by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 5, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 3
Sermon for All Saints Sunday – November 3, 2024
Isaiah 25:6-9, Revelation 21:1-6a, John 11:32-44
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Death stinks.
In our modern world it is blessedly rare that this is a literal experience, but no matter how hygienic we might be and no matter how quickly bodies are whisked away, death still stinks. Grief tends to hang in the air for a long time afterwards. There is an unpleasant heaviness which clings to people. The overwhelming emotions floating around can be so overpowering that people can hardly see straight.
There may well be moments of peace when death draws near. There are sometimes beautiful goodbyes and deeply touching expressions of faith and hope and love and care in a person’s final moments. But even under the best of circumstances, death stinks. It stinks because it robs us of the people we love. It stinks because it leaves an aching absence in our lives that lingers and lingers and lingers.
Even Jesus thought that death stinks. When he saw his dear friend Mary weeping after her brother died, Jesus was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” Jesus began to weep too. When he came to the tomb that Lazarus had been laid in, he was again greatly disturbed. While John’s gospel usually presents us with a more stoic Jesus, even with John’s high Christology, his emphasis on Jesus’ divinity, he doesn’t hesitate to show us the raw human emotions Jesus experienced at the death of his friend. Tears flowed. He felt this terrible loss in his gut. He was racked with grief, with sorrow, with anger even. Jesus would completely agree – death stinks.
In the case of Lazarus, the stench was quite literal, of course. When Jesus went to his tomb and demanded that the stone be rolled away, the ever-practical Martha objected because of the odor which was sure to burn their nostrils if they were to crack that seal. But Jesus said to Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” In other words: “Trust me, Martha.” “Trust me,” Jesus said.
So they took away the stone. And once the tomb was opened, after offering a prayer up to the Father, Jesus cried out with a loud voice. He shouted into the tomb: “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus came out.
The takeaway? Death stinks, but it doesn’t deter Jesus. Jesus enters the stink with a word that is more powerful than death. Christ comes to the tomb with a voice that has the power to raise people up. When your name is on Jesus’ lips it means there is life beyond death, it means the grave cannot hold you, it means death does not have the last word. Death stinks, but when we put our trust in Christ and his word, we can be sure that we will see the glory of God.
All Saints Sunday is a somber day. It is a widespread tradition in the Christian church for congregations to remember their members who have died in the past year. We’re doing this today, of course, as we remember Hal, David, Walt, Karola, and Kyle, with special prayers this morning. There will also be a time of silence during those prayers when we can remember and give thanks for the many other saints in our lives, whether they’ve been gone for two years or twenty. And so it is a time of somber reflection. It is a time when that ache of absence can begin to throb with renewed intensity. It is a time when we confront the reality of death. It can be a Sunday on which we are painfully reminded of how much it stinks.
But just as our Lord Jesus spoke into the stench of Lazarus’ tomb, so too does he speak to us. Today God gives us a word that cuts through the heaviness hanging in the air and brings life.
Sometimes it is hard to hear this word when grief is especially raw. I remember visiting a gentleman a few weeks after his wife had died, and towards the end of our visit he asked me for a copy of the sermon I delivered at her funeral. While he had no reason to feel guilty about this, he sheepishly admitted that he didn’t remember a single word I said at the service. At the time he was too numb to hear it. He was still in shock. His grief was too overwhelming. This is a very common experience, and so All Saints Sunday gives us an opportunity to listen to Christ’s life-giving word at a time when we are perhaps more likely to actually hear it. While there is plenty of grief in this sanctuary today, perhaps this Sunday provides an opening for God’s promises to break through in a way they haven’t before.
First, in our reading from Isaiah God promises a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines. While God’s people are feasting on these rich foods, the Lord himself is dining on something different. The Lord, Isaiah says, will swallow up death forever! What we have here is a glimpse of the great exchange that Christ has brought about in his own death and resurrection. By experiencing death himself, Jesus has swallowed it up. He has defeated it. What we get is the feast! What we get is life! The Lord’s Supper is an embodiment of this feast. Jesus gives us his body and blood, and we get forgiveness, life, and salvation. Jesus swallows death and we swallow life! It is through this feast, Isaiah tells us, that God begins to wipe away the tears from all faces.
Over the last several days I’ve served the Lord’s Supper in the kitchens and living rooms of people who are fighting for their lives, people whose grip on life is starting to slip, or is at least seriously threatened. Even through the furrowed brows and teary eyes of the gravely ill and their loved ones, there is a peace that is found in sharing in this feast of rich food. Christ’s broken body and shed blood provide an assurance that no matter how near death may be, Jesus already swallowed it, and as we swallow him, we are promised life with him. And so, while tears are never bad or wrong, God begins to wipe them away with this comforting promise.
As we share the Lord’s Supper here in the sanctuary, this feast of rich food becomes the place where the veil between heaven and earth is particularly thin. As we say in the communion liturgy, “with the church on earth and the hosts of heaven.” As our voices join the heavenly chorus in singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” death is not quite as deep a chasm as we share in communion with all the saints through Christ. Many people go to the graves of their loved ones to feel close to them after they’re gone. That’s fine, but it is here at this table that you are particularly close to them.
And then there is our reading from Revelation. Here we are given a glimpse of the coming kingdom, the new Jerusalem, where death will be no more. Just as there was a loud voice at Lazarus’ tomb, there is another one here! From the throne, the Lord Jesus uses a loud voice to say, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will be with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
Here we are promised that God dwells with mortals – that is to say, with people who die! Here we are promised a future where every tear will be wiped away at last, a future where death will be no more. We are promised a new Jerusalem where grief and sorrow are gone forever and we will bask in the presence of Christ and all whom he has called to himself.
“See, I am making all things new,” Jesus says. Also, he says: “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Remember how he told Martha to trust him? Now he is saying the same thing to you. “Trust me!” he says. “Trust these words, for they are trustworthy and true!” “Trust me, and you will see the glory of God!”
Death stinks, but it isn’t quite as pungent when we hear and trust in these words, these promises.
Death stinks, but there is a savior who is not repelled by it, a savior who enters into it with a word that has the power to call us into life with him. He comes with a voice that cuts through the heaviness. He comes to call us by name. Your name has already been on his lips when he claimed you as his own in Holy Baptism. Your name will be on his lips again when you hear his voice calling you out of death and into the new Jerusalem.
In the meantime, he speaks to you now to begin to wipe those tears away, bringing you healing, hope, and peace. He comes to you now to fill those aching absences with his loving presence. He gives you his word today so that you would believe, and in believing, you would see the glory of God.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 28, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for October 27
Sermon for Reformation Sunday – October 27, 2024
Romans 3:19-28, John 8:31-36
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
If you want to understand what Reformation Sunday is all about, you only need to look at how Martin Luther has been depicted over the centuries. In Lucas Cranach’s Weimar Altarpiece, which was created just a couple of years after Luther’s death, he is depicted pointing to scripture. In the many statues which have popped up over the centuries since, Luther is almost always pointing to scripture. You can find German nutcrackers of Martin Luther, and he is usually either holding a Bible or pointing to scripture. And then there is my Martin Luther bobblehead, which has him…you guessed it – pointing to scripture.
We celebrate Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday in October because it was on All Hallow’s Eve – October 31, 1517 – that Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, which is widely regarded as the spark which started the fire of the Reformation. This is fine as far as it goes, as long as we understand what Luther’s purpose was in posting that document. Luther was not filing for divorce from the Catholic church. He was not quitting the Roman church to start something new. Neither was Luther suggesting some radical new ideas he thought the church should adopt. With these theses, Luther was calling the church back to the Bible. After centuries of drifting away from it, Luther was calling the church back to the Word of God. Luther was calling the church back to the treasures he himself had found in the scriptures.
Luther was not a separatist. Some have said that Reformation Sunday feels to them like one of those grossly inappropriate divorce parties people sometimes have when their divorce is final. They’ve said it feels like we’re celebrating a break-up, the fracturing of the Christian church. I get that to a point, but Luther didn’t leave the church. He was kicked out! He didn’t intend to cause a split. He was excommunicated! And so on Reformation Sunday we are not celebrating a break-up or the forming of new denomination.
Neither was Luther an innovator. He wasn’t inventing anything new, as the radical reformers of the past or progressive theologians of the present are want to do.
Luther was neither a separatist nor an innovator. He was more like an archaeologist. Martin Luther was the theological equivalent of Indiana Jones. At great personal risk to his health and safety, Luther excavated the scriptures to recover the true treasure of the church which had been hidden, or lost, or stolen, or forgotten. In thesis number sixty-two Luther wrote, “The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.” Luther worked to recover this treasure so it could be put on public display for everyone to enjoy!
He did this by delving deeply into the Bible. He did it by sweeping away the cobwebs and the dust the church had let accumulate, and by dodging the boobytraps and the poison arrows certain church leaders would soon shoot at him. He did it by bringing the Word of God out of the darkness in which it had been hidden and out into the light. As Luther himself said later in his life as he reflected on the Reformation, “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp and Amsdorf…. the Word did everything.”
Martin Luther was only doing what our Lord Jesus calls all of us to do in the gospel reading for Reformation Sunday. “If you continue in my word,” Jesus says to us, “you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” To be a disciple of Jesus is to continue in his word. It is to be a student of the Bible. It is to gladly hear and learn from the scriptures, holding them as authoritative, as the very word of God.
Scripture is the written word of God, but God doesn’t only give this word to us in book form. God also speaks his word to us as it is preached and proclaimed. God attaches his word to water in Holy Baptism, pouring his grace over us, joining us to Jesus and his saving work. God feeds us his word to us by putting it in bread and wine, the very body and blood of Christ, which we can taste and savor as we are renewed in his forgiveness. These are the treasures of forgiveness, life, and salvation given to us through Jesus Christ! These are the treasures that are to be on display in the church for all to see. These are the treasures that belong to God’s people, the treasures we are called to share with the world. These are the treasures that make people truly free – free from sin, free for a life with God.
Jesus exhorts us to continue in his word because he knows how easy it is for this word to be hidden, or lost, or stolen, or forgotten. This word is sometimes hidden by the church when it starts to focus on other things, particularly when it seeks prestige or popularity or power. It gets lost when the church gets its priorities mixed up, putting the cart before the horse. The word gets stolen when those called to deliver the goods of the gospel instead use their platform to tell you how to become righteous through your works – works which usually bear a striking resemblance to their own projects or agendas.
There has been a buzz on social media in these last frenzied days before the election where some have said, “If your pastor isn’t telling you how to vote in this election, they are cowards.” I don’t actually engage in these debates online, but if I did my response would be that any pastor who sets aside the gospel in order peddle influence or steer people’s votes one way or another is worse than a coward. They have abandoned their post, abused their office, and betrayed Christ.
But it isn’t just church leaders. This word is forgotten when all of us as God’s people forget what the real problem is. The real problem, as St. Paul puts it in our reading from Romans, is that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” I did a word study on the Greek word for all here, and it means ALL! All of us are in the same boat! None of us are righteous before God, and no amount of virtue signaling or moral preening can change this fact! The real problem, as Jesus puts it in our gospel reading, is that we are all slaves to sin.
We admit this just about every Sunday when we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves, but we seem to have a touch of spiritual amnesia from time to time. We are constantly forgetting the real problem! We are like those in the gospel reading who thought they were fine, who thought they didn’t need any help, who thought they didn’t need saving, that they didn’t need to be set free. “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone!” they said. Oh really? What about the time they were slaves to the Egyptians, or the Assyrians, or the Babylonians? Or how about the fact that they were arguably currently living as slaves to the Romans? The human capacity for self-deception, for self-justification, for self-righteousness is deep and pervasive – and we are all guilty of it.
God’s word tells us the truth about us. It relentlessly reminds us of the real problem, which is our bondage to sin. But that’s not the real treasure it contains. The accusation of the law is important. It is indeed God’s word to us. But it isn’t God’s last word, and so it is not the real treasure. The real treasure is the Good News of what God has done for us in Christ. As St. Paul writes in our second reading:
“…since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”
This is the real treasure. We who have fallen short of the glory of God have been justified – brought into right relationship – by his grace as a gift. We have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. This is effective through faith, through trust in Christ’s work – not ours.
The real treasure is that the Son has made us free. He has freed us from our bondage to sin. He has freed us from our past regrets and our current brokenness. He has freed us from our fear, from our guilt and our shame and our anxious striving. He has freed us for a new life with him, a life steeped in forgiveness and the mercy of God. He has freed us for a life filled with peace and hope. He has freed us for a future with him that will have no end, a future where we will be freed at last from all suffering and from every lingering sin or struggle.
“If you continue in my word,” Jesus says, “you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” That’s the treasure. “If the Son makes you free,” Jesus promises, “you will be free indeed.” That’s the treasure.
Today we commemorate the posting of the 95 Theses, which sparked the Reformation. Today we give thanks for Martin Luther, the theological Indiana Jones who at great personal risk spelunked into the scriptures to bring back to us these treasures to put on display for all of us to enjoy. Above all, today we celebrate the true treasure of the church that is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God, which is given to you today through scripture, speech, and sacrament, so that you would be free indeed.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 22, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for October 20
Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost – October 20, 2024
Mark 10:35-45
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
I once went on a quest to discover the roots of my last name. The name “Spencer” has a long history in England, where it originated, and there are some prominent Spencers in British history, so I had high hopes. Perhaps there was some long-lost connection to nobility. Perhaps I was in the blood line of some prominent figure. One of our church members was recently visiting Westminster Abbey, where some of the most exalted figures from England’s past are buried, and he found a pin emblazoned with the Spencer name and the Spencer Coat of Arms in the gift shop, which he brought back for me. The Spencer line is established enough that it has its own Coat of Arms, represented at Westminster Abbey! While it turns out that I don’t appear to be related to any of them, but there are some significant Spencers sprinkled throughout British history.
However, if you go back far enough, if you research the origins of the name, it is not associated with nobility. It does not suggest prominence. In fact, the name means “someone who waits tables.” You see, many English surnames are based on occupations. The Millers were the family who milled flour. The Bakers were the family who baked bread. Well, the Spencers were the family who dispensed things for others. They were, at least originally, the waiters and waitresses in the houses of the nobility. They were servants.
I have to admit I was a little disappointed by this. But then I thought better of it. I thought what better last name for a pastor to have then Spencer! After all, I wait tables for Jesus, don’t I? I wait tables for the King! A pastor’s job is to dispense the gifts of Christ, given in Word and Sacrament. I’m like a Pez dispenser. I lift my head, and the gospel is supposed to come out! This is what it means to be a servant of God’s Word!
I went searching for nobility in the origins of my last name, and I found something better – at least from a biblical perspective. I went searching for prominence and found servanthood instead.
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, went looking for nobility too. In our gospel reading for today we hear them approach Jesus with an audacious request. “Grant us to sit,” they said, “one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
This wasn’t merely a request for a good seat in the Kingdom of God. They weren’t merely asking for a comfy chair up front with a good view. They were looking for positions of nobility. They wanted positions of prominence. The seats they were asking for were a reference to the seating chart in a royal court. To sit at the right or the left of a great earthly king or leader was a privilege reserved for nobility. That’s what James and John were looking for! What they found instead, however, was a call to servanthood.
“You do not know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink? Are you able to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Jesus was referring to his impending suffering and death. He was using common Hebrew euphemisms, or ways of speaking, to describe the overwhelming affliction he would soon face.
You see, Jesus was now on his way to Jerusalem. The throne he would soon occupy would be a cross, where he would give himself up for a sinful humanity. Jesus’ kingdom wouldn’t be about nobility or prominence or power – at least not in the way the world understands those things. Instead, it would be about humbling oneself. It would be about sacrifice. It would be about suffering for the sake of others. It would be about servanthood.
When the other disciples learned that James and John had been trying to jockey themselves into positions of nobility and prominence in Jesus’ kingdom, they got angry! Jesus saw this as a perfect teaching moment. He called them together and explained to them what his kingdom was all about. “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them,” he said. “But it is not so among you; whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus provides an example of what true greatness, true nobility, looks like in his kingdom, and it is not a matter of elbowing your way into a position of prominence or power.
Jesus’ kingdom isn’t like any earthly kingdom. It isn’t like the monarchies of the ancient world. It isn’t like the feudal system of medieval England. It isn’t like the meritocracy of our own time and place. Greatness in Jesus’ kingdom comes through servanthood. “Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all,” Jesus said.
Jesus calls us to servanthood. He calls us to humble ourselves and to live lives of sacrificial service to others. This servanthood can be expressed in many different ways. It can be practiced in ways big and small. We can be servants to the people around us, caring for them in their time of need. We can be servants to our spouses, to our children, to our families – not seeing them merely as a means to our own happiness, but as people God has given us to serve.
We can be servants in our workplaces, whether that’s milling, or baking, or waiting tables, whether that’s teaching or driving a bus or stocking shelves or maintaining airplanes or homemaking. We can bring a servant’s heart to any number of tasks, whether they are in positions of prominence or in things the world sees as lowly. When it is done in faith and with love, our work – whether paid or unpaid – become an expression of discipleship.
We can be servants to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ here in the church, treating each other with humility and honor and love in spite of our differences. We can be servants of the church, and not just consumers of its goods and services. A paraphrase of JFK might be appropriate here: “Ask not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church.”
Jesus is our example in all of this. “For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.”
But Jesus is much more than just our example. Before we see him as our example, we must first receive him as our savior. Before we can be his sacrificial servants, we must first grasp his great sacrifice for us.
As Isaiah prophesied in our first reading, “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”
As Jesus himself said, he came “to give his life as a ransom for many.”
We are imperfect servants, to be sure. But through his sacrifice for us, Jesus has made us part of his noble blood line. Jesus donned the crown of thorns and assumed the throne of his cross, so that we would have complete forgiveness for all our failures as servants. He was raised for us so that we might rise again daily by his grace to walk in newness of life, serving him by serving those around us.
The only human being born of true nobility made himself a servant, humbling himself on the cross so that we could be part of his kingdom forever. He gives us all his name as we are called Christians. Through baptism he adopts us into his holy family, marking us all with his Coat of Arms and making us children of God. He continues to join himself to us through his sacrifice, putting his own precious blood in us, that we would be his own.
Our Lord Jesus continues to serve us with the gift of himself.
And so we willingly and joyfully live in service to him.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 22, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for October 13
Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost – October 13th, 2024
Mark 10:17-31
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
The man who ran up to Jesus in our gospel reading this morning had it all. He was wealthy. All his life he had kept the second table of the law, the commandments governing how we treat others, and so he was what people recognize as a good person. In Matthew’s version of this same story, we also learn that he was a ruler, so he had power. He had prestige. Matthew also tells us he was young – so it is probably safe to assume he still had his looks and his health as well. Like I said, this guy had it all.
But he didn’t really have it all, did he? Something was missing in his life. Something was missing, and he went to Jesus to find it. In fact, he ran to Jesus. This was urgent! He knelt before Jesus, showing both his vulnerability and his reverence for Christ. And then came the question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
In spite of “having it all,” there was something he lacked. He lacked peace. In spite of all his earthly blessings, he was still anxious about his relationship with God. In spite of all the outward blessings he enjoyed in life, he lacked the assurance that his eternal future was secure. He lacked hope. He lacked the true joy that comes from a trusting and intimate relationship with the God who created him and who held his future in his hands. And so this outwardly blessed but inwardly anxious man fell at Jesus’ feet and said to him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good but God alone.” We shouldn’t read too much into this. This isn’t a theological statement about the hypostatic union. This isn’t suggesting that Jesus wasn’t truly the sinless Son of God. What Jesus is doing here is challenging this man’s assumptions. What he is doing is giving the hint of an answer to his question, which is that “goodness” has nothing to do with inheriting eternal life! You don’t earn it. You don’t get in with a good resume. A relationship with God isn’t dependent on your own goodness. If it was, no one would have a relationship with God. This is Jesus’ assessment of humankind: “No one is good but God alone!”
And then, as if to show this man that no one is good but God alone, Jesus started listing off the commandments. “You know the commandments,” Jesus said, “You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal or bear false witness or defraud.” And this rich young ruler responded by insisting that he had kept all these commandments since his youth. Check, check, check, and check.
Jesus then looked at this outwardly blessed and inwardly anxious young man, and, St. Mark tells us, he loved him. And so it was out of love that Jesus then zeroed in on his sin. Jesus put his finger on what it was that was getting in the way of this man’s relationship with God. It was his wealth. “Sell what you own,” Jesus says, “give the money to the poor – then come, follow me.” Jesus called his bluff on his keeping of the First Commandment. The First Commandment says, “You shall have no other gods,” and wealth had become his god.
Note well that in telling him to sell everything he owns and give it to the poor, Jesus was not giving this man something to do in order to earn him a place in the kingdom. Jesus was not prescribing a good deed that would finally put him over the top. Jesus was calling his bluff. Jesus was showing him his sin.
This becomes obvious in what happens next. In what is perhaps one of the saddest moments in all of scripture, the man hears what Jesus says, and he turns around and walks away. He just couldn’t give up the wealth which had become his god. “He went away grieving,” St. Mark tells us, “For he had many possessions.”
Jesus then turned to the disciples and said, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” This declaration caused the disciples to be perplexed. They were confused. You see, going all the way back to Abraham, wealth had been seen as a sign of God’s blessing. In fact, in the popular piety of the day, any good thing that happened in your life was seen as a sign of divine favor. And this man had it all: he was rich, young, powerful, and apparently, well-behaved! If this guy couldn’t be saved, who could!
Jesus then said that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Several years ago, there was an interpretation of this saying of Jesus making its rounds which suggested that there was a place in Israel with a very narrow rock canyon called “the eye of the needle.” Supposedly travelers got their camels stuck in there all the time, but if they unloaded their camels and soaped their sides and made them suck in their guts, and if they pulled on their harness from the front and shoved their butts from behind, they could potentially squeeze their camel through. It was hard, but it wasn’t impossible. This is the “So you’re saying there’s a chance!” interpretation.
But this is exactly the opposite of the point Jesus is making! This is a proverbial saying. It is a proverbial camel and a proverbial needle. It is a like when we say something will happen “when pigs fly,” or that something has “a snowball’s chance in,” well, you know where. What we mean when we say that is, “It ain’t happening!”
The disciples got this. They got what Jesus had just said, and they were shocked by it. They were perplexed. They were greatly astounded. So they asked Jesus, “Who then can be saved?” If the people we always thought of as blessed and good can’t do it, who is getting in? And then Jesus lays it bare. He tells it plain. He says, “With mortals it is impossible.”
But that’s not all he says, is it? Jesus also says, “but with God all things are possible.”
I believe this poor rich man, perhaps more than anyone else in the entire Bible, reflects the spiritual state of our nation, our community, and much of the time, us – you and me. There is a quiet desperation that plagues so many in our decadent culture today. Like this poor rich man so many of us are outwardly blessed but inwardly anxious. Like him we have many possessions, but we are utterly lacking in peace, in hope, and in true joy.
And, as it was for him, this is a First Commandment issue. We stubbornly cling to other gods. That is to say, we look to things other than God to give us peace, hope, and joy. We turn to idols, those things we make more important than God. These idols are often wealth and the pursuit of it, but they can be other things too. They can be any number of the many things that our wealth makes possible. Our idols can be comfort or busy-ness. They can be television or alcohol or food or sports. There is the digital idol we carry around in our pockets, those phones we turn to over and over again for fun and for validation and for the answers to every question we have, letting them shape how we view others and the world around us. Our idols can be our political ideology and our election hopes. A pastor friend of mine recently quipped that, “nothing flushes out peoples’ idols like a close election.” Our idols always come back to us in the form of self-righteousness. We are our own idols, thinking we are good, or at least good enough. Keeping seven out of the Ten Commandments is good enough, right?
But it isn’t good enough. The First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods,” is the granddaddy of them all, and it is the one that trips us all up.
Who then can be saved? For mortals like you and me, it is impossible. Full stop. It will not be our goodness that saves us. It will not be our efforts that help us to gain eternal life. It will not be anything we do. Our Lord Jesus could not be more clear: “For mortals, it is impossible.”
Thankfully Jesus doesn’t stop there. “But not for God,” he says. “For God, all things are possible.”
Dear friends, the impossible has been made possible by God, who sent Jesus to us not just to be our “Good teacher,” but to be our savior. Now the question is not “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” but “What has he done for us?”
The impossible has been made possible by God as Jesus, himself young, himself possessing all the riches of God, himself ruler of all creation, gave up everything for us on the cross, looking upon us with love as he did so, making it possible for us to inherit eternal life with him.
The impossible is made possible today as God moves our hearts to walk towards this savior of ours instead of away from him, receiving what he has done for us through faith.
The impossible is made possible today as God moves our hearts to lay down our idols and to hold those outward blessings more loosely, in order to take hold of the peace and hope and joy only he can give.
Only in him do we truly have it all.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 8, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for October 6
Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost – October 6, 2024
Mark 10:2-16
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Preaching on marriage and divorce is a daunting task. These topics touch on some of the most sensitive and painful aspects of many peoples’ lives. Our texts for today also happen to poke several of the hottest hot button issues raging in our culture today.
For encouragement this week I looked up a sermon of Martin Luther’s on the topic. Surely someone as biblically astute and as graciously pastoral as Martin Luther would know how to tackle these sensitive issues, right? Well, I looked at his most famous marriage sermon, and the first words were, “How I dread preaching on the estate of marriage!” I found it oddly reassuring that even Luther himself approached these topics with a measure of dread! “But,” Luther continued, “timidity is no help in an emergency. I must proceed. I must try to instruct bewildered consciences and take up the matter boldly.”
So, despite the landmines in just about every sentence I am about to speak, let us proceed together boldly, listening to what God’s Word has to teach us today.
The Pharisees asked Jesus about marriage and divorce in an attempt to get him into trouble. Marriage and divorce were hot button issues in Jesus’ time too. In fact, you’ll recall that John the Baptist ended up imprisoned and ultimately executed because he dared to speak out against Herod after he divorced his first wife in order to marry his sister-in-law. There were also debates raging at this time about what exactly the Bible said about when divorce was allowed, with different rabbis lining up on different sides. If the Pharisees could drag Jesus into this debate, perhaps even get him to say something that would get him in trouble with Herod, maybe they wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. This was the “test” for Jesus.
I think this context is important to note. In his reply, Jesus is not talking to a woman with an abusive husband. He is not talking to a spouse who has been abandoned or discarded for another. I believe Jesus would have had a very different reply for people in those situations. I’ll come back to that in a bit. The context here is that Jesus is talking to Pharisees who are trying to get him into trouble.
When these Pharisees ask Jesus about his take on the lawfulness of divorce, Jesus turns the question back to them, asking them what the law of Moses says. The Pharisees correctly point out that divorce is allowed in some circumstances. It is indeed there in the book of Deuteronomy that a man can give his wife a certificate of dismissal and divorce her. But Jesus isn’t satisfied with this answer. He wants to go deeper. And so Jesus identifies the root problem causing divorce. Jesus says that it isn’t so much a legal issue as it is a heart issue. The root problem is hearts that are hardened. “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you,” Jesus says.
A hardened heart is a heart that is opposed to God and to God’s will. Pharoah was described as having a hardened heart when he refused to obey God’s command to let his people go. The Greek word here translated as “hardened heart” is sklerocardia, which you might recognize as the root for diagnostic terms used in medicine today, terms like arterial sclerosis or cardiac arrest. These terms are used to describe hearts that are blocked and malfunctioning. Sklerocardia is a spiritual condition wherein the heart has blocked out God’s truth and so is out of beat. One theologian has described sklerocardia in this particular context as “willful blindness to truth and a stubborn refusal to yield to God and his ways for a properly ordered, healthy, and fruitful relationship as shown to us from the beginning of creation.”
And “the beginning of creation” is exactly where Jesus goes next. Jesus quickly moves beyond the finer points of the law of Moses and instead pulls out the blueprints for humankind. Jesus sets aside the already much-debated escape clause for divorce in Deuteronomy and begins a Bible study on Genesis, where God’s original intentions for marriage are made clear.
First Jesus quotes from Genesis 1, saying: “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’” Jesus goes back to the beginning, pointing out how God created two distinct but complimentary kinds of humans. They are literally made for each other! Jesus teaches here that gender is given by God and is an essential feature of the created order. Being male or female is bestowed by God, and it is good!
Then Jesus quotes from Genesis 2, saying: “‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.” Citing Genesis, Jesus describes marriage as the coming together of a man and a woman into an organic oneness. In marriage, these two halves of humanity come together in a unity that will be so close – relationally, spiritually, and physically – that they will be like one person. “So they are no longer two, but one flesh,” Jesus says.
To separate the two is not merely a matter of tearing up a contract, it is more like the tearing of flesh, with all the pain that brings. And so Jesus adds his own word, his own emphasis, saying, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Citing the very blueprints God has given for humankind, Jesus describes what God’s intentions are for marriage. Two become one flesh. They become a single biological dyad, bound together by vows of love and faithfulness. This holy union will be the foundation of human society. This two becoming one will be the source of all human life.
This is something so beautiful and so essential that every culture across time and place has sought to celebrate it and encourage it and protect it. But at the same time, in a fallen world many hearts have been hardened against it. People railed against this in Jesus’ time, and they rail against it today too.
When I started out in ministry, divorce was the hot button issue. Now, a couple of decades later, just about every word Jesus says as he teaches from Genesis is railed against: from the basic realities of being a man or a woman, to the purpose of marriage, even the number of people a marriage might involve. Nearly every word out of Jesus’ mouth here is now being questioned, or resisted, or rejected entirely in our culture today.
When the Pharisees lured Jesus into this potentially dangerous topic, Jesus was every bit as bold as John the Baptist was. Jesus went right to the original blueprints for humankind in Genesis. Jesus was so insistent on God’s original intent in those blueprints that it shocked even the disciples.
As Jesus’ disciples today, these words are for us. Through this living Word Jesus is now teaching us. Our first reading from Genesis and Jesus’ own citation of it as authoritative are given for our benefit, that we would know the truth about God’s blueprint for the flourishing of humankind. We cannot be followers of Jesus while ignoring or rejecting the truth he so passionately proclaims. As it is, our society is increasingly losing touch with truth, losing touch with reality, certainly losing touch with something that God and his Son both call precious and holy. We dare not lose touch with it too.
At the same time, we cannot let our hearts be hardened towards those who are confused about this truth, and we cannot let our hearts be hardened towards those who have fallen short of it.
As followers of Jesus, we should not only look at what he teaches here when he is tangling with the Pharisees in a debate. We also need to look at how our Lord treated those who, for whatever reason, had fallen short of the blueprint. We need to consider how he treated people in concrete situations.
For example, there was the woman at the well. She had been married five times, and the man she was currently with was not her husband! And what did Jesus do?
He didn’t condone her situation, but neither did he condemn her. Instead, he offered her living water welling up to eternal life. He offered her a new life in him that would continue forever. He showed her mercy.
When he wasn’t debating Pharisees, Jesus went around the villages and towns healing those who were broken. He went around showing compassion towards those who were suffering from situations beyond their control. He went around forgiving those who had sinned. When it came to concrete situations, Jesus never stopped speaking the truth, but he also never failed to show mercy.
As Christians, we live at this intersection of truth and mercy. If we are going to call ourselves followers of Jesus, we need to keep these two in tension. There are truths given to us from the lips of our Lord that we cannot deny, but they must always be lived out with mercy towards those who don’t understand God’s truth or have fallen short of it. This balance isn’t always easy to find. Sometimes it is hard to know how this takes shape in the various concrete situations that we encounter in life. Fidelity to the truth will draw hard lines in the sand at times, but for followers of Jesus, it must always be done with mercy. It must be done with mercy because our Lord Jesus has had mercy on us.
You see, the truth is, we all have sklerocardia. No matter how successful one may be at marriage, we all have the same spiritual condition. We all have hardened hearts – they are just hardened in different ways, with different symptoms.
We all fall short of the blueprints in one way or another. This is not an excuse to throw them out, but it is a humbling reminder that every one of us, regardless of marital history or marital status, are equally dependent on God’s mercy, which he abundantly provides to all of us through his dear Son.
Marriage is a precious and holy thing. It is not merely a socially constructed human invention. It has been established by the God who created us. As such it is to be celebrated and cherished and guarded and honored. It is to be protected as fiercely as our Lord Jesus sought to protect it.
But as important as it is, there is only one marriage which saves us – and that is the marriage between Christ and his bride, the church. This bride, the church, is made up of people who are married or single, divorced or remarried, widows and widowers. This bride, the church, is made up of people who are sometimes confused or have fallen short in any number of ways. It is made up of people who have been joined to Christ through his mercy.
As Christ’s beloved bride, together our hearts are being healed by a merciful Lord who has joined himself to us forever, a merciful Lord who has promised to never leave nor forsake us, a merciful Lord who loves all of us and will never let us go.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 1, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for September 29
Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 29, 2024
Mark 9:38-50
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Did Jesus just describe a mafia-style hit job in our gospel reading for today? You heard that too, right? Having a millstone tied around your neck and being thrown into the sea sounds an awful lot like wearing a pair of concrete shoes and going for a swim in New York harbor or wearing a “Chicago overcoat” and being tossed into the river!
And did Jesus really just say that if your hand or foot causes you to stumble you should cut them off, and if your eye causes you to stumble you should tear it out? Did Jesus really just suggest self-mutilation as a means of managing sin in our lives?
Yep, he said both of these things – and this isn’t just an isolated incident. Jesus talks like this on other occasions too.
Jesus, of course, is using hyperbole. He is using extreme language and imagery to make a point. The great Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor, who herself was known to use grotesque imagery in her stories, once said, “To the hard of hearing, you shout, and, for the almost blind, you draw large and startling figures.” This is what Jesus is doing here. He shouts because he knows we have selective hearing. We tend to shut our ears to the things he says that we don’t like. Jesus draws large and startling figures here to grab our attention, to keep us from looking away.
So, just to be clear, Jesus doesn’t literally want anyone to be thrown into the sea with a great millstone around their neck. Neither does he literally wish for anyone to start hacking off limbs or gouging out eyes.
However, if your reaction to hearing that this is hyperbole is to wipe your brow and say, “Whew, that’s good!” then you have utterly missed the point! If your response to hearing that these are metaphors and not to be taken literally is to relax and brush it all off, you are still shutting your ears to what he is trying to say to you! You are still averting your eyes from the urgent truth he is trying to show you! The language is extreme because what he is saying is so terribly important! Jesus may not be speaking literally, but he is deadly serious – and so let’s not relax too quickly here. Jesus shouts and draws large and startling figures for a reason. He speaks this way because sin is serious business. Stumbling can have deadly consequences, for us and for others.
The first concern Jesus expresses is for others. Jesus warns his disciples to not put a stumbling block in front the little ones who believe in him. These little ones include the young children Jesus had just pointed to as the ones they are to welcome and serve. These little ones can also be understood to be new Christians, new followers of Jesus who are still growing in their faith. These little ones can also be understood to be the allies across the street who are casting out demons in Jesus’ name, the new-to-them followers of Jesus who are outside of their circle.
Our behavior towards these others matters. Our attitudes and our words and our actions can become obstacles that get in the way of their walk with Jesus. They can become stumbling blocks that trip people up, that prevent these little ones from drawing closer to Christ.
Corruption and abuse in the church are obvious examples of this. There are the grievous public sins and scandals that turn people away from Christianity. But there are also plenty of other stumbling blocks which are more subtle and insidious. There are the ways Christians, both individually and as congregations, can become territorial or elitist or insular or self-righteous, or ethnocentric or politically partisan, or rude, or cold, or unwelcoming. These too can cause people to stub their toe on their way to Christ, and woe to those who are that stumbling block, Jesus says.
Jesus is also concerned about the stumbling of the disciples themselves. He is not only concerned about them putting stumbling blocks in front of others, but also about them tripping over their own two feet! He is concerned about them doing a faceplant due to their own sin! And so, in the strongest terms possible, Jesus tells them that when sin starts to trip them up, to cut it out! When those temptations and triggers begin to lead them astray, get rid of them! They are to cut them out of their lives! “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off!” “If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off!” “If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out!”
The Christian life is a life of spiritual warfare. It is a battle against temptations. It is a struggle against the forces of the world, the devil, and our sinful flesh, which are always trying to trip us up. I was reading an unrelated book this past week and came across a quote from Martin Luther that I’d never seen before which summarizes this struggle nicely. In one of his Table Talk conversations Luther said, “Sin in a man is like his beard, which, though shaved off today so that a man is very smooth around his mouth, yet grows again by tomorrow morning…Just so sin remains in us and bestirs itself as long as we live, but we must resist it and always cut off its hair.”
This gospel reading, as hard as it is to hear, is much-needed reminder of this call to resist sin in our lives, to cut it out and cut it off. It is a much-needed corrective to the all too casual and comfortable mindset of too many Christians who seem to believe that what they do doesn’t really matter. It is a much-needed antidote to what Lutheran pastor Deitrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer warns that cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church. He describes cheap grace as “preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.”
Both Luther and Bonhoeffer are describing the pattern of Christian life which St. Paul articulates so succinctly in Galatians 5, where he calls us to “crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.”
This might sound harsh and demanding and deadly serious – because it is! But it all comes from a place of love. Jesus calls us to cut it out and cut it off because he loves us. He does indeed shout and use startling figures of speech, but he explicitly says that the reason behind it all is so that you may enter into life.
Imagine you go to a doctor who examines you and discovers that you have skin cancer, or a diabetic ulcer on your foot, or hand infected with gangrene. Now imagine the doctor saying, “Ah, just leave it. Who cares?” That doctor does not have your best interests in mind. That doctor does not care about you. That doctor does not care about your life.
Jesus is not that kind of doctor. Jesus loves us enough to say, “this needs to be amputated, stat.” Jesus loves us enough to say, “cut it out, cut it off.” Jesus tells us what we need to hear in order to enter life, in order to enter into a life with him that begins now and continues forever.
This gospel reading, of course, is only one snippet of the larger narrative of Mark’s gospel. It is important, to be sure, but it is not the whole story. We dare not dismiss it or brush it off, but we also need to set it into its larger context.
You see, as the story unfolds, there is a major plot twist. The same Jesus who warned about millstones being hung around one’s neck willingly let himself be hung from a cross. The same Jesus who talked about severed hands and severed feet let his own hands and feet be pierced with nails. The same Jesus who warned about the deadly consequences of sin himself endured death. Every consequence Jesus describes in our reading for today he ended up taking upon himself.
And so, you see, in the end, Jesus doesn’t leave it up to you to secure your salvation through self-amputation. In order to ensure your place with him, he has sacrificed himself. In order to ensure that you would enter into life with him, he himself has endured the consequences of our sin for us.
There is still a daily struggle to be had as we seek to avoid stumbling and causing others to stumble. There is still a spiritual battle to be waged as we continue to resist sin, cutting it off as it keeps growing back day after day. We continue to be called to engage in spiritual warfare as we battle the world, the devil, and our sinful selves, striving to crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.
But we take up this daily battle in the good confidence that the war has ultimately already been won by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who wore a millstone around his own neck so that we would enter into life with him, today and forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
