First Sunday in Lent

I tell my son that he is a hero. He loves to play pretend. And it is not an uncommon occurrence that as I am making my way through the house I am greeted by a ½ sized Spiderman, or Batman or Superman as he runs off chasing the bad guys down the hall slinging webs and wielding swords as he goes.
So I tell him that he is a hero.
In a sense, all of us are heroes. We are all fighting in the same battle, our Bible texts make mention of that battle today. Our epistle from James tells us to remain steadfast under trial. Our Gospel tells us of Jesus out in the wilderness doing battle against the devil. Our Old Testament text tells us of Abraham standing firm and believing God when he was tested. You and I are all like heroes engaged in battle, fighting against evil and hoping to win the victory. Every day the contest begins anew.
So what kind of a hero looses every battle he enters?
Not a very good one! After all, isn’t that what it means to be a hero? Aren’t heros supposed to win? We wouldn’t want to see Batman if the Joker wound up winning. We wouldn’t want to see Spiderman if the Sandman ruled the day. A hero is supposed to win. If you and I are heroes then how is it that we loose so often and so regularly? What kind of a hero looses every battle!
You and I are heroes, of a sort. Waging war and fighting battles on the arena of sin and temptation. We loose all the time – but Christ who fights for us has the ultimate victory in us and despite our losses the victory in the end belongs to the Christian. We are the anti hero. Christ is the true hero.
But still we fight. In spite of our losses. In spite of our failures we fight.
The battle is over sin and temptation. Just like in the Gospel text for today, where Jesus squared off against Satan, we too fight battles of temptation. God has given to us Christians His commandments and we arm ourselves to battle against the temptation to break those commandments. We read the commandments. We rehearse the commandments. We study up on the bible. We go to church. We are strengthened for the day of battle. And then the encounter comes. The day comes when we are weak, when we are tired, when we are stressed, when we are distracted, when our defenses are down, and there comes the devil. . Eager to provide just the right temptation, to point out the opportunity that you have to do that thing, you know what it is. That thing that violates God’s command, that you struggle with, that you fight against. Satan is there to eagerly give you the opportunity. Every hero has his arch enemy. Batman has the Joker. Superman has Lex Luthor. We battle Satan.
If only he was our only enemy. It gets worse. Not only do we fight against Satan. Satan has friends. Friends who live in the world. Friends who gang up on us and fight against us. Friends who help to provide those opportunities to sin. Friends in the world who despise the Word of God and the Command of God. Friends who believe that God’s commands are too strict and too stringent, that they will damage you self esteem, that they should be thrown off and thrown away and so they do, and they tell you that you should too. We fight against the devil and the world
But if only those two were our only enemies. It gets worse still. The eager accomplice of the devil and his friend the World is our very self. Our sinful nature. We love to sin. We can’t wait to sin. We are eager for every opportunity to indulge the sinful self, to throw off God’s commands to do the things we do. The hero inside of us in easily overwhelmed and easily outnumbered. It is a dark day when the Superhero is too weak to enter the battle, when the superhero cannot even get up to fight. There is no chance. It’s not even a fair fight. We sinful Christians make lousy super heroes.
Superhero movies are all the rage these days. A fan favorite has been the Spiderman franchise. One of the promotional posters from the last movie depicted Spiderman hanging upside down from his web face to face with his reflection in the glass windows of a sky scraper. The Spiderman that stared back at him from the reflection was dressed all in black.
If you saw the movie, you know the storyline. Spiderman was taken over by a black substance that fed off his anger. Spiderman became selfish. He fought for revenge instead of justice. He became evil.
There was a scene in the movie where Spiderman recognized the ill effects of this blackness that had overcome him and he began to struggle against it. He tried to pull it off and tear it away and emerge from its grip.
We would like to think of that as a metaphor that describes our struggle with sin. We would like to think of sin as a substance that has grabbed a hold of us and all we have to do is dig deep enough to find some good in our hearts. All we have to do is fight against that blackness that comes on to inspire evil in us and we can defeat it. We would like to think that the good is there in all of us and like Spiderman we have the power to win.
We don’t. remember, we are lousy Superheros. We don’t have the strength. We don’t have the power. We don’t have the will to even enter the battle. WE are doomed to loose.
But there is one. There is one who fights for us, who fights on our behalf. There is one who has the strength, who has the power, who has the will to win.
We saw this hero in action today in the Gospel. Our arch enemy came against him with all he had. He pulled out every trick that he has used for thousands of years against us – there are none that are new – every temptation that has seized you is common to man. But with this man and against this man the devil’s tricks were strangely ineffective. He appealed to his appetites. He appealed to his pride. Yet nothing worked. Those same battles that would have taken us under were of no effect against this man. This man fought back. He fought off the temptation and the tempter was forced to flee.
That hadn’t happened for a while. Not since the garden had this tempter met with such resistance. Even there Adam and Eve proved to be an easy target. Yet this man was different, this Jesus was different. His only weapon was the Word of God, but that Word was powerful. That Word was truth. Satan could not be get around it. He was soundly defeated. Jesus won the day.
And so it went. Wherever Jesus went, wherever the Devil had his strongholds Jesus entered. He commanded Satan. He fought against him. He overpowered him. He fought him off. He sent him packing. Jesus won victory after victory in his battle with the devil.
But the battle wasn’t over Jesus. The battle wasn’t over his soul. The battle, the thing that Jesus came to fight for, to earn possession of was you. Jesus came to fight against the devil, against the world so that he could have you.
In order to earn this victory, in order to take possession of the spoils the cost was going to be high. There would have to be blood. There would have to be sacrifice. So Jesus, the hero of heroes surrendered himself. He himself became the victim. He suffered defeat so that you could be set free. The cross became the place of Jesus’ ultimate demise, where he was defeated for you. He took responsibility for your wrong, for your sin so that you could be set free.
When Jesus the hero came up out of the Jordan River, when he had defeated the devil in the wilderness, he came for you. And as he came he preached. Mark has written down for us the sermon that he delivered. “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.”
The kingdom comes with the king. Salvation comes with the savior. The war is won with the warrior. Jesus was those things. He was the King who came to be your savior, the warrior who came to fight for you with his own blood and death. What is left for you it the second half of the sermon.
Repent and Believe the Gospel!
Repent! So many times we think that this is something that we do. Repentance is my work. It is my action. It is me saying I am sorry, feeling bad for my sin, turning my back on my old way of life, deciding to follow Jesus. But we can’t! We can’t do it! Look into your heart! Look at what you find there. Nothing but sin and evil and weakness and death. Even your good works, even those things that everyone else thinks are good you know your motives. You know you are less than sanctified.
I found out recently that an old friend thinks of me as righteous because of how I handled an overbearing counterpart. In his eyes I was patient and longsuffering. The truth is that I was lazy. And that’s the way it goes with our righteousness – even our righteousness is dirty before God. So we repent! We turn in horror from who we are. No excuses. No self justification. No pretending we’re not that bad. We just recoil in disgust.
And Believe. Believe in the Gospel.
In spite of what we find when we look inside, Jesus the hero who fights on our behalf, who has fought for us has declared us to be righteous. He has declared you to be without sin. You are perfect because he has loaded your sin on himself. He has taken the blame for your sin so that it is no longer yours.
Ralph Burns died on Friday. He has been approaching that moment for weeks now. He knew he was going to die. So did the devil. So the devil came at him with everything he had. I know because he told me. But Jesus did not leave Ralph to fight this battle alone.
The devils weapons are arrows – small flaming arrows of accusation. “See” he says, “look at what you have done. You are no Christian. Christians don’t do those things, think those things, say those things.” Those arrows find the holes in our armor.
But faith! Faith extinguished those arrows. Faith holds on to promises of Jesus.
Sunday mornings, we have as a regular part of our worship the confession of sin. We all say the words, “I am a poor miserable sinner” and always the response is the same. I speak back to you the words of the absolution. “For the sake of Jesus I forgive you your sin in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” IT comes. It goes. We move on to the next thing.
Not Ralph. Not as he lay on his death bed. Not as he fought and battled against Satan. He was a sinner. There was not denying it. He knew it. He felt it. Yet Jesus spoke to him words of forgiveness using the mouth of his pastor. Ralph believed those words.
Repent and believe the Gospel.
Satan’s fiery darts were extinguished. “Pastor” said Ralph, “It’s so nice you can say that.”
And so to you. Repent. See the sin inside your heart and run away. Repent and Believe! Just as I said to Ralph so I say to you. Your sins are forgiven in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen. Now may the peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Epiphany 4 - Mark 1:21-28

It seems that Jesus was creating quite a stir.

Upon his initiation into his earthly ministry, he began taking on the work that God the Father had appointed for him to do. He was baptized, he was tempted in the wilderness, he began to assemble his disciples, he was healing, and as we see here in our text, Jesus began to teach.

And it was this teaching of Jesus that set him apart, that especially attracted attention, that stirred things up and that caused such a commotion. Words by themselves can great have power. Words have meaning. And when those words are God’s Words, those words can be unsettling.

After calling the first of his disciples, Jesus went in to Capernaum and began entering synagogues to teach. Jesus was like a guest preacher who travelled to different towns and to different churches so that he could preach and teach. And on those days that Jesus showed up, the usual preacher surrendered his pulpit to Jesus.

And Jesus was an amazing preacher. Our text tells us so. So amazing in fact that everyone there hung on every word. They could not look away. They could not stop listening.

You have all heard preachers before. At this point in your life you have heard hundreds, probably thousands or tens of thousands of sermons. Some sermons are better than others. Some preachers are better than others. Some are more skilled or more compelling than others. Some are fiery and passionate, some are comfortable, some are easy to understand and some are even entertaining. Our text makes no mention what-so-ever of Jesus’ style. What stood out about Jesus was His authority.

Jesus was not a teacher like other teachers. Jesus did not depend on what other teachers said or thought. Jesus didn’t get his sermons off the internet, Jesus didn’t borrow his material from popular talk shows, He didn’t check public opinion polls or cultural trends to help decide what to preach. Jesus taught with authority. Jesus was the authority. Jesus was the Word of God. So Jesus just taught. He just preached. He simply took the Word of God, without passing it through any filters, without worrying about whether or not it was politically correct or whether or not he would step on any toes. Jesus simply preached. Jesus just climbed into the pulpit and delivered the Word of God. Jesus preached the law so that it hit you right between your eyes and made you shake and tremble. Jesus preached the Gospel so that it made you weep.

We could use more of that today.

These days we hear lots of sermons, and not just on Sunday morning. Unless you lock yourself away in a box and don’t open a magazine, or turn on the radio or television, unless you stay away from movies and the internet, every day, you hear a different sermon. It doesn’t matter who, whether it be Limbaugh, or Beck, or O’Reily, the View or Oprah, or Leno or Letterman, whether it be the dispatch or the Tribune, Newsweek or Time, or even the President of the United States, every day you hear sermons from people telling you how to live your life, how to live a better life, who to listen to, who not to listen to, and what your life will look like after you have done everything they have told you to do.

For all the face time and all the air time granted to all these different preachers, there is only one preacher that matters. There is only preacher who truly preaches and teaches with authority, there is only one who speaks with the authority of heaven, there is only one who delivers the truth that matters for your salvation. There is only one Jesus.

When Jesus came to preach and to teach his message was about the kingdom of heaven. Jesus came carrying the message that the Kingdom of heaven had come near.

Mark tells us that when Jesus began his preaching and teaching that was the sum and substance of his message. He preached about the kingdom of Heaven. “"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."

Last week, in the Old Testament lesson, we saw Jonah who came to a sinful generation preaching a similar sort of message – calling for repentance. Jonah’s preaching also created quite a stir. And his message was also very simple. “Yet 40 days and Nineveh is about to be changed.”

Here Jesus preaches that the time was ripe for the kingdom of God, repent and believe.

Jesus’ sermon was the Gospel. It was the good news. Because the preaching of Jesus was the preaching about Jesus.

Every other sermon from every other preacher from every other pulpit is basically the same. They all tell you what you want to hear. They all cheer you on, tell you that you can do it, tell you that you are okay, tell you that all you have to do is believe in yourself and things will get better.

Jesus is different. He doesn’t tell us to believe in ourselves because that is not the gospel – that is the law. Jesus doesn’t tell us that we can do it - because that also is not the gospel – it is the law. Both of these messages preach to you a gospel of self fulfillment. You have to do it and you can do it. The law that Jesus preaches doesn't water it down. Jesus tells it like it is: perhaps God has given you the brains to earn a living and feed your family and live a satisfied life - but that won't get you into heaven. That won't save you from your wickedness and sin. Your wickedness will kill you. And since we can’t make it on our own into the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of heaven has come near to us. Jesus himself, the King of Heaven has brought his kingdom with him. And through his preaching and teaching that Kingdom comes to rest.

Now that is good news.

The best thing about the teaching and the preaching of Jesus was that it was not just empty words. Jesus words were not just pie in the sky philosophy or feel good rhetoric – the words of Jesus were tied to the actions of Jesus. Jesus preached that the kingdom of heaven would come and then he brought that kingdom down to earth.

When Jesus made his way into the synagogue, one of the people who happened to be there that day was a man enslaved to Satan, a man who had been taken over by a devil. This man was drawn to the preaching of Jesus because the devil inside him was drawn to Jesus. The devils know Jesus, they know him by his words and by his preaching. They were created by him and they need him and depend on him as much as they hate him. And in terror this devil came to Jesus and demanded to know what Jesus had come to do.

And Jesus wasted no time with this demon. “Be silent” Jesus commanded. Don’t talk. You have nothing to say. Keep your mouth shut. Even though the demon spoke the truth, his words were not allowed. The demon confessed Jesus to be the Christ. The demon understood who Jesus was better than anyone there, yet Jesus did not allow him to talk. Jesus silenced him and forced him to release the man he held captive.

Because that is what the Kingdom of Heaven does.

The Kingdom of Heaven releases us and sets us free from Satan. The Kingdom of Heaven releases us and sets us free from ourselves, from our sin and our shame. The Kingdom of Heaven sets us free from those things that condemn us because of the mercy of the King.

The Kingdom of Heaven has come near because the King of Heaven has come near. The Kingdom is where the King can be found. The King was there in that synagogue on that day and the King extended his reign over the heart of that man who had been ruled by Satan. The King has come here today as well. The King has come to you in his word to reign in your heart and be King in your life.

And to see this King, to know this King is to see him on his throne. When this King was most clearly pictured in all of his glory and power was not while he was teaching, not while he was commanding, not while he was feeding, it was while he was dying. This king came to die. For you. On the cross.

This King is your crucified Lord who has come to die for your sins on the cross and who has come to reign in your heart with his love and forgiveness.

Amen.

Epiphany 3 - Jonah 3:1-5. 10 - A Sermon Against Abortion

This past week, the entire nation was gathered in celebration at the historic inauguration of our great nation's first black president. Barack Hussein Obama was sworn into office as the 44^th president of the United States of America. People of all ethnicities, but especially African Americans were joyful at the turning of a page in American History. For many there is suddenly a feeling of hope for change in America.

And change is the order of the day. President Obama ran under the banner of Change, promising to bring a new dawn to American politics and a new dawn to the American way of life. He toured throughout the country promising change – change in an unpopular foreign policy, change in a failed economic policy, change in environmental policy, and change in a strictly partisan approach to politics. President Obama has promised to bring that change and through his policies to bring an end to the bickering and infighting and deliver a new dawn of unity and hope in the United States of America.

President Obama is not the first to preach the message of change.

Jonah, the prophet of the Lord spent only three days walking through Nineveh, a major city of the Assyrian Empire with a similar sort of message. Jonah called for change. God called Jonah, and commanded him to go to the City of Nineveh.

We all know Jonah. He is most famous for his three night's lodging in the belly of a large fish. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. Jonah knew God was merciful and he knew that if he went to preach to them and they repented God might spare them. Jonah wanted them to perish. So he went off in the opposite direction. He tried to get away from the Lord by stowing away on a ship. But, as we know, God caused the storm to blow up, the sailors discovered Jonah was the cause of the storm. Jonah was thrown overboard, swallowed by the fish and then vomited out of the fish's mouth after 3 days and 3 nights onto the shores of the Assyrian empire.

Jonah repented of his sin and made his way to Nineveh to preach the message that God gave him to preach.

God sent Jonah to Nineveh. There are a few important things for us to know about the city of Nineveh. The first time God spoke to Jonah he said this: "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me."

According to God's own description, Nineveh was a “great city”.

Nineveh was large. It took Jonah 3 days to make it all the way through the city.

History and archeology teach us that Nineveh was a magnificent city, with palaces and gardens, and city squares, carvings and statues.

Nineveh was a beautiful city. It's beauty was the result of their wealth, their success in military exploits, in commerce and trade and all of these things were gifts given by God. (Although during the time of Jonah, Nineveh had experienced some economic hardship) But, had it not been for God's blessing, had it not been for the fact that God is a good God who gives good gifts even to the wicked, Nineveh would have never achieved the greatness that is acknowledge here even by God in the book of Jonah.

But not only was Nineveh a great city. Nineveh was an evil city. They had committed a great many sins. Sins that were so great that their evil stood out before God.

Nineveh was known for its worship of false gods, especially the goddess Ishtar. The worship of Ishtar involved all kinds of sexual perversion and her temples employed prostitutes.

Nineveh was known for its violence. The Old Testament Prophet Nahum condemns Nineveh for its violence, claiming that Nineveh has piled up the bodies of her dead and so that they stumbled over them in the streets. Nineveh, in her lust for power and wealth, lost her conscience, she lost her regard for human life as a good and sacred gift of God. And Nineveh became exceptionally evil.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Are there any modern day parallels that compare to the “great city” of Nineveh? Can you see rampant sexual perversion and a careless disrespect of human life accompanied by great God-given prosperity and success anywhere in today's world?

This past week, while the nation was looking ahead to the presidency of Barack Obama, there were also those who were looking back to that fateful day in 1973 when the US Supreme Court decided in favor of legalizing abortion in the famous court case Roe vs. Wade. Since the court decided in favor of abortion, there have been over 50 million abortions in the United States alone, with an average of about 3,000 abortions occurring every day. The United States, a modern day “great city” is guilty of killing her children, her babies are being murdered at alarming rates. If God was angered and outraged at the sins of the people of Nineveh for piling up the bodies of their dead and treating them with shame and contempt by running over them in the streets, we have treated our own children at least as badly if not worse!. Every day, thousands of baby boys and girls are dying. They are being killed, treated like trash; their little hands and feet are dumped into paper buckets and they are thrown into the dumpster.

The stench of Nineveh's evil had risen up before God and he was angry. This city and these people had committed this horrible sin against people He had created and against people He loved. In His justice he could have destroyed them right then and there. But He did not. God is a merciful God and He loved even the people of Nineveh, in spite of their violence and their crimes against humanity. God in His mercy called His prophet Jonah and sent him to Nineveh to preach to that people so that they turn away from their sin, so that they repent, so that they stop their violence and their sin and so that they turn and receive God's forgiveness.

And so Jonah, in spite of his reluctance, in spite of the fact that he did all he could to run away from God and to run away from Nineveh found himself making his way through that great and grand city, through that violent and evil city.

Just like Jonah, Christians today have been given that same duty. Just like Nineveh was a great city that had been blessed and beloved by God we live in a great city. The United States of America is great. There is no mistaking that fact. God has given our nation great power, great wealth. Our nation, our cities are beautiful. Our people are resourceful, hard working, possessing great ingenuity and a will to “get the job done”. But we are also a wicked nation, an evil nation. We have tolerated and condoned great evil. We have committed great sins and we have piled up the bodies of our dead, even the bodies of our own children. The Church today must proclaim the message of repentance. We must urge our leaders to stop this evil and barbaric practice.

The theme of today's orators has been “change”. We have heard that sermon preached to us over and over again. America needs change. Whether the answer was “Change we can believe in” or the “Change America needs”. we were told that America needed to change.

That same theme was preached by Jonah. If you go to Barack Obama's website, you will see the top banner reads “Change is coming”. That was the same message preached by Jonah. The message God gave to Jonah as he made his way throughout the city of Nineveh was by no means complicated or complex, it was really quite simple - “Yet 40 days and Nineveh is about to be changed.” If you check your text, you will notice that the ESV reads that Nineveh will be “overthrown”. That is only half the intended meaning. But the Lord had a double meaning in mind when he gave this sermon – Nineveh will be changed.

There are two ways to take it – it could mean what our ESV text says, it could mean that Nineveh will be overthrown. That would certainly be a change. Things would be different. But there is also a gospel based hint of possibility in that message. There is the hint that maybe Nineveh will respond to Jonah's preaching with “real Change”, with the “Change that Nineveh needed”; there was the hint that Nineveh would repent. That she would turn from her great sin and beg the Lord for mercy.

That was the message of Jonah's sermon. Not complicated. Not hard to understand. God has judged Nineveh and she needs to change. One way or another Nineveh will be changed. That is the same message for abortion friendly culture. Murder does not need to be “safe, legal, or rare”. Murder, the murder of our babied needs to be stopped. There needs to be change.

But part of that message, part of that change needs to be God's message of forgiveness.

Allow me to read an expert from a letter written by a woman who had an abortion:

"Let me tell you about that day. I was 17 years old and very scared. My boyfriend and I skipped school and we drove to Chicago. When we got there, the first thing they asked for was money. Then they asked for my name. I was taken to a large room with many other girls and given a gown. A woman stood in the front and told us we would feel some discomfort but `not much more than a female exam'. We were then lined up in single file. I remember feeling like I was a cow being led to a slaughterhouse, but I quashed those feelings.

"Then we were taken, one by one, into a small room where the abortion would take place. The abortionist was cold. Never said a word. Just put me in the position. The sound was horrible, as was the pain. Let me tell you, it was many years before a vacuum cleaner didn't bother me because of this sound. After it was over, I was taken back to the small cubicle where I had left my clothes. I was not told anything about the mental anguish and the physical pain I would feel for so many years.

"Finally we drove home, and on the way I fell asleep (I guess maybe that was my way out). We arrived at my house. My boyfriend awakened me with sort of a slap. He said, `You're home.' That's all he said. My seven-week-old baby was gone.

"Well, time goes on. But as a direct result of this abortion, I have lost five babies through miscarriages. Finally I had a little girl, and she was born with a heart problem. She has since undergone heart surgery and much pain, and, believe you me, I have been suffering more than she, but mine has been guilt. Mine has been pain and shame. And I stand here and say, `Abortion is wrong!'"

Abortion is wrong. It is murder. It is sin. Those who have committed that sin need to repent. But those who have committed that sin also and especially need to know that it is a sin that has been forgiven by God.

This woman knows what she did was wrong. Indeed, most women who have abortions believe that they are wrong, but they go through with the abortion because they feel trapped, they feel there is no way out and then they live with the guilt and the shame of what they have done like this woman here.

This woman needs to hear about Nineveh. The people of Nineveh were just as guilty as she. And more so. They had piled up the corpses of their slain. Yet when they heard God's message of repentance and change – they changed. They had a change of heart. They confessed their sin, they repented in sackcloth and ashes and God had mercy. He did not punish them.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus refers back to this city. Jesus says “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:41)

The wicked and murderous people of Nineveh repented of their sin and God forgave them, so that Jesus assures us that they will arise on the last day and that they will receive God's gift of eternal life in heaven. Their sins were washed away when they were changed by the preaching of Jonah.

If the preaching of Jonah changed the hearts of the people of Nineveh, so that they were forgiven, imagine the change that is available for this women and the millions like her through the preaching of Him who is greater than Jonah.

Jesus the Greater Prophet came preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins. And just like Jonah was reluctant to fulfill the destiny laid out for him by the Father, so also was Jesus reluctant. So reluctant that he begged for there to be another way. “Father, if it be your will take this cup of suffering from me.” But the Greater Prophet did not run away. He did not try to escape God's will but He willing went “like a sheep to the slaughter.”

And just as Jonah was in the belly of the beast for three days, Jesus was in hell . For three hours on the cross, Jesus endured hell. He suffered hell even while he was suffering from the nails and the thorns and the spear. And out of his wounds poured the blood that cleanses us from sin – the blood that cleanses us from our shame and our guilt – even the shame, the guilt, the sin of abortion. To those women who are the victims of abortion, to those women who are stained by the blood of their children, we need to proclaim to them that the blood of Jesus has washed away those stains so that there is forgiveness, so that they are set free and released from their guilt.

And what of that change? Jesus, the greater Jonah was also three days away. In the belly of the beast – in the belly of hell, but not as the victim, no longer the victim. The Jesus in hell was Jesus the victor, the Jesus who conquered sin and who was soon to conquer death. He was there to preach his victory to the sinners in hell so that Jesus is Lord every place. That means that Jesus is Lord of heaven. Jesus is Lord of earth. Jesus is Lord even in hell. And yes, Jesus is Lord even where hell seems reigns supreme: even at the abortion clinics, at Planned Parenthood, and at pro choice rallies. Jesus is Lord of Heaven and earth.

And Jesus has called us to call for change, the change America really needs. The change of repentance from the sin of abortion. The change of repentance from the murder of children and babies. But especially the change of heart that can only come through faith in the risen and ascended Lord of heaven and earth who has died to cleanse us from all sin. And that is Change America can believe in.

Amen.

Epiphany 2 - John 1:43-51

There have been those who have said that “seeing is believing”. Typically those words are spoken by skeptics – by those who do not believe in the supernatural, who don't believe that it is possible for a god to exist, let alone a god who is active in the universe, let alone a god who created the universe or who cares for his creation. In the minds of such people, even if there was a god we could not know him, because there is no way for us to measure and quantify him; therefore he cannot exist. Unless you see him, unless you reach out and touch him, unless you hear his voice and see his lips move then you simply cannot believe in him. After all, seeing is believing.

Fortunately God’s people are too smart all that. God has given to us the wisdom to know better. We know that we can be confident of things we do not see and measure even if they are not right under our noses. We believe what God has told us, what He has revealed to us, regardless of what someone says they can or cannot measure in a laboratory somewhere.

Yet in spite of our God given wisdom and in spite of our faith inspired savvy, the fact remains that such people have taken away from people of faith something that God has very clearly given. People of faith, and even people of the Christian faith have been duped into believing that faith is little more than a blind leap, a simple matter of the heart. There is no relationship between faith and reason, between faith and knowledge, that Christians should turn off their faith when they step into the classroom, into the workplace, out into public because faith is even something that stands in the way of knowledge. Faith has been reduced to a blind leap - stepping out into nothing and believing that God will catch you. It help you make it through your day, it gets you through tough times, but that is all its good for. Faith is sort of like Dory the fish in Finding Nemo when Marlin asks her how does she know that she won't get hurt or that something bad won't happen. Dory replies, “I don't” and she just keeps swimming. Sadly many Christians have come to believe that is all they've got. Since seeing is believing in the real world, the Christian faith has no place.

Ironically for those who think that believing and seeing have nothing to do with one another, as John the disciple of Jesus and the Apostle of the Church writes our text that we have heard this morning, there is an awful lot of seeing that seems to be going on. If faith and seeing truly have nothing to do with one another, the Apostle John does not seem to have heard about it.
Look at the text:

John tells us that Jesus called Phillip – he sought him out found him and commanded him to follow. Philip obeyed the command of Christ (which is simply another way to say that Philip believed and had faith in Christ (Matthew 28:20, Romans 1:5)). And the very next thing that Philip did was go out and find his friend Nathaniel and tell him that he found the one that Moses and the Prophets had written about and his name was Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

Suddenly faith had an address – it had an object. There was something solid that it was tied down to. You might even say that there was something you could measure. Philip did not say, “Nathaniel, you've just got to step out into nothing and let God take over, Close your eyes and let Jesus take the reigns.” What he did say, was Nathaniel, I found the Messiah. He is a man, flesh and blood, skin and bone and His name is Jesus. He comes from Nazareth. He has a father just like the rest of us and his father's name is Joseph.” Suddenly the promises given by God through Moses and the Prophets had a connection to something you could see and touch; a person who could even be measured in a laboratory. The promises all pointed to Jesus of Nazareth. And Philip invited Nathaniel to “come and see”.

Oh, but Nathaniel... he was a skeptic. We have them in our time, Philip seems to have had one on his hands as well. Someone who says “It can't be. It's too far from the truth to be real. I don't believe it.” Nathaniel was one who heard the Word of God about Jesus and he refused to believe that word.

You know the sort. We talked about the people who claim that seeing is believing. In order to believe in God I have to be able to see him. Usually what they really mean is that they want to see him do for them what they think he should do, what they want him to do. A plane crashes in the Hudson River and we claim its a miracle. A plane is steered into the World Trade Centers and we wonder where was God. It's not so much that they cant see God or see evidence of him or that God has not made himself known. The problem is that they want to see a god who performs tricks for them. God save me from illness, poverty, war, bloodshed, God give me fame, success, power, wealth, glory.” Then I will see for sure. Then I will believe. Seeing usually is not the problem when it comes to faith in God, usually the problem is whether or not God sees eye to eye with you.

Chances are, he does not.

When Nathaniel came to see Jesus, Jesus already knew him. Because Jesus had already seen him. “Nathaniel, Before Philip called you, while you were still under the fig tree, I saw you.” Where else had Nathaniel been that Jesus had seen him? Where have you been that Jesus has seen you? Have you been an Israelite in whom there is no deceit? Or have you been a scoundrel? Have you been a thief? Have you been an idolater, have you demanded from God that if He is to be your God he had better get things right. Jesus saw Nathaniel and Jesus has seen us and the things he has seen in us, in our hearts and in our minds and in our words and in our actions all have been sin. Jesus has seen us and Jesus has seen sin.

A few weeks ago our Gospel text was from Luke 2.22-40. Simeon who had been promised that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah came up to Mary and Joseph in the Temple, took the boy in his arms and said. “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared before all people.” Simeon had faith in the promise of God and his faith was connected to what he saw. He saw Jesus. And Jesus, the baby carried in the arms of the poor mother and father was the salvation for the whole world. The baby was the God/man who had come into the world to die for the sins of the world.

God had seen the condition of the hearts of men. He had seen their sin and so he sent to them his salvation so that they could see it in the person of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. And what did God permit us to see? God permitted us to see a man who was humble of appearance. A man of sorrows who had no beauty that we should look on him. (Isaiah 53:3) Who was looked down on and rejected so that men would hide their faces from him. When men did look at him it was to gloat over him and to make fun of him as hung naked and shamed on the cross. Men looked at him to pierce him (Psalm 22:16, Zech. 12:10, John 19:37), his hands and his feet, his side. To wag their heads and criticize. He saved others yet he can't even save himself.

And here we begin to see. Here we begin to understand. Scripture says that Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the substance of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) Scripture says that “We walk by faith and not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7) because what we see is the cross. What we see is suffering. What we see isn't what we want to see; we don't see wealth or honor or fame or glory or power. Jesus doesn't always save us from getting cancer, he doesn't always steer our car out of harms way so that we wind up safely on the side of the road. He doesn't always keep us from insult or injury or harm. But what he does is what is most important. He saves us from sin. He died for our sin. He gives us salvation.

Salvation is seen in Jesus. God gave to us the account of the things that Jesus had done written by those who had seen him – eye witness accounts. People who were there, people who could testify in a court of law as to what they had seen and heard. People who saw him die. People who saw him rise. People who saw him ascend into heaven. Jesus the Son of God is not a myth or a legend. He is not comic book superhero. He is a flesh and blood man who really lived, a historical figure who accomplished our salvation through his death for us on the cross.

When Nathaniel marvels at the words of Jesus and says to him “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” It was because of what he had seen. He had seen Jesus. And because he had seen Jesus he believed. Jesus told him of the things that he was yet to see. He would see “heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” He would see salvation. He would see the sins of men paid for in full so that heaven would be open and so that access would be given to men. Because of what he had seen, Nathaniel was granted the hope of what he would see.

That same thing is true for us. Our hope is not for the things that we see. Our hope is not for an immediate fix to all of life's little problems. Our hope is not a genie-god who fulfills all our wants and desires. Our hope is that because of what God has done for us in Jesus we have the promise that we will see with our eyes what God has accomplished for us on the cross. Job says “I know that my Redeemer lives and in the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has thus been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me.” (Job 19:25-27)

We have that hope that after our skin has been destroyed, yet will we see God with our eyes because of the fact, because of the eye witness account of those who have seen it and written it down for us that Jesus our Redeemer Lives. He who was crucified has been raised from the dead and He is alive. And He will live forever. And He will stand on the earth and we will stand with him.

Yet like Job we are weak. Like Job, we suffer. Like Job our hearts are faint. And so God gives us salvation and forgiveness and strength that we can see.

On the night when he was betrayed Jesus took bread, he took a cup, he blessed it, he gave thanks and he gave it to his disciples saying to them “Take eat... This is my body... Take drink... This is my blood...” Jesus, who was soon to die and who was soon to rise and who was soon to ascend promised his disciples that he would still be with them, that they would still see his body and his blood and that they would see him as they tasted the bread and the wine and that just as certain as the bread and the wine was in their mouth he was with them and they were with him.

Jesus is with us. He comes to us to be with us so that we can see him. We see him in with and under the bread and the wine. We see the salvation that he has prepared for us on the cross and delivered to us in the means of grace, in the mechanism that he has chosen as the means for the delivery of that forgiveness that he earned for us on the cross. He comes to be with us in his bodily presences on the altar so that with our eyes we can see the salvation that he has prepared for us in the presence of all people.

Some people say that seeing is believing. I say that believing is seeing. Seeing what God has done for us in Jesus on the cross. Seeing what God has done for us in seeking us out and calling us to faith, just as he called Philip. Just as he called Nathaniel. Seeing what God has done for us to strengthen our faint hearts here on the altar in His sacrament. Believing is seeing. Believing is seeing Jesus. And He is a sight for sore eyes.
Amen.

Baptism of Our Lord - Mark 1:4-11

And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opening and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. [11] And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."

Any father can attest to the pride that one feels at the relationship that he forms with his son. Fathers invest so much of themselves into their sons, teaching them the things that they have learned through the years about what it means to be a man; things like how to throw a football or hit a baseball, helping him to learn the appropriate collegiate athletic team to root for (even when you happen to find yourself living in an area where most people root for the wrong team), teaching him to ride a bicycle, having him work with you on projects while you teach him how to use and handle tools, and then, especially teaching him the more important aspects of manhood – things like honesty and integrity, service and self sacrifice, responsibility, and what it means to show love and to put the needs of others before your own.
And then to see your son in action – to see when he takes the lessons you have taught him and he puts them into practice; to see him doing those things out of love and out of a desire to please you and out of obedience to you – as a father that is a source of immeasurable pride. Words simply cannot express the joy that brings.
The words spoken by God the Father in our text are an expression of that same sense of pride and joy and satisfaction at the obedience and devotion displayed by His Son. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father from eternity willingly carried out the plan for the salvation of the world established by His heavenly Father. Fully knowing the cost to himself personally, out of love and obedience he took on himself the burden of our sin so that he might carry out the will of His heavenly Father. Upon witnessing this event as it occurred on the banks of the Jordan River, the heavenly Father voiced his pleasure from heaven. “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.“ God expressed this pleasure because of Jesus' obedience. He expressed this pleasure because of what Jesus had done!
And what had Jesus done? He got baptized. He went down to the Jordan River where his cousin John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, was preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Hundreds and thousands of people were lining up, coming in droves to hear this preacher and prophet; they were repenting of their sins and they were coming to him to be baptized and therefore receive through that baptism the forgiveness of sins. They were in need of that forgiveness. (But) Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God was perfect and sinless. He did not need repentance. He did not need forgiveness. He did not need baptism. But he was baptized regardless. Not for himself. He was baptized for us. Because God the Father, His heavenly Father, desired that it be done. Because His heavenly Father desired that He claim the life of a sinner for his own, despite the fact that those sins were not his own. Because his heavenly father desired to save sinners through the perfect sacrifice, through the perfect death of this Son Jesus.
As every father knows, there are instances where a father is not so proud of his son. There are times when the lessons learned are forgotten and are set aside. There are times when the son disobeys his father. Perhaps the son determines that he does not need to listen to the instruction of his father and ignores his will, resists the will of his father and even goes against the will of his father. Perhaps the son acts up in school, neglects his responsibilities at home, perhaps he does not show honor and respect to his authorities and the result is that father is disappointed. The father is saddened by the behavior of his son and expresses his disappointment. The father disciplines his son to help him to learn to behave differently.
Oh but also there are those times that the son is simply following the poor example set by the father – perhaps the son notices the hot temper of the father and reacts accordingly in similar situations. Perhaps the son notices the father's prolonged gaze at women not his wife. Perhaps the son hears and recognizes the dishonest explanations and excuses given by the father when he is caught in a bind and the son learns lessons of falsehood. Our sons have plenty of sins of their own to struggle against without learning from the poor examples we fathers set for them. Sometimes it is the poor examples set by the fathers that prove to be a stumbling block for our sons.
And so Jesus came. Imitating the perfect example of the Heavenly Father's righteousness, Jesus the Son of the Heavenly Father, the Only Begotten One was righteous. He was sinless. There was no falsehood, no lust, no anger, no pride found in his person. A man like no other man that had ever lived. He was always obedient to his heavenly father and even to his earthly father. Even from Joseph the husband of his mother Mary, the adopted father of the Lord, Jesus learned lessons of righteousness. From Joseph he followed the good examples and ignored the sinful ones. Jesus was always obedient. He always showed honor and respect. He always kept the Commandments – without exception. Not even one.
And this obedience led him to the Jordan River where John his cousin, his blood relative was baptizing repentant sinners. The sinless one stepped into the water to be baptized with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Not for himself. Not for his own repentance. Not for his own sin. Jesus stepped into that water so that he might be one of us. Earthly sons. Fleshly sons. Earthly Fathers. Fleshly fathers. Given to anger and lust and dishonesty and pride. Guilty of breaking the commandments. Disobedient to our Heavenly Father. Poor examples to our earthly sons. Jesus became like us so that He could die for us.
And he did. Jesus came up out of the water and the very next thing he did was make his way out to the wilderness where he fasted and then was tempted by Satan. Satan came to him with every temptation we have every faced, ever temptation that we have been deceived by and fallen prey to – Jesus suffered this same torment and he successfully withstood it. And then he called his disciples. He taught the crowds. He preached the Word of God. He healed the sick. He confronted the sins of fathers and sons, of mothers and daughters, and they grew tired of his Word. The sinners arrested the sinless one and they tried him, not according to justice, but according to human falsehood and lies and they found him to be not one of them – yet what they should have been. They nailed him to a cross to kill him, to be rid of him, so that they could comfortably continue in their dishonesty, their lust, their greed, their pride, their sin.
Jesus died. He died for sinners. He died for you, for me, for your family and my family. He died for us all.
And so the Father was well pleased. He gave the Son this task – to become like the sinners so that he could die for the sinners. The Son began that task at his baptism and that son completed that task at the cross. The salvation for you and me was accomplished through the obedience of this son and through the death of the righteous Son of God!
Our text tells us that as Jesus came up out of the water he saw the heavens opening and the Spirit descending like a dove. We usually bypass those words quickly and think of them as rhetoric or symbolic language and don't often stop to consider the full importance of what Mark is telling us.
The heavens opened!
For you and me that is good news. Because for us the heavens have been closed. We could not get in. The doors were locked. We did not have the key. We did not have the ability to open the doors of heaven. They were shut tight to keep out those who do not belong – they were shut tight to keep out sinners.
Jesus was baptized and the heavens were opened! In light of the sacrifice that the son was going to make. In light of the work that he took upon himself to complete for us, the heavens were opened.
Little Anna Christina Headings was baptized today. She was born as daughter to Dennis and Rebekah. She was born sharing in the sinful nature that we all have a part in. She was born with the heavens shut to her because of her sin. But today she was baptized.
And just as the heavens opened when Jesus was baptized, the heavens were suddenly opened for Christy. The doors of heaven were flung wide open with the promise that God will never shut them to her. The doors of heaven will always be open. She will always have the key. She is a baptized child of God.
And the Spirit? When Jesus was baptized the Holy Spirit came down from heaven like a dove and anointed Jesus. That same Holy Spirit has come down out of the opened heavens and anointed baby Christy. He has made his home in her heart and he there will live. Her heart will be his temple forever.
And the words from heaven. You and I may not have heard them, but they were spoken – God himself on his throne in heaven said of Anna Christina Headings, “You are my beloved daughter. With you I am well pleased.”
God our heavenly Father is well pleased with you. For the sake of Jesus and because of his obedience to his father. Because of His sacrifice on the cross, the Heavenly Father is your Father and He is well pleased with you.

Christmas 1 - Luke 2:22-40

If you ever saw salvation, what would it look like? I suppose that would all depend on what you need salvation from.
In the weeks leading up to Christmas the weather conditions around the country left people in need of some sort of salvation or another. Ice storms in the north east left people without electricity for more than 2 weeks. Some were sleeping in shelters, others searched for warmth inside their cars, all were hoping for some sort of salvation from the cold. If your problem is downed power lines due to icy cold weather, salvation comes in the form of a work crew from the electric company.
And then there were those who were left stranded in airports, unable to fly out due to the severe weather conditions. Many had no where to go, they were simply stuck in the airport until the runway could be cleared enough to safely take off. Many were hoping to get out of the airport and get home to their families in time for Christmas. If you are stranded in an airport, I suppose salvation would come in the form of a Jet sitting on the runway fueled and ready for takeoff. It all depends on what you need to be saved from.
While many people need to be saved from many different sorts of things – the greatest need that we have and the biggest danger that we face is one that holds true across the board for every man, woman and child. The greatest thing that we need to be saved from - is sin. We need to be delivered from sin: both the sin that lives in the world around us and the sin that lives inside of us. If we are not delivered from this universal problem of sin it will most definitely be the death of us. The New Testament book of Hebrews even tells us that death is born from sin.
So if your biggest problem is sin, what does salvation look like? For Simeon, the Old Prophet who found Mary and Joseph in the temple, for Anna the prophetess who came after him, and for you and me, salvation looks like the little baby Jesus. An infant carried in the arms of a poor young first-time mother as she and her husband brought this baby to the temple for his purification. I guess it all depends on what you need to be saved from…
At the time of Jesus’ birth, lots of people were looking to be saved from lots of different things, most were looking for God to save them from political enemies. Simeon and Anna were looking for God to save them from sin. This little baby carried to the temple came for that distinct purpose.
You might think that it was strange for a prophet to look for a savior from sin at the temple. After all, the temple is the place for sinners. It is where sinners go to get right with God. You would hope that your savior is not also someone who himself needs saving. After all, a life guard who is drowning won’t do you much good, neither will it do you any good to discover that your surgeon was occupying the bed adjacent to yours in the hospital. You need a savior who can overcome your situation. So what was the savior doing at the temple?
Perhaps you did not realize that was what the temple was for – it was the place to go when you need to be saved. That is what church is for. It the place you go when you need to be saved. And what do we need saving from? Why SIN of course. What you and I need to be saved from – more than weather, more than the economy, more than taxes, more than cancer, more than homework or relationships or anything else – what we need to be saved from is sin because we need to be saved from death. So what was the savior doing at the temple?
The savior, Jesus, the newborn baby was wasting no time in getting starting on your salvation. He was starting as soon as possible. He started right away. As soon as the law that God gave for sinners commanded fulfillment, Jesus got started accomplishing it for you.
Jesus was a baby. He was a perfect baby –what you and I should have been but were not, and indeed are not. And Jesus was brought to the temple where God commanded all sinful babies should be brought. They should be carried here 8 days after they were born so that they could be purified. So that God could mark them for salvation from their sin. But Jesus had no sin. He was not there for himself. Jesus was there for us!
Not too different from what we have done here. Dustin Blair brought his two children, Dillon and Jade here before the altar of God so that he and his daughter and his son could be marked for God’s salvation. So that God could claim them back from the sin that they were born into. Jesus the sinless one, allowed himself to be treated as a sinner so that he could be the sacrifice for sinners.
Simeon knew that. He saw the baby wrapped up and swaddled the way any baby would be, but it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that this baby was different. That this baby was special. That this baby did not need to be brought to the temple but that he would come anyway so that he could be the salvation from sin that the world has needed since she first fell into sin.
Simeon walked up to that child, and Simeon the sinner who was there at the temple looking to be saved from his sin made his confession of Faith – Lord I can now die in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation. Some of you are going to make that confession in a few minutes. You will stand up in front of the Altar of God because you are sinners who need saving and you say that your eyes have seen the salvation that God has prepared for you.
The other night, in our Children’s Christmas program several of you may have noticed that as the Children sang their one of their songs, I was taking some items from the manger and placing them on the altar. You may not have noticed, and if you did notice it might have been hard to see what those things were. Those things were a Bible, a Baptismal shell, and a Communion Chalice and Patten – (the cup and the plate that holds the Lord’s Supper). Simeon saw God’s salvation and for him it looked like a baby boy. You and I also see God’s salvation and what we see is the salvation that baby boy has prepared for us. We see His Word. We see His baptism. We see His supper. And so we SEE His salvation.
That salvation has come to you.

All Saints - Revelation 7:9-17

Tuesday and it will all be over. All of the campaigning, all of the advertising, all of the phone calling, all of the polling, all of the mudslinging, all of it. Come Tuesday morning America will vote. We will make our choice, elect our candidates, decide our ballot initiatives and be done. And guess what, for the people of God who are signed sealed and delivered as His forgiven saints – it doesn’t matter one iota! We will have a new president, new state and local representatives, new laws and not a one of them will change what we have to do here as the people of God. Today is All Saints Day. Today we can forget about what the rest of the world is doing out there and we can settle in and focus on what God is doing here. Because that is what really matters, that is what really counts.
And what is God doing here? More than you could even begin to imagine. Over the last few months we have heard lots of people make lots of promises. Most of those promises are going to be broken the day they are sworn in to office. Today Jesus has made a promise that will last forever! Today Jesus made a promise to little Clara Barbara Andrews. Today Jesus put the sign of His Cross on her forehead and on her heart. Today Jesus spoke her name in Heaven – “Clara Barbara” he said, “I baptize you in my name. You are mine; you will be mine forever and ever. No one can ever take you away from me.”
Friends, that is a big deal.
Today Clara has joined us – what Ancient Christians have called the “Church Militant” – that is to say, the Christians who live in the world – this corrupt and sinful world that is ruled by sin and the Devil. It is called the Church Militant because it is a church that is armed & ready and that is engaged in battle. Every day, every Christian gets up and gets out of bed and straps on his spiritual armor to get ready to go to battle. Every day we fight against sin, against temptation to sin, against the devil, against the world around us and the battle is tough. It is hard fought and it is bloody. And there are casualties. There are Christians who die in that battle. There are Christian martyrs who suffer for their faith, who suffer for sticking by what the Bible says and refusing to give it up.
Make no mistake, Jim and Erin, and all you other moms and dads out there, you are not just raising sweet little innocent angels for a life of peace and happiness – you are raising warriors. You are sending them out to do battle. So arm them. Equip them. Get them ready for the fight. Make certain they have a strong hold on the Christian faith. Paul tells us that faith is our shield that puts out the Devil’s flaming darts. Make certain that they have a firm grip on the Sword of the Spirit. Make sure they know the Bible, that they know what it says.
Parents, God has given you such an amazing gift. Here at St Paul’s God has given to you a Lutheran School that will help you to train your children for battle. This is such a blessing. Every day as we teach our children to learn the word of God, to sing hymn, to recite the catechism we are outfitting out little warriors for this battle. They are being trained for the fight that they will have to endure every day of their life! Parents don’t take this lightly!
But today is All Saints Day. Today is about those Christians who have fought this battle and won! It is about the Christians who have been victorious over sin and even over the Devil himself and who are now celebrating the spoils of their victory in Heaven. St John was given a rare treat. He got to see those saints (we call them the Church Triumphant ) in all their glory. Standing before the throne of heaven. Surrounded by all the angels, praising God in a giant shout! Singing with one voice. John got to hear their song! It must have been a glorious sound!
Imagine every voice in heaven singing as one. All the angel choirs, the same angels who sang out in praise on the night that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the same angels who stood by as Jesus suffered on the cross. The same angels who rejoiced on the day that he was raised. The angels who came and rolled away the stone. The angels who announced Jesus’ resurrection to the women on Easter morning. Every last one of them was there singing praises to god. And before the angels gathered around the throne, singing together with the angels, John saw those who were “coming out of the great tribulation”.
John saw the survivors. Those who had come through the battle. Who had fought long and hard. Who had gone into battle and who lived to tell about it. Those who fought hard to hold on to their faith, who resisted the many temptations to lay it down and set it aside, who resisted the many temptations to give in or to fit in, to take the path of least resistance, to go along and get along. They fought, they battled and they survived. And here they are joining in heaven’s song!
John describes them. They were dressed in white robes. What John means to tell us is that they were righteous. They were clean from their sin. To wear your own clothes is to wear your sin, it is to believe that you don’t need to change your style because you think you already look pretty good.
We are conditioned to worry about how we look, what we are wearing and if we are wearing the right fashions. As much as we think that fashion makes us individuals, it mostly just makes us look the same as everyone else. Sin is the same way. In a sinful world, sin is what’s in fashion. Sin is what’s hip and up to the minute. To follow in line with what everyone else is doing, to buy in to the philosophies of Oprah’s reading list is essentially to dress yourself in the latest, the hottest, the up to the minute sin. No matter the kind of clothes you choose to put on your body, the type of spiritual clothes that are in fashion in a sinful world are and always will be sin. Sinners dress themselves in sin.
But heaven has a strict dress code – no sin is allowed. Check you coat at the door. Take off the sin and leave it behind. The only fashion that fits-in in heaven is the fashion that is made by Jesus. He takes your old dingy sinners’ robe and he plunges that deep into his blood. He custom fits you with a robe of righteousness. The saints in heaven, the warriors who hung up their battle gear were given new outfits to wear. They were given sparkling white robes.
And in their hands they were holding palm branches. We have seen palm branches before. On Palm Sunday Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem and he was greeted by people waving palm branches. Palm branches were for celebrations, for victory celebrations. They were waved for kings who returned home from battle, who came back after defeating their enemies. The Saints in heaven were celebrating their victory that had been won for them by Jesus who sits on the throne. Jesus had gone into battle! He had strapped on his battle gear and gone off to war. He went to fight.
And fight he did. Demons were terrified of him. They begged him for mercy. Satan himself tried his hardest to knock him off his course and distract him from his purpose. Even Satan’s servants, the Jews who rejected him and the Romans tried their hardest to send him back where he came from. They gathered together all their strength, they dragged him before their courts, they sentenced him and they executed him. They nailed him to a cross! And on that cross he died! And just when it looked like he lost the battle, just when it looked like his enemies won, Jesus turned the tables. As it turned out, his enemies had only plaid right into his hands. They did what he was hoping they would do all along. He wanted to die.
Jesus died for you and me. He died for our children, our grandchildren. He died for our mothers and fathers, for our grandmothers and our grandfathers. He died for all of us. To pay the price for our sin. And since the price was paid in full he was raised to life! And so now in heaven he is seated with the Father on the throne. The heavenly choirs gather around him and sing, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb.” They shake the rafters of heaven with their song, with their joyous celebration. John saw it with his own eyes. He heard it with his own ears. What an incredible sight it must have been!
We belong to the church Militant. We are the warriors. We are the ones who are in the middle of the battle. We fight along side one another. We encourage each other to keep up the fight, to not loose heart, to not give up. It is a hard fight, and we have lost some from our number over this past year.
Since we last recognized All Saints Day there have been a few who have been taken from us. We remember Marcella Dellinger who died in April. Harold Gaulke who died July. Truman Nicol who died in September. They struggled through to the end as members of the Church Militant. But those deaths are never a defeat. Jesus has already won and the war is over.
While we remember All Saints Day and while we remember those who have gone out of the Church Militant, what we are remembering is that right now they are in that picture that John saw. They are in heaven with all of the angels, the saints, and God himself who sits on the throne and Jesus the Lamb. They are singing at the top of their lungs. In fact, they joined their voices just a moment ago when little Clara was baptized. The Scriptures tell us that there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents. You all saw your pastor take a little baby in his hands, sprinkle some water and speak some words from the Bible. Those were Jesus’ words. When I spoke them, Jesus spoke them. Jesus spoke them in heaven!
Every time you go to a sporting event, they always announce birthdays of those who are in attendance on that day. Fans get a kick out of hearing their name spoken over the sound system and seeing their name up on the jumbotron. Today, Clara’s name was spoken by Jesus himself in heaven! And all of heaven erupted in rejoicing. There was a celebration even greater than what you would hear in Ohio Stadium after a Buckeye touchdown. And you can bet that Truman, Harold and Marcella were celebrating along with them.
And so today we celebrate. We celebrate the victory given by God to the saints in heaven, even to our own friends and loved ones. And we celebrate the new life given to Clara this morning as she has been outfitted with a brand new suit of armor to do battle here in the world. And most of all, we celebrate Jesus who has given to us all the victory over sin death and the devil when he washed us all in His blood.
Amen.