So You're a Sheep, Are You? It's Not a Compliment. But It Is Good.

This sermon was preached at Trinity Lutheran Church in Burlington, Iowa, on the weekend when their pastor (and my beloved former student and friend) Ryan Cosgrove and Amanda Stevenson were married.

Let us pray. Gracious Lord God, as Handel’s Messiah reminds us, “All we like sheep have gone astray.” We give you thanks that you are loath to leave things that way and have given your Son to lay down his life for our sake. Send your Spirit to draw our eyes up from our incessant nibbling, so we might look to Jesus who knows us inside and out and still refuses to turn his face from us. Amen.

It happened again yesterday: I added to my wardrobe. Usually when I go out of town there’s an inevitable trip to Target because I forgot to pack underwear or socks. This time it was a black belt to go with the requisite gray slacks for my role as a groomsman. So my wife and I went in search of the missing item. Over spring break, I traveled to see family in South Dakota. When I got to Pierre on the way, I discovered I hadn’t packed the insulin I needed. That’s not as easy to land as a pair of boxer briefs. I wound up contacting my physician’s assistant from over 20 years ago, who in turn sent a prescription to Walgreen’s. But when I got there, Walgreen’s didn’t have the right insulin pens in stock, so they sent the scrip three hours down the road to Rapid City where I could stop at another Walgreen’s on my way to my hometown. Once I got to that Walgreen’s, the pharmacist and I discovered that my insurance wouldn’t allow a refill until a week later. That meant paying out-of-pocket and, because they don’t sell just one eighty-dollar insulin pen, I had to buy a box of five for a sweet four hundred dollars. But I wound up with insulin in my grubby little diabetic hands. Whew.

t’s that sense of going off in quest of something that we hear about in today’s gospel reading. Jesus the good shepherd is the one who goes after what his own and protects it at all costs, even when it cost him his own life. And when the one who is Jesus’ own is us, that’s going to be big voodoo. If Jesus is the good shepherd, it doesn’t take much head-scratching to figure out what we are: sheep. We’re the cute little lambie-kins, wagging their tails behind them. Who wouldn’t want to cuddle up with us?

 

From the time before our 23-year-old son Sam can even remember now and all the way through his high school years, every night we sang this lullaby to him at bed time: “Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me. Bless thy little lamb tonight. Through the darkness be thou near me. Keep me safe till morning light. Amen.” I cherish the memories of our little lamb Sam. But we need to be careful when we start thinking of Jesus’ dealings with his sheep, because, while sweet spring lambs make an equally sweet and sentimental image for little children, the reality of sheep is much different.

I grew up in western South Dakota, where my grandparents ran a sheep and cattle ranch. I can tell you that sheep are nothing like our romantic picture of them, even lambs. First of all, sheep aren’t white. At best they’re a grimy grayish yellow with cockleburs, thistles, and pieces of grass stuck in their wool. And you don’t want me to describe their hind quarters. Suffice it to say that area is a mess. Second of all, these mangy creatures are just about the most-skittish of animals around. One quick motion or loud noise and you’ve got a bolting flock on your hands, scattering to the four winds for a long day of searching and herding. Third, these are quite possibly the dumbest dang domesticated beasts in the whole cosmos. They put their noses to the meadow grass and start eating, bite after bite after bite, with no attention to where they’re going. Their immediate nibbling moment is priority one, so danger can sneak up on what the scientists call ovis aries, and before you know it you’re out looking for a clump of bones, wool, and mutton instead of a sheep.

 

Once you get to know sheep, it becomes fairly obvious that, when Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, he’s paying us no compliment. And here I thought I was such a valuable creature, absolutely worth going after. I know Jesus calls me a sheep, but I’m sure he really means that he’s the good dog owner and I’m the Yorkshire terrier whose mint green kerchief makes you go, “Awww.” I can sure understand why Jesus would search for me if I were lost. I bet he’d even put up lost dog signs around the neighborhood to get me back.

 

Yet, sadly, Jesus remains the shepherd, and we remain sheep, dirty, dung-encrusted, dopey sheep. What is it about you that you’re so in need of a shepherd? Is it that, nibble-by-nibble, you’ve found yourself unawares having nibbled your way into a tight place? Is it that your actions have made you less than white-as-snow? Is it that you live a life where you bolt in fear and spot dangers all around? People you can’t trust. Systems that discourage you. Situations in life that make you cower. Perhaps you need a shepherd because you’ve at last discovered the truth that, whenever you try to exercise you own free will, it looks nothing like God’s will and that, time and time again, your choices – even your best ones – have a sorry outcome. And we’re not even talking yet about the grave.

You might need a shepherd because you’ve found yourself in a pen watched over by a hired hand. Oh, those hired hands, they look the part. These things seem like saviors and protectors: things like status and success or diets and financial investment seminars, or even religion or piety – they all present themselves as the things that will take care of you and assure your future. A quick drive from my house to the nearest mall will get you into the thick of these hired hands who promise to look after you. In my classrooms I see college women who’ve ventured to the mall to give themselves over to those faithless hired hands. You can tell, because you see them wearing short shorts they purchased at Victoria’s Secret with the word “pink” arrayed in block letters on their backsides. Or it’s the guys in the Abercrombie or Hollister or American Eagle t-shirt. Or the student athletes in the UnderArmour hoodie with guns and a six-pack under there to show off. They all come under the sway of the hired hand called consumerism who promises that, if you not only acquire enough stuff but also the right trendy stuff, your life will be set.

For those of us of an earlier vintage, the hired hands look like a five-bedroom, three-bath house in the suburbs, or tenure as a professor, or a hefty 401k, or an Apple iWatch, or regaining the less flabby body we had at 25. And for those of us in the church we look to the hired hands of numbers of people worshiping, of Bible study and prayer that we can offer as evidence of our godliness, of regaining the congregational presence we had in the community 60 years ago.

All our hired hands confidently offers us assurance that they will keep us safe from the lupine enemy, the wolf that prowls around the sheepfold, looking to devour us. These hired hands have nothing to protect you from jaws of death, our greatest and last enemy. For when it comes to grave’s power, every one of those things in life that has promised safety and security is revealed as a full-frontal fraud and must run away, lest it be caught up in God’s judgment and wrath as well. For in the face of death, the truth about all of these false friends comes to light: status, success, piety, fashion, politics, and even pious religion care not one whit about you. Their goal is to have you serve them and provide ongoing life for them. But ultimately, in the presence of death they neither know you nor care for you. They hear your crying voice and respond with a resounding, “Meh.”

And yet there is one who does know you and your cries, who has a heart for your benefit, who has a voice you can listen to and believe. Jesus, the good shepherd, calls you his own, calls you from afar, and calls you into his pen. He goes after you, not to force you into some arbitrary moral system or religious hierarchy, not to perniciously take your freedom from you, but to protect you and preserve your life. If the hired hands of this world run for the hills when the grave’s certainty comes clear, the good shepherd does no such thing. Jesus promises to lay down his life for you. When the possibilities of every other object and “ism” in this world are depleted and when your own power is at an end, Jesus remains there, crucified for you. He’s done it of his own accord. That’s how far his mercy and his commitment to his sheep extend: the very limit of endurance, and the greatest disaster and degradation are his, for your sake.

And the irony is that if you are to be his own and know his voice calling for you, the only way to do it is to recognize your own sheepliness, to see with utter clarity your great need that’s come with your unwitting nibbling at substitute sources of life, to know your blindness to all save yourself, to dive into your own limits, your own disaster, your own degradation. The deeper your sense of your own sin, the more good your shepherd becomes. That’s when you find yourself protected within the sheepfold of Christ’s love and mercy. The only way to be a sinner escaping death as the wages of sin is to confess “I am a sheeply stray and the wolf justly snaps its jaws at me.”

When you can confess that, then you will also know that being called a sheep is not Jesus dissing you. Instead it’s a sign of the one true fact about you: Christ has given his life for you whose own life is lost, and the life you now have is hid in him. Then you will desire to be no lap dog for Jesus, even if the dog is a Yorkie who lives in a parsonage. No, you will say, “Let me be his sheep.” You can revel and glory in it, because the more ovine you become, the dopier you are, the more danger you’re in, the deeper your need, the greater Jesus’ glory, the deeper Jesus’ mercy, the quicker he is to use his shepherd’s crook to pull you back from the abyss.

In fact, as our reading from 1 John puts it, calling yourself a sinful sheep is to have an uncondemned heart, to have boldness before God, as if to say, “Yeah, that’s right God. You sent your Son to be my good shepherd, not some pitiful substitute, but the real thing. He’s promised to grab hold of me and even snatch me from the jaws of defeat, despair, and death. He’s put me in your pen and kept me there with his own blood. I can’t escape being a sheep. Don’t let me ever escape being a sheep in your fold. Lord, fire those hired hands who skitter and scatter, and in turn keep sending my good shepherd to enfold me with the gospel on the lips of a faithful preacher, in the haven of your church, with every nibble at your table. I just want to be a sheep. Take my wool and let it be, consecrated Lord to thee. Baa. Baa. Baa. Yes, joyfully, baa.”

You, my friends, are allowed to bleat your need to Jesus the good shepherd, for your every need affirms his goodness. So let your “baa, baa, baa” be your confession of sin and your faithful reliance on him. Say it with me, “Baa. Baa. Baa.” You’re his. You’re in the pen. Amen.

New DNA from the Lord

This Maundy Thursday sermon was preached April 2, 2015, at Grand View Lutheran Church at a joint service with Luther Memorial Church.

I’ve signed on to teach one of Grand View’s freshman seminars next semester. Students in my course will examine the various patterns in their lives, from time management to the paper-writing process to their family history. As part of the class, they’ll have a DNA test done in order to learn more about what the pattern of their genome says about their ancestry. In order to know exactly what kind of information students will learn, I sent in a vial of my own saliva to see what it said about me. I got the initial results back this week and learned that I belong to two distinct genetic streams called haplogroups, one traced through all my male ancestors beginning with my father and the other through my female ancestors. It turns out that I’m the product of a genetic mutation on my paternal side that happened in southern France about the time of the Ice Age, and on my maternal side things go way back to early human migrations from Africa to southern Pakistan.

Wild, huh? But that’s the least of it. Doing a DNA test from 23andMe will also give you information about how much Neanderthal DNA you carry in you. I’m proud to say that the preacher standing before you today is made up of 3.2% Neanderthal genes – more than 98 out of 100 other people have. So I have that going for me, and if you wonder why I can verge on the earthy and boorish, there’s good reason.

Your preacher tonight, this part-Neanderthal named Ken Jones, is the product of thousands of years of ancestors from whom I’ve inherited my very being. My eye color, the fullness of my beard, the shape of my toenails, my lima bean ear lobes, my propensity for weight gain, and all kinds of genetic markers that may indicate a likelihood for cancer or Parkinson’s disease, all of these have come to me unbidden through 22 pairs of chromosomes. I chose none of it, and I have to live with it, all thanks to an ancient woman in Pakistan and a mammoth-hunting progenitor in southern France, not to mention a Neanderthal that hooked-up with a human partner. It’s my millennia-long inheritance.

All of this DNA and genome business comes to the fore for me tonight because of a word Jesus used at the Last Supper when he instituted the sacrament of Holy Communion. It’s right there in the Words of Institution: “On the night in which he was betrayed our Lord Jesus took bread and gave thanks. He broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat. This is my body given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.’ Again, after supper, he took the cup saying, ‘This cup is the new…’” And there we hit that word. In Greek it’s diathēkē. “This cup is the new diathēkē in my blood.” Our current permutation of hymnal translates the word as “covenant.” Jesus is giving a new covenant. An ancient covenant was a legal and binding agreement between two parties, and covenant language is strewn across the 37 books of the Old Testament. God had made a covenant with the ancient Israelites, which, of course they had a mighty hard time upholding. Now in the sacrament of the altar given to you by Jesus, he makes a new agreement with you.

The problem with thinking of the Lord’s Supper as a covenant is that it implies that we’re a party to the covenant and have some say in it. You’d never go through the elaborate ritual of name-signing in a house-closing if you didn’t see yourself as an equal partner with the home seller. But the sacrament doesn’t work that way. There’s nothing for you to do here. If you could contribute in any way to what the Lord’s Supper offers, there would be no need of it to start with. Here’s Jesus’ body and blood given and shed for you, all on account of your inability to get your act together, fully follow the Commandments, or desire God’s will.

So if we miss something by calling what Jesus offers to us tonight a covenant, there’s another way into understanding what our Lord has to give us. The other way to translate diathēkē is will or testament. When Jesus says, “This is my diathēkē,” he’s saying that this sacrament tonight is his last will and testament. We know how that kind of thing works. When our son Sam was born, a member of our congregation who was a lawyer drafted a will for us that’s now been in place for over two decades. Our will dictates exactly what our beneficiary receives. Sam gets it all. Our last will and testament declares it. His inheritance comes not by being good enough, not by accomplishing a single thing, not by meeting our expectations. Our diathēkē will come to him as sheer gift.

Of course, Sam has already received a prior gift from us, and that’s his genetic structure. His haplogroups aren’t exactly like mine, because half his genes were handed on by his beloved mother. But every single gene is all his, including whatever bits of Neanderthal DNA he’s inherited. It belongs to him without his behest. He’s the living embodiment of a first inheritance and of another that awaits him when we die.

And that’s exactly what happens for us in the sacrament tonight. When Jesus says, “This is the new testament in my blood,” he means exactly that. He’s giving you the inheritance that is first his as the Father’s only-begotten Son: forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. That’s what he’s come to give. In the sacrament he gives his last will and testament that declares that his gifts are for you. There’s nothing for you to do. He’s not much interested in being a role model or an arbiter of piety, so that you can be all you can be. Frankly, he knows how awful you are at hewing closely to him, committing to God, or being devoted to a spiritual life. Instead he lays it out in the sacrament in a way that is legal and binding. He is righteous and faithful for your sake, all the way to the cross. He does it all in order that you might live. That’s his bequest.

When we hear the words of institution spoken from the altar, the pastor functions like an attorney will one day when Mary and I die. Gathered in some lawyer’s office, our heir will be present for the reading of the will. And it will be explicitly declared what is now his: Mary’s earrings and assorted jewelry, shelves full of books, the bed my grandfather was born in, the art on our walls, dishes and silverware, and whatever toilet paper is still under the bathroom sink. When you hear the words of institution, you hear exactly what you have coming to you.

The irony is that if you’re at all honest about yourself, you know exactly what you justly have coming to you from God: nothing at all at best and damnation at worst. But Jesus is no just Lord. He’s not into issuing contracts and holding all parties to the letter of the law. He likes flaunting the law on your behalf and breaking the bonds of every demand. He’s got an eternity of forgiveness, life, and salvation in his back pocket and he’s champing at the bit to make sure you get it.

But here’s the rub: just like our own last will and testament, there’s one thing that has to happen for it to come into effect. Someone’s gotta die. When Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper, he knows exactly what’s coming. He will be betrayed and arrested. He will be tried and adjudicated as an out-and-out sinner. He will suffer scourging and mocking. He will be crucified. He will die. And your inheritance can’t be proclaimed without it. That means that tonight, Maundy Thursday, isn’t just a reenactment of the Last Supper or a kind of remembering that puts the pieces of Jesus broken body together again so we can, in turn, break them in our ritual. No, but Jesus’ own actions and command are the proclamation that what happens on Good Friday and Easter are indeed for you.

When you take and eat and take and drink, what happens to Jesus’ body and blood is the same exact thing that happens when you eat a B-Bop’s burger or drink a glass of the best pinot noir. Jesus’ body and blood go down your gullet, only to be broken down, so that the nutrients of his forgiveness and mercy can be sent via your bloodstream to every single cell of your own body. Because of this sacrament you will carry around Jesus’ death and resurrection in each of those cells – nerve cells, ear lobe cells, calloused heel cells, left gluteal cells, liver, spleen, and pancreas cells, eyeball rod and cone cells, salivary gland cells. Each of your cells will carry Jesus in the same way that they carry your DNA.

In fact, Jesus is already at work in you, creating a new person in you, unbound by your past, your present worries, your weights and woes. He even promises that all that DNA, both human and Neanderthal, is bound for an end and new beginning. He’s the first-born of the Resurrection and aims to take you up with him and give you, too, a new body. For a stocky guy who has his grandmother’s genetic predisposition toward weight-gain and a sinner who’s inherited my brokenness and death from my first parents in the Garden of Eden, that’s extremely good news. And the promise stands true for you, as well. In Jesus’ forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life, the old you is coming to an end and new life is coming to you like some divine somatic gene therapy.

So steel yourselves, my friends. Let the sinner in you gird its loins, as if it’s going to do any good. For the Lord himself has died to give you your inheritance in this sacrament. And this is not your own doing, but it’s given by the free will of the only one we truly can say freely wills what God intends. It’s his will that he die that you might have life. It’s his testament that you own everything that is his. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Seventh Mark of the Church: The Suffering Moral Baker

When Luther drafted his list of the marks of the church in On the Councils and the Churches, he included the obvious ones like the Word, Sacraments, and Prayer. But for some his final mark of the church is unexpected: suffering. He calls it the cross, but suffering is what he means. Those who follow Christ will get the same treatment he did. If the world does this to the wood when it's green, just think what'll happen when it's dry.

Indiana's recent so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has put me to thinking about this mark of the church. Certainly Christ's upside down kingdom can be at odds with the world, and it's likely to be on the receiving end of some reprobation as worthless or dangerous. But when Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves and after the resurrection tells Peter to "Feed my sheep," it sets us up for another kind of suffering.

That's the suffering that comes when we call ourselves Christian but turn the faith into a moral code. We treat Jesus as Moses and become indignant that the world doesn't follow our morality to a tee. For Jesus calls us into vocations that will inevitably pull us out of our well-spun law-abiding cocoons into service to those who have no respect for our comfort, our spiritual pleasure, or our moral systems.

The truth is that, in our God-given vocations as baker, florist, professor, or parent, Jesus' fate becomes our own. In serving our vocations faithfully we find our crosses, and we'll wind up saying, "It kills me to do this." Honestly, as a dad I don't like changing dirty diapers or cleaning up vomit. As a professor I don't like picking up trash on my trek across campus to my next class. And yet I've been given these vocation where I'm face-to-face with a baby who has no respect for my 3:00 a.m. need for sleep, with students who drop straw wrappers and to-go cups, and with people who don't share my morality.

In Freedom of a Christian, Luther gives two reasons why we do good works. The first is because our neighbors need them. A splendid cake is a mighty good thing to have at my neighbor's wedding  — just as having safe fellow commuters on the freeway is a good thing and a service I give my neighbor. The second reason to do good works is to restrain the old sinner in me who does not want to let go of my control, my security, or the morality I think will sustain them both. But the new inner person of faith in me, the one that is created by the gospel, insists on doing what I'd normally disdain in order to remain faithful.

To deny service to those I disagree with or whom I find morally reprehensible is to turn my back on the one for whom my own sin is anathema and yet who still treats me as a beloved child for Jesus' sake. In Christ God himself has gone against his own legal code and broken the living daylights out of the commandments in order to save me. In that light, to hew closely to my ethical standards may indeed be moral, but it sure isn't faithful. I imagine that if Jesus showed up today, he wouldn't tell a parable about the wheat and tares to call me on the carpet, but would instead hold a mirror to me with a story about a pious, indignant, and moral Indianapolis baker.

When the Son of Man comes to separate the sheep from the goats, I don't want it said of me that Jesus was in prison and I didn't visit, was naked and I didn't provide clothes, wanted a wedding catered and I did not bake the most glorious five-tiered cake possible. Although whether I'd include glitchy icing is another question entirely.

The Poison that Cures

This sermon was preached March 14-15, 2015, at Lutheran Memorial Church in Pierre, South Dakota, where I first served as a pastor twenty-five years before. I was asked to preach when I accompanied Grand View University's choir on their spring tour. The sermon is based on Numbers 21:4-9 (the Israelites rescue from venomous snakes in the wilderness) and John 3:14-21 (Jesus' allusion to the bronze snake lifted up in the first passage).

Next month I’ll be able to mark twenty-five years since I first came to be associated with Lutheran Memorial Church. My fiancée Mary and I showed up at your doorstep on Palm Sunday, 1990, for an interview. I was a seminary senior, all wet-behind-the-ears, rarin’ to go, and with a certain naiveté that would soon be replaced by the real rough-and-tumble of daily pastoral ministry. I wasn’t much of a pastor when I shook hands with folks at the meet-and-greet in the fellowship hall when I interviewed, and I didn’t know much more by the time we moved into the parsonage at the end of June on the hottest day of the year (with a broken-down AC unit, to boot). But I can say this with no uncertainty whatsoever: You made me a pastor during those 4½ years serving in Pierre and Hayes. I’m quite a bit older now (not far from the age Esther Schleuter was when she crashed 60-Plus events even though she was too young). The kids who were in confirmation and the youth group are now in their 40s with kids of their own. Yet though I have years of ministry under my belt, it was here that the patterns were set: being invited into your great questions, your sorrows, and joys, and being called to deliver a word from God that was wild and wooly enough to match your lives.

We certainly had some good times. I remember the weekly men’s breakfasts with Myron and Clyde and Don. And coffee with quilters every Wednesday afternoon where we’d hear about Trudy’s lost brassiere. And youth group retreats to NeSoDak or the youth gathering in Dallas. And the annual Hayes picnic where I’d debate the relative stupidity of sheep with Mary Hedman. And spotting congregational members at our wedding in Minneapolis. And putting together a nursery in the now long-gone parsonage with Lori Wilbur and Sandy Zinter. And, of course, holding our baby the first time at St. Mary’s hospital. But it’s the dark places I remember best – those times when you came up against the poisonous powers that sap your life, diminish your value, and shrink whatever faith you had coming in.

I don’t remember the exact count anymore, but I know that my first year-and-a-half here I had to navigate no less than five baby deaths, including Lewis Ode buried over in Scotty Philipps Cemetery on the other side of the River with a botanical drawing of the Resurrection plant etched into the back side of his grave stone. And there was Chad a year out of high school whose truck rolled coming back from Sturgis. And the names of those at the other end of life’s spectrum go on and on: Mary Neuharth, Clara Nygaard, John Redlin, Lorna Herseth, Mark Werpy. Every funeral left behind a gaping hole where a loved one belonged and sometimes left behind brokenness that never had a chance to be resolved. You came to me to talk about some of that brokenness: marriages falling apart, depression, confusion, addiction, and cancer. And then there was the Governor’s plane that went down, flags at half mast, and the capitol rotunda with lines of people passing by a casket that was too small for George Speaker Mickelson’s eighth-of-a-ton frame.

What exactly was that all about all those years ago? What’s behind all the darkness you let me in on? For that matter, what’s behind the dark and broken places in your lives this day? Our Old Testament and gospel readings have something to say about that. They both talk about a poison that kills us and that requires healing. As they wandered the wilderness after God freed them from bondage in Egypt, Moses and the Israelites encountered an infestation of venomous serpents. The people were bitten and were dying right and left, and they cried to God for help. So God had Moses craft a bronze snake and put it on a pole. When the people looked at it they were spared from death by poison. Hundreds of years later, in our gospel reading, when Nicodemus came to Jesus under cover of darkness to spare his reputation with the other Pharisees, Jesus likens himself to that bronze serpent by saying that the one who for all the world looks like he’s a danger to you is the exact one who can save you from whatever’s poisoning you.

There’s irony there, because the religious leaders and Roman officials certainly thought of Jesus as poison to their well-considered religious and political systems. For the Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus was a blasphemer bent on disrupting their religion and on corrupting people with his seeming disregard for the religious laws. The penalty for that kind of thing was stoning. And for Roman officials, Jesus was a treasonous threat to good order. The people who lived under their occupying army were being stirred up, and when Jesus began to be called the awaited king and messiah that put him in competition with the emperor’s power. The penalty for that kind of sedition was death on a cross. They all thought they knew the way to get rid of the poison in their midst: exert the full force of the law at their command. “If we kill Jesus, that’ll eliminate the threat and give the people a little lesson in obedience for good measure.”

We’re not so different are we? We hear Jesus words that the first will be last and the last will be first, and our response is, “I like you personally, Jesus, but I’d rather you didn’t demand so much of me. It’s like you want to take over my whole life.” We get suspicious of folks who take Jesus too seriously. “Losing my life for his sake and the gospel? Well, maybe. But let me finish binge-watching the latest season of House of Cards on Netflix first.” Jesus’ way is poison to our best laid plans, and the natural human response is to shirk it or shrug it off at best and, on the other end of the spectrum, to kill him.

So we’re left stewing in our own darkness, scrambling to find some release from the real poison in our lives. We work our pitiful tails off to accomplish what? Success? Security? Good order? Just the right legislative act that will bring about our preferred view of the world? We know very well that it all comes to naught. Get something done at work, and there just another item on the to-do list. Dust your fireplace mantle, and it’ll need to be done again in a week. Pass your history test and tomorrow you’ll face chemistry. Any law passed across the street and signed by Governor Daugaard’s pen will need refining, and even then it won’t work in every single situation. Gravity will have its way with us as toned teenage bodies give way to the middle-age sag of boobs and backsides. Even being able to look back on a good life, you’ll be reminded that in spite of the memories that death rate for human beings remains a hundred per cent.

What’s the cure? We look to our work, our efforts and toil, to save us from the poison of death by establishing some legacy. We Botox our crow’s feet to gain the illusion of youth. For some of us the path leads to attempts to anesthetize ourselves from life’s pain through drug and drink and the pleasures of our nether regions. Sometimes we look to our golf game, walking field with a well-trained hunting dog, or catching our limit of walleye as good ways to forget. Or we look to the pleasures of children and grandchildren. But even with these most wonderful parts of life, they might temporarily put our sickness unto death into remission, the venom remains, slowly, steadily, bringing us to a final full stop.

What Jesus’ opponents can’t figure out is that the solution to the snakes in the wilderness and their deadly bite is not to run from death by controlling the world around you in order to eliminate the poison. Here in John 3, Jesus tells them and us the one needful thing. The way to regain your life is not to eliminate the poison but to run to the one the world has labeled as dangerous to their control. When Jesus reminds Nicodemus of the story of his ancestors and the serpents in the wilderness, Jesus knows what’s coming down the line. He himself will be lifted up on a cross. The powers that be will present him there as a deterrent to sinners, and they’ll brush their hands and say, “There. God rid of the poison.” The irony is that, while the religious and political officials want him gone, this one who’s branded as poison is the only dose of anti-venom there is.

Of course, it’s utterly ridiculous to think that. When I was growing up we’d go to my grandparent’s ranch in central Meade County in that beautiful West River country. Sometimes the whole clan would gather to go shoot rattlesnakes. The pickups and station wagons would pull up around a known rattlesnake den. The menfolk would step out of the vehicles with their rifles and start shooting. We kids would play the game of hopping out of one pickup box and running to the next, always keeping an eye out for snakes. Ah, it makes me puff my chest out to come from a place and time where we could do that. Yet, what if one of us kids hadn’t watched out and were the victim of a snakebite? We were all schooled in first aid at school about what to do: use a knife to slice open the wound and start sucking out the blood and venom. We wouldn't add more venom.

But if Jesus has been labeled poison, he’s advising us that his brand of venom is actually the cure for what ails us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” The context of this most-famous Bible verse is this whole business of serpents and venom. It’s such a nice thing to think of God loving the world. But the verse isn’t about the world or niceness. It’s about you. It’s about your darkness. It’s about the places and things that break you down. Jesus says, “Whoever believes will not perish.” That means the end of your death comes in the last place we’d want to look. It doesn’t come with genetic breakthroughs, new drugs and medical procedures. It doesn’t come by producing kids that turn out. It doesn’t come with advancement in a career or even from simply having a job. It only comes by letting go and falling in with that rascal Jesus.

And now we’re at the spot where my trip down memory lane and God’s word today finally connect. While we won’t race to take up the poison of Jesus, God makes sure that, when you go searching for options and come out empty-handed, you aren’t left standing there dumbfounded. When you hear the word cancer, when the machines keeping a loved-one are about to be shut down, when babies are stillborn, when teenagers roll their trucks, when your girlfriend sinks into the daze of dementia, when your finances are in turmoil, when your marriage is over and you know it’s your own damned fault, when your town faces a flooding river or the death of your governor, when your girlfriend breaks up with you and your grades suck and you just want to end it all, when, when, when… Oh, I tell you, it’s an honor to have been your pastor, called to show up with a word, tasked with the work of bringing you Jesus and his promise to be lifted up for you so you can live.

After the governor’s plane crash, the lieutenant governor Walter Dale Miller, who hadn’t yet been sworn in, came to me and Pastor Zellmer. Many of the other pastors in town had parishioners who had died, so he told us that we were to accompany him as he went to every department of state government that lost someone and we were going to bring scripture and a prayer. And after having been a pastor for over two years, that’s when I finally got it. It doesn’t matter if I’m a shy introvert who hasn’t read enough of his Bible. It doesn’t matter if I’m laid just as low in grief. It doesn’t matter whether I have sterling words on my lips. It matters that I’m there. Because I have a word of life that, when it comes to the biggest poisons in our lives, will be the only thing to cling to, the only thing that offers hope, the only thing that is big enough to counter death and bring life – because I know that word, it has to be delivered. And when it is, the darkness must give way to the light. It must.

This congregation has stood strong since those first Norwegians on these prairies saw fit to establish a church. And though it might seem like it’s just a normal thing for you who are their legacy to just come to church of a Sunday morning – after all, it’s just you sitting here in that pew – what’s actually happened here for more than a century is actually quite extraordinary. No, that’s not the right way to talk about it. What’s happened way back then, what happened during my years with you in the 90s, and what’s happening right now in this very moment, this is holy ground. This is the place and moment that your savior is lifted up, where he takes every drop of venom that sin, death, and the devil have sunk into you and places it in the spear-wound in his side. And it happens because there’s a word of grace and hope, a promise of release and healing, that is placed in your ear.

 

If this is a day when you’ve found yourself facing darkness, if you’re at the end of your rope, if the logic of your enlightened mind can no longer give you meaning, if death is knocking at your door, if you have nowhere to turn, then listen up. There’s a word for you. Christ himself, God’s only Son, has made you his own. Your broken life is hid in him. He is determined to bring you with him, so your own crucifixion becomes an Easter morning. Your sins are fully and eternally forgiven. There, now, Jesus has been lifted up before you. You can look to him. You who are baptized have long had that assurance, and if you’re not yet baptized I know a couple pastors who are eager to talk to you. You who come to the table for Christ’s body and blood, will step away having taken in the thing that ends this darkness: an eternal forgiveness swallowed in with the bread and wine, Christ’s body and blood.

So are you healed now? It may not seem like it. Cancerous cells my still float in your blood. Your finances may still be a mess. A divorce may still loom. But the anti-venom is now at work. This gospel has now been placed in you. And it does not fail. God's word does not go out and return empty. I thank you for making me into a pastor, for making me the delivery vehicle for the word, for sustaining me and Mary and Sam, and for remaining a place that lifts up Jesus for the world of dying, sinful folks to look to and believe. And live. Amen.

The Demon Is Done

This sermon was written for my sister Lynne and her family following her twin daughter Brooke's death of a drug overdose. The sermon wasn't preached anywhere, but the tragedy demanded a word. And it's what I do. Thanks to Lynne for her gracious permission to share it here. (If you're reading it, say a prayer of thanks for Brooke and bid God comfort her family.)

Mark 7:24-30

[Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go — the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

What an amazing woman this feisty mother was. She knew she had no business with someone like Jesus. No first century female in her right mind would approach a man and speak to him, much less make demands of him. But what else was she to do? Her daughter was in a bad way, possessed by a power bigger than the girl was. The whole situation was out of control, and life no longer worked. She’d heard of this Jewish teacher from Galilee and, though her religion and his had clashed for a long, long time, if her daughter was going to survive she was going to have to screw her courage to the sticking place and risk getting in Jesus’ face.

And this Jesus was just as determined. He’d been hounded by the crowds demanding divine power from him and by religious leaders trying to trap him into betraying their laws. He just needed a break. This business of being the Son of God and the long-awaited king of the Jews was draining. What’s a messiah to do when he’s tired but get away for a little recharging time? He’d set his face to a comfy memory foam mattress in an upstairs bedroom of this house and a good, long nap.

The Syrophoenician woman wouldn’t let it happen. Her daughter was too important for that. She barged right into a stranger’s house, stood in front of him and said, “Please free my daughter from the demon that controls her.” It had to have been a shock to Jesus. Not only had he set his sights on that bed, he was also determined to save his fellow Jews. This woman and her plea were getting in the way of both goals. So Jesus’ first response was to dismiss her as intruding on his mission. He basically said, “What I’ve got is pretty significant stuff. It’s for the Jews, not people like you who’ve never done things the way the Jews say religion needs to be done.”

Ah, but there was that daughter back home, trapped by a demon and as good as dead. The woman had heard of Jesus’ dealings with demons and diseases. He’d been doling out divine favor right and left. He’d been extravagant with his largesse. It wasn’t just the holy rollers who got something from him. It was the outcasts, lepers, and out-and-out sinners. This mother was so desperate that she was willing to take even the smallest portion of what Jesus had. A wink of an eye, maybe. A flick of his little finger. A crumb from the banquet he’d served up to the Jews. When a possessed daughter is at stake, a mother can’t take no for an answer.

On this day, when there are so few answers, such great tragedy, and so little hope, this desperate woman from the wrong side of the tracks shows us exactly what to do. There’s a daughter who’s a stake today. She’s been possessed by a power bigger than she was. Brooke’s situation was so out of control that she’s even beyond where the woman’s daughter in the story was. Here we are facing the hard, cold fact that Brooke has died at a demon’s hands – hands with a capital H. There’s nowhere we can look to turn back time, to rescue her, or to fix this ultimate brokenness. We’ve heard that Jesus has power to fix things. Isn’t that what we learned in Sunday school? Oh, I know there have been prayers lifted up for Brooke these past years, and this funeral is the answer we get? Today it seems like Jesus has secluded himself in some inaccessible place. What’s a mom and dad, a sister and brother, and a passel of mourners to do?

The only thing to do is get right into Jesus’ face, eyeball to eyeball, and remind him what he came to do, and beg him for the crumbs. Isn’t freedom from addiction for one twenty-something twin a tiny thing in the vast scope of the cosmos and the salvation of humanity? The only thing to do is to step into the divine house, hold out a hand, and say, “Please, Jesus, give me something. I can’t stand this hopelessness. I can’t live in a world empty of Brooke. I can’t move forward.” If Jesus gave that Syrophoenician mother a crumb of the grand table of God’s power by releasing her daughter from a demon, then Jesus replies to our fresh mouths and incessant begging by giving us that – and more.

The first thing he gives us is a certain end to Brooke’s demons. There’s not a single drug that can threaten her ever again. She’s been released as fully as that uppity mother’s girl was. The first thing most of us ever knew about Brooke’s death was Alyssa’s post on Facebook: “RIP my beautiful twin sister. I love you.” So many others have also said RIP, rest in peace. There’s no place more peaceful than where the dead lie. Lynne has made sure her hair was done right. Such a small last thing from a mother’s big heart, such an act of love and readying Brooke to lie peacefully.

Of course, we hear Jesus say he’s giving Brooke peace, but our reply has to be, “That’s not enough. You gave that Syrophoenician daughter her life back. Pony up, dude.” To which our Lord says, “And what was that life she got? I’ve given Brooke something more. Did I not promise that with the water and the word? Did I not say I will be with you always? And like the highway between Lebanon and Gettysburg, that road goes both ways: You, Brooke, will be with me where I am.”

What that desperate mother taught Jesus is that the scope of his mission was far too narrow. He had to set his sights on everyone hounded by demons, from first century Palestine to twenty-first century PA. That gutsy woman wouldn’t quit until she had wrung a yes out of Jesus’ no, until she forced him to give life where there was only death and despair. She broke Jesus open when she begged for crumbs. She pulled him so far from his original path that he wound up descending to the dead to grab them and raise them up with him — our dear Brooke included.

If Brooke’s now safely held in Jesus’ risen hand, that leaves one more place where Jesus has to cast out demons. It’s here today where we face the gnawing demon of grief. Oh, it’s an empty, gaping maw where Brooke belongs. The waves of sorrow feel more like a tsunami, drowning us again and again.  So I make my impudent plea that he would free you from grief. Not freedom from memories, for those are a gift to anyone who knew Brooke. But freedom from having to bear this load day after day. And to a begging uncle and preacher, Jesus responds, “I’m already making it happen. I’ve got those broken hearts in hand. Look at all these people who loved Brooke gathered today to hold hands, to cling together, to love and care for each other even as Brooke loved them. Didn’t I promise I would be there in your midst?”

Our plea for hope and help is itself a sign of his presence. The power of heroin has met its match in Christ’s own eternal power. The grave has become not a bitter end but a gate to new life. Brooke already has it. Jesus already has said, “You may go. The demon has left your daughter.” And now today he says to you, “Go and live, rejoicing in who Brooke has been and anticipating a day when I also whisper a getting-up word to you: ‘Psst. Time to rise. She’s been waiting for you. That empty Brooke-sized hole in you is about to be filled. Let’s go.” Amen.

Thoughts on the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids

Something I'd never noticed in the story before hearing it on Sunday again: The bridesmaids are "sleeping" when the fanfare sounds, announcing the arrival of the bridegroom and the start of the party. It seems that while they were sleeping the oil ran out for half of them. There's another time that Jesus talked about sleeping in this gospel. In Matthew 9, when Jesus is brought to the little girl who's died, he says, "She's sleeping." Could it be that in Jesus' mind, the sleeping bridesmaids in the parable are stand-ins for sinners such as we are, lying in our graves? Could this parable be less about a wedding and more about a funeral?

And when the trumpet sounds on the last day and the dead are raised, all we'll be left with is the same word that Cleopas and his friend said burned within them in Emmaus Or will we continue to pooh-pooh the power of the word to give us light and life? Will we be off wheeling and dealing with the world's snake-oil sellers to find something to take us through the night of the grave? Whatever they have to sell, it simply won't last. It'll be like the grass that withereth.

What's more, the actual sorting in the parable (see also the parable of the sheep and goats elsewhere in Matthew 25) doesn't happen at the door with the bridegroom's rejection. It happens while this "sleep" descended on the bridesmaids. The sleep while waiting for the bridegroom is shows five people whose oil runs out.

Death sorts us. There is Christ, who has power to carry you to the new dawn. And then there's everything else. The sorting is not between people who made a wise decision and those who didn't. It's between those beggars who cling to Christ as their only hope and those who wouldn't stoop so low.

The gift of baptism is that it eliminates all the waiting. The bridegroom, crucified and risen, comes floating in with the water to haul you downstream to the party. There's a reason the Christ candle is lit for baptisms. It's the same reason for the graveside words, when we pray that God would grant our loved one "light perpetual." He is the Light of the World, who, in some quantum physics kind of way, is solid enough to go beyond mere light-giving to eternal life-giving.

Ain't no need to go knocking on the door, when you're already at the wedding reception with a fatted Lamb as the main dish waiting to nourish you.

This Is Most Certainly True

Pastor Ryan Cosgrove

Reformation Sunday

I preached this sermon at Trinity Lutheran Church in Burlington, Iowa, on October 26, 2014. Trinity's pastor, Ryan Cosgrove, is a Grand View University alumnus, and we in the Theology and Philosophy Department are extraordinarily proud of him!

Grace to you and peace my friends, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

One of the best novels I’ve ever read and movies I’ve ever seen is Sophie’s Choice. It’s about a young man named Stingo who’s from the South and who moves to Brooklyn, New York, in the late 1940s to take up his calling as a novelist. He rents a room in a big pink rooming house where he meets another resident named Sophie Zawistoski. Sophie is Polish, and we gradually learn that she has a number tattooed on her wrist and that she somehow managed to come out of the Auschwitz death camp alive. She’s wracked by guilt over what she did to stay alive. Late one night, Stingo tells Sophie to just tell the truth. Sophie responds by saying, “The truth? I don’t know even what is the truth anymore.”

Do you yourself know even what is the truth anymore? I’m pretty sure you don’t if you’ve had your television or radio on lately. What was once a reliable source of information about political ads has become an unreliable mud-slinging contest thanks to the big money infused into the campaigns by super-PACs and anonymous donors. The worst of it for us in Iowa is the battle between our senate candidates. You’ve got a decent attorney from northeast Iowa and a decent member of the National Guard from the western part of the state running against each other. But you wouldn’t know it based on the attack ads coming across our screens. And you can’t tell the truth about their policies either. It’s just one ad hominem attack after the other. “Bruce Braley? You can’t trust a Washington insider.” “Joni Ernst? She’s too extreme for Iowa.” Sophie Zawistowski speaks for us all. “The truth? I don’t know even what is the truth anymore.”

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, isn’t it? Our whole way of living obscures the truth for us. We’ve come to believe the snake-oil pitch of our culture. We think life is about getting ahead. We’ve fallen for the quip that “if you just believe in yourself enough, you can achieve your dreams.” We think we’ve gotten to where we are because we’ve pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps and deserve our high status. We see it as evidence of our own moral righteousness and come to suspect the poor as having insufficient grit and gumption. We establish all kinds of measuring rods for assessing others’ eye splinters and allow ourselves to ignore our ocular logs. And we never allow ourselves to see our utter need for the one whose hand flung the stars against the heavens, who holds together the electrical charges within every atom, whose deepest desire is to fill our need, hear our prayers, and sustain us with everything needed for life. We just can’t see our way through to it. “The truth? I don’t know even what is the truth anymore.”

In our gospel reading Jesus lays it out for the religious leaders of Jerusalem who themselves have a bit of a truth problem. Of course, none of them wants what Jesus has to offer, especially not his assessment of where we human beings stand. Jesus tells them they’ve been enslaved. They respond by declaring they’ve never been in bondage. But Jesus is talking about more than simply being owned by another person. Like us and every other human being, the religious leaders are enslaved to themselves. They insist on their autonomy. They want to be self-sufficient. They want to be self-made people. They want to create their own futures through their good choices, intentions, and works. They’re so caught up in the world’s way of operating that it’s impossible for them to see the strength of its grip on them. But Jesus is so bent on providing them with freedom that he tumbles relentlessly and recklessly down the road to a hill out back of the city where he will be condemned to die on account of that very slavery – because of humanity’s willingness to trade his life for their continued much-vaunted control. There are no ears who want to hear Jesus when he says, “The truth will set you free.”

On Reformation Sunday we don’t simply celebrate the work of Martin Luther and his fellow reformers during the sixteenth century. We don’t hold high their glorious works and the amazing outflowing of faith that happened in the face of stiff opposition from the established church in Rome. First of all, none of them, starting with Luther, would want us holding them up as heroes. Luther himself objected to his followers being called Lutherans rather than Christians. Second, the whole business of the Reformation was messy, inglorious, and fraught with set-backs, martyrdom, political wrangling that make our senate campaign pale in comparison, the slaughter of a hundred-and-fifty-thousand protesting peasants, the military defeat of the evangelical princes just a couple years after Luther’s death, and the enduring squabbling among his theological adherents for the rest of the century and down to today. What we really celebrate today is the truth that lay as a foundation under all the reformers efforts. They endured the opposition, the threats, and their own infighting for the sake of the truth so much greater than themselves. They had come to understand the truth and been so set free by it that, like Luther before the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms, they had to say, “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”

Martin Luther unabashedly pointed to the truth in his little teaching book that many of you had to memorize during your confirmation instruction. In dealing with the Apostles’ Creed, each time Luther explains one of the articles he ends by saying, “This is most certainly true.” It’s such an innocuous phrase. It seems like it’s just a toss-away, something easy to say. “This is most certainly true.” Try saying it with me. “This is most certainly true.” It’s not something we have to think hard about, but maybe we should, especially if we gather in a congregation named Trinity Lutheran Church whose middle name came about because of the proclamation of the truth done at great personal cost by person whose name is on at least five signs and banners around the place we sit. So let’s deal with “This is most certainly true.” Let’s go after it, so it isn’t just a Lutheran catch-phrase. Let’s deal with each of the five words.

First off: true. We tend to think of truth in terms of modern history. For us, true generally means factual. We want front page stories in the newspaper to be factually true. We expect our history books to be factually true in a Dragnet just-the-facts ma’am way. But the truth is more than just the facts. Ancient historians like Tacitus and even our four gospel writers knew that. When Plutarch wrote his account of important historical figures, he had no problem putting words into their mouths, because he was more concerned with truth than with facts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are no different. They tell their separate accounts of Jesus life, death, and resurrection in their own ways, spinning the facts of the story to be able to open up the truth about Jesus for their readers. Knowing the truth isn’t knowing facts, which are actually subjective. Any lawyer will tell you how difficult it is to bring an eye-witness to the stand. Our memories are highly selective, and the facts an eye-witness brings forward are subjective.

So when we talk about truth, it’s better to go a different route. We ought to talk to carpenters about what’s true. When they’re framing a building they want to true their work. They want it both level and plumb, so the house or clinic or office or tallest skyscraper in Dubai will stand the test of time. They want it strong and firm, so that what’s intended to happen within can actually happen. When we say, “This is most certainly true,” it’s true if what God intends to happen does happen. Are we fruitful and do we know our relational multiplication tables? Do we see God as our God? Do we see ourselves as God’s people? Are our lives measured against God’s will from the foundation of the world? Does this truth blow away the chaff and detritus of our lives? Does it hold strong against all other comers? Is it level and plumb? If so, it’s most certainly true.

Next word: certainly. This has to do with our conviction and with what, as Paul says in Romans 8, we’re persuaded to believe. Is what we’re dealing with sand for building our house on or is it the firm foundation of rock?  If it’s built on the ever-changing eddies of our emotions or our checking accounts and investment portfolios or political movements or economic indicators, there can be no certainty. You can’t count on these things to hold true and stand the test of time. We need something more.

Luther said that he was constantly attacked by the devil’s accusation that said, “Who do you think you are, Luther? What gives you the right to battle princes, emperors, and popes? You’re just a piddling, little German friar.” But it was the certainty of the truth Luther had come to see in the church’s proclamation that kept him speaking, writing, and teaching. Luther regarded himself as exactly what the devil said – nothing – but he had the conviction of knowing the certainty of a divine promise made.

When a promise is made, it depends on the one promising to fulfill the promise. If we’re making the promise, all of life inserts itself into the deal as contingencies and exigencies. We can’t count on it. But if it’s God making the promise, then you have certainty. God changes not a whit. Jesus himself is the same yesterday, today, and forever. When the promise is made, you can count on it.

Next word: most. Not moist. That’s the most hated word in the English language. I’m talking about most. This certain truth is beyond anything else in heaven and on earth. The word “most” slices everything in two. There’s this thing at the pinnacle and then there’s everything else. Only this thing is the truth to be certain of. It’s categorical, like Jesus himself, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (which means he’s the most kingly of kings and the most lordly of lords). There’s Jesus who alone has the power and means to save you, and there’s everything else. Even all the good things in life like morality, good works, and religion are not the most. There’s only Jesus, and him crucified. He’s the one who makes God left-handed by sitting on his right hand. He’s the one who is the Word from the very beginning of things. Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, is the hinge of all history and the turning point of all creation. He’s the most, baby, and for sinners at the limit of their own reason and strength he’s as beautiful as they come. That’s most certainly true.

Now an odd word to think about: is. If something is, then it’s not just an idea or concept. Back in Ancient Greece the philosopher Plato tried to tell us that the world around us isn’t really real. We can easily see that everything changes. Rivers flow. The makeup of Congress shifts. Mountains wear down. And one day our tired old bodies will rot away, food for bacteria. So Plato said ideas are real. Even if all dogs where to disappear, still the idea of dog would last. The idea of numbers lasts. Two plus two will always equal four. But Plato conveniently ignored the certain truth. The world around us does exist. And when we say “This is most certainly true,” we’re saying it actually exists.

 

This truth isn’t some mere idea. It is. It exists. It does things. The word of truth is a living word. It changes lives. It’s what linguists call “first-order discourse.” It is because it’s language that changes the person who hears it. It changes the relationship between the person speaking it and the one who hears. It’s like the words we speak from our hearts to each other, words like “I love you,” “I take you to be my husband,” and “Come over here, sweetie, and kiss me quick.” The trust exists, it is, because it comes into the world and changes everything by its presence. As the gospel writer John says, Jesus is the Word that came into the world. And, boy howdy, did he ever change things. Because of your Lord, the entire ground has shifted. The Law is over with. The new day has begun. We’ll leave the pie-in-the-sky hope for a future transformation into becoming our own gods to the Mormons. Give us the true God born of the Father from eternity and true human being born of the Virgin Mary, God in the flesh, Immanuel, who was, who is, and who will be. Give us the God who says his name is “I am who I am.” Give us the God who’s come to us and who is at work in the world right now.

And then there’s “this.” What is this “this” that we speak of that is, that is the most, that is certain, and that is true? Now we’re at the core of the Reformation and the very center of what this time and space are dedicated to week after week, year after year. Now we’re at the reason you have my beloved Ryan as your pastor. We’re at the certain thing that drives our proclamation. And it is the promise I just alluded to. God comes to you in a way that you might become his own.

 

The “this” is the very Word of God that was spoken to create the heavens and human creatures. The “this” is the promise that cleansed Naaman of his leprosy. It’s the power that went out of Jesus at the touch of his hem that cured the woman with the twelve-year flow of blood. It’s what raised both Lazarus and the son of the widow of Nain. It’s what calmed the storm and banished demons. It’s the “this” that forgives sins, delivers from sin, death, and the devil, and makes a new you out of sinful, dying flesh. It’s the “this” that swirls through the galaxies and through your veins. When the crowds hear Jesus teaching, they ask “What is this?” That “this” is a Word that has taken me out of my death. And you, too. It’s the Word that makes you such a new person that not even death can change you.

This “this” comes in all sorts of ways. Luther and the reformers knew it and spoke it. We set apart women and men who have this “this” on their lips, so there’s always a place to come when the world bears down, beats down, and betters you, so there’s always a place you can be most certain you can hear the truth. The “this” is what we come for, isn’t it? And to that end, the only way to have you be able to say “This is most certainly true” is to give you “this.” The only way for the truth to be able to set you free is to actually speak “this” and free you. So I challenge Pastor Cosgrove to start speaking it to you with me. When we speak the “this,” your response each time will be Luther’s words from the catechism: “This is most certainly true.” Let’s try it.

• Jesus has come to be your Lord.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• You have been baptized into Christ’s death and raised with him to new life.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• This is Jesus body and blood given and shed for you.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• I have called you by name.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• I will be your God, and you will be my people.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• Can a woman forget her nursing child or the child of her womb? Yet even if these should forget, I will never forget you, says the Lord, for I have you carved in the palm of my hand.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• He is risen. He is risen indeed.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• There will come a New Jerusalem where there will be no more mourning or crying. The past is over and a new day has begun.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• When your church building burned to the ground, you built a crypt in below the new church to hold the old church's charred remains. It ties you to the past but reminds you that our good God holds you even in the most difficult of situations.

               "This is most certainly true."

• Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• This is the feast of victory for our God. Alleluia.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• The Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• All things work together for God for those who love the Lord, who are called according to his purpose.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• Neither height nor depth, angels nor principalities, things present nor things to come, nor anything else in all creation can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• Years ago you lost a pastor. He preached on Sunday morning but died suddenly that night. Yet God brought you through that loss to a new day.

               "This is most certainly true."

• Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child or spouse; though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day. The kingdom’s ours forever.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• I once was lost by now am found, was blind but now I see.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• We know that we are justified not according to works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• Go therefore and baptize all nations, teaching them what I have commanded you. And, lo, I will be with you to the end of the age.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• The Lord is my shepherd. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• For freedom Christ has set us free.

               “This is most certainly true.”

• As a called and ordained minister of the church of Christ and by his authority, I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins.

               “This is most certainly true.”
Do you see? You are people who have no cause to say “The truth? I don’t know even what is the truth anymore.” For you know the most certain truth. It has come into your midst, into your ears, into your hearts, to do its eternally merciful work. This place in these few moments with all this back-and-forthing is a place that carries on not just the legacy of the Reformation and Luther. You are the bearers of God’s Word in the world.

Budgets-schmudgets, buildings-schmildings, church councils-schmouncils. You are a place where this miraculous living word does its work. No congress or senator can do that certain true thing. No plan or program can do it. It’s that guy’s calling to do it. It’s your job to demand it of him. It’s your business to spread the word. And when you hear it both today and on your last day when the dead are raised, you know what to say. Say it with me. “This. Is. Most. Certainly. True.” Amen.

And now may the peace which far surpasses all our human understanding keep our hearts and minds in the one who himself is certainly true, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.