Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

Messiah Lutheran Church

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Trinity 4 (June 27, 2010, revised from 2004)

Luke 6:36-42

Trinity04-2010 sermon (MP3 file)

TITLE: “The Greater Joseph, The God of Mercy”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.  Our text for this morning is from the Gospel lesson just read.  Our theme is the mercy of God as seen through the eyes of the story of Joseph and his brothers and Jesus comments about the mercy of God.

Joseph and his brothers had history.  Imagine having your own brothers wait to kill you, then decide to send you into slavery, then lie to your father and mother and say you were dead.  Then imagine them keeping the secret for years and years and years.  Imagine the grief that your parents would feel.  Your mother dies of a broken heart at her lost son, dead so many years.  How would you feel?  What kind of payback would be in your mind and heart?

For you survived.  In fact, God was with you, so that you not only survived, but came through every tough situation and ended up smelling like a rose.  You survive, and your betrayer brothers languish.  It seems God has a sense of justice about him after all.

And here in our Old Testament reading it all comes down to one moment.  Father is dead; mother is dead; Joseph is the viceroy of Egypt.  Here Joseph has that one chance, the moment of truth.  What will he do?  Will he kill them for the dogs they were, or will he play the nice guy and let bygones be bygones?  But they couldn’t rely on his goodwill, so they concoct a story about how their father commanded him to forgive his evil brothers.  Even after all those years and all that time, they just had to manipulate and assume the worst in Joseph, because they knew what they themselves would do in the same situation.

Joseph, however, surprises them with his great confession of faith.  Am I in the place of God?  It is as if Joseph said, who am I to judge you?  You are a sinner as much as I, and rather than give you what you might deserve, I will show mercy to you, out of my great love for my father and for you.  Joseph does what they could not.  He forgives, and shows mercy at the one time they needed it most.

It’s a beautiful story, and one where we can all learn a lesson about forgive and forget, especially when it comes to families.  For it is our families, the ones we love the most, that we have the hardest time forgiving.  They know us.  They know our weaknesses and faults.  When family members sin against you, it cuts twice as deep, for they know how to hurt you.  Forgiving a spouse or a child or a parent is the hardest thing to do, because deep down we all believe, “But they should KNOW better!”  That is what makes Joseph’s forgiveness so moving; we could hardly even believe doing it ourselves.

That is why Jesus, the greater Joseph, takes it one step farther.  For you see, Jesus is Joseph.  He is the favored son, born into our own flesh and blood.  He is the one who lived with us, and who only wanted what was best for us sons and daughters of Adam.  He was baptized into our sin, took on our very humanity.  So how did we brothers and sisters of Jesus treat him?  He was mocked and maligned his whole life by the very people who should have greeted him with open arms.  They plotted to kill him, and an uncaring government went along with it.  And when Jesus’ moment of truth came, would his disciples stand with him?  No, they all forsook him and fled.  He was left alone, in the pit like Joseph himself.

Now of course, you know that we’re not just talking about the disciples here.  We’re talking about you and I.  Every time we put ourselves above another of God’s children, we are playing God.  Every time you assume that you are more righteous than another, and that this justifies your sinful actions, you are playing God.  When you condemn those whose lives have not gone as well as yours, even if it were their own fault, you are playing God.  But you are not playing the God of mercy and love, no, you are playing a false god of judgment and hatred, one who seeks not the good of others but your own good.  You are, in a word, acting the hypocrite.

But what Jesus does for you and I today is far greater than our false judgments and condemnations of each other.  For when he says show mercy, forgive, do not condemn, and the like, he is really painting a picture of Himself.  Jesus is the one who, like Joseph, shows mercy to his sinful brothers and sisters.  He is the one who does not give you what you deserve.  When you deserve to be held accountable for your misdeeds, he forgives you.  He is the one who does not condemn you, but sets down the stone of the Law that has been crushing you, and lifts you up.

Why does all of this matter to sinners like you and I?  It matters because when Jesus paints a picture of Himself, even by showing us Himself in others like Joseph, Jesus is drawing us into the very mind of God Himself.  As the Scriptures themselves say, God is love.  God loves to reveal His mind to you chiefly in showing mercy and pity.

When Joseph finished forgiving his brothers, he said to them: “Now therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones.” And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.  This is God’s promise to you even today.  He promises that he will provide for you, first by forgiving your sins, second by bringing you life in His name, and finally, by comforting you with His Word and Spirit.

So now, receive the very mercy of God in your mouth and soul by the body and blood of His Son, Jesus.  He is your life and your salvation, and He will care for you in all of your times of need.  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.

Messiah Lutheran Church

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Trinity 3 (June 20, 2009)

Luke 15:1-10

Rev. Todd Peperkorn

“Received”

I work a lot with kids, and one thing that always amazes me is how fast the organize into tribes.  Do you know what I mean?  It seems as though if you put a group of 30 children into a room, in about 5 minutes they will have figured out the pecking order.  Who is older or younger, shorter of taller, richer or poorer, who knows the teacher or who had a run in with them.  Children can sniff such things out quickly.  I don’t know if it is some kind of internal radar or what.

But, of course, children aren’t the only people that like to divide and categorize.  We adults do it all the time, both now and in Jesus’ day.  In our text this morning tax collectors and sinners drew near to Jesus.  There is always an odd collection of people around Jesus.  The rich, the poor, the religious, prostitutes, heretics, tax collectors, priests, Pharisees, they were all in the neighborhood.  But like people everywhere, they were divided into groups.  And these groups don’t like speaking with one another.

You can imagine the religious of the day.  If Jesus is the Messiah, surely they should get special seating, don’t you think?  I mean, they had paid their dues, done their tithes, and it was clear to everyone that they deserved to sit at the right hand of God.

But these Pharisees and scribes don’t get special treatment with our Lord.  So they begin to grumble.  This man receives sinners and eats with them, they say.

Maybe this doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, but it most certainly was a big deal in Jesus’ time.  Hospitality is considered one of the cardinal virtues in the Middle East, even to this day.  All the way back to Abraham and the three visitors (Genesis 18), we find that hospitality is considered a mark of godliness.  If you showed hospitality to another person, if you gave of yourself, sat them down at your table and actually ate with them, that was a sign that you were on equal footing with them.  It was a sign that you were reconciled, and that everything is right between you.  So when the Pharisees accuse Jesus of receiving sinners and eating with them, what they are really accusing Jesus of is of soiling himself with people who are so dirty that they infect everyone around them.  If they eat with Jesus and He eats with sinners, then they are going to become dirty and unclean as well.

The implication here is clear.  What the Pharisees and scribes wanted was for Jesus to only be with people who had cleaned up their act.  It is as if they are saying, “Look, Jesus, we know you’re the Messiah and all, and that’s fine.  But you can’t go traipsing around with these lowlifes.  It makes us all look bad.  Tell them to clean up their act, live a good life, and THEN you can have the photo shoot with them.”

Have you ever looked around this church and felt the same way?  Man, I wish these people would get their act together before they come into God’s house.  Divorce, money problems, noisy kids, gossipers, lousy givers, the people in these pews around me are a mess!  I wish they would get it together.  They’re starting to make me look bad.

What Jesus does with the Pharisees is to force them to take a long, hard look at who God is, and who Jesus really is as the one who seeks and saves the lost.  It is as if Jesus says,

You accuse me of eating with sinners.  You are absolutely right.  That is precisely what I do.  But as a matter of fact I not only sit down and eat with sinners, I rush down the road, shower them with kisses and drag them in that I might eat with them.  I hunt them down in the wilderness.  I turn my house inside out in search of the smallest one.  It is much worse that you imagined!  (Paraphrased with thanks from Dr. Kenneth Bailey, Jacob and the Prodigal, p. 62.)

So Jesus, in order to show them and us the real nature of God’s love, tells three stories or parables.  He tells the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the crazy housewife, and the parable of the lost son.  Each of these parables teach us something about God.  Let’s look at the first one briefly to get a sense of it.

In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus asks the question, “Which one of you if you had a hundred sheep, and one gets lost, wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine in open country and go after the one that is lost until you find it?  And when you find, it you lift this 70 pound little animal up on your shoulders, sing for joy, come home and throw a party for your friends and neighbors in celebration of finding the lost lamb?  That’s what happens in heaven when a sinner repents.”

So what does this little parable tell us about God and about what He thinks about you?  This teaches us several things:

1. First of all, God, specifically Jesus, is the Good Shepherd.  This is obvious to us in some ways today.  The Lord is my Shepherd is pretty well etched into our minds.  However, what Jesus teaches us here is that His being your shepherd means that He goes after you, He is invested in you, and most importantly, that He cares for you deeply.

2. In each of the parables we are lost.  You are the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son.  God has to find you; you can’t find Him.  So the shepherd goes into the wilderness, the crazy woman turns her house upside down, and the father runs out to meet his wayward son.

3. There is always a price to be paid.  The price may be a trudge in the wilderness with a heavy load.  The price may be throwing a part worth far more than the lost coin.  Or it may be the price of loss and giving up everything for the sake of your lost child.

4. Your salvation is worth a party in heaven.  Heaven rejoices over repentance, sorrow over sin, and over the forgiveness Jesus won for you on the cross.  Heaven doesn’t rejoice at your attempts at self-justification.  No, heaven rejoices that you were lost, wayward, squandered, but now you are found, drawn back, and paid for with the blood of the Son.  That, dearly beloved, is worth a party.

So this is it, baptized.  God has sought you out, found when you were lost, paid the price for you, and is now throwing a feast in your honor here, in His house, at His Table.   So come, Jesus receives you.  Repent and believe in the mercy of God.

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