Lutheran Satire: Luther, the Pope, and James 2

Jesus Is Not Just Another Good Man

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

August 27, 2017

Matthew 16:13-22

Jesus Is Not Just Another Good Man

In the name of the Father

and of the ☩ Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

Children saving the world from evil is a common idea in books and films these days, but I suppose in 1963 it wasn’t. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle Iin Time is about children saving the world. They travel through space and time, fight an evil brain, and save the world from evil.

It’s mostly make-believe, but the Madame L’Engle identified herself as a Christian. She wanted her writing for children to indoctrinate them into a certain way of understanding Christ. So cut to about the middle of the book and you get this dialogue between the characters explaining how there is a cosmic battle between good and evil, light and darkness, and how people on our planet have been fighting against the darkness. Quoting the Gospel of St. John, a sort-of angelic fairy godmother called Mrs. Whatsit explains to the kids that Jesus is one of these fighters:

“And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”

“Jesus!” Charles Wallace said. “Why of course, Jesus!”

“Of course!” Mrs. Whatsit said. “Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They’ve been lights for us to see by.”

“Leonardo da Vinci?” Calvin suggested tentatively. “And Michelangelo?”

“And Shakespeare,” Charles Wallace called out, “And Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie and Einstein!” . . .

“And Schweitzer and Gandhi and Buddha and Beethoven and Rembrandt and St. Francis . . . Euclid . . . And Copernicus.”

(A Wrinkle in Time, Bantam Doubleday Dell, Yearling Edition, April 1973, page 89)

Who is Jesus? According to the author of A Wrinkle in Time Jesus is a good light fighting the darkness, just like Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi and Buddha and Madame Curie and Einstein. Artists and philosophers and scientists who were—giving them the benefit of the doubt—trying to make the world a better place. Jesus is a nice guy who teaches us to be nice. And if you’re already nice, how to be nicer.

We could make-believe that if Madeleine L’Engle were to travel back in time to the moment Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say I am?” I have no idea what she would have said. But in her writing, this notion that Jesus was some kind of Yoda or Mr. Spock comes through loud and clear.

Who is Jesus?

He is not just another good man, another artist, another philosopher, another scientist, another prophet.

He stands alone because He is

the Christ, the Son of the living God.

MATTHEW 16:16 NIV

Christ means that He is the anointed Savior, sent by His Father to save spiritually dead sinners by living and dying for them.

He was sent by His Father into the world at Bethlehem, He was anointed by the Holy Spirit at the River Jordan, and He was put to death for our sin upon the cross of Calvary. Indeed it’s worth noting that although at this point Jesus had done many miracles in the presence of His disciples, He was now going to clearly lay out why God was among them. Just after this dialogue between Jesus and His disciples, Matthew reported that for the first time,

Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

MATTHEW 16:21 NIV

Jesus is the Light that shines in the darkness, but He doesn’t save us by inspiring us to be good or creative or charitable. He rescues us by being punished for our evil and the destruction our evil causes. By means of His cross and baptism He inspires, breathes, into us His completed promise that our sins are forgiven.

This is what He means when He promised Peter that the Christian Church would be built on these words that Peter had been given to speak. Because of Jesus, heaven is opened to you and He brings you into His heaven. Heaven is where Jesus is, and He is already with you and with His Church.

If Jesus was just another good man, you would just be another bad person. Happily Jesus is not another Einstein or Shakespeare or Albert Schweitzer.

Children will not save the world.

Science will not save the world.

Art and literature and music will not save the world.

Humanitarianism will not save the world.

But Jesus does save you, because He is God in the flesh, who died and rose, for you.

For even the Son of Man

did not come to be served,

but to serve,

and to give His life

as a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45

Jesus’ Promise Pulls Us Out of Our Imagination

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

August 13, 2017

Matthew 14:29

Jesus’ Promise Pulls Us Out of Our Imagination

In the name of the Father

and of the ☩ Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

I.

Jesus made them get into the boat. He had just finished feeding the 5,000 and then He made His helpers, the disciples, get into a boat. Picking up the account:

²⁰They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. ²¹The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. ²²Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of Him to the other side, while He dismissed the crowd.

MATTHEW 14:20-22 NIV

A big reason for getting these men on the boat was their imagination. They were thinking how nice it would be to have a king who could provide bread without Adam’s curse: no longer having to sweat to get bread. John reported that the crowd was thinking pretty hard.

¹⁴After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” ¹⁵Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make Him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by Himself.

JOHN 6:14-15 NIV

John referred to the crowd, but it would wise to include the twelve disciples in that crowd. They, too, were imagining this king of bread. And why stop at bread? If this Man could make thousands of loaves from five, why not wine? Olive oil? Or even gold? You start with one bar of gold and He makes it into a thousand. Rumpelstiltskin, eat your heart out.

If you think the disciples were immune from their imagination, go back to Jesus forcing them onto the boat. They needed a timeout after this glorious miracle, so that they would not fall in love with power and come to despise the real reason Jesus had come to earth.

II.

He had come to rescue us with His Word. He had spoken His promise that He would die. His suffering and death would grab us up and away from the slow death we were drowning in. From the womb we are drowning in our doubt, in our intentions, and in our bad ideas, to say nothing of our actual sins. So He came by, reached out to us not with His hand, but His tongue, and spoke us out of drowning and onto dry land, Himself, the Rock of our salvation.

III.

Mark tells us that while the disciples were on the boat in the storm, Jesus went walking by without any intention of stopping. But when they saw Him, they were scared. In His mercy, Jesus stopped and spoke to them.

Shortly before dawn He went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, ⁴⁹but when they saw Him walking on the lake, they thought He was a ghost. They cried out, ⁵⁰because they all saw Him and were terrified. Immediately He spoke to them and said, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

MARK 6:48b-50 NIV

Again the disciples’ imaginations were on overdrive. They thought Jesus was a ghost; what other explanation could they imagine under the circumstances?

And again Jesus’ word brought them comfort when their human imagination only brought them only grief. Their dream that Jesus had come to give them free bread pulled them away from Jesus’ cross. And now they must have thought that they were dreaming as a man was walking on water—only ghosts can walk on water and soon they would be surely be ghosts, too!

Oh, how our minds bring us grief with visions of gold and of ghosts, of power and poverty. What we need and what Jesus gives us is Himself and His dependable word.

²⁷But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” ²⁸Peter replied, “Lord, if it’s You, tell me to come to You on the water.” ²⁹He said, “Come.” Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. ³⁰But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” ³¹Immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught him. He said, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

MARK 6:48b-50 NIV

Peter heard the word of God, “Come.” By the power of that promise, he walked on water. It is easy to forget that Peter actually walked on water. But quickly his imagination took over and insisted on being listened to. The little voice in his head got louder and louder: “Peter, this isn’t happening. You can’t walk on water. Jesus can, but not you! You’re just a man, and He’s God! What would God care if you drowned?” And his dying imagination doubted Jesus’ living word.

IV.

I can’t picture it. Jesus walking on water. And not calm flat water—wind and waves. How do you imagine that? I’m always interested how film makers are going to portray Jesus walking on water, because you can’t. You can never get it right. Even if Peter was an adviser to the film, how does he explain to the special effects guys? He can’t. The Gospel writers don’t try to explain it either. They just say that He walked on the water.

What more impossible than walking on water? Dying and coming back from the dead. Jesus did that, too. He did it all so that when He comes near to you, you no longer need to be afraid. You are, so to speak, walking on water with Him. You are doing the impossible because you have received Jesus’ powerful and living Word. He tells you to come and by faith in Him you walk with Him.

For even the Son of Man

did not come to be served,

but to serve,

and to give His life

as a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45

Being Needed by God—A Precious Gift!

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

August 6, 2017

Matthew 14:13-21

Being Needed by God—A Precious Gift!

In the name of the Father

and of the ☩ Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

Crowds were always following Jesus. Even when Jesus tried to be alone to pray, they found Him. And most of the people who found Him were desperate. They were crippled, they were sick, and they had no where else to go.

When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them and healed their sick.

MATTHEW 14:14 NIV 1984

But then Jesus’ disciples became afraid that the people that had been healed would be right back in harm’s way.

As evening approached, the disciples came to Him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

MATTHEW 14:15 NIV 1984

Healing desperate people all day, Jesus had now allowed the food situation to become desperate. But this is how Jesus usually does things. He gives us impossible things to do. Baptize babies and make them alive. Tell sinners that they are sinners and that Jesus has died for them. These are things that should be impossible, but with God they happen. When He speaks through us, the impossible is done.

Jesus demands the impossible from His disciples: “You give them something to eat.” The men had just returned from their time of preaching and miracle-working. Jesus had sent them out and they had returned, filled with excitement and joy. But notice how quickly they had forgotten? They had healed the sick, but even more impossible they had forgiven sinners in the name of Jesus. Now Jesus asks them to get some bread, and they fall to pieces. How quickly they forgot!

How we quickly forget, too. You have come here today and you are hearing me speak about this account from Jesus’ life that has preoccupied my heart and mind all week. But others things have filled your mind with worry. How are the bills going to get paid? Will I pass my latest test? When is the baby going to arrive? Will I get my project for work done in time?

You probably won’t find an unmarked envelope stuffed with cash on the sidewalk. You might not get the answers to the test beamed into your brain. Jesus doesn’t usually send babies gift-wrapped on your doorstep. And you won’t turn on your work computer to find your project all done.

Instead Jesus uses people to do this, usually you. You work and get money to pay the bills. You study and pass the test. Moms have babies. You finish the project.

This is the way He does it.

And He directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, He gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people.

MATTHEW 14:19 NIV 1984

He allows Himself to need His disciples, disciples who worried and disciples who forgot. And He allows Himself to need you, too. To get daily bread to His people, He uses you to work and cook and plan and sacrifice as you care for yourself and for others. What a dear and precious thing it is, to be needed by God Himself in this daily life!

But in one thing, indeed the most important thing of all, Jesus uses no middle men. He didn’t send His disciples or saints or the Virgin Mary to die on the cross to pay for all the evil indifference of the world. He sent Himself.

For even the Son of Man

did not come to be served,

but to serve,

and to give His life

as a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45

Our Job Is to Wait

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

July 23, 2017

Matthew 13:24-30

Our Job Is to Wait

In the name of the Father

and of the 2 Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

The parable of the wheat and the weeds teaches us that it is not our job to end unbelief. This teaching is contrasted by the dogma of Mohammed and his followers. Their god demands the end of unbelievers with the sword; our dear Lord, however, takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

In the parable when the servants ask the master if they should tear up the weeds, the master says no. No, do not try to get rid of sinners. The true God has not instituted a purifying cult that seeks to create paradise on earth. Instead, our Lord teaches us to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” He wants none of the wicked to die; He wants His rule of grace and peace to come even to them.

The Lord’s prayer has been answered. We were weeds, but now we are the living proof of His kingdom. We are the wheat, the good plants that will be brought into God’s harvest. He has given us the opposite of what we deserve and from before we were born He knew us. He knew when we would start growing. He knew where we would live. He also knew all the weeds, all the unbelievers, that would grow up alongside you—childhood friends and siblings who no longer follow Jesus or carry their crosses to the glory of His name.

But the weeds aren’t just around us; they also grow inside us. Anger and doubt grow up alongside faith; greed and lust stain our lives. And so the good we want to do, we do not do; the evil we do not want to do, this we do. And we cry out to the Lord in frustration, “Why do You give us a taste of Your glory, but leave us here in our sinful flesh?”

And His answer to us is that it is not yet time. Because of His mercy, He will wait until all His chosen people have been brought to faith in Jesus. To those already in His kingdom, this waiting seems to go on forever. But to those not yet in His kingdom, they will be eternally grateful for the time.

Our job is not ending unbelief; our job is not fixing the problems of the earth. We show mercy to those harmed by evil, but we will never end evil. We know that Time itself is in God’s good hands and He will end war and greed and unbelief in His good time.

Instead, our job is to wait. We wait on our dear Lord who is gracious and works all things for the good of those who love Him and for the good of those who will love Him.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served,

but to serve,

and to give His life as a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45

Christ Makes the Soil Good

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

July 16, 2017

Matthew 13:23

Christ Makes the Soil Good

In the name of the Father

and of the ☩ Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

Jesus taught His people with stories. This parable is a straight-forward story about farming, about seeds and how they grow. And the point of the story is that more Jesus is always better.

The seeds fall all over the ground. This is seed-sowing is like Jesus, whose saving death and resurrection have been heard all over the world. The seed is sown by the preaching of pastors and the prayers of fathers with their wives and children. But there are sadly many who hear Jesus, but nothing grows.

The following explanations point out, not cradle-to-grave heathen unbelievers, but instead those who at one point believed, but do so no longer.

So some seeds fall on the side of the road. Jesus said this represents those who hear Him, but don’t listen to Him. For example, what was last Sunday’s sermon about? You might think:

(1) I remember!

(2) Oh no, I can’t remember!

(3) Who cares? It’s just the same old thing every week.

This last reaction is what this roadside seed is about. They heard Jesus and they just don’t care.

Some seeds fall onto rocky shallow ground. These are those who hear Jesus, but only hear what they want to hear. This is usually the happy stuff. They load up on the John 10 and Psalm 23, the Good Shepherd Jesus; they love Christmas Eve and Easter Morning, animals, a cute baby, angels, the obviously glorious Christ. Noah’s Ark is fine as along as it’s the happy boat with smiling animals popping out.

But they never want much else. Good Friday and the crucified Christ—pass. The righteous judgment against the people of Noah’s day and the judgment that is coming also for the people of our time—skip. Jesus declares that He brings swords and division to our homes and churches—no thanks.

Other seeds fall among thorns. These are those who hear Jesus, but the world’s priorities end up running their lives. The world tells us how to spend our time, perhaps always working, perhaps always having fun. These people knew Jesus, they liked Him, but they just love the world more.

Finally there is the seed on good soil. Jesus explained:

And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.”

MATTHEW 13:23 NASB 1995

Why does the seed grow here? Because the soil is good. Unfortunately in much Christian art, drama, and music, even among things labeled “Lutheran”, the idea is that you make yourself ready for Jesus by being good soil.

Being good soil to make God like you is a theme of another story Jesus told. He told a story about a father who allowed his younger son to take his inheritance and leave home to chase wine and women. But in the end the father brought the younger son back into his home and family and threw a feast to celebrate his son’s return to life. But the older brother was furious with his father’s generosity.

“Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.”

LUKE 15:29-30 NASB 1995

Like the older brother in the story of the Prodigal, this idea that we make ourselves good soil for God by following the rules (and of course, never God’s Commandments, but instead whatever rules you can keep and are comfortable with) actually put you back into the thorns.

Christ makes you good soil. He makes you good with Himself, His Word. To use His metaphor, He takes bad soil like us and makes us alive. This is the miracle of faith. He takes dead things and makes them alive by His Word and promise.

The soil that Christ Jesus has made good produces fruit. This fruit takes many shapes and sizes and may take time to appear. Most of the life of these good plants is in the necessary, but unseen roots underground. But fruit will appear. And indeed our greatest work is listening to Jesus.

So more Jesus is always better. More Jesus at home, listening to His Word is always better. More Jesus at church is always better, too, and not necessarily longer sermons, but certainly more opportunities to receive His body and blood on Sunday morning.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. Amen!

Mark 10:45

Audio of the Sermon

The Sword of the Spirit Is Still a Sword

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

July 2, 2017

Matthew 10:34

The Sword of the Spirit Is Still a Sword

In the name of the Father

and of the ☩ Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

St. Paul finished up his letter to the Christians in the Greek city of Ephesus with a wonderful illustration of God armoring up His people against the world. Paul wrote:

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

EPHESIANS 6:16-17 NIV 1984

This battle talk here pumps us up for the fight against the Evil One, the Devil, and his allies, the unbelieving world and your own sinful flesh. But when the fight against sin comes to us, we must not forget what swords actually do.

In Exodus 32, the Levites used swords to kill 3,000 of their brothers and friends and neighbors (out of about 600,000) who had devoted themselves to the worship of their own pleasure. (The golden calf was just the flimsy excuse for their sinning. Perhaps that day you might have heard someone saying, “The gold calf told me to get drunk!”)

A sword is sharp. It cuts. It kills.

The Word of God is a sword. It’s sharp. It cuts. It kills.

Jesus said:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’”

MATTHEW 10:34-36 NIV 1984

So here’s the thing: our culture, which feels more and more like a cult every day, encourages opinions and discussion of opinions on every last thing on the face of the earth, expect one thing. If you’re thinking that I’m you can’t talk about God, you’re wrong. You can. You can say anything about God you want, except that God died and rose from the dead.

You bring that up at a holiday gathering, even among some Christians(!), and the party’s over. Anything but that. Anything but that. You can gossip, you can be vulgar, but just don’t bring up Jesus dying and the claim His life has on our lives.

A wise preacher once said that our society’s last taboo is conviction about God and His Word. Confess that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven and you are bound to be disliked . . . Protocol dictates that we look the other way as men race toward perdition, lest we should offend the damned.¹

Hell is never offended. Hell doesn’t need to be acknowledged by modern pagans. Hell doesn’t care if anyone believes in it or not. It can wait. It quietly applauds our silence.

Why do we keep silent? By faith we say that Jesus is number one—this is very good!—but in what we do (and don’t do) we show that there are things that are just as important as Jesus dying and rising from the dead. Jesus mentions what one of those god-like things is: family.

Tell your children that you love them dearly, but that Jesus loves them even more you do. You know this because He died for them and baptized them. And tell them that you love them dearly, but that you love Jesus more than you love them. And God-willing, your children will say the same to you.

When this confession of Jesus—Jesus above all—is the watch word of your home, then true love for your parents, for your children, can flourish. Certainly there are loving heathen homes, but these relationships are always expected to deliver constant happiness, treating each other as their fellow gods.

Only by forsaking the sin of Adam, who hoped to be god, and taking up the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, is true love unsheathed. Telling the truth about Jesus’ victorious death means that we no longer need our parents to be our saviors, or our children to redeem us and give our lives meaning. Jesus is our Savior; with His blood He has bought us out of the clutches of Death and the Devil.

Let us pray.

Dear Lord, thank You for times of peace in our family life when Your Word is heard continually in our hearts and frequently in our homes. Strengthen us for days of unrest, when Your sword will separate the living from the dead. Let us lose our lives for Your sake, for in Your death we live forever.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, 

but to serve, 

and to give His life as a ransom for many. Amen!

Mark 10:45

1 Reformation Sermon by the Rev’d David Petersen, Matthew 10:34, October 27, 2002. Accessed cyberstones.org/sermon/reformation-2002 on June 28, 2017.