by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 16, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for December 14
Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent – December 14, 2025
Matthew 11:2-11
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus described John the Baptist as the greatest of all the prophets. It isn’t hard to see why. While still in his mother’s womb, John famously leapt with joy at the presence of the unborn Messiah as his pregnant Aunt Mary came to visit. Even then he was preparing the way! John was a spiritual superhero, living under vows of strict asceticism, depriving himself of worldly pleasures like comfy clothes and good food, utterly devoted to his calling as the forerunner for God’s promised savior. John was asked to baptize the Messiah, and in doing so he witnessed a manifestation of the Holy Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each made themselves known as Jesus rose up from the water. There was no greater prophet that John the Baptist. Nobody else experienced some of the things he experienced. No one was as dedicated to the tasks of being a prophet as he was. And yet, there came a point in John’s life when he was confused about what God was up to in Jesus. There came a time when doubts and disappointments crept into his heart. There came a time when he wrestled with some questions. Questions like, “Is Jesus really the one?”
The John we meet in our gospel reading for today is a very different John than the one we met last week. Last week John was preaching boldly and bravely, pointing that blessed finger of his at both sin and the savior, calling people to repent, for the kingdom of heaven had come near. John lambasted Pharisees and Sadducees, calling them a brood of vipers. John was fearless and loud!
Later, John’s loud mouth and pointing finger would get him in trouble with Herod Antipas, the Jewish king who served as a puppet ruler for the Romans. Herod had his own personal sexual revolution going on which became a bit of a public scandal. Herod abandoned his first wife in order to marry his sister-in-law. Herod passed himself off as a pious Jew when it fit his purposes, but then he ignored God’s will for marriage in order to indulge his appetites. Well, John just couldn’t let that slide. He publicly rebuked Herod for his behavior, and he ended up in prison for it.
Perhaps John was expecting that his bold preaching on the sanctity of marriage and the sinfulness of adultery would earn him special protection from God. Perhaps, once he was imprisoned, he thought Jesus would put together a tactical squad to come orchestrate a jail break, or maybe that he would negotiate for a prisoner swap. After all, wasn’t the Messiah supposed to overthrow their oppressors and bring liberty to the captives?
John sat in his prison cell, waiting for something to happen. He had plenty of time to think. As weeks, and then months, went by, some troubling questions started to come into his mind. “Is Jesus the one? Was I wrong about him, because this is not at all how I expected things to go! Should I be waiting for someone else, some other Messiah, some other savior?”
John’s questions are not unfamiliar to us. They are not uncommon, even amongst the most devout and faithful Christians. We shouldn’t be surprised by this. If John the Baptist, whom Jesus called the greatest of all the prophets, experienced this season of confusion, if he asked these troubling questions, why should we expect to be spared from them?
And it seems to me that this confusion and these questions are especially common during the holidays. We are told over and over again that it’s the most wonderful time of the year, and then people get confused or troubled when things aren’t so wonderful. People watch hours and hours of Hallmark Christmas movies, where everything gets wrapped up neatly in a nice bow by the end, where every problem gets resolved by some last-minute Christmas miracle, and then people get confused and troubled when they don’t get a Christmas miracle of their own.
The truth is this is a hard time of year for many people. It is a season with so many expectations that it leaves many people disappointed and despairing. There are gifts that land flat and recipes that are a bust and plans that fall through. More seriously, there are those fault lines in family life that come under strain, threatening to break loose with conflict as emotions run high. There is the financial stress of trying to fill every wish and make everything special. There is the aching from the absence of loved ones – the spouse who is deployed, the family on the other side of the country, the kid who isn’t coming home this year. More seriously still, there are people who can’t enjoy Christmas cookies or egg nog because they are nauseous from chemo, and widows and widowers who are facing their first Christmas without their beloved.
First there is the confusion: It wasn’t supposed to be like this. And often this confusion leads to questions, questions like John’s: “Who is this Messiah again? Who is this savior? Because I don’t feel very saved right now. Where is he? Why isn’t he breaking me out of this awful situation? Is Jesus the one? Is he my savior, or should I be looking somewhere else?”
When John faced these questions, he sent for Jesus. He had a few of his friends go and ask Jesus precisely this question. And Jesus sent word back to him. Jesus responded by sending his friends back with a word of reassurance. Jesus didn’t scold John for asking the question. He didn’t say, “How dare you ask that?” Instead, through the witness of these friends Jesus pointed John back to the promises of scripture. The scriptures said that when the Messiah came, the blind would receive their sight, the lame would walk, the lepers would be cleansed, the deaf would hear, the dead would be raised, and the poor would have good news brought to them. This is what Jesus was doing! Jesus encouraged John to look beyond his circumstances to the promises of scripture. He told John to stop looking inwardly at his feelings, and instead to keep his eyes on him, even if he isn’t doing exactly what John expected. “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me,” Jesus told him. Jesus encouraged John to live by faith.
And then Jesus went on to say some wonderful things about John. In spite of his struggles, Jesus says he is strong. He is no reed shaken by the wind! Jesus calls him a prophet – and not only a prophet, but the greatest of all the prophets. In spite of his confusion, Jesus praises and blesses him.
John may have had some questions, maybe even some doubts, but John took those doubts to Jesus. He took those questions to Jesus when he reached out to him for help. This is faith, and Jesus proclaims John righteous on account of this faith.
Jesus has a proclamation and a promise for you here too. Jesus says that among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist. And yet, Jesus says, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he! Jesus is talking about us here! He’s talking about all of us who have been made part of the kingdom of heaven through Christ’s death and resurrection. We may be the least, we may not hold a candle to John the Baptist in many ways, we may not have seen all the things John witnessed, but we have the benefit of living on the other side of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We have seen things John didn’t live to see. We have received a greater, fuller picture of Christ’s saving grace than John did during his lifetime. We have seen the vindication of Jesus as the Messiah of God and the savior of our souls. We have seen his ultimate victory over the worst captivity of all, our captivity to sin and death. We have been set free from those dark prison cells once and for all.
Some of you might still have questions. That’s okay. Some of you might not feel very saved as you face various troubles in your life. That’s okay too. If John the Baptist had those struggles, we shouldn’t expect to be spared from them.
Whatever your situation in life might be today, our Lord Jesus encourages all of us to look beyond our circumstances to the scriptures, to the promises of God we find there. Jesus encourages us to look beyond our feelings and to instead live by faith in him, putting our trust in what he has done for us. Jesus isn’t angered by those tough questions. He can take them. But he doesn’t want you to stay stuck in confusion. He doesn’t want you to stay stuck in doubt. He wants you to know the truth, the truth that he is your savior. He wants you to know the truth of his saving love, the truth that he has made you his own, the truth that he has made you part of the kingdom of heaven, bringing you into right relationship with God both today and forever.
It can still be the most wonderful time of the year, even when we are facing troubles and doubts, because when we send for Jesus, he sends word back to us that it is all true. The gospel, the good news, is true. Jesus sends his Word to reassure us that he is who he says he is. He was born to save us. He is coming again to make all things right once and for all. He has made us part of his kingdom even now, and so we are never alone, and never without hope.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 9, 2025 | Sermons
Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent – December 7, 2025
Matthew 3:1-12
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Throughout the centuries, when John the Baptist has been depicted in Christian art, he usually has his finger out, pointing. Artists have felt free to take liberties with his clothing, interpreting for themselves just how rough or refined that camel’s hair tunic might have been. They have given him a variety of hairstyles, often with a wild, frizzy mane, making him look like he’s the lead singer of an 80’s rock band, other times giving him a goofy medieval bob and bangs cut like we see in the picture on our screen today. But in nearly every depiction of John the Baptist, across centuries and styles, there is that finger, pointing.
What we see on the screen this morning[1] is a close-up of a section of the Isenheim Altarpiece by the Reformation-era artist Mattias Grunewald. Just look at that finger, pointing. Notice how it is unnaturally elongated. Grunewald wants you to notice it. He wants you to notice it because it is John’s job to point.
Pointing is considered rude most of the time, and some of the pointing we see John doing in our gospel reading for today does feel a little offensive. John is pointing to people’s sin. He is pointing to their need for repentance.
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This was John’s message. Citing the prophet Isaiah, he called people to prepare the way of the Lord by making his paths straight, by removing every obstacle that gets in the way of receiving him. People were coming out to the wilderness from all over the region of Judea to repent. They came to confess their sin and to be washed with John’s baptism of repentance and forgiveness.
Apparently, John didn’t care much about being perceived as rude, because when both the Pharisees and the Sadducees came out to him, he pointed that finger of his right in their faces and called them a brood of vipers! He called them the offspring of snakes! In using this language, he was calling them pawns of the devil. Talk about rude!
What is interesting about the Pharisees and Sadducees is that they were theological opposites. These two groups did not get along. They were not carpooling out to the wilderness together, that’s for sure! The Sadducees were the theological liberals. They were squishy on doctrine. They were loose with their interpretation of the scriptures, not holding it as all that authoritative. They made all kinds of cultural accommodations in an attempt to curry favor with the powers that be and maintain their popularity among the elites. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were theological legalists. They were strict enforcers of religious law, adding their own extreme layers of interpretation to God’s law and then showing no mercy towards those who didn’t keep it. They were self-righteous and sanctimonious, always looking down on others who supposedly weren’t as holy as they were.
To John the Baptist the Pharisees and the Sadducees were two sides of the same coin, and so he gives them all the finger. The pointing finger, that is. They were all full of deceit and hypocrisy and wickedness, each in their own way. Though each group thought of themselves as godly, the truth was that their hearts were far from God. And as they inflicted their different versions of faithlessness on others, they had become sons of the evil one, pawns of the devil himself.
John went on to point out how both groups were relying on their relationship to Abraham as the basis for their relationship with God. He points out how they thought that their status as descendants of Abraham automatically gave them a special status with God. But that’s not how it works, John tells them. “God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham,” John says. “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the tree.” Your family tree is irrelevant here, John is saying. This isn’t a matter of genealogy, it is a matter of faith and its fruits, so bear fruits worthy of repentance!
I don’t mean to be rude, and I’m not going to point, but I have to ask: What is John the Baptist’s finger pointing at in your life? What does repentance look like for you? What sins need to be confessed and turned away from? What obstacles need to be cleared away in your life in preparation for the Lord’s coming? Are you a libertine? Or a legalist? Are you placing your trust in God or in something else? Perhaps in an ideology or in a family association or in a heritage or in the fact that your name is on a membership list in the church office?
John the Baptist and his finger always show up this time of year. Sometimes I get irritated at the lectionary for this. Do we really need two doses of John the Baptist every single Advent? (We get him again next week.) But I think there is wisdom in it. I think there is wisdom in being pushed to listen to John during this season because this is a time of year when the obstacles getting in the way of our Lord’s coming to us are bigger than ever. There are more distractions than ever. We are more overscheduled than ever. There are more temptations than ever to look for joy in stuff and in self-indulgence. There are temptations to eat too much and drink too much and spend too much. And all this overindulgence is given a vaguely religious gloss as just being part of the seasonal festivities. What of faith and its fruits? Where are they? How are they being cultivated?
We need John’s finger pointing at our need for repentance, especially this time of year, when there are so many distractions and so many temptations. We need John’s finger to help us avoid the hypocrisy and the faithlessness and the casual assumptions of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
But John’s finger doesn’t just point at our sin. It also points to our savior. John calls us to repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near. John is preparing the way for the coming of Christ, who will bring heaven itself to all who put their faith in him. You see, the kingdom of heaven is not just the assurance of a comfy spot inside the pearly gates after we die. It is that, but the kingdom of heaven is also a relationship we enjoy with God now as he comes to rule our hearts through the grace and mercy of his Son.
John’s finger points us to Jesus and the new baptism he brings. John tells the crowds that one who is more powerful than him is coming. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire,” John says. John is using symbolic language to describe how the baptism Jesus brings will be different from his. John’s baptism was a touch-up job, while Jesus’ baptism will bring a whole new life. Christian baptism is a baptism into the very presence of God, who purifies us from sin once and for all by joining us to Jesus and his eternal forgiveness.
John goes on to use the imagery of a farmer separating wheat from chaff. If you’ve ever been to a threshing bee you’ve seen how that beautiful, valuable, precious grain is liberated from the chaff, from the obstacles which had been separating it from the farmer. That precious grain is gathered in, while the obstacles are burned in an unquenchable fire, never to return again. This is what Jesus is coming to do, John is saying. There is a threshing bee coming, and he’s coming to gather what is precious to him. He is coming to gather you.
Notice the lamb at John’s feet in Grunewald’s painting on the screen. This lamb is clinging to a cross and shedding its blood into a chalice. That lamb is Jesus. John called Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is who is coming. This is who will usher in the kingdom of heaven. This is who John is ultimately pointing us towards.
Jesus said that John the Baptist was the greatest of all the prophets. Martin Luther once explained that John was the greatest of prophets, “not because of his austere life, not because of his phenomenal birth, but because of his blessed finger, because of his message and his office…” “No other man,” Luther writes, “had such fingers as John’s, with which he points to the Lamb of God and declares that He is the true Savior who would redeem the world from sin…For he is the ultimate of all prophets and preachers; no more comforting word and finger will ever appear than John’s word and pointer.”
Today John the Baptist certainly points us to our sin. But even more than that, he points us to our savior. Repentance includes both a turning away from sin and a turning towards our savior in faith. And so John points us to the Lamb of God, who even now is pouring himself out for us. He poured himself out for you in your baptism, and so you are not the offspring of the serpent. You are children of God! Jesus, the Lamb of God, pours himself out for you in his Holy Supper, where you take in his grace and mercy anew from that very chalice. Jesus pours himself out for us through his Word, renewing us in faith so that we would bear its fruits.
Don’t fear John’s finger. It only does it’s rude pointing so that it can then point you to the kingdom of heaven, which has come near to us even now as God clears the way, removes every obstacle, forgives every sin, and sends Jesus into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
[1] https://www.wikiart.org/en/matthias-grunewald/st-john-the-baptist-detail-from-the-annunciation-from-the-isenheim-altarpiece-1516
by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 2, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 30
Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent – November 30, 2025
Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Advent begins with an alarm clock. Alarm clocks are meant to startle. They emit loud noises that are meant to wake you up. In many cases, the sound of an alarm clock is unwelcome – especially when we are comfortable, especially when we open our eyes and it is still dark out, especially when we want to go back to sleep.
Advent begins with an alarm clock. Our readings are meant to startle. They are meant to wake us up. They are meant to rouse us out of our comfortable slumber and to draw us out of the darkness and into the light of day.
St. Paul sounds the first alarm. He says to us, “Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep!” Paul barks at our bedside like this because, he says, “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.” Paul then tells us to get dressed! He tells us to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” He calls us to strip off the things people wear in the dark – revelry and drunkenness and debauchery and licentiousness and quarreling and jealousy – and instead to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. “Let us live honorably, as in the day,” Paul says. The new day is dawning, so act like it! Wake up! Get dressed!
I wonder how many of you, upon hearing these words of St. Paul in our epistle reading, do what I do many mornings, which is to reach over and hit the snooze button. I wonder how many of you heard it, were mildly roused, and then mentally went back to sleep.
Well, not so fast, because the alarm when off again just moments later when we got to our gospel reading, and this time it comes from Jesus himself.
Jesus is talking about the final coming of his kingdom. He clearly says that about that day and hour no one knows. Then he goes on to emphasize the importance of being awake. He says that before the final coming of his kingdom it will be like the days of Noah. People were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage. In other words, they were carrying on with their daily lives. They were carrying on with their comfortable routines. There’s nothing inherently wrong with eating or drinking or marrying, of course. The problem, if you remember the story, was that the people in Noah’s day were doing all of this while being completely asleep to the reality of God. There was no one who had faith in God except one man, Noah. Everyone else was sleepwalking through life. They were in the dark, completely oblivious to God.
This is what it will be like at the coming of the Son of Man, Jesus says. People will be busy with the day-to-day activities of their lives, but they will fall asleep to the presence of God. Jesus warns that some will be caught sleeping and miss the coming kingdom altogether. “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming!”
Advent begins with an alarm clock, because this is a perennial problem. It begins with an alarm clock because human beings have spiritual narcolepsy – we are always nodding off. It begins with an alarm clock because we get so comfortable in our slumber, especially when it is still dark out.
Paul’s concerns are perennial. We can’t dismiss them. We shouldn’t hit the snooze button on them. They are not just Paul’s words, but, by the power of the Holy Spirit, they are God’s Word to us. And God sees how we prefer to stay in the dark. God sees how many people dedicate their lives to revelry, living solely for the pursuit of selfish pleasures, and only end up in the shadows of despair. God sees how many people cope with the dark by numbing themselves with alcohol and other substances. God sees how many people cast aside God’s good law, given for the sake of human flourishing, and instead make up their own rules and chase whatever feels good in the moment. God sees how many people are caught up in the quarrels and jealousies of the day, living as though the entire point of life is to dunk on your opponents. Wake up! God says. There are more important things for you to focus on. Now is the time for you to rise from this darkness. Now is the time for you to rise from sleep. The day of salvation is nearer than it has ever been, so act like it. Wake up and get dressed!
Jesus’ concerns are perennial too. Does it not seem like we are living in the days of Noah? Do we not see wickedness and violence and people doing what is right in their own eyes, ignoring God? Do we not see people sleepwalking through their lives, going about their routines while utterly in the dark about what God is up to? And we aren’t just talking about people outside the church. We aren’t just talking about those who don’t believe. Many Christians are sleepwalking through life too, living as functional atheists, going about their days without regard for what God is up to, getting so caught up in their daily activities that they fall asleep to the reality of God.
A good example of this is seen in the way worship attendance has dropped off in the last several years – a phenomenon which has been seen across the church, in nearly all denominations. It was thought that after the pandemic, everyone would flock back to church. But instead, it seems, a lot of people fell asleep, and a lot of them haven’t woken back up yet. Studies have shown that even those who were eager to come back are far less frequent worshippers than they once were. This doesn’t make me mad so much as it makes me sad. And it makes me sad not only for us, who miss their voices and their presence in the pews here in-person, it makes me even more sad for them, for what they are missing.
It makes me think of the time a few years ago when the Washington Post conducted a little experiment. They had the world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell play his violin in a subway station in New York. He was playing one of the finest instruments in the world, a Stradivarius violin worth 3.5 million dollars. He played some of the most exquisite music ever written for 45 minutes. Hundreds and hundreds of people were coming and going, and almost no one stopped. He had a hat out for tips and received 30 dollars over those 45 minutes. Just days before he sold out two shows in Boston with tickets averaging 100 dollars a seat, but there in that New York subway, people were just too busy to notice. Most just walked right past him.
The experiment was conducted to study the role of perception and context in the appreciation of art, but I think it is a powerful illustration of this spiritual slumber we are being warned about today. It is so easy for people to get so busy with their daily lives that they miss the beautiful things God is doing right under their noses in the church. The church is our ark. In fact, many sanctuaries are built to look like the ribs of a large boat for just this reason. The church is the ark where God saves his people. The ark is where the beautiful music of the gospel is played. Too many people, though, can’t be bothered to stop and come in and hear it.
In his preface to the Small Catechism Martin Luther wrote that if people really believed that Jesus Christ was truly present in the Lord’s Supper, they would come running to receive him every Sunday. If they really believed he was there in, with, and under the bread and wine forgiving their sins and giving them a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, you wouldn’t be able to keep them away! The problem is, they don’t. Or they do, but they forget. They start sleepwalking through their lives, asleep to the reality of what God is up to.
Do you see why Advent begins with an alarm clock? Our faith needs to be roused, lest we fall asleep. For those who are awake, who are here to hear the beautiful music of the gospel, we need to be encouraged to keep awake. Don’t you fall asleep too! And not only that, but perhaps we need to take a cue from St. Paul and think about rousing our brothers and sisters in Christ who might be sleepwalking a bit. We don’t need to be a buzzer in their ears, but we can perhaps rouse them awake with a phone call and an invitation: “Hey, we miss you. Come and hear the beautiful music of the gospel. It’s worth waking up for. It’s worth stopping to listen to.”
Not all alarm clocks have a grating, alarming sound. Sometimes we need that, but that isn’t the only way to wake up. My wife works in the high school library and needs to be over there bright and early every school day. A few years ago, she got an alarm clock that is actually a light. It wakes her up by slowly getting brighter and brighter, mimicking the sunrise. It is just as effective as one that rings or buzzes, but it rouses her by light, by telling her that a new day is dawning.
This is what Advent is about too. The color for Advent used to be purple – it still is in some churches. The purple comes from the understanding that Advent is a sort of a mini-Lent. It is still technically a penitential season in preparation for the celebration of the festival of Christmas, but in recent decades the color has more and more been changed to deep blue. This blue is intended to lift up themes of hope, themes of anticipation. It has been said that this deep blue is meant to represent the color of the sky just before dawn.
Sometimes we need a buzz in our ears to wake us up. But God sends his light to do it too.
The light of his promise shines through Paul’s words as he tells us that salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. This is what we’re waking up to, to salvation! We’re waking up to the healing and wholeness Jesus has won for us, which we begin to receive even now. We are waking up to hope, to peace, to faith in God’s promises. We wake up to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, leaving behind the darkness and living a new life through faith in him.
The light of his promise shines through Jesus’ words as he speaks of his coming again. This is why we want to keep awake, because it is our gracious Lord and savior who is coming.
Even now we can hear the beautiful music of his saving grace. This beautiful music of his redeeming love has called us into the ark, which will deliver us into the new day he has in store for us.
So keep awake.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 2, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 23
Sermon for Christ the King Sunday – November 23, 2025
Luke 23:33-43
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
A sign hung over Jesus as he was being crucified. It said, “This is the King of the Jews.” It was put there ironically, as a joke. Some king he was, pinned there between two criminals, naked and bleeding, soon to be dead! Most of the people below him were in on the joke. They joined in, scoffing at him, mocking him, deriding him. The word “if” came up a lot. “He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one.” Or as the soldiers said, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.”
One of the criminals being crucified beside Jesus joined in on the mocking from the people below. He derided Jesus, ridiculing him with sarcasm: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself! And get us down from here while you’re at it!”
That sign identifying Jesus as the King of the Jews may have been intended as a joke, but there was one there who understood that it was true. The other criminal somehow saw in Jesus’ innocent suffering that something divine was happening. He somehow saw that Jesus’ crucifixion was his coronation. He somehow saw in Jesus’ crown of thorns a real king about to enter his kingdom.
And so he rebuked the other criminal who was talking trash to Jesus. “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” This criminal recognized that he was getting what the law demanded. He accepted his own condemnation. He acknowledged his own guilt while pointing to Jesus’ innocence.
And then he said something truly remarkable. He turned his head towards Jesus, and he said to him, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Notice he didn’t use the word “if,” like so many others did. He said “when.” He firmly believed Jesus had a kingdom! As far as he was concerned, there was no “if” here, it was only a matter of when! That’s faith!
He then asked Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. This is more than just asking to be called to mind. He wasn’t asking Jesus to put a picture of him on his fridge and think about him once in a while. In asking Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom, this criminal was asking him for mercy when Jesus takes his place in his royal court. He was asking his King Jesus for pardon, for clemency in the coming kingdom. He was asking the King he knew would soon be on his heavenly throne to remember him with grace.
And Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
“Today,” Jesus said. On that very day Christ’s kingdom would come to him. There would be no waiting, no delay. He wouldn’t be taken down from the cross for a second chance in which he could prove himself first. He didn’t have to come back for a hearing at a later date. “Today,” Jesus said. His grace was imminent. It was available on the very day of his asking! “Today.”
“Today you will be with me,” Jesus said. This criminal would not be alone. He would not be cast out into the outer darkness. He would not be stuck with his mouthy fellow criminal. He would not be dumped with all the other bodies piled up at the bottom of the hill. He would be with Jesus. He was going where Jesus was going. “You will be with me,” Jesus told him.
“Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Jesus doesn’t tell him he will be in Purgatory, with a sentence still to serve. Jesus tells him he will be with him in Paradise. This word can also be translated as “garden.” What Jesus is promising is a return to the Garden, a return to the paradise of Eden before the fall. He is promising a complete restoration, where he will be free from sin and its consequences, free from the condemnation of the law, free from guilt and shame and pain and weeping and death.
Jesus won’t just remember him, he will re-member him. That is, he will put him back together the way he was supposed to be. He will heal everything in his life which has been dis-membered. He will restore him to the wholeness and perfection God intended for him at the beginning of creation. This is the picture of heaven Jesus gives him with this beautiful word, “Paradise.” And if anyone questions this criminal as to why he is there, he can just point to the King and say, “He invited me! He let me in!”
My pastor during my high school and college years died from cancer while I was in seminary. We kept in touch in the years before his death, even after he took his last call to a congregation in Arizona. Once when I was down in Arizona on a trip, we met for lunch. He talked about how he endured all the ups and downs – mostly downs – of dealing with a terminal illness. He said that in his worst moments of suffering he would sing a chant he had learned, a musical setting of the words of the criminal from the cross: Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.
This didn’t entirely make sense to me at the time. He was one of the most godly, honest, upright, gentle, and kind people I have ever known, and I thought it was a little odd for him to be meditating on the words of a criminal, making them his own.
But years after he died, I came across something Martin Luther wrote about this criminal and his words. Luther wrote: “The criminal, perceiving his guilt and Christ’s innocence, trusts that Christ’s innocence will help him. He sees right into the heart of Christ, as though through a solid wall. The criminal is one of us, and we are like him; therefore, let us cry out to Christ trusting that He will say to us: `Yes, Amen!’
“The criminal is one of us, and we are like him,” Luther insists.
You don’t need to be a felon to need forgiveness. The scriptures tell us we all have fallen short of God’s law. The scriptures tell us that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. The truth is we all need mercy in the court of our King. The truth is that we all suffer from sin and death. The truth is we all need to be re-membered and restored.
But this is just the first part of what Luther gets at here. Luther also says that we are also like the criminal in that we perceive that Christ can help us! We are like him in that we too see the heart of Christ in his innocent suffering for us! We see his great mercy. We see his great love. We are like this criminal in that we trust that our Lord Jesus will help us. We cry out to Jesus trusting that he will say to us, “Yes, Amen!”
Reading this snippet from Luther helped me make sense of my pastor singing the words of this criminal. He didn’t just meditate on them because he knew he was a sinner – although he certainly did and would be the first to admit it. He meditated on these words, making them his own, because he had faith that Jesus could help him.
He sang those words over and over again because he believed that the words on the sign hanging over Jesus’ head are true. Christ is indeed our King, and he is a King who can help. He is the King of mercy. He is our highest authority and our deepest hope. He is a King who suffers alongside us while promising us Paradise.
When the world looks to Jesus, it still sees that sign over his head and laughs, thinking it is all a big joke. It still scorns and derides him. King of the Jews? What kind of King dies on a cross?
But with eyes of faith, we too see that that sign is true. We see in Christ a King who helps us. We see a King who wore a crown of thorns, bearing our sin, in order to set us free. We see a King who suffers with us, so that we would know that he is with us even in our pain. We see a King who shared our death so that we might share his eternal life. We see a King who remembers us with mercy and promises us Paradise.
And so we pray, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.”
And already now, our gracious King says, ‘Yes! Amen!”
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 17, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 16
Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost – November 16, 2025
Luke 21:5-19
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood is the time my dad took me to my first Mariners game. It was their first or maybe second season as a new franchise. They played in the Kingdom, which had just been completed a year or two before. I don’t remember who they played or whether they won or what we ate. What is vivid about this memory is walking up those big ramps around the perimeter of the Kingdom, looking up at the massive concrete pillars and beams, several feet thick. It was the hugest building I’d ever been in. It was like being inside a mountain. That enormous concrete structure made a big impression on me as a seven or eight-year-old kid. It seemed like it was built to last forever.
When they demolished the Kingdome only a mere twenty-three years later, I had to watch. I tuned in from our parsonage in Montana and watched the controlled demolition live. It only took a few seconds for a few well-placed explosives to do their work and poof, that entire massive concrete structure collapsed into a cloud of dust and a pile of rubble. What loomed so large both in the Seattle skyline and in my childhood memories was gone in an instant.
Things are never as permanent as we think they are.
We’re getting close to the end of Luke’s gospel now in our lectionary readings, and Jesus is in Jerusalem. We hear in our gospel reading for today that people were talking about the temple. They were admiring that spectacular structure which dominated the Jerusalem skyline. The temple was an architectural wonder of the ancient world. It was built on an enormous foundation with stones weighing as much as 40 tons each. There were massive walls covered in plated gold and towering columns of white marble. One set of doors was 75 feet high and 60 feet wide and made of solid Corinthian bronze. It seemed like it was built to last forever.
Jesus heard people talking about the temple, and he said to them, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” It was no doubt an unwelcome comment. It was a bummer of a thing to have inserted into someone’s casual conversation. It probably seemed absurd.
But Jesus was right. Eventually, the entire temple structure would be leveled. In 70AD, the Romans completely destroyed it, burning it down in a fire so hot that it cracked those massive stones, causing the structure to collapse in a heap of dust and rubble. There was not one stone left upon another.
Things are never as permanent as we think they are.
When those who had been talking about the temple asked Jesus when this would happen, Jesus didn’t tell them. He warned them that people would come along claiming to know, but that they shouldn’t listen to them. (This is still good advice today, by the way.)
Jesus then went on to describe all sorts of other things that aren’t as permanent as we think they are. He said that nations and kingdoms will be shaken by wars. He said that the ground beneath our feet, those enormous tectonic plates upon which we literally build our lives, will be shaken by earthquakes. He said that there will be times when economic structures are shaken and people will struggle to put food on the table. He said there will be times when our physical health will be shaken by disease. He said that our religious communities and even our families will be shaken by change, by conflict, by fracturing. These structures upon which we build our lives, these foundations which usually seem so firm, so sure, so certain, so strong, so permanent, will be shaken. They aren’t as permanent as we think they are.
That’s the bad news. And we need to hear this bad news, actually. We need a Lord who tells us the truth. We need a Lord who is honest with us about how things will be before his kingdom comes. That way, when we look at the world unraveling around us in so many different ways, we can say, “Ah, Jesus said there would be days like these.” Whether we’re looking at world history or current events or our own shaky lives we can be confident that none of what we see, none of what we experience, is unknown or unexpected to our Lord Jesus. He literally said there would be days like these!
There’s plenty of bad news in what Jesus says, and we need to hear it. But sprinkled in among the bad news is good news. It is easy to miss it, but it is there.
First, Jesus tells us that when we hear of these things happening, when we observe the collapse of these things we think are so permanent, we shouldn’t be afraid. “Do not be terrified,” Jesus says.
By itself, this may not be so helpful. Usually when someone tells me not to be afraid, it has the opposite effect! It has the effect of making me aware that there is a situation at hand which has prompted someone to try and talk me out of my anxiety, which then turns my anxiety up even higher!
Fear cannot be driven out by command. It can only be nudged out with a promise. We need a reason not to be afraid. And Jesus gives us a reason. He tells us that those shaky situations are not the end. They won’t have the last word. He tells us that the collapse of those things we thought were so permanent, as devastating and as final as they seem, are not the end. When our world seems to be unraveling or cracks start to show up in the foundations of our lives, it isn’t the end. God isn’t done yet!
As we deal with the fracturing of our world and our lives, Jesus also promises to help us. He tells us to not prepare ahead of time what we will say when we are attacked or maligned or ridiculed or threatened. “For I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict,” Jesus says. This doesn’t necessarily mean Jesus will whisper an awesome speech or sermon into our ears at just the right moment. It doesn’t mean he will slip us a note with the perfect comeback or argument to use against our adversaries. What Jesus is promising here is that he will be with us in every moment of trial or difficulty. He will be with us with his Word, assuring us that he is Lord and that we belong to him. It means that his Word will be the strong foundation upon which we will stand, leaving us unshaken even when everything else is collapsing. It means that our testimony before the world will be so simple and so ingrained in us that we don’t need to rehearse it. It will be part of us, part of our lives. The first Christian creed was simply, “Jesus is Lord.” These three words are so simple, and yet they say so much. They are so powerful. And we can only say them and mean it with Jesus’ help, which he promises to give us.
Jesus makes another promise, too. He promises that even though the world itself might collapse around us, not a hair on our heads will perish. This isn’t really about hair care, of course. Bald or balding Christians, take heart! This is a metaphor! This is about being known and loved so completely by God that there is no part of us that God will not redeem. This is about entrusting every last fiber of our being into God’s merciful care, even when parts of our lives seem to be falling away like hairs down the drain. It is about having every last dead cell being animated with new life through Jesus Christ.
“By your endurance you will gain your souls,” Jesus says. This is not an endurance that comes from our strength, but from his. It is the endurance of faith. It is the endurance of holding fast to what our Lord Jesus is promising to do for us here.
Jesus promises us that the future is in his hands, and so we don’t need to be afraid. It isn’t the end of things until he has the last word, so do not be terrified by what you see. Jesus promises to help us along the way, giving us words and a wisdom that the world cannot withstand or contradict. Jesus promises us that the entirety of our lives are in his powerful hands, down to the last strand of hair, and so even when everything else is collapsing, we will not perish. We will have life with him, now and forever.
Things are never as permanent as we think they are, but in our Lord Jesus and his Word we have a strong foundation which will never be shaken or destroyed. The Word of the Lord endures forever. His promises are permanent. When things get shaky, stand there.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 10, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 9
Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost – November 9, 2025
Luke 20:27-38
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we are introduced to a new sparring partner for our Lord Jesus. Jesus usually goes toe-to-toe with the scribes and the Pharisees or the chief priests. Today it is the Sadducees. The Sadducees were a small but powerful group in Jesus’ time. They were religious scholars of a sort. They were the elites who ran the Temple system. They were religious aristocrats who rubbed elbows with the wealthy and the powerful. They even hob-nobbed with Roman authorities as part of the upper class. Luther called them “the smug.”
One distinct feature about the Sadducees, which St. Luke is quick to point out to us, is that they didn’t believe in a resurrection. They didn’t believe in any kind of life after death. The Pharisees did. Most Jews did. The Sadducees did not. This might sound strange to have people so embedded in a religion’s leadership who don’t believe in something so central to it, something so widely held by its adherents, but that’s how it was. The Sadducees considered themselves too sophisticated to believe in something like life after death. Believing themselves to be smarter than God, they abandoned the best part of what their religion taught!
These types of religious leaders are still with us, by the way. The current president of Union Seminary in New York made waves a few years ago when she admitted in an interview that she didn’t believe in the resurrection. She said, “My faith is not tied to some divine promise about the afterlife.” There was a prominent Episcopal priest who sold a ton of books in the Nineties who openly denied that Jesus was really raised from the dead. I even heard a high-ranking clergyman from our own denomination once say that he wasn’t too sure about life after death.
You would think that if you can’t affirm the basic tenets of the Christian creeds that you would have the integrity to go find a new job, but instead these people somehow manage to work their way into the highest echelons of various religious institutions. They are the Sadducees of our own time. This is who the Sadducees were.
These Sadducees came to Jesus with what they thought was a sophisticated argument against the resurrection. They described a scenario in which a woman was married seven times, to seven brothers in a row, before she herself died. Then, no doubt with smug grins on their faces, they asked Jesus, “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”
It is important to say more about this before we go on to Jesus’ response. The Sadducees were referring to what Moses had written in Deuteronomy about an ancient practice called levirate marriage. If a woman was widowed without a child, according to this practice it was the responsibility of the brother of the man who died to take in his sister-in-law, marry her, and have a child with her. This sounds completely bonkers in our time, but the function of this was to provide care and support for widows. It was less about marriage as a relationship and more about basic life insurance. A childless widow in that time had no means of supporting herself other than begging or prostitution. And so in a time where there was no life insurance, no social security, no safety net of any sort, this levirate marriage system was essentially life insurance. It was a way to provide ongoing support and protection to widows. The Sadducees thought they were so smart in citing this practice from the law of Moses as a way of ridiculing the idea of the resurrection. What if she ends up going through seven brothers? In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? This background is important to note, because it shapes Jesus’ response to them. Jesus tells them that in the resurrection from the dead, people neither marry nor are given in marriage. Which, by itself, might not be a very satisfying response.
I’ve heard people who are in happy, loving marriages say that this response from Jesus makes them sad. “Is Jesus saying I won’t be with my husband or wife in heaven?” This is especially confusing and painful and difficult for the many widows and widowers in our congregation. When this reading has come around in the past, I’ve had widows come to me in a fury, with tears in their eyes, saying, “What do you mean there’s no marriage in heaven? If I won’t be married to my husband in heaven, then I don’t want to be there!” And I get it. I do. I adore my wife, and while we technically only signed up “until death parts us,” I would love to go extra innings with her. She is the best part of my life, and I want to spend eternity married to her. I can’t imagine heaven being heaven without her there as my wife. So I understand completely.
But we need to be careful about isolating these words and jumping to conclusions.
Jesus is talking about something really specific here in this reading, so we need to pay close attention to him. Jesus is not giving a full-fledged description of heaven. Jesus is countering the Sadducees and their argument. Jesus is saying that the life insurance program which is levirate marriage won’t be a thing in the afterlife. It won’t be needed because in the resurrection there will be no death! Jesus isn’t saying we won’t know each other. He isn’t saying we won’t recognize each other. He isn’t saying we won’t be together. Jesus is telling the Sadducees that their scenario is irrelevant, because in heaven none of those earth-bound concerns for support or protection will matter anymore.
What Jesus goes on to say should provide encouragement and hope for all of us. Jesus cites the story of Moses and the burning bush to point out that God identified himself as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Jesus points out that although all three of them are long dead, God speaks of them in that story in the present tense. God calls them by their name. And so they are still themselves. They are still recognized as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Jesus then says, “Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
I don’t know what marriage, or any of our relationships for that matter, will look like in heaven. But we have a divine promise from our Lord Jesus that our God is the God of the living. We have a divine promise that to him, all of our loved ones whom he has called to himself are alive. We have a divine promise that we will be alive with them – still recognizable, still known by name. We cannot possibly understand what this new state of being with God will be like, but Jesus assures us that it is real, and that it will be good.
You might have heard the modern parable of the two unborn twins in their mother’s womb. The first unborn baby says to the other, “Do you believe in life after delivery?”
The second one replies, “Yes, of course! Don’t you?” And the first twin scoffs and says, “No! That’s a silly idea. What we are experiencing here and now in this womb, this is all there is. What would life after delivery even be like, anyway?” And the second replies, “Well, maybe there are senses that we don’t even know about yet, senses that we don’t use here. What if our eyes open and we begin to see things we can’t even imagine yet?” The first baby says, “You’re being ridiculous. Don’t you see this umbilical cord? Don’t you know this is what is keeping us alive? It’s a scientific fact.” And the second says, “Well, maybe it will be different out there. Whatever it is, I’m sure our mother will take care of us.” The first twin starts to laugh, “Ha! You believe there’s a mother? What gives you that idea? Where is this mother now?” And the second says, “She’s all around us. In her we live and move and have our being. I believe that in life after delivery, she will be there to hold us and care for us. But even now, if you listen, you can hear her heartbeat. Even now, you can hear her voice.”
My friends, in Jesus Christ we can hear the heartbeat of the One in whom we live and move and have our being. Through the Word of God we can hear the voice of God telling us that there is indeed a life beyond this one. I can’t tell you exactly what it will be like. Our eyes haven’t yet been opened to that. There are senses that won’t be awakened until then. I can’t tell you what our relationships will be like either, but based on the divine promise we have from our Lord Jesus, I can assure you that we will recognize each other. I can assure you that we will be alive and together in ways that we can’t begin to imagine now. I can assure you that the resurrection is real, and that it will be good.
To you widows or widowers, or anyone who is in a happy, loving marriage and feels saddened by Jesus’ words, know this: the scriptures promise us that love never ends. And so all the things you currently enjoy about your spouse, or all the things you miss about them – the companionship, the closeness, the love – it will all be there in the afterlife. We will be recognizably reunited with them in heaven. The scriptures teach us that a loving marriage is a sign, a faint reflection, of Christ’s love for the church, and that reflection can only come into sharper focus in the life to come.
To those whose relationship status or relationship history is more complicated, know this: in the life to come all those complicated scenarios will be resolved by God in ways you can’t begin to imagine, so don’t worry about it. All will be sorted out. All will be perfected.
To those who feel alone, know this: in the life to come, all will be loved and held and cherished and cared for forever.
For those who are missing any loved ones, whether they are friends, parents, children, other family members, know this: because of Jesus, we have the hope of living with them forever as children of the resurrection.
Don’t let anything rob you of that hope. Don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise or try to distract you from it, even if they’re wearing a clerical collar. Our God is the God of the living. To him, all of them are alive, and one day we will be delivered into a new life too.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
