Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent – December 22, 2024

by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 23, 2024 | Sermons

Click here for a worship video for December 22

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent – December 22, 2024

Luke 1:39-45

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

Some of the most cherished and precious memories of my life are from when my wife was carrying our unborn children. I remember the first time our first son kicked in the womb. It was at a Mariners game after Amy had eaten a half-order of garlic fries. He leaped with joy for those garlic fries, and he still likes them! I remember with our second son lying on the couch in the parsonage in Winlock and Amy picking up my hand and resting it on her belly, right on the place where our son was kicking. I remember with our third son going to a performance of the Seattle Symphony with my wife, late in her pregnancy. She was wearing a little black dress, proudly protruding with seven months’ worth of baby underneath. She was gorgeous and radiant. And this wasn’t just me who thought so – she cut through the crowd like a rock star or a queen. People were pointing at her and smiling. Part of the concert was a performance of Bach’s Magnificat, so people were already excited about pregnant ladies, and they were all thrilled to see one in real life! Amy was the star of the intermission. These are some of my most cherished memories and my greatest blessings in life.

What we have in our gospel reading for this morning are some of the most cherished memories of the Christian church. Many of the world’s most respected Biblical scholars believe that Saint Luke, who set about to write an orderly account of the life of Jesus based on eyewitness testimony, wrote the verses we hear today based on conversations he had with Mary herself as she shared her cherished memories with him. And these memories are full of blessings! And these blessings are not only for Mary. These memories are full of blessings for all of us.

After learning that she would bear a child, Mary went to visit her aunt Elizabeth, who was herself six months along with a miraculous pregnancy, having conceived in her old age. When Mary arrived at Elizabeth’s home in the hill country of Judea, the baby Elizabeth was carrying leaped in her womb. We have here, preserved in scripture, the precious memory of a baby kicking. The unborn, grapefruit-sized prophet, John, was already doing his job of pointing to the unborn, pea-sized savior, Jesus. This led Elizabeth to proclaim the first of three blessings: “Blessed are you among women!” she said to Mary.

Now think about this blessing. Mary was not wealthy. She was not powerful. She was a poor girl from a small village. If she had an Instagram account, she wouldn’t have much to post about with the hashtag “blessed!” And yet, Elizabeth said, “Blessed are you among women.”

Mary is unique in the way she is blessed. We’ll hear more about that in a minute. But this memory is a blessing for all of us, because it tells us that God chooses people who are not the most obvious candidates for blessing. God calls those who are not necessarily wealthy or powerful. God notices and loves people who are not the “influencers” of their time. And so, God’s blessing falls upon us as well. Our often-unnoticed lives are not unnoticed or unimportant to God! God blesses us too. God blesses you.

And here is how God blesses you: he has come to you in Mary’s child. For the second blessing proclaimed by Elizabeth to Mary is: “And blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

Elizabeth knew who Mary was carrying. She said so in no uncertain terms.  “Why has this happened to me,” she continued, “that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” Mary was carrying the Lord, a term which, for two Jewish women, meant one thing only. It meant Mary was carrying the Lord God himself! That is what this term Elizabeth uses means! And so Mary is uniquely blessed among women in that she is the mother of God.

Here we have what is the heart and the scandal and the wonder of Christianity: That the Lord of all creation, the One who established the entire universe, came into it as a cluster of fetal cells in Mary’s womb.  “Blessed is the fruit of your womb,” Elizabeth proclaimed. Blessings, indeed. For by coming into the world in this way, God has become Emmanuel, God with us. In all our humanity, in all our frailty, in all our vulnerability, God has come to be with us.

Elizabeth then said to Mary, “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

Martin Luther once preached a sermon where he said there were three miracles in this chapter in Luke’s gospel. The first miracle, he said, is that a virgin would conceive. This wasn’t a huge deal, really. After all, God created the world out of nothing – surely he could have a virgin conceive! The second miracle is that God became a human being. This was a much bigger miracle, no doubt about it. But the third miracle, Luther said, was that Mary believed it – and Luther said that this third miracle was the biggest miracle of all! Mary trusted the word of the Lord! Mary had faith! She trusted the promise! “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

This third miracle continues to happen today. It is happening right now as God speaks his word to you, stirring you to faith, inviting you to believe, calling you to trust in his promises. What God conceived in Mary’s womb continues to be conceived in your ear and in your heart as God puts his word in there, telling you that he is near to you, nearer than you might think or feel. He has come to you in the Lord Jesus to forgive your sin, to show you his great love for you, and to assure you that you belong to him forever. Blessed are you who believe that there will be a fulfillment of what has been spoken to you by the Lord!

We have a tendency to romanticize our memories. I know I do. As our boys come home for Christmas as young adults and Amy and I reminisce and share memories with them and the special people in their lives, I know we mostly remember the best parts. As magical as Amy’s pregnancies seem to me now, if I think hard enough, I can remember being worried – worried about money, worried about the responsibilities of fatherhood, worried knowing that giving birth is never without risk. It was indeed a wonderful time, but it was an anxious time too.

It is easy to romanticize these memories of the Christian church too, and we shouldn’t. We should remember the terrible danger Mary was in as an unwed mother in that time and place. While part of the motivation for Mary to go to her aunt and uncle’s house in the hill country was to see her pregnant Aunt Elizabeth for herself and probably to help as one of her midwives, it was also true that it was probably a pretty good time for Mary to get out of Nazareth. Once Mary started showing, there would be all kinds of rumors going around. Surely part of Mary’s motivation, then, was to avoid some of that scandal and the very real danger it brought. If she was out of sight and out of mind for a few months, the math surrounding the dates of her wedding and her delivery date would be a little more fuzzy. People would be less likely to figure things out. And so, even amidst the very real blessings, this was no doubt a time of anxiety for her.

There would have been difficulties for Elizabeth too. While she was no doubt thrilled to be expecting a child in her old age, she also probably had to endure the snickers and knowing smiles of people who were surprised to find out that their elderly priest and his wife were still…active in that way. More seriously, having a child now would also have been a sad reminder of all those lost years when she was younger and had more energy to do things with her child, when she might have expected to live long enough to see her child marry, perhaps even to become a grandmother – something that surely wouldn’t happen now. And so it had to have been bittersweet for her. There had to have been some complicated emotions around the edges of her joy, as is often the case for all of us.

But it was right into the anxiety and the danger and the bittersweet, right into the middle of these fraught situations and their complicated emotions that these blessings came: The blessing of God’s favor, the blessing of a Savior, the blessing of faith.

As Christmas comes this week, many feel immense pressure to create memories that are just so. Many people feel a lot of pressure to have things be magical in one way or another. If that’s how it ends up being for you, wonderful. For others who are experiencing grief or estrangement or loneliness, the joy of Christmas can be tainted by lots of complicated emotions. But know that the blessings of God came to Mary and Elizabeth in a complicated set of circumstances, and they can come to you that way too.

No matter what today or the next few days or the new year ahead brings for you, these precious memories of the nascent life Mary and Elizabeth carried are for you to cherish and ponder.  They have been handed down to us by Mary and dutifully recorded for us by Saint Luke so that we might delight in them, that we might learn from them, that we might trust in what God is telling us through them. Whether you are young or old, a parent or childless, male or female, they are the memories we hold collectively as the church, and so they are yours.

And they tell us that God comes to and calls and notices and loves people you wouldn’t necessarily expect, people like you and me. They tell us that the Lord himself entered the world through the womb of Mary so that he could come and be with us, so that he could come to save us. They tell us that when we believe this, when we believe the word spoken to us by the Lord, we too are truly blessed.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent – December 15, 2024

by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 16, 2024 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for December 15

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent – December 15, 2024

Luke 3:7-18

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

When people come to church, I usually say something like, “Welcome!” or “Good morning!” or “Good to see you!” I am genuinely happy to see people come through the doors for worship, no matter who they are. I’ll bet you’re the same way. In fact, our Stephen Ministers have recently been serving as greeters, and I’ve never seen anything but a smile on their faces and I’ve never heard anything but sincere joy when they see people coming in to worship.

And if somebody shows up at Oak Harbor Lutheran to be baptized? Well, I am thrilled! I am ecstatic. I even get a little giddy.

John the Baptist? Not so much, it seems. As we heard in our gospel reading for today, entire crowds of people came out to be baptized by him. And how did he respond? He said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

So maybe we don’t want John the Baptist serving as a greeter here at OHLC. But as blunt and rude as John sounds here, he is really just doing his job. His job was to prepare the way of the Lord. His job was to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. And part of his work in preparing the way involved reminding people of why they need this Messiah, why they need to be saved, why they need to be rescued and redeemed.

And so John calls the crowd “a brood of vipers.” He doesn’t single out any one group or behavior – everyone gets tagged with this unsettling name. A brood of vipers is a nest of young snakes. A brood of vipers is a mass of slithering baby serpents. I’m not making this better for John, am I? To be sure, the language is unsettling, even insulting, but – it is theologically accurate! John calls those in the crowd the offspring of the serpent. He is inferring that they are the descendants of those in the Garden of Eden who followed the serpent into sin. We say the same thing in our baptism liturgy, only with more polite language: “We are born children of a fallen humanity.”

The crowds don’t argue with John. They don’t deny that they are in league with the serpent. Instead, they ask what they should do. And John tells them. If you have two coats and you see someone who has zero coats, share one of yours! Do the same with food! Don’t be greedy! If you’re a tax collector, don’t cheat. If you’re a soldier, don’t extort people and don’t be a bully.

This is not advanced ethics. All of this is already laid out in the Law. The Ten Commandments already taught all of this! None of what John teaches here is new information. None of it is complicated or extraordinary or heroic behavior. This is “Being a Decent Human Being 101.” But the fact that they need to be told to do the most basic ethical thing is revealing.

In preschool chapel recently I was teaching a lesson about the Ten Commandments and I introduced the topic by asking the kids what some of the rules are at preschool. And one of the kids said that one of the rules at preschool is “No kicking people in the head.” You would think this would go without saying, but apparently this little guy needed to be told. The rule itself, then, is revealing, isn’t it! Well, what John is saying here is just the grown-up version of that! That the crowd needed to be told the most basic things about how to conduct themselves just further reveals that they are indeed descendants of the fallen, that they are children of the serpent who deceived humanity into sin.

What John might lack in tact, he makes up for with truth. He tells the truth about the crowds, and the truth about us. John is accurate and honest about our condition, our situation. We may not be extorting people or kicking them in the head, but we too are born children of a fallen humanity – and we shouldn’t need to scratch too deeply beneath the surface of our lives to see that this is true.

In this way John is like a doctor who tells you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. John may not have the best bedside manner, but as a diagnostician he is accurate and he is honest. He announces a diagnosis. He bluntly points out the venom in our veins, and he prescribes some behavioral changes, some lifestyle changes.

But, like a good doctor does, he also goes a step further. Seeing that our condition will not ultimately be remedied by lifestyle changes – as important as those lifestyle changes are – he refers us out. Knowing that his prescription will only manage our symptoms, at best, he refers us to another. He refers us to a specialist.

As soon as people started wondering whether John himself might be the Messiah, John admitted that he wasn’t. He admitted that they were going to need help from someone else. He told them that someone who was more powerful than him was coming. He would be the expert in curing the snake sickness we have inherited. He would be the specialist in this area. John isn’t worthy even to untie the thong of his sandals. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire,” John said.

On the surface, this sounds like more of the same from John. On the surface, John’s words about what the Messiah will do continue to sound ominous. Fire is a symbol of judgement. John says the Messiah will come with a winnowing fork in his hand – and whatever that is, it doesn’t sound like something you want to be on the wrong end of. John says that the Messiah will separate the wheat from the chaff, with the chaff being destroyed in an unquenchable fire.

Is this a specialist with whom you want an appointment? On the surface, maybe not. But thankfully, we can interpret this language from the perspective of what the Messiah did when he came. We can interpret this language from the perspective of who the Messiah ended up being. We can interpret it through the lens of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus came, he removed the chaff from people through the fire of his love. He showed mercy towards sinners, announcing that they were forgiven. This removed the chaff, that sheath of sin surrounding and obscuring the valuable wheat within. Jesus gathered in the precious grains of wheat, restoring them to the granary of God by the fire of his grace.

When Jesus came, he took the fire of judgement upon himself on the cross. He endured the winnowing fork with his own body, taking our sin upon himself so that we would be free.

When Jesus came, he not only died for our sin, he rose again – breaking the curse of the serpent, conquering sin and death forever, raising us to new life with him.

When Jesus came, he brought with him a new baptism, just as John said. Jesus told his disciples to go to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul teaches us that this baptism joins us to Jesus’ death and resurrection, for it takes the salvation he won for us on the cross and gives it to us personally. St. Peter teaches us that this baptism “now saves you.”

This is indeed a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire.

It is a baptism of the Holy Spirit because God comes to us in it. God is present and at work in it. Through it, God gives us his Spirit, that he might continue to guide us and teach us and repent us and renew us and comfort us throughout our lives. And by the power of this Spirit, truly good works begin to come out of us.

It is a baptism of fire because through it, God gives us his name – just as he did for Moses through the burning bush. It is a baptism of fire because through it, God leads us out of bondage – just as God led Israel by the pillar of fire. It is a baptism of fire because it puts good news in our hearts and on our lips, just as it did as tongues of fire fell upon the disciples. It is a baptism of fire because through it, God destroys everything that separates us from him.

John the Baptist is a good diagnostician. Jesus calls him the greatest of all the prophets. But John’s most important job is to refer us to the specialist, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Once the specialist goes to work on you, things are different. As the one who is more powerful than John, Jesus doesn’t just diagnose, he cures. His message isn’t just, “Do better!” It is “Your sins are forgiven.”

With the baptism he brings, we are no longer a brood of vipers. We are no longer children of the serpent. With the baptism he brings, we have been reborn as children of God and warmly welcomed into life with him, today and forever.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent – December 8, 2024

by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 9, 2024 | Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent – December 8, 2024

Luke 3:1-6

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

The roughest road I’ve ever been on (that wasn’t a forest service road) was Cleveland Avenue in Saint Paul, Minnesota. While I was in seminary there I worked part-time at a bookstore, and I took the bus to work. There are a lot of bad roads in Minnesota due to the frost heaves that buckle the roads every year, but Cleveland Avene was the worst. This road didn’t have potholes, it had craters! I could always tell when we hit Cleveland Avenue because the bus would start to shudder. That was your signal to hold on for dear life, because next came the bone-jarring bouncing up and down. That bus bounced so hard I thought for sure the drive shaft was going to snap! I thought the windows would shatter! I thought the wheels on the bus would go flying off, flying off, flying off. It was terrible.

But then a voice would come over the intercom. The voice was shaky, vibrating, and tremulous because of the violent shaking of the bus, but the message was firm and clear: “Next stop, Como Avenue.” When I heard that voice, I knew that the rocky ride was almost over. When I heard that voice, I knew that I was almost home.

The people of Israel traveled a rocky road. They had been overrun by the Babylonians, their cities and towns decimated. They had been marched off into exile, held in captivity in Babylon. They were far from home, and longed to return. They were surrounded by foreign gods and were tempted to forsake the one true God and start worshipping these idols. It was a temptation that was too much for some. Many gave in. The people of Israel were far from home, and they were far from God. It was a rough road. It was a bone-jarring experience. They were holding on for dear life.

But then came a voice crying out in the wilderness. The prophet Isaiah came with words of demand and promise: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Isaiah called the people to get ready. He called them to prepare themselves. He told them that God was going to act. God was going to straighten out the crooked path they were on. God was going to smooth out the rough ways. God was going to make a road home.

Fast forward several hundred years. The people of Israel were home, but now they were being oppressively ruled by Romans instead of Babylonians. In our gospel reading for today St. Luke reminds his readers of what the political situation in Israel was like. He tells us the brutal Roman leader Pontius Pilate was serving as governor of Judea. He tells us the conniving, murderous Herod was ruler over Galilee. He tells us the self-serving Annas and Caiaphas were serving as the high priests. This roots the story in real history. This is not a pretend, “once upon a time” story, but something that really happened.

But the naming of all these figures from real history also serves to remind everyone what a difficult time this was for the people of God. Just as had happened in Babylon, they were under the thumb of their enemies. Just as happened in Babylon, many had turned away from the one true God and were increasingly comfortable with the pagan gods whose statues were popping up all over Israel. Just as happened in Babylon, many were compromising their faith in order to make a buck, in order to ingratiate themselves with their oppressors. Those who remained faithful faced a particularly rough road. It was a bone-jarringly difficult time. God’s people were holding on for dear life.

But then came a voice. Then came a new prophet. Then came John the Baptizer. St. Luke describes him as a new Isaiah. John came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin. He called the people to turn away from those other gods. He called them to turn towards the one true God, the God who loved them, the God who had rescued their ancestors, the God who was coming to save them. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

As God’s people today, we often travel a rough road. Our lives often look like a crooked path, zigging this way and zagging that way. Oftentimes it feels all uphill. Sometimes life is a bone-jarring experience. Sometimes we feel like we’re holding on for dear life.

But today we hear a voice. Today through the living Word of God, we hear the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. God speaks to us today through the prophet John, via the writings of St. Luke.

Today we are called to repentance. To repent means to turn. It means turning away from sin. It means turning away from all the false gods we find ourselves serving. We may not be praying to a statue of a Roman deity, but we might well be putting our trust in things that are not God. Maybe we’re serving the god of politics, making it the be-all and end-all of our lives. Maybe we’re serving the god of home entertainment. Maybe we’re serving the god of Jack Daniels or the god of money. The most common false god of all is the god of the self, thinking we are the center of the universe, the independent arbiter of right and wrong, and the definer of our own realities. To repent is to turn away from all of this. It is to turn away from the chronic idolatry that plagues our lives. It is to turn away from sin.

To repent is also to turn towards. It is to turn towards the one true God. It is to turn towards the God who loves us and forgives us, the God who rescues and saves us, the God who joyfully receives us through his grace and welcomes us home to him.

To repent is not merely an exercise of the will. It is much deeper than that. Repentance is what happens when God’s Word comes to us and shakes us up. It is what happens when God gets our attention, when God “repents us” away from our sin and towards himself. This is what God is doing for us today as he has called and gathered us by the Holy Spirit to come and hear his voice.

This voice also calls us to prepare. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” the prophet says. As Christmas approaches, many of us are preparing our homes for the holidays. We decorate. We spruce things up. We do a little extra cleaning so things look nice for our guests. Similarly, we sometimes think the preparation we’re called to here involves sprucing ourselves up, cleaning up our bad habits, decorating our lives with a few good deeds here and there. This isn’t wrong, exactly. Perhaps that’s exactly what the Holy Spirit is prompting in you as you are “repented.”

But to prepare the way of the Lord is not just about cleaning up your life. It is about handing your whole life over to God – even the messy parts, especially the messy parts! It isn’t just about cleaning your room, it is about making room. It is about making room for him in our lives. It is about making room for him in our lives by setting aside time to be in his Word, time to be in prayer. We prepare the way of the Lord by making room in our lives for worship. We add extra worship services on Wednesdays during Advent for just that purpose. We are preparing not only our homes, but our hearts. We are preparing not only for Christmas, but for Christ.

For many people, life in general, and perhaps the holiday season in particular, feels like a ride down Cleveland Avenue. It is filled with a lot of bone-jarringly difficult moments. It feels like things are about to snap, about to shatter, about to break. Sometimes we feel like we’re holding on for dear life. Sometimes it feels like the wheels are about to fly off.

But then comes a voice.

The prophet John doesn’t just call us to repent. He doesn’t just call us to prepare. He also gives us a promise from God. He promises us that all the rough ways will be made smooth. He promises us that home is just around the corner. He assures us that the day is upon us when all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

With these words, John is pointing us to the coming savior. He is pointing us to Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life. He is pointing to Jesus, who comes to us with forgiveness, life, and salvation. With the coming of Jesus, we have a smooth and straight path home to God, where we find true hope, true joy, and true peace, today and forever.

Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church