LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.
From the Gospel heard today, Jesus speaks, saying:
“Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the
word, and my servant will be healed.”
The
restoration of the sermon to its ancient place and power became one of the
marks of the Reformation. The Reformers constantly castigated the church of
their day for their neglect of correct preaching
(Reed,
306). Such are the words that faith gives to the centurion who begs Jesus for a
sermon to heal his servant, from the Gospel.
Dr.
Luther says,
“We
have no slight reasons for treating the Catechism so constantly
[in
sermons] and for both desiring and beseeching others to teach it, since we see
to our sorrow that many pastors and preachers are very negligent in this, and
slight both their office and this teaching; some from great and high art
(giving
their mind, as they imagine, to much higher matters], but others from sheer
laziness and care for their paunches, assuming no other relation to this
business than if they were pastors and preachers, for their bellies' sake, and
had nothing to do but, to
[spend
and] consume their emoluments as long as they live, as they have been
accustomed to do under the Papacy.”
(LC
Intro:1)
This
is because the sermon is the vox ecclesia,
the voice of the living Church, lifted in witness, instruction, testimony, and
exhortation. So, if any of you happen to find yourselves at a church that asks
you for your testimony, I expect you to have one of my sermons handy!
Gospel,
Creed, sermon. That is the order of things. The Gospel is heard to create Faith
in us, again and again. The Creed is confessed in order to repeat back to God
what He has spoken to us in the Gospel. The Sermon is heard after those to give
modern light to eternal truth.
So
it is that each of our readings for this 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany of our
Lord, speak of the power of the spoken Word of God, which is the traditional
and historic origin of the sermon. God speaks, so how could we not have a
sermon? The very first sermon ever heard didn’t bring the house down, but built
it up. The Lord used a sermon to create all things, choosing His theme words as
“Let
there be”.
In
2 Kings, Elisha is confronted by a general, a warrior, a fighting man with his
retinue. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t go out to meet him either!
Elisha preached from inside his house, telling Naaman to go wash himself.
Naaman refuses in anger, being insulted by this sermon from Elisha, but note
what his servants say:
“…had
the prophet told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?” (5:13)
This
is how I often picture my sermons. If they were great, people would listen.
Naaman takes the point, that washing is such a simple thing, why not just do
it, if only to prove the prophet wrong. God gives us the point that, if the
infinite, eternal Creator of the universe takes the time to come to us in His
Word, simple ink and paper, then why not listen?
Even
the listening is so simple, but the outcome that the Word of God produces in
that listening is not. For the universe, the Word spoke and it came into being.
For Naaman, the Word was preached in a sermon and he was cleansed. For the
leper and the paralytic servant, a word was spoken; rather, the Word Himself
spoke and the leprosy was eradicated and the paralysis was lifted. All at the
preaching of the Word of God.
So
it is that our Augsburg Confession teaches that
“The
chief service of God is to preach the Gospel”
(AP,
XV, 42). Not to secure jobs for future pastors, but to prove Christ’s own
command. Jesus was enacting these healings by the Word in order to show us that
that same Word would not be lying when it raises itself from the dead. Belief
is always the point of the Sermon.
This
is why God chooses to work through means. In this case, His Word preached, as
He promised. Did you think meditating on God’s Word day and night, and hearing
the Word meant in private at home or in your heart? The Lord always intended
for His Word to be preached and He always intended it to be preached in His
Church. Not just intended, but ordained for all time that it should be this
way.
Thus,
when the pastor preaches Christ as the Lord given by God, Christ Himself
preaches; when he testifies to the word of God’s dominion, God testifies to His
Word through them.
“Our
Lord God will alone be the Preacher.” That is what Jesus says in Luke 10:16:
“The
one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one
who rejects me rejects Him who sent me.”
God
thinks the sermon is that important, hence the Reformers’ anger at the lack of
solid preaching to the people. Yet, after the Reformation, another side of the
horse was discovered when the Reformed traditions fell off it. Preaching can
also be given too much prominence and made the center and sum of all worship.
This only led to its devaluation, mere moral lessons, and the church’s loss of
all reverence, mystery, order, beauty, and historic continuity.
The
Sermon combines the sacrificial and sacramental elements. It is an
interpretation and expansion of the Word. It is an expression of personal
Christian conviction; a testimony to the experience of God’s people in
accepting His Word as the rule of faith and life.
(Reed,
307)
So
it is, that when we look to our Epistle reading from Romans 12, the sermon
becomes the practical answer to all of our Lord’s commands made to us there.
How are we to live in harmony? By hearing and believing the same things from
God, explained to us in the sermon. How are we to associate with the lowly? By
hearing the exalted, un-hearable Word of God, spoken in our language.
In
fact, you even overcome the evil in your own heart with the good of hearing
God’s Word preached to you. Such is the power of preaching the cross of Christ,
as we hear preached to us in 1 Cor. 1:18. Such is the strength of the
forgiveness of Christ that it can be preached to all the world by mere men, as
Jesus says in Luke 24:47.
So,
there is a burden to the sermon. That it must be Christ’s words. We must be
able to say and boast about it as Jeremiah does, that the Lord has put His
words into the pastor’s mouth
(1:9)
and with Paul and all the Apostles, that God Himself has said this. For this
reason, even a poor sermon is not incorrect, because it is God’s Word, not
man’s, and He will confirm, praise, and crown it because He spoke through him
and the Word is His.
This is something that God says we can trust Him with, so
that we are not chasing after the man who sits in the office of preacher, but
rather the Word. The true Faith pursues the Gospel, will wrestle all night for
it, and will not let go until it receives forgiveness from Jesus’ hands.
The sermon gives us Christ, in words we can understand, to
move us on to the Altar of God in confidence and in Christ.
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