I be spared the suffering that will come with the task you have willed for me to do. Lord may there be some other way to win salvation and pay for sin. But if this is your will, Lord, so be it.
This was Jesus’ prayer to His heavenly Father and the Father responded with comfort. He sent an angel, a messenger of comfort and hope. Jesus here is your cup, yield to the will of your father. Notice the angel. One hand holds the cup, representative of the suffering that Jesus will endure. One hand points upward, reminding Jesus of His Father’s will. Jesus yields. He receives the cup, he carries the weight, he devotes himself to fulfilling the will of the father.
And so here is Jesus, suffering, timid, humble and alone, carrying literally the weight of the world on his shoulders, suffering rejection even from his friends, and he submits. He receives suffering. He drinks the cup. And you receive salvation. Because of the suffering and death and willing submission of Jesus, you are saved.
In the painting we are reminded that the Father sent an angel, a messenger from heaven with the Authority of God to preach hope and comfort to Jesus in the midst of His suffering. If he has done that for Jesus he has also done the same for you.
When you suffer, as you are in the midst of your suffering he sends to you his messengers. Just as the Father sent this angel to Jesus he has sent his messengers to you. See how the angel points to the Father reminding Jesus of his father’s will? Likewise the Lord’s messengers remind you to look to your Lord in faith. Yield to the Lord’s will. What he ordains is always good.
These messengers take many forms. Sometimes friends, parents, siblings, cousins – fellow Christians who urge you to look to the Lord. God sends pastors, men he has called and to whom he has given the specific task of preaching the good news and pointing you to Him. God sees to it that you are not left to yourself to suffer alone, instead he comforts you with the consolation of Christian brothers and sisters.
But what of that cup, that cup of suffering that Jesus pleaded to be relieved of, what happens when you beg to have that cup taken from you? Each of us will have our cross to bear and our cup to drink, but we won’t ever drink it alone. And when we do, that cup will not ever lead us away from the Lord. Because he drank his cup for us. He drank the cup of suffering down to its most bitter dregs. And in return he gives you his cup of salvation. His cup of love, of mercy and grace, his cup of fellowship and even joy. In the picture the cup is in the hand of the angel. For you that cup is in the hand of his messenger given to you. Jesus fills the cup with his own blood and gives it to you to drink for the forgiveness of your sins and the strengthening of your faith.
And so you are not alone. As you see Jesus, solitary and suffering know that just as he is not alone, but is helped and comforted, know that you are not alone. He sends his angles to guard you in all your ways and comfort you in all your sorrows, He sends you Christian friends and loved ones. He sends you his pastors to carry his message of consolation and his cup of salvation. Drink deeply. Receive his word of hope and be strengthened in your suffering.
Amen.

Lent 1

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Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

This past Monday morning, I woke up to a big giant head ache. Not literally, mind you. My head wasn’t literally hurting. Rather I woke up Monday morning to reports that my Facebook account had been hacked. Some malcontent living in some remote corner of the world got into my Facebook account and started sending bogus emails to all of my cyber friends, posing as me and pretending to be stranded in London England and needing a immediate transfer of money. First of all, thanks to all of you who were concerned. I appreciate it, although some of you told me you assumed it was just London Ohio and figured I could probably walk home. But many friends and former acquaintances took the trouble to call or contact me to let me know what was happening and offered their help to get the issue resolved. I appreciate it.
Bottom line, in spite of the many plans that I had for things I was intending to do Monday morning and afternoon, instead I found myself dealing with the effects of sin in the world. Some cyber thief, some computer hacker, targeted me and my friends to run a scam. It was frustrating. A big headache, makes me wonder if Facebook is worth the all the trouble.
Manny Acta, the manager for the Cleveland Indians recently tweeted, “There are more positive things going on in the world than negative ones… Negativity is just louder.”
Mr Acta reflects a common sentiment found in the world today. There are positive things and negative. You have to choose to listen to the positive and tune out the negative. And you know what, that sounds really good. And most of the time you can get away with that. But there always comes a time when you can’t ignore the negative, when you have to hear it and acknowledge and find some way of explaining. There comes a time when tuning out the negative is even kind of naïve.
My personal Facebook fiasco was kind of frustrating. It was an example of the negative. True enough Mr Acta, it’s not worth worrying about all that much. But my personal interaction with the negative pales by comparison to that of many others.
Take the people of Japan, for example. They are suffering with the aftereffects of an earth quake and ensuing tsunami. Hundreds have lost their lives, thousands have lost their homes, a nuclear power plant is on the brink of meltdown, there is untold devastation from the flow of water, and from aftershocks. The people of Japan are living a nightmare.
Sometimes you can tune out the negativity. But other times, that negativity is so loud, so prominent, you can’t just turn it off. As much as you would like to change the station to your favorite positive sounding pop music channel, you can’t. The negative, the bad, the horrible is being broadcast on every station and there is simply no escape.
When that happens it is time to wake up. Take a hard dose of reality and come to grips with the truth.
Our text offers us a good dose of that truth.
Our text provides the answer. Our text shows us the solution. It demonstrates the cause, it diagnoses the problem and then it provides the answer. The problem is sin, the problem is that God’s good world has been ruined and spoiled by sin. The solution is God’s promise, salvation brought about by God’s own intervention through the sacrifice and death of Jesus our savior.
It all goes back to the beginning. To Adam and Eve as they were living there in God’s paradise. Satan, that Old Evil snake found Eve in the Garden and he began to tempt her. “Did God really say?” He was getting Eve to doubt God, to question whether or not he was as good as she knew him to be. Satan always does that to us.
Eve responded. “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” She was mostly right. They were not supposed to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and Evil, God said nothing about touching it. But she was correct, to eat it would mean death for Eve.
“You will not surely die.” Said the snake. “For God knows that when you eat of that fruit your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.”
Satan has plaid that same trick with you and me and everyone else ever since.
Take my Facebook thief for example. Whoever it was he or she certainly has the smarts and computer savvy to earn a decent living, to earn an honest living. But Satan has convinced them to earn their living dishonestly, to focus on what God hasn’t given and to find some way to take it dishonestly, to prey on peoples friendship and loyalty. God hasn’t given you what you deserve so you have to take it for yourself.
So many times Christians have asked themselves the question, they have wondered why in the world God put that tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, in the garden in the first place. Why did God give them the chance to disobey? Wouldn’t it have been better if that tree were never made?
But we are short sited in our question. We assume God put it there for ill. But we forget the true nature of God. God is good. God gives only good gift. This tree was not a carrot on a stick, it was not a temptation for Adam or his wife. It was a blessing.
In his commentary on Genesis, Luther calls this tree their church, their temple, their place of worship. God made Adam and Eve and placed them in the garden with no rules, no regulations for his entire creation. They could go anywhere and do anything and as such, they had no way to serve Him; no way to thank him, no way to obey him. God gave them this tree with a specific command so that they could go to that tree and worship. It was God’s Word, God’s command for them. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the very place where they good go to demonstrate their love and devotion to their Creator.
So then you see just how insidious Satan’s trick was. He attacked the very spot where Adam went to church, he attacked Adam at the heart of worship and divine/human interaction. Adam, the God you have come here to serve has been holding out on you. He has been denying you what should be yours. Don’t use this tree to worship that stingy and selfish God. Instead be your own god. Eat the fruit. Know good. Know evil. Then you will be god unto yourself.
And Adam listened. He listened to the snake. He was deceived by evil and he paid the price. God’s perfect creation, God’s unspoiled world, was suddenly polluted by sin. And just like pollution corrodes and corrupts the beauty of what’s green and alive so has sin polluted and corrupted God’s entire world. It brought death to Adam and to Eve, it brought suffering and evil of every kind. Earthquakes, tsunamis, large scale disasters, but even the smaller disasters that happen only to you. They all point back to this one event.
Adam was scared. He knew what he had done and he all of a sudden felt feeling he never felt before. Anxiety, fear, shame, anger, bitterness, confusion, uncertainty. And then he heard the Lord coming. Walking through the garden. And so he did what any one of us would have done. He tried to cover his tracks. He felt exposed. Eve felt exposed. The threw together a covering of leaves – a lot of good that would have done – and they hid from the Lord.
But God knew. He had seen and heard what they had been up to. There is no hiding from the Lord. But that didn’t stop them (or us) from trying.
But here is the beauty. Here is the remarkable thing. In spite of all they had done, in spite of how greatly they had ruined and destroyed the good world that God had made, in spite of their disobedience to God, in spite of the fact that they undermined his love and care for them, God forgave them. They should have caught the brunt of God’s wrath, they should have experienced his full punishment, his anger at sin, but they did not.
God loved them. In the same way that God loves us, God loved them and he forgave them. He showed them mercy, and grace, and forgiveness, and promise, and hope, and salvation.
And so here we are back to our original question. The bad, the negative, the unpleasant, and even the tragic. Why does it happen and how does it come. And here we have the answer. It comes because of sin, but sin has a solution.
God found Adam and Eve hiding in their sin and he confronted them. And then he confronted the snake. Your head will be crushed by the offspring of Eve. Your work will be undone by a child to be born. Generations down the line, descended from Adam and Eve, God himself was born of a woman, the Son of God born to a daughter of Eve. Jesus the solution to sin and answer to suffering.
Eden was God’s original blueprint for his world, there was no sin, there was no suffering, there was no death. Those were all later additions brought about because of our sin. Sin has consequences. Pain in childbearing, morning sickness, the battle of the sexes. Hard work, thorns and thistles, sweat and toil, and finally and worst of all, death. As you and I find ourselves interacting with sin, with our own sin and the sins of others, we see the effect that it has. All of earth’s disasters have come about because of sin. But God has a solution. God has sent Jesus.
In our Gospel text for today, we see Satan hard at work once again. He battled with Adam, he battled with Eve and he led them into sin. He thought he could do the same with Jesus. But he could not. Jesus withstood his attacks and fought him off. Jesus lived his life from beginning to end without sin, without falling or failing even once. And this perfect life of Jesus enabled him to be our perfect sacrifice, to be our righteous substitute, to die for us in our place as he suffered on the cross. And Jesus has given his life to cover ours.
Adam and Eve tried to cover their sin and shame with fig leaves. Fig leaves don’t offer a whole lot of protection from the wind and the rain. So God gave them a coat made from leather. Warm and secure, protection from the elements. But protection brought by death, protection because of some animal made the ultimate sacrifice.
In the same way, the feeble attempts at righteousness that we come up with on our own are out done by God as he covers us with his own robe or righteousness also cut in blood. The righteousness earned by Jesus as he died on the cross to save us from sin and secure us for salvation.
What is so utterly amazing is that here in our text, but also in our lives, God finds us as we are affected by sin. At various times in our lives the bad the negative the hard and the tragic frustrate us and our efforts and living our lives. These things have come about because of sin. But God has dealt with that sin. He has saved us and he has given us to the hope of salvation found in Jesus. He did it at Eden, He has done it here at Chuckery.
Amen.