by Jeffrey Spencer | Sep 2, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for September 1
Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 1, 2024
James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
As we come to September and get closer to autumn, you can bet that cold and flu season is just around the corner. In fact, we’re getting reports from our kids that on college campuses it is already well underway. One of our sons and our niece have both started off the school year at Washington State University with nasty bugs.
There are some preventative measures you can take to avoid getting sick. You can take vitamin C. You can get a flu shot, which sometimes kind of helps. You can avoid sick people, being especially careful to not use their fork or their toothbrush, which you probably shouldn’t do anyway. And, of course, you should wash your hands – frequently and thoroughly. These are all good preventative measures to avoid catching something.
The Pharisees in our gospel reading for today practiced some preventative measures of their own. But they weren’t worried about catching a cold or the flu. The Pharisees weren’t concerned about becoming physically sick. Instead, they were concerned about becoming spiritually sick.
The Pharisees, along with most devout Jews, established a whole set of religious practices they put in place to preserve their spiritual health. They developed a whole set of rules above and beyond God’s commandments which they thought would help them avoid getting spiritually sick. They were to keep themselves separate from others who had questionable moral or spiritual health. They wouldn’t eat anything from the market unless it was ritually washed and dedicated to God. The utensils and pots and pans they used were similarly “purified” through ritual washing. And, of course, they washed their hands. This wasn’t to get rid of germs – they didn’t even know about germs! This was about ritual purity, not hygiene. All of this was in place to keep them from becoming spiritually sick. These practices had become well-established and widely practiced among the Jewish people as a sort of preventative measure against the sickness of sin.
So imagine their shock when they saw some of Jesus’ disciples digging into their meal without going through these proper rituals first! This was the spiritual equivalent of having someone sneeze on your plate or cough in your face! The Pharisees approached Jesus about this. They asked him: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” How could they be so careless? They wanted an explanation.
Jesus never does directly answer their question. Instead of explaining why his disciples don’t do the ritual hand washing, he instead uses their question as an opportunity to challenge their assumptions about spiritual health.
First, Jesus points out that these Pharisees aren’t as spiritually healthy as they think they are! “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition!” Jesus says, turning the tables on them. A few verses from this section are dropped, so we don’t hear the exact charge in our reading for today, but in the omitted verses Jesus accuses them of breaking the fourth commandment. He accuses them of using some of the traditions of the elders as a religious loophole to avoid taking care of their parents, violating the commandment to honor your father and mother. These Pharisees are bragging about being as healthy as a horse and pointing a disgusted finger at others while they have chicken pox all over their faces! And so Jesus rightly calls them hypocrites.
Jesus then goes on to challenge their assumptions even more. You see, these Pharisees seem to believe that sin is something you catch from others. They seem to think that you get it by being around others who have it. But Jesus tells them that it’s more complicated than that. “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile,” Jesus says. Sin isn’t something you catch! It isn’t something floating around outside of you that you breathe in. Instead, it already resides in every human heart. “It is from within,” Jesus says, “from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they are what defile a person.”
These Pharisees were always on the lookout for ways they might be spiritually infected by others. They pointed at Jesus’ disciples as being contagious, and all the while that bug was already there within their own hearts. They thought sin was a virus, but Jesus teaches them that it is genetic.
What does this mean for us?
Sometimes we do need to be careful about the air we breathe. Sometimes as Christians we do need to separate ourselves from certain people or situations or environments. Just as addicts often need a whole new friend group in order to stay clean and sober, sinners need to be careful about the company we keep and the circles we move in and the media we consume so as not to make our spiritual sickness worse. There are things we do need to stay away from, things we need to avoid, things we need to wash our hands of completely so as not to exacerbate our symptoms. We are called again and again in scripture – even in the New Testament – to be holy, to be godly, to be careful about how we live. Our second reading for today concludes with a call to keep ourselves “unstained by the world.”
But at the same time, we need to remember that sin and evil aren’t just “out there.” They aren’t just floating around outside of us. It isn’t only found in other people, those people we avoid, those people we judge. It’s already right here in our hearts.
As the great Soviet dissident and writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn once wrote, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties – but right through every human heart.” This sounds to me a lot like what Jesus said to the Pharisees, and what he’s saying to us today. There are things we can and should do to limit our exposure to that which would lead us astray, to be sure. But we cannot escape what is already in our hearts.
So what are we to do? What do we do with these hearts of ours that Jesus says are already infected with sin and evil? What are we to do with this gospel reading?
I’m privy to a lot of medical situations people endure. People often come to me with prayer requests when they are undergoing medical testing or struggling with frustrating symptoms. There often comes a point when they finally get a correct diagnosis. And when that correct diagnosis comes, even if it isn’t great, there is usually a great sense of relief. “At least now we know,” people say. I know a kid who wasn’t gaining weight like he should. He had tummy troubles and potty issues. He went years with these symptoms before finally getting correctly diagnosed with Celiac disease. This isn’t fun to have, but it was also a relief to know what the real problem was. “At least now we know,” his mother said. Once you know what the problem is, you can start thinking about what is going to make you better. Getting a correct diagnosis was the first step in getting his life back.
Our gospel reading is notably deficient in actual gospel – that is, there is nothing that is explicitly and obviously good news in it. But the beginning of the good news is there in the accurate diagnosis of our spiritual sickness. Spiritually speaking, we all have a genetic heart condition. This isn’t the gospel, but it is the beginning of the good news, because now at least we know! Now we know what we’re dealing with. Now we know the truth about ourselves. Now we know the real problem.
Now we know that our problem is more than skin deep, and so we need something more than hand sanitizer or a topical lotion. Now we know that our illness is more than viral, and so we know that all the preventative measures in the world will not ultimately save us. Now we know the full truth about our condition, and so now we are in a position to receive the only thing that can make us well.
Why could the disciples eat with unwashed hands? Because they were eating with Jesus, whose grace meant that they were already clean. Why didn’t they need those spiritual preventative measures? Because they were with Jesus, who had come to make them well through his saving love.
This same Jesus comes to us today. He makes us clean by his word of forgiveness, where he sanitizes us anew by his grace. He comes in the cleansing Word and water which are poured over a new brother in Christ today who is receiving the sacrament of Holy Baptism. Jesus comes to us in his Holy Supper to give us a blood transfusion as we literally receive him – in, with, and under the bread and wine – that he would literally enter into the veins that lead directly to our hearts.
Today, through Word and Sacrament, our Lord Jesus is creating new hearts in us. By his presence here with us today, we are made clean. By the grace he pours out for us, we are made well. He is the cure for our sin-sick hearts, and as we receive him today, we get our lives back – today and forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Sep 2, 2024 | News & Events
September 8 we return to worship at 8 & 10:30. Christian Education for all ages will be held at 9:15. We’ll also have a Blessing of the Backpacks at both services and a Youth & Family BBQ from 4pm-6pm. Join us as we kick off a new program year!
by Jeffrey Spencer | Aug 27, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for August 25
Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 25, 2024
John 6:55-69
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
There’s a pastor I know who entered into ministry as a second career. He started out working in the trades, but when he went into ministry it was obvious right away that he was a natural at it. He had a lot of gifts for pastoral work and his congregation, which was a new mission start, grew quickly. He kept bringing in new members. But then one Sunday he preached a sermon that went over like a lead balloon. What he said confused some people. It made others angry. And just like that, his ministry tanked. One sermon was all it took. People stopped coming. His congregation went into a steep decline. This preacher I’m talking about, of course, is Jesus.
As we come to the end of our exploration of John chapter 6, we hear how Jesus preached a sermon which offended people. They found his teaching difficult and started complaining about it. Jesus had, after all, told people they needed to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have life. He said that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood abide in him, and he in them. He said that whoever eats him will live because of him. This made no sense to anyone. Frankly, it sounded disgusting.
You might think that once people started complaining about this language that Jesus would soften things, that he would explain what he “really” means. But no. That’s not what happens. Not at all. As we pick up the sermon today Jesus doubles down once again.
Jesus said to those who were complaining: “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” This is a reference to his death and resurrection and ascension as the crucified and risen savior. If you’re offended now, Jesus is saying, what is going to happen when we get to that part? If they’re queasy about a little blood now, what are they going to do when Jesus is lifted up on the cross? If they don’t like Jesus describing himself in this way now, as the sole source of eternal life, what are they going to do when he actually ascends to the right hand of God?
Jesus goes on in this explosive sermon to say that “the spirit gives life and the flesh is useless.” When Jesus uses the word “flesh” here, he is NOT devaluing the body or our physical being. Christ became incarnate in a physical body and he rose with a physical body! Jesus is NOT saying that the physical body is less important than some inner truth or inner voice or inner spirituality – that’s Gnosticism, not Christianity.
The use of the word “flesh” here refers to our fallen human nature. Our fallen human nature will not lead us to salvation, Jesus is saying. Our fallen human nature will not lead us into life. The spirit gives life – our fallen human nature is useless. It cannot save us. It is what we need to be saved from!
Jesus continues by pointing out something else that is painfully true: His words are spirit and life, but there are some who do not believe. Moreover, Jesus says, no one can come to him unless it is granted by the Father. Faith is not a human work. It is not a human decision. It is not the result of human effort. It is a work of God to create faith in the human heart. You can’t achieve it; you can only receive it.
“Well then,” said the crowds, “forget that!” This is the moment when people left in droves. And note here that these weren’t Pharisees or the Chief Priests leaving. These weren’t the usual suspects who were always complaining about Jesus. John tells us that these were his disciples who were leaving! These were his followers!
We live in a time when people are again leaving in droves, when former disciples of Jesus are walking away from him. The Gallup organization has been keeping track of church membership in the United States for about 80 years, and in 1940, 73% of Americans belonged to a church. This held remarkably steady until around the year 2000, when it dipped slightly to 70%. Since then, it has plummeted. It dropped to 61% in 2010, and in 2020 it had fallen to 47%. I was ordained in 2000, so maybe it is all my fault! Seriously, some of you remember when peak cultural Christianity met the Baby Boom in the U.S. and churches were full to overflowing. My entire ministry, on the other hand, has been during this momentous shift towards a post-Christian culture, with people leaving Christianity in droves. It was no coincidence, then, that one of the elements of my Doxology pastoral renewal program was about the importance of spiritual disciplines in what can be a very discouraging time to be a pastor. It can be discouraging to anybody who cares about the church.
There are lots and lots of reasons for why people are leaving Christianity in our own time, but I think it boils down to the same thing that is happening in our gospel reading for today. Many people find Jesus and his claims hard to swallow. They don’t believe they need him for life. They don’t believe they need his forgiveness. They don’t believe there is anything wrong with their human nature, or at least they don’t believe there is anything wrong that they can’t fix themselves.
They find the whole idea of needing a savior offensive.
In desperation, some Christians have tried to soften the offense. Back in the 60s, Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco famously (or infamously) took down all the crosses in his church because he thought it was an offensive symbol. In the last few decades, Evangelical churches have bent over backwards to make worship as unoffensive as possible, constantly catering to people’s felt needs. In our own denomination there are more and more clergy who believe that the concept of sin is too offensive. They seem to believe that talking about sin is the only sin there is. And so in some circles the confession of sin in worship is being replaced or rewritten with softer language or tossed out entirely because it is seen as too negative, too offensive. Never mind that sin and being saved from it is what the Bible is about from beginning to end. Never mind what the Lutheran Confessions, which every Lutheran pastor vows to uphold at their ordination, might say about any of it.
We should never set out to be offensive. There are others in the church today who seem to enjoy the offense a little too much. They seem to enjoy driving people away. They seem to take pride in their smaller and supposedly purer churches.
But at the same time, it is noteworthy that Jesus cares less about offending people and more about saving them. He cares less about what is popular and more about what is true. He cares less about telling people what they want to hear and more about what they need to hear.
And the truth Jesus proclaims in this sermon is that he gives his body and blood for us, that he would abide in us and we in him, that we would have life – now and forever. The truth is that the blood of the cross was necessary for our salvation, and that Jesus, the Son of Man, has ascended to the right hand of God. What people need to hear is that our human nature is useless. We are in bondage to sin and unable to free ourselves. We need forgiveness. We need a savior. What we need to hear is that saving faith cannot be achieved, it can only be received as God grants it through the hearing of the Word.
When people started to bail on Jesus after this sermon he turned to the twelve and said, What about you? Are you going to leave too? “Do you also wish to go away?” he asked them. And Peter replied, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
You have many options for where you can go, many options for how and where you can spend your time other than at church, other than in worship. Many of your friends and family members are choosing those other options. There has been some more encouraging polling recently from Gallup suggesting that the drop off in church membership and attendance of the last few decades has leveled off – but many are still choosing to be elsewhere.
But we are here because it is here that we find something that we cannot find anywhere else. The “here” I’m talking about is not specifically the picnic or the barn, though I always love being here. I’m not even specifically talking about Oak Harbor Lutheran Church, though I love our congregation and think everyone on Whidbey Island should be an active member. The “here” I’m talking about is our gathering around the Word. The “here” I’m talking about is this sharing in life-giving body and blood of Jesus. The “here” I’m talking about is this community which has been gathered around Christ and his gifts, given in Word and Sacrament.
We are here because Peter’s response is our own. We sing it in our weekly liturgy:
“Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” We are here because there is nowhere else that we can receive what we are given here. We are here because it is here that we receive Christ’s gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation. We are here because we know just how much we need them.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Aug 25, 2024 | News & Events
We have moved to our summer schedule of one service at 9:30 a.m. We look forward to coming together as one congregation throughout the summer months. Join us for worship!
by Jeffrey Spencer | Aug 21, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for August 18
Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 18, 2024
Proverbs 9:1-6, Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:51-58
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we hear what might just be the most shocking thing Jesus ever said: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” There is the graphic language of eating flesh and drinking blood, which, on the face of it, sounds more like something you’d hear in a zombie movie than a worship service. Then there is the exclusivity of Jesus’ statement and his total lack of equivocation: Unless you eat his flesh and drink his blood, Jesus says, you have no life in you. Life is found in him alone! And just in case anyone was to think that maybe Jesus just phrased things poorly, in his very next breath Jesus repeats all of this by saying that his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink, and those who eat and drink of it have eternal life. He really means all of this!
But what, exactly, does he mean?
There are different ways of interpreting Jesus’ words here. Even within Lutheran Christianity there are different interpretations. Some, including Martin Luther himself, have argued that what Jesus is saying here is all about the cross. With this shocking language, Jesus is pointing ahead to the sacrifice he would make for us on the cross. He is the one whose flesh would soon be given and whose blood would soon be poured out in order to make atonement, in order to make things right between sinful humanity and a holy God. This was all foreshadowed in the Levitical system, the sacrificial system we read about in the Old Testament – only now, instead of it being a bull or a lamb or a turtledove, it would be the Son of Man giving himself as the final sacrifice. By eating and drinking this in, by consuming this gift, by taking it in through faith and inwardly digesting it (as we talked about last week) we receive eternal life.
Other Lutheran theologians argue that this passage is all about the Lord’s Supper. They point out that John doesn’t include an account of the Last Supper and the institution of the Lord’s Supper in his gospel – probably because he knows it has already been covered three times in Matthew, Mark, and Luke – and so instead John is sure to document these words of Jesus to help us understand what is happening when we share the Lord’s Supper, to help us understand that we are indeed eating and drinking the true body and the true blood of our Lord Jesus, who gives us eternal life.
There are important reasons for both interpretations, and I don’t want to gloss over them, but I also think both can be true at the same time. This shocking language from Jesus is primarily about the cross. Jesus is no doubt pointing ahead to the sacrifice he would soon make. But it is also true that in the Lord’s Supper we are connected in a powerful way to what happened on the cross. It is in the Lord’s Supper that we receive the body and blood which were given on the cross for our salvation. As St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthains: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” Jesus is no doubt pointing ahead to this too.
Speaking of the Last Supper, you may have heard about the controversy at the Olympics opening ceremonies in Paris a few weeks ago. As part of the performance art there was a depiction of a banquet which bore an uncanny resemblance to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” only instead of Jesus and the apostles there were drag queens striking similar poses. There is some question as to whether the resemblance was intended or not, but even if it wasn’t, the artist’s explanation wasn’t much better. He insisted that what he was really depicting was the feast of Dionysus. To be fair, because the Olympics originated in Greece, it does make some sense to give a nod to Greek mythology, but Dionysus is an interesting choice. Dionysus doesn’t represent strength or speed or victory. Dionysus represents revelry, drunkenness, promiscuity, and pleasure seeking. The Roman name for Dionysus was Bacchus, which is etymologically related to the word debauchery. The Bacchanal feasts of ancient Rome and the Dionysian feasts of ancient Greece were notorious for intoxication and gender bending and orgiastic indulgences – all of which were depicted in not-so-subtle ways in this performance art. This Dionysus-inspired display perfectly represented what St. Paul is referring to in our second reading from Ephesians when he warns against evil days and foolish people, and saying, “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery.” This is exactly what the Ephesians had left behind when they became Christians.
This part of the opening ceremony represented less than two minutes of the otherwise spectacular four-hour event celebrating French history and culture, but the specific Greek mythology this artist chose to depict is telling. The motto or mantra of these worshippers of Dionysus was: “Nothing is true; everything is permitted.” Even if the artist didn’t intend to mock the Last Supper (which I find very difficult to believe), this is the ethos he was promoting, and this is the ethos that is increasingly gaining a foothold not only in France but in all of Western civilization. We are seeing a resurgent Dionysian paganism where nothing is true and everything is permitted, and those who worship at this table are in grave spiritual danger.
A couple of Sundays ago I was at my Doxology conference in Kansas City, and in the Sunday morning sermon, which was on the Bread of Life just as it was here that week, the preacher said something which stuck with me. He said, “False gods always consume their worshipers. Only the Lord Jesus gives himself to be consumed.” This just rings so true! The idols people turn to for comfort or peace or pleasure always end up devouring them. Those Dionysian false gods have a way of consuming their worshippers. We see this in how promiscuity so often leads to depression or disease. We see this in how drug and alcohol abuse destroys people from the inside out, making them a shell of their former selves. I’ve personally watched this happen, and I know many of you have too. We see this in how people spend their lives chasing one pleasure after another, and when that inevitably leaves them feeling empty, they fall into despair. The celebrity chef and food journalist Anthony Bourdain seems to be an example of this. He was wealthy and famous. He went all around the world eating all the best foods. As an atheist, he believed this was what life was for – to eat, drink, and be merry. He ended up taking his own life – in Paris of all places, the culinary center of the world. Dionysus consumed him. It’s awful. He was a charming and insightful and wonderful man. This is the danger. False gods always consume their worshippers. Only Christ gives himself to be consumed.
This, my friends, is what this shocking-sounding gospel reading is all about. When you get right down to it, what Jesus is saying here is more than an abstract theological claim about the cross or an abstract theological claim about the Lord’s Supper. Instead, it is a powerful proclamation of the kind of God Jesus is. Jesus is the kind of God who, instead of consuming us, gives himself to us to be consumed. Jesus gives himself for us on the cross, and he gives himself to us in the Lord’s Supper. He is the only God like this, and so he is the only God who can truly give us life.
In a world that wants to eat you up and spit you out, the Lord Jesus comes as one who gives you his own body and blood to eat and drink. This isn’t cannibalism, which is what the early Christians were accused of by their pagan neighbors. This is the promise of Christ dwelling in us as we receive his gifts, given in Word and bread and wine. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them,” Jesus says.
In a world that wants to eat you up and spit you out, the Lord Jesus gives you himself to eat and drink, that you would have life. “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever,” Jesus promises. “Whoever eats me will live because of me,” he says. Ignatius of Antioch, one of the early church fathers – so early that he knew the apostles personally – wrote that the Lord’s Supper is “the medicine of immortality, because there in the eating and drinking we receive the Lord’s true Body and Blood just as He had taught in Capernaum.”
In a world that increasingly believes that nothing is true and everything is permitted, Jesus comes to us as the way, the truth, and the life.
Christ comes to us with his cross, where we find forgiveness for all the times we may have sat at the table of Dionysus. He comes to us with his Word, which guides us in the way, teaching us to lay aside immaturity and walk in the way of insight, as it says in our first reading, teaching us to be careful in how we live, not as unwise people but as wise, as it says in our second reading. Christ comes to us summon us to his table, which is set with his true Body and Blood. He comes to feed us with true food and true drink – the medicine of immortality. Jesus comes to be consumed by those who worship him, that we would have life in him.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
