http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html Another Nifty Geeklog Site jessi@ilcep.org jessi@ilcep.org Copyright 2007 Immanuel Lutheran Church GeekLog Sun, 09 Dec 2007 09:52:15 -0700 en-gb http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071209095149809 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071209095149809 Sun, 09 Dec 2007 09:51:49 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071209095149809#comments Weekly Sermons December 09 2007 Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon December 9th 2007 First Reading Isaiah 11:1-10 Second Reading Romans 15:4-13 Gospel Matthew 3:1-12 “By Whom Are We Saved?” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Gracious and Almighty God, you sent John the Baptist ahead of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, in order to prepare the way, in order to announce the coming of the Messiah. Through him you proclaimed a message of repentance, a message that called all people away from their evil and sinful ways and back to you. Today we pray that John might call us back to you this day, that we might repent knowing that the kingdom has come near, repent us O God and change our hearts to serve and worship only you, for it is in Jesus name that we pray, amen. In today’s Gospel lesson there is much talk of repentance, to change one’s mind or in the Hebrew tradition, to turn one’s self away from or back to something. For the Jews, to repent was to turn back to Sinai, back to the Law the Torah, and remember what God had done for them and the life that God had called them into. Now that’s fine and dandy for the Jews, but what of you here today, what do The Baptists words from Matthew’s Gospel mean for you here today? Well, they mean, repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. John here is not pulling any punches, he is not making a joke, he is saying repent, turn away from your sinful ways and follow the Lord. But you may say that we have Christ, he has taken away our sins, he has already died upon the cross for me, and you would be right and within reason to say such a thing, but does that mean that we abolish the law, does that mean that we throw the law out, no, on the contrary, we uphold it. So what then does this mean to uphold the law, to repent and make the paths straight for the coming of the Messiah, for the coming of God’s own Son our Lord? Well it means just that, it means to do those things, to repent and prepare for the coming of the Lord, but then we must ask by whom are we saved, and by whom is this accomplished? So today we must look at repentance, now there are two ways in which to repent, both described in the bible. The first way is to repent yourself, this is the way in which Judas sought repentance, he sought to repent himself and in doing so took the only logical action that he thought he could take, he hung himself, he committed suicide. This is an example of repenting yourself, first Judas took the money back to the priests who quickly rejected it, and then full of guilt and despair Judas took his own life. And then there is Peter, the disciple who promised to never leave nor abandon Jesus, only to deny him three times before the *censored* crowed on that fateful night of Jesus’ trial. So here we have Peter, full of guilt and dismayed, he has abandoned his Lord and now they have crucified him, time is now up for Peter, there is nothing left for him to do, he has lost the one thing he thought he might have left, time. But then to this story there is a different end, for unlike Judas who tried to repent himself, Peter is repented by Christ himself, for Christ was raised from the dead, and is now on the loose, and he appears to the disciples and Peter and tells them, peace be with you, and he showed them his hands and his side and the disciples rejoiced. Unlike Judas who sought forgiveness and repentance from the priests who threw the money back at him, Peter received a preacher in Christ who repented him and forgave him his sins, Peter received a preacher to declared to him, peace be with you! You see even repentance is God’s gift to you, and it is something that Christ does to you, you are repented through the word and then you receive another word, a new word a word that gives to you forgiveness and gives it to you fully. So that like the disciples you rejoice in this word, you may even roll around in it, bathe in it and let if wash over you a bit. So what then do we make of The Baptist’s harsh words to the Pharisees and Sadducees? Of course there is no covering it up, even in the translation they have tried to make it more palatable, but it is not, it is a harsh word that John has for these people as he calls them a brood of vipers, and asks them who told them to flee from the wrath to come. John now gives us a tip as to why the need for these harsh words, as he tells them, Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Do not think that you are saved or will be spared this wrath to come because of your DNA, for God can raise up children to Abraham from stones. It’s not DNA that will help you, it’s not your birth that will save you or spare you in this matter, it is your fruits that bear witness to you, and even now the axe is lying at the base of the tree ready to cut down any tree that does not bear fruit John proclaims. Your time is now done, it is over, you have no time left for yourselves, you have no more space, as his winnowing fork is in his hands and he’s ready to clear the threshing floor. So to you hear this day, I tell you this, your time is now over, you have no time left to do anything, you have no more space, your DNA will do you no good, you have nothing left to bargain with, you have no more chances to nurture your tree in order that it might bear fruit, all that is now over and done with, your time has now come to an end in the hearing of this word. So what is left to be done, what is there for you to do today, nothing, Christ has already accomplished all things, so all that is left for you is to believe, as you are repented for your sins and made new again through Christ and his word for you. So the end has now come, the end for you has already passed, but the beginning is at hand, the beginning is now, the beginning of living in a world where Christ has already accomplished the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection from the dead. Today is your new day to begin again, to live as Christ has commanded you to live, loving God and loving your neighbor, so today you have ended, and your life will never be the same, for Christ has come and given to you a new life, a new freedom, a new world, a world in which you suffer and die with the assurance that Christ is for you, that Christ is with you, so it is not the end, for the end is now behind you, but it is just the beginning, amen. http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071209095149809 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071202112743987 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071202112743987 Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:27:43 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071202112743987#comments Weekly Sermons December 2nd 2007 Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon December 2nd 2007 First Reading Isaiah 2:1-5 Second Reading Romans 13:11-14 Gospel Matthew 24:36-44 “Comfortable” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Gracious Lord, we come before you today comfortable, warm and secure, and we give you thanks that over the past century you have allowed us to modernize our lives and our world so that our houses and clothing keep us warm. But in our lives of faith, may we ever be ready for your imminent return, keep our hearts and minds fixed upon you and you alone and never allow us to be overly comfortable in this world, as we keep our hearts and minds fixed upon you, for it is in Jesus name that we pray, amen. Today we live in a world quite different from the world that Jesus was born into and spent his life in. No longer must we walk everywhere, for we now have automobiles that are capable of transporting us around. No longer must we worry about food, for the super market industry along with farmers and the whole agribusiness industries keep our super market shelves stocked. And there is a long list of other things that we no longer have to worry about in our time. We live in a society and country today where we are able to be comfortable and complacent, where we can keep hunger and poverty at arm’s length, as we give money to a few organizations whose job it is to feed the hungry and cloth the poor. We live in a society where we do not have to be in relationship with these people, and only occasionally, it would seem, does a neighbor or friend come upon tough times. We also live in a country and society were we know we will not be shot or imprisoned for our beliefs. It is safe to have faith in this country, and we can exercise our faith and beliefs in all that we do without fear. But it was not always that way, in the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the ministry of the Christian Church of the first century, there was an edge to the ministry and its message. You see to be a Christian, or to be a person of “The Way” was not easy, as the Jews didn’t like you and the Roman Government didn’t care for you to much either, in fact in those first years of the Church there were many martyrs for the faith, and the slaughter of the Christians did not really abide until Constantine’s conversion some three hundred years after Christ. But more than just the killing of “People of the Way” in the beginning there was urgency to the message that was being proclaimed, there was an edge to the message, which came from Christ himself, who tells us to be alert, be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. Today we call this the season of Advent. Today we have taken Christ’s radical message and we’ve house broken it, we’ve made it more palatable, we’ve domesticated it, and we make sure it only lasts a month. But since the theme of advent it waiting, waiting with baited breath no less, it’s time we claim this urgent nature of the Gospel one more time, so I tell you this day, be ready, be alert for Christ is coming back, at a time that you do not know, at hour that you cannot know for only the Father himself knows this. So wait and be ready for if you are not, then you will be swept away like those two examples from the text, for those who are ready are left, and the two who are not ready are swept away. This is the radical nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the promise that he comes soon, that he will come quickly, of course there have been those who have lived for this daily in the wrong way, as they have done nothing but prepare themselves for this day and time, and in doing so they have forgotten their neighbors, they have been selfish and curved in upon themselves in their pious desire for righteousness. And then there are those who pay no attention to these words, those who disregard them and then live any way they please, living only to please themselves doing whatever it is that they want to do. This of course is yet another way of being curved in upon yourself as you go about your day and time worrying only about yourself. But you here today are called to live in a different way, you are to live in eager expectation of the day of the Lord’s return, waiting and expecting it every day, for you know this, that the Lord Christ has commanded you to feed his sheep, to care for the widow and the orphan, to tend to the poor as they will always be with you. In short you know and understand what Luther meant when he was asked what he would do if he knew that the Lord Christ was coming that very day, he said in reply that he would plant a tree! You know that you have vocations here in this life, vocations that you have been given by Jesus so what else do you have to do but to work in those same vocations, what else do you have to do but those things which Jesus has given you to do. So when he comes back as he will, you will be found actively working in your vocation, things like, being a husband or wife, being a son or daughter, being a friend, and being a follower of the way. But what of the imminence of Christ’s return considering the fact that we have now waited some 2 millennia? Of course Paul and the other apostles had to wrestle with this one as well, what about the time in between, what does it mean and what is it for? Why is it that we have had to wait so long before Christ returns in glory? To this question there is one simple answer, it is so that Christ and his word can drag your butt into the kingdom as well, and while he is at it he is going to work to drag as many other butts into his kingdom as he can, you see we are in the time of mercy right now, we are in the time of preaching, time to urgently go out and proclaim this message to all people so that faith might also be created in them so they too might live in the kingdom. Right now we are in mercy time, the time where the kingdom is here but not seen, where Christ’s kingdom is now but not yet, it is the time where we see as through a veil but soon we will see face to face. It is as urgent a time for this message as it was two thousand years ago, for everyday people live and die so before death there must be proclamation, proclamation of the Gospel of Christ that ushers in a new reality, a reality where the blind see, a reality where the lame walk and the mute speak, it is a reality where death is no longer the final matter for we know and hold in faith that there is a resurrection from the dead. So in this time, in this mercy and preaching time, may you find yourself busy at work in your vocations, tending to the matters of life while hear on this earth, while working to spread this message of mercy to all people so that on the day the Lord returns you will be prepared, and he will find you busy working according to the vocation where he has placed you, as Luther said, may the Lord find you planting trees upon his return, and there finally take you unto himself for all time, amen. http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071202112743987 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071201124233425 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071201124233425 Sun, 18 Nov 2007 12:42:33 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071201124233425#comments Weekly Sermons November 18th 2007 Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon November 18th 2007 First Reading Malachi 4:1-2 Second Reading 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 Gospel Luke 21:5-19 “Trust in the Lord” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Almighty God, in a world that has seen great empires come and go, in a world with large cathedrals that were once full and now sit empty, in a world of change where things come and go we give you thanks that your word abides forever. For all other things are like grass that withers and fades, but your word is steadfast and strong, your word is our sure defense against oblivion. Keep us ever steadfast in your word that we might always seek to study it and to hear it, for it is in Jesus name that we pray, amen. It’s hard to believe that it was now over 6 years ago that the twin towers in New York City fell, those two symbols of the American capitalist system that were supposed to be there until we decide to bring them down and built them bigger. But down they came when 19 or so zealous young men decided they wanted to make a statement, by hitting at what they perceived to be the very center of our society, which is arguably the most prominent society and country in the world today, and these men shook us to our very core. Of course history is littered with the remains of once great and powerful countries and empires, even recently we can see the remnants of a few of these empires. A few of them that are more recent are the Ottoman Empire which existed from 1299 to 1922 and the Holy Roman Empire which began in 962 and was dissolved in 1806, and of course who can forget the empirical dreams of Hitler and his Third Reich which existed from 1933 to 1945. Of course what all of these empires have in common is this, the hope of immortality, if we build it up to be great and powerful then it shall always be that way, and it will be a testament to us. Of course the church is not immune from this either, for we have built great church bodies that we believe will stand the test of time, that some consider to be the end all and be all of the church, something to have faith in, and yet even in our own faith tradition we have seen merger after merger and the end to many of these institutions. And then there are the buildings, this summer Dr. Nestingen made the comment that the church always gets into trouble when it leaves the tent! When we leave the tent we of course begin to worry about our building and about hierarchy, or we begin to have grand ideas of building big and ornate buildings to show our dedication to God. And yet cathedral after cathedral sits abandoned and empty throughout this world, and we continue to find and dig up ancient churches that were meant to endure all of time. Even the temple in Jerusalem, God’s own house, was not immune from this. In Luke’s Gospel for today we have Jesus listening to the crowds at the temple as they ough and agh over how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, and Jesus responds to them in the most interesting manner, for he tells them that not one stone will be left upon another, as all will be thrown down. For something that is suppose to last for all time these words strike at the very heart of the people, as they being good Jews follow the Torah, God’s law as it lays out for them that they are to worship one God in one place, that place being Jerusalem at the temple. But if the temple is no longer there then what are they to do? It is a matter not of what you place your trust in, but whom you place your trust in. Do you trust the system; is your faith in your denomination or in your church building? Is it in something that lasts forever or just something that you hope will last forever? In this text Jesus is getting down to the nitty gritty, he is saying to them that things will come and go, people will claim all kinds of crazy things and some will do it in my name, mighty countries and institutions are going to rise and fall, and you will be persecuted and arrested for my name Jesus tells them. After hearing this from Jesus who is going to worry, those who place their hope and trust in institutions and countries? Or those who place their faith in the God of the entire universe who by his word creates out of nothing. What is it going to be, will you believe and trust in what the world creates, or will you trust in Christ, he who was there at the very creation of the world. Of course for those who trust in the world and all that it has to give, they find no hope in death, they find only questions, or burdened consciences, for what good are institutions and buildings to those who are dead or dying? Is there hope in them? Is there even one promise in death in them? But what of those who’s faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ himself? Well there is this promise, not a hair of your head shall perish and by your endurance you will gain your souls. There is the promise that goes beyond buildings and institutions, there is the promise for you that goes even beyond this life into the next, which promises that all who believe and are baptized shall be saved, all who believe and are baptized are heirs to the promise of Jesus Christ, so no longer do you find your hope and trust in anything but in the Lord Christ himself, the one whose promises are assured. Paul puts it this way in his first letter to Peter: 22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. 23You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. 24For ‘All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, 25but the word of the Lord endures forever.’ That word is the good news that was announced to you. For grass read, the ELCA, the Lutheran Church, The Popes, Immanuel Lutheran and Brule Creek, all grass. But Christ’s word, the very word that calls us together, the very word that we come together around, the very word that kills and makes alive, is assured, and it will endure forever, even unto death, for that word shall call to you even in the tomb, Lazarus, get up and come out here! The temple shall fall, as it did around 70AD, the church’s buildings shall at some point be abandoned, having served their purpose, denominations, Pope’s, Bishops and the like will all pass away, but Christ, but Christ Jesus and his word will not pass away, even though nation shall rise against nation, even though there will be wars and earthquakes, even though the Twin Towers fell and the once mighty empires have crumbled, Christ, Christ and his word abide, Christ and his word remains, even unto oblivion. So now hear his word for you this day, his word that is your sure protection against oblivion, your sins are forgiven, now get up and come out of your tomb, amen! http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071201124233425 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071115090355890 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071115090355890 Sun, 11 Nov 2007 09:03:55 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071115090355890#comments Weekly Sermons November 11th 2007 Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon November 11th 2007 First Reading Job 19-27a Second Reading 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 Gospel Luke 20:27-38 “Who could believe?” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Almighty God in a world that is constantly changing, in a time where information is transmitted and exchanged in the blink of an eye, keep us ever grounded in faith in Christ our Lord. Keep us ever steadfast in your Word for us, your word that gives faith, your word that kills and makes alive, your word that gives us hope not only for this world but for the next, for it is in Jesus name that we pray, amen. Isn’t it almost too much to believe? Just think about all of the things in this world that we are asked to believe, or to believe in, or better yet think of all of the things in this world that you do not believe or believe in. Like the Vikings winning a super bowl, ever. Not gonna happen as long as Jerry [my friend craig/aaron] and I are still fans, [but Jerry], I still have faith! But anything this world throws at us to believe in is nothing compared to that which we believe in our lives of faith. For we hold that God, a divine being, was born of a virgin, becoming human, the creator entered the creation as a creature. Now there is one for you, God becoming man? How can this be, how can God be both human and divine? How can the divine dwell within the human, this is a question that has been at the center of heresy after heresy? But we are not done there, as worse yet, Jesus came not to be served but to serve. Can you believe it, God in human flesh, coming not to have everyone serve him, after all we are his creation, but coming to serve the very creation he spoke into being, the very creation he gave and continues to give life. But we are not done there, so God is human and divine, and has come to serve, and then he goes and hangs out with sinners, with the people on the fringes, on the edge of society. People our parents would tell us that we should not associate with. And then Jesus goes and calls the not good enough’s to be his closest followers, his disciples. And then Jesus goes and does something that would make any rational person immediately say ah-ha I’ve caught him now, now I know that this is not a person to believe in, for Jesus does the unbelievable, he dies for his creation, as he dies a criminal’s death on the cross, not unlike all of the others who dared go against the establishment of the day. After all once these radical people had been executed that was the end, for there was no coming back from the tomb, at least that’s what they thought. You see the Sadducees did not believe that there was a bodily resurrection; they believed that once you were dead that was it. There was no hope for anything eternal; there was no hope after the grave. This was not the general belief in Judaism, but it is the belief of this sect of Judaism who are called the Sadducees. This of course is why in Luke’s Gospel for today they ask Jesus about the resurrection and whose wife this women would be. They are clearly trying to trap Jesus with this question, they are trying to get him to answer what I’m sure they thought was an unanswerable question. But Jesus takes it head on and answers it in two ways. First Jesus tells them that what you see here is not what will be, and how you live now is not how you will live then. Jesus is addressing the question that many if not all of us have had or still have, which is what will the afterlife be like? How will things function, will it be similar to today, to the way that we all live our lives right now? What about family, will we see them and know them? Who will be raised from the dead and how will we know what to do, and on and on it goes. These are the technical questions of the faith. My grandmother, bless her soul, while dying of bone cancer in 1980 was worried about death, she was not worried about where she was going, but she was worried about how she would get there. From what I’ve been told this deeply worried her, of course what she needed at that moment was a preacher, someone to tell her precisely what she needed to hear. Of course it’s not the answer that she may have expected but this is what she needed to hear, Elenora, this is not for you to worry about, for Christ is not afraid of this, he is not afraid of death or the afterlife, in fact he is going to be right there holding you the entire time, after all that is what he promises you in John’s Gospel where he says that he is the Good Shepherd, he knows his sheep and his sheep know him and he holds them in his hand and nothing or no one will snatch them out of his hand. Now this wouldn’t have told Grandma how to die, but it would have told her who holds her in death. It doesn’t give a step by step to do list, but Jesus never gave us one of those, so we must hold his Words in faith and cling to them alone for our hope. The point is Jesus doesn’t always give us the details, the how’s and why’s of this life. So we begin to speculate of them, we try and come up with ways in which we believe things are going to happen, but in the end these are nothing but speculation and as Luther says, “true Christian theology, as I often warn you, does not present God to us in his majesty…therefore when we are embattled against the Law, sin, and death in the presence of God, nothing is more dangerous than to stray into heaven with our idle speculations…therefore if you want to be safe and out of danger to your conscience and your salvation, put a check on this speculative spirit. Take hold of God as the scripture instructs you”. What Luther is saying is this, don’t worry about it, don’t worry for those things are of the divine majesty, God has them under control so you do not need to worry, all that is to be done is to hold to Christ. Take hold of Christ and his word, and leave the rest up to him, for that is the dominion of the divine and only the divine. Do not worry or fret about how you will get to heaven, or about what you will do when there, but hold to Christ and know that he is faithful to his Word and promise and all is now firmly in his hands. The second part of Jesus’ answer has to do with faith and believing. So what about it, what about faith, and believing, well I tell you this, for there to be resurrection first there must be death and so to the cross Jesus went, and three days later the Father raised him from the dead, which now gives you your promise and hope in faith for the future, and allows you to say words like this, like him in death, so that I may be like him in resurrection. So do not fret and worry, but hold in faith all that Jesus has given you, and know that his promises of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life is for you today and every day, and so death becomes nothing more than that your eyes will be opened to that which you already hold in faith, for now we see as through a veil, but then we will see face to face, for God is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all of them are alive, amen. http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071115090355890 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071115090303180 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071115090303180 Sun, 04 Nov 2007 09:03:03 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071115090303180#comments Weekly Sermons November 4th 2007 Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon November 4th 2007 All saints Sunday First Reading Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18 Second Reading Ephesians 1:11-23 Gospel Luke 6:20-31 “Blessed are the Un-Blessed” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Almighty God, on this day that we remember the saints who have gone before us, we give you thanks for their witness to the Gospel and for their life amongst us. May the faith that lived in them also live in us, that we might be faithful to the preaching and teaching of it so that your Word may continue to the next generations, those with us today and those that are yet to come. Keep us ever faithful to this the core of our mission and ministry, to proclaim the Gospel at all times, amen. To begin with I have to admit that I’ve never liked this sermon of Jesus’ in either Luke’s Gospel which we have before us today called Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, or in Matthew’s Gospel which is the more common of the two called the sermon on the mount. So as I was driving one day this week I finally realized why it is that I have never like either of these sermons, which some consider to be the meat and potatoes of the Christian faith. The reason is that every time I’ve heard someone preach on either of the texts they have used them to advance their own political agenda and beliefs, they have used them as a weapon in order to brow beat everyone who may not hold to the specific political belief they are trying to advance. Because of this every time I read these sermons, I chaff a bit, I get uncomfortable, and I hear these bad sermons replayed over and over in my mind. So if these sermon’s of Jesus are not to advance some current political agenda of the preacher, then what else can we take from them, or what can we hear from them, what are they telling us, what is Jesus calling us to do? I think the best way to understand these sermons’s is to understand the culture to which Jesus first spoke them, this is where it is most helpful to have studied the Old Testament, the scriptures that these people would have known very well. You see throughout the Old Testament there is this struggle, this tension taking place. The tension is this, the Deutronomistic Theology says that if you do good, God will reward you or bless you, and if you do bad then God will curse you. So to reason that out it ends up looking like this, anyone who is wealthy is blessed by God because they have done so much good, and anyone who is hungry and poor is cursed by God because they have sinned greatly. So think of the poor widow who is in the nursing home as a ward of the state, reason tells us that she has done nothing good, and Bill Gates and others on the Forbes 400 list according to this reason have done nothing but good before God. Well do you think this is right? Do you think that this is what God and Jesus are all about? I’ll tell you now that just about every Television Preacher believes and preaches this exact thing, just think good, do good and God will bless you! But when you work and strive to do good and you are not blessed according to what you believe should happen, then what? I’ll tell you, despair, depression, no comfort of your burdened conscience; this is why these preachers are so dangerous, and this theology was such a problem that it is the very center of the book of Job. But what do the Prophets continue to say, over and over again, return to the Lord, right, for you have forgotten the widow and the orphan, you have not taken care of them you cows of Bashan, return to the Lord and do what he has command you to do, feed the hungry, care for the poor, take care of those who cannot care for themselves. It is not they who have done evil, it is you, you who have been fed, you who laugh, you who are rich and who have been spoken well of, for you have received your consolation, you have been given your reward. But blessed are the unblessed, blessed are the hungry, because you should have been feeding them, blessed are the poor for you should have been taking care of them, blessed are those who you hate for you should have loved them, blessed are those who have been reviled, for surely their reward is great in heaven. This past Thursday I went to an event with our new bishop and his staff. During the evening the bishop spoke about a variety of things, one of which was the vast poverty in our state. Did you know that close to 17% of children in SD under the age of 18 live in poverty? Did you know that South Dakota is rapidly approaching the poverty and hunger levels of those in the Appalachian’s? Even here in our own dear county and area there is more poverty and hunger then you would ever know about. As part of this the bishop spoke of the rapid growth of hunger and poverty in the rural areas of the state, including many around here. Of course South Dakota also has the honor and great distinction of having the two poorest counties in the entire United States, which are of course both in reservations. As he spoke of all these issues he began to talk about cultivating relationships with our elected officials, so that as pastors we would be able to pick up the phone and call them in order to lobby for one bill or another. Of course to do this he explained we must get to know them, we must work on developing relationships with these government officials so that they might cast votes that would help some of these issues at the state and federal level. It was about right there that I almost came unglued, this is the exact abuse of these words of Christ that I cannot stand, in the time it would take for us to develop these relationships we could have already been feeding these people! Instead of wasting our time with phone calls etc., as the people of God we are called to go out and feed the hungry, we are called out to go and cloth the poor. We are not to wait for the state or federal government to take care of these issues; this is your job today! Even in our own community in our own parish we must look at what we are doing. Take the turkey dinner which is today as an example, now let me first say that I believe this is a great event, it is a wonderful time of fellowship with others in our congregation as well as others in our community, but does is feed the poor, do we go out and give not just the leftovers but the very first to those who are hungry. What if we took Jesus’ words seriously and went and fed the hungry first and made those who are full wait? What if we took Jesus seriously and gave first by feeding the hungry? Maybe these sermon’s of Jesus will just always irritate me and many others, maybe they will always be a thorn in the side because they call us out of our comfort zones to do things differently, after all Jesus’ kingdom is the upside down and backwards kingdom, for the first shall be last and the last shall be first, the hungry will be fed the poor with be clothed, and the peacemaker will be the victor, and those who are fed shall be hungry. Maybe these words of Christ while calling us out to love and serve the neighbor, also drive that last nail in the coffin of works righteousness, and we find that the more we do the more we realize that we do not and cannot do enough, so our only recourse in the entire matter is to fall on Christ and say, forgive me, a cursed sinner. And then may we hear the word of the Gospel ring forth from his lips as his words go forth to forgive sinners and raise the dead. And there finally give us peace so that we might be freed up from our good works to love and serve our neighbor, and enjoy this bountiful feast that has been prepared for us all today, and may we be found to have used it to feed the hungry, amen. http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071115090303180 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071115090210177 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071115090210177 Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:02:10 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071115090210177#comments Weekly Sermons October 28th 2007 Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon October 21st 2007 First Reading Genesis 32 Second Reading 2nd Timothy 2:8-15 Gospel Luke 18:1-8 “Reformation” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Great and merciful God, we come today to hear your word for us, your word that kills and makes alive. As creatures of your word keep us ever faithful in proclaiming it to all who have ears to hear. Today we especially thank you for the life and ministry of Dr. Martin Luther, continue to raise up faithful leaders in your church that boldly stand upon your word, even when it goes against current trends in the world. Lord today and everyday keep us steadfast in your word, amen. This morning as you filed into the sanctuary you may have noticed the change of colors from green to red on the alter and the pulpit. The reason for this change is that today we are celebrating “Reformation Sunday”. It is the day that we celebrate what God has done for his church, that he has raised up courageous men and women that have been faithful in proclaiming his word to the world. This of course what Luther’s big thing, to preach the word, to proclaim the Gospel to all people. For at the time of Luther the Roman Church suppressed the Gospel, claiming it only for the special, the holy and properly prepared. But Luther seeing the burdened consciences in his life as a monk and priest knew he could not withhold this Gospel word, this word that gives comfort and peace to those who hear it. So Latin would no longer do, the Word must be in the language of the commoner, it must be in German so too the mass, which also must be in the common tongue. So out of that we get the German Mass and the German Bible. “And you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free”. It is my belief that you should all know something of our name sake Martin Luther, so today in honor of Martin Luther and all of the reformers, I’m going to be preaching Luther’s own sermon from 1539, preached in the Castle Pleissenburg on the Occasaion of the Inaguragion of the Reformation in Leipzig, the Gospel text for this sermon is John, 14:23-31. So what better way to learn about Luther and the reformation that to hear one of his actual sermons… The great gift of the reformation is that the Word of Christ has been set free, it has been handed over to all people, it is no longer the sole possession of the few, the “holy” it has now been set free and is now handed over and given to all people. In that light we also now know what the true church is, it is where ever the Word of Christ is proclaimed and taught in its truth and purity. The church is not about bishops or popes, the church has one leader, Christ, and there is no need for a vicar or a fill in as we have Christ himself. So today we give God thanks and praise for his word, and that he has and continues to raise up faithful leaders who boldly proclaim his Gospel of forgiveness and grace to all who have ears to hear, amen. http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071115090210177 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071027151458836 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071027151458836 Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:14:58 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071027151458836#comments Weekly Sermons October 21st 2007 Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon October 21st 2007 First Reading Genesis 32 Second Reading 2nd Timothy 2:8-15 Gospel Luke 18:1-8 “Conquering God” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Great and merciful God, at times we are afraid to enter into the arena with you, so we do not pray as we ought, or we think our problems are too small for you or are not of your concern. But you tell us in your Word that we are to ask for all things, so give to us this day a spirit of courage, the same spirit that lead Jacob out into the wilderness, the same spirit that allowed Jacob to wrestle and hold on to you until he got your blessing, give now to all here that very same spirit, for it is in Jesus name that we pray, amen. In the womb he tried to supplant his brother, and in his manhood he strove with God. He strove with the angel and prevailed, he wept and sought his favour; he met him at Bethel, and there he spoke with him. The Lord the God of hosts, the Lord is his name! The Old Testament text for today from Genesis the 32nd chapter tells the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel at Bethel. And in the 12th chapter of Hosea, the prophet sums up Jacob’s life in an epitaph fit for a tomb stone, in the womb Jacob grabbed his brother by the heal, and in his manhood he strove with God. Now if you have not yet purchased your head stone, I would recommend putting these words on it, as it describes everyone one of us whom God is even now shutting up entirely and without remainder under sin, but God has chosen to work with grabbers like Jacob to make faith. So what does it mean to wrestle with God, to struggle with God? Or better yet, what does it mean to conquer God? Often when we struggle with God we feel like failures, we feel like we haven’t done what is right, what is proper. We feel like our faith is just another failure in a long line of failures. Of course it doesn’t help when the church or people in the church accuse or berate those who have questions, or those who struggle with faith. So here is the good news today, you are not alone in your struggles with God, in fact you are part of a long line of sinners who have struggled with God. Take Jacob as an example; of course Jacob’s name betrays him, as it means, grabber, or opposable thumb boy. But Jacob has lied, cheated and stole his way to the top, what do you do when you want the birth right, you connive by cooking, and for the father’s blessing you put on goat hair and fool the blind old man. In his youth Jacob did all that he could do to get what he wanted. As his name betrays, he is a thief, a stealer a grabber of what is not his. So what does God do with Jacob, well he wrestles him, he enters into the arena and joins the struggle, God enters in and becomes a play thing of sinners, or as the old Christian hymn states, our Lord Christ did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave being born in human likeness. Or to put it another way, our Lord Christ did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but went and made himself a graspable thing. And so at Bethel Jacob struggled with God, and as the day was breaking and God told him to let him go, Jacob held firm, and demanded a blessing! Even after having his hip dislocated by God, Jacob continues in his grabbing ways, and won’t let go until a blessing is given. And so God tells Jacob that he is now to be called Israel, for he has striven with God and prevailed, and there, finally God blessed him. In the womb he grabbed his brother by the heal and in his manhood he grabbed God. Luther writes this about Jacob “Why do you not let him go? Your thigh is hurt and you are already lame; what will you do? I feel no weakness, says Jacob. Who is strengthening you? Faith, the promise, and indeed, this weakness of faith. In this manner God is conquered when faith does not leave off, is not wearied, and does not cease but presses and urges on. So it makes its appearance in the Canaanite women, with whom Jesus was wrestling when he said: You are a dog, the bread of the sons does not belong to you. The woman did not yield here but offered opposition, saying: even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table. And so she was victorious and heard the excellent word of praise: O woman, great is your faith.” “Such examples teach us that faith should not yield or cease urging or pressing on even when it is already feeling God’s wrath and not only death and sin. Christ, while still wrestling with Jacob and with his omnipotence concealed, wants to be dismissed, but Jacob replies: I will not let you go unless you bless me.” As Jacob wrested with God, so too are you to wrestle with you faith, to struggle, seek, ask and demand of your God, to pin him down and conquer him until you get a blessing. For it is time to pull your thumb from your mouth, quit grabbing for your brothers heal, it’s time to go for the gusto, grab for God. It’s time to use you specially crafted skills to lie, cheat and steal your way to God. It is time that you wrestle, seek, and grab a word for you from this God, a word that kills and makes alive, a word that gives life and gives it abundantly. Do not give God quarter or rest, if you are at first rebuked, do not cast aside courage and all hope at the first blow but press on, pray, seek, and knock. Even if God hides himself in a room in the house and does not want access to be given to anyone, do not draw back but follow. If he does not want to listen, knock at the door of the room; raise a shout! For this is the highest sacrifice, not to cease praying and seeking until we conquer Him. He has already surrendered himself to us so that we may be certain of victory, for he has bound himself to his promises and pledged his faithfulness with an oath, saying “Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name.” Be persistent, hold fast, cry out to him day and night, do not give him rest, and fight the good fight of faith, and conquer Christ. Yet he is not conquered in such a way that he is subjected to us, but his judgment, or his wrath and fury and whatever opposes us, is conquered by us by praying, seeking, and knocking, so that from an angry judge, as he seemed to be previously, he becomes a most loving Father, and says, “O woman, great is your faith. Your faith has saved you. As you have believed, so be it unto you. Oh, how you hurt me with your cry! So to quote Hosea, “but as for you, return to your God, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God.” Christ is ready for you; he has been practicing with the likes of Jacob, he is ready for you to enter the arena of faith, he is ready for you to pin him down, to hold his feet to the fire, to hold him to his word! And there in that arena, when you conquer Christ, he will say to you, well done, good and faithful servant, your faith has saved you, be made well. [Brule] Confirm ands, now for you, you have been through confirmation, you have hopefully learned a few things along the way, so today may you step up and grab for God, in the same way that Jacob wrestled with God, may you also pin God down and not let him up until he gives you a promise. [Brule] For you have now entered into the arena of faith, and in a few minutes you will make public affirmation of that same faith, so now, like Jacob, it’s time for you to lie, steal and cheat your way to Christ, and in that battle, pin him down and get your blessing. So that on that last day you may hear these words for you, well done good and faithful servant, amen. http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071027151458836 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071015101810403 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071015101810403 Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:18:10 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071015101810403#comments Announcements October 14 2007 Sunday Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon October 14th 2007 First Reading 2 Kings 5:1-15 Second Reading 2nd Timothy 2:8-15 Gospel Luke 17:11-19 “10 Percent” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Great and merciful God, you speak and it is so, you spoke and created the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon, you spoke and brought all of creation into existence, you speak and it is done, it is so. Just so, your Son speaks and it is, Jesus speaks and sins are forgiven, the dead rise, the lepers are made clean. Speak now to us through your Word, a word that forgives sins and raises the dead. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing before you, amen. One of the recent studies out involving youth today states that we retain roughly 1/8th or approximately 13.5 percent of our youth. The rest, or approximately 7/8th of the youth in our churches today will disappear and we will never see them again. So roughly, we lose about 86.5 percent of our young people after we have confirmed them and after graduation. Now this is not a very cheery statistic, but when you compare it to today’s Gospel text, where after healing 10 people of leprosy Jesus only get’s 1 who returns to give him thanks, working out to 10 percent for Jesus, so if the church is getting 13.5, at least we are doing better than Christ Jesus himself. We’ll get back to the 1/8th another time as I believe that it is a number that is sitting out there challenging us, but for now let’s look at what is going on with Jesus. You may have noticed that not only does the Gospel text deal with leprosy, but so does our Old Testament reading from 2nd Kings, as it tells the story of Naaman the layman, Naaman the commander or general of the army of the king of Aram, Naaman the leper who is made clean by the word of the prophet. So maybe there is something about this disease leprosy that really effected people during the biblical times. If we look back to the Old Testament books of Numbers and Leviticus we can read about what happened to lepers. From Numbers chapter 5 verses 2 and 3, “command the Israelites to put out of the camp everyone who is leprous, or has a discharge, and everyone who is unclean through contact with a corpse, you shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp; they must not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.” And from Leviticus chapter 13: “The person who has the leprous* disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” And from Leviticus chapter 14: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: This shall be the ritual for the leprous* person at the time of his cleansing: He shall be brought to the priest; the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall make an examination. If the disease is healed in the leprous* person, the priest shall command that two living clean birds and cedar wood and crimson yarn and hyssop be brought for the one who is to be cleansed. The priest shall command that one of the birds be slaughtered over fresh water in an earthen vessel. He shall take the living bird with the cedar wood and the crimson yarn and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was slaughtered over the fresh water. He shall sprinkle it seven times upon the one who is to be cleansed of the leprous* disease; then he shall pronounce him clean, and he shall let the living bird go into the open field. The one who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and bathe himself in water, and he shall be clean. After that he shall come into the camp, but shall live outside his tent for seven days. On the seventh day he shall shave all his hair: of head, beard, eyebrows; he shall shave all his hair. Then he shall wash his clothes, and bathe his body in water, and he shall be clean. On the eighth day he shall take two male lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb in its first year without blemish, and a grain-offering of three-tenths of an ephah of choice flour mixed with oil, and one log* of oil. The priest who cleanses shall set the person to be cleansed, along with these things, before the Lord, at the entrance of the tent of meeting. The priest shall take one of the lambs, and offer it as a guilt-offering, along with the log* of oil, and raise them as an elevation-offering before the Lord. He shall slaughter the lamb in the place where the sin-offering and the burnt-offering are slaughtered in the holy place; for the guilt-offering, like the sin-offering, belongs to the priest: it is most holy. The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt-offering and put it on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, and on the thumb of the right hand, and on the big toe of the right foot. The priest shall take some of the log* of oil and pour it into the palm of his own left hand, and dip his right finger in the oil that is in his left hand and sprinkle some oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. Some of the oil that remains in his hand the priest shall put on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, and on the thumb of the right hand, and on the big toe of the right foot, on top of the blood of the guilt-offering. The rest of the oil that is in the priest’s hand he shall put on the head of the one to be cleansed. Then the priest shall make atonement on his behalf before the Lord: the priest shall offer the sin-offering, to make atonement for the one to be cleansed from his uncleanness. Afterwards he shall slaughter the burnt-offering; and the priest shall offer the burnt-offering and the grain-offering on the altar. Thus the priest shall make atonement on his behalf and he shall be clean.” I’m sorry for boring you with this text, but I feel it is important to read for our understanding of what it meant to be a leper as well as what it is that Jesus has done. You see to be a leper in those days meant expulsion from the community for there was a great fear of this disease; so if you had it, you were to live on the outskirts of the camp, on the fringes, for us it would be like living in Burbank or Spink. But it meant that you would be cut off, having to go around all day yelling “Unclean, Unclean”. It would have been similar to those who were first diagnosed with HIV and AIDS in the early 80’s, or those who had cancer 70 or 80 years ago, people didn’t want to get to close to them, out of fear of catching the disease. It would have been a terrible way to live, with no way of earning a living, being apart from the community, living only on the grace of others who took pity on you. So what do you do when you find yourself in this situation, cast out of the community, living on the fringes of society, well you yell out to the Lord, the Messiah, and you ask for mercy. So mercy is what they get, as Jesus tells them that they are to go and show themselves to the priests, and as they go they are made clean. What happens next is the most interesting part of this entire text, for out of the 10 lepers who are made clean, only one of them turns back and gives thanks to Jesus. And adding insult to injury, Jesus tells us that he is of all things a Samaritan. He is a half breed, and he worships not in Jerusalem in the temple, but on Mt. Gerizim. Yet he is the only who gives thanks, he is the only one who recognizes what Jesus has done, for in that miracle, Jesus has restored this man to the community, Jesus has given him and the other 9 their lives back. So what about you here today, I doubt any of you here have leprosy or have ever seen it. So what are we to make of this text? I suppose we could use it as a call to give Jesus our thanks and praise, after all it gives us a little more of a reason to be here today. Or we could make a nice moral out of this story, you know, telling all of you that you are not grateful enough, you have been receiving all of this from Christ, faith, life, hope, and yet 9 out of 10 of you don’t stop to give him thanks. Fair enough I suppose, and perhaps very true. Or we could continue to listen to Jesus and his word to this man, “get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well”. Your faith has made you well, your faith that shouted out to this man from your place on the fringes, your faith that believed he could do all things, your faith that beheld this miracle and turned back to do the only thing you could think to do, give him your thanks and praise, for he has restored you, he has given you your life back, he has made you well. So too has Jesus Christ made all of you here today well, he has made you clean, not by the crazy ritualistic cleansing methods used in the temple, but by his word he has made you clean. And by speaking his word to you He restores you to his kingdom, he has given your relationship with God back to you, he has forgiven you of your sins, he has made atonement for all of your sins on his cross. So you do the only thing you can, you give him your thanks and praise, knowing that it is by faith that you have been made well, your faith in him, in Jesus Christ, has done all these things, so get up and go on your way, amen. http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071015101810403 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071015101600406 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071015101600406 Sun, 07 Oct 2007 10:16:00 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071015101600406#comments Weekly Sermons October 7 2007 Sunday Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon October 7th 2007 First Reading Amos 8:4-7 Second Reading 2nd Timothy 1:1-14 Gospel Luke 17:5-10 “Whose Faith?” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Good and gracious God, we know that apart from you we are nothing. We know that it is only by your grace that we can live, breath and have our being. It is also by you O God that we have faith, for faith itself is a gift from you, come now and strengthen our faith that we might hold firmly to Christ our Lord, the one in whom our sins have been laid upon, the one who gives us the promise of salvation and eternal life, come now and give us faith to believe it is all true, for it is in Jesus name that we now pray, amen. One of the guys that comes with my uncle from Colorado to hunt, now on their 16th year I believe, once told me that whenever he speaks with one of his children, who are all grown now, he asks them, how is your faith, and how are things between you and your Lord. I always thought that was a great conversation to have, a bold conversation for sure, but one that is greatly needed in our world. Today we are going to look at faith, what it is, how it functions in the believing heart, and why it so important. I must admit that I have made a promise today that I would be brief, knowing that the Gospel is a short Word, being reminded of Dr. Forde’s comment after a 20 minute sermon from Dr. Paulson, who said “You almost converted me, but then I remembered that the Gospel was a short Word, and I lost it.” So today I promise to be brief in the hope that you will be able to hold on to the gospel. So what is this matter of faith anyway? For sure it is a matter that can drive us crazy, forcing questions like, why does one person have faith and another does not? Or why do I at one moment feel very confident in my faith and a moment later I feel I almost lose it completely? And what about those who go around and constantly question everyone’s faith? Are you sure you will be saved? Can you be completely confident in your relationship with Jesus? And one of my personal favorites, well, if you were baptized as an infant, then you must be baptized again, otherwise it is not valid, as if God’s promises in baptism are ever null and void. As Luther might say, the gouty foot laughs at your doctoring! Of course this text from Luke’s Gospel doesn’t necessarily help us in our predicament, after all Jesus tells us that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could up root a plant! Which begs the question, how do you measure faith? Can you quantify faith, could you measure it out like you do when you cook? The imagery of this text can be awesome, and it can be completely frustrating. After all we have faith, right, and yet I bet none of you has ever uprooted a tree and planted it somewhere else, by telling it to. So how much faith must one have? This of course is the center of the question the Apostles have asked, “Increase our faith”, Jesus! Of course they beg for this on account of what Jesus has just told them: ‘Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.’ To be honest after hearing this I too would have asked Jesus for more faith. So why does Jesus respond to them in the way he does for simply asking for more of something that is good? Why does Jesus tell them that if they had even the smallest amount of faith, they could do anything? In response to the apostle’s plea for more faith Luther writes: “Our hearts should always be in the condition as if we had only begun to believe today and always be so disposed toward the Gospel as if we had never before heard it. We should make a fresh beginning each day. The nature and character of faith is constantly to grow and become stronger. The devil, as has already been said, is not idle, and has no rest. If he is struck down once, he will arise again; if he cannot enter at the front door, he sees to it that he enters at the rear; if he cannot effect an entrance in this way, he breaks in through the roof or digs his way through underneath the doorsill, toiling until he effects an entrance, employing all manner of cunning and schemes. If one way fails, he tries another and perseveres until he succeeds.” “Over against this, man is a poor, weak creature, as St. Paul says 2 Cor. 4, 7, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” The treasure is the Gospel; but I am weaker than the vessel in the potter’s hands. An earthen vessel is a weak thin and is easily broken and its contents spilled. Hence the devil, when he notices what a treasure faith is and in what a poor vessel it is kept, rages and storms, and in his wrath says to us: “I will strike you and shatter your vessel: you have a great treasure, but I will spill it for you; I will give you a blow. If I were permitted, how soon would I shatter the vessel. You are after all nothing but a little poor and weak vessel of earth.” The problem according to Luther is that where there is faith, there is the devil, with all his clever tricks, his conniving, and his undermining as he works to destroy faith. This after all is what the devil does, he attacks faith, he doesn’t worry about those who have no faith, but he goes after those with faith. He gets into our heads and says your faith is weak, it is no good, and neither are you! Your weak faith will fail you, and in your weakness you will not do the thing you want to do, opting for the thing you do not want to do. So what is the solution to our conundrum? Do we abandon our faith and give up? Or do we follow in the apostles footsteps and ask Jesus for more faith? No, we hold to Christ and his word, for Jesus is telling the apostles that he is enough! Hold on to me and my word and you will uproot plants he proclaims, hold on to Christ, and you will weather any storm, and you will withstand even the most aggressive attacks of the devil. Hold on to Jesus and his promise to you in his sacraments and nothing can wash you away. So we do what Christ tells us, we hold on to him, and confess that we are worthless slaves who have only done what has been commanded. And we leave the rest up to him, the one who is faithful to his people, the one who is faithful to his church, the one who has even given you this gift of faith, the one who is all in all. So now hear the comforting words of Paul, “for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace”. So be bold in your faith, hold tight to Jesus, and walk humbly with your God, the giver and perfector of faith, for even the smallest amount of faith when planted, tended to and nourished with the Word and by Christ himself, can grow into a strong and sure plant, able to withstand all things, while providing good things to eat, amen. http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071015101600406 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071002081932764 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071002081932764 Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:19:32 -0700 http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/article.php?story=20071002081932764#comments Weekly Sermons September 30th Sunday Sermon Jared Rakness Sermon September 30th 2007 First Reading Amos 8:4-7 Second Reading 1st Timothy 6:6-19 Gospel Luke 16:19-31 “Wealth and God” Dear hearers of the Word of God, Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray: Almighty God, giver of all things, send your Spirit upon now that it might create faith in us, restore us to a new relationship with you and teach us your ways. Let us never forget that it is you who is the owner of all things, and that you have commanded us to be stewards of these things for you, open our eyes and hearts to that which you would have us do with all that you have entrusted to us, amen. Since it will be a year tomorrow that I was installed as your pastor, I suppose it’s about time that I talk about money. Or better yet, I’ll preach to you about stewardship, what it means to be a good steward. From the end of the Gospel text from last week we get these words, “You cannot serve God and wealth”. Last week’s Gospel text not only spoke of mercy but it also spoke of what it means to be a steward. Continuing in the 16th chapter of Luke’s Gospel Jesus continues to hammer away at this point with the parable that we get for today. At this point I’m sure the kids would be saying, alright dad or mom enough, please don’t lecture me anymore, I get the point, and then they would go off and do exactly what their mom and dad told them not to do, right? We’ll apparently Jesus thought the subject of money was important enough to speak about since he continues with the parable for today, so maybe, just maybe we should listen to what Jesus has to say. It’s about this time that I want to say, no, it’s my money and I’ll do with it what I please, or here goes the church again, talking about money, they must be behind in the budget. But the fact is money is important for life, it buys you food to eat, it pays for the roof over your head, it provides you clothes to wear, it allows you to drive and see friends and family. Money is an important part of our daily lives. So how do you relate to money? Do you see it as security, so you must stock pile it into a savings account earning 2 percent so that you know nothing will happen to it? Or do you like to spend it to get things, or stuff? Or do you relate to money like the rich man, who sumptuously feasted every day while Lazarus lay at his gate. What Jesus is speaking of in this parable and what Paul is writing to Timothy about is your relationship to money, not money itself. Take this brick, now there are a few things that I could do with this brick, I could take it and throw it through the windows over there, but that doesn’t make the brick evil, I’m evil for what I’ve done. The brick itself is amoral; it’s just a brick, that’s it. Now I could also take a second brick with some mortar and put them together and build a house. It’s the same with money, take this bill, it’s nothing more than paper with some fancy printing on it, that’s it, it is also amoral, but what I do with it, can either be moral or immoral, I can either be a good steward or a bad steward with this money. So you see, money in and of itself isn’t evil or good, it is just what it is, it is when you begin to relate to it that the problems begin. So you’ve just had a little lesson from Financial Peace University, now you’re going to get a little bit of Crossways! So what does God want us to do? How does God want us to relate with money? First we must know that nothing in this world is ours. Nothing in this world is ours; Paul puts it this way, “for we brought nothing into this world, so that we can take nothing out of it”, or to put it in more common terms, you’ll never seen a U-Haul behind a hearse. Everything in this world in God’s! Making you all poor stewards of what God has entrusted to you, commanded you to take care of for him. But unfortunately sin is so deeply rooted in our world that we have stories like Lazarus and the rich man. We have instances like Somalia in the 90’s, or 1930’s Russia where thousands and even millions of men, women and children died because of starvation. There was enough food for them, but because of evil men and women in positions of power, it never made it to them. In the Gospel lesson for today Jesus is giving us a stern warning against this behavior. In fact in this story Jesus explicitly lays out what this way will earn you, eternity in Hades, being tormented while being able to see across the great chasm to those in heaven. Wealth can be a great blessing or it can be an awful curse. For an example just look at Hollywood, in the past 5 years or so we’ve had example after example of how great wealth can be a terrible curse. Just look at the lives of Lindsey Lohan or Brittney Spears, both have been in rehab, one is currently in for the second or third time, the other is on the verge of losing her children as she continues to be spotted at the clubs and bars of LA. These are two examples of how great wealth has almost ruined two young lives because neither of them know how to relate to money and wealth, and we could go on and on and on with examples both current and in the past. But there are also examples of people with great wealth who have done really great things with it, like feeding the poor, helping the less fortunate, to these folks wealth has been a great blessing. But you don’t have to have wealth for money to be a curse or a blessing, the lack of it can be a terrible thing as well if you don’t know how to relate to it, as people go bankrupt because they continually spend more money than they make, or as people get foreclosed on because they bought too big a house and financed to much of it. Or maybe you have been responsible with the money God has entrusted to you and you have been able to give lots of it away, and spend it and save it. Throughout all of it, the key is how you have related to money, as to whether it has been positive, or negative. So what to do? I think it beings here today with the absolution of your sins including how you have handled money, and beginning a new life today living as a steward of what God has entrusted to you. It means placing God at the center of your entire life, over everything including money, time and talents. So I’ll tell you how that look’s, God has sent his Son Jesus Christ for you and upon him all of your sins have been taken. So there is nothing left for you to do to earn your salvation, nothing nada, for all has been done in Christ. So now hearing that word and being called into faith in Christ, you do what is now natural to you, that is feed your neighbor, and serve them, for after all it is your neighbor who needs your good works, not God. Jesus said that we will always have the poor with us, that is a fact, so it is your job and responsibility along with the whole church to care for and tend to those who need help. Because we still live in a fallen world, a world full of sin, we will always have the Lazaruses with us, so take care of them, feed them, invite them in. So it is now time to take care of Lazarus, to feed him, tend to him, care for him, love him. All this while tending to and caring for what God has entrusted to you, so that you might use it to care for others. It’s just that simple, amen. http://ilcep.org/ilcblog/public_html/trackback.php?id=20071002081932764