by Jeffrey Spencer | May 23, 2023 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for May 21
Sermon for the Ascension of our Lord – May 21, 2023
Ephesians 1:15-23, Luke 24:44-53
Dear friends grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
What a difference forty days makes! As we’ve been hearing in our readings these past two Sundays, when Jesus first told the disciples he would be leaving them they were beside themselves with worry. Their hearts were troubled. They felt like they were about to be orphaned, like they were losing the one who gave them life, the one who loved them more than anyone else ever had. As Jesus spoke of his leaving in the Upper Room, the disciples were filled with anguish and confusion and fear.
Now, forty days later, Jesus actually leaves them. He withdraws from them, St. Luke tells us. Jesus is carried up into heaven, getting smaller and smaller and smaller until he disappears from their sight. And what is their response to Jesus’ leaving? They are filled with great joy! What a difference forty days makes!
So what changed? What happened to make Jesus’ leaving them go from being an occasion of anguish to an occasion of great joy?
Well, one obvious thing that happened was the resurrection! Over those forty days the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples in many and various ways. Although the disciples all scattered like sheep when the storm of the crucifixion blew in, the risen Jesus didn’t appear to them in order to scold them. Instead he came to them saying, “Peace be with you.” This is what his death and resurrection accomplished: Peace with God! Although Peter denied knowing Jesus three times, publicly disavowing him, Jesus didn’t come to Peter so that he could punish him, so that he could get his revenge. Instead Jesus forgave him and restored him. Although Cleopas was clueless about what had just happened in Jerusalem and blind to Jesus’ presence while he walked with him on the road to Emmaus, Jesus didn’t give up on him and start walking the other way. Jesus had patience with him. He taught him. And then he broke bread with him, opening his eyes at last.
The resurrection had ushed in an entirely new reality for all of them. If there was a love more powerful than sin and death, what did they have to be afraid of?
The risen Jesus also opened the minds of the disciples to understand the scriptures. Now they understood how what we call the Old Testament writings pointed to him. He was the offspring of Eve who would crush the head of the serpent, defeating sin. He was the fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham that through his descendants all the families of the earth would be blessed. He was the Lamb of God in Exodus who delivers people from death. He was the suffering servant in Isaiah, by whose wounds we are healed. Now they understood that his death on the cross was not an accident or a failure, but God’s means of salvation. The Messiah was indeed to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day. It was all part of God’s endgame from the beginning. Now they understood this, and so Jesus’ leaving was not a tragic farewell but a triumphant victory lap after his mission was accomplished.
In addition to opening their minds to understand the scriptures, Jesus also promised to clothe them with power from on high. Jesus was promising them the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit they would continue to deepen their understanding of the scriptures. Through the Spirit they would be empowered for their own mission, which was just beginning – their mission of proclaiming repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name to all nations. Through the Holy Spirit they would continue to know the presence of Jesus in their lives, and so he wasn’t really going away. He would just be with them in a different way.
As Jesus left them, as his risen body began to ascend, Jesus lifted up his hands and blessed them. This was the posture the priests in the temple used to put God’s blessing on the people at the end of worship. It is the posture priests and pastors continue to use to bless God’s people, to put his word, his mercy, his love, his blessing on them. Jesus lifted up his hands in blessing. His hands, still bearing the wounds of his great sacrifice for them, were over them, covering them, shielding them, assuring them, blessing them.
These hands of blessing were yet another part of what made Jesus’ departure an occasion of great joy rather than great anguish. These disciples knew that these hands would remain over them, and so they could go back to their daily lives in great joy. They could go back to Jerusalem, where so much ugliness had happened, without fear. They would spend the rest of their lives worshipping him, blessing God for the blessing that was upon them.
The Ascension of our Lord continues to be an occasion of celebration among Jesus’ disciples today. While it isn’t well known or celebrated much among many American Christians today, historically in the Christian church it has been considered as important as Christmas and Easter! St. Augustine went so far as to say it was even more important than those festivals. He wrote:
“[The Ascension of our Lord] is that festival which confirms the grace of all the festivals together, without which the profitableness of every festival would have perished. For unless the Savior had ascended into heaven, his Nativity would have come to nothing…and his Passion would have borne no fruit for us, and his most holy Resurrection would have been useless.”
The Ascension “confirms the grace of all the other festivals” because now our ascended Lord is seated at the right hand of the Father, where all the things he accomplished in his Nativity and his Passion and his Resurrection continue to be poured out upon his people throughout the world. Our ascended Lord has taken his place at the right hand of God, where he continues to do for us what he did for his first disciples. He continues to do for you what he did for them!
For you who have scattered, who have strayed or fled from him, Jesus comes to you through his word – not to scold but to say, “Peace be with you,” to say, “It’s alright. I have made peace between you and God.” For you who have denied Jesus by your words or your actions, Jesus comes to you through the forgiveness which is proclaimed here in his name. He comes to restore you to right relationship with him and recommission you for service. For you who have been confused or distracted or blind to him, Jesus comes through the breaking of the bread, opening your eyes to his presence. Jesus doesn’t give up on us when we stumble or scatter or sin. He just keeps on coming to us with his word, moving us from repentance to forgiveness.
Jesus opens our minds to understand the scriptures. This isn’t to say we won’t be confused by the Bible from time to time. It is a big book with some confusing parts. There are some verses which the best Bible scholars in the world can only guess at their meaning. But Jesus opens our minds to understand that it is all ultimately about him and what he has done for us. It is about how God sent us a savior to save us from sin and death. It is about how the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. It is about how forgiveness, life, and salvation are found in Jesus.
This understanding doesn’t happen by osmosis. It doesn’t happen by being in the vicinity of a Bible. You actually need to open it up once in a while. You actually need to gather with God’s people to hear it and study it. But when you do, you can be assured that Christ Jesus will teach you what you need to know.
Jesus continues to clothe his people with power from on high. He sends the Holy Spirit to open up the word to us and stir up our faith and remind us of his presence and empower us for our mission and our callings.
And the same hands that were raised up over the disciples in a posture of blessing are raised up over you. As you gather to worship Jesus, as the disciples continued to do, his hands are lifted over you in blessing.
Every week I lift my hands in blessing at various points in the service, whether it is the absolution, or the post-communion blessing, or the benediction. Next week I will lay hands on our confirmation students, blessing them anew with the blessing they first received in Holy Baptism. Last week I laid hands on the head of one of our church members, saying the words of the benediction at the end of our time together. And so she was sheltered, she was covered in blessing when she died a few days later.
The hands of your pastor raised in blessing are a reminder that Christ’s hands of blessing are always over you. And so, with the disciples, you can live without fear. You can go back to your daily lives in great joy. No matter how ugly the world can be, you can go back to it knowing that Christ continues to hold his hands over you in blessing from his throne at the right hand of the Father.
The Ascension of our Lord is good news for you and for me. It is not about Jesus leaving. It is about him being with us forever in a different way. It is not a farewell, it is a “mission accomplished.” His hands were not waving goodbye, they continue to be held over us in eternal blessing.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | May 15, 2023 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for May 14
Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter – May 14, 2023
John 14:15-21
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Although we are still in the Easter season, our gospel readings for both last Sunday and this Sunday take place before the resurrection. We might think of them as flashback scenes. Jesus is preparing his disciples for all that is to come. He is telling them what will happen and what to expect in the days ahead. He is laying the groundwork for what his church will look like after his death and resurrection.
Jesus is also seeking to calm the hearts of the disciples, which, as we heard last week, had become troubled. Jesus had told them that he would be leaving them soon, and this news caused quite a stir. The disciples became nervous. They became anxious and afraid. And so, as we heard last week, Jesus said to them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.”
Today we pick up right where we left off last week. Jesus is continuing to speak to the disciples, preparing them for what was to come. He had a lot more to say to them. In fact, Jesus will go on for four entire chapters with his farewell address to the disciples!
In the snippet we hear from this much longer farewell address, Jesus again speaks to the disciples’ troubled hearts. He addresses this visceral, primal fear they have of being left alone. And in doing so Jesus uses a word that is the same in both English and Greek. He uses the word orphanos, orphan – one whose parents have died. An orphan in the ancient world was especially vulnerable, but we know the sting of that word even today.
I felt a bit of that sting last week as, for the second time in my life, I stood before the Mother’s Day cards at Rite Aid and had that stinging reminder that I wouldn’t be needing one for my mom, who died a year and a half ago. I delight in the opportunity Mother’s Day brings for lavishing my wife with gratitude for what a wonderful mother she is to our three sons. I am also grateful to have a wonderful stepmother who I love very much and has been a tremendous blessing in my life. (She got one of the OHLC-made cards.) I also acknowledge that I’m only a half-orphan, and that I lost my mom later in life than some people do. I’m not trying to stir up a pity party.
But, as many of you know, there is something primal about losing your mother, and it reared up in me again as I looked at those cards. There is something existentially painful about losing the one who carried you in her body and delivered you into the world and nursed you at her breast and took care of you when you were sick and always called you on your birthday and was a constant source of unconditional love in your life. Losing that person leaves you feeling a little lost. The world just feels different without that person in it. It feels a little colder.
The word “orphan” captures this experience, and this is the word Jesus uses to name the fear the disciples were experiencing. They were afraid they were about to be orphaned. They were afraid they were about to lose Jesus, the one who gave them new life. They were afraid that that they were about to lose the one who loved them more than anyone else they had ever known.
Speaking to this primal fear, Jesus gave them a promise. “I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus said. Jesus promised that he would not leave them alone.
Jesus promised he would send “another Advocate” to be with them forever. This is a vaguely legal term for someone who would defend you and protect you. The opposite of this is the Accuser, the devil, who goes on the attack, trying to drag you into despair. Jesus promised to send the Advocate, someone who will forever be in their corner, defending them from these attacks, protecting them from the evil one.
This Advocate, however, also has a soft side, a tender, nurturing side. In fact, some Bibles choose to translate the word “Advocate” as either comforter or helper. This Advocate both defends and comforts. You might think of it as a Mama Bear, who will both hold you close in the warmth of her love and tenderness and will also rip the face off of anyone who dares to mess with her cubs.
This Advocate Jesus is talking about is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit holds us close in God’s love while fiercely defending us from our enemies of sin, death, and the devil. “This is the Spirit of truth,” Jesus says, “whom the world does not know, but you know, because he abides with you and will be in you.” And so they will never be alone. They will always have the Holy Spirit.
Jesus also promised the disciples that he himself will come to them. “I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus says, “I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”
This refers specifically to the fact that the risen Jesus will literally come to them, and they will literally see him. But it also alludes to how Jesus will come to his church after his ascension. That Spirit of truth will make the risen Jesus known to us. That Spirit of truth is his Spirit, which will be with us forever, giving us life with him. Jesus promises that by this Spirit his disciples will know that he is in the Father and that they are in him and that he is in them. That’s a lot to get your head around, I know, but the essence of this is simply that Jesus will not leave his disciples, then or now, alone. He will come to them. He will be with them. He will not leave them orphaned.
Jesus also says that “those who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
It is easy to hear this, along with what Jesus says earlier about how those who love him will keep his commandments, as a litmus test of sorts, as if there is something we must do to prove we really love Jesus before he will reveal himself to us. But that isn’t quite right. Jesus isn’t giving a litmus test so much as he is giving a description of how his disciples will experience his presence once he has left. Those who love him – and it won’t be everybody – will have and keep his commandments. To keep Christ’s commandments does mean to obey them. You can’t say “I love Jesus, but I don’t want him telling me how to live my life.” But to keep Christ’s commandments is so much more than mere obedience. To “keep” is also to preserve. It is to hold close. It is to treasure. This is not a burden or a begrudging obligation. Instead, for those who love Jesus, it is an honor and a joy to hold his teachings close.
On December 31st of this last year I got the shocking news that my beloved professor, Jim Nestingen, had died. Not everybody loved Jim. While he was a world-renowned academic, many of his fellow scholars found him a little too backwater with his thick North Dakota accent and his stories from the prairie. He was always more at home in church fellowship halls than in academia. He could get salty in his language and a little too earthy in his illustrations. He could also be very outspoken in his criticism of certain bishops and the direction of the church. So, not everybody loved him.
But many did. Jim has a cadre of students who loved him, myself included, and in the months following his death we have gathered in various ways to share his stories, to remember things he said, to encourage one another to continue in what he taught us. We’ve all pulled out our favorite books and essays and articles of his. There is an effort to collect and keep and preserve his writings and any videos of his lectures. None of this is done begrudgingly. None of this is a litmus test to prove our love for him. This is all the organic response of students who love their teacher.
How much more, then, do the disciples of Jesus have and keep and preserve and treasure his teachings, his commandments, his words? We will never obey them perfectly in this life, but we have and keep and preserve and treasure all that Jesus has said, all that he has taught, all that he has commanded, as the organic response of disciples who love our Lord. It is what we do in response to the One who first loved us and gave himself for us. It is what the church is and does. And Jesus promises us that as we continue to have and keep his commandments, we will know the love of the Father. He promises that he himself will reveal himself to us. We will not be alone. We will not be orphaned. He will continue to make himself known to us.
The fear the disciples had still shows up among Christ’s disciples today. We are desperately afraid of losing the people we love, the people who love us. When we do lose them, there is a vulnerability, an ache, a sting. We feel a little lost. The world feels different, a little colder.
Jesus speaks to this primal fear we have, this universal ache. In a world where people lose mothers and mentors and all kinds of other people who are dear to us, Jesus promises that we will never lose him. In a world full of loneliness, he promises us that we will never be alone. Jesus sends us the Spirit to be our Advocate and our comforter and our helper. He comes to us himself by that same Spirit, dwelling in and among us as our risen Lord. As we keep and preserve and treasure his Word, he reveals himself to us, filling us with the love of the Father.
“I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus promised the disciples.
This is his promise to you too.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | May 12, 2023 | News & Events
Adult Bible study continues in May with classes being held on Sunday morning in the library from 9:15-10:15. Continuing the theme of lesser-known New Testament writings, we are exploring 1 John, a short letter in the back of your Bibles.
by Jeffrey Spencer | May 8, 2023 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for May 7
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter – May 7, 2023
John 14:1-14
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
The disciples’ hearts were troubled. How could they not be? Jesus had just told them that one of them would soon betray him. He told them that he would be leaving them, and he was saying it in a cryptic way that sounded ominous. He told them that Peter would deny even knowing him three times before the cock crowed the next morning. Of course the disciples’ hearts were troubled!
And so Jesus said to them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”
Jesus wasn’t merely encouraging them to believe in the existence of God. He was telling them to have confidence in God, and to have confidence in him. He was telling them to have faith in the Father and the Son. He was telling them to trust in them.
Their hearts didn’t need to stay troubled, Jesus continued, because there was a dwelling place beyond the betrayal. There was a place for them beyond the denial – a place for them in the Father’s house. There was a room for them in this house, and Jesus was leaving in order to prepare that room for them, so that where Jesus was, there they would be also.
“You know the way to where I am going,” Jesus said to them. It isn’t hard to imagine the confused looks on their faces. You can imagine them thinking, “Uh, we do?” You can picture them scratching their heads, trying to figure out the way. Thomas alone was brave enough to say what probably all of them were thinking: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
Thomas was asking for directions. He was asking for a map. Even just a place name would have helped. Are you talking about the temple, Jesus? Are you going back to Galilee? Somewhere further, like Syria? Rome even? Where are you going, and how can we know the way?
And Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
This is a boldly exclusive claim Jesus is making here, to be sure. He alone is the way to God the Father. But while this is indeed an exclusive claim, it is also a promise. In the context of these disciples and their troubled hearts, it is good news!
The disciples were anxious and confused. Jesus was talking about going to the Father’s house and saying they knew the way, but clearly they didn’t know the way! What were they going to do? How were they going to figure out the way?
What Jesus said in response to their confusion and their anxiety was an assurance. Jesus said to them, “I AM the way!” They knew the way because they knew him! They didn’t need a map. They didn’t need directions. And they didn’t need to worry, either! Jesus IS the way. No one comes to the Father by their own power or cleverness or sense of direction. No one comes to the Father by their own strength or smarts or spirituality. No one comes to the Father except through Jesus. He is the way, and the truth, and the life, and he will get them to where they need to be.
As part of my seminary education I took a study trip to Brevig Mission, Alaska, which is way up on the Seward Peninsula, north of Nome. Brevig Mission is named after a Norwegian Lutheran pastor named Tollef Brevig, who established a mission among the Inupiak people there. Today it is essentially a village of Alaska Natives who are all Lutheran! They are served by a pastor who also serves the community of Teller, which is just across an inlet of the Bering Sea. When it is above freezing and the water is open, you get from Brevig to Teller by boat. In the winter, you cross that frozen inlet by snow machine. I went in January, so on a Sunday morning I got to ride in the supply sleigh behind the snow machine as we went over to Teller for worship services.
On the way back is when things got interesting. As we made our way out onto the ice for the return trip, it started to snow. Hard. Then the wind kicked up, creating total white-out conditions. At one point the pastor driving the snow machine stopped to try to find the tracks we made on the way over. Those tracks were filling in fast.
You could say at this point that my heart was troubled! I’d read enough Jack London stories as a kid that I could vividly imagine how this could end up. I thought for sure that this was how I was going to die, lost out on this frozen finger of the Bering Sea. I came to Brevig to learn about being a pastor, but I would die instead as a popsicle.
I sure as heck didn’t know the way back to Brevig. There was no amount of smarts or strength or spirituality which I possessed that would get me back to the house. All I could do was hold on and trust that this pastor would get me there. And, somehow, he did.
To believe, to have faith, is to hold on and trust in Jesus. To know the way to the Father’s house is not about knowing a route and then following it, it is about knowing and trusting a person. It is about knowing and trusting Jesus to get you where you need to go. As Jesus explained further to Thomas, he and the Father are one.
And so when Jesus says he is the way, the truth, and the life, he is not giving us an orienteering project for us to figure out. He is not giving us a set of directions and telling us to prove ourselves. He is not telling us to make our own way or discover our own truth or to find life in ourselves. Jesus is calling us to simply hold on and trust him. He is the way, and the truth, and the life.
As Jesus’ disciples today, we often find that our hearts are troubled. During our life-long battle with sin, we find that we continue to betray and deny Jesus in ways both big and small, by things we have done and things we have left undone. Our hearts are troubled by the brokenness of the world. Our hearts are troubled by uncertainty and by loss and by fear.
In fact, in our congregation here it seems like we’ve had more than our share of troubled hearts these last few weeks. We have a number of folks who are grieving. We have several folks who are very sick, and folks who love them who are very worried. We have several brothers and sisters in Christ who are in life situations that are complicated and painful, without a clear path forward.
When your heart is troubled you can feel a little lost, a little disoriented. You can feel cold and afraid and unsure of the way home, uncertain that you’ll even make it home.
Today Jesus says to all of us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” He says, “Believe in God, believe also in me.” Jesus isn’t just asking us to give our assent to an idea or a doctrine. He is inviting us to trust in God, and to trust in him. They are one in the same, after all, and they are in cahoots to save us from everything that troubles our hearts. Trust us, Jesus says! Let us take care of things! Don’t worry!
Today Jesus says to all of us, “There is a future beyond your sin, beyond your failures. There is a home beyond your fears. There is a dwelling place beyond death. On the other side of all of that is the Father’s house. You will be safe there. I will be with you there. And I am going to get you there.”
Today Jesus says to all of us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This is indeed a boldly exclusive claim. Christ alone is the way to God the Father! No one comes to the Father by their own goodness. No one comes to the Father by their own efforts, or because they have earned entry. No one comes to the Father by their own smarts or strength or spirituality. These are all dead-end roads.
No one finds their own way to the Father’s house. No one discovers the truth by defining it for themselves. No one finds life by looking inward.
But this exclusive claim is also a promise: Christ’s work alone gets us to the Father! We don’t need to go down those dead ends, those spiritual rabbit holes. All there is for us to do is to know and to trust in Jesus. When you know Jesus, you know the way. When you believe in him, you know the truth. When you trust him, you will have life.
When Jesus left the disciples, he was indeed betrayed. He was denied three times by one of his closest followers. Jesus was arrested and beaten and crucified and killed. But then on the third day, he rose again. This was how Jesus prepared the way.
By his death and resurrection, Jesus leads us out of sin and into forgiveness and mercy and righteousness. By his death and resurrection, Jesus leads us out of fear and despair and into peace and hope and even joy. By his death and resurrection, Jesus ultimately will lead us out of death and into eternal life with him, so that where he is, there we will be also.
If your heart is troubled today, hold on and trust in Jesus. Even now he is making a way. Even now he is leading you. Hold on and trust him. He will get you where you need to go. He will get you to the Father’s house. He will get you safely home.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | May 2, 2023 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for April 30
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter – April 30, 2023
John 10:1-10
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our risen Lord Jesus Christ.
We live in the midst of an increasingly confusing cacophony of voices, all vying for our attention, and it is increasingly difficult to know which of these voices can be trusted.
There are voices on TV news with competing claims to the truth depending on which station you’re watching. While the nation’s news used to come through the trusted voice of a single figure like Walter Cronkite, it now comes through several voices, and they are all saying very different things.
There is a vast array of voices on social media making claims to the truth. Social media companies have struggled to figure out ways to make those online conversations trustworthy by trying to weed out fake accounts and figuring out ways to verify users and by tagging some statements with context or correction.
There are voices on platforms like Tik-Tok, where quick sound-bite video clips with sometimes dangerous or destructive ideas are repeated and multiplied over and over again, warping young minds and spreading social contagions.
There are now more than 150 million podcast episodes floating around the internet, being piped into people’s ears. Talk about a cacophony of voices! And with the increasing sophistication of Chatbots and AI, it is getting more and more difficult to trust that the voices we hear even belong to real people!
Podcaster Joe Rogan recently illustrated this point by having AI generate an entire episode of his show. It perfectly mimicked his voice and the voice of his guest. They engaged in a perfectly natural sounding conversation covering various topics for almost two hours – only none of it was real! It was all AI generated. The voices were completely fake.
For the record, this is not a blanket endorsement of everything Joe Rogan says or does – but this little experiment of his was very telling of what we’re in for as this technology advances. In a world like this, which voices are we to listen to? Which voices can we trust?
There were many voices competing for people’s ears in Jesus’ time too. Even without social media and podcasts and AI, there was a confusing array of voices. There were many religious movements and leaders, all making various claims to the truth. There were different voices saying different things about Jesus, about who he was and whether people should follow him or not.
In the chapter just before our gospel reading for today is the story of a man born blind. He couldn’t see Jesus, but he could hear his voice. He listened to Jesus’ voice and trusted it. By trusting in this voice he not only had his sight restored, he was given an entirely new life as he came to believe in and worship Jesus. In stark contrast to this were the voices of the Pharisees. They didn’t want people to listen to Jesus. They wanted people to listen to them.
It is in this context that Jesus warns people about listening to the wrong voices, and invites them to listen to his voice. And by way of illustration, Jesus points to how sheep listen to the voice of their shepherd. He talks about how shepherds open the gate and call their own sheep by name, and they follow him because they know the sound of his voice.
When I was in my first congregation in Montana, we were invited out to the home of some sheep ranchers. Our oldest son was just a toddler, and we pushed him in his stroller out to the big enclosure where the sheep were. The sheep were all clustered together on the far side of the sheepfold, so we called out to them, trying to lure them closer so our son could get a better look. Well, they didn’t budge. Then the wife of the sheep rancher called out to them. They still didn’t budge. But when the rancher, the shepherd himself, called out to them, they all came running! They knew his voice. They knew the voice of their shepherd and they followed it. What Jesus was talking about two thousand years ago still happens today!
Jesus points out how sheep don’t follow the voice of strangers, because they do not know the voice of strangers. He also warns that some of those voices are dangerous. They belong to thieves and bandits who come only to steal and kill and destroy.
Jesus is warning us too. Jesus is warning us to be careful about what voices we are listening to. He is warning us against following those voices which only lead us into danger. He is warning us against those voices which only want to steal and kill and destroy. Because we are his sheep, we are to listen to his voice.
Jesus says he uses his voice to call his sheep by name. Jesus knows his sheep intimately! He knows them personally! He cares for each of them individually, calling them to himself.
Jesus says that those who listen to his voice come in and go out and find pasture. That is, they come into the safety of the sheepfold where they are protected, and they go out into the pasture where they are fed. It is a picture of both protection and providence, of being guarded and being nourished.
Best of all, Jesus says that those who listen to his voice will have life, and have it abundantly. He has come to give us life with God, a life with God that begins now and continues forever. How can this kind of life be anything other than abundant, overflowing with God’s goodness and mercy and love?
You have heard this voice. In your baptism this shepherd Jesus has called you by name. He knows you intimately and personally. He knows your individual quirks and failings. He knows your specific sins, and he laid down his life for all of them, taking them upon himself. He also knows your specific gifts, and he raises you to new life in him so that you might share them with the world. He forgives you and loves you and continues to call you by name.
As you follow his voice, he leads you into his sheepfold, where he protects you from all those voices which would steal or kill or destroy. He calls you into the church, into Christian community, where he can ward off those other voices which would lure you away from him. He leads you to good pasture, where he can nourish and strengthen you.
As we listen to his voice, as we trust it, he fills us with life! A truly abundant life can only come from listening to the voice of Jesus Christ. He alone can give us an abundant life full of hope and joy and peace and love. He alone leads us into the abundance of eternal life with God.
Just this last week the Wall Street Journal had an article about a poll they had conducted about happiness. Only 12% of respondents in the poll said they were truly happy, and they followed this up with further investigation to try to find out what these happy people had in common. The biggest commonality among those who said they were truly happy was that they were frequent church-goers. They didn’t just identify as Christian in some vague philosophical way. They didn’t just go to church a couple times a year. They were weekly worshippers.
Now I’m sure this 12% of people who said they were truly happy still had problems. I’m sure they still had difficulties. But even so, they said they were truly happy. (Not to quibble, but perhaps a better word for what they were describing would be joy rather than happiness.)
It isn’t hard to see the connection between their response and their regular attendance in worship. After all, it is in worship that they hear the voice of their shepherd. That’s where they join with the rest of the flock to listen to his voice. It is in worship that his voice rises above all those other voices that only seek to steal and kill and destroy. It is within the sheepfold of the Christian church that we hear the Word of God, and in so doing we hear the deepest and fullest truths about ourselves, about our world, and about God. These truths are life giving!
It is a sad correlation to see that as church attendance has been going down in our country for decades, exacerbated significantly by COVID, people are quantifiably less happy. Diseases of despair are on the rise. Deaths of despair are on the rise to such a degree that the average life span in our country is going down. Those voices that only steal life and kill true joy and destroy hope are being listened to and followed far too often, with tragic results.
Let’s not be simplistic. It isn’t that coming to worship frequently is a magic formula that inoculates us from pain and sorrow and struggle. We all know that isn’t true.
But it is true that as our shepherd calls us into this sheepfold, as we listen to his voice, he continues to call us by name. He continues to lead us to green pastures and still waters, restoring our souls. He continues to comfort us when we are in the darkest valleys. He continues to prepare a table for us in the presence of our enemies. He continues to give us the promise that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
And so, amidst the cacophony of other voices competing for your attention, continue to listen carefully to the voice of your shepherd. Listen to it and trust it. Listen to it and follow it. For you are one of his beloved sheep, and he has come so that you would have life, and have it abundantly.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
