Grouches, Take Up Your Cross

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

June 23, 2013

Luke 9:23

Take Up Your Cross

In the name of Jesus.

Why are there grouchy old people? Why do young and middle-aged people stare at little screens all day long? You might not think that these two problems are related, but they are.

Old grouches are grouchy because they spent years and decades of their life doing what they wanted, when they wanted to do it. And now they are old. They don't get to do what they want to do anymore. Their kids tell them what to do or their nurse does.

Grouches are grouchy because they spent their life devoted to their career or to their family, but now they've been forced to retire and their kids moved away. They're too old to play golf and they can't run the Bix anymore. So they're grouchy.

They now can't avoid seeing the truth that's always been there: we aren't God. But the grouches spent their whole life dedicated to worshiping themselves. They worshiped by doing what they wanted, when they wanted to.

The iPhone or Pad that you might be staring into later today (hopefully not now) makes loving yourself easy to such a degree that televisions are green with envy.

I go to the Eisenhower playground and I see a mom and dad absorbed with their smartphone, while their kids are playing. Are they working? Is it Facebook? Doesn't really matter—the underlying evil is the same. They love themselves. They're the most important thing going and they need to be happy.

For some happiness is found in constant stimulation from a variety of sources. For others happiness is found in a routine that never changes.

For still others happiness is found in being left alone and leaving others alone, something that's easier than ever in our convenience culture. A father at another playground told me casually that his 12-year old daughter never gets up before noon during the summer. He made it clear that he was not going to be the one to make her grouchy. Let her sleep and thus be happy. At the risk of sounding like a grouch, that stinks.

Take up your cross and follow Me. Jesus tells us that this means doing hard things, and the hardest thing of all is denying self. For those playground parents glued to their cheap plastic battery, denying self means putting it away and getting up and engaging with your kids. Don't watch it; watch them. For that other dad, denying self means making it clear to your little girl that she is not a grown-up and not letting act her like one.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't about getting kids up by 8 during the holidays or destroying tech. I am amused by the rap-making app on the iPad and I like listening to my kids' Patty-Patty Cake, Baker's Man get turned into a mild suburban rap.

The point is: I'm not God. Jesus is. And He calls on us to follow Him by denying our desire to worship ourselves.

How do you follow Him? Start by saying His name. Say His name today. Say His name tomorrow. Worship Him at home. Set up a special place for Jesus in your home and let Him speak to you from the Bible. Read a section from the Small Catechism out loud. Make Jesus visible to yourself and family by reading His promises aloud in your house. Pray at home. That is a radical idea. Do it.

Dr. David Scaer writes: “The Gospel is at work through one person in the home, and the best missionaries are a believing mother or father whose life is a preaching of salvation for their spouses and children... The best missionaries are parents who bring their children to church for baptism and those who are patient with their unbelieving spouses.”

Be patient also with your unbelieving children. We have lost our next generation, our grown children. Most have moved away and sadly some refuse to eat and drink at their nearby Lutheran church. Denying yourself means being patient with these children. Every day speak their names to Christ and call on His mercy and ask Him to send His Word into their lives so that their stubborn self-imposed starvation is brought to an end. And then be a voice in their lives that urges them to church. Be the answer to your own prayer in the name of Christ.

But being patient doesn't mean excusing their apathy towards church, the very place where they receive the promises of Jesus. Giving college kids and grown children a pass when it comes to their indifference to Christ is a way in which we worship ourselves and deny Him.

Being patient means that we—especially parents, pastors, and elders—take time to engage these souls who are starving themselves. Picking up our crosses means that when someone refuses the spiritual care that is available to them here at Gethsemane or in their new town, we recognize that fact.

Not going to church is a sin because it is spiritual suicide (John 15). It's time to stop denying this fact and follow Jesus at all costs. Bearing your cross means having your children or your members think that you are a grouch, a jerk, and worse.

Who do people say I am? The Christ of God, who will be rejected and be killed and be raised on the third day.

Who am you? A wretched old grouch who belongs to Him through water, word, and wine, Baptism, Preaching, and Communion.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, forgive our grouchiness, which comes from how much we love ourselves. Crush our worship of self and turn our hearts to You.

In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Your Faith Has Saved You

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

June 16, 2013

Luke 7:36-50

Your Faith Has Saved You

In the name of Jesus.

Why would this woman with a bad reputation wash Jesus' feet in a house that had a good reputation? The answer helps to explain Jesus' final words of this incident: “Your faith has saved you.”

If this sinful woman was washing Jesus' feet to earn His blessing, then she chose an awfully strange time and place for it. She could have found a place where Jesus' company would not have fussed over her presence. There were several occasions where Jesus ate with sinners, people with bad reputations. Why not wash His feet then? She would have fit right in and her kind deed might have appreciated by the others there.

But if this woman was washing Jesus' feet out of profound thankfulness, then she wouldn't have cared about the opinion of those Pharisees. We see that this was the reason why she washed Jesus' feet with her tears and her hair and expensive perfume. She didn't care where Jesus was. A house of good repute or a house of ill repute didn't mattered. What mattered was that her Jesus, her Saver, was there. And that's where she needed to be.

She was profoundly thankful because Jesus had spoken to her and forgiven her reputation, which was based on her actual sins that came out of her sinful heart. For years she had been without hope. She knew she was guilty of great sin—everyone in Simon's house knew who she. She knew that living a better life by avoiding old friends and places and finding better people to associate with might raise her reputation in the eyes of some. But perhaps she knew that a person's better behavior doesn't cancel out a person's life of sin in the judgment of the only one who counts: Jesus.

So if behavior didn't save that woman, even the act of cleaning Jesus' feet, what did save her? Jesus tells us: “Your faith has saved you.” And what is faith? It is the trust that Jesus had given to that woman. She trusted that she was clean, not because Jesus had ignored her past, but because He was going to die for her past and her present and her future. He was going to become her sin (see 2 Corinthians 5:21). He was going to become her bad reputation and give her His spotless reputation in its place. By her saving faith, her reputation before God was now spotless. And now she was compelled to confess her gratitude with this humble act.

Faith is grasping Jesus' promise of forgiveness. This grasping is caused by the Holy Spirit's work in us, so Jesus is absolutely correct when He reminds this woman that she specifically has been saved by her faith alone, the faith that He had given her, the faith that had led her to carelessly and with the greatest care, wash His dirty feet. Carelessly in regard to the opinion of other people; with the greatest care in her choices, buying expensive perfume, using her own hair as the rags that would wipe away the filth of His feet, the same feet that would walk to Calvary. The same feet that would be nailed to a wooden cross. The same feet that would bleed real blood for her sin.

Our own hearts are determined to read this assurance of Jesus—“Your faith has saved you”—as a Law to obey. We read faith as a choice to behave better. But Jesus assures us that this isn't at all the case by telling a story.

“A creditor had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii, and the other 50. Since they could not pay it back, he graciously forgave them both. So, which of them will love him more?” (Luke 7:41-42)

Make this story yours. How many more years on your mortgage? 19 years? Eight? 27? Now what if the bank sends you a note informing you that the bank has decided to pay off your loan in full—what would you do? You'd cry with joy and buy Whitty's for everybody at the bank all summer long. Or maybe it's your student loan to Palmer and a long-lost great aunt from Norway decides to pay it off in full. Happy? Of course and you're on the next flight to Oslo to say thank you.

Now some would be jealous and say that you are saying thank you only because the bank or Aunt Helga did something wonderful for you. Well, yes! But that isn't money-grubbing. That's just being profoundly thankful.

Let's not pretend that we are Jesus in this incident. Let's confess that we most identify with the Pharisees. Now let's be clear: the Pharisees were not going around with their noses in the air. They acted just like you. They helped people or they wanted to help people. We turn the Pharisees into silly caricatures and we do this so they can't reflect our own bad image back to us.

Some preachers today are going to preach this text and say that the point is this: “Don't judge others … like those bad Pharisees.” And what they mean is that a real Christian will never point out sin, wherever it is. In yourself. In others. Never ever call sin out and name it, especially if it popular. And if the sin in question is judging, then in that case, judge away and decry that evil sinner.

This approach that effectively snaps the Bible shut and locks it away changes Jesus' parable so that the there is no creditor or debtors. They don't owe 500 or 50—they owe zero.

When there is Law, there is no sin. And where this is no sin, there is no Savior. This woman was guilty of great evil and the Pharisees would have been right to call her on it. But they didn't do that and they were guilty of a greater sin—they despised the forgiveness of God.

Their final sin wasn't being judgmental. They were guilty of deep-seated jealousy. They despised this woman's forgiveness and they despised the Savior who forgave her.

Let us not be jealous, but rather rejoice in the forgiveness of a sinful person. Like a book, in viewing the covers of some people, we might think that we can see signs of past or present sin. And we might be right. And so we rejoice with them and in their forgiveness. The same Jesus that forgave them has forgiven us. And to despise their forgiveness is to drive yourself away from yours. To say that they don't belong at the foot of His cross is to say that you don't belong there, either.

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Our faith grabs onto this promise from Jesus. And that's why it saves you—because He has.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Requests Aren't Needed In Death

Third Sunday after Pentecost

June 9, 2013

Luke 7:11-17

Requests Aren't Needed In Death

In the name of Jesus.

In many ways it was a redo, a repeat. In our readings from the ministries of Elijah and Jesus, we saw sons who had died and were then raised back to life by the Word of God.

It's hard to exaggerate how devastating losing your only child is today. It was the same back then and on top of the grief—if it could be worse—losing your only son likely meant you'd get old and die alone without any money, no place to live, and little food. A son and his wife would care for their parents; without a son or daughter-in-law (like Ruth), there was very little to fall back on for the golden years.

And for a woman who was already a widow, life was over as she knew it. This was the devastation that Jesus walked into when He walked into Nain. The scene was this: two large crowds were coming together at the city gate. Both crowds had a focal point: one group was focused on Jesus, the living Man, and the other crowd was focused on the young dead son. One crowd was jubilant in God's Son; the other, wailing with the son's mother.

Jesus spoke first, “Don't cry.” He had in mind what He was going to do. He was going to use His Word to bring life from death. He wanted the crowd that was wailing with the ruined woman whose family was all dead to be still and listen. He wanted them to hear what He was going to say.

Young man, I say to you, arise!

In these words, we behold our Savior whom we confess every Sunday and hopefully every morning and evening. He is true God and true Man.

We see His humanity as He comforts one of His many mothers—women whom He has given the gift of a child—and treats her like His own mother Mary. This is the same single-minded compassion we see on His cross as He cares for His mother all the way into death, when He places John and Mary into each others' care as adopted mother and surrogate son.

We see His divinity as He clearly knows what is happening without having to ask. And even more to the point, this poor widow doesn't have to ask, either. Many other miracles begin with a request from a suffering soul to Jesus. But here in cruel death, Jesus doesn't wait around to be asked. He acts without being asked. He speaks without a word being spoken, so that in a moment the woman whom no word could comfort now heard words coming from her living son.

With Christ's word life is created where only death had been before. And so it is with you. You were dead, but Jesus spoke at your first funeral—your baptism—where the same Voice that spoke at Nain now rings out again.

I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

And coming up out the water from a very different kind of box, life begins again. Depending on the age of the baptized soul, the anointed child may cry out among God's family or the anointed person may sing the next hymn with the communion of saints.

Yet even they will die again because of the sting of sin. Indeed the young man of Nain who had died would die again. Elijah raised up the son of Zarapheth from death, but years later he would die. So did Jairus' daughter and the Centurion's slave. They all died. But not their souls. Their souls live on even today. And so it will be with you. Why?

Because Jesus' death and resurrection are unique. Unlike your death and the death of the widow's son, Jesus' death was not a consequence of His own sinfulness, but a punishment for the sin of all humanity.

And unlike the other resurrections of the Bible, Jesus was resurrected to glory everlasting, His glorious Person is now sitting at the right hand of God the Father almighty. His resurrection lasts and endures. And His unique death and resurrection serves as the divine pledge from our heavenly Father that in our second resurrection, that repeat of Nain, at the end of time, we will stand in glory with His only son, our only hope.

This is our Savior, both the living Man and the compassionate God, who walks into our devastation and without being asked, acts to save us by speaking us from death to life.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Call On Me Anytime

Second Sunday after Pentecost

June 2, 2013

Luke 7:1-10

Call On Me Anytime

In the name of Jesus.

Jesus had just finished His famous Sermon on the Mount, when He walked into Capernaum. Capernaum was a coastal town on the Sea of Galilee, not too far from Jesus' hometown of Nazareth.

And then, after a long day of preaching and then walking, Jesus gets a phone call from one of His members. Not really. But sort of.

One of the fears that you may have is bothering me, your pastor. You'll often start your sentences to me on a non-Sunday by saying, “Pastor, I know your busy” or “Pastor, I don't want to bother you.”

When you say this kind things, I always smile because I see your grace and concern for your pastor. I'll usually respond with the truth.

“I'm not busy. What's up?”

Or “It's not a bother.”

Or “I'm busy, but what you need to tell me is more important.”

I hope I do a decent job of communicating my desire for you to come to me with problems. That's why I'm here and I hope you know that you can approach me with your life and your troubles anytime. I'm here to mourn when you mourn and to rejoice when you rejoice. I'm here to listen and to comfort.

But still, I'd guess that it'd be hard to believe that I'd want you to call me on a Sunday evening after I've preached here and then gone down to Burlington to preach again.

I'd guess that the centurion who asked for Jesus' help was uneasy. He must have felt like he was intruding on Jesus' time. Being an invader in a foreign land and also a man who got to know the people and community around him, it was his job to know the local news. He almost certainly knew that Jesus had been preaching and and healing and traveling all day.

And this centurion was not a brutal heathen, who could have heard of Jesus and His healings, and then ordered Jesus to come and make his slave better. Instead he was a believer in the one true God and he trusted Jesus, God's Son. And so he didn't order Jesus around like Pontius Pilate would do later on. He asked for help from a very tired Jesus.

And Jesus said yes. The centurion asked in great faith trusting in the words of the Psalms that he knew well from his time in the synagogue.

Answer me when I call to You,

my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

have mercy on me and hear my prayer. (Psalm 4:1)

I call on You, my God, for You will answer me;

turn Your ear to me and hear my prayer. (Psalm 17:6)

Call on Me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you will honor Me. (Psalm 50:15)

Through the Psalmists and Prophets Jesus had urged His believers to call on Him anytime, because the day of trouble can come in the middle of the night, in the morning or evening, or it can remain for many years.

The centurion didn't trust in the opinions and cares of men. He didn't care about having to owe the Jewish leaders a favor. He didn't care that his fellow Roman soldiers would despise him for asking for help from a Jew.

Instead he trusted in Jesus' saving word to heal his slave. He cared about his servant and above all who Jesus is and what He said. This faithful soldier knew that Jesus is God and His Word creates Reality and Truth and Salvation. When Jesus says, “Go,” it goes. When Jesus says, “Come,” it comes. And when Jesus says, “Be healed,” you are.

We, too, trust Jesus' word of healing. By it, our souls are forgiven and we are set free to trust Christ and one another. We can trust the forgiveness spoken by the pastor and by one another, so that when forgiveness is declared, it is not merely a pious wish. Instead it is the Truth of Christ proclaimed to a fellow sinner.

So when evil is troubling you, call on Christ and call His shepherd that He has placed under Him—your pastor. Call him anytime and hear Jesus say to you, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” (Matthew 8:13)

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Athanasian Creed Explained (Mostly the Beginning and the End)

The Holy Trinity

May 26, 2013

The Athanasian Creed Explained

(Mostly the Beginning and the End)

In the name of Jesus.

Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold to the true Christian faith. Whoever does not keep this faith pure in all points will certainly perish forever.

Whoever wishes to be saved must have this conviction of the Trinity.

It is furthermore necessary for eternal salvation truly to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ also took on human flesh.

Those who have done good will enter eternal life, but those who have done evil will go into eternal fire.

This is the true Christian faith. Whoever does not faithfully and firmly believe this cannot be saved.

I.

These are all sentences from the Athanasian Creed. A statement of belief is called a creed (credibility and credence are words that mean something is believable). It was written to stand up against the false teachings of 400s AD. These false teachings are mentioned in the creed. False teachers were mixing God together. They were preaching that there was a time when God's Son did not exist. They talked about the Holy Spirit as though He were a ancient cosmic energy to be used like a Jedi using the Force or Harry Potter using magic.

So faithful pastors and theologians were tired of having their fellow believers deceived by these lies. So they wrote the most precise statement of the Trinity possible based on what has been revealed about the Trinity in the Bible.

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! (Deuteronomy 6:4 NASB)

God is one. But also three Persons. In the beginning God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26 NASB)

And at the end of Jesus' time on earth, He commanded the Church and her pastors, Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19 NASB)

So any statement of faith that did not confess that God is three distinct and equal Persons in one God is not a good confession. In fact it would be a lie. So in the middle of Athanasian Creed it is correctly stated that,

Whoever wishes to be saved must have this conviction of the Trinity.

This conviction of the Triune God, the Three-in-One God, is beyond intellectual understanding. It is goes beyond our imagination. No one could have dreamt this up. The human mind can conceive of a single entity. It can imagine hundreds or millions of little gods. But a Trinity is absurd. And we have this conviction of the Trinity only through Christ alone.

II.

No one can believe in the Trinity without the Son. He is the only way to the truth, and He says so,

I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. (John 14:6 NASB)

Our Way to Life is Jesus and this Divine Son became a man. He did this so that He might die for us. If Jesus is not a true man, He could not have died to save us.

[God the Father] made [His Son] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in [Him] we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV2011)

To deny Jesus' humanity is to claim that Jesus did not take on our sin. This means that without this conviction in God becoming a man, a person is outside the Christian faith and is lost. The writers of the Creed knew this and stated,

It is furthermore necessary for eternal salvation truly to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ also took on human flesh.

Rejecting Jesus' humanity leads to eternal damnation.

III.

Those who have done good will enter eternal life, but those who have done evil will go into eternal fire.

This statement often troubles Lutherans because it rings of the papacy and Roman Christianity. But again this statement sums up what God says about the role that good works, the works of the Law, have in our lives. To put it simply, good works do not save us, but they are evidence of faith. The works of believers are the only works that Jesus considers good; the good works of unbelievers are no good at all.

Jesus said for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. (John 5:28-29 NKJV)

Well, fine, yoy might say. Jesus said it, but why say it in a statement of faith that someone might misunderstand. Again, these Athanasian Christians were talking exactly like Jesus. Instead of running away from good works they embraced them as evidence of belief, evidence that will be judged not by humans, but by Christ.

The creed writers were also following in the footsteps of St. Paul in the opening chapters of Romans. Paul wrote: [God] will repay each one according to his works: eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality… glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does what is good. (Romans 2:6-7, 10 HCSB)

But of course, there is a puzzle because Paul goes on to say in no uncertain terms that good works never cause salvation.

There is no one who does what is good, not even one. (Romans 3:12 HCSB) And again no one will be justified in His sight by the works of the law. (Romans 3:20 HCSB)

But Paul does not dilute the need for good works. He praises them and calls on Christians to obey God's law.

For we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law… Do we then cancel the law through faith? Absolutely not! On the contrary, we uphold the law. (Romans 3:28, 31 HCSB)

Therefore, it is more than appropriate to declare that doers of good deeds go to heaven because only Christians can do good deeds.

IV.

Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold to the true Christian faith. Whoever does not keep this faith pure in all points will certainly perish forever… This is the true Christian faith. Whoever does not faithfully and firmly believe this cannot be saved.

The Athanasian Creed is condemning those who deny and reject these vital scriptural truths. Those who reject the doctrine of the Trinity and the true deity of Christ are not Christian.

But here's the wonderful part. Believers—whether the very young who haven't learned how to express trust in Jesus' promises or the very old who have lost their ability to think and speak of their Savior—will be saved. Even many lifelong Lutherans will be saved, even though they ceased studying God's Word when they were 14. The creed is not condemning simple Christians whose knowledge and understanding is incomplete. We do not have to be able to explain complex scriptural doctrine in order to be saved.

We confess one God in three Persons and three Persons in one God. And He came down from heaven to earth to live with us and to tell us about His Father and about His Spirit. They love us and He has died for us.

He's risen! He's risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the Beginning Was the Holy Spirit

Day of Pentecost

May 19, 2013

Genesis 1, Matthew 1, Acts 2

In the Beginning Was the Holy Spirit

In the name of Jesus.

In the beginning was the Holy Spirit. He was there in the beginning for all the important milestones of history.

He was there when the universe was created by His will and the will of the Father and Son. In the beginning God said: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:26 NASB).

The Holy Spirit was there at the world's next great milestone—the Incarnation of God. Our Savior was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Virgin Mary. By the Holy Spirit God took on human flesh.

So her husband Joseph, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly. But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:19-21 HCSB)

And the Holy Spirit was there when the Church of the New Testament began on the Day of Pentecost.

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. (Acts 2:1-4 NASB)

These are the great milestones of history. Genesis gave humans bodies and souls. Incarnation gave sinners the Savior. Pentecost gave believers the Church. And the Holy Spirit was there for all three milestones.

[Jesus said:] “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” (John 15:26-27 NASB)

The God who gave us mouths and hands, who forgives us, is the One who comes on Pentecost. The disciples' quiet contemplation of Christ's resurrection and ascension was loudly disrupted by the coming of the Holy Spirit. There was a hurricane, a tornado, a mighty wind, rushing through this house!

This loud wind was a fitting picture of what would follow. For Peter his loud screams that he didn't know Jesus would be transformed by the Holy Spirit into powerful sermons that declared Jesus. This Jesus knew Peter, had heard his denials, and despite this, and indeed because Jesus knew how treasonous Peter was, Jesus died for Peter's sinfulness.

Now Peter loudly testified that he knew Him, “God has resurrected this Jesus. We are all witnesses of this. Therefore, since He has been exalted to the right hand of God and has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, He has poured out what you both see and hear.” (Acts 2:32-33 HCSB)

This Pentecost sermon of Peter that declared Jesus to be the Word of God gave birth to the Church. You are part of this Church today. In the Church of Christ God's Word is proclaimed in simple words and language, not in incoherent gibberish. The Holy Spirit pours out Jesus in simple words, in all the languages of the world. Here, it is English. But even more profound is that the Holy Spirit pours out Jesus in water, bread, and wine—simple sacred things that need no translation.

We didn't witness the loud commotion of Pentecost, the glorious coming of the Holy Spirit. Instead our Pentecost is quiet, celebrated in the private milestones of our lives. The Holy Spirit comes to us when we baptize our children. The Holy Spirit comes to us when we bury our loved ones.

Between the time of the death of our sinful flesh and the death of our flesh, the Holy Spirit comes to us still, as we gather in God's house. He comes to us when the pastor absolves us. He comes to us when the pastor places Christ on our tongues, the very same tongues we use to sing His praises in His house and in our homes. Like Peter, these are the same tongues we use to confess what Jesus has done for us, because He knows how pitiful we are and how desperately we need His forgiveness.

And because the Holy Spirit comes to us, we have Jesus' forgiveness. There is no tornado in the house, there is no large crowd beating down our door, but the Holy Spirit—who was there in the beginning and will be with us until the end—brings us the one thing we need: you are forgiven, you are forgiven indeed!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.