by Jeffrey Spencer | Jan 10, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for January 7
Sermon for Baptism of our Lord – January 7, 2024
Mark 1:1-4
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
The beginning of a new year is an exciting time. As we put a new calendar up on the wall or crack open a new weekly planner, we have hopes for how our days might unfold in the new year ahead. Many have longings that some things would be different than they were the year before. Many resolve to do things differently, making adjustments to their lives. It feels like a clean slate, a fresh start. There must be some reason so many people stayed up on New Year’s Eve and counted down. There must be some reason for the fireworks in cities around the world as midnight struck in one time zone after another. When a new year begins, we celebrate a new beginning.
Our gospel reading for this morning begins with people who were longing for a new start. They had a sense that God was about to do a new thing. They were preparing for the coming of the Messiah by being baptized in the river Jordan. They received John’s baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This baptism felt like a clean slate, a new beginning.
And it was! But something even better was just around the corner. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” John told them. “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
When the Messiah comes, John told the crowd, he will baptize not with water alone, but with the Holy Spirit – that is to say, he will baptize with the very presence of God. This will be more than a ritualized washing. It will be more than a pledge to live differently. It will be more than a human action, a human expression of faith and love and commitment. This baptism will be a pouring out of the Holy Spirit. It will be God’s work, God’s action, God’s expression of love and commitment. It will not be a baptism of water alone, but a baptism of water and the Holy Spirit – bringing the baptized into the very presence of the one true God.
And then this Messiah came, and this is precisely what happened! As St. Mark tells us, “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” Mark mentions it so casually, almost in passing. But something incredibly important is happening here. Jesus entered into the same muddy waters as those common sinners. Jesus, the Son of God, met them where they were in the waters of baptism. Jesus didn’t need to be baptized. He didn’t do it for himself, for his own benefit. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, a way of turning back to God. Jesus had no need for this. John’s baptism was for the forgiveness of sin. Jesus had no sin. He didn’t need forgiveness! Jesus did not need John’s baptism. So why did he receive it? In receiving John’s baptism, Jesus was coming alongside the very people he had come to save. He was present to them, present for them. And in going under the water and then rising to the surface, Jesus was foreshadowing how he would save them once and for all – by dying and rising again.
As Jesus came up out of the water, we are told he saw the heavens torn apart. Jesus’ baptism is marked by this sign of cosmic significance! The veil between heaven and earth has been breached! The distance between a heavenly Father and his fallen world has been overcome. The barriers separating a sinful humanity from a holy God have come down.
The only other time Mark uses this phrase “torn apart” is right after Jesus dies on the cross, when the temple curtain which separated the holy from the sinful was torn apart. When Jesus sees the heavens “torn apart” apart at his baptism he is getting a glimpse of what his saving work would accomplish: there would no longer be anything in the way of sinners having a relationship with the living God.
As Jesus gets this glimpse of the heavens being torn apart, the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. It was just what John said would happen. Now the Spirit was upon the waters, just as it was at the creation. God was doing a new thing! By going into that water himself Jesus changed the very nature of baptism. He infused that water with his own saving presence. He infused it with the Holy Spirit. The one more powerful than John had come, and baptism would never be the same.
God the Father looked at all of this happening and smiled. He saw his Son in the water alongside common sinners and said, “Yes!” God the Father said. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” God the Father saw the Spirit and the Son splashing in the waters, bringing about a new, more powerful baptism, and God blessed it. The Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all gave high fives to each other. (That’s not in the text, but I think it is safe to infer that this happened!)
On this first Lord’s Day of the new year, when many of us are hopeful about new beginnings and fresh starts, our attention is turned away from a new calendar and towards Holy Baptism. We have something better to place our hope in than the fact that 2023 had turned to 2024. Because you see, this baptism of which John spoke has come. It has been given to us. (If you haven’t yet received it, that is something we would be glad to remedy!)
When you were baptized into Christ, the Lord Jesus met you in those waters. When you were baptized into Christ, you were given the Holy Spirit. In Holy Baptism you were reborn as a child of God. St. Paul teaches us that when we are baptized into Christ, we are baptized into his death and resurrection. In other words, the gift of salvation won for us on the cross is bestowed upon us through water and word and Spirit, making us Christians, making us his own forever.
New calendars are nice, and I have a few new year’s resolutions of my own, but the truth is, your baptism is the only clean slate you’ll ever need. And this new beginning can be claimed whenever you need it. In fact, Martin Luther teaches us in the catechism that baptism has a daily significance. It sets a daily pattern of dying and rising with Christ to newness of life, a daily pattern of putting off the old sinner and putting on the new person you are in him. We are invited, indeed encouraged, to return to the promises of baptism every day, and in do doing we are born again, and again, and again.
In the new, more powerful baptism established by our Lord Jesus, we are given a well of grace and mercy and forgiveness in our lives that never goes dry. Christ continues to be found in the water with sinners. The heavens continue to be torn open, giving us access to the presence of God.
And so, no matter what the calendar says, every day, every moment lived in light of what Christ has done to you and for you and in you in Holy Baptism is a new beginning, and a fresh start.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 25, 2023 | Sermons
Sermon for Christmas Day 2023
John 1:1-14
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christmas Eve is traditionally the time when the church tells the story of Jesus’ birth. We get Joseph and Mary and shepherds and angels and the manger. They’re all still here today. They’re in our hymns and in our creche and in our hearts.
But on Christmas Day the focus turns from the story of Jesus’ birth to a deeper dive into the meaning of Jesus’ birth. And so we move from St. Luke, whose purpose in writing his gospel was to get down an “orderly account” of the story of Jesus, to St. John, who gets right to the heart of the meaning of it all.
John begins his gospel with language hearkening back to the creation account in Genesis:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
John sets the scene for his gospel by describing the Word that existed with God and as God from the very beginning, before creation itself came into being. This Word brought creation into existence. This Word was and is the spark of life.
This is all very conceptual, very theological. It is beautiful and powerful and important, but so far these are ideas that John is putting before us. This Word is, at this point, remote. Abstract. Distant.
But not for long. Not for long, because John goes on to tell us that this Word came into the world! The world did not know him. Many of his own people did not accept him. But the Word came into the world, and to those who did receive him, he gave them power to become children of God. In other words, they were drawn into relationship with him, a close relationship.
And then comes the most wondrous statement of all: “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
Here is the meaning of Jesus’ birth: This Word that existed with God and as God from the beginning of time became a human being. What was abstract has become concrete. What we struggle to understand as an idea or a concept has become a person. The God who is above all, and through whom all things came into being, has entered his own creation, becoming incarnate, coming to us in the flesh as an infant.
And so what can sometimes seem so distant to us has come very, very close. The Word became flesh and lived among us! In theological terms this is called the incarnation. God took on human flesh to come close to us, to connect with us, to reconcile us to himself, to draw us into relationship with him.
My wife and I got into the habit of taking walks every day when we had our dog. Sadly, our dog died this summer. But while we lost our dog, we kept the walks. We found that we enjoyed them so much that we’d keep doing them. Only now that we aren’t juggling a leash and poop bags we have made a point of holding hands on our walks.
Some of you want to say, “Aww, how sweet,” right now, while others want to groan or roll your eyes. It’s okay. We are well aware that some see us strolling hand in hand and think it’s corny or cringey. But here’s the thing we have discovered by holding hands for a half an hour almost every day – it brings us closer. There is a connection there that is deepened. If we’ve been distant from each other or preoccupied, we are suddenly more present to each other. If we’ve been snippy with each other earlier in the day and there are lingering resentments, that all fades away with that human touch. It’s hard to stay mad at someone you’re holding hands with.
Sometime after we started this practice, I came across an article about the benefits of holding hands, which affirmed everything we’d noticed since we started doing it. It even gave scientific, biochemical explanations for how holding hands can lead better overall wellness, decreasing stress, soothing anxiety, lowering your blood pressure and heart rate.
This isn’t just for married people. Holding hands is not just a romantic gesture. Last week I went to see one of our church members who is in hospice. He is now in a haze of morphine, making it difficult to carry on a conversation. But the moment he recognized who I was he put out his hand, and I held it the entire time I was there. That human touch established a connection, a closeness.
When we hear John tell us that the Word became flesh and lived among us, he is telling us that in Christ, God has come close to us. God has come to us in the flesh. God has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ to establish a deep and close human connection with us. The Word became flesh so that instead of being distant, he can be present to us and for us. The Word became flesh so that any sin separating us from him can be overcome and we can be reconciled. The Word became flesh in order to bring us the wellness that comes from his touch.
You might be thinking to yourself at this point, “But pastor, Jesus came in the flesh a long time ago. He’s not here anymore. It’s not like we can hold his hand. He is not here in the flesh for us to touch today.”
Are you sure about that?
There is a moment in our worship service where we take hold of each other’s hands. We do it during the Passing of the Peace. You wouldn’t guess from how casual and chaotic it can be, but it is a holy moment. We, the church, are the Body of Christ, and so when we take hold of each other’s hands, we aren’t just saying “howdy.” We are connecting through human touch as the Body of Christ. We aren’t just touching each other, we are touching Him, the Word who became flesh. We are literally passing the peace of Christ!
There’s another moment in our worship service where this happens. It happens when the bread of the Lord’s Supper is placed in the palm of your hand. The Word becomes flesh as Christ’s body is given for you. When you touch that bread, you touch Him. When you take hold of that bread you are taking hold of him. And when you take hold of him, you are deeply, personally connected to Him. He is truly present for you. Any difficulties or troubles in the relationship melt away through his forgiveness. His touch makes us well.
The story of Christmas is something we hear once a year, but the meaning of Christmas is evident Sunday after Sunday. In fact, the meaning of Christmas shapes every moment of our lives as we come to see that God is not far off, not distant, not merely a concept or an idea, but is close, living among us, full of grace and truth. The meaning of Christmas is that in Jesus Christ the Word became flesh so that he might take your hand in his – today, and forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 25, 2023 | Sermons
Sermon for Christmas Eve 2023
Luke 2:1-20
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
What are you getting for Christmas? When you are young, this seems like the most important question in the world this time of year. Will you be thrilled? Will you be disappointed? This week I heard someone on a podcast talking about a Christmas back in the 1980s, when he was ten years old. He thought for sure that those small, rectangle-shaped presents under the tree were the Nintendo game cartridges he so desperately wanted. He tore them open on Christmas morning only to find that they were different sets of flash cards. Math flash cards. Forty years later, you can still hear the disappointment in his voice.
What are you getting for Christmas? When you’re an adult the question is almost taboo. You’re not supposed to care. The most virtuous thing you can say is, “Oh, I don’t need anything. Don’t make a fuss. Oh, you shouldn’t have.” By and large, this reflects a maturity of sorts. It shows that you are no longer seeking happiness in products or possessions. You have come to see that the true joy of Christmas is not found in the material things you might get. And that is good.
But you have to admit it – when you see a gift and there’s a tag with your name on it, it’s a pretty great feeling! It gives you a little thrill, right? And it isn’t really so much the thing inside – whatever it may be. It is simply the fact that someone gave something to you. It is that you have been thought of. It is that someone cared enough about you to wrap something up and put your name on it.
It doesn’t even have to be a gift with wrapping and a bow – even going to the mailbox and seeing your name on an envelope containing a Christmas card instead of yet another bill is a wonderful thing. It is sheer grace. Instead of asking for something from you, it simply regards you. It blesses you. It is a gesture of goodwill towards you, for you.
It isn’t necessarily greed or narcissism that makes all this such a thrill. It can be those things, for sure, but it can also simply be our human longing for connection, our longing to be known, our longing to be loved.
What are you getting for Christmas? There is a gift being given tonight. It is a gift from God. It is the gift of God. And it has your name on it.
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the city of David, the birth announcement went out. This birth announcement did not go out to kings and queens, to those with power and prestige. This birth announcement did not go out to the wealthy, to those who were the most prominent and respected. This birth announcement did not go out to the priests in the temple, to those who were the most spiritual or religious or devout. The birth announcement went out to shepherds. It went out to shepherds while they were at work, while they were putting in their shift in the fields, watching over their flocks by night.
This birth announcement came as a gift, and it had their name on it. This gift was for them! The angel giving this birth announcement said, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
We don’t even know the shepherds’ names. They were nobody in particular. And so they represent everybody! The shepherds represent you. As you hear this birth announcement, the gift is given to you. The angel said this was good news of great joy for all people, and so this gift has your name on it.
What are you getting for Christmas? “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior.” A savior is one who saves. The gift is the gift of salvation. The gift is the gift of God’s grace – for he has regarded you, he has seen you, he knows you, and he has come to you in the infant flesh of his Son to save you, to make you his own.
“Do not be afraid,” the angel said to the shepherds. You don’t need to be afraid either. You don’t need to be afraid of this birth announcement from God, this message. God has not come to intimidate you. God has not come to frighten you into obedience. God has come to you in the most non-threatening way possible – as an infant. God has come to you as a baby so that instead of being afraid you would look upon him with love and with joy and with awe.
You don’t need to be afraid of this baby. In fact, because of this baby, you don’t need to be afraid about anything anymore! You don’t need to be afraid of your past, your sins, your failures, your regrets – for in him all is forgiven. That’s exactly what this savior has come to do, to forgive you! Yes, even for that. The daily anxieties about life that we all wrestle with dissolve away when we remember to lay them at his manger, remembering that because of this child, this Savior, we have God walking with us through everything that life can throw at us, giving us strength, giving us peace, giving us hope.
Because of this baby you don’t even need to be afraid of death, for he has come to defeat even our greatest fear. He has overcome death so that we might live with him forever.
“Do not be afraid,” the angel said. This is part of the gift. We don’t have to be afraid about anything anymore. He’s got us. He is God with us.
What are you getting for Christmas? God has remembered you. God has regarded you. God has blessed you with a gift. This gift from God is the gift of God. With the birth of Jesus God has given you himself, so that you would know the love of God in your life. God has cleared away every barrier to a relationship with him, a relationship where you are known completely and loved eternally. There is absolutely nothing standing in the way of this relationship. It comes as a gift, and make no mistake about it – the tag has your name on it.
This season brings with it a lot of hopes, a lot of expectations, a lot of longings, a lot of pressures, a lot of emotions, a lot of disappointments. But as we sang earlier in our service in O Little Town of Bethlehem: “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” The “thee” there, of course, is Jesus, the Christ child, Emmanuel, God with us. His birth is good news of great joy for all people.
You may not think you need anything for Christmas this year, but God has seen your need for healing and for hope. God has seen your need for forgiveness. God has seen your need to be known and loved. God has seen the fears from which you need to be delivered.
And so for Christmas this year, God gives you the gift of a Savior, the gift of his Son – born for you.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 12, 2023 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a sermon video for December 10
Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent – December 10, 2023
Mark 1:1-8
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Preparing for Christmas gets more and more sentimental for me every year. We pull out the bins with all the Christmas stuff the day after Thanksgiving and begin to unpack the special things we’ve been storing all year. There is the ornament I made for Amy our first Christmas together, crafted from driftwood from the beach where we got engaged. There are the holiday recipes in my mother’s handwriting. There are the Santa pictures from back when our three boys were little and sweet instead of tall and sarcastic. With every passing year, these things become more and more precious to me. As the bins are unpacked and each item finds its place in preparation for Christmas, our house is transformed into a den of warmth and peace and comfort.
In our gospel reading for today we are invited to prepare for Christmas, but in a radically different way. Instead of bringing out what is precious to us, we are called to bring out the things that trouble us, the things we are ashamed of, the sins we’d rather leave packed away. Instead of warm sentimentality, we are splashed with the cold waters of John’s call to repentance. We will get to comfort, so stay with me, but to get there we must first be made uncomfortable.
We will be spending much of the liturgical year ahead in the gospel of Mark. Today we find ourselves at the very beginning of his gospel: chapter one, verse one. St. Mark begins his account the life of Jesus not with angels and shepherds and a baby in a manger, like St. Luke. He doesn’t begin with wise men visiting the Christ child, like St. Matthew. He doesn’t begin with profound theological statements about the Word becoming flesh, like St. John. Mark begins his gospel at the Jordan river. He begins with a call to repent, a call to confess our sins, bringing them out into the open, putting them on full display.
Mark begins with John the Baptist – or as he is more accurately described in Mark’s gospel, John the baptizer. After all, this is not about denominational affiliation. John the Baptist isn’t like Jeff the Lutheran or Doug the Presbyterian. John was a baptizer. John’s job was, in part, to prepare the way of the Lord with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This was not yet Christan baptism, as John himself says. It was, rather, a ritual of repentance. It was a ritual signifying a confession of sin and a return to God, a return to faithfulness. It was a ritual that was also used for Gentile converts who came to faith in the God of Israel. And now, at this moment, it was a ritual of preparation for the coming of the Lord.
People from the whole Judean countryside and all of Jerusalem were going out to the river Jordan to confess their sins. They went out to the river not with their precious treasures; they went with their dirty laundry. They went to the river with the things that troubled them, the things they were ashamed of, the sins that they would rather have kept packed away. They brought their sins to John the baptizer.
John was dressed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. In both his diet and his dress he was conjuring up the prophet Elijah. He was like one of those people who go to Comicon conventions dressed as their favorite character. Only John wasn’t engaging in cosplay. He wasn’t just playing dress-up. John was indeed an actual prophet. He was the last and the greatest of the prophets, because he had one foot in the old covenant and one foot in the new kingdom. He straddled the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. He embodied the prophets of the past while being the herald of the age that was now dawning. John announced the coming of everything the prophets before him had promised. He dressed in the clothing of a prophet to announce the arrival the One the prophets said would come – the Messiah, the Savior, the Lord.
John prepared the way of the Lord by calling people to repent, to receive his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin, and the people prepared the way of the Lord by confessing their sin. They confessed their idolatry, all the ways they put their trust in something other than God. They confessed the ways they had lived as though they were their own gods, making themselves their highest authority and their highest good. They confessed their need for control and their lack of faith. They confessed their negligence in honoring God with lives that were holy, lives that were set apart for his service and lived in obedience to his will. They confessed the ways they had failed to love God with their whole heart and mind and strength, and their neighbors as themselves. The people prepared the way of the Lord by bringing this all out into the open, confessing their sin.
As we hear this gospel reading, this is what we’re invited to do too. This is what we’re invited to do every Sunday of course, but we are especially invited to repent, to confess, as we prepare to celebrate the coming of our Lord. This is uncomfortable, perhaps. It pushes us to look at the ways we have sinned. It pushes us to confess the ways we have turned to other gods, especially the god of the self. It pushes us to confess the ways we have grasped for control rather than living by faith, the ways we have been negligent in holiness, the ways we have failed to love God and one another. This isn’t warm, fun stuff. It makes us vulnerable. But it is how we prepare.
I went to see a dermatologist this week. We have a history of skin cancer in my family, with my sister having battled melanoma twice now, so I try to stay on top of it. It had been a couple years since I’ve had a full screening, but recently my barber noticed some things she thought I should have looked at, so it was time to go in. And when you go in for a skin cancer exam, you have to show them everything. I had to strip down to my skivvies and put on a hospital gown, which he then pulled back as needed in order to examine pretty much every square inch of my body, pointing out spots to his assistant along the way so she could get a look and make notes. It was not warm. It was not pleasant. It was uncomfortable.
Now imagine that I had refused. Imagine that I said, “No, I’m going to keep covered up,” or “No, I’m not showing you that.” How in the world would he then be able to help me? It was uncomfortable, but it was only by showing him everything that he can do his job of diagnosing me and making me well.
Confessing our sin puts us in a similarly vulnerable position. It isn’t comfortable. But we can do so because we know that this Lord of whom John speaks is coming to help us. He is coming to be our savior! We prepare for his coming by confessing our sin, especially by showing him our trouble spots, so that he can do the job he has come to do in making us well. This Lord is bringing a forgiveness even greater than John’s. This Lord is bringing a baptism not of water alone, but of water and Word and Spirit. This Lord comes to make us well by restoring us to God forever.
Soon we will celebrate this Lord’s birth. We prepare ourselves spiritually by repenting, by turning away from everything in our lives that is not godly. We prepare ourselves by confessing our sin, bringing it out so that he can cure it with his grace, which is what he is coming to do. This is precisely why he was born. He was born for you. He was born to be your savior. He was born so that all would be well for you in your relationship with God.
Listen to how Isaiah describes the coming of the Lord:
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, tell her that her penalty has been paid….Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain made low…then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed…Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up and do not fear…See, the Lord comes…he will feed his flock like a shepherd….he will gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”
St. Mark, sacrificing prose for brevity, puts it far more simply when he writes: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
“Comfort, comfort my people,” says our God. There is a comfort that is far deeper than anything we pull out of Christmas bins, as precious as those things can be to us. There is a warmth that is warmer than sentimentality and nostalgia. Even with the splash of cold water we get from John the baptizer this morning, this comfort and warmth is ours as we see that the coming of the Lord is good news. You see, God in Christ has made a pathway straight to you, so that you would know his forgiveness, his mercy, his love. The Lord comes to feed his flock like a shepherd, to gather us in his arms and carry us in his bosom. He comes with a forgiveness and a baptism far greater than John’s, as John himself was quick to note.
And so today we are empowered to confess our sin. Today we are empowered to repent. Today we are empowered to show our trouble spots to this Lord of ours, who comes to us even now to heal us with his forgiveness, to comfort us with his grace, to wrap us in the warmth of his great love. Today we are empowered to show him everything, trusting that through his saving work, he will make us well.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Dec 4, 2023 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for December 3
Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent – December 3, 2023
Mark 13:24-37
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
When you look to the future, what do you see? What do you hope for? What do you expect it to be like? Are you excited? Are you afraid? Are you a little of both? If you’re like me, it depends on the day.
Back in the 1950s there was a strong sense of optimism. The second World War had been decisively won, and the technologies developed to win that war were now being put to use to make life easier and better through a myriad of new convenience products. This optimism about the future found its epitome in Walt Disney’s “Tomorrowland.” I remember going to Disneyland as a kid in the late 70s and seeing the displays of how technology was going to make everyone’s life into a utopia. The future looked like “The Jetsons,” where every family would have a flying car and a robot maid and a vending machine-like contraption which would spit out meals with the push of a few buttons. People would live in gleaming, streamlined cities designed for efficiency and comfort. The view towards the future was one of optimism, even utopianism. Through technology and human ingenuity, everything was about to get better!
Today that optimism seems to be harder to come by. Our cultural vision of the future is no longer utopian. It is now more often dystopian. Think of popular culture the last few decades. We had the Terminator movies in the 80s and 90s, where our machines were depicted as turning against us. There was the Hunger Games in the twenty-teens, which depicted a future where people are pitted against each other for entertainment. More recently there was the popular HBO series “The Last of Us.” Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road,” is one of the most celebrated novels of the past twenty years. There is an entire genre of dystopian stories, and they are very popular. When the storytellers of today look to the future, most of them seem to see darkness. They see civilization descending into chaos. They see technology turning against us, wreaking havoc. These stories might be entertaining. They might be insightful. Some of them might even end up being prophetic. But one thing is for sure is that as a genre with remarkable popularity they mark a shift in the cultural mood towards pessimism about the future.
What are we to make of all this as Christians? How are we to look at the future? Are we to be utopians or dystopians? Are we to be optimists or pessimists? This is what our gospel reading is all about on this first Sunday in Advent.
At first glance, Jesus’ words seem pretty pessimistic. They sound like they fit right in with the dystopian genre so popular in our culture today. Using apocalyptic language of cosmic calamity, as was common in Jesus’ day, our Lord describes the future darkly – literally! “The sun will be darkened,” he says. “The moon will not give its light. The stars will be falling from heaven. The powers of the heavens will be shaken.” This is all symbolic language used to describe dark times, times of suffering and chaos and disorder.
Jesus is simply telling the truth here. He is being honest about what the world will be like between his first coming as a baby in a manger and his second coming on the clouds. There will be dark days. And who can deny that this is the case? We are living in dark days right now – and not only because the sun goes down at three in the afternoon! We see a culture sliding back into the darkness of paganism. We see the fault lines between nations starting to heave with greater and greater intensity. We see an alarming rise in open and increasingly violent antisemitism.
In his recent year-end letter, the commandant from my son’s Corp of Cadets at Texas A&M cited many of these factors and then asked, “Is this what it felt like in 1937?”
We are living in dark times now as we experience disease and wars and poverty. Mental health care providers and school counselors will tell you there is an epidemic of personal darkness people are struggling with too. And so the so-called “dark ages” are not just something from the past. Neither are these dark times something yet to come in some future tribulation. Jesus is describing what the world will be like in the generation of human history between his first coming and his final coming. The four horsemen of the apocalypse have been trotting across human history, and they continue to gallop across the headlines to this day. And so, as Christians, we acknowledge that in many ways we live in dark times, just as our Christian ancestors did in ancient and medieval times, and just as future Christians surely will.
But this does not mean we are dystopians! For we also have reason for hope! We aren’t complete pessimists – we also have reason to be full of courage and peace and even joy! You see, in the same breath that Jesus paints this dark picture of the future, he also makes us some wonderful promises! He says it won’t be dark forever! Jesus says we will see him coming in power and glory. He says that he will send out his angels to gather his people. He says that when we see this darkness taking place, he is near – at the very gates! He says that though heaven and earth will pass away, his words will never pass away. He says that he is coming again at an unexpected hour. Therefore, we are to keep alert. We are to keep awake – which doesn’t mean guzzling caffeine and propping your eyelids open with toothpicks – it means keeping the faith. The short term might include some dark days, but Christ is coming again. He is with us now, to be sure, but he is not yet with us as we will be. Something much better is coming – and so there is hope even in the midst of the darkness.
Jesus says our posture towards the future is to be like that of a doorkeeper on the watch for the return of the master of the house. It might get late. It might get dark. Jesus, our Master, might not come until midnight, or at cockcrow, or even dawn. We are going to get sleepy. We’ll be tempted to nod off for a bit. But no matter how late or dark it gets, we are to keep alert. We are to keep awake. We are to keep the faith. We are to watch and wait with anticipation, and with confidence, with courage, and with hope.
This is a time of year when many people in our region suffer from seasonal affective disorder, which has the apt acronym S.A.D. The quite literal darkness of the northern latitudes in the fall and winter sometimes causes a set of symptoms in people which include lack of energy, fatigue, an increased desire to sleep, even mild depression.
One of the ways of treating S.A.D. is the use of a light box. By basking in the right kind of light – the kind that mimics natural sunlight – many of these symptoms can be alleviated. I’ve mentioned before that this is something I’ve struggled with a bit. I’ve used these light boxes from time to time. (When one of our members heard this, she came in and installed special lightbulbs in my office which mimic natural light. And it has helped. I haven’t used the light box since.)
There is a spiritual version of S.A.D. as well. The darkness we see in the world around us sometimes robs us of our energy for discipleship. It robs our faith of its vitality. The darkness we experience in our lives sometimes makes us spiritually fatigued. We become apathetic. We become spiritually lazy. All we want to do is doze off. We close our eyes to Christ and his Word. We can even start to drift out of faith and into unbelief. And where there is unbelief, despair is never far behind.
The promises our Lord Jesus gives us in our gospel reading for today are like a light box for our souls. They provide hope and courage and peace in the midst of darkness. They assure us that while the future in the short term may well include some dark days, Christ is coming again to light up the world with his great power and glory. They assure us that on those dark days when our Lord seems so far away from us, he is actually quite near – at the very gates. They assure us that although it often seems like everything is passing away – because it is! – Jesus’ words of promise will never pass away. They will only grow brighter and brighter as they are fulfilled. The light of these promises keeps us alert and awake. They help us to watch and wait for the Master of the house with confidence and hope and joy, even when it gets late and dark.
The holiday season is officially underway. This is a fun and exciting time of year for many. They holidays bring all kinds of opportunities for feasting and celebrating and joy. But the brightness of the holiday season also casts some long, dark shadows. For those who are missing loved ones, those absences are felt even more profoundly. For those who are suffering from broken relationships, the jagged edges ache all the more. For children of divorce, the tensions of family life can cause great anxiety and heartache. For those struggling financially, this can be a season of great stress. For those who are sick or hurting, these weeks on end of enforced cheerfulness can be salt in the wound.
It may well be that there is a shadow of one sort or another casting its darkness across your life. Don’t let that darkness lull you into spiritual fatigue. Don’t let it cause you to nod off, closing your eyes to Christ and his promises. Don’t let it put your faith to sleep. “Keep alert!” Jesus says to us. “Keep awake!” Keep your head in the light box of J esus’ promises and be energized. Make worship and prayer and scriptural devotions a priority. That’s what this season of Advent is designed to do. It isn’t about non-stop indulgence. It is about keeping alert. It is about keeping your head in the light of Christ’s word. So bask in his word, this word that will never pass away even when everything else does. Let it fill you with hope.
As Christians we are not utopian optimists, nor are we dystopian pessimists. Instead, we are hope-filled doorkeepers awaiting the return of our Master, doing his work while we wait, trusting that he is coming again to gather us to himself, to bring us into the warm, bright, and eternal light of the new day.
Who doesn’t want to be awake for that?
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 27, 2023 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 26
Sermon for Christ the King Sunday – November 26, 2023
Matthew 25:31-46
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
In our gospel reading for this morning we find Jesus at the end of his earthly ministry. His passion and death are right around the corner, and before he goes to the cross, Jesus gives his disciples, and us, a glimpse of his coming again. He will come in glory, he tells us, with all his angels with him. He will return as the king of heaven and earth, sitting on his throne of glory with all the nations gathered before him. He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep will be at his right hand, and the goats will be at his left. And the king will say to the sheep, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” while the goats will be told, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and all his angels.”
At this point you might be wondering to yourself nervously: “Am I a sheep, or am I a goat?” You might be asking yourself, “What can I do to make sure I’m in the sheep category when Christ returns?” You might be tempted to think that what makes a sheep a sheep is the good things they do. You might think that the ticket into the good place is to be earned by feeding the hungry and giving a drink to the thirsty and clothing the naked and caring for the sick and visiting the imprisoned. You might start panicking that you haven’t done enough of those things to avoid the bad place.
But this is to get this vision Jesus gives us, this glimpse of his coming again in glory, all wrong. Before Jesus mentions anything about what the sheep have done, he spells out what has made them sheep. Jesus says, “Come all that are blessed by my Father.” Who is blessed by the Father? Those who have received the salvation he has provided freely as a gift through his Son! Those who are blessed by the Father are those who have received Jesus in faith! That’s what Jesus has been saying over and over again up to this point!
Jesus then points to an inheritance that is given to the sheep. An inheritance is not something you earn. An inheritance is not wages for a job performed, for hours you have put in. An inheritance is something you are given because someone has died. This is precisely what Christ is just about to do! He is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, so that all who receive him in faith would have eternal life.
Finally, Jesus says this kingdom he has in store for his sheep was prepared for them before the very foundation of the world. It was not prepared for them after they proved themselves through their good works. It was already established for his sheep well before they had even baa-d their first baa.
The sheep in this vision, then, are not sheep because they have performed good works. They perform good works because they are sheep! Just look how surprised they are when those good works are mentioned. They didn’t even realize they were doing anything special. “When did we serve you, Lord?” they ask. “When did we do these good things for you?” And the king replies, “When you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
We’ve probably all seen those stories when a citizen does something heroic – maybe saving someone by doing CPR or the Heimlich maneuver, or rescuing someone who fell in a river, or bravely tackling an assailant unleashing mayhem on a crowd. They always end up on the news, and they almost always say something like, “I didn’t mean to be a hero. I was just doing what needed to be done. I didn’t think about it. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
In the same way, Jesus’ sheep don’t perform good works because we’re trying to impress anyone. We don’t do it because we are calculating the rewards or benefits the king might bestow. We don’t do it to earn anything. We do it because that’s just what sheep do. As Martin Luther himself said in his commentary on Romans, “Faith is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, such that it is impossible not to do good works constantly.”
It is the goats who calculate rewards and benefits. It is the goats who only do good works because of what it might get them. “Oh, that was you?” they say to the king. “We didn’t know! If we knew, we would have helped!” Do you see what is happening here? The goats have turned good works into a way to earn favor with the king. This is the way of the law. And it doesn’t turn out like they thought it would.
The sheep, on the other hand, are equally oblivious to the fact that when they serve a world in need, they are in fact serving their king. That isn’t why they do it! They don’t do it to curry favor. They don’t need to! They are already sheep, and they are merely doing what sheep do.
When we respond to human need, we are serving our Lord and King. This King of ours hides himself in the people around us, where we serve him through the callings of daily life. So when you bring groceries for the food pantry, you are feeding Jesus. When you bring coats or socks to our clothing drive, you are clothing Jesus. When you make beautiful quilts for strangers on the other side of the world, you are making quilts for Jesus. When you are up half the night with your sick child, or are caring for an ailing spouse or parent or friend, you are taking care of Jesus. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made visits to church members at the hospital or nursing home or in their homes and have found that someone from our congregation has already been there. When you make those visits, you are visiting Jesus himself.
Our King Jesus hides himself in the human needs all around us, and it is there that we serve him – but we don’t do it because we’re trying to earn points or ensure our place in the coming kingdom. We do it because it needs to be done. We dot it because that is who we are as people who have faith in Jesus. We do it because God has already made us sheep, and that is just what sheep do.
If you hear this parable today, this glimpse of the future that Jesus gives us, this glimpse of his coming kingdom, and start looking at yourself, trying to discern whether you’re really a sheep, maybe beginning to panic a little bit, you are putting your focus in the wrong place. Look instead to your King Jesus and to what he has already done to make you his sheep.
You have been blessed by God the Father. He has given you his dear Son to be your savior, to forgive your sin, to reconcile you to himself. The moment you receive Jesus in faith you are a sheep.
As a sheep, you have been given an inheritance. Jesus died for you, and you have inherited his life, his righteousness, his glory, his kingdom. He is the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep.
Christ’s kingdom was prepared for you from the foundation of the world, before you ever lifted a finger in his service.
The parable we hear today is the last parable Jesus tells before going to the cross. The next words out of his mouth are about his crucifixion. And so our eyes are led away from ourselves, from concerns about our own judgement, to the cross – the true source of our salvation.
It is on the cross that Jesus reveals himself most fully as king. It is on the cross that he takes on the crown of thorns, suffering for our sake. It is on the cross that Jesus is enthroned on high, even as he takes our sin upon himself.
As we look to the cross and see the sacrifice our king has made for us, we can’t help but want to live as his loyal subjects, carrying out his will in the world. As we behold his love, we can’t help but have him begin to rule our hearts and our lives. As we receive his grace and mercy through Word and sacrament, we are blessed by the Father, we receive the beginning of our inheritance, we are given a glimpse of the kingdom he has prepared for us, and we are assured that we are indeed his precious sheep.
And then, when we hear the words, “Go in peace, serve the Lord,” we go back to our daily lives to do the things that sheep do.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
