Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Our text for today is the Gospel just read from St. Luke chapter 19.

It is very easy in the church, in our lives, and in the world to major in minors. What I mean by this is that sometimes we can get so caught up in the details, that we can overlook the whole point of the matter. How many people do you know, for example, that at the end of their life lamented how much time they had spent with their family? Or how many businesses are there that make a conscious decision to spend less time or work making sure the customers are happy? Or how many churches are there in the world that spend so much time on the things of today, that they forget they exist in order to bring Jesus Christ to their people?

This is what we have with our Lord in the text this morning. Jesus is drawing near to Jerusalem, the city of peace, God’s city, the holy city, and rather than rejoice over it, he weeps. Jesus sees a city and a people so immersed in the things of this world, that they miss the most important event of their lives. They miss God’s gracious visitation. God Himself was coming into their midst, into their flesh and blood, walking among them, teaching and healing in the Temple, and they would act as if nothing had happened. As a result of their unbelief and stubbornness, there would come a time not far in their own future, when the city would be level, and not one stone would be left upon another. It is a sad picture.

But the picture gets even more tragic. Jesus then goes to the Temple, the very place where God had promised He would dwell, and what does He see there? He sees the work of the sacrifices turned into a bustling business. He sees this magnificent building, which all pointed to God’s reconciling love, turned into a place for the select few to make a buck. It is no wonder He wept. It is no wonder he drove the hucksters and hustlers out of the Temple. Jesus wept, and He was right to do so. Remember, this is the same Jesus who said before, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…, how often have I wanted to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34).

But He does not only weep for them.[1] He weeps for you. That word “visitation” is a variation of the word we usually translate as “bishop” or “overseer,” or what we in Lutheran terms would call pastor. God’s oversight of the world, both the mysterious, hidden presence throughout history, and His oversight at the Last Day, is that of the Good Shepherd. He comes into your midst to lead you away from the life that leads to death and destruction, and leads you into into paths of righteousness. But when we think about God, look at His presence in our midst, our pride makes it so that we cannot see Him as the Shepherd, but rather as an angry judge.

What I mean is this. It is nearly impossible for us to separate the presence of God from the judgment of God. We do not by nature think in terms of a God of love. What is the first thing that pops into your head if I were to say to you that God is present here, in the flesh, right now? Fear. That is the first thought, or nearly the first thought.

One preacher put it this way:

Going into the temple, he drives out all who sold and bought in the temple, overturns the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons, and says to them, “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers.” His episkope – his visitation, his gracious shepherding and bishoping of creation – once again asserts itself. Of all the places in the world that should have stood witness to grace and truth, the temple was that place; but the world has infected even it, and there is nothing to be done with such a ship of fools but to pronounce upon it the judgment it deserves. Nevertheless, even after he parabolically acts out that judgment, his visitation remains one of grace: “and the blind and the lame [losers all] came to him in the temple, and he healed them” (Matthew 21:14).

Luther once described the Gospel as a passing rain shower that comes to a place for a time and then leaves. You never know how long it will stay, or when it will go from the place. The mediterranean world, particularly Jerusalem and Palestine, were the birthplace of Christianity, but within a few centuries that had changed. There was a time when Europe was the center of Christianity, but no more. There was a time when the United States was the heartbeat of Christianity, but I fear that is fast leaving us. What this really comes down to is a people refusing to recognize God’s presence in their midst.

So today, my challenge to you is this. What are the things that prevent you from receiving God’s mercy? Is it money? Family? Friends? The things of this world? Do you see God’s hand at work in your life, drawing you into His gracious presence, forgiving your sins, giving you life where there is none and hope where it is absent? Repent of all of your ties to falsehood, your desire that the things of today become your gods.

Repent, and believe. Believe that Jesus is your Good Shepherd. Believe that He comes as your judge, and that He judges you innocent of all because of His own death on the cross for your sins. Believe that God comes to you even now, humble and lowly, weeping for you, longing to gather you into Himself. God is in your midst. Right here. Right now. He is a God of love, nor fear. He loves you more than life itself. Christ Jesus is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Romans 10:4). Be free of the burden of your sin. Be free, and live as free people, one, holy, and righteous because of His death and resurrection.

It is easy to major in minors. It is easy to let the things of this life really take on a life of their own. But Christ is your life. Live in Him, for He lives for you. Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.


[1] Taken from Fr. Capon

Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

Holy Cross Lutheran Church

Rocklin, CA

Trinity 09, 2012 (August 5)

Luke 16:1-13

TITLE: “Crazy Mercy”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.  Our text for today is the Gospel lesson just read, the parable of the unrighteous servant.  We focus on the words of Jesus: And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

No question about it.  This is a tough text.  So in order to navigate this, we have to get a couple things really clear off the bat.  First, God the Father is the merciful rich man.  He doesn’t punish the dishonest manager when He would have had every right to do so.  Instead, He shows mercy and love.  That’s point number one.

Point number two is that Jesus is the dishonest manager.  No, I’m not saying that Jesus lies or deceives us.  What I’m saying is that He forgives our sins and failings, because Jesus knows more about the mercy of our Heavenly Father than we do.

So let’s rehearse the text to make sure we understand what’s going on here, then we’ll come back to our two main points.  A rich man has a manager who takes care of his rental properties for him.  Someone comes to the rich man, we’ll call him the master, and tells him that is manager is being dishonest.  The master then calls his manager to him and says, “‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’” (Luke 16:2)  Now at this point he could have thrown the man in jail. But He doesn’t.  He shows mercy. He simply fires him.

Our unrighteous manager is no in a pickle.  He can dig ditches.  He’s ashamed to beg.  The only thing he’s good at, apparently, is taking care of his master’s property.  And he isn’t even good at that!  He keeps squandering the master’s riches, wasting them when they shouldn’t be wasted.  So this is his idea: “I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’” (Luke 16:4)

He then has a fire sale on the rich man’s rental properties!  He slashes prices left and right, dismissing a year’s worth of work and more with the stroke of a pen.  In a flash more has been forgiven them than these poor renters even thought possible.  It’s a dream come true.

So, now, let’s get back to the rich man.  It’s pretty easy to put ourselves into this Lord’s position.  He has an employee that is acting crazy with his property, all for his own selfish gain.  But this manager/employee knows something about the rich man.  He knows that the rich man is merciful, and that he will not shame his crooked employee or himself by going back on the promises the employee made.  

The rich man can’t help but commend the shrewdness of the dishonest manager.  The manager recognized something very important: no matter what, the rich man will be merciful, because that’s who he is.  

So now that we’ve heard the story, let’s get back to our two main points and bring them home for sinners like you and I.

Point number one is that the master, the rich man, our Heavenly Father, is merciful.  That’s what makes God tick.  His love for you knows no bounds.  He will forgive your sins.  He has forgiven your sins already on the cross of His Son, Jesus Christ.  You have a Lord who loves you, and who will stand by you even when you mess up royally.  And make no mistake about it, we all mess up royally.  Our sin is almost as boundless as God’s mercy and love.  

Point number two is that forgiveness come from the most unlikely places.  The dishonest manager is the Christ figure in our story.  Jesus does not present Himself as the nice, pious Buddha sitting up on a hill, detached from the sufferings and hardships of others.  Jesus comes to us as one of us.  Jesus comes to us in the form of a sinner, so that we need never be afraid of His boundless mercy.  One pastor put it this way:

The unjust steward is the Christ-figure because he is a crook, like Jesus. The unique contribution of this parable to our understanding of Jesus is its insistence that grace cannot come to the world through respectability. Respectability regards only life, success, winning; it will have no truck with the grace that works by death and losing – which is the only kind of grace there is. (Robert Farrar Capon)

Your redemption will not come through the respectability of the world.  Your salvation will not come because you act right, look right, or appear to have everything together.  Far from it.  The reason Jesus comes to you lowly and humble is because that’s the only way sinners like you and I can receive him.

Today God comes to you with a gift.  The gift is the forgiveness of sins in Himself.  He covers up this gift in bread and wine, but Jesus is there, His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins.  Shed your worry about how the world views you.  God comes to you now to give you salvation.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Sometimes God’s mercy will give you a headache, like this parable.  It just seems too good to be true.  We may even eye God’s mercy with suspicion, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  But Jesus comes to you today and slashes your sins to ribbons.  That old debt and guilt which you have been clinging to, Jesus takes it from you and puts it on Himself.  He will take care of it.

So this day, rejoice in the crazy love of God for you.  Rejoice that God would take a sinner like you or me into His heavenly mansions.  It is strange.  It even seems irreverent somehow.  But that’s God for you.  Trust in His mercy, for it will last you for all eternity.

Believe it for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting.  Amen.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Our text for this morning is from the Gospel just read from St. Matthew, chapter seven.

Beware of false prophets! This is not a popular idea today. Talk about false prophets is about as popular now as it was with Jeremiah, or Paul, or Jesus. Why should we need to be wary? Isn’t that an old fashioned idea, that should have gone out with the rotary phone? Surely we are discerning enough to be able to tell truth from falsehood. Surely we can tell what is from God and what’s not. Can’t we?

The fact of the matter is that we can’t tell the difference. Not on our own, at least. Eve was beguiled by Satan, and ever since that time, it has been a struggle, indeed a war to discern what is true and what is false.

But its not for lack of information. We have more access to more information that ever before in the history of the world. We can Google our way through most any problem or question that you could come up with. Want to know what birds are indigenous to the mountains of Tibet? No problem! How about the distance from here to Alpha Centari? Got it. Or who was the last Pharaoh in Egypt who was left-handed? I can find that.

Yet for all our knowledge, for all our science and the multiplication of resources, we are no closer to God today that we were thousands of years ago. We as a people may be advanced, we may even be at the pinnacle of our civilization, but we are still, after all of that, just sheep.

This is why we as a people are so tempted by the vision makers and the dreamers of this and every age. Every generation has teachers who offer vain hopes and who make promises they cannot keep. In Jeremiah’s day, the promise that the false visioners gave was that everything would be hunky-dory, that everything would be perfect. “No disaster shall befall you,” they said. This was despite all the warnings. This was despite decades of preaching of the Law. They did not want to hear. And so Jeremiah was persecuted, just like the prophets who went before him, and just like to many prophets who came after him.

But why? Why did the people want to hear the lie? Why listen to the wolf who would devour them instead of the Shepherd who would lead them to the still waters of God’s Word?

They listened because it was easy. It was easy to hear the message of “peace, peace” when there was no peace. They listened because they did not want to face the simple reality that their actions have consequences. So they stubbornly followed their own heart. They didn’t want to believe that their idolatry and violating of God’s will would actually come back to haunt them. And so, rather than face the truth, they believed the lie.

Perhaps an example from history is in order. In 1938 the British Prime Minister was a man named Neville Chamberlain. We remember him today because of his appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany. He signed a peace treaty with Hitler called the Munich Agreement. And this was just months before the invasion of Poland. He signed a treaty with Germany that meant nothing.

But when Chamberlain came home from the Munich Agreement, he was greeted to thronging crowds. Thousands, tens of thousands lauded him as the one who had brought “peace in our time.” But their peace was based on a lie. The madman would have his day, so matter what a piece of paper read.

So back to Jesus. What Jesus warns about here is false prophets. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, He called them. He warned them of these false prophets because Jesus knew our weaknesses. He knows how easy it is for us to be swayed by the lie. He knows how quickly our itching ears would have their way and follow the dreamers and the visioners. So Jesus gives us this warning, and He gives us a promise wrapped in this warning. “You shall know them by their fruits.”

The fruits of a teacher is both what he teaches and what his followers teach. There isn’t really any mystery about how to find a faithful preacher and teacher. It’s really not complicated at all. Look at the fruits. Does the preacher give God’s Word? Does the preacher give you Jesus? Does he point you to God’s Promises in Word and Meal, in preaching and the waters of Baptism? Or does he drive you back inside yourself to your own feelings and fears and doubts?

I once had a teacher who said that theology is simple, but that false theology is complicated (Robert Preus). Jesus says “My sheep know my voice.” So do you know the voice of your Shepherd? Do you hear the words and promises of God in His Word, and how dearly our Lord paid for those promises?

It is no accident that Jesus warns them about the wolves. Elsewhere Jesus sends out the disciples as “lambs in the midst of wolves.” But He would know. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The false teachers swarmed around Him, and when He would not listen to their lies, they killed Him upon a tree. But He lives even now! And Jesus this day makes the promise to you that you will never be snatched out of His hand.

The point, beloved, is that you are God’s and that our Heavenly Father will guard and keep you until you are reunited with Him and all the saints in heaven. Don’t listen to the wolves who would spread their lies of despair and self-righteousness. Christ Himself holds you in the palm of His hand. He has sent and under-shepherd to give you Him, and to lead you to the still waters of His life.

Trust in His Word of promise. It will never let you down. Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Rocklin, California, on Trinity 8, July 29, 2012, by Pastor Todd A. Peperkorn.