Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 17, 2024

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 19, 2024 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 17

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 17, 2024

John 12:20-33

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

When my boys were really little we went on a long road trip to Arizona to see their grandmas, both of whom were living there at the time. Before our big trip we showed the boys the route our journey would take. We had one of those children’s puzzles where each state is a piece of the puzzle. We showed them where we were in southwest Washington, where we used to live. We showed them how we’d be traveling through Oregon, and then Idaho, and then Utah, and then Arizona.

The day of our departure came, so we got up early in the morning to begin our journey. We loaded up the van and headed out. We were on the freeway for about twenty minutes when one of them said, “Are we in Utah yet?”

“Not yet,” we said.

That was a long trip. I think we must have said “not yet” about a thousand times.

The disciples had been on a long journey with Jesus. And throughout their journey they too heard a lot of “not yets.”

When Jesus and his mother and his disciples attended a wedding in Cana, his mother saw that the wine had run out. Mary urged Jesus to do something about it. Jesus said, “Mother, why do you involve me, my hour has not yet come.” While Jesus did eventually intervene, he did so on the sly, because his hour had not yet come.

Later, when Jesus was staying in Galilee, his disciples came up to him and said he ought to go to Judea in order to do some miracles there. They urged him to go there in order to show himself to the world. But Jesus said no. “My time has NOT YET come,” he explained.

When Jesus went to Jerusalem to teach in the temple, people got all riled up and hatched a plot to kill him and tried to seize him, but we are told they did not lay a hand on him, because his hour had NOT YET come.”

All of these “not yets” lead us to our gospel reading for today.

As we heard, Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover. While he was there some Greeks asked about him. These Greeks were foreigners. They looked different. They were clean shaven and had short hair. They wore different clothes. They ate different foods, like feta cheese and their own weird version of yogurt. The way they spoke was different. While just about everyone spoke Greek throughout the Mediterranean region, these actual Greeks would have spoken it with a distinct crisp accent – without any of those throaty, guttural sounds made by native Hebrew speakers. Perhaps these Greeks were proselytes to the Jewish faith, or maybe they were simply there to take in the celebratory atmosphere of the festival of Passover, kind of like how non-Christians without a drop of Irish blood celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

At any rate, these Greeks were drawn not just to the temple itself, but specifically to Jesus. They came asking about him. They wanted to see him. And when Andrew and Philip told Jesus that these Greeks were looking for him, Jesus at last said, “The hour has come.” With the arrival of these Greeks, all those “not yets” suddenly became a “now.”

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” Jesus said. Jesus told his disciples that now was the time for him to do what he really came to do. Now it was time for him to die. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.”

“Now my soul is troubled,” Jesus continued. He dreaded what lay ahead. How could he not? But at the same time, he was determined. “Should I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour?’” Jesus asked. “No,” he said, “it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” This is where his journey had been leading all along.

“Father, glorify your name,” Jesus said. And in a peal of thunder God the Father said, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

With this assurance from his Father, Jesus said, “Now is the judgement of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.”

The presence of these Greeks served as a cue to Jesus that the final leg of his journey was now at hand. Now was the time for Jesus to trade places with a sinful humanity, enduring their judgement. Now was the time for him to defeat sin, death, and the devil by enduring the cross. Now was the time when Jesus would offer himself up as the Passover lamb whose blood would bring life and salvation to all people. Now was the time to fulfill the promise made to Abraham, that through his line a savior would come to bless all the families of the earth. Now was the time for Jesus to be buried like a seed in order to rise again and bear much fruit. Now was the time for Jesus to be lifted up, that he might draw all people to himself.

All of the “not yets” of Jesus’ journey led to the “now” of the cross. This is how the Son of Man would be glorified – by dying on the cross for the sin of the world. This is how God’s name would be glorified – by the self-giving love of his Son, lifted up on the cross to draw all people to himself.

And as Jesus draws people to himself, he calls them – he calls us! – to die with him. We are called to join him in this pattern of dying and rising. “Those who love their life lose it,” Jesus says, “and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

This is a Hebrew way of speaking that is difficult to translate into English. To hate your life does not mean being nihilistic or negative. Life is a precious gift from God to be cherished and preserved! This is a Hebraic idiom, an exaggerated expression which means to die to yourself, to die to your self-centeredness. It isn’t about nihilism or negativity, it is about narcissism. It is about that pervasive human inclination to want to be our own gods, our own saviors, to live in service only to our own appetites and desires. To “hate your life” means to bury that narcissistic impulse in all of us in order to rise to something new, something better. Jesus is calling us to be buried with him in order to rise to a new life of faith in him.

Our lives often feel like a big “not yet.” In many ways we are works-in-progress, waiting to arrive. Sometimes we get confused and frustrated and anxious that we aren’t farther along than we think we should be. Maybe you have not yet figured out your place in this world. Maybe you have not yet found the healing you long for. Maybe you have not yet achieved what you hoped you would in life. Maybe you have not yet conquered your demons. Maybe you have not yet had God’s grace reach certain parts of your life. Maybe you have not yet had God’s love reach certain corners of your heart.

Dear friends, today all of those “not yets” give way to the “now” of the cross. On the cross, Jesus was lifted up in order to draw you to himself.  Now your sin is forgiven! Now he has won for you life and salvation!

On the cross, Jesus opened his arms to the world. He opened his arms to you, embracing your life as it really is today. He takes your pain, your grief, your broken hearts, your fear, your sin. He takes it all upon himself so that you might know God’s loving presence in your life now.

And now we are also called to follow.

“Whoever serves me must follow me,” Jesus says, “and where I am, there will my servant be also.”

Now we are called to die to ourselves and live for him. As Martin Luther said, we are called to be “little Christs” to the people around us. Now we are called to embody the selfless love of our Lord in our lives. Now we are called to glorify his name in all that we do, living in joyful obedience to his will.

Christ is the grain of wheat that fell into the ground and was buried, so that he might bear much fruit. Even now that resurrection fruit grows in us as we die and rise into a new life with him.

The kingdom is not yet here in its fullness, but now we have a promise to live by. Now we have a foretaste of the feast to come. Now he is lifted up for us, that he would once again draw us to himself.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 10, 2024

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 13, 2024 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 10

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Lent – March 10, 2024

Numbers 21:4-9, Ephesians 2:1-10, John 3:14-21

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

When I’m sick, if it gets bad enough, I will end up looking at a snake on a pole. When someone in my family is hurting, they too will look at a snake on a pole. My wife just started seeing a chiropractor for some low back pain, and part of her treatment involved looking at a snake on a pole. My oldest son had his tonsils and adenoids taken out last year, and before he underwent surgery, he looked at a snake on a pole. Here’s what I mean: my medical insurance card has a picture on it of a snake on a pole! Blue Cross/Blue Shield has it as part of their logo, and so every time anyone in my family needs medical attention, we pull out our card and see this snake on a pole.

Why would that be? Why would this image be found on our medical insurance card? Why would a medical insurance company include it as part of their logo?

Well, it isn’t just them. You can find this image in lots of places related to medicine. It is found in the insignia of several medical institutions. It is often found on nurses’ uniforms or on patches on the shoulders of EMTs or on the side of their ambulances. It is also found on medical bracelets people wear. Some of you might be wearing one with it on it right now.

So what is this image, this symbol? Why this snake on a pole?

This symbol is called a caduceus. It is also sometimes referred to as the Rod of Asclepius. Asclepius is a figure from Greek mythology associated with healing and medicine. But how in the world did Asclepius come to be associated with this strange image of a snake on a pole? It is widely believed that the Greeks “culturally appropriated” this symbol from the Jewish people and their story of Moses in the wilderness – the very story we hear in our first reading for today.

Moses led the Israelites out of slavery and through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. Almost as soon as they were out there in the wilderness, the people started to grumble against Moses and against God. They complained about everything! The water they had to drink was yucky. They were hungry. When God gave them manna to eat, that wasn’t good enough. They wanted meat too. When God gave them meat in the form of quail, they said, no, not that meat, we want that other meat, like we had back in Egypt.

Even worse than being a bunch of ungrateful whiners, the people of God started to doubt God’s goodness. They started to think God had led them out into the wilderness only to let them die there. They failed to trust in God’s promises to them, that he was with them, that he had a future in store for them. And so God sent poisonous serpents among them. The snakes bit them. Some of them died. This sounds harsh, and maybe it is, but God was showing his people that sin leads to death.

Thankfully this is not the end of the story! God went on to provide a way for his people to be healed. He provided them with a way to be saved from death. God instructed Moses to make a serpent of bronze and hang it on a pole. Then Moses was to lift this snake on a pole up before the people, and all who lifted their eyes and looked upon it would be healed. They would live. As they lifted their eyes to this symbol of their sin, it became the very means of their salvation. That snake on a pole, then, has become a symbol of healing and of life.

Today in our gospel reading we hear Jesus using this story and this symbol to describe what he has come to do. Jesus uses the snake on a pole as a way of pointing to the healing he has come to bring. He uses it to describe how he would save people with the venom of sin pulsing through their veins, how he would save them from death.

Just before our reading picks up, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. This is who Jesus is talking to. Nicodemus was trying to figure out who Jesus was and what he was up to. He and his fellow Pharisees had established that Jesus was a teacher, but Jesus wanted him to know that he was much more than that. Jesus told Nicodemus that he was the Son of Man who has descended from heaven. The Son of Man is a phrase from the book of Daniel, where it refers to the Messiah, the long-promised Savior. Jesus explained to Nicodemus that the Son of Man would save by being lifted up, just like that snake on a pole. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus said, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever who believes in him may have eternal life.”

Jesus was more than a teacher. He was more than a prophet.  Jesus had come down from heaven to save those who had been bitten by the serpent – which is everyone! Jesus had come to be put on the pole that is the cross, where once again the symbol of our sin becomes the very means of our salvation. Jesus had come to be lifted up on this pole, so we would lift our eyes to him in faith and live.  As N.T. Wright puts it so succinctly in his commentary on this passage: “Humankind has been smitten with a deadly disease. The only cure is to look at the Son of Man dying on a cross and find life through believing in him.”

This tees up what has sometimes been called “the Bible in miniature,” or “the Gospel in a nutshell.” It leads to what is probably the best-known Bible passage of all. Right after saying this, Jesus tells Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

When you hear the word “believe” in the Bible, and especially in this passage, I would invite you to think of the word “trust.” “Believe” isn’t a bad word. It isn’t wrong. But in modern usage “believe” is often understood as something related to knowledge and then personal assent. It is often thought of as accepting a proposition. Again, this isn’t entirely wrong, but the Greek word here is more nuanced. It can also be translated as trust. Trust is something that is elicited. It is something that is cultivated in us and directed towards another.

For instance, when you’re receiving medical treatment, there is a lot of trust involved, isn’t there? To believe your medical provider when they tell you what is wrong with you is a good place to start, but when they start prescribing meds or putting needles in you or cutting you open, you have moved into trust territory. You are entrusting yourself to their care. You are putting your life in their hands. Faith, too, involves not only belief, or believing, it involves trust, entrusting yourself to another.

And so to look upon the Son of Man as he is lifted up is not only to believe an idea. It is not merely to say, “Yep, there he is!” To look upon him with faith is to trust that what he is doing there is for your benefit. It is for your healing. It is what saves you. It is what has opened the door for you to eternal life. To look upon him with faith is to entrust yourself entirely to him.

Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we often grumble against God when things don’t go exactly as we’d like them to go. Even worse, there are times when we, too, start to doubt the goodness of God. In spite of God’s ongoing patience and grace and faithfulness to us, we start to believe God doesn’t care about us, that he has abandoned us in the wilderness. Sometimes we fail to trust God’s promises to us.

And so we, too, are snakebit by our sin. We, too, have the venom of the serpent pulsing in our veins. We all have this same condition, and it is fatal. As St. Paul writes in our epistle reading for today: “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once lived.”

But just as God saved the ungrateful Israelites from sin and death, so too has God saved us! As St. Paul continues in our epistle reading, “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.”

The Son of Man has been lifted up for us. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that all those who believe in him, all those look upon him with faith, all those who entrust their lives to him, may not perish, but may have eternal life.

Just as with the Israelites, the symbol of our sin – the cross – has become the very means of our salvation. And so we look upon it with faith, with trust. We process the cross during the Lenten season to train our eyes and our hearts to look up, to look upon the Son of Man lifted up for us in every time of need.

Jesus is our snake on a pole. In looking upon him, we find healing and life.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent – February 25, 2024

by Jeffrey Spencer | Feb 26, 2024 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for February 25

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent – February 25, 2024

Mark 8:31-38

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

When someone is confronted with traumatic news, their response to it often is to say, “No!” Sometimes this “no” comes out quietly, as a gasp or a whisper. Sometimes it is a statement of utter disbelief. “No, this can’t be. No, this can’t be happening.” When news is too shocking, too terrible, it isn’t uncommon for people to be in a state of denial at first. And so the “no” is a denial of a reality that is too difficult to face.

Other times people understand the magnitude of what has happened right away, and so the “no” comes out as a groan or a cry, or even a scream.

Pastors are often with people during, or more often in the aftermath, of traumatic news, and that’s something I’ve observed over and over again: “No, no, no, no, no.” I’ve said it a few times in such situations myself.

This is a common – and normal – human response to trauma. It isn’t inherently wrong or bad. In fact, it is motivated by love – a love for life and a love for others. Of course we don’t want to be sick! Of course we don’t want our loved ones to suffer! Of course we don’t want to lose them! And so, we say, “No!”

This response does, however, have a spiritual dimension to it which we should give some thought to today. When we say “no, no, no, no” to suffering, sometimes part of what we’re saying is that God isn’t doing things the way we want him to. Sometimes part of what we’re saying is, “No, God, we don’t accept this. This isn’t right. You aren’t doing this whole God thing correctly.” Sometimes that completely normal human response, rooted as it is in love, becomes an occasion for us to put ourselves in the position of God, deciding for ourselves how things should go. We only accept that God is good and loving and in control when things start going our way again, the way we think they should go.

Jesus told the disciples that he was going to suffer. He told them he was going to suffer, and be rejected, and be killed. This was traumatic news. Things had been going so well. Jesus had been going around healing people. He was becoming popular, gaining quite a following. Earlier in this very chapter Jesus miraculously fed thousands of people with fish and bread. In the verses just before our reading Peter had correctly identified Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the long-promised Savior. From the disciples’ perspective, everything was going great. Everything was going as they thought it should.

But then came this traumatic news. Jesus told them he was going to suffer and be rejected and be killed. And Peter’s response was, “No!” St. Mark tells us Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked him. From the other gospel accounts we know that Peter literally said, “No! No, Lord, this must not happen to you!”

We heard what happened next. Jesus then rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind me Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

It was normal, it was human, for Peter to want to spare Jesus from suffering and death. Peter loved Jesus! But Peter’s response to this traumatic news assumed that he knew better than Jesus did. It assumed that he knew better than the Messiah did about how to be a Messiah. It assumed that he knew more than the Savior did about how to save.

“Get behind me Satan!” Jesus said to him. This is not to suggest that Peter had suddenly turned evil. It meant he had been deceived. He had been deceived into thinking he knew better than God. Jesus saw the tempter at work, tempting him to think he knew a better way for the Messiah to carry out his saving work. The deceiver was doing what the deceiver is always trying to do. He was trying to direct Peter, and Jesus, away from the cross.

Next Jesus turned to the crowd as said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

What does it mean to deny ourselves? What does it mean to take up our crosses? What does it mean to lose our lives in order to save them?

With these words coming as they are in the midst of Lent, we might be tempted to think that denying ourselves means giving up ice cream or candy for five more weeks. We might think it is a project of self-discipline we need to take on in order to get our act together to prove ourselves as disciples. We might think that taking up our crosses means heroically pursuing a life of hardship and suffering, again, as a way of proving ourselves as disciples. We might think that losing our lives for Jesus’ sake means seeking a glorious martyrdom, either figuratively or literally.

But none of this makes sense in light of the context in which Jesus spoke these words. Jesus is addressing Peter’s “no” here. He is addressing what he has come to do. He is talking about how he as the Savior was coming to save. Jesus was going to accomplish his saving work by himself undergoing great suffering, being rejected and killed, and after three days being raised again. What Jesus is inviting the crowd to do is simply to believe it! He is inviting them to trust that what he is going to do will save them.

To deny yourself in this context is to set aside the human way of thinking, the normal “no” reflex, and trust that this is how the Savior will save. To take up your own cross in this context is to give your life over entirely to God, to entrust yourself to God completely, even in the midst of suffering. To lose your life for Jesus’ sake and for the sake of the gospel is to die to yourself, to die to your need for control. It is to surrender your life to the reality that God has saved you through the death and resurrection of his Son.

I’d like to illustrate this with some words by the great American theologian, Carrie Underwood. In her 2005 theological treatise entitled “Jesus Take the Wheel,” (which also happens to be a country song) she describes a woman who is desperate. She’s in a life-threatening situation. She’s a single mom on her way home to see her parents in Cincinnati. She is described as running low on both faith and gasoline. It had been a long, hard year for this woman, Underwood writes, and now, with 50 miles left to go and with her baby in the back seat, she hits a patch of black ice. Both of their lives flash before her eyes and she cries out, “Jesus take the wheel/Take it from my hands/’Cause I can’t do this on my own/I’m letting go.”

The second verse of this treatise, er, song, reveals that she and her baby are okay, thank goodness, but what makes song so powerful is the chorus. What makes it so powerful is the surrender. She hands her life over. “Jesus take the wheel! Take it from my hands! I can’t do this on my own! I’m letting go!” She entrusts herself and her loved one entirely to Christ.

She wasn’t giving up, she was surrendering her life to Jesus. There’s a difference. Christianity is not a death cult. We do not glorify death or seek it, thinking we are pleasing God as we do so, like some extreme forms of religion do. Neither do we see it as some benign part of “the circle of life” that we must accept as part of nature. Scripture describes death as an enemy. As such, we should fight it. We should guard against it. And when it seems to win, we rightly say “no!” We rightly grieve it. But we do not grieve as those who have no hope. Nor do we suffer as those who have no Savior.

God’s ways confuse and confound us at times. God doesn’t always do things the way we would like. God’s ways are often hidden from us. Sometimes they don’t make sense from a human point of view.

But God has heard our “no.” God has heard our cries. And God has responded to them by coming to us through his Son. God has responded to them by entering into our suffering through the cross of Christ, who suffered, and was rejected, and was killed. In Jesus, God stretched his arms out over all the suffering of the world, taking it all upon himself, until he bowed his head in death.

But Jesus’ story didn’t end with suffering and death. On the third day he was raised, just as he said. He ultimately conquered death through his resurrection. He has defeated that enemy, and he promises to share that victory with us. And so suffering and death won’t be the end of your story either.

In the meantime, surrender your life to Jesus. Deny yourself, setting your mind on divine things and not only on human things. Take up your cross and follow Jesus to the future he has in store for you. Entrust your life, and your death, to Christ and his gospel. Let him take the wheel. He’ll get you where you need to be.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church