Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent – December 3, 2023

by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 4, 2023 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for December 3

Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent – December 3, 2023

Mark 13:24-37

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

When you look to the future, what do you see? What do you hope for? What do you expect it to be like? Are you excited? Are you afraid? Are you a little of both? If you’re like me, it depends on the day.

Back in the 1950s there was a strong sense of optimism. The second World War had been decisively won, and the technologies developed to win that war were now being put to use to make life easier and better through a myriad of new convenience products. This optimism about the future found its epitome in Walt Disney’s “Tomorrowland.” I remember going to Disneyland as a kid in the late 70s and seeing the displays of how technology was going to make everyone’s life into a utopia. The future looked like “The Jetsons,” where every family would have a flying car and a robot maid and a vending machine-like contraption which would spit out meals with the push of a few buttons. People would live in gleaming, streamlined cities designed for efficiency and comfort. The view towards the future was one of optimism, even utopianism. Through technology and human ingenuity, everything was about to get better!

Today that optimism seems to be harder to come by. Our cultural vision of the future is no longer utopian. It is now more often dystopian. Think of popular culture the last few decades. We had the Terminator movies in the 80s and 90s, where our machines were depicted as turning against us. There was the Hunger Games in the twenty-teens, which depicted a future where people are pitted against each other for entertainment. More recently there was the popular HBO series “The Last of Us.” Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road,” is one of the most celebrated novels of the past twenty years.  There is an entire genre of dystopian stories, and they are very popular. When the storytellers of today look to the future, most of them seem to see darkness. They see civilization descending into chaos. They see technology turning against us, wreaking havoc. These stories might be entertaining. They might be insightful. Some of them might even end up being prophetic. But one thing is for sure is that as a genre with remarkable popularity they mark a shift in the cultural mood towards pessimism about the future.

What are we to make of all this as Christians? How are we to look at the future? Are we to be utopians or dystopians? Are we to be optimists or pessimists? This is what our gospel reading is all about on this first Sunday in Advent.

At first glance, Jesus’ words seem pretty pessimistic. They sound like they fit right in with the dystopian genre so popular in our culture today. Using apocalyptic language of cosmic calamity, as was common in Jesus’ day, our Lord describes the future darkly – literally! “The sun will be darkened,” he says. “The moon will not give its light. The stars will be falling from heaven. The powers of the heavens will be shaken.” This is all symbolic language used to describe dark times, times of suffering and chaos and disorder.

Jesus is simply telling the truth here. He is being honest about what the world will be like between his first coming as a baby in a manger and his second coming on the clouds. There will be dark days. And who can deny that this is the case? We are living in dark days right now – and not only because the sun goes down at three in the afternoon! We see a culture sliding back into the darkness of paganism. We see the fault lines between nations starting to heave with greater and greater intensity. We see an alarming rise in open and increasingly violent antisemitism.

In his recent year-end letter, the commandant from my son’s Corp of Cadets at Texas A&M cited many of these factors and then asked, “Is this what it felt like in 1937?”

We are living in dark times now as we experience disease and wars and poverty. Mental health care providers and school counselors will tell you there is an epidemic of personal darkness people are struggling with too. And so the so-called “dark ages” are not just something from the past. Neither are these dark times something yet to come in some future tribulation. Jesus is describing what the world will be like in the generation of human history between his first coming and his final coming. The four horsemen of the apocalypse have been trotting across human history, and they continue to gallop across the headlines to this day. And so, as Christians, we acknowledge that in many ways we live in dark times, just as our Christian ancestors did in ancient and medieval times, and just as future Christians surely will.

But this does not mean we are dystopians! For we also have reason for hope! We aren’t complete pessimists – we also have reason to be full of courage and peace and even joy! You see, in the same breath that Jesus paints this dark picture of the future, he also makes us some wonderful promises! He says it won’t be dark forever! Jesus says we will see him coming in power and glory. He says that he will send out his angels to gather his people. He says that when we see this darkness taking place, he is near – at the very gates! He says that though heaven and earth will pass away, his words will never pass away. He says that he is coming again at an unexpected hour. Therefore, we are to keep alert. We are to keep awake – which doesn’t mean guzzling caffeine and propping your eyelids open with toothpicks – it means keeping the faith. The short term might include some dark days, but Christ is coming again. He is with us now, to be sure, but he is not yet with us as we will be. Something much better is coming – and so there is hope even in the midst of the darkness.

Jesus says our posture towards the future is to be like that of a doorkeeper on the watch for the return of the master of the house. It might get late. It might get dark. Jesus, our Master, might not come until midnight, or at cockcrow, or even dawn. We are going to get sleepy. We’ll be tempted to nod off for a bit. But no matter how late or dark it gets, we are to keep alert. We are to keep awake. We are to keep the faith. We are to watch and wait with anticipation, and with confidence, with courage, and with hope.

This is a time of year when many people in our region suffer from seasonal affective disorder, which has the apt acronym S.A.D. The quite literal darkness of the northern latitudes in the fall and winter sometimes causes a set of symptoms in people which include lack of energy, fatigue, an increased desire to sleep, even mild depression.

One of the ways of treating S.A.D. is the use of a light box. By basking in the right kind of light – the kind that mimics natural sunlight – many of these symptoms can be alleviated. I’ve mentioned before that this is something I’ve struggled with a bit. I’ve used these light boxes from time to time. (When one of our members heard this, she came in and installed special lightbulbs in my office which mimic natural light. And it has helped. I haven’t used the light box since.)

There is a spiritual version of S.A.D. as well. The darkness we see in the world around us sometimes robs us of our energy for discipleship. It robs our faith of its vitality. The darkness we experience in our lives sometimes makes us spiritually fatigued. We become apathetic. We become spiritually lazy. All we want to do is doze off. We close our eyes to Christ and his Word. We can even start to drift out of faith and into unbelief. And where there is unbelief, despair is never far behind.

The promises our Lord Jesus gives us in our gospel reading for today are like a light box for our souls. They provide hope and courage and peace in the midst of darkness. They assure us that while the future in the short term may well include some dark days, Christ is coming again to light up the world with his great power and glory. They assure us that on those dark days when our Lord seems so far away from us, he is actually quite near – at the very gates. They assure us that although it often seems like everything is passing away – because it is! – Jesus’ words of promise will never pass away. They will only grow brighter and brighter as they are fulfilled. The light of these promises keeps us alert and awake. They help us to watch and wait for the Master of the house with confidence and hope and joy, even when it gets late and dark.

The holiday season is officially underway. This is a fun and exciting time of year for many. They holidays bring all kinds of opportunities for feasting and celebrating and joy. But the brightness of the holiday season also casts some long, dark shadows. For those who are missing loved ones, those absences are felt even more profoundly. For those who are suffering from broken relationships, the jagged edges ache all the more. For children of divorce, the tensions of family life can cause great anxiety and heartache. For those struggling financially, this can be a season of great stress. For those who are sick or hurting, these weeks on end of enforced cheerfulness can be salt in the wound.

It may well be that there is a shadow of one sort or another casting its darkness across your life. Don’t let that darkness lull you into spiritual fatigue. Don’t let it cause you to nod off, closing your eyes to Christ and his promises. Don’t let it put your faith to sleep. “Keep alert!” Jesus says to us. “Keep awake!” Keep your head in the light box of J esus’ promises and be energized. Make worship and prayer and scriptural devotions a priority. That’s what this season of Advent is designed to do. It isn’t about non-stop indulgence. It is about keeping alert. It is about keeping your head in the light of Christ’s word. So bask in his word, this word that will never pass away even when everything else does. Let it fill you with hope.

As Christians we are not utopian optimists, nor are we dystopian pessimists. Instead, we are hope-filled doorkeepers awaiting the return of our Master, doing his work while we wait, trusting that he is coming again to gather us to himself, to bring us into the warm, bright, and eternal light of the new day.

Who doesn’t want to be awake for that?

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday – November 26, 2023

by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 27, 2023 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 26

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday – November 26, 2023

Matthew 25:31-46

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

In our gospel reading for this morning we find Jesus at the end of his earthly ministry. His passion and death are right around the corner, and before he goes to the cross, Jesus gives his disciples, and us, a glimpse of his coming again. He will come in glory, he tells us, with all his angels with him. He will return as the king of heaven and earth, sitting on his throne of glory with all the nations gathered before him. He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep will be at his right hand, and the goats will be at his left. And the king will say to the sheep, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” while the goats will be told, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and all his angels.”

At this point you might be wondering to yourself nervously: “Am I a sheep, or am I a goat?” You might be asking yourself, “What can I do to make sure I’m in the sheep category when Christ returns?” You might be tempted to think that what makes a sheep a sheep is the good things they do. You might think that the ticket into the good place is to be earned by feeding the hungry and giving a drink to the thirsty and clothing the naked and caring for the sick and visiting the imprisoned. You might start panicking that you haven’t done enough of those things to avoid the bad place.

But this is to get this vision Jesus gives us, this glimpse of his coming again in glory, all wrong. Before Jesus mentions anything about what the sheep have done, he spells out what has made them sheep. Jesus says, “Come all that are blessed by my Father.” Who is blessed by the Father? Those who have received the salvation he has provided freely as a gift through his Son! Those who are blessed by the Father are those who have received Jesus in faith! That’s what Jesus has been saying over and over again up to this point!

Jesus then points to an inheritance that is given to the sheep. An inheritance is not something you earn. An inheritance is not wages for a job performed, for hours you have put in. An inheritance is something you are given because someone has died. This is precisely what Christ is just about to do! He is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, so that all who receive him in faith would have eternal life.

Finally, Jesus says this kingdom he has in store for his sheep was prepared for them before the very foundation of the world. It was  not prepared for them after they proved themselves through their good works. It was already established for his sheep well before they had even baa-d their first baa.

The sheep in this vision, then, are not sheep because they have performed good works. They perform good works because they are sheep! Just look how surprised they are when those good works are mentioned. They didn’t even realize they were doing anything special. “When did we serve you, Lord?” they ask. “When did we do these good things for you?” And the king replies, “When you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

We’ve probably all seen those stories when a citizen does something heroic – maybe saving someone by doing CPR or the Heimlich maneuver, or rescuing someone who fell in a river, or bravely tackling an assailant unleashing mayhem on a crowd. They always end up on the news, and they almost always say something like, “I didn’t mean to be a hero. I was just doing what needed to be done. I didn’t think about it. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

In the same way, Jesus’ sheep don’t perform good works because we’re trying to impress anyone. We don’t do it because we are calculating the rewards or benefits the king might bestow. We don’t do it to earn anything. We do it because that’s just what sheep do. As Martin Luther himself said in his commentary on Romans, “Faith is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, such that it is impossible not to do good works constantly.”

It is the goats who calculate rewards and benefits. It is the goats who only do good works because of what it might get them. “Oh, that was you?” they say to the king. “We didn’t know! If we knew, we would have helped!” Do you see what is happening here? The goats have turned good works into a way to earn favor with the king. This is the way of the law. And it doesn’t turn out like they thought it would.

The sheep, on the other hand, are equally oblivious to the fact that when they serve a world in need, they are in fact serving their king. That isn’t why they do it! They don’t do it to curry favor. They don’t need to! They are already sheep, and they are merely doing what sheep do.

When we respond to human need, we are serving our Lord and King. This King of ours hides himself in the people around us, where we serve him through the callings of daily life. So when you bring groceries for the food pantry, you are feeding Jesus. When you bring coats or socks to our clothing drive, you are clothing Jesus. When you make beautiful quilts for strangers on the other side of the world, you are making quilts for Jesus. When you are up half the night with your sick child, or are caring for an ailing spouse or parent or friend, you are taking care of Jesus. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made visits to church members at the hospital or nursing home or in their homes and have found that someone from our congregation has already been there. When you make those visits, you are visiting Jesus himself.

Our King Jesus hides himself in the human needs all around us, and it is there that we serve him – but we don’t do it because we’re trying to earn points or ensure our place in the coming kingdom. We do it because it needs to be done. We dot it because that is who we are as people who have faith in Jesus. We do it because God has already made us sheep, and that is just what sheep do.

If you hear this parable today, this glimpse of the future that Jesus gives us, this glimpse of his coming kingdom, and start looking at yourself, trying to discern whether you’re really a sheep, maybe beginning to panic a little bit, you are putting your focus in the wrong place. Look instead to your King Jesus and to what he has already done to make you his sheep.

You have been blessed by God the Father. He has given you his dear Son to be your savior, to forgive your sin, to reconcile you to himself. The moment you receive Jesus in faith you are a sheep.

As a sheep, you have been given an inheritance. Jesus died for you, and you have inherited his life, his righteousness, his glory, his kingdom. He is the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep.

Christ’s kingdom was prepared for you from the foundation of the world, before you ever lifted a finger in his service.

The parable we hear today is the last parable Jesus tells before going to the cross. The next words out of his mouth are about his crucifixion. And so our eyes are led away from ourselves, from concerns about our own judgement, to the cross – the true source of our salvation.

It is on the cross that Jesus reveals himself most fully as king. It is on the cross that he takes on the crown of thorns, suffering for our sake. It is on the cross that Jesus is enthroned on high, even as he takes our sin upon himself.

As we look to the cross and see the sacrifice our king has made for us, we can’t help but want to live as his loyal subjects, carrying out his will in the world. As we behold his love, we can’t help but have him begin to rule our hearts and our lives. As we receive his grace and mercy through Word and sacrament, we are blessed by the Father, we receive the beginning of our inheritance, we are given a glimpse of the kingdom he has prepared for us, and we are assured that we are indeed his precious sheep.

And then, when we hear the words, “Go in peace, serve the Lord,” we go back to our daily lives to do the things that sheep do.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost – November 19, 2023

by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 20, 2023 | Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost – November 19, 2023

Matthew 25:14-30

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

I would like you to imagine that someone has decided to give you two million dollars. That’s a pleasant thing to imagine, isn’t it? You’re probably already thinking about what you would do with it, aren’t you? But before you spend too much of it in your head, consider who gave you the money. Would that make a difference in how you used it? It most certainly would!

If the money came from a beloved, trusted relative who encouraged you to use the money freely, a loving relative who had plenty more where that came from, whose love you could never doubt no matter what, if that’s who gave you the money you would be empowered to take risks with it. If it came from a wealthy relative whom you knew to be merciful and patient and kind, and had no shortage of resources, you would be empowered to share it, to put it out there into the marketplace.  You would not be afraid to fail. Instead, you would be free, and in that freedom, that gift would become a blessing to many beyond yourself.

If, on the other hand, the money came from a mafia boss, if it came from Vito Corleone, who handed the money over to you through a cloud of cigar smoke while his henchmen were cracking their knuckles and looking at you menacingly, you would handle that money very differently! You would NOT take risks. You would NOT share it. You would put it somewhere safe. You would be terrified of failure, terrified of losing the money, terrified that they would come looking for it and you wouldn’t have it anymore. Instead of being free to use it, you would feel trapped by that money. You might even grow to hate both the gift and the giver.

This morning we hear another parable from Jesus about the final judgement. It’s that time of year in the liturgical calendar. We had one last week and we have yet another next week. In the parable we hear this morning Jesus describes the final coming of his kingdom as being like a master who gave large sums of money to three of his slaves. These sums are called “talents” in the parable. We hear the word “talents” and think of things we’re good at, like singing or doing math or juggling. But that’s not what the word means here. In the ancient world, talents were a measurement of weight used to assess the value of precious metals. Five talents might be thought of as fifty pounds of gold or 500 ounces of silver. Translating those amounts into modern dollars and cents is tricky, because it depends on what you’re weighing and the market value at that moment, but it is widely agreed that these talents represent A LOT of money. One professor I heard on a lectionary podcast this week said two million dollars per talent, so let’s go with that.

The amounts aren’t as important as what the slaves do with the riches given to them. The first two trade with them. They take risks. They put that money out there and it multiplies. It grows. It becomes a blessing beyond themselves. And in the freedom of sharing and using those riches, they come to enter the joy of their master. But as the parable unfolds, we come to learn that there is something even more important than what they do with the money. How they perceive their master makes all the difference in the world! We see that what they believe about their master, what they believe about who he is and what he is like, shapes their behavior, determining what they do with the riches they have been given.

The third slave believed that his master was “a harsh man.” He describes his master as a gangster and a thug, “reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” He saw his master as demanding returns on his investment and taking them one way or another to get what is his. And so the third slave buried his allocation of the riches. Better safe than sorry, right? When you believe your master is harsh and unforgiving, the last thing you want to do is come up short.

But when the master returns and sees what this third slave has done, he calls him wicked and lazy. He is judged, alright – but it isn’t so much for his failure to produce even interest as it is his utterly wrong belief about what kind of a master he had. He isn’t just accused of being lazy, this slave is also called wicked. He had no faith in his master’s goodness. He had no faith in his kindness or his mercy. “Oh, you knew that I was a harsh man, did you? That I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter? That’s how you think of me, is it?” And as it happened, the master he believed in was the master he got. The one talent he did have was given to the others and he was thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

It would be very easy for us to hear this parable as a threat. It would be easy to interpret this parable as: “God has given you much. Use it, or else.” But that, my friends, would be to make the exact same mistake that this third slave made. It would be to turn God into a gangster, into someone who makes demands and comes looking for a return on his investment, bringing with him all the muscle he needs to get what he wants one way or another. But something else is going on here. It is hard to see at first glance, but there’s a bigger point being made.

Back in Matthew 13, Jesus himself said that the meaning of many of his parables are not readily apparent to many people (Matthew 13:13-15).  Jesus is purposefully obtuse at times! Many of these parables need to be looked at from a certain slant, in the light of the whole gospel, and with eyes of faith, in order to be understood. This is one of those parables that is operating on a deeper level than what we see on the surface. If we look at it with a normal human sense of how the world works, we’re going to get the “use it or else” message. We’re going to get a harsh gangster God. But if we look at it in light of the entirety of the gospel, we are going to get something different.

This is a parable about perception. It is not just warning us about using God’s gifts rightly. It is about that too, but it goes deeper than that. It points to something more fundamental. It is encouraging us to see God rightly. It is encouraging us to perceive who God really is, what God is really like. Yes, God has wrath. Our reading from Zephaniah makes that painfully, viscerally clear this morning. St. Paul refers to it too in our epistle reading.

But God is not a gangster. God is not a “harsh man.” The fullness of God has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God’s true heart has been revealed as full of mercy and forgiveness and love for us. The final judgement will be a day of great darkness, Paul says in the epistle reading, but not for you, not for those whose faith is in Christ. “You, beloved, are not in darkness,” Paul writes. “You are children of light and children of the day. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, God has bestowed riches upon us. As Paul writes in Ephesians 2:

“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— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

This passage would have been a great epistle reading to pair with this parable, because it ties everything together. It shows us in no uncertain terms who God really is! It shows us what kind of a God we really have! God is a loving, generous, wealthy benefactor, and in Christ his Son he has freely given us everything – not only everything we own and every skill we have, God has also given us forgiveness, life, and salvation. This God is good! This God is rich in mercy and grace. And so we have nothing to be afraid of – we can take everything God has given us and put it out there. We can take risks with it. We can be generous with it. Our good works are not what saves us – they are instead what God has prepared beforehand to be our way of life. They are just what we do when we know and trust and believe that God is good and kind and patient and forgiving.

When I train acolytes, I will ask them what they’re most afraid of happening when they are serving as acolytes. They will sometimes mention not being able to light the candles, or tripping, or – worst case scenario – dropping a communion tray. When they tell me what they’re most afraid of, I tell them that any of those things might happen, but if it does, I won’t be mad at them, and God won’t be mad at them either. I tell them we should try our best because we love God, but not because we are afraid of God. Mistakes will happen, but we will just clean them up and move on, trusting in God’s mercy and forgiveness. You can almost see their anxiety level drop!

This is something I need to hear too. It is a principle that empowers everything I do as a pastor. I have a meme I keep on my phone that says, “When God put his calling on your life he already factored in your stupidity.” I draw inspiration and comfort from this on a regular basis. In my office I have a print of Luther’s Sacristy Prayer for pastors, which says much the same thing in prayer form, calling on God’s help and grace, “for without it,” it says, “I would have ruined everything long ago.” It is trusting in God’s love, God’s goodness, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ, that empowers ministry, that frees us to risk and to dare and even to fail.

Now apply this to your own life. It is trusting in God’s love, God’s goodness, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, that empowers your discipleship. It is what empowers your stewardship. It is what empowers your service here in the church and in your families and in our community and in the world. God has given you the riches of his grace, and God has plenty more where that came from. God created you and has endowed you with gifts and skills and resources. God has given you everything you have, everything you are. God loves you more than you can begin to imagine. He sent his Son to give you forgiveness for every failure and freedom for faithful service. And so you have nothing to fear.

That other so-called god that so many people believe in, including too many Christians, is a lie. You can believe in that gangster god if you want, if you insist. But that so-called god is a wicked liar who will only drag you into darkness.

The real God, though, the God in whom Jesus invites us to place our trust, is like a powerful, wealthy, and loving Father who pours out upon us the riches of his kingdom and invites us to have fun with them, to freely and fearlessly put it out there, to share it, to multiply it, so that it becomes a blessing for others beyond ourselves.

Put your trust in this good and loving and true God, and you will find yourself entering into his joy – today and forever.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church