Sermon for the Feast of All Saints (Observed)

All, or Nothing at All

Text: I John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12 The Beatitudes

Remember when Wendy’s kicked off their anti-McDonald’s Chicken McNugget campaign? “Parts is parts!” The relic veneration system is just like that. Pray to the parts of the Saints. Some very extraordinary saints led such holy lives that they earned way more merits than they needed to buy their ticket to heaven. St. Paul, St. Peter, St. Mary, etc. So all that extra merit goes into the treasury of merit in heaven. Pray over that saint’s parts, and some of that saint’s merit gets direct-deposited into your account. Now you need to get more parts! That’s the pieces-parts method. If you collect them all, you get your golden ticket. The saints are your go-between.

The world and our sinful nature believe the only way to be blessed by heaven is the old-fashioned way, we earned it. Just like the old Smith-Barney investment commercials. The world believes as Rome does: God gives you a piece of grace. If you do well with that, he’ll give you some more. You don’t get dessert unless you clean your plate. If you are a waste of grace, God cuts you off. It’s all or nothing at all. Secular society works this way, and most of the world’s religions do also.

The reality is God’s law teaches us we either get all the grace, or we get nothing at all. It’s not the amount of merit credit we gather and hoard. God’s accounting records don’t record our credits and debits. It isn’t your good intentions and your selfless deeds that make you worthy of God’s approval. Our blessedness is not a tit-for-tat of our efforts.

After the fall, we lost all our merit. No blessedness at all. Even if we want to do good, our fallen nature cannot know what is truly good. Our best effort at collecting good works is tainted with sin and self-pride. Your works wrote a check your soul can’t cash. God’s law is like that. The law is good, but it also condemns sin and deeds tainted with sin. Every single work from every single soul.

That treasury of merit didn’t belong to the saints of blessed memory, the pope, the Southern Baptist Convention, or even the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. It is Christ’s, and He bought it with His precious blood. All the baptized receive His merit, and are His blood-bought saints. Not nothing at all, but all. No in-between but Christ, our intercessor. Your works have nothing to do with anything. Christ’s merit, however, means everything, and He gives it all to you.

Sermon for Reformation Day (Observed)

Be Still and Know I AM God!

Text: Psalm 46 God is Our Fortress

When Job had been devastated by a series of incredible tragedies, he sat in sackcloth upon a bed of ashes for seven days and seven nights.1 His friends traveled a great distance to sit at his side during this period of immeasurable grief. When Job finally broke his silence, he lamented that “the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, but trouble comes.” Many of us endure trials in life that are similarly devastating. We’ve lost loved ones. Battles against cancer. Struggle with various forms of addiction or substance abuse. Financial stress or the stress of a job that is not a passion but necessary to make ends meet. Natural disasters strike without mercy or discretion. Men of small faith wage enormous wars that affect the entire world. Psalm forty-six was written during just such a time of overwhelming turmoil in Jerusalem.

As a monk in Erfurt, Martin Luther prayed the Psalms seven times daily, going through them all at least once a week. As Wittenburg University’s newest professor, his first lectures were on the Psalms. He knew them by heart as well as knew their power as prayers for all times and situations. And, he knew the overwhelming battle of the soul against sin and the power of the devil intimately.

Luther would repeatedly turn to the Psalms for solace and strength. With the continent of Europe in upheaval, he found great comfort in the soul-lifting truths of the Psalms. Specifically, in 1527, Luther faced one of the greatest difficulties of his life as the Black Plague swept across Germany and much of the European continent. During this time, Luther’s son almost died, and his own body was fainting under the mounting pressure. Amid this personal conflict, Luther found himself contemplating the promises of Psalm forty-six, an encouraging psalm of trust in the invincibility of the Lord. Soon after, he penned the song which would become known as the battle hymn of the Reformation: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, A Mighty Fortress is Our God.

Sermon for Pentecost XIX

The Mark of God

Text: Genesis 4:1-16 Cain & Abel

The writer to the Hebrews said, “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”
Just what is a sacrifice that is acceptable to God? And how exactly do we offer God a pleasing sacrifice in the modern world? What exactly is God looking for? How can we determine whether or not He feels what we offer is acceptable? God looks into our hearts! Just what is a sacrifice that is acceptable to God? And how exactly do we offer God a pleasing sacrifice in the modern world?
We do not know what the mark of Cain was. Much ink has been spilled on the subject; not much of it helpful. What the mark was is not important. What was important is the fact that the mark protected Cain from his enemies. They could see it, and they knew what it was. Even in his sin, Cain was not abandoned by God. Neither are we. God remains faithful to us when we are faithless (II Timothy 2:13), and invites us to turn back to Him in repentance. What we do know is that each one of us has received a mark from God as well – and we do know what this one is, even though we can’t physically see it. The mark is the sign of the cross.

Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Lord’s Love Reaches Out

Text: Ruth 1:1-19a

Where is God? Is God working in the background to help even when all signs point against it? Or does God make the bad things happen, to punish us?

Like Ruth, we are children of sin. We are born sinful, and our nature is to embrace it and flee God’s discipline. Our sinful nature wants to veil our thoughts and actions from what God teaches us is good and right. Therefore, it is only natural to think that the bad things are punishment; or, at the very least, a sign that God really isn’t watching out for you.

That’s our sin talking. The Lord’s love is louder. His reach is further. The Lord’s love reached out to Ruth, a foreigner, and drew her into His kingdom. From her, the Lord’s love reaches through the centuries to us - Jesus Christ is one of her direct descendants. Her story is your story as well...

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost

All Along The Watchtower

Text: Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 (Luke 17:1-10)

The Righteous Shall Live By Faith

“There must be some way out of here, Said the joker to the thief. There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief. “

It doesn't matter if you are Bob Dylan contemplating society at the close of the sixties, or the people of God observing the corruption of their leadership in the seventh century before Christ, or we sitting here today shaking our heads at the powers that be. One theme remains clear. We do not understand how the onslaught of evil against those who are helpless to withstand it can continue to go on.

A community of faith is built on forgiveness. That is the Christian life. Have we sought reconciliation with those who have hurt us? Have we taken the initiative to reconcile with those whom we have wounded by our action or inaction? Or have we sat idly by secretly hoping it will all fix itself, or that it will all go away?

Our failure to seek out these injuries head-on with an eye toward the restoration of these damaged relationships only leads to bitterness, festering resentment or even hatred, and a downward spiral into despair. Is it any wonder, then, that we have little faith and trust in God to deliver justice for all the evil we see at work in the world? We need help! And we need a lot of it, don't we?!

Jesus comes to us today with a solution to both of these problems. It centers around faith. And, as with most things, it isn’t about us. It is instead what God has done for us.