Nativity of St. John the Baptist [w/Confirmation]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

Who speaks to you today in the hymn of the day, saying,

“And their will to die doth quell e’en the lord and prince of hell.”

As we celebrate the nativity of St. john the Baptist, we can’t help but remember what happened to him at the end of his life. It seems that he was simply born to be beheaded and that doesn’t seem fair to us. To be fair, we are saying this from padded chairs, in an air-conditioned building, and with relative peace all around us.

Thus, our military soldiers understand better than we do. They also seem born to be cannon fodder. They are thrust into a world where your worldview is pit against another and it is not a pretty thing, but life and death. How you view the world matters.

In fact, our own Small Catechism, who most think is only for small children to learn, states, “These questions and answers are no child’s play.” What we say and do in Church is not pretend. This is not make-believe. Just because going to Church seems easier than running a 5K or doing your taxes, does not make it worth less.

In our sin, we make mountains out of molehills and major in the minors. We take our church for granted and believe “real” life, life outside these walls, is much harder and more pertinent to living. If ever you leave your comfortable air-conditioning, however, you will find that belief is held in high regard in the world and people live and die according to what they believe, even in the US.

Even the middle-schooler or high school graduate is thrown to the wolves, each time they advance a grade. This is especially true in universities and work-places where the world is all too ready to crucify those who do not agree with the status quo.

On this day of the confirmation of the faith of Lizzie and Ethan, we stand at the precipice. Will Lizzie and Ethan make the good confession, even upon the threat of death, or will they retreat to the air-conditioning? Will they keep the promises made this day, or find a less demanding path?

For these answers, we need look no further than ourselves. How have we treated our allegiance to St. Luke? How is our Biblical quiz knowledge? Where do our priorities and loyalties lie, not just Sundays? In other words: how healthy is your church?

What St. John the Baptist teaches us, even though we celebrate only his birth today, is that the faith is worth dying for and is actually the only good thing we can do in the quest to extend God’s Kingdom.

This is what our hymn is about and this is what the Faith is about. If we think that acting Christ-like or showing God’s love to others is a smile and a handshake, we are dead wrong. If we want to act like God, speak like God, and walk like God we’re going to have to face the fact that that means crucifixion; martyrdom.

If we want to be Christ like, what was Christ like? It should be obvious. The way of the Christian is that of life and death, the same as our Lord and master. The world may have hated Him first, but the world hates us second. He may have overcome the world, but that is not something within our natural skill set.

Jesus says, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” (Rev. 2:10)

St. John knew those words and don’t think that while he was in prison the “be faithful unto death” didn’t stick out sorely. Jesus also knew these words, also knew John would be a martyr, and also knew He would be martyred as well. In fact, Jesus’ martyrdom was on purpose, not just to quiet our incessant need for works, but also to make martyrdom a gateway to life, not death.

Thus, our hymn of the day becomes to us of utmost importance in order to learn about this Christ-like life and be constantly reminded of it. Rise again ye lion-hearted, saints of early Christendom, because death has been destroyed, there is no need for you to sleep in your graves again. You faced death knowing that it is but a sleep which Christ Himself will awaken you, so why is your strength departed?

Whither gone is your martyrdom? It is cast off, killed and sent to hell, never to harass you again. Jesus has defeated death. There is no fear or eternal damage to the faithful. Yet in it you participate in the true Love come down from heaven. The glory of Christ suffering on the cross flames upon you in the guise of actual burning and suffering on a stake, as He did.

And because you desire death to be at your Savior’s side forever, not even the devil can compete. He trembles in his boots at this. He fears the Christian that none of his tactics work on. Fear, lust, danger, vanity, battle, and earthly loves are all in the devil’s tool-bag. When these are of no effect, what power does he have?

The hungry fire at the stake, the ravenous animals, and the blood-stained sand can only heap greater honor upon Jesus, because those martyred are simply ushered on their way to Him even quicker. In this way, even satan and death serve God’s purpose, for in death the Christian is taken beyond death forever. There is no winning for either death or the devil. Only Christ is the victorious captain.

Who fights for us as the valiant one, Whom God Himself elected. And Who in turn, elects us in baptism. Jesus fights for us. Jesus fights for Lizzie and Ethan. Jesus destroys death and defangs all the world can throw at them. For, He has set His table before their enemies and has prepared a place of rest from them, in His Church.

It is the curse of the old soldier to slowly fade away, instead of dying in a blaze of fire, but it is a fight nonetheless. Do not think that because the young can find glory, that the aged do not have their own glory. That is the glory of the faith of Jesus Christ: true for all ages and times.

Thus, we add a final stanza to this powerful hymn of ours:

Rise again, ye lion-hearted, saints of modern Christendom

With the lesser loves be parted, Soldiers of His “age to come”

Lo, our Lord commands us, triumph’s promise upon us

And our will to die doth quell, e’en the lord and prince of hell.

As confirmands, every one of us, we stand strong, not because we are strong, but because Christ is strong. As confessing believers, the devil has no power over us because not only has Christ died to purchase and rescue us, but comes to us even today to give us the sign; the seal of His pledge to never leave us nor forsake us.

He gives us His token of promise in His true Body and Blood that we would believe Him and know that what He did for St. John, that is make him live eternally and reunite him with all believers in Christ in the resurrection, He will do for us. How do we know? Because He baptized us, He communes us, and He gives us His words of confirmation: given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.

So, more important than our confirming our own faith in martyrdom, is Christ’s confirmation and Christ’s martyrdom. His martyrdom on the cross and His confirmation in the Resurrection are our only symbols and hope for true peace and eternal salvation from sin and death. And this is Christ’s pledge to us; His confirmation, that He sets His table before us.

Fatherhood [Trinity 3; St. Luke 15:1-10 (11-32)]

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Jesus speaks to you today, saying,

“And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’”

Do not misunderstand. The vocation of father is such a divine and holy office, that the Lord Himself creates it and hangs the 4^th Commandment upon it: Honor your father and mother, regardless of what kind of father or mother a person is.

Yet, as with all things that turn bad or evil, fatherly care and concern begins with the best of intentions. I will do my best to keep my 100 sheep. I will carefully concern myself with my 10 silver coins. I will thoughtfully and purposefully raise my sons, as in the parable of the Prodigal son.

As the author of the English dictionary, Samuel Johnson, confirms, “Hell is paved with good intentions.” What he means is that even though we voice our opinion of things, intent changes nothing. Action alone will suffice a change. Yet, in our sin, we find even our actions unable to produce good, for even good actions go awry, though we never intend them to.

One of these actions and intentions is that of the American father. At the first, he was a father: guarding, protecting, and nurturing his family by hard work and disciplined piety. It was on him to provide simply because of how he was built as a male. He was able to bear hard labor and get things done all the while ensuring his family believed the right things.

Since that time, especially accelerated in the last 70 years or so, fathers have been hard at work giving up fatherhood and manhood and have unintentionally enslaved the ones they sought to free. Where they intended to give women a voice in society, they unintentionally vacated a lot of the public sector forcing women to serve instead.

Where they intended love and peace for all in the sexual revolution, they unintentionally left a scorched earth of no love and no peace in no-fault divorce and risk-free fornication. Where previously they intended to provide for families and others, they unintentionally forced self-education and hard labor on women and children, instead of themselves and now live in their parent’s basements well into their 30s.

With the intent to educate, they unintentionally shoved off their children onto the State, having others deal with them, instead of them raising their own children. With the intent to connect all the world via the internet, they unintentionally made it so they never have to leave the house for anything.

As more and more fathers and men shove their responsibilities off onto others, society falls further and further into decay. The Family, the very core of society, entrusted to men, has been dissolved. There is no father or mother anymore, but the gender neutral guardian or parent. There is no marriage anymore, but the all inclusive relationship. There is no husband or wife anymore, but spouse and partner.

Repent. Intending to make things better, we have made things worse. The immigrants to America intending to make a clean start, unintentionally brought their own troubles and sin with them and yet this did not change how fathers are supposed to be. Just because you disagree with a previous generation’s view, does not make it completely wrong. We do not need to reinvent the wheel of fatherhood, here, but simply to find what we lost.

What is lost is true manliness and fatherhood.

Not only does the Good Shepherd have good intentions, but good results as well. Notice the shepherd in the Gospel. He keeps a tight lid on his flock. He knows all 100 of them, where they will be, what they are doing, and where they are going. He instantly knows that one is missing. He reacts violently to the fact that there was a chink in the armor, a hole in the wall and immediately moves to close the gap, by retrieving the lost.

The woman also keeps her wealth close to her chest. Guarding and caring in her own way. She does not rest until every means is exhausted in finding the lost. The father of the prodigal boy also acts in this manner. Though his son left, he continues to guard his household and seek for his son so that when he returns, his son may find a home left for him.

The Good Shepherd has had His flock stolen from Him; his precious treasure; His beloved Son, the Church. A chink; a gap was opened where no gap can open. Sin and death poured in, un-creating everything good and pure. There was nowhere for the lost to go except to be lost and to die in sin.

If the Lord were to go out there He would die as well, but that’s exactly what He does. Jesus does not stay in His mansions of safety, He forsakes all for His lost, fallen creatures. Finding them dead in their sins, He pours out His life-blood upon them, raising them up to new life.

On the cross, Jesus is restoring the lost and destroyed. He hoists your sins upon His shoulders and pays for all your impudence and iniquities. He scours His house, bleaching and purifying with His Body and Blood until nothing remains except silver and gold. He trains up His children in baptism, the way that they should go, and they do not depart from it.

Yet, what our heavenly Father is teaching us is not to be as diligent and concerted with our own efforts at finding and restoring, but instead to latch onto and covet that which overcomes the world and its corruption: faith. More than going out to find our own lost sheep, we need to have faith that our Good Shepherd comes out to find us.

More than seeking out our own absent treasure, we are to believe that Christ makes us His treasure by virtue of His Suffering and death on the cross. In this way, our true heavenly Father stops the gap up with His own Son’s Body and Blood, plugging the dam of sin and death forever, not just as a temporary measure, but as an eternal measure.

The Father’s intent from the beginning was always Good, with a capital ‘g’. This is because the Father’s intent, from the very beginning, was always to send His Son, rescue His people from their sins, build a house that cannot be broken.

The Father therefore sends true God and true man to care for those who are shoved off, to bring light to those in darkness, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. As earthly father, we can not hope to stand between the sin that leads to death and our own family and friends. Thus, the only duty of a manly father; the true restoration of fatherhood is to point to faith in the heavenly Father.

Greater than our actions and greater even than our “good” intentions is the Word of God. For in it the earthly father does not find his own words and actions, but the words, actions and promises of Jesus the Christ of God. In this, the earthly father does not present himself to his children or to society around him, but he presents the Savior of all.

The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The Spirit is willing because it is the Holy Spirit. The flesh is weak, because it is corrupted to death with sin. We do not rely on the flesh that seeks and loses, but on the Spirit Who sends and finds.

The Spirit Who sends true love, Who gives a true family in the Church, and who creates living faith in those baptized believers. The world’s gates of revolution and progression will never overcome this given faith and even though we fail at every turn, we are not asked to succeed, but to confess and be forgiven.

That is the true intent of our heavenly Father and the actual good that comes from it. That though we find ourselves failing in sin, we always find Him intentionally succeeding, suffering and dying for us, in order that we might live the blessed life of faith, in Him.

Adultery [Trinity 2; St. Luke 14:15-24]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

Jesus speaks to us today, saying,

“But they all alike began to make excuses.”

In the 6^th command from God we hear a call to purity and chastity, in the words, “You shall not commit adultery.” In this command is the leading of a life that considers sexuality a good gift from God. That marriage be honored as God’s institution and a lifelong union of one man and one woman.

That sex is reserved for marriage alone and should be put under control in a God-pleasing way. There is to be no unfaithfulness. There are to be no sins of rape, homosexuality, incest, child abuse, obscenity or pornography. Our thoughts and desires are to be taken captive if they step out of these bounds. We must avoid all temptation, cleanse our thoughts, and only use this gift in a God-pleasing way.

Because of our abuse of this gift, it is difficult to think of it in terms of godliness, much less in terms of Christ and the cross. Because, really, where does the cross go when you talk about adultery?

Immorality. Fornication. All are in the lists of those who won’t be getting into heaven. At this point, you may think that it’s the guy who made the excuse of having a wife, in the Gospel today, but you’d only be partly right. The adultery comes in making the excuse in the first place.

If you think about Adam and Eve, got kicked out of the garden for not giving their heart to God, you’re wrong. Eve was listening to and obeying a man/thing that was not her husband. She committed adultery by cherishing and honoring the serpent.

The Babylonian Exile and the complete destruction of Israel was not because the people didn’t have enough Jesus, but because the people were playing the harlot with other gods. This is adultery.

“The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? 7 And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8 She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. 9 Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree.” (Jer. 3:6-9)

Repent. What we constantly do not believe is that adultery is first and foremost a sin against God. It is not just a matter between husband and wife, but Christ and His Church. The fruits of adultery create an excess of all sins, faults, and vices, and a lack of all virtue, chastity, and decency. Then there is only a bold, wild, desolate life, with no fear of God and no shame before man, and the you become a beast, heedful of neither God nor men.

“For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.” (1 Jn. 2:16)

True adultery is turning your heart away from God in unbelief, which then makes you scorn His gift of sexuality and marriage. It is not believing that marriage between one man and one woman is the way God has made things. It is believing that by progressing, we can create something better and still believe it to be God’s will.

The Lord will restore the fortunes of Sodom and Gomorrah before He turns away from our adultery (Eze 16). This mystery, this gift of marriage is great, but I am speaking of Christ and His Church.

The Good husband loves His wife and gives Himself up for her. He loves her as He loves His own body and nourishes it and cherishes it. He takes the bullet. He dies that the Bride might live. In Jesus, the Bridegroom, God establishes His covenant with you and it is a marriage contract. A marriage contract sealed with water and blood.

For it is the water and the blood that cleanse and purify, that the Bride might be sanctified for every good work. It is the water and the Word that wash and bathe the Bride in salvation. And it is for this glory, the glory of brining back the adulterous wife and purifying her back to virginal state, that the Son leaves the Father and clings to Bride and the two become one flesh.

In this one flesh union, all that the Bridegroom has is the Bride’s. The Groom took her out of her blood of sin and washed and clothed her in His righteousness. Jesus snatched you from the jaws of death with His own suffering and death and has adorned you as a Bride, with everlasting life.

You have been bought and paid for. You have been sealed with the death and resurrection of Jesus in baptism, you have been instructed and brought to new life in the Gospel, and you have been nourished by the very Body and Blood you formerly despised in your sins and crucified.

This is the new covenant God makes with the world. A covenant that cannot be broken by earthly means or soiled by sin and death, for its purity depends entirely on the Pure Bridegroom and His perfect life. Its rigidity rests solely on the merits and worthiness of Jesus, Who, for the joy set before Him, obeyed His Father even though it caused His death on the cross.

In this solitary, necessary way, the Lord of Life buys back His Bride from her adultery. He completely covers her debts and creates a new heavens and a new earth in the Church, where the marriage vows can never be broken again. For in the Word and sacraments, it is His Word against hers, yet in this marriage, Her word becomes His Word. One flesh.

In the Divine Service, it is the Lord’s Word that is preached. We do not allow ourselves the temptation to come up and each one speak for himself, for we know it would only bring us deeper shame. In the Sacraments, God’s promises are the crucial ingredient in making them work. We would never think of trying to take credit for our “choice” to take them or receive them, in fear of our own sin corrupting them.

The Divine Service stands as the life of the true Bride to be lived out by us and the Sacraments are the marriage certificate. The life of the Bride is so marked by the Word and prayer and her existence as a Bride confirmed by water and Blood. In these things, there is no adultery. In these things, there are no broken lives or promises, only forgiveness.

In the Divine Service, we are subject to our Husband, Who has suffered and died for us. In this way, He is our Lord and head, and we are His Body. We keep silent in Church that He might speak to us His faithfulness. Our mouths are shut up so His mouth would proclaim our pardon.

In committing adultery, we not only ruin our lives and the lives of those involved, but we also declare that God commits adultery, since we dare to call ourselves His. Yet, because of Jesus the Crucified, not even our own adultery can separate us from the love of our Good Husband.

So now, when we hear “You shall not commit adultery”, it is not only the stern words of a jealous God, but the sweet words of Promise from our crucified husband. That now, in Him and in this marriage, “you shall not commit adultery” is a promise; a wedding gift given; a life to be lived in faith and belief that the Son will never leave us or divorce us.

Heavenly Father [Trinity 1; St. Luke 16:19-31]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

Jesus says,

“And [the rich man] said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house”

I heard a story at the Vietnam wall, last weekend. It was a fairly common story about a child growing up without a father, because it’s only the young men that get sent out to fight the wars of the old. Anyways, this young girl was born into her family and before she got to know her father he left to fight and died.

God placed within her, as He does all of us, an intense desire for both father and mother and when one is lacking, we are poorer for it. So it was with this girl. She just knew she had a father and as she got older she wanted to know who he was, but her mother could only tell her so much.

What she needed was someone who knew him, who grew up with him, who fought with him. She went to some veterans and lo and behold, a member of his unit was still alive and had been there with her father, at the very end. That veteran began her relationship with her absent father that she desperately needed in her life and that God has placed in her.

Rewind to the Rich man and Lazarus. Regardless of how it looks to the world, both men are in need of a father. The rich man is in need of fatherly discipline and Lazarus in need of fatherly aid. Both lead poorer lives for their absence and both lives are rich in suffering for the same reason.

For, when they both die they meet no one else except the Father, in today’s episode played by Abraham. The Father Who was supposed to discipline and aid, yet appeared to refuse to do either one of those so that the situation ended up as it did with the rich man in hell and the Lazarus at the Father’s side. How did it happen?

There are three fathers portrayed in the Gospel today. The father of earthly prosperity, the father of earthly suffering, and the one, true Father. In each case of revelation, there is a desperate need for a father, regardless of how he acts. Both the rich man and Lazarus display the deep seeded desire to have a father in one’s life.

The father of earthly prosperity is the dad we all want. He’s the one with the gifts, he’s the fun one, he’s the one that is so laid back he lets us do whatever we want and winks at our vices, much to our condemnation.

Repent. The father of earthly suffering is the father nobody wants, thus we usually associate anything of this sort to the devil or some other evil. Though this is not the true Father in heaven, yet, it is this father that leads Lazarus to Him and we are all in desperate need of a Father.

Our true Father in heaven makes the path of suffering in this world in order to reveal Himself. Not because He wants to test us or make certain we obey and are true, but because the path of suffering is the path of the cross of Christ. Lazarus suffers under his “absent father” in order to point to Jesus.

If we were the rich man, we would understand that we have a father, because he recognized his “father” Abraham, but we would not know him for who He really is. The rich man mistakenly thought Abraham would rescue him. Even if we were Lazarus and suffered as he did in this life, we would still be no closer.

The only way to know there is even a Father in the first place is because there is a Son. Jesus says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Mt. 11:27)

Jesus is the only way to the Father. Jesus is the Son Who suffers at His Father’s command in this life and is rewarded in the Resurrection. Jesus is also the Son Who gives up all His riches and lands Himself in hell in place of all others. Jesus is not the Son Who does not know His Father neither is the Father absent on His account.

Jesus proves by His life that His Father is always present by calling upon Him throughout His life. Though He did not “appear” as we wanted Him to, His will was done according to Jesus and to us. The will of God was to sacrifice the Son on in place of you and Jesus joyfully chased after that will, regardless of what it did to His body.

And it is only through this Body of work that Jesus reveals the Father. It is only through Faith, given freely, in the flesh of Christ on the cross that Jesus does this work. It is only through belief and the sacraments that tears the curtain in two showing us Who the Father really is.

If we try to find our heavenly Father in the rich man, we get enjoyment of the now, but He turns against us afterwards and we don’t understand. If we try to find our Father in Lazarus, see a suffering that has no purpose and is used only to gain a reward.

In order to find out Who our true Father is, we need His Son. The Son Who was there since the beginning. Who created with the Father, Who sat beside the Father for all eternity, and Who conversed with the Father. We need this Son to speak this information to us, to describe Who our Father is, What He is like, and What He is doing.

We need to find the Son, sit down, and have a nice long conversation with Him. Dead in our sins, this is impossible for us. As father Abraham described, there is a great chasm between us and the Father. But, in the Church Christ has purchased and redeemed by His true Body and Blood, the Son brings the Father to us. The Son finds Himself and locates Himself and the Father in a place and manner of His choosing.

So when you come into the Divine Service, sit down, and start talking, singing, or praying, you have been incorporated in the Divine conversation. For it is in the Word and Sacraments that the Son is fully revealed as the Crucified Savior as He is in no other place.

It is here that the Spirit comes to hand out the gifts of Faith and belief that we might hear and know the words of this conversation. And it is here that the Father reveals all His plans and purposes, which just so happen to be all that Jesus has said and done. Thus, on the other side of things, it is not us desperately seeking the Father, but the Son desperately seeking to reconcile us to Him.

Jesus knows suffering and prosperity will attack and plague us, so He doesn’t sit by and wait. To the rich man He proclaims His Word and His Divine Service rings her bells, calling the young and old to repentance. To the suffering Lazarus, Jesus’ Church opens her doors and her heart to the poor, helping whenever and however, all the time, every time.

The Father is only apparently absent. He is truly present in His Son on earth and in heaven. The rich man had heard the discipline and will of God necessary for salvation in Moses and the Prophets, as Lazarus also did. Lazarus had the fortune of suffering as his Messiah did and thus provided the better picture of faith.

Even though this conversation is 2 weeks early, fathers need to be present to prevent both Lazarus and the rich man from befalling family and friends. A father’s absence, even for his job, is no excuse and only leads to calamity in young faith. A father needs to be there, just as our heavenly Father is there for all men.

There are also children that are related to you not by blood, that you find in the pews next to you and living life beside you. These children, neighbors, are also placed under your care to be a father to. Even if you have no children of your own and even if you are a poor father, it is not you, but Jesus.

Jesus does not point to your fatherliness, success or failure, but He always points to the heavenly Father. The Father Who is always present, Who always fathers perfectly, and Who always gives the Son as His greatest accomplishment.

Though we participate and commune in God’s father-ship, our actions don’t reveal Him as He truly is. The real earthly father will always point to Christ and let the Son do the talking. He will always sit his children down in the pews so they will hear the Word and believe. He will always bring them to the water and the blood, because he knows that only the heavenly Father can rescue his charges from their sin.