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
by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 4, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 2
Sermon for All Saints Sunday – November 2, 2025
Ephesians 1:11-23, Luke 6:20-31
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
On All Saints Sunday we need to get one thing straight right from the start: Sainthood is not earned or achieved; it is bestowed and received. Sainthood is a gift! It is the baptismal birthright of every Christian! A saint is not someone who has earned the title by being exceptionally well-behaved. A saint is not someone who has achieved this status by performing a miracle and making it through a process of canonization. What the Bible teaches us is that a saint is someone upon whom Christ has bestowed his saving grace, someone who has received this saving grace through faith. Whenever saints are mentioned in the New Testament it simply refers to those who have been baptized into Christ.
There are certain people from Christian history who have made extraordinary contributions to the church. We commonly refer to them as saints. These are those spiritual superheroes who have their own days on the church calendar. This is a good thing. We should remember and celebrate them. We can learn from them. We can be inspired by them. But they are not in a separate category. Their title of saint is not exclusive to them. In the Bible the word “saint” is simply a synonym for the word “Christian.”
We see this most clearly in how St. Paul addressed several of his letters. When Paul wrote Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, he addressed all these letters to the saints. He was not writing to spiritual superheroes in these letters. If they were already spiritual superheroes, they wouldn’t need his letters! The people he was writing to were not people who had earned any status in the church. They were not people who had achieved moral or spiritual perfection. In fact, in some cases, Paul was writing to people who were deeply messed up! Have you read 1 Corinthians? Parts of it read like it could be a script for a new series called “Desperate Housewives of Corinth.” And yet, the Apostle Paul addressed them all as saints. Why? Because they were Christians. He called them saints because Christ Jesus had bestowed his gift of salvation upon them, and they had received it in faith.
In our reading from Ephesians for this All Saints Sunday we hear Paul repeatedly refer to the saints as those who have received an inheritance. An inheritance isn’t earned or achieved. It is bestowed and received. To be precise, an inheritance is bestowed and received after someone has died. To be a saint, then, is to receive the gift of what Christ has done for us through his death on the cross. It is to receive the inheritance of salvation he has won for us through his death and resurrection. Jesus bestows this gift, Paul says, through his Word, and we receive it in our ears by faith.
Christ is bestowing this gift upon us today as he speaks to us. In the gospel of Luke today we hear Jesus proclaiming blessing after blessing. This blessing isn’t just for those who heard him back then, they are for you who are gathered here today. This is a living Word being bestowed upon you to receive and believe.
“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says. “Blessed are you who are hungry.” Jesus proclaims his blessing upon those in need, whether materially, spiritually, or relationally. Jesus looks upon those who don’t have enough, whether it is money or food or hope or love, and he says to them, to you, “Blessed are you, for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you, for you will be filled.” Blessed are you because God sees you. God cares about you, and in the coming of his Son, God is bestowing upon you a love that fills every emptiness.
“Blessed are you who weep,” Jesus says. This tends to be a weepy Sunday as we remember those saints who have died since last All Saints Sunday. We ache at the sound of the names of those saints who are no longer with us. They were dear friends and beloved members of our church family. They were beloved husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. In many cases, that grief is still fresh, still raw. “Blessed are you who weep,” Jesus says to us, “for you will laugh.” That laughing doesn’t have to be today. It is okay to weep. But Jesus promises us that a day is coming when death and mourning and crying will be no more, a day of restoration and reunion and, yes, laughter.
“Blessed are you are who are hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed on account of the Son of Man,” Jesus says. Jesus proclaims his blessing on all who suffer because of their faith in him. Jesus proclaims his blessing on our brothers and sisters in Nigeria who are currently being violently oppressed under an extreme form of Sharia law, with tens of thousands of them being massacred and martyred for their Christian faith. Jesus says that they, and all who suffer for their faith, can rejoice, because their suffering won’t have the last word. Jesus promises that their reward will be great in heaven.
Jesus bestows blessing after blessing after blessing. And these blessings are given to those who haven’t earned or achieved anything! These blessings are instead freely bestowed upon those who need them. They are bestowed in grace and received in faith.
There are woes too, of course. Jesus gives warnings to those who are already comfortable in this life: the rich, the happy, the well-fed and the well-liked. These aren’t inherently bad things to be. In fact, in the right context, they can be received as blessings of their own. But Jesus warns that those who are already comfortable with life as it is are less likely to see their need for a blessing from Jesus. They are less likely to receive the salvation he has come to bestow. Being comfortable now makes it very easy to be in denial about our need for the life he brings.
There was a news story that ran a week or so ago about a new study on the health benefits of walking. My wife and I are avid walkers, so it got my attention. The way ABC News described the study was to say that “walking 4,000 steps per day reduced the risk of death by 40%.” Now, whoever wrote that byline is in some serious denial, because I’m pretty sure that no matter how much you walk, the risk of death is always 100%! (If you’re curious, the story went on to clarify that it led to a 40% reduction in premature death from cardiovascular disease, which is a pretty important detail, I think.)
We may well be secure and happy and healthy now, and that isn’t bad or wrong. But it can lead to this kind of denial, this false sense of security. The reality is, we will all face times when we are poor in some way or another. We will all face times when we feel empty, when we hunger for things to be different. We will all have times when we weep at the loss of someone dear to us. And no matter how much we walk, the death rate is still 100%. And so the day will come for all of us when our name is on the list of those who have died since the last All Saints Sunday.
In the meantime, we have a word of blessing from our Lord Jesus. In the meantime, we have the promise of the inheritance our Lord Jesus has bestowed upon us through his saving death. In the meantime, we have a title which has been freely bestowed upon us, the title given to us in our baptism – the title of saint. There is nothing we do to earn or achieve this title. We can only receive it through faith, by trusting that it is ours, by trusting in Christ’s Word to us.
And when we receive this title by faith, we start to act like who we are. When we receive this gift of salvation and sainthood which has been bestowed upon us, we start to act at least a little bit like those people who have their own days on the calendar, each in our own way. Our hearts begin to soften towards our enemies. We are a little more inclined to bless those who curse us and a little less inclined to seek revenge. We begin to look forward to sharing with those in need. We start to do to others as we would have them do to us.
We don’t do this perfectly, or even particularly well. We are sinner-saints who will always struggle with this. But in fits and starts we begin to live into the identity bestowed upon us by our Lord – not because we have to, but as a grateful response to the One already did it perfectly for us. Our Lord Jesus loved his enemies, even as he was being crucified. Jesus blessed those who cursed him, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” Jesus turned the other cheek to those who struck him, and by his wounds we are healed. Jesus gave up not only his cloak but also his tunic as he was stripped bare, giving up everything, even his life, in order to save us, in order to save you, in order to make you one of his saints.
Sainthood isn’t earned or achieved; it is bestowed and received. As we receive the gifts Christ won for us on the cross, given to us in Word and Sacrament, we are strengthened for a life that, however imperfectly, begins to reflect the perfect life and the perfect love of our savior. As we receive the promise of the glorious inheritance our Lord Jesus has in store for all who believe, we also live in hope. We look with hope to the day when we can once again share some barbeque with Roger, a piece of pie with Jack, some chocolate milk with Allan, some tea and cookies with Mary, some Dove chocolates with Gisela, a cup of coffee with Bob, and some ham salad with Leona. Until that day comes, we gather with them, and with the whole company of heaven, at the table our Lord has set for all the saints as a foretaste of the feast to come.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 20, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for October 19
Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost – October 19, 2025
Luke 18:1-8
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
We live in a cultural moment which is filled with doom and gloom. I’m not talking about Halloween displays, though why people “decorate” their yard with all of that ugly, hideous gore this time of year is something I will never understand. What I’m talking about is the angry, fearful, despairing, doom and gloom attitude I see so often in people. I see it in people from all walks of life, and from all points on the political spectrum. There are different concerns driving this doom and gloom, but the spiritual malady underneath it all is the same: It is a lack of hope.
In our gospel reading for today Jesus gives us both practical advice and a powerful promise for cultivating hope amidst the doom and gloom. He teaches us how we can endure in hope when dark days and hard times come.
In the verses leading up to today’s gospel reading, Jesus himself lays some doom and gloom on the disciples. He tells them that there will be dark days ahead. He tells them that days are coming when they will “long to see the days of the Son of Man,” and they will not see it. He says there will be days like the days of Noah, when there was widespread immorality and lawlessness and rejection of God. He says there will be days like the days of Sodom, when Lot and his wife fled the violence-plagued city as fire and sulfur rained down. The disciples were understandably shaken by what Jesus was saying, and so they asked him: “Where, Lord?” And Jesus replied cryptically and ominously: “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” Talk about doom and gloom!
I imagine the disciples sitting there, pale and sweaty, ready to buy a bunch of canned goods and head for the hills. But then Jesus goes on – and that’s where our reading picks up for today: “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”
In this parable there is a judge. In the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, there are special mandates for the judges of Israel to give special attention and care to widows. But this judge, Jesus tells us, neither feared God nor had any respect for people. And so, when a widow kept coming to his court, asking for justice, he ignored her. But this widow kept coming back again and again and again. She knew what the scriptures said about how judges are supposed to treat widows. She was persistent. She didn’t give up. She knew what the judge was supposed to do, and she held him to what the scriptures demanded of him. Finally, the judge relented. He said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice so that she will not wear me out by continually coming!”
Some parables Jesus tells are allegorical, with God usually being represented by the powerful figure in the story. Other parables, however, employ a teaching method used by Jewish rabbis to make a point differently by employing contrast, moving from a lesser example to illustrate something greater. An example of this method is found when Jesus taught that just as fallen human parents know how to give good things to their children, how much more will God give good things to those who ask.
This same teaching method is being used with this parable. God is not represented by the unjust judge, as might happen in an allegory. Instead, the unjust judge is there to provide a contrast to the qualities and character of God. Unlike the unjust judge, God cares deeply for widows and others who are vulnerable or needy. Jesus is saying that if even a godless, heartless judge will relent at the persistence of this widow, how much more will a good and loving God respond to you! “Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night?” Jesus asks, rhetorically. “Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.”
With this parable, Jesus gives both practical advice and a powerful promise for the inevitable difficult days the disciples will face. He recognizes the doom and gloom that will fall over them, but he doesn’t leave them mired in it. Instead, he tells them this parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He encourages them by assuring them that God will respond to their prayers, God will hear their cries and respond quickly, God will be there to help.
Like the disciples, we too experience dark days and hard times. Like the disciples, there are times when we long to see the Son of Man, but we have a hard time seeing him. Like Jesus said, there are days when we seem to be surrounded by immorality and lawlessness and violence. It does seem at times as though wickedness and confusion and godlessness are as rampant today as they were in the days of Noah. Dark days and hard times come on a smaller scale too. There are the many personal apocalypses people face that come with a scary diagnosis, or a lost job, or a broken relationship, or the death of a loved one – those times when life gets completely upended and the future is frightening and foreboding.
How do we respond to dark days and hard times? Jesus calls us to “pray always and not lose heart.” But what does this mean? What does it mean to “pray always”? Does it mean we should all become monks or nuns and head off to a remote monastery somewhere where we can cloister ourselves off from the world and literally pray all day long? It sounds tempting, I know! But this isn’t what it means to “pray always.”
Does praying always mean closing our eyes and folding our hands twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week? That’s not a bad prayer posture. It is how I teach our preschoolers to pray. It can help us focus. But we can’t hold that posture all day long, right? So what does it mean to “pray always?”
To pray always is to constantly keep a God-centered perspective on things. To pray always is to constantly entrust ourselves to God even when everything around us seems to be falling apart. To pray always is to constantly take all our concerns to God in prayer, trusting that God will hear us and help us. To pray always isn’t just to fold our hands, it is to open them up to God, ready to receive the future God promises he has in store for us.
The practical advice given to us in this parable is to be persistent in prayer, cultivating hope by immersing ourselves in the reality of God’s promises, day by day, minute by minute. But there aren’t just instructions for us to heed here. There is also a promise. Jesus promises us that God is not an unjust judge, unwilling to give us a hearing. Instead, God is standing by, even now, to hear our plea, to listen to our cry, and to respond. While worldly justice is a perpetual struggle, God quickly grants justice to his chosen ones. God justifies us by his grace. God makes things right with us by giving us his mercy, his love, and the promise of his coming kingdom. And so our posture towards the future cannot be one of doom and gloom. We have a God who hears us, and a promise that gives us hope.
And so, my dear friends in Christ, pray always! In a time when prayer is sometimes dismissed or ridiculed as a response to horrible events, Jesus lifts up prayer as the most important thing you can do! To pray always is to call upon the God who has promised so hear us, and the means by which we hang on to hope.
So pray always and do not lose heart. Remember that God is in control, that God will always be there to hear and to help us. There might be dark days, but God’s kingdom will come. In fact, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the glorious kingdom of God has already begun. Sin, death, and the devil, though they seem to rule the day, have already ultimately been conquered by Christ Jesus.
And so as we look to the future, we pray, trusting that God will come to make things right once and for all, to complete what he’s begun. As we look to the future, we do not lose heart, for even now he comes to us, speaking to us through his word, feeding us at his table, giving us a foretaste of the feast to come, when his goodness and grace will restore all things.
In the meantime, as Jesus’ disciples today, we don’t stay stuck in the doom and gloom our algorithms and news channels are constantly feeding us. Instead, we pray, and we do not lose heart.
Dark days and hard times will come, but we don’t run to the hills when they do. We don’t close ourselves off or retreat to our enclaves in fear.
Instead, we go out into the world to share the promise. We go out into the world to share the truth of God’s Word. We go out into the world to share hope that is in us with a world that desperately needs it.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 14, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for October 12, 2025
Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost – October 12, 2025
Luke 17:11-19
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
As a pastor I am with people who are very sick on a regular basis. It is part of my job to bring the Word of God to people when they need it most, and so I find myself in hospitals on a fairly regular basis, meeting with people who are enduring various medical crises. And something I’ve observed over the years is that when people recover from a serious medical condition, oftentimes they are healed in ways that go beyond the physical. They are not only restored in body; something has changed in their soul too. They have a renewed perspective on things. Gratitude pours out of them in ways it didn’t before. Their faith comes into sharper focus, and so they are quicker to give praise and thanks to God. There is greater appreciation for all the gifts God gives. They aren’t just healed, they are well. They are well in a way they weren’t before, in body, mind, and spirit.
I notice this most profoundly in those who have been the most sick. I’m not going to name names, but if I were I could name at least three people in our congregation of a variety of ages who have been through serious health challenges in the past couple of years, all of whom have told me that their physical healing has changed them spiritually. And it isn’t just the patients themselves who experience this. Those who are closest to them do too. Their spouses, their parents, their loved ones often say the same thing. The healing of bodies often leads to greater spiritual and relational wellness, a wellness that is steeped in deep gratitude to God.
In our gospel reading for today we encounter ten people suffering from the disease of leprosy. This horrible disease causes your skin to tighten and shrivel up around your extremities, causing fingers and toes and even noses to fall off. Leprosy is still around today, and not fun to have in our own time, but it was an especially devastating diagnosis in the ancient world. Once you were diagnosed with it, you were immediately sent away. You were banished from your town, banished from your home, banished from your family, made to beg and roam about with other lepers. To be diagnosed with leprosy meant you would never again kiss your spouse. It meant you would never again hold your son or daughters’ hand. It meant you would never again be embraced by a friend. For Jews, to be diagnosed with leprosy also made you ritually unclean. As long as you had those lesions, you couldn’t attend worship, which meant you couldn’t make sacrifices of atonement for your sin. This meant that, for all practical purposes, you were cut off from God. And so it was a disease that went more than skin deep. There were relational and spiritual implications too.
These ten lepers called out to Jesus as he was traveling between Samaria and Galilee. They approached him, but they followed the rules. They didn’t come too close. They kept their distance. They called out to him saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
And Jesus did have mercy on them. Jesus had mercy on all ten of them. He told them to go and show themselves to the priests. They knew what this meant. The priests also functioned as de facto public health officials. It was their job to verify that their disease had been cured and then administer the rites of purification which would allow them back into the company of others and back into the worship life of God’s people. To be told to go and show themselves to the priests was a way of telling them that their healing was at hand, and sure enough, as they went, they were made clean. Their lesions vanished. They were healed.
One of the ten turned back. This one who turned back praised God with a loud voice. He knelt before Jesus and thanked him. And this one who turned back was a Samaritan. St. Luke, being a master storyteller, holds this important detail back from us until now. One of the ten – a Samaritan of all people – loudly praised God and knelt at Jesus’ feet, expressing his gratitude.
You can hardly blame the other nine. Jesus asked where they were. He asked why this Samaritan was the only one who returned to give glory to God. But the nine were only doing what Jesus told them to do! He told them to go show themselves to the priests, and that’s exactly what they did!
So what was it about the Samaritan that made him turn back? Perhaps it was because the Samaritan knew he had received the most mercy from Jesus. After all, Samaritans had no reason to expect anything from a Jewish healer. Jews weren’t supposed to interact with Samaritans at all. The Samaritans were the descendants of those who had been Jews from the northern kingdom but had intermarried with the Assyrians and had adopted many of their religious beliefs along the way. The Samaritans had cobbled together a hodge-podge spirituality of their own making and drifted away from the true God their people once knew. And so Samaritans were widely regarded as traitors and heretics. Perhaps the Samaritan knew he was in far worse shape than the other nine, and had received far more mercy from Jesus.
Jesus granted him physical healing, curing his leprosy. But there was more to it than that. Through this physical healing he had been given a whole new perspective. The Samaritan now praised God – the true God whom Jesus was making known. The Samaritan fell as Jesus’s feet in humble adoration for this gift he did not deserve, this gift of complete and utter grace. The Samaritan overflowed with gratitude.
And in response, Jesus said to him, “Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well.” The Samaritan wasn’t just healed; he was made well. His healing wasn’t just skin deep; it went down to the depths of his soul.
Martin Luther was once asked to describe the nature of true worship, to which he replied: “The tenth leper.” That was his response! He just said, “The tenth leper!” That’s what true worship is!
This answer makes a lot of sense, actually. After all, we follow the ancient traditional pattern of Christian worship by singing the Kyrie on most Sundays, which is the very same plea as the ten lepers. Together with them we cry out: “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.” We sing this plea because we all have a spiritual sickness which makes us unclean, a spiritual sickness which separates us from God and often gets in the way of our relationships with one another too. We are all afflicted with the spiritual disease of sin. And it is here in worship that Jesus extends to us his great mercy. It is here that Jesus, our Master, hears our plea and responds with his grace, healing our sin-sick souls. He forgives our sin, he restores us to God, and he goes to work rebuilding our relationships with one another too. And so we offer him our thanks and our praise. We kneel before him in humble adoration. And then we rise to live a life marked not only by the obedience of the nine, but the deep gratitude of the tenth.
He is doing all of this right here for you today. His mercy and grace are for you too, no matter who you are.
It is wonderful when God grants physical healing. We are right to pray for it. We are right to seek it through medical professionals. But as we all know all too well, sometimes physical healing doesn’t come. Sometimes it comes only in part. Sometimes it comes imperfectly. Sometimes it doesn’t come at all.
But when it doesn’t come, it does not mean the Lord Jesus has ignored us. It doesn’t mean he has forsaken us. Jesus never fails to notice those who cry out to him, and he comes to us all with a healing that is more than skin deep. Jesus ultimately came for the healing of our souls.
No matter how far you may have drifted from God, no matter how unclean your life has been, Jesus has come to give you mercy. Jesus Christ took your disease upon himself on the cross, and he rose again to cure us from sin and death so that we could be with God forever. If that isn’t a healing that gets you to turn around and give thanks and praise God, I don’t know what is!
Trust in his mercy. Trust in his grace. This is the faith that makes us truly well.
And then watch as your entire perspective changes. Watch as you come to a greater appreciation for all the gifts of God. Watch as your life begins to overflow with gratitude. Watch as you find yourself more and more saying, “Thanks be to God.”
Amen
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 7, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for October 5
Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost – October 5, 2025
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4, 2 Timothy 1:1-14, Luke 17:1-10
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
We have a golden thread running through our scripture readings for this morning, and that golden thread is faith.
In our first reading we hear from the prophet Habakkuk. This is the only reading we get from Habakkuk in the entire three-year lectionary cycle. But while he only makes a triannual appearance before the church, the problems he describes are perennial. They are always with us. Habakkuk laments the violence that is all around him. He points to destruction and strife and contention he sees everywhere. He complains that the law has become slack, and so justice never prevails. It is hard to tell the difference between these verses and the news we watch or hear or scroll through every day, right?
Habakkuk cries out, “How long, Lord?” He cries out with brutal honesty: “How long shall I cry out for help, and you will not listen?” The Lord then replies with a promise. The Lord says to him, “There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.”
In our epistle reading we hear the Apostle Paul writing a letter of encouragement to his young protégé, Timothy. It is hard to know exactly what is troubling Timothy, but we can infer some things based on what Paul writes. It is pretty clear that Timothy is upset about Paul’s imprisonment. He is probably worried about his beloved father in the faith. He doesn’t have the same access to his mentor. He is now responsible for the Christians in Ephesus and is probably feeling overwhelmed, especially as persecutions are starting to ramp up.
And in order to comfort and encourage Timothy, Paul points him to faith. He encourages Timothy to hold on to the faith that first lived in his grandmother and his mother, and now lives in him. He encourages Timothy to rekindle this gift of God that is within him, to blow on that coal that has started to cool. He reminds Timothy of what faith really is, which is relying on the power of God, especially in times of suffering and struggle. Paul points him to the promise, the promise that Christ has ultimately abolished death and brought life and immortality to light, and so he has nothing to fear. Paul describes faith beautifully when he says to Timothy, “I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.” Do you hear how many times Paul uses variations of the word “trust” here? That’s what faith is. It is not a generic optimism. It is not self-confidence, confidence in your own power. Christian faith means putting your trust in Jesus. It means putting your trust in the power and the promises of God.
In our gospel reading, when Jesus tells his disciples they will need to forgive others over and over again, they ask Jesus to increase their faith. It’s funny, actually. If you read Luke’s gospel before this, Jesus tells the disciples they will cast out demons and heal people of their diseases, and the disciples are like, “Really? Cool! Let’s do it!” And they do! But when Jesus calls them to forgive those who sin against them, that’s what they think is impossible! And so they say to him, “Increase our faith!”
But Jesus says it is not impossible. Not with faith. And you don’t even need a lot of faith to do it, Jesus says. “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea!’ and it would obey you.” This is an obviously absurd image meant to illustrate that faith can do things that seem impossible. Faith is not magic! This is not the Force we’re talking about. This is not Yoda teaching Luke Skywalker to use his mind powers to lift his X-Wing out of the swamp. This is obviously an illustration. But what the illustration points to is absolutely true – even a little faith can accomplish the seemingly impossible things our Lord Jesus calls us to do.
That’s because faith is not trusting in ourselves. It is not trusting in our own power or strength or abilities. Christian faith means putting our trust in Jesus. It is not so much a matter of how much faith we have, but where we put it! When we put our trust in Jesus, his power is at work in us to accomplish things that we could never accomplish on our own.
It makes sense that forgiveness would be the thing that the disciples would balk at. Forgiveness is, in many situations, the most difficult thing we are called to do as Christians. I hear from people all the time who have spent years struggling to forgive. They know they should. They want to, but it is so hard. I know this struggle myself. There are people I think I’ve finally forgiven, letting the past go, and then something stirs up those old resentments again and I’m back at square one. So this isn’t easy. It is completely understandable for the disciples to ask Jesus for help with it. It isn’t easy, but with Christ’s power at work in us, it is not impossible.
A few weeks ago, a young political activist named Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a live debate on a college campus in Utah. His wife Erika and their young children witnessed it first-hand. Charlie might not have been your cup of tea, but I’m going to ask you to take off your ideological lenses for a minute. You can put them back on later, if you must. Take off your ideological lenses and put on your human lenses. Better yet, put on your Christian lenses. Because what happened a few days after this gruesome murder in broad daylight was nothing short of a miracle. At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, which was held at a football stadium in Arizona, his wife Erika took the stage. As she memorialized her husband, at one point she took a deep breath and said, “My husband Charlie, he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life.” She paused as the audience offered some subdued applause. She took a few more deep breaths before continuing. “That young man,” she said, “That young man.” She paused again, and then said, “On the cross our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do….That man, that young man, I forgive him. I forgive him because that’s what Christ did.”
Just days after this wife witnessed her husband’s murder, she publicly forgave the assassin, and it is estimated that more than 20 million people around the world heard her do it. There were lots of things said on that stage, but that was the headline that came out of it. For a grieving young widow to be able to say those words on a stage in front of millions of people seems impossible, but it happened! And it happened, as Erika herself said, because of Christ. It was his power, not hers.
This forgiveness does not mean that there will be no consequences. Jesus himself talks about the need for rebukes and for repentance. He even discusses millstones for the worst of unrepentant offenders. St. Paul teaches us in scripture that worldly authorities have the God-given responsibility to restrain evil by holding people accountable for their actions, and that they do not bear the sword in vain.
To forgive is something different. To forgive means to let go of the anger and the hatred that only poisons you. To forgive means to seek reconciliation whenever possible, but to pray that your enemy might be reconciled to God, even if they can’t be reconciled to you. To forgive means to hand the person who hurt you over to the mercy of Jesus, when what you really want is for them to be condemned to hell. To forgive is to respond to the worst in others with love, because that’s exactly what Jesus has done for you.
This is not easy. It isn’t easy for me, and I know it isn’t easy for you. Sometimes forgiveness takes years. Sometimes it is a life-long struggle. Sometimes we need to do it again even after we already did it. Forgiveness might not come immediately – but never let it be said that it is impossible. Faith makes it possible, because faith means relying on Christ’s power and not our own. It isn’t a matter of how much faith we have, but where we put it. And when we put our trust in the Lord Jesus, he makes the impossible possible.
Violence and strife continue to dominate the news cycle. Strife and contention continue to plague our lives. But with Habakkuk we wait on the Lord, trusting in his promise, because the righteous live by faith.
We continue to worry about those who are dear to us, as Timothy did. Like him, we experience tragic separations. Like him, we experience anxieties and discouragement. Like him, our faith needs to be rekindled from time to time. And this happens as we listen to God’s Word and are reminded of the promise and the power of the One in whom we place our trust.
We are asked by our Lord Jesus to do things that seem impossible, and so we ask for more faith. We worry that we aren’t up to it. And we aren’t. But Jesus is. He has already forgiven you. He has seen the worst in you, even the worst that is still there, and he has responded to it with his self-giving love and his saving grace. He died and rose to forgive your sin and make you his own forever. To trust in this good news, to have faith in this Savior, even just a little, is all he needs to begin to go to work in us, accomplishing all that we could never do on our own.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
