Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 30, 2025

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 31, 2025 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 30

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 30, 2025

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

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

Today we hear what is likely Jesus’ most famous and most beloved of all his parables. But our gospel reading for today begins with an important bit of context. St. Luke prefaces the parable with an important bit of information. He writes: “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable.”

Jesus actually goes on to tell three parables, all with the same theme. Jesus tells the parable of the lost coin. Then he tells the parable of the lost sheep. And then, finally, he tells the parable we hear today. We only hear the third parable, which is why we jump from verse three to verse eleven. And the context in which Jesus is speaking is especially important for understanding this third parable.

Jesus tells these parables with two groups there listening to him. These two groups could not be more different from each other. On the one side you have a group of tax collectors and other assorted sinners. This group was comprised of people who were widely despised for their sin. Their sins were public, obvious, easy to see.

The tax collectors were despised because, well, because they were tax collectors. I mean, that’s pretty obvious, right? It is tax season, after all. As necessary as it surely is for a functioning government, I don’t know anyone who would list the IRS as their favorite government agency. In ancient Israel this was made far worse by the fact that tax collectors worked on commission, that is, they kept for themselves whatever they were able to gouge out of people beyond what was required, and they were working for their Roman oppressors while doing so. So they were widely reviled not only as aggressive bill collectors, but as betrayers of their people and betrayers of their God.

Along with the tax collectors were other assorted sinners. These were those who had wandered away from God and squandered their holy heritage with dissolute living –  chasing their every appetite, abusing God’s gifts for their own selfish pleasures, living by their own rules, ignoring God’s commandments, spending their weekends committing idolatry and adultery, wallowing in their own bad decisions.

This first group, the tax collectors and other assorted sinners, had been coming to listen to Jesus – and Jesus welcomed them! Jesus had even been breaking bread with them. Jesus had been enjoying little dinner parties with them.

The second group was comprised of the Pharisees and the scribes. This second group was the mirror opposite of the first group. While the first group was publicly reviled, the second group enjoyed great public respect. These were the good people, the respectable people. They were careful followers of God’s law. They were obedient to God’s commandments. They were Israel’s most loyal sons. And so of course they raised their eyebrows when they saw Jesus eating with these rank sinners. Of course they objected to someone who came preaching and teaching in the name of God sitting down and breaking bread with them. Of course they looked down their noses and grumbled at the whole thing.

Jesus tells this parable in response to this dynamic. Jesus is masterfully addressing both of these groups with it. Jesus is explaining what these little dinner parties with sinners are all about, while also inviting the Pharisees and the scribes to quit grumbling and take their place at the table.

Jesus begins by saying there was a man who had two sons. Note that right from the beginning this is a parable about two sons! The first son asks for his inheritance ahead of time. This was a great insult to the father in that culture, but the father gives it to him and the son promptly leaves home and goes to a far-off country called Las Vegas. He goes to a far-off country known as Amsterdam’s red-light district. In this far-off country he blows through all the inheritance money, spending it on vice, and debauchery, and immorality of every kind – which is precisely what “dissolute living” means. He hits rock bottom. He ends up flat broke. In his desperation he takes a low-paying job at a Gentile pig farm, where he ends up so hungry that the pig’s food starts to look good to him. He finally comes to his senses and returns home, hoping at least to get hired on as one of his father’s hired hands. But when he is still at the end of his father’s long driveway, he sees his father running towards him. Before he can even apologize, his father throws his arms around him. His father kisses him. His father calls for his son to be clothed in a new robe and to have the family ring put on his finger. Then he tells his servants to prepare the fatted calf. It was time to barbecue! It was time to celebrate! For this son of his who was dead was alive again, he was lost but had been found.

This first part of the parable describes what was going on with the first group, with the tax collectors and other assorted sinners. By listening to Jesus, those sinners were coming to their senses! In him, they had found their way back home to God. Jesus wasn’t endorsing their sin by eating with them. The son in the parable doesn’t bring whiskey and dancing girls back home to dad. These sinners had repented. They had come home, and God was receiving them with open arms! God clothed them in a new robe, giving them a new life. God restored them to the family. God and all his angels celebrated, for these sinner-sons who were dead were alive again. These sinner-sons who were lost had been found. The meal Jesus shared with them both symbolized and celebrated their homecoming.

The story line of the first son takes up most of the parable, but it is not the end of the story! This parable is often called the parable of the prodigal son, but there are TWO sons in the parable, and to ignore the second son is like telling an entire joke only to botch the punchline! This should be called the parable of the lost sons, because there are two sons in the parable, and both of them are lost. One is lost to self-indulgence, and the other is lost to self-righteousness.

When the younger, self-indulgent son comes home, the older son is indignant. He is sanctimonious. He is resentful. When he sees that his father has thrown a party for his brother, he becomes angry and refuses to go in. He feels he deserves more from his father for being the good, loyal son. Here they are butchering a fatted calf, and he never even got a goat to roast for a party!

But the father speaks tenderly to his older son. He acknowledges his faithfulness, his loyalty. He tells his older son that everything he has already belongs to him. All the fatted calfs. All the goats. It is all his and always has been. The father invites his older son to set aside his self-righteousness and to just come in and enjoy the party. You see, he is lost too! He needs to come home too!

This part of the parable is aimed at those Pharisees and scribes. They might enjoy much public respect, but they are sinners too. They might not be self-indulgent, but they are self-righteous. And so they are more like the first group than they want to admit! In fact, Jesus suggests with this parable that they are brothers! Their sins are two sides of the same genetic coin!

As the father of three boys, it is amazing to my wife and I how different our three sons can be. They sprang from the same two parents. They were raised in the same home, in mostly the same way. They share the same blood, the same DNA. But they each have such radically different personalities. For instance, one is an extrovert who will talk to you until you want to sew his mouth shut, while another is so introverted that two complete sentences from him in a conversation is a precious, cherished moment. They are so different, and yet, at the same time, in other ways, they are obviously brothers. They have a lot in common too!

The tax collectors and sinners and the Pharisees and the scribes are all brothers. They are all sons of the same Father. They are radically different in the ways sin presents itself in each of them, but they are all the products of the same turned-in-on-self DNA.

The same is true for us. There are obvious, public, glaring sins that we easily recognize in people – the sins of self-indulgence. These sins are harmful. They need to be repented of. There are behaviors that need to be left behind when coming home.

But there is another way in which sin is manifest, and it is especially rampant among those who consider themselves to be the good people, the respectable people, the correct people. This is the sin of self-righteousness. This sin is expressed in sanctimoniousness – which isn’t just a religious phenomenon. People get sanctimonious about all kinds of things. People look down their noses at others for what they eat or what they wear or what they drive or how they vote. They get sanctimonious about how their ideas and concerns and choices are SO much better than everyone else’s. This is a form of lostness too. It is a form of lostness because it fails to see that everything we have and everything we are is given to us through the graciousness of the Father. It is a form of lostness because it fails to see how we all fall short of the glory of God and are all equally and utterly dependent on God’s grace.

The son you might identify with can vary from day to day. We’ve all been both of them at different times. But no matter which son you might identify with today, the invitation offered in this parable is the same. The invitation for all of us always is simply to come home. We are invited to leave our self-indulgence AND our self-righteousness behind and come into the forgiving embrace of our loving Father. This Father clothes us in a new life. By his grace he restores us to the status of family. In his joy, he throws a celebration to which both kinds of sons and daughters are invited. We are all brothers and sisters, after all. And our gracious Heavenly Father wants nothing more than for all of us to enjoy the feast together.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent – March 23, 2025

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 26, 2025 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 23

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent – March 23, 2025

Luke 13:1-9

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

Wouldn’t it be great to know what Jesus thinks about current events, about all the things happening in our world today? Wouldn’t you love to get Jesus’ hot take on the latest news? Wouldn’t it be interesting to have our Lord give color commentary on the most recent terrible thing that happened? Maybe he could get his own show on one of the cable news channels, or his own Twitter account where he could post his thoughts.

There are many who claim to know what Jesus thinks about this or that. Oh, they are quite sure the Lord is on their side. There are some who turn to preachers to give them these hot takes, and there are no shortage of preachers who are happy to do so. The trouble is, these people who claim to know exactly what Jesus thinks about the latest current event often contradict each other. These takes are often just thinly veiled political ideologies from one side of the aisle or the other, so how do we know which side is correct?

Well, today we actually get to hear Jesus respond to the news. They aren’t current events, of course, but today we hear how Jesus responded to the breaking news stories of his time.

Some people came to Jesus with a situation which was deeply troubling. This was breaking news. The Roman governor Pontius Pilate had massacred some Galileans and then went on to mock their religious practices by mingling the blood he had spilled with the blood of the sacrifices they had offered to God in worship. It was a horrible act of violence and desecration. It was the kind of story that got people’s attention. This news traveled fast. It was a story that shook people up.

And as people often do, they gave their hot takes. People were trying to make sense of the evil Pilate had done. Jesus, perhaps hearing the chatter in the crowds about this horrible story, understood that some people believed these Galileans had actually brought this on themselves. They must have done something. Maybe they provoked Pilate. Maybe they even provoked God somehow!

Jesus soundly and swiftly rejects this kind of thinking. “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” Jesus pointedly asked. “No, I tell you!”

And then Jesus turned their eyes from the headline to their own hearts. “But unless you repent,” Jesus said, “you will all perish as they did.”

Jesus then brought up a different news story. “You know those eighteen people who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Do you think they were worse offenders than everyone else in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.”

And then Jesus did it again. He turned their attention from the headlines to their hearts. “But unless you repent,” he said, “you will all perish as they did.”

What is going on here? What does Jesus mean by this, and what does it mean for us?

Whether the latest tragedy in the headlines is due to wickedness or a freak accident, Jesus encourages us to respond in the same way. He calls us to repent. He calls us to turn our attention from the headlines to our hearts.

There is certainly a place for analyzing why bad things happen in order to stop them or prevent them from continuing. Sometimes it is indeed bad people or bad choices that bring on bad consequences – St. Paul has something to say about that in our second reading for today. It is also worth noting that Jesus makes it clear that victims of violence or accidents – then or now –  are not being punished by God. And none of this suggests we should all just put our heads in the sand and ignore the world around us.

But Jesus points to these unsettling new stories as opportunities for us to not only look outward, but to look inward. They should prompt us not just to look at who we can blame, he says, but to take a close look at our own lives. They should prompt us to repent.

To repent is to turn back to God. Whenever we see a news story that reminds us of the wickedness and evil of this world, it should drive us to God. Whenever we see a news story that reminds us of our mortality, our human frailty, it should move our hearts to repentance, to taking stock of our lives and recommitting ourselves to living lives of faith in God and love for one another.

This leads us to the second part of our reading for today, the little parable Jesus tells. Jesus tells the story of a man who had a fig tree in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit and found none. He was ready to cut it down, but the gardener pleaded for a little more time. “Let me put some manure on it. If it bears fruit, well and good. If not, you can cut it down.”

At first glance it is an odd juxtaposition – having these brutal news stories alongside this quaint parable about gardening. But what Jesus is saying here is that we have something that the victims in the latest news do not. We have time. We have life yet in us.  We’re still here. And Jesus is the gardener who has come along to coax some fruit out of us while we are here. What’s more, Jesus is going to use manure to grow that fruit.

St. Augustine taught that the manure in this parable represents the sinner’s sorrows. He wrote that “the basket of dung is filthy, but it produces fruit.” I think this interpretive move by Augustine is the key to connecting the parable to those horrific news stories. Our Lord Jesus, the gracious gardener, is using the sorrows of life to draw us to himself. He is using the manure we see or smell or step in to help us become more deeply rooted in him. Christ Jesus, the savior of the vineyard, is using the filthy parts of life in this broken world to grow fruit in us, the fruits of repentance.

This is how God often works in the Bible. When Joseph’s brothers sold him off, God used that stinky move to save all of them from famine. “What you intended for evil,” Joseph would eventually tell his brothers, “God used for good.” When the Assyrians and then the Babylonians invaded and conquered Israel, God used those bloody situations to call his people back to the covenant. When the early church was violently persecuted, God used the dispersion it caused to spread the gospel out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. In each of these cases God used the wicked and evil dung scattered around by human beings to a greater purpose: to draw people to himself, to root people in him, and to grow the fruit he desires, the fruits of faith.

The best example of this, of course, is found in the cross. What Pilate did to those worshippers, spilling their blood and mingling it with their sacrifices, desecrating God’s beloved children, was a foreshadowing of the desecration Pilate presided over in the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ. And as wicked and evil as this certainly was, God brought life out of it! God used it as the very means of our salvation!

We don’t come to worship to look at headlines, we come to look at our hearts. We don’t come to worship to look at who we can blame, we come to look in the mirror. We don’t come to merely to rally, but to repent. We don’t come to worship to get a hot take on the news, we come to hear the Good News.

And the Good News is that even amidst the horrific events that make us afraid or angry or quick to blame, the patient gardener of our souls is still at work in us turning fertilizer into faith, turning manure into good fruit, turning all the world’s excrement into the first blossoms of hope.

The Good News is that on the fig tree of his cross, our Lord Jesus stretched his arms out over every bloody headline the world has or ever will see, taking it upon himself. The cross is God’s commentary on every human tragedy, telling us that there is no story or situation which is beyond his redeeming love.

The Good News is that after enduring the cross, where his own sacrificial blood was spilled, after experiencing his own brutal death, Jesus rose again. Pilate did not have the last word. Evil did not have the last word. Sin and death did not have the last word.

The Good News is that none of the violence or tragedies we see in the news today will have the last word either – for the most important headline of all is that Christ is risen, and that’s the headline we need to focus on the most.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent – March 16, 2025

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 18, 2025 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 16

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent – March 16, 2025

Luke 13:31-35

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

It is very difficult to help someone who does not want to receive help. Many of you know how frustrating this can be, painful even. I’ve sat with family members of alcoholics who have offered their loved ones every opportunity to get help, but they are not willing. I’ve talked with parents who desperately want to help their wayward children, but they are not willing. I’ve had conversations with elderly people who still live alone and need more help than they are willing to admit, help that is available, but they are not willing. I know one of the greatest disappointments of our Stephen Ministry leaders is that we have all these Stephen Ministers trained and available to walk with people through any kind of difficulty, but when people who are experiencing those difficulties have been identified and invited to receive their care, they are not willing. Our male Stephen Ministers in particular often sit without care receivers for long periods of time, because even though there are men in need of their care, they are not willing.

My wife and I have some dear friends. We’ve known this couple for almost 30 years. They are from Washington state, but we met in Minnesota, where we started seminary together. Although ministry has taken us to different parts of the country at times, we’ve stayed in touch. We’ve stayed close.

Ministry can be hard on marriages. There are particular challenges and strains that are unique to this calling. They tell us this at the beginning of our seminary education. In fact, Luther Seminary offered marriage care groups to start to get us in the habit of being intentional about caring for our marriages. We invited these friends to come with us, but they were not willing. Years later Amy and I went to a Lutheran Marriage Encounter weekend. We raved about it, and encouraged these friends to go, but they were not willing. Over the years there were times when we saw fissures start to show up in their marriage, little cracks that emerged. When Amy and I went through training and wrote our talks and started leading Marriage Encounter weekends ourselves, we encouraged them to come. They are free for pastors and their spouses! “You’ll at least know us,” I told them. But they were not willing.

Just a couple of weeks ago these dear friends signed divorce papers, ending almost forty years of marriage. I could kind of see it coming, but it still hit me hard. When I told Amy, I couldn’t get the words out without getting choked up. I was not only sad but frustrated. There was an anger even, an anger rooted in love for them. We could have helped you! But you were not willing!

I know this feeling. So do many of you. And Jesus knows it too. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

There is a long history behind these words. Jesus was talking to God’s chosen people. God had delivered them out of slavery in Egypt. God fed them in the wilderness. God brought them into the Promised Land. And again and again, they rejected God. They thought they were doing just fine, that they could get by on their own. God sent prophets to them over and over again, offering his help, calling them back, offering to restore them to life and holiness and right relationship. But they were not willing. Again and again God’s prophets, God’s lifelines of help, were rejected, killed even, because the people were not willing to receive this help.

Along came Jesus, the long-promised Messiah, and now they were doing it again. Jesus expressed his frustration with them, his anger even – an anger rooted in love. His only desire was to gather them together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. He only wanted to help them – but they were not willing.

A few chapters later in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus weeps for Jerusalem. There is a chapel which was built on the spot where Jesus wept. It is called Dominus Flevit, which is Latin for “The Lord wept.” It was built in the shape of a teardrop, and the big windows behind the altar look out over Jerusalem. There is a mosaic in this chapel too. The mosaic at the base of the altar depicts a mother hen with her wings spread out in defense of her chicks.

This is how a mother hen saves her chicks. She saves them by putting herself between them and the threat, by shielding them from danger with her own body. She will do this even if it means she herself will die. It isn’t uncommon to find a chicken coop which has been attacked by racoons or coyotes or foxes and to find the mother hens torn to shreds while the baby chicks are safe inside.

This is how Jesus ultimately saves us too. In our gospel reading for today we hear Jesus refer to what is about to unfold in Jerusalem. When the Pharisees told Jesus to get out of there, warning him that Herod was out to get him, Jesus said, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.’” Jesus then refers to his triumphal entry, saying they won’t see him again until everyone is shouting, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” These are the shouts of acclamation which will so quickly turn into calls to crucify him.

What lies just ahead is a showdown between the fox and the hen. Jesus will soon hand himself over to the powers of sin and death. Jesus will place himself between the enemy and his beloved chicks. Everyone knows how this story plays out. The hen always gets destroyed by the fox. She bears the fangs and the claws in her body to spare theirs. She dies for her chicks.  But in the showdown between this fox and this hen, there is a surprise ending. On the third day, Jesus finishes his work by rising from the dead.

Do you need help? Are there parts of your life you are still refusing to let God help you with? Are there troubles you think you can handle on your own? Are there sins you are unwilling to confess? Are there behaviors you are unwilling to let him help you change? Are there wounds you are unwilling to let him heal, a grudge you continue to nurse, a mistake you won’t let him forgive, a fear you are unable to hand over to him?

Our Lord Jesus wants nothing more than to help you. Our Lord Jesus wants nothing more than to gather you under the shelter of his wings. Are there ways in which you are not willing?

Lent is a season of self-examination and repentance. It is a season in which we are invited to take a long hard look at our lives and to “change our minds” and “change our direction,” which is what the word repentance means. And so I invite you today to think about the ways in which you might be spurning the help God wants to give you.

In Jerusalem, Jesus threw himself into the jaws of the fox. He allowed himself to be chewed up in a brutal crucifixion. He died on the cross, giving up his life in order to save us, his brood.

On the third day he finished his work. He rose again, leaving an empty grave behind. And now his resurrected wings are spread over us, where they eternally protect us from sin and death and every evil.

So take your place under his wings. His help is continually offered to you. This help comes first and foremost through Word and Sacrament, where he graciously and continuously forgives sins and gives us new life. This help comes through the presence of his Holy Spirit, which leads us into lives that are holy and pleasing to God and offers mercy and whenever we stumble, helping us back up.

This help also comes through the wider ministry of the church, which offers guidance through Bible study, care through Stephen Ministers, pastoral counseling through pastors, grief care through compassionate experts like Pastor Laurie, and all kinds of other resources for help in times of need.

The strong wings of the risen Christ are spread wide, that you might find shelter under them. It is under those wings that he will protect you. It is under those wings that he offers forgiveness, life, and salvation. It is under those wings that he offers his help to every part of your life that needs it.

He spreads those healing, helpful, holy wings out for you today. Are you willing?

He is still gathering, still calling, still inviting, still forgiving, still defending his brood. He stands between you and every enemy with his wings stretched wide, saying, “If you want to get to them, you have to go through me.”

It is safe behind those wings. So let him gather you. Let him draw you to himself. Let him help.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church