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

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent – March 9, 2025

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 10, 2025 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 9

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent – March 9, 2025

Luke 4:1-13

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

In our adult Bible study recently we talked about the Christian life as a battle. The conversation arose out of our looking at St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, specifically in chapter 6 where he writes: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Paul then goes on to describe what the armor of God is: It is the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness and shield of faith and the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. These are spiritual weapons for a spiritual battle.

On the one hand, this sounds utterly foreign to many people. To think of life as a spiritual battle sounds like something from medieval times or out of a fantasy novel. To talk about “standing against the wiles of the devil,” as Paul says, sounds a little too woo-woo for some. As children of the Enlightenment, rationalism has shaped our minds in powerful ways. It has made us quick to dismiss spiritual realities, particularly the reality of the devil. The devil prefers it this way, you know. As C.S. Lewis once quipped, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.”

Many of us, then, are predisposed to dismiss the whole idea of spiritual warfare.  But when I started to describe this spiritual battle in our Bible study as a struggle between belief and unbelief, between hope and despair, between fear and trust, between obeying our appetites and obeying God, between living by faith or grasping for control, well, then heads started nodding around the room. When you start to talk about the devil in the way the Bible describes him – not as a little man in a red leotard with a pitchfork, but as an accuser, as a deceiver, as a tempter – well, then the devil becomes an enemy that people start to recognize. This is a battle people are familiar with. This is a battle you are in. We all are, whether we realize it or not.

St. Paul encourages us to put on the whole armor of God for this battle, and in our gospel reading for today Jesus teaches us how to use this armor.

Jesus was let by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he engaged in spiritual hand-to-hand combat with the devil. This was like a spiritual karate match in the desert, with Jesus deflecting every blow.

The first attack the devil attempted was to exploit Jesus’ hunger. After forty days of fasting in the wilderness, St. Luke tells us, Jesus was famished. And with his appetite raging, he was vulnerable. You’ve probably heard that it is a bad idea to go grocery shopping when you’re hungry?  Well, the devil knows this too! Our appetites have a way of lowering our defenses, lowering our inhibitions, weakening our resolve.  You can bet that the enemy will attack us at this same point, at our appetites – both physical and emotional. The devil will exploit the hunger in our bodies and the feelings in our hearts in order to lead us astray.

While his stomach was in knots, writhing with hunger, the devil tempted Jesus to command a stone to become a loaf of bread. There was nothing inherently wrong with this. Jesus would miraculously provide bread on other occasions in his ministry. But Jesus would not obey his appetite when that meant obeying the devil. And so Jesus deflected this attack by quoting from scripture. He quoted from Deuteronomy 8:3, saying, “One does not live on bread alone.” Jesus stops there, just referencing the first half of the sentence, but the rest of the verse is implied, and is just as important. The complete sentence is: “One does not live on bread alone, but from every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

We all have hungers and we all have feelings. But neither of these define what is true. Neither define what is good for us, necessarily. We must obey God rather than our appetites. Our appetites need to be kept in check by the Word of God.

The next attack was to tempt Jesus with an easy route to having authority over all the kingdoms of the earth. All Jesus had to do was worship the devil.  All he had to do was bend the knee.  This was a sneaky move. Both the devil and Jesus knew perfectly well that Jesus already had authority over all of these kingdoms, over all of creation itself.  After all, he was the Son of God!  What the devil was offering here was an easy route to establishing that authority.  Touching his knee to the ground would have been a whole lot easier than dying for the sin of the world.  Bowing before the devil would have been so much easier than going to the cross.  This could be the shortcut to glory by which Jesus could avoid all of that nasty business awaiting him in Jerusalem, and Gethsemane, and Golgotha.

You can be sure the devil will try this tactic on us too, laying before us what looks like an easier way of doing things, trying to lure us away from God by showing us another path – the path of least resistance.  The devil tries to promise us glory without a cross.   Just as the legendary blues man Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for worldly glory, we too can be convinced to take short cuts in our lives in order to avoid doing the hard thing.  We will abandon people rather than doing the harder thing of seeking reconciliation.  We will let ourselves be conformed to the world rather than transformed by the will of God.  We will bow the knee to our own personal causes and comforts and conveniences rather than making the sacrifices we need to make in order to be faithful to God. It is all so very, very tempting!

Jesus shows us how to deflect this attack. He did so by turning once again to God’s Word. Jesus again cites the book of Deuteronomy, saying, “It is written: Worship the Lord our God, and serve only him.” This is a reference to the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods.”  We deflect this attack by keeping this commandment front and center in our lives. We repel this attack by always putting God first, worshipping and serving only him, even when it is hard.

The third attack was to tempt Jesus to prove God’s faithfulness by throwing himself off the pinnacle of the Temple in order to let God’s angels rescue him.  The devil’s tactic here was to demand evidence that God’s promises were true.  The devil tried to lure Jesus into calling God’s bluff rather than trusting God’s promise.

This is perhaps the most sinister tactic of all, because the devil uses scripture for his own evil purposes.  Perhaps he is learning how Jesus fights and is trying to use Jesus’ moves against him. The devil quotes from Psalm 91, where it says that God will not let one’s foot be dashed against a stone.  The devil quotes this passage to Jesus and says, “Well? Prove it!”  And Jesus fought back with a counterpoint verse, again from Deuteronomy, saying: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

As Christians we live by faith, not by sight.  The evil one tries to lure us away from God by making us think we should be able to prove that God’s promises are true with hard evidence.   Sometimes we do have evidence in the form of an answered prayer, an unexplained healing, or a life dramatically transformed.  But sometimes we don’t!  And when we base our faith in God on proof, on evidence, we’re not really living by faith anymore!  Living by faith means trusting in God even when you’ve fallen and are hurting.  Living by faith means trusting in God’s salvation when all you see around you is suffering and sin.  Living by faith means trusting God’s promises rather than asking God to prove them.  When this tactic is used on us by the enemy, we can deflect it by trusting God rather that testing him.

We have learned some moves from Jesus’ duel with the devil. We’ve learned some techniques as we engage in this spiritual battle that is the Christian life. We’ve learned to not live by our appetites, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God. We’ve learned to take the path of the cross rather than the path of least resistance.  We’ve learned to live by promises and not by proofs.  These are all important moves for us to learn as we wage this battle. But Jesus is so much more than our sensei. He is so much more than a spiritual karate instructor.

During the Lenten season we use a different prayer after communion. In this prayer we pray, “Almighty God, you gave your Son both as a sacrifice for sin and a model of the godly life.” Jesus is a model of the godly life, to be sure, and so he has some moves to teach us. But even more importantly, Jesus was given as a sacrifice for our sin. Jesus is more than a sensei; he is our savior. Jesus went into the wilderness for us, a place of utter desolation. Jesus experienced excruciating hunger for us, going without food for forty days. Jesus did battle with the devil, winning every round for us. This was all a great sacrifice for us, and it foreshadows the greater sacrifice he would make for us on the cross. It was there on the cross that the devil found his next opportune time, and came at Jesus again saying, “If you are the Son of God, save yourself! Come down from the cross!” But Jesus didn’t come down. And it was in Christ’s sacrifice for us on that cross that the devil was finally defeated.

We still have a battle to fight, there are still these spiritual skirmishes over our souls, but the war has ultimately already been won by the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, who promises to share his victory with us when his kingdom comes in all its fullness. In the meantime, as we sing in “A Mighty Fortress,” Martin Luther’s great battle hymn of the Christian church: “God’s Word forever shall abide, no thanks to those who fear it; for God himself fights by our side, with weapons of the Spirit.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church