Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent – February 26, 2023

by Jeffrey Spencer | Feb 27, 2023 | Sermons

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Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent – February 26, 2023

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7, Romans 5:12-19, Matthew 4:1-11

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

The wilderness of Laos is scattered with wreckage from the Vietnam war. The dog tags of American pilots have been found in the jungle. A chunk of an airplane wing rests in the courtyard of a small Laotian village. Bone fragments have been found, DNA-tested, and repatriated to long-suffering families here in the U.S.

One of our church members went out into this wilderness in search of his father. Our friend Brian Danielson (who gave me permission to share this story) was only 18-months old when his father was shot down over Laos, and Brian has made several trips now to the Laotian wilderness. In 2006 he stood and laid flowers at the spot his father was last seen alive. A bone fragment previously recovered from the area was proven to have belonged to his dad, allowing the family to finally lay him to rest in their hometown of Kenyon, Minnesota. Brian will tell you that this wilderness journey brought tremendous healing and closure to him and his family. Brian has since been back to the Laotian wilderness with others on a similar journey of what you might call ancestral healing, sifting through the wreckage to make things right, bringing healing and peace to old and lingering wounds.

Our gospel reading from Matthew for this first Sunday in Lent takes us into the wilderness with Jesus, where he spent forty days and forty nights. Matthew wrote his gospel primarily for a Jewish audience, and if you were part of Matthew’s original audience and you heard the words “wilderness” and “forty” as the setting for a story, you would automatically have thought about Israel and the forty years they spent in the wilderness. This is a crucial backdrop for understanding what Matthew is telling us about Jesus.

The wilderness was a place of disaster for God’s people. It was a place strewn with wreckage from their past, a place where the enemy had brought them down. It was in the wilderness that the Israelites were brought down by the enemy, who exploited their hunger to bring them to despair and cause them to doubt God’s promises. It was in the wilderness that the enemy tricked the Israelites to start demanding proof from God rather than living by faith. It was in the wilderness that the enemy led the Israelites to bow the knee to false gods who promised them greater worldly power. As this spiritual battle raged, many, many Israelites perished. Their bones were literally strewn across this wilderness.

After Jesus’ baptism, he was led by the Spirit into this wilderness. He didn’t wander out there accidentally. He wasn’t going for a leisurely stroll. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. He was led there for a purpose, for a mission. He was going there to be tempted by the devil, Matthew tells us, but this was not just a boxing match out in the boonies. Jesus was going to the very place his ancestors had fallen. He was going to the wilderness to begin to make things right.

The enemy came at Jesus after he had fasted for forty days and forty nights. Jesus was famished, just as Israel had been. “If you are the Son of God,” the devil said, “command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Jesus had the power to do so. It wasn’t inherently wrong for him to do so. Jesus would miraculously provide bread on other occasions in his ministry. But Jesus was righting an old wrong here. He was making things right. He wouldn’t fall to the devil’s taunt. He responded, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

The enemy then tried to lure Jesus into testing God. “Throw yourself down from this mountain peak! Let God prove he will save you!” But Jesus resisted. He would live by faith, not proof. He replied, “It is written: You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Finally, when the devil invited Jesus to fall down and worship him in exchange for worldly power, Jesus replied by saying, “Away with you, Satan!” And then he recited the first commandment: “It is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

Do you see what is happening here? Jesus was doing battle with the devil, to be sure, but he was also revisiting old wounds, the wounds God’s people had left behind in the wilderness. Jesus was walking amongst the wreckage of the past in order to begin to bring healing.

This old wound goes back even farther than Israel. It goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. We heard in our first reading how their jungle paradise was turned into a wilderness after the enemy brought them down with a deception. They were tempted by the serpent to doubt God’s word and to eat of the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve were deceived by the enemy into seeking their own wisdom, deceived into attempting to be their own gods – and the wreckage of this attack has followed human history ever since.

As St Paul says in our reading from Romans for today, sin and death came into the world through one man, Adam. It has “exercised dominion” from Adam to Moses and generations since. And just as sin and death came through one man, so too does God’s grace and the free gift of his righteousness come through one man, Jesus Christ. “Just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all,” Paul explains, “so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” It was Jesus’ act of righteousness which would make things right once and for all.

This “act of righteousness” refers to all of Jesus’ life and ministry, of course.

It is especially referring to Christ’s death and resurrection, where sin, death, and the devil were defeated once and for all. But the beginnings of this can be seen right after his baptism, when Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Jesus’ time in the wilderness was a journey of ancestral healing. He went to the very spot where his ancestors died, confronting the pain, overcoming the devil and his temptations, foreshadowing the victory he would eventually share with all of us.

Life in this world can sometimes feel like a walk through the wilderness – and not the leisurely kind. It can feel like a journey through the wreckage of the past. There are painful reminders of losses we’ve faced. There are tokens of old wrongs that ache to be resolved, old absences we long to fill.

Sometimes in this wilderness we find ourselves under attack. While the devil has ultimately been defeated – he has no ultimate power over us! – he still knows how to deceive. Even in his death throes, he manages to attack us with temptations. The enemy knows to come at us when we’re hungry, when we’re weak and vulnerable. The enemy continues attack our identity as God’s children by getting us to look for tangible evidence of answered prayer rather than living by faith, by simple trust in God’s promises. The enemy continues to lure us into seeking worldly power and control by worshipping false gods. The enemy continues to massage God’s word, saying, “Did God really say that?” until we’ve come up with our excuses for eating the forbidden fruit, justifying our disobedience with our turned-in-on-self logic.

We can learn from Jesus today how to withstand these attacks. Jesus models for us how important it is for us to know God’s word and to hold fast to God’s promises. He teaches us that God’s word strengthens us more than bread ever will. He teaches us that living by faith and living by proof are two different things. He teaches us that false gods and justifications will only ever get you a mouth full of rotten fruit.

These lessons are important, but they come too late to deal with the wreckage that is already part of our lives. Jesus came to do more than teach us how to survive in the wilderness. He came to bring healing and life and salvation. He was led into the wilderness on a journey of ancestral healing, to bind up the wounds that began with Adam and Eve and have continued right up to you and me. For as sin and death came through one man, so too does grace and righteousness come through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Whatever attacks you’ve endured, whatever losses you’ve grieved, whatever wounds you’ve suffered, Christ has come to bring healing to them through his saving love. He was led into the wilderness by the Spirit to begin his mission to rescue and restore us. There he showed his power over the enemy, succeeding where death once exercised dominion. He continues to meet us in the wilderness to share his victory with us, to make things right, to bring us his peace.

And one day he will bring us home at last.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for Ash Wednesday – February 22, 2023

by Jeffrey Spencer | Feb 25, 2023 | Sermons

Sermon for Ash Wednesday – February 22, 2023

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17, 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

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

There are any number of images from the news that remind us that not all is right with the world. Perhaps you’ve seen the pictures from Turkey after earth’s tectonic plates violently pulled apart, leaving a miles-long gash in the planet. The latest numbers I’ve seen are that over 40,000 people were killed in that earthquake. Perhaps you’ve seen pictures from across Ukraine, where once vibrant cities are now burnt-out shells surrounded by mass graves. Perhaps you’ve heard about the train derailment in Ohio and have seen the pictures of that demonic-looking plume of toxic smoke which darkened the sky. Maybe you’ve seen pictures of the dead fish and the dead wildlife and the dead pets which had been poisoned by that cloud of chemicals. We are reminded on a regular basis, are we not, that not all is right with the world?

The prophet Joel describes a similar time in the life of Israel. He describes a plague of locusts so thick they darken the sky. He describes a crop failure so devastating that it is sure to lead to widespread famine and misery. He describes a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. “Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in the ages to come,” Joel writes.

Scholars are torn as to whether this “great and powerful army” is another reference to the locusts which are crawling all over chapter one, or if this is a reference to a literal invasion of the Assyrians happening on top of the infestation of locusts. But whether Israel is facing a natural disaster or a human-caused disaster or both, it is clear that not all is right with the world. And Joel goes on in chapter two, as we heard, to point to the fact that all is not right in the lives of God’s people either. He uses it as a picture of the fact that not all is right in our hearts.

Joel issues a call to repentance. “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming…”

It isn’t just the world that is out of whack, Joel is warning, it’s your hearts too! It’s your lives! So return to the Lord your God, Joel pleads. Return with all your heart, with fasting and with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.

“Blow the trumpet in Zion!” Joel says. “Sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people.” All people are to be part of this gathering – the aged, the children, even nursing infants and amorous newlyweds. All need to repent. All need to return. And they can, Joel says, WE can, because the LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

To return to the Lord with all our heart is not merely a sentimental thing. It is about more than emotions or feelings. In our culture the heart is often symbolic of this kind of stuff, but in the Hebrew lexicon, the heart is the seat of the will. It is symbolic of the entire person, including the mind. And so to return to the Lord with all our heart is not just to think sweet thoughts or feel sweet feelings about God, it is to bring our whole selves to God, our whole lives.

There have been certain spiritual disciples God’s people have used to help facilitate this. Joel specifically mentions fasting. Fasting is the voluntary giving up of food for a set period of time or during certain times of the day. It has also sometimes been practiced as the voluntary giving up of certain kinds of food. For centuries and in some Christian circles still today it means no meat, no fats like oil or butter, no dairy, and no sugar. Sometimes today it means giving up something other than food.

In our gospel reading Jesus mentions fasting too, and adds prayer and giving as well. Jesus assumes his people will be giving and praying and fasting from self-indulgence. He says, “whenever you give alms, whenever you pray, whenever you fast,” assuming that these are things his people will be involved in.

But Jesus goes on to issue a warning. He warns against turning these practices which help us return to the Lord with all our heart into something self-serving. They shouldn’t be done to improve our reputation. They shouldn’t be done in order to be seen by others, so that others will praise us. We should never make a display of our giving, our praying, our fasting, Jesus says.

You see, Jesus knows how deep the rot goes when it comes to the human heart. He knows that even the practices we might take up to return to the Lord with all our heart can be occasions for sin, serving our own self-centered interests.

This is important for us to hear as we begin the season of Lent. As we seek to return to the Lord with all our heart, we may well take up certain practices, certain disciplines. In fact, the liturgy for Ash Wednesday just assumes that we will.

But we dare not use these disciplines as a way to display our righteousness before others. We dare not trivialize it by turning it into a forty-day challenge to see what we’re capable of. We dare not turn it into a self-improvement project. These disciplines of fasting and giving and praying are intended to be ways we learn to bring our whole hearts, our whole selves, our whole lives to God.

We need to return to the Lord with all our hearts, because not all is right with our lives. The same brokenness evident in creation as entire tectonic plates pull apart exists in our own lives as we pull apart from one another, as families and communities and nations pull apart and the structures which make human life flourish come crashing down on top of us. The same hatred and lust for power and glory that leads to the shelling of cities exists in our own hearts as we lob devastating words or actions at the people around us, or even just harbor devastating thoughts in our hearts. The same toxicity filling the streams and poisoning the farmlands of northeast Ohio runs through our veins as we reject or ignore God, or turn him into our casual plaything or part-time hobby. It poisons our relationship with God and our relationships with others. It poisons our hearts.

The result of this is death. The result is our return to the dust from which God created us. “The wages of sin is death,” as St. Paul so bluntly puts it. We are marked with a solemn reminder of this today as we are marked with ash and hear the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

But the shape the ashes take on our foreheads remind us that death and dust do not have the last word for us. We are marked with ash in the shape of the cross as a reminder that Jesus already died this death for us! Jesus took our sin upon himself, dying this death for us so that even though we die, yet will we live! His cross is inscribed on our forehead as a reminder of the salvation he has won for us. As St. Paul says in our second reading for today, “He made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Today is the day in the church year when we are confronted with the reality that not only is not all right with the world, but not all is right with us. Not all is right with our hearts, our lives. The same fallenness that cracks the world open and sets cities on fire and pollutes the sky and the earth exists in our hearts too. We are reminded that we need to return to the Lord our God with all our hearts, with our whole selves, our whole lives.

But we are also reminded that we CAN return to the Lord our God, because this God of ours is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

We CAN return to the Lord because he has already turned towards us in his dear Son, our savior Jesus Christ.

We CAN return to the Lord because Jesus has embodied the grace and mercy of God, bringing it to us as a free gift, received in faith, giving us forgiveness, life, and salvation.

And so even on this day of great solemnity, even on this day when we confess some hard truths about ourselves, this day when we are marked with ash, even so, even now, we rejoice that in Christ we have been reconciled to God. We rejoice that we have been marked with the cross of Christ forever, and so we can always return to him.

“See,” St. Paul writes, “now is the acceptable time; See, now is the day of salvation.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday – February 19, 2023

by Jeffrey Spencer | Feb 21, 2023 | Sermons

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday – February 19, 2023
2 Peter 1:16-21, Matthew 17:1-9

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

One of my favorite places to go is up to the top of Mount Erie. It is especially nice to be there on a bright sunny day. The views are spectacular! From one direction you can see Mount Baker gleaming in the distance. You can see all the way out to the Skagit flats. From another viewpoint you can see Campbell Lake, with its little island in the middle. You can see the western shore of Whidbey and all the smaller islands nearby, covered in lush forests. You get a nice day up there with a little sun on your face and you just don’t want to leave! You want to bask in the majesty of it all!

Jesus took Peter and James and John up to Mount Tabor, their version of Mount Erie. It is even pretty similar in elevation. But the spectacular view they would take in had nothing to do with the scenery. Once they were up on the top of this mountain Jesus transfigured before them. Jesus’ face shone like the sun. His clothes became dazzling white, or, as the ESV nicely translates it, “his clothes became white as light.” For a moment, they saw Jesus in all his glory. They saw the glory Jesus had from eternity with the Father, the glory of the Father’s only begotten Son, the glory of the Word who was with God and who was God and who had become flesh and lived among them. They saw his divine light breaking out, as bright as the sun.

As if this weren’t enough, suddenly, Moses and Elijah were there, talking with Jesus! Talk about a celebrity sighting! These great figures from the past were now right there in front of them, chatting away with Jesus!

As Peter looked on in awe, shielding his eyes and squinting at Jesus, he said: “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Peter wanted to stay there! He wanted to continue to bask in that majestic light. He wanted to continue to take in this remarkable scene. And so he quickly came up with these elaborate plans for a building project. He would build three dwelling places, one for each of them, so that they could all stay there and the disciples could continue to soak in that holy light. Yes, Peter had big plans. But you know, it has often been said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

It seems rather fitting then that as Peter was describing his plans, God interrupted him! “While Peter was still speaking,” scripture tells us, “suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” The disciples were terrified. They fell to the ground, overcome by fear.

Were they terrified because of the shadow that now fell upon them? Were they terrified because of the darkness that enveloped them? Were they terrified because they heard the voice of God himself? Were they terrified because of their human smallness in the face of such power? Because of their sins in the face of such holiness? As it says in Hebrews 10, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Were they afraid because their own plans were falling apart? Were they afraid because they were suddenly keenly aware of their own utter lack of control? Their helplessness? Their complete dependence on God’s mercy?

These terrified disciples were told to listen to Jesus. And what did Jesus say to them? “Get up and do not be afraid.” Jesus touched them, perhaps with a hand to raise them up, perhaps with a reassuring touch on their shoulder. He touched them and said, “Do not be afraid.”

Peter’s plans were abandoned on that mountaintop. Jesus’ plan was now to be implemented. Jesus was now on his way to the cross. He told the disciples to tell no one about what they had seen until after his plan was complete, after he had been raised from the dead.

We all have mountaintop experiences we wish would never end but do. We all have times when life doesn’t go according to our plans, when that shadow comes out of nowhere, when the darkness creeps in again. Maybe it happens when we are confronted with our own sinfulness. Maybe it happens when we are reminded of our weakness, our smallness, our vulnerability, our mortality, or the mortality of our loved ones. Maybe it happens when we have those moments when we realize just how little control we have over things. There are times when we lose sight of the glory of Christ, when we find ourselves in the darkness and become afraid.

Our epistle reading for today is an excerpt from a letter from Peter himself, where he reflects on his experience of the Transfiguration. After the resurrection, that gag order Jesus gave, that non-disclosure agreement, was voided and he could talk about his experience on the mountaintop.
First, Peter makes clear that this is no tall tale. “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Peter writes, “but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty….We ourselves heard this voice from heaven, while we were with him on the mountaintop.” This is something that really happened in history, and Peter saw it himself.

Peter then goes on to draw out the implications of the Transfiguration for us today. He says that because of the Transfiguration we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed, and then he says we “would do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

The light of Christ, Peter is saying, is something we need to be attentive to. We are to hold it near as one would hold a lamp shining in a dark place. We are to cling to this lamp in defiance of the darkness. We are to live by the hope its light provides until the fullness of that light dawns and Christ brings in the new day.

On Wednesday the high school across the street went into lockdown after someone called in reports of an active shooter. Social media blared rumors of shots fired and people down. Soon the roads were closed around the church. Emergency vehicles started staging their response in our church parking lot. The Light Flight helicopter had been dispatched in anticipation of casualties and could be heard overhead. We locked down our building. The church staff started calling preschool parents to tell them they’d need to wait to pick up their kids. There were police briefly in our narthex with tactical rifles, getting organized before they headed quickly over to the school – the school where my wife was working and my son was in class. I felt sick to my stomach. I was terrified.

I watched from the narthex for a bit, trying to be available and helpful, but at one point I had to come into the sanctuary by myself. I needed to catch my breath. I didn’t turn any lights on, so it was dark in here, but there was a light streaming in through the windows. I remembered what I had just told the preschoolers an hour before as I lit the altar candles for chapel, “A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The situation at the school turned out to be a hoax, thanks be to God, but for a good hour and half I was pretty scared. In fact, I was a little disoriented the rest of the day. I lost track of time for a while and embarrassingly missed an appointment. I couldn’t concentrate. But for a moment in this then-dark sanctuary, there was a light of hope, a light of peace, a light no darkness could overcome.
“Be attentive to this, as to a lamp shining in a dark place,” Peter encourages us. Having seen the glorious light of Christ firsthand as an eyewitness, Peter encourages us to be attentive to this light when the darkness comes.

We are attentive to this light when we listen to Jesus. And what does Jesus say to us? He says, “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” He says to us, “All your sin is forgiven for my sake.” He says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” He touches us with his own body and blood and says, “Given for you.” He says, “Do not be afraid.” He gives us promises which shine a ray of light and hope and peace into the darkness. When we listen to Jesus, falling into the hands of the living God isn’t such a scary thing after all.

Today we join Peter and James and John on the mountaintop. We catch a glimpse of Christ’s glory, a glimpse of the radiant light of his divine majesty. It’s quite a view, to be sure.

But like them, we cannot stay here. We are moving now into the season of Lent, which begins on Wednesday. And so we join them by heading down the mountain on the journey to the cross.

Sometimes our plans fall apart. Sometimes our plans need to be abandoned. And so we entrust ourselves wholly to God’s plan for us. We trust in God’s plan of salvation, which unfolds for us now in the weeks ahead. In the midst of every darkness we trust that through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, God has ultimately saved us from sin, death, and every evil.

This good news is a light shining in the darkness. It is a light that no darkness can overcome.

Be attentive to it.

Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church