Sermon for 7/26/2020: Seventh Sunday After Trinity

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Compassion

Mark 8:1-9

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our Lord Jesus has a way of caring for His children that is unlike any other way that the world has ever known. It is the Lord’s way to gather people unto Himself. It is the Lord’s way to feed those whom He gathers as His own. It is also the Lord’s way to give us what we need in order that our burdens may be lifted. The sort of Lord and Savior to which you and I belong looks beyond Himself to the needs of others. Jesus said to His disciples, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat.” Don’t take this statement lightly. Jesus uses a word which means His concern for the people causes His insides to ache with sadness. What happens to His children affects Him deeply. The condition of the people affects His very being. He sees a people who are going through a spiritual wilderness, a people who are at risk, who are saddened and troubled. He sees disbelievers, sinners, people who are hurting, people who are troubled. We see those same people when we look in the mirror.

Jesus cares for them with a Divine love. We see in this text something that sounds very familiar to our ears: “He took the loaves and blessed them and broke them and gave them to His disciples.” Time rushes together in such a way that the event becomes timeless. Just as God placed Adam and Eve in a delightful garden filled with food they could eat just by plucking it from the tree; just as God provided manna in the wilderness for His wandering children; just as Jesus, God in flesh dwelling among His people, provided for these 4,000 hearers, He now comes to you in the Word, in the water, in the bread and wine here in the Divine Service, sustaining and blessing His people. It is for you, free, given without any work or worth on your part.

Did you hear it? Remember the words recorded by the Apostle Paul: “The Lord Jesus, on the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you.’” It is sad, though, that, in the midst of these blessings of bread come from God, Israel ends up grumbling about it. Many disciples in the Gospel of John stop following Jesus because of His Bread of Life teaching.

Even today we are sometimes guilty of despairing of ourselves, of not rejoicing in the Supper which is Jesus Himself, taking it for granted, saying it could be something less than special if we receive it more often. At times we are numb to its blessings, and we even neglect the opportunity to receive and find comfort in this gift of Jesus, present in and under bread and wine. We must repent of this apathy. We should thank God that He gives us this holy Feast, and we should cry out and beg Him for it when it is not made available to us.

What we see in the feeding of the multitude is Jesus pointing to the upper room and to Golgotha. Jesus looks upon you with compassion and love. Jesus has mercy for you and forgives your sins—even the sin of our disbelief that God would provide heavenly bread in the midst of the spiritual wilderness of the world in order to give us heavenly peace. The blood He shed, the body He gave as the sacrifice, is the sign of His compassion and love showered upon you. In the same way, the Church looks upon the holy Supper as the evidence of God’s love, mercy, and concern for His people. This is how our Lord operates. When you hear the Words of Institution in this place over bread and wine, God grant that you remember that it is the compassion of Jesus being showered upon you by Him directly. In the name of the Father and of the Son (†) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.

HYMN: Lord, Let Your Servant Now Depart

Not long after I started writing hymns, I thought it would be fun to write metrical versions of the canticles the Church uses in worship. That being said, it was hard for me to believe that I could do justice to them, which kept me from attempting to do so for a long time. I've written a text before concerning the Christ Child being brought to Simeon in the Temple, but it did not really cover the Nunc Dimittis, Simeon's song. I couldn't sleep last night, and somehow the first line of the text below popped into my head, and since I wasn't sleeping anyway, I went to work. After re-reading this morning what I wrote in the middle of the night, I decided it wasn't total garbage, so I'm sharing it with you. Feedback is love.

I didn't have a tune in mind when I wrote this, which is unusual. Lutheran Service Book doesn't have a lot of options for the LMD meter, so I chose the one which is in the public domain.

Lord, Let Your Servant Now Depart

1. Lord, let Your servant now depart
In peace which You alone can give,
For in the Christ, I taste and see
The promised Savior, and I live.
He is the one revealing Light
To gather wayward Gentiles near,
The glory of Your Israel:
The Church’s Head in flesh is here.

2. All blessing, honor, endless praise
To God, almighty Father, sing!
All worship, holy Jesus Christ,
Immanuel, the Savior King!
O Holy Spirit, Helper, Friend,
To you shall endless glory be!
O Triune God, all thanks to You
Both now and to eternity!

© 2020 Alan Kornacki, Jr.
LMD
O GROSSER GOTT (LSB 810)
Occasion: Nunc Dimittis

Sermon for 7/19/2020: Sixth Sunday After Trinity

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Righteousness in Christ

Matthew 5:17-26

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

People are always trying to tell themselves that they’re okay, that they are basically good. As long as they are surrounded by other people who are doing worse things than they are, they can feel pretty good about themselves. So then, how are you doing? How righteous are you before God? Are you doing enough—are you righteous enough—to earn your place in the eternal Kingdom of God? We don't want to be like the Pharisees. The Pharisees were hypocrites, right? So long as we please God and are sincere, we should be fine. So long as we avoid becoming narrow-minded like “church people”—like people who think they have everything figured out—we should be safe, right?

We like to pick on the Pharisees and call them names. And why not? They deserve it, don’t they? After all, they were a constant thorn our Lord’s side during His earthly ministry. They were His enemies. But if being righteous comes down to doing those things that make God smile, then we are in big trouble. The Pharisees were far more righteous than you or I will ever be. Many of them were not even that self-absorbed or hypocritical. And Jesus tells us that no one will get into heaven unless he is more righteous than even the most praiseworthy Pharisee. The Pharisees were great at being righteous. They kept the law better than anyone. But not even one of them was righteous enough.

You need to be completely righteous. You need to be sinless before God—sinless in thought, word, and deed, in what you do and what you leave undone. You must love God with all of your being; you must love your neighbor as yourself. And that is an insurmountable problem. Jesus says that those who have had a hateful thought, even if they haven’t acted on it, are guilty of murder. Someone who has an impure thought is as guilty of adultery as someone who is having a tawdry affair. And if you think neither of those apply to you, think about this: During this pandemic, do you love your neighbor by wearing a mask? Or do you love your neighbor by refusing to wear a mask? And which is better way? The righteousness of the sinner is the kind where we believe we are only guilty of those things our neighbors catch us doing. The righteousness of the sinner is the kind where we make our own rules, and those rules change all the time. That isn’t any kind of righteousness at all. We have no righteousness of our own.

This means that we must get our righteousness from somewhere else. The only place where this perfect righteousness can be found is in Jesus. He is the only One who is righteous enough. Therefore, if we want a place in the eternal Kingdom of God, we need His righteousness to get us through the door. And, sure enough, Jesus gives you His perfect righteousness. Of course, that righteousness much better than that of any Pharisee. It is the righteousness of the One who has paid the price for all our Unrighteousness with His own blood. You received that righteousness in the bloody waters of Holy Baptism, where all your sin was washed away and the perfect white robe of our Lord’s righteousness was placed upon you. This righteousness is more than you could ever imagine. How much righteousness does it take to get into heaven? It takes all of Christ’s righteousness. And His righteousness is sufficient for you, for me, and for everyone. In the name of the Father and of the Son (†) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

                     

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.

Sermon for 7/12/2020: Fifth Sunday After Trinity

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“At Your Word…”

Luke 5:1-11

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Peter may call Jesus, “Master,” but it's clear that he didn't truly believe. He already had everything figured out in his own head. He knew how to fish; he was an expert. He knew that he and his partners had worked all night, using the tried-and-true methods they had most likely learned from their fathers. Somehow, there were just no fish. If they couldn’t find any fish, how could this carpenter’s Son be of help? What could this Jesus know about fishing? He was probably thinking, “Stick to preaching and teaching, Rabbi, and let the expert do his job.” Like a child who listens to and obeys his parents but still thought he knew better, he grudgingly, condescendingly said to the Lord, “Nevertheless, at your word, I will let down the nets.”

The Word of God is powerful to do exactly what He says it will do. As the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah, “As the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” The Lord tells Peter to go drop the nets in the deep water, and when he does, his boat and the boat of his partners overflow with fish to the point that the boats begin to sink—and this is after these professional fishermen hadn't caught one fish. Peter finally recognized the power of the Word of God, the power Jesus wields as the Son of God. He fell on his knees and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” The Lord taught Peter to locate true faith in the right place: in His Word. Faith flows from the Word of God and receives what Jesus did for us by the power of the Word.

We have to repent with St. Peter too, don't we? How many times have we tried to find faith and salvation outside the words of Jesus? How many times have we tried to rely on our own reason and strength? In our sin, we've got it all figured out. We smile at our boss instead of complaining about him or posting vague condemnations on social media; we shut the computer down rather than looking at that pornographic website; we throw a vague prayer into the air to demonstrate our faith. We’ve got it figured out. We stop this sin, and God will love us. We do better, and we will catch God's favor. Do we doubt His Word and forgiveness? Our lives confess that we do.

The gift to Peter, James, and John that day was not fish. The fish were left on the shore when they left the nets to follow Jesus. The gift was faith: they received Jesus by the power of the Word. The boats would stay where they were; from now on they would fish for men. They would cast the very nets which caught them: the power of the Word of God. Our Lord sends His fishermen to preach repentance and faith, to share the good news that Jesus died to pay the price for sin. He sends His fishermen to wash those sins away with water and His Name, to make people His own children in those baptismal waters. He sends His fishermen with His own body and blood to feed and nourish that gift of faith.

And it is in those very nets that we have been caught. With water, bread, wine, and the Word of God, your pastors, fishermen sent by Jesus to speak His Word and act as His hands, have used those means to wash away your sin, to speak forgiveness to you, to feed your faith. Instead of departing from you in your sin, your Lord removes your sin. Having received these precious gifts, you are now invited and freed to follow Him. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

           

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.

Sermon for 7/5/2020: Fourth Sunday After Trinity

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Mercy for Sinners

Luke 6:36-42

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” What does this mean? How merciful is our Father? While we were yet sinners, our Father sent His Son to die on the cross for us. That's how merciful He is. You can’t live up to that. After all, even if you have good intentions of being merciful, the old self is still right there. You remember what your fellow sinners did to you—ever slight, every insult, every injustice. And you want to get them back. You assume the worst about your neighbor because you think you know them and how they operate. You bring up people's old mistakes again and again. You get treated that way, and you do the same thing in return.

Sometimes that desire is even justified. It would have been reasonable for Joseph to have taken action against his brothers for what they did to him. He was the de facto ruler of Egypt. His brothers were guilty of a conspiracy to commit murder, of kidnapping, of wrongfully selling Joseph into slavery. It would not have been wrong for Joseph to do exactly what his brothers were afraid he would do.

And God would be perfectly within His rights to destroy you right now, to condemn you to the same eternal torment reserved for Satan and the other fallen angels. That us what sinners deserve. But that's not what He does. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”—not after we had repented, not after we decided we were going to do things God's way. That is how merciful our Father is.

God does not give you what you deserve, and He wants you to show the same mercy to your neighbor. He would have you overlook and forgive the sins of your neighbor. Yes, you should confront sin when necessary—after all, we don't want people to harm themselves or those around them by whatever it is they're doing wrong—but you must not hold grudges or let old arguments and animosities determine how you think about that person or act toward them. “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

But the Old Adam is selfish. The Old Adam sees his god every time he looks in the mirror. And that false god, like any false god, doesn't tolerate rivals. When the false god within our own hearts is offended, he demands satisfaction. And there's nothing we can do ourselves to change that. Maybe we can improve our behavior somewhat, but the old grudges, the old hatreds, the old prejudices are still there in our hearts. The false god within us needs to be put to death, and our true God, Jesus Christ, needs to take its place.

And that is exactly what God does to us. He puts us to death. He drowns us in baptismal waters, not just on the day we were baptized, but daily. He puts us to death with Christ on the cross. And that means that He also raises us up with Christ. The Father’s mercy is not just an example for us to try to follow—though we should examine ourselves using His Word as a standard. Our Father's merciful example, and Christ's merciful example towards sinners He encountered in His ministry, is more than an example. It is a pattern, a mold in which God lovingly recreates us.

That incredible standard of mercy and love toward one's neighbor is how God actually sees us in Christ, because that's the standard that Christ lived up to. And that standard is therefore also what we really are according to our new selves. God says we are merciful, because He sees us in Christ, who is merciful. But He doesn't lie. His Word does what it says.

And that means that we who now are merciful will inherit the greatest mercy of all. God provides all our needs, not just for this life, but for eternity. Before we are even aware of a need, He fills it. And that is especially true of our need for His presence and love. We may be capable of having mercy on those who wrong us, but we usually don't like it very much, and we often don't necessarily like to be around that person a whole lot for fear he will do it again. But we who were sinners, for whom Christ died while we were yet sinners, He wants us to be in His presence forever. That's how merciful our God is. In the name of the Father and of the Son (†) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.