I often wonder why I get so, uh, curmudgeonly during Christmas time. It is one of the two highest feast days of the Christian Church. The music and Scripture readings for the season are sublime. In every measurable way, it is a time of great joy and happiness. Family gather together. There is festiveness in the air. All in all, it is a good time.
But then I remember.
Nadia. Emmanuel. Mom. The many people whom I have buried over the years who are no longer with their families. The families who now are at a loss of what to do because of this emptiness.
To quote the hymn, “In the midst of earthly life, death has us surrounded.†Or to quote St. Paul, “the wages of sin is death.†Death has a way of messing up and just bringing down everything around us. Some years or season are greater reminders than this of others, but the sad reality is always there, always present, always trying so very hard to draw us into the pit of self-pity and despair.
That is why I get curmudgeonly.
But that is also why I don’t stay curmudgeonly.
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, to defeat death by taking it into Himself, and to wipe away the tears of grief which wet our faces year after year.
One hymn, perhaps more than any other for me, encapsulates this reality. I hope it brings you joy this season.
Oh, rejoice, ye Christians, loudly,
For your joy hath now begun;
Wondrous things our God hath done.
Tell abroad His goodness proudly,
Who our race hath honored thus
That He deigns to dwell with us.
Refrain
Joy, O joy, beyond all gladness,
Christ hath done away with sadness!
Hence, all sorrow and repining,
For the Son of Grace is shining!
See, my soul, thy Savior chooses
Weakness here and poverty,
In such love He comes to thee
Nor the hardest couch refuses;
All He suffers for thy good,
To redeem thee by His blood.
Refrain
Lord, how shall I thank Thee rightly?
I acknowledge that from Thee
Every blessing flows to me..
Let me not forget it lightly
But to Thee through all things cleave
So shall heart and mind receive:
Refrain
Jesus, guard and guide Thy members,
Fill Thy brethren with Thy grace,
Hear their prayers in every place.
Quicken now life’s faintest embers,
Grant all Christians, far and near,
Holy peace, a glad new Year!
Refrain
God’s richest peace to you this season. Merry Christmas in Jesus’ Name.
Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Rocklin, California
Advent IIIa (December 15, 2013)
Matthew 11:2–15
TITLE: “The Jesus We Needâ€
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for this morning is from Matthew chapter eleven, with focus on the words of Jesus, ““Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.â€â€ (Matthew 11:4–6 ESV)
John sends his disciples to Jesus with a question: Are you the Coming One, or do we look for another? Now if ever there is an Advent question, this is it. All of our texts today revolve around the theme of the preaching of the Gospel, and John’s disciples really get at the heart of the matter. It is as if they are saying, Is this it? Are you the Messiah or not? Should we follow John or do we follow you? I think you can almost sense some tension in their question. Have we been wrong for following John the Baptist all these years? Perhaps John is concerned that when he is martyred, some of his disciples won’t follow Jesus, but will rather bask in John’s memory. Perhaps they would turn him into a folk hero, and they wouldn’t get the connection between John’s preaching of repentance and Jesus’ work of forgiving sins.
Really, though, the question of the disciples to Jesus is our question as well. In one way or another, we are all searching for answers. We all have questions about life and about our identity as God’s children. These questions draw us into the question of Jesus. Who is He? Why did He come? What does that have to do with my life here and now? Those are good questions, and there ones that have to be asked, this time of you perhaps more than any other time right here in church.
Now Jesus knows all about John’s disciples’ fears and questions. Notice what Jesus does. He doesn’t answer their question outright. They ask, are you the Coming One, or do we seek another? Jesus doesn’t just answer, yes, I am the Coming One. No, instead, Jesus points them to two things. He says, go back and tell John what you hear and see. Jesus then gives a list of the works He’s performed in their presence: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. Notice how Jesus in this list moves from the least important to the most important. The blind see and the lame walk. These things didn’t make you unclean, but they incapacitated you. The lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear. These things not only incapacitate you, but they make you unclean, so that you cannot hear the Word of God. The dead are raised and the poor have the gospel preached to them. Jesus raised up the dead, but even more important than that, Jesus gives the good news of salvation and forgiveness to the poor. Or to put it another way, for the ministry of Jesus, preaching the forgiveness of sins was the most important thing He did, and continues to do today.
But that is offensive, or literally, that is a scandal. How can this be, you might ask? How can Jesus forgiving sins be scandalous? And what does that have to do with Advent? It has everything to do with Advent, because this question gets at the heart of why Jesus came to earth in the first place. In Jesus’ ministry, many people were offended when Jesus said that He had to suffer and die on the cross for the sins of the world. Many quit following Him, and looked elsewhere for a more user-friendly Messiah. The tried to make Him a king; they wanted Him to rebel against Rome; they followed after Him because He fed their stomachs. But when He sought to forgive their sins, when He went to preach the Gospel to them, well, they had better things to do than that. As Paul said, preaching of the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks.
How different is this message what we seek after by nature! Jesus gives us what we need, not what we want. That was His message to John. John was wondering if Jesus would come down and get him out of prison. But that was not Jesus’ purpose; He had a higher purpose for John and for you. You may want Jesus to help you with your money problems, or family problems, or conflicts with co-workers, stress about life, or school, or whatever may be ailing you. Now to be sure, Jesus cares about all these things. And He will help you with whatever the problems of your life are.
His sights are much, much higher than that, though. Jesus did not come to earth to make you feel better, or happier, or even to make your life easier. He came to earth to raise you from the dead. He came to earth to heal the sickness of sin, which is a part of you even now. He came to preach to you that your sins are forgiven. He comes to give you Himself. He comes to lift you up out of your mess of a life, and to make you sons and daughters of heaven!
So what do you hear and see? Do you hear and see a Jesus you want? Do you see a Jesus that makes you happy, that makes you feel good about your self and about who you are. Do you see a Jesus that says it’s okay to sin and revel in wickedness? Or do you hear and see the Jesus you need? Do you hear the Jesus that says that sin cannot be brushed over? Do you see the Jesus born in a manger, dead on a cross, gone from the empty tomb? Do you hear the Jesus that forgives your sin, and who gives you Himself week after week?
That is why Jesus says to John’s disciples, blessed is he who is not offended because of Me. Jesus doesn’t give you what you want. He gives you what you need, and that is the far greater thing. He gives you His very body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. What looks on the outside like almost nothing, is in fact the thing you need the most in the whole world. Blessed are you who are not offended that Jesus uses poor preachers, words, bread and wine, water on the head of little Evangeline this morning, to bring you the greatest gift of the season. Blessed are you when you are not offended because you hear and receive the Christ, the Messiah of God.
So rejoice and be glad! Jesus has come, He is coming, and He comes even now to give you what you truly need. That is the message of Advent. He comes to give you Himself for life, for salvation, for the forgiveness of your sins. Come to the table, for there your sins are washed away.
In the name of the Father and of the †Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting. Amen.
Last Sunday of the Church Year, 2013 (November 24)
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Rev. Todd A. Peperkorn
(Luke 23:27–43)
TITLE: “Paradiseâ€
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for today is the Gospel just read from St. Luke chapter twenty three.
It is the end of the Church Year. We have been talking about judgment day for a couple weeks, considering the end of all things and Christ’s return in glory. And here is this reading from Jesus’ death right in the middle of it? Why? What does Jesus’ death on the cross have to do with our life in Christ, and especially how we stand before God on the great, final day.
That is the question for the day. What does Jesus’ death have to do with judgment day?
As our Lord was stretched out dying upon the cross, two other men were experiencing their own judgment day. They were both criminals. They were both deserving of death. Their judgment was really their won doing. As they lay dying, the three of them together, one of them joined in mocking our Lord. Hear again the exchange:
“One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!†But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.â€â€ (Luke 23:39–41 ESV)
The wages of sin is death, so St. Paul said. We all receive the just reward for our false and sinful works. Good or bad, rich or poor, wise or fool, every one of us will make our own long road to the grave. Somehow, though, in the midst of that kind of pain and suffering, one of these thieves recognized that with Jesus, there was something different. With Jesus, He was not there because of His own doing. He was innocent. The first man since Adam to ever be really, truly innocent of all wrongdoing. Yet He suffered the same humiliation as they. He would die, just as they were about to die.
The concept of judgment by God goes far beyond the modern view. Today we don’t talk about judgment; we talk about karma. What goes around, comes around. Usually we use the concept of karma whenever something bad happens to someone else. A rich person goes broke and it’s karma.
But judgment is very different. Judgment means that you are held to a standard, and the standard is fixed, immovable. Love the Lord your heard with hear,t soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s the standard, that’s the rule. These thieves had broken the rule, and so they stood under the judgment. They would die for their crimes.
And so it is that we stand under the same judgment. Oh, we may not be notorious criminals, stuck in the ground on a cross for the world to see. But we are still under that same judgment. How do we know this? Because we are all dying, every one of us. That is the nature of life under sin. We all stand under that one judgment.
Or do we? What if we aren’t looking forward to judgment day, but backwards on it? What if we are actually on the other side of God’s judgment, and we have come out innocent, holy and loved by God? Is that possible? Could such an amazing thing be true?
Yes, it is. Saint Paul tells us of this miracle in our Epistle. He writes,
“He [Jesus]is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.†(Colossians 1:15–18 ESV)
Jesus is the image of the invisible God. That word image is literally the word, ikon. Jesus is a window to peek in and see the very heart and character of God. And there He is, the Word made flesh, the creator of heaven and earth and everything in between, the one who holds the whole world together, there He is, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do†(Luke 23:34). God the Father poured out His judgment not upon you, but upon Him. St. Paul continues in his Epistle,
“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.†(Colossians 1:19–20 ESV)
In other words, Jesus takes all of the sin and sorrow, sickness and death, the disease which infects us all, He takes all of it and sucks it into Himself. And out of Him pours the very blood of His forgiveness. St. John reminds us that when Jesus died, out of His side poured blood and water. That blood and water and Spirit testifies that in every way that matters, Judgment Day has already taken place.
Judgment Day was on the cross, beloved in Christ. And on the cross of Jesus all your sins were taken to the grave. And when our Lord arose from the dead, He left all those sins there, in the tomb. Your Judgment Day was a long time ago, and God has judged you holy and righteous, His precious sons and daughters, heirs with Jesus to an eternity forever in God’s presence, along with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
Don’t be afraid of judgment. It’s done. Finished. All that’s left is the cleanup. Oh I know, we still suffer and hurt here. The earthly consequences of our sins sting and bother. We struggle with how to live and we struggle with how and when to die. But not matter. Christ has reconciled us to Himself. You are one in Him and therefore in each other. Jesus, who is enthroned forever at His Father’s side, Jesus now calls to you and says, “Come, sit with me up here. This is your place. This is your home. Leaven all of your worrying and anxiety behind. I have done it all for you. You need never be afraid, ever again.â€
That is your future, beloved of God. Your future is wrapped up in Christ, who has won it all so that you might become one with Him.
Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
And now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith to life everlasting. Amen.
Pentecost 28c, 2013 (November 17)
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Rev. Todd A. Peperkorn
(Luke 20:5–28)
TITLE: “Legacyâ€
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for today is the Gospel just read from St. Luke chapter twenty.
Today we are going to talk about legacies. There are different kinds of legacies, of course, there is the legacy of a sports team. The legacy of a statesman or political leader. The legacy of a business owner. There is the legacy of your family. A legacy is whatever it is that is left behind after you die.
In Jesus’ day, the Jews had a legacy. Their legacy, so they thought, was the Temple. They admired its beautiful, noble stones and offerings. The huge columns, the candles, the altar of incense. There was the holy place, and within that, the holy of holies, where God promised to dwell between the cherubim and on the mercy seat. This, so they thought, was their legacy. It was a legacy rooted in blood, built for them, this time at least, built for them by Herod the Great on the site of the original Temple, which was destroyed in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians. It is hard for us to fathom the size and grandeur of this building. It was one of the marvels of the ancient world. Some of the stones which were carved for its foundation weighed upwards of six-hundred tons. The great cathedrals of Europe have nothing on this temple of old. And so the Jews were proud of this temple. They saw it as their as identity, their place of worship but much more than that. They saw Herod’s Temple the sign that God loved them, that they were special, and that nothing could ever harm them again.
We all have a tendency to do this with our legacies. Legacies can be both good and bad. They can help us remember the many accomplishments of those who have gone before us. But they can also lead us to pride in the wrong things. What is your legacy as a human being? What will people remember about you five, ten, twenty or fifty years after you die and go to be with Christ? What is it that truly endures in this life? As we ponder the end of all things and the return of Christ, this is a question that is really worth considering along the way. What will you be remembered for?
Now in our Old Testament for today from the book of Malachi, we hear that the people wanted their legacy to be their own works, not God’s enduring mercy for them. They thought that the things of this life, the buildings and works of man were what really matter. God said to them, “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble.†(Malachi 4:1 ESV) It is a sad reality that what seems important to us, what looks and feels enduring and long lasting, well, often these are the very things that burn up the fastest in the fire of judgment and time.
This is why our Lord says to the Jews about the Temple, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.†(Luke 21:6 ESV) In 70 A.D., not forty years after Jesus’ resurrection, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, razed to the ground along with its beautiful Temple. No two stones were left upon each other, as Jesus Himself had said.
In God’s Kingdom, what endures isn’t the things of this world. Not when it comes to brick and mortar, at least. This building will be torn down someday for something else. Cars break. Computers go into the great recycling bin somewhere. Whatever it is that we cling to in this fallen world, they will all fade away into nothingness sooner or later. All of this is a result of sin, the brokenness and rebellion which we all endure every day. We all construct our Tower of Babel, and in some way live under the fantasy that we can reach to the heavens with our own labors. But it is not so. That is your own pride talking, and it is a lie.
So if the things of this world are broken, fading and ready to burn away like so much stubble on the plains, then what does endure? What is it that will really stand the test of time? What is it that will last far beyond own years and those of our children’s children’s children? What endures is Christ, the power of His resurrection, and His Word offorgiveness for you. We hear about it in Isaiah as follows:
“The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.†(Isaiah 40:7–8 ESV)
The end will come. It is even already upon us. The end will come, but the end of all things here on earth isn’t the final act in some great tragedy of life. Far from it. It is exactly when these crazy things are happening, which destruction seems to loom around every corner, it is precisely then that we hear of what is to come. Jesus says it this way at the end of our Gospel:
““And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.â€â€ (Luke 21:25–28 ESV)
Straighten up, Jesus says. He doesn’t mean that like a drill sergeant. No, He means it like a father will lift up his child’s teary face and give them comfort. Look up! The best is coming. Resurrection is on the way. Jesus’ work of salvation and eternal life is on the way for you, always for you. Your redemption is drawing near.
So God uses what may be the most wispy and transient of all things to deliver the one thing that will endure to the end of the world and beyond. He uses the ordinary. Just words. Words of comfort and Gospel. Words of hope in the midst of sorrow and death. He uses words. He uses bread and wine, He uses water, things that are hear today and gone as fast as you can swallow. Yet through these, the most impermanent of things, God gives you the one thing needful, He gives you a legacy of eternal life in His name.
That, my friends, is called faith. Trust in His Word of promise and hope. Trust that even though steeples are falling, your life may be a confused wreck, and that the wars and rumors of wars persist, trust that God will continue His quiet work of redemption, drawing you back, preparing a place for you, and making you a home. For where Christ is, there is the kingdom of God.
Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
And now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith to life everlasting. Amen.
Proper 27c, 2013 (November 10)
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Rev. Todd A. Peperkorn
(Luke 20:1–8)
TITLE: “Resurrectionâ€
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for today is the Gospel just read from St. Luke chapter twenty, as well as Moses’ encounted with God in Exodus chapter three. Let us pray:
Living God, Your almighty power is made known chiefly in showing mercy and pity. Grant us the fullness of Your grace to lay hold of Your promises and live forever in Your presence; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
When Moses was on Mt. Sinai, he didn’t expect to encounter God. He was fleeing from Egyptian justice, hoping to tend his sheep in peace, miles away from Pharaoh’s courts and the intrigue involved with it all. He wanted to tend his sheep, care for his family, and look after himself. His attempts at helping his people, the children of Israel, well they hadn’t exactly gone well. But here was a bush, burning but not consumed, speaking out to him and calling him by name. God would use Moses to deliver His people, Israel, from their imprisonment and slavery. Moses didn’t believe it, not at first at least. He wasn’t sure that the people of Israel would listen to him. But God had promised His enduring presence with Moses, and the people were saved in His time and according to His divine plan.
God does not work in obvious ways. He does not play by the rules that we think He should play by, and His goals are not the same as our goals. He is, after all, God and not one of us. His divine work of salvation and resurrection, well, they are so big, so amazing and beyond our comprehension, we have a hard time fathoming what resurrection even means. The closest we get is to think about heaven. Heaven, to us, is like here only better. Heaven is earth without the problems. That’s what we think. But God’s plans for you and me are way, way bigger and better than that.
So a group of people come to Jesus with a question. It’s kind of a silly question to our ears, but to them, it was deadly serious. The group asking the question are called the “Saducees,” that is, a group within Israel that didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. So for them, all of Jesus’ talk about death and resurrection is just wrong. They don’t want a Messiah that brings back the dead. They want a Messiah that fixes things right now. So they ask Jesus this question about the one wife for the seven brothers. It sounds like a bad take on a musical to us. But their point is that if there is a resurrection from the dead, all of the patterns and things that we learn in this life won’t work anymore. They won’t even make sense. So to the Saducees, the answer was that there could be no resurrection.
Now before we dismiss the Saducees as kooks, it is important to stop and recognize the Saducee in each of us. We may poo-poo the Saducees as a strange group of Jews from years ago, but we all act like Saducees in our practice of Christianity. We all act as if the troubles of this life, the trials we face and the heartaches and injuries we endure, we act as if these troubles signal the end of the world. We act as if the troubles that we endure here and now is all that there is.
In other words, we live and act as if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. We act as if all we have is this life, and that we had better gather all we can now, because there is nothing else. That is the Saducee talking you. Live for today, because there is no tomorrow. Heaven, the afterlife, resurrection, all of those things are so far away and just plain weird, that it is just easier to act as if they don’t exist.
The problem with this, and what happens to us as Christians is that when we forget the point of the faith is resurrection of the body, when we forget that central teaching, then everything else in the Christian faith isn’t far behind. Once the resurrection of the dead is no longer important, then nothing else in the Bible or that Jesus teaches really matter, either.
What the Saducees, and oftentimes we, cannot accept is that Jesus did not come in order to make us feel better about ourselves. He didn’t come to fix every earthly problem or contradiction in our lives. He didn’t come even to tell us how to live, not really. All of those things will come in their own time and way, but they are not the point. No, Jesus came to raise you from the dead, pure and simple. And when they reality sinks in, how we treat one another becomes much clearer.
God reveals His power chiefly in showing mercy and pity. There are lots of things we don’t understand about heaven. We know that there is no marriage, because that is the highest estate here on earth. The marriage there is between Christ and His bride, the Church. God shows you mercy and pity not by making sure that your chains are comfortable. He is not satisfied to just make you a little better in this life. No, He plans a whole new beginning. A resurrection from the dead.
Today our Lord calls you to trust in Him for your very life and salvation. Hope in Him, and in His resurrection and therefore yours. As we continue to look forward to His return, live you life knowing that the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of the Living, that He is the one who serves you, who redeems you, who reveals Himself to you in Word and Meal. He is the one who will raise you from the dead, where we will be equal to the angels and true sons and daughters of the heavenly king. That is a pretty great picture. That is a future worth looking forward to all the more. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.
Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
And now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith to life everlasting. Amen.
