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
by Jeffrey Spencer | Sep 29, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for September 28
Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 28, 2025
Amos 6:1a, 4-7, 1 Timothy 6:6-19, Luke 16:19-31
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is some question about whether what we hear from Jesus today should be classified as a parable. It is never described or introduced as such in the text. It lacks some key features of parables. Parables are often offered as similes, as in “the kingdom of God is like…” Parables are often playful and sometimes mysterious, laced with ambiguity and layers of meaning, gently inviting the hearer in. What we hear today is more like getting whacked upside the head with a two-by-four! And so it has been suggested that instead of thinking about this as a parable, we should think of it as an editorial cartoon. Those of us from the newspaper generation are familiar with editorial cartoons. They are drawn with exaggerated features and stark contrasts. They are more in-your-face. For those who are of the internet generation rather than the newspaper generation, you might think of this as a dank meme, as an edgy message conveyed through sharply contrasting images.
The contrast is indeed sharp here. On the one hand we have a rich man. He is dressed in purple and fine linen. The dye to make purple clothing was extremely rare, which made purple fabric extremely expensive. Only the super-rich could afford to wear purple. He feasted sumptuously every day, eating the finest of food and lots of it.
On the other hand, we have a poor man. He lies at the gate of the rich man. He was so hungry that even the scraps left on the rich man’s plate would have been a feast for him. He was covered in sores. This could have been leprosy, which was common in the ancient world. It could have been ulcerative lesions, a common affliction of the very poor. It could have been bedsores from lying in the same position on the hard ground for so long. Instead of being waited on by servants, he was being licked by dogs. These were not sympathetic puppy kisses. These were the mangy street dogs that roamed the city in packs. These scavengers were licking him in anticipation of the dinner in store for them when he finally expired. His sores were appetizers.
The poor man had none of the things the rich man had. He had no home. He had no food. He had no clothing by which to cover his wounds. But he did have one thing that the rich man didn’t. He had a name. The rich man isn’t named at all. He is anonymous, unknown. But the poor, suffering man is known. He has a name. His name was Lazarus, which means “God helps.”
And when both of these men die, we see that God does indeed help Lazarus. Lazarus is personally escorted by the angels of God into the arms of Father Abraham, where he is comforted at last. When the rich man dies, he finds that their situation has been reversed. Now he is being tormented. He finds himself in agony, roasting in the flames of Hades. Wham! Right between the eyes. No subtlety here, right?
But as clear as the contrast is between the rich man and his fate and the poor man and his fate, we shouldn’t be too quick to make this about rich verses poor. This editorial cartoon is not about the haves verses the have-nots. After all, Abraham himself is described in scripture as a rich man, and he is on the good side of the great chasm. He is with God in heaven. We have other people in scripture who are both wealthy and faithful, people like Zaccheus and Joseph of Arimathea and Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth. So, this editorial cartoon isn’t some anti-capitalist critique, damning the bourgeoisie and idealizing the proletariat. This is about something else, and this becomes clear as we look at the rest of it.
Even as the rich man asks Abraham for mercy, he still thinks he is in control. Even as he is roasting in the flames, he still thinks he has power to call the shots. He practically orders Lazarus to bring him a Gatorade! He still thinks other people exist in order to serve him. And so he is still acting like the Lord of the manor.
Abraham tells him, “Nope, sorry, that’s not how things work here,” but even then, he still acts like the Lord of the manor, asking Abraham to then send Lazarus to warn his five brothers, who are still alive. He still sees Lazarus as someone who should do his bidding. He is still unrepentant.
And what Abraham says next is the final flourish on this editorial cartoon, revealing what it is all really about. Abraham says that they have Moses and the prophets, and that they should listen to them. The rich man insists that Lazarus would be a much better messenger, coming back from the dead and all. Surely he could get them to repent. But Abraham is unmoved. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
The great chasm is not divided along the lines of rich and poor. It is divided along the lines of those who listen to and trust in the Word of God and repent and those who do not. It is divided along the lines of those who insist on being the Lords of the manor and those who know how desperately they need the Lord’s help.
Our other lectionary readings help clarify this for us. The prophet Amos convicts those who lounge and feast and drink wine from bowls, not merely because they do those things, but because in doing them they have come to see themselves as their own Lords who can safely ignore the ruin of Joseph. St. Paul says it isn’t money that is the root of all evil, but the love of money which causes people to wander away from faith. That’s the key problem – wandering away from faith! Those who are rich in the present age, Paul warns, should be careful not to place their hopes on the uncertainty of riches. We should instead place our hopes on God, who richly provides us with everything.
The great chasm then, is divided along lines of unfaith and faith. It is divided between unfaith which leads to indifference to those in need, and faith, which inevitably moves hearts towards love of neighbor, noticing especially the ruin of Joseph and the beggar at the gate.
Editorial cartoons can evoke a variety of responses. The same cartoon can make one person squirm and another person laugh. It depends on where you see yourself in the cartoon, right?
Many of us should probably see ourselves as the rich man. We have been given so much that it is easy to be lulled into thinking that we are the Lords of our own manors. It becomes easy to feel that we are in control. Our wealth and our comfort make it easy to wander away from faith in God. And once we wander away from faith, we no longer see that everything we have been given comes from God, to be used not to numb ourselves with overindulgence, but to serve others, especially our neighbors in need. How we do that is complicated and demands wisdom. It does not necessarily mean indiscriminate handouts, which can often make things even worse. But it does begin with noticing the need. It does begin with seeing the person behind the problem. To shut ourselves off to the needs of others is a sign that we have shut ourselves off from God. It is that serious.
There are others among us, however, who may well see a bit of themselves in Lazarus. I’ve had conversations with people this past week who are experiencing great suffering. Some are sick. Some are hurting. Some feel alone and abandoned. To those I want to point out that just as God knew Lazarus’ name, so too does he know yours. You are not forgotten. You are not abandoned. God’s help will come, even if you can’t see it now.
You might identify more with one or the other of the contrasting characters in this editorial cartoon, or even a little bit of both. But where we all should find ourselves reflected today is in the five brothers sketched lightly in the background. You see, like them, we are still alive. And because we are still alive, we can hear the Word of God. Because we are still alive, we can listen to Moses and the prophets. And do you know what they have to say to us? They tell us that what we really need is not more money or more wine or more status or more control. What they tell us is that what we really need is a savior. What they tell us is that we all need God’s help, and that this help has come in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Jesus has planted an Easter egg in this editorial cartoon. The reference to one who comes back from the dead is an Easter egg hidden in plain sight, pointing us Jesus himself, who is the fulfillment of everything spoken of by Moses and the prophets. Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, and he came to the living with a message. He called people to believe. He called people to trust in him as their Lord and not themselves. He called people to relinquish control and to receive his peace. He called people to feed his sheep.
In this editorial cartoon, Abraham didn’t think anyone would believe even one who rose from the dead. But this is Jesus winking at us, because when Jesus rose from the dead many did believe in him.
And this risen Jesus is still bringing people to faith today. Our risen Lord continues to come to the living through his Word. He comes to us even now. He comes to us as the God who helps. He comes to us as the savior who heals both hardened hearts and open wounds with his forgiveness and his mercy. He comes to us as the one who has ultimately conquered death for us all, so that we can one day be carried by the angels to his side, where we will receive eternal comfort on the safe side of the great chasm. He calls us to repent of our love of money, to repent of trying to be our own Lords, so that we can take hold of the life that is really life – a life lived with faith towards God and fervent love towards one another.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Sep 23, 2025 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for September 21
Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 21, 2025
Luke 16:1-13
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the great archetypes in all of storytelling is the antihero. An antihero is a character who is utterly lacking in all the qualities you usually see in a hero, and yet, you can’t help but root for them. An antihero is a character who lacks typical hero qualities like, oh, say, morality or honor or respect for the law, and yet, you can’t help but like them.
One of the most famous antiheros of all time is Robin Hood, a character who has been around in various forms since at least the 15th century. Robin Hood, of course, breaks laws left and right. He is constantly on the run from the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John. He steals from the rich and gives to the poor. While he is a thief and a lawbreaker and exceedingly crafty (and thus portrayed as a fox in the Disney classic), he is also a beloved hero. There are plenty of other examples we could point to. Han Solo was a smuggler. Jack Sparrow was a pirate. Sherlock Holmes describes himself as a “high functioning sociopath.” These aren’t “good” guys, but somehow, they’re the good guys! You can’t help but admire their craftiness, their cleverness, their shrewdness.
The archetype of the antihero was common in the ancient near east as well. Poverty-ridden peasants of Jesus’ time loved stories about crafty antiheroes who outwitted the privileged and the powerful. Today we hear Jesus use just this kind of character in one of his parables.
“There was a rich man with a manager…” Jesus begins. The rich man accuses the manager of squandering his property and fires him. What’s this suddenly unemployed manager going to do? He knows he isn’t strong enough to dig ditches for a living. He knows he doesn’t want to beg. So he cooks up a plan. Before any of his boss’s clients know he’s been fired, he goes out to them to settle their accounts. He cancels their debts left and right! Oh, I see you owe a hundred jugs of olive oil? Make it fifty. What is that, a hundred basked of wheat? Make it eighty. This manager goes around unilaterally cancelling the debts of his boss’s clients! It is unethical. It is illegal. And it is….celebrated?
Yes, it is indeed celebrated! When the boss finds out what his former employee has done, he COMMENDS him for his craftiness, for his shrewdness! And not only that, but when Jesus himself finishes the story, he lifts this character up as a positive example! Jesus encourages his disciples to emulate him! He says, “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”
Now we need to understand what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is not telling his disciples to acquire wealth through illegal and unethical means. Jesus would never encourage anyone to violate the Eighth Commandment, “You shall not steal.” The point here is that the disciples are to be crafty and clever and shrewd in how they manage their money. The word “shrewd” here can also be translated as wise. They are to use their resources wisely, in ways that benefit others, with an eye towards eternity. They are to use what has been entrusted to them wisely while always keeping in mind where their true riches lie. They are to manage their resources well while always remembering that they cannot serve both God and wealth. Only one can have first place, and it cannot be wealth.
Jesus is telling this antihero story to put his finger on what he knows will be the biggest temptation for the disciples, which will be to feather their nest rather than build the kingdom, to worship the almighty dollar rather than Almighty God. Martin Luther writes in the Large Catechism that “Money is the most common idol on earth.” That was true in Jesus’ time, it was true in Luther’s time, and it is most certainly true in our time as well.
You’ve probably heard the old observation that $100 looks huge in the offering plate, but not so significant when you’re spending it at the movie theater or the golf course or the tavern or the yarn store or the bookstore. (Did I manage to poke everyone at least once?) People can be extremely clever and resourceful and driven when they want something. We are to be even more clever and resourceful and driven in the funding of the kingdom of God. We are to be even more shrewd and wise in investing in God’s work in the world and in tending to our neighbors in need.
I’m so grateful to say that so very many of you are. We make a point here at Oak Harbor Lutheran Church to protect your privacy in giving. There are very few people who see your year-end giving statements, and I’m not one of them. So unless a giver specifically tells me, I don’t have any idea who gives what around here. But I do know that we have many people here who have been very clever and resourceful and driven and so very generous in giving to this congregation and to the ministries we support. You have cleverly utilized so many different ways to give. We had people dig deep this summer during our catch-up campaign, which has brought our budget out of the red and into the black. Pete Pedersen has come to me more than once with a huge grin on his face, telling me that he has to make three runs a week to take food to Help House because we have so many donations coming in. You are so quick to respond to needs, both within our congregation and outside of it. You are so wise, so shrewd, so resourceful, so generous in investing in God’s work.
This is all truly wonderful – but it is also true that it is part of our sinful nature for all of us to keep wanting to cling to that idol of money. This is an idol we keep returning to, thinking it will give us peace, thinking it will help us feel secure, thinking it will give us joy. And when we return to clinging to our bank accounts, we are no longer clinging to God.
This story is told to the disciples, and to us, to remind us once again not to cling to that idol. “You cannot serve both God and wealth,” Jesus says. This story with its antihero is told to begin to peel our fingers away from the false god of our bank accounts so that we might take hold of Christ the true riches of his grace.
The parables of Jesus are never just a morality tale. They are never simply a way to cajole people to do something. The parables of Jesus can usually be understood on more than one level, and much of the time they are not just about what we are to do, but what Christ has come to do for us. This story is no exception. Because, you see, Jesus is the ultimate antihero. It might feel slightly irreverent to think of him in this way, but consider the work of Jesus from the perspective of the Pharisees. They had just been complaining that he ate with tax collectors and sinners. That’s not typical hero behavior! Not to them! They complained that Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, which they saw as a total disregard for the law. Jesus was going around just announcing that people’s sins were forgiven – like he was God or something! From the perspective of the Pharisees, what Jesus was doing was immoral, illegal, even blasphemous. And so Jesus is the ultimate antihero. He dined with sinners and he died with criminals. He didn’t have any of the qualities the Pharisees expected their hero Messiah to have.
You could even say that Jesus bears a striking resemblance to the clever manager in the parable. Jesus was going around cooking the books on the debt sinners owed to God. Jesus engaged in some clever accounting as he went around writing off people’s sins, just forgiving them. He made a lot of friends in the process. He made it possible for them to enter into those eternal homes. This was an epic scandal! And all the while, his boss, God the Father, sat back and smiled. God commended him for it! God patted him on the head and said, “You are my Son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
When Jesus died on the cross he said, “It is finished.” What Jesus said here in the biblical Greek can also be translated as “paid in full.” The word is tetelestai, and it is the very same word that was stamped on the bills of the ancient world whenever an account was settled. This is what Jesus has done for all of us. Jesus is like the clever manager in the parable – only he didn’t just reduce our debt, he paid it in full.
This is where we find true riches. As we receive the riches of his grace, his mercy, his forgiveness, his love, our hearts are set free to live for the Giver and not the gifts, to worship the Giver and not the gifts, the serve the Giver and not the gifts. Our hearts are set free to cling once again to God alone, who is the only one who can give us true peace, true security, and true joy.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
