The Free Gift of the Good News Continues: Reformation Sunday - Romans 3: 19-28

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Epistle lesson from Romans 3. “For we are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.”

Occasionally, someone will ask what I enjoy the most about being a pastor, either here at St. Paul’s or just in general. I suspect most people think I’m going to say something about baptizing babies, or being around the school kids, getting to tell people about Jesus, or only working a few hours on Sunday mornings while playing golf the rest of the week. True, I do enjoy those things, but that’s not quite what I like the most, and I do work more than just a Sunday morning (although it is funny how many people think that is truth). My favorite thing about being a pastor, my most favorite part of this vocation is this: I get to proclaim to God’s people, with troubled, burdened consciences, that are struggling with guilt and shame that their sins are forgiven by Jesus. Yes, that happens in preaching and Bible class, but more to the point, I get to say to an individual person, a Christian soul weighed by the knowledge that they have sinned against another person and against God, “I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Still, that may seem to be an odd choice to identify as my favorite part of this vocation, and a very specific one, at that. Television shows and movies don’t speak much about God’s gift of forgiveness through the pastoral office. Books rarely mention absolution, unless it involves a weird plot twist. MASH’s Father Mulcahey was the closest, but that was only on occasion. But it’s not just pop culture. Seminary doesn’t spend a lot of energy teaching about it – at least, not compared to exegetical study of Greek or Hebrew or preaching. I took three preaching classes my last year at Seminary. I can only remember a singular lecture on pastoral care by absolution.

So, if it’s such an odd part of pastoral ministry, and such a small part of our pastoral training, why do I like it so much?

Some years ago, I was at a pastor’s conference where the keynote speaker was an old-school-Lutheran pastor whom I will call Pastor James. Pastor James was speaking with us about the art and craft of pastoral care, that is, the caring for the soul of the baptized child of God. As Lutherans, we think of Law and Gospel usually in the vein of sermons. His thesis was that the same Law and Gospel we use in preaching should be the key when caring for God’s people. God’s Law holds us accountable before God. That’s why we feel bad when we sin, both horizontally in human relationships and vertically in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. The Law, with its demands of perfection, exposes us as sinners and the Christian conscience realizes our Old Adam won the battle in that moment – sometimes in a very, very bad way. If we were to dare to stand before God as judge on our own merits, we stand condemned. That’s magnified when we realize that our merits are, in fact, worthless. Thus, the terror, the guilt, the shame of sin. You can’t fix it; you can’t remove it; you can’t undo it. The medicine, the cure for the crushing condemnation of the Law is the Good News of Jesus Christ. That Good News is that Jesus perfectly fulfilled that Law, living as God demanded and as none of us can do. As the perfect, sinless Son of God, He then became the Lamb of God, sacrificed for the sins of the world. The fancy term is “vicarious atonement”: a substitutionary sacrifice, the holy for the unholy, the sinless for the sin-stained.

In the Old Testament, God’s people offered countless animal sacrifices. To use a British term that is also apropos to describe the sacrifice, it was a bloody mess. The animal was slaughtered. To demonstrate that the animal was taking the place of the worshipper, its blood was caught in a basin. Some of the blood was poured out on the altar; some was sprinkled on the people who brought the sacrifice. Literally, they were marked with the life-blood of the animal. That covering of blood was called the propitiation. Life was taken so that life could be given through the forgiveness of sins.

That’s the image Paul is using to explain Jesus’ sacrificial death. What was true in Old Testament sacrifice becomes infinitely more true as Jesus becomes the Lamb of God for the sins of the world. He dies for us. The holy for the unholy; the sinless for the sinful. By God’s grace through faith in Christ, His blood covers our sins. Not literalisticly, of course. But, that is how God sees us: with our sins covered by the blood of Jesus. Because we stand under the propitiation of Jesus, God declares us righteous. His death becomes our life. His holiness becomes our holiness. His sinlessness becomes our sinlessness. His Divine Sonship becomes our identity as sons and daughters of God.

This is what Paul preaches to the Romans, and that is what we as Lutheran Christian pastors are taught to proclaim. Pastor James said this isn’t just for proclamation from the pulpit. It’s to be delivered person to person, each time they feel as though they are standing before God, as naked and exposed as Adam and Eve, with every raw, terrible sin illuminated by the holy brilliance of the Law. He told us about the time he was flying when the person next to him started talking, telling his life’s story. Because he was listening as a pastor, Pastor James realized that this fellow traveler was actually confessing his sins – not formally, but in his story. And, because Pastor James was listening as a pastor, he acted as a servant of Christ. When he finished, Pastor James said he stood up, the airplane serving as an ersatz confessional, and with his huge, Norwegian Minnesota accent, he thundered the words of absolution to an embarrassed but grateful traveler among a confused and somewhat disgruntled congregation of flyers. “I forgive you all your sins,” and with the sign of the cross, declared that terrible burden of guilt to be covered with the propitionary sacrifice of Jesus. He did it, he said, because that is our calling as pastors. When a penitent confesses their sins, knowingly or without realizing it, we are called to speak forgiveness, regardless of where, when, or how.

“You pastors,” he said to us, “you pastors get to tell the burdened, troubled conscience that, yes, the Christian has sinned and fallen terribly short of the glory of God, but his or her Savior has redeemed the same child of God. You tell the saint, the baptized, the child of God that powerful word. Listen in your conversations for the shame of the Law, and when you hear it, if there is even an inkling of Christian faith, you deliver the Good News right then and right there. You give life to the one who is otherwise dead.”

"Christ's Ambassador"
2 Corinthians 5:20 - Full of Eyes

That opened my eyes, and my ears, to the necessity of delivering this life-giving word of God in settings I previously ignored. I began to listen more carefully and put into practice this gift of absolution delivered by grace, through faith in the One who died for our sins. It’s led to some interesting moments. One Sunday after church, while filling my car at a Valero gas station, a woman pulled up opposite me at Pump #6 and after a couple of questions about my clerical shirt, she began telling me her sordid life’s story. With a voice that was an admixture of hope, guilt, fear, and a splash of challenge, she asked, “Tell me: can God forgive that mess?” That morning, Pump #6 became a confessional. I crossed across the island and with my right hand held high, I proclaimed forgiveness to her. “In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins,” and with the invocation of the Trinity I made the sign of the cross over her. A moment later, as I drove away, she was still there, standing perhaps a little taller and with a smile on her face.

But the conversations aren’t always so easy. For all of it’s joy, for some, they have swallowed the barbed hook of satan’s lie that Jesus can’t forgive a sin, a terrible sin, their sin. How do you proclaim forgiveness to a soul who thinks they are unlovable, un-mercy-able, unforgivable? For over two years, I corresponded with a former Lutheran church worker who was in prison serving 30 years – given his age, that would likely be a life sentence. Don’t worry about what he did; it’s irrelevant. Besides, I won’t tell you, anyway. What is important is that he was overwhelmed with shame and guilt at what he had done. Convicted by both man’s law and God’s Law, He was fully aware that his sin destroyed his family, his home, the church where he served. He was a professional church worker, remember, and he knew his Bible very, very well. His letters dripped with God’s conviction against sinners, citing passage after passage of God’s condemnation for sinners who broke His commands. Paul’s “Through the Law comes knowledge of sin,” was no joke for this man! Finally, at the bottom of page 6, he asked a question that was almost like the woman at the gas pump: “How can God forgive me when I sinned against Him, His church, and my family and hurt so many people?” Did you hear the question? It wasn’t denial – God can’t forgive me. It was inquiry, how? I know I am an absolute disaster, so how can God do this?

I let his letter marinate on my desk for almost a week, bathing it in prayer, imagining he was sitting across from me in person. Finally, I began to type. I leaned back into Pastor James who leaned back into St. Paul who leaned on nothing more than the cross of Jesus. “Yes, you are a terrible sinner and what you did is great and grievous against both God and man. Jesus died for sins as these – not just for the light-weight, low-calorie, socially dismissible, low-impact, slightly inconvenient sins. He died for the murderer who hung next to Him on Golgatha. He died for the great apostle who once sent countless Christians to death. He died for prodigal sons who wish dear old dad was dead so he could get his inheritance faster. He died for a prophet who despaired so greatly that he prayed God would take his life. He died for a disciple who denied knowing Jesus and for others who ran in fear. He even died for those who drove nails into His perfect body, for the man who condemned Him to death, and those who stood at the foot of His cross, mocking, doubting, disbelieving. The difference is the former confessed their sins with the sure and certain hope that Jesus did, in fact, die for sinners like them. The latter either thought they had no sins to confess or that they certainly did not need to confess their few-and-far between sins to a Man whom, they thought, was a hypocrite and a heretic who deserved to die. You asked “how can God forgive me?” The short answer is: because He loves sinners. Then, I wrote the words we read from Paul: The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law…the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus for all who believe. There is no distinction, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forth as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.”  “There’s the answer,” I wrote. “God sent Jesus for you. Do you believe it?”

I won’t lie: when I signed my name, sealed and stamped the letter, and dropped it in the mailbox, I did so praying for the words to be received, for the man who would read them, for his broken and bruised heart to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit. I think I prayed those prayers every day. It took almost a month before I got a letter back. Where the previous letter was page upon page of Law-driven self-flagellation, this was three progressively shrinking paragraphs that barely covered a page.

The first was a quick description of his emotions reading the letter, five or six sentences long – maybe half a page. The second paragraph was two sentences long. He picked up in Romans where I left off with one small change in verse 27. Paul wrote, “Then what becomes of our boasting?” He wrote boasting, then drew a single line through boasting and wrote “guilt” so that it would read, “What becomes of our guilt?” He continued: “It is excluded…by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” The final paragraph was one simple sentence. “I believe; help my unbelief.” I still have that letter which, I am not too embarrassed to say, includes more than a few tear-marks, shed from joy at the Spirit’s work in this man’s heart.

That is why I love speaking absolution. Those words that God calls me to speak robs satan of his power of guilt and shame and restores the Christian conscience to a right relationship with God – even one that is not much more than a bent reed or a smoldering wick. He has called me to do that. It is a joy to do so.

I know: it's Reformation Sunday and I haven't said much about Martin Luther. That's because if he were here, he would scold us if we talked about him. Instead, he would point us to Jesus. That blessing of the full and free forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ was at the heart of the reformation some 500 years ago, one which still echoes through the centuries to parishes and God’s saints still today. So, Jesus, with His gift of forgiveness for sinners, is where we go this Reformation Sunday, every Sunday, and every day of our lives. In His name. Amen.

Jesus' Righteousness Makes Us Right With God - Matthew 5: 10-20

Are you afraid? If you were listening carefully to Jesus’ closing words in today’s Gospel, you probably should be. I know am. There Jesus says, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” If that doesn’t frighten you, let me tell you something about the righteousness of those Pharisees and teachers Jesus is talking about, the righteousness that the Son of God says you and I must surpass to enter heaven.

James Tissot
The Pharisee & Publican

For one thing, the Pharisees and teachers of the law knew their Bible cover to cover, backward and forward, inside and out. One of the kids asked me if  knew Psalm 83. I said, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and darkness hovered over the face of the deep.” A wise adult standing nearby said, “That’s Genesis 1:1; she asked you for Psalm 83.” I said, “I know…I’m getting there.” Pharisees needed no such running start. If asked for Habakkuk chapter 4 verse 7, or 1 Kings chapter 5 verse 18, he could do it without having to look it up. That’s how righteous the Pharisees and teachers were: righteous enough to know their Bible that well. Jesus says that unless our righteousness surpasses theirs, we cannot enter heaven. Does your righteousness surpass theirs in the field of Bible knowledge? Mine neither.

Another example... the Pharisees and teachers of the law gave a full ten percent of their income to their church, at a minimum. That’s how righteous they were in their giving. Jesus says that unless our righteousness surpasses theirs, we cannot enter heaven. Does your righteousness surpass theirs in the area of generosity? Mine neither.

The Pharisees and teachers of the law would not be caught be dead anywhere near any display of immorality. They would never set their eyes on anything dirty or impure. Jesus says that unless our righteousness surpasses theirs, we cannot enter heaven. Does your righteousness surpass theirs in the area of purity? Mine neither. And that ought to make us afraid. And Jesus says we have to be even better than that – we have to surpass their righteousness and be perfect – to enter the kingdom of heaven.

But in this Gospel Jesus has more to say; and what else he says takes away our fear and restores our hope of entering heaven. He says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.” You and I are not perfectly righteous in our knowledge of God’s Word, but Jesus was. He knew every command in the Word of God. He knew exactly what it took to live a perfect life.

And while you and I are not perfectly righteous in our generosity, Jesus was. He was so generous that he gave all of himself. He gave himself completely by coming into this world to fulfill that Word of God, to do all that his heavenly Father requires. While you and I have not been perfectly pure, Jesus was. He kept every single one of God’s commands, and he did it for us. He laid down his righteous life on the cross, and he did it for us.

Has our righteousness surpassed the Pharisees in the knowledge of God’s Word, in generosity, and in purity? Have we been perfect in those areas, so that we can enter the kingdom of God? Certainly not. But we have a Savior who knew God’s Word perfectly. We have a Savior who showed perfect generosity in giving himself for us. We have a Savior who lived a pure life that he then sacrificed for our sake.

And because we do, we do not need to despair of our hope of entering heaven. Because Jesus came knowing God’s Word, and in pure generosity to us fulfilled every word of God’s commands, we know that heaven is ours. Through faith in Jesus, we have righteousness before God. We have righteousness that surpasses the Pharisees and teachers of the law. We have the holiness of our Savior Jesus. And with it we have the promise of heaven.

Yes, Jesus has made you righteous through faith in him. That’s what he tells you today. And he also tells you this: Since he has made you righteous in God’s eyes, spend the time between now and the day you enter heaven living in the righteousness Jesus has given you.

Jesus makes that command using two different pictures. First he says: “You are the salt of the earth.” Later he says, “You are the light of the world.” Notice, Jesus does not say, “You are like salt,” or “You are like light.” You are the earth’s salt. You are the world’s light.” Jesus has made you righteous; he has turned you into something special: the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It’s what you are.

So, Jesus says, live like the righteous person he has made you. Live as the salt that you are. Live as the light that you are.  

Jesus has made you righteous; he has made you the salt of the earth; so go out and be what you are. Do good things for whatever you touch in the world, just as salt does good things. Add some flavor and preservation to this world by walking in the Commandments. Make your world different. Give it the flavor of righteousness. Your world is wasting away, rotting from sin. Preserve it by showing others the God-pleasing way to live.

Be the righteous person Jesus has made you; be the salt of the earth. Be the light of the world. Your world is a dark, dreary place full of angst and anger. Be someone bright. Let the joy of your forgiveness show in the way you speak to others. Respond to sarcasm with something genuinely nice. Answer selfishness and self-centeredness with thoughtfulness and kindness. Break the darkness of hate with the light of love.

You are different than the world around you. It is bland with all the same flat and tasteless sin; it is wasting away with rebellion against God. It is dark and mean and cruel. But you are not. You are righteous in Christ. And when he made you righteous, he made you salt and light. Go out and be what you are; the world will be better for it.

Today, we give thanks to God for the Lutheran Women’s in Mission, the LWML. Since 1942, Lutheran women have been serving the Lord with gladness, serving others in His name as salt and light. Although not chartered nationally until the 40s, the first organized gathering of Lutheran women took place right here in Oklahoma in 1928. For over 80 years, Lutheran Women in Mission have been proclaiming Christ, supporting missions, equipping other women in service, and in using their own, unique gifts to care for one another and other Christians from our neighborhood to across the globe.

Today is LWML Sunday. The stereotype is that the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League is nothing more than a group of women who sit around, drink coffee, and chit-chat the time away. The LWML is much more than that. The heart of the LWML is a love for Jesus and a desire to spread His message of hope and life. 

Several years ago, back in Victoria, we were hosting the Zone rally. Unfortunately, our Zone president, who was also a member of my church, was not in the hospital, unable to be with us. After doing the opening devotion, I excused myself and went into town to see her. She was very disappointed because she had helped with the planning, selecting the theme, and the service project for the event. But, she wanted details – how many ladies were there, how was it going, was there enough food, so on. Then she asked me what my devotion was about. I smiled and said, “Jesus.” She grinned at me and, after scolded me for being a smarty-pants, she nodded and said, “Well, that’s what it’s supposed to be about, isn’t it?”

Her comment embodies the entire mission and ministry of the LWML. We thank God for the faithfulness of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League in serving the Lord with gladness and sharing that word of Hope and encouragement, to be salt and light to a saccharine, dark world.

Whether you are part of the Women in Mission League, or if you have never heard of them until today, you live as the salt and light of the world Jesus has made you to be. He will give you opportunities to tell others about His love. If you want the world around you to be attracted to what you believe, if you want your friends and neighbors to see something different in you, be what Jesus has made you. If you want them finally to have to ask what makes you different, live like the righteous person you are. If you want your opportunity to tell someone, “It’s Jesus – he has won my forgiveness, he has made me righteous. He’s for you, too. Trust in him,” then be salt and light.

The Wicked Tenants and a Patient Landowner - Matthew 21: 32-45

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Gospel reading from Matthew 21.

Another parable; another story about the reigning of Jesus. This one, however is different than most others in two distinct ways. First, it’s a parable that is more about what is to come, not what is happening or has been. Second, it’s a parable that does not end well – not for the main character (the son) or for the tenants whom the son was sent to work with. Thus, the parable is unsettling – for both reasons.

The parable is easy enough to understand. Jesus calls them tenants. In the South, we would call them sharecroppers, working the land and sharing the crop to pay the rent. Whether sharecroppers in the south who refuse to share the crop, or tenants in ancient Israel who refuse to pay the rent, there is another, simpler name to use to describe such people: thieves.

The Parable of the Wicked Workers of the Vineyard
Andrey Mironov

To collect what’s due, without the benefit of constable or sheriff, the landowner sends his own emissaries: a series of servants. It doesn’t go well.  Number one gets smacked around; Number two gets the stuffing knocked out of him; Number three, sadly, is murdered. Can you imagine being part of the servant corps, hoping – praying – that your lottery number isn’t pulled for the draft? No thanks!

Now, at this point, I hope you are asking some questions, questions like, “What in the wide, wide world of sports is the landowner thinking?” We can understand sending the first, maybe even a second servant to collect the rent. But after the second incident, evidence is mounting that the sharecroppers aren’t going to play nice. With workers’ comp payments skyrocketing, what kind of landowner sends yet a third servant? None who understand any kind of risk management, no one who have any value for life. So, why would the landowner continue to send servants when the chances of a peaceful resolution are falling faster than water tables in the Panhandle?  Because the landowner, at heart, is kind and merciful and he wants to give those tenants every possible opportunity to stop their foolishness, to stop being thieves, and instead return to a faithful relationship with the master.

The servant can breathe easier when the draft is stopped and the landowner strategizes to send his son instead. You should be asking more questions, now, questions like, “Is this guy mad? Has he gone coo-coo for cocoa puffs? Sending his own son even as he’s still paying disability and funeral benefits for his other three servants? If this happened to servants, what makes him think the son will be treated better? This makes no sense! Who would do such a thing?”

Who, indeed? And, why?

What kind of master would continue to send servants down the highway to the danger zone when recent history shows no reason to expect anything other than further rejection? If that’s true of servants, why would he determine to send his son as a debt collector with such a risk of his being rejected – perhaps even killed?

This, friends, is a parable that tells us something about the mercy of God towards sinful mankind – even at the risk of His own servants, those who speak on His behalf….and even at the risk of His own Son. 

Isaiah 5 helps us paint the picture to understand the parable. The vineyard is the nation of Israel and the plantings, that is the vines themselves, are the people of Israel. The tenant farmers represent the Jewish leaders. The parable, then, illustrates the rejection of God’s authority by the Pharisees, et al, openly defying His word, His gifts, His promises. They have been doing it for quite some time. To call these people to repentance, God sent His servants, called prophets, to call the tenant-pharisees to repentance and properly care for God’s own. Prophets represent God by speaking on His behalf: “Thus saith the Lord.” Don’t try to identify who the servants specifically represent. The three collectively represent all of the prophets who were physically hurt, ignored, and killed for His name’s sake, culminating with the martyred John the Baptizer. So, if God’s people reject His messengers, His prophets, His spokesmen who proclaimed His call to repentance what else could God do?

A moment ago, I said that in the parable the landowner was kind and merciful, wanting his tenants to repent. If that is true in a parable, it is infinitely more true of the Father in Heaven. His greatest desire for Israel (and, again, for all mankind) was repentance, that they would turn from their foolish, arrogant, selfish sinfulness and live. With them rejecting His prophets, God chose to send the Word made flesh, His Son, His only-begotten Son with a simple message: repent, for the Kingdom – the reigning of Jesus – is here.

I also said that this parable is unique in that it foretells something. This parable is speaking about the rejection of Jesus as the tenants plot the murder of the landowner’s Son. “We’ll gain the inheritance,” they foolishly thought in the parable, as if the father would surrender what is rightfully his to murdering thieves.  Their rejection of the master’s kindness and mercy, rejecting his servants and, finally, his own son, was full and complete folly. What kind of fools would do such a thing? Then again, the landowner’s sending his son was folly, itself.  There was no reason, no evidence that the tenants would change their unfaithful stewardship after going oh-for-three with his servants. Yet, the landowner sends his son to the rebellious tenants to give them a final chance to repent – that is, to pay the balance owed and become favorable sharecroppers, again. We know that doesn’t work, though. They foolishly murder the son.

In much the same way that Nathan used the story of a rich king and a poor neighbor’s pet lamb to gain the empathetic response from King David after his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, Jesus’ parable has garnered an empathetic response his Pharisaic listeners. He brings the story to them by asking, “So, what’s the landowner/father going to do to those rebellious tenants?” There was a question hidden in His question to them, as if He’s asking, “Do you get what I’m asking? Are you going to repent or keep killing those whom My Father sends to you?”

They don’t realize that they answer prophetically, judging against themselves by saying, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in due season.”

Jesus minces no words when He agrees with their assessment. It’s no longer a story, though. It becomes a first-person narrative addressed to them.  He goes back to Kingdom talk: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.” It’s as if He is saying, “Those whom you find undesirable, they will be the ones in the Kingdom because of faith and repentance. Meanwhile you all, so worried about your own appearances and façades, will be left outside the kingdom. That which was once yours will be taken. 

There was no reason for Jesus to hope the authorities would change their disbelief in hearing this story. So, why does He tell the story? Why does He continue to speak to the Jewish leaders who are rapidly tiring of His Messianic work?

The same reason as in the parable: as the landowner sent his son to give them the opportunity to repent, God sends His Son to give the people an opportunity to repent, believe, and trust in Christ alone for the mercy and grace of God.

We know this parable is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ crucifixion, that the Jewish leaders will take the Son outside the Vineyard, outside the city walls of Jerusalem, and crucify Jesus. They reject Him, His authority, His divine Sonship. They can’t stop the Father’s plan of rescue, though. He uses their sinful jealousy, taking what they intended for evil and using it for the salvation of the world.