Pigpen Perspective

 Jesu Juva

St. Luke 15:1-3, 11-32                                   

March 30, 2025

Lent 4C                               

 Dear Saints of Our Savior~

        On today’s menu it’s the parable of the prodigal son.  Or is it?  German theologian Helmut Thielicke turned this parable on its head seventy years ago.  He published a volume of sermons on the parables of Jesus, which he titled:  The Waiting Father.  It was a not so subtle suggestion that our Lord’s famous parable is not primarily about the son and his sins and his reckless living. It’s about the Father who waits and watches for his son’s return home. 

        This father endures everything—dishonor, disgrace, mistreatment, and shame—all at the hands of his children.  And yet this father never stops hoping, never stops enduring, never stops loving his wayward sons.  He never disowns them.  This waiting father rejoices in the return of his sons, is prodigal with his forgiveness, is quick to throw a party, and is outrageously lavish with his grace.

        It all begins with a scandal.  The younger son tells the old man to drop dead.  By requesting his inheritance early, the unspoken message is:  “Dad, I wish you were dead.”  Words that make the Fourth Commandment blush for shame.  But this father incredibly grants the request: He drops dead in a legal sense—divides his property between the boys—as should have happened only if he were six feet under.

        As you might imagine, it rarely goes well for young men who suddenly inherit large sums of money.  The younger son headed to a distant country with his newly acquired wealth and began to squander it in reckless living.  And “reckless living” does not mean that he invested in the wrong mutual funds or occasionally forgot to balance his checkbook.  No, as one wordsmith expressed it:  “He whored with the best of them.  He swore with the best of them.  He gambled with the best of them.  He drank with the best of them.”  All that he had been given by grace—the inheritance, a good name, a father’s love—all that he wagered and wasted and tossed out like trash.

        Hard times set in for the boy.  Destitute and hungry, he took a job working in a gentile’s pig pen.  I’m not sure where the closest pig pen is to Whitefish Bay.  But in my years in Kansas and South Dakota, I can tell you that there’s little doubt when you’re in the vicinity of one.  The smell and the flies are what start to give it away—especially after a rain on a hot afternoon.  Slopping hogs is as bad as it gets for a good Jewish boy—for whom pigs were considered unclean in every way.  When he started longing to eat what the pigs were eating, the young man finally came to his senses.

        The pig pen has a way of doing that—of slapping sinners across the face and awakening them from their downward spiral.  It should make us think of times in our own lives when we’ve found ourselves in the pig pen, so to speak—knee-deep in a sinful squalor of our own making—far away from our Father’s house and embrace. 

        But this is actually one of the best things about our heavenly Father:  He sometimes allows you to wallow in the mess you’ve made, until you come to your senses and repent.  Our sinful nature doesn’t much care for this kind of fathering.  We’d prefer to have Him swoop in and bail us out of every sinful situation we dive into.  In the pigpen you can either rail against your heavenly Father—blame Him for the mess you’ve gotten yourself into; OR you can just go home to your Father with a repentant heart.

        That moment of repentance is depicted on the cover of today’s bulletin.  The great Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer shows us the

prodigal son in the pigpen.  Take a look at that engraving with me.  Notice that the son is literally down on one knee with his hands folded—the posture of repentance. It’s also true that the prodigal son bears a striking resemblance to the artist himself.  Might it be that Dürer has cast himself in the place of the prodigal?  Don’t we all need to see ourselves there? 

        Notice also that he’s looking off into the distance toward home—toward his father’s house.  And doesn’t his father’s house in the top right hand corner look remarkably like a church?  Don’t we all need to see this place—this church—as the Father’s house—the place where repentance leads us—the place where we are welcomed and forgiven and embraced?

        On his way home, the boy planned what he would say to his father: 

 Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

Treat me like one of your servants . . .

 

That little speech is the way we expect the story to go.  It’s certainly what Jesus’ hearers expected.  They expected the young man to return home on his knees, groveling, begging, pleading for a second chance, and promising to make things right.

        But the last thing anyone would have expected is for the father to go running down the road, past the neighbors, to greet his wayward son.  The last thing anyone would have expected is for the father to throw his arms around the boy and shower his son with kisses.  The last thing anyone would have expected would be for the father to listen to the son’s confession of sin, but not even allow him to speak that third line about how he was going to make things right by becoming a servant.  Before he can even get to that line, his father places the robe and the ring of sonship on the boy.  He gives orders to kill the fattened calf and throw a party for this kid who was dead, but is now alive—who was lost, but now is found.

        The last thing the religions of this world expect is for God to be merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  The last thing the religions of this world expect is a God who justifies sinners—while they are still sinners.  The last thing the religions of this world expect is a God who shows undeserved kindness to sinners for Jesus’ sake. 

The son never gets to say that line about becoming a servant.  And this is important.  He never gets to make a deal with dear ol’ dad—to make things right by his works.  Our God doesn’t make deals.  He strikes no bargains.  Our God drops dead to save sinners.  This is the God who, in Jesus Christ, dies for His enemies, who seeks and saves the lost, who scans the horizon for sinners so that He can meet them at the gate and gather them up in His embrace.

Like the prodigal son, we too have an older brother.  His name is Jesus.  He is the Son of God who left His Father’s home to join us in the pigsty of our sin and misery and death.  Jesus did what the older brother in the parable did not do.  He went out to seek us and find us, to rescue us from the slop of our sin, and bring us back home to the Father.  Our older brother, Jesus, laid down His life as a ransom to save us, to buy us back.  God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Jesus we might become the righteousness of God.  He was executed as our sacred substitute, and reconciled us to the Father.

The older son in the parable, he behaves like a lot of firstborn sons.  He’s the rule-keeper—the serious, stressed-out, straight “A” son.  He can’t believe what a pushover his father is:  “Lo, these many years I have served you, never disobeyed, yet you never gave me so much as a goat.  But now this scumbag son of yours comes crawling back home after burning through your money with prostitutes and you roll out the red carpet.”  To which the father essentially says, grab a glass and join the party.  Your lost brother is found.  Your dead brother is alive.

        And there the parable ends.  We don’t know what the older brother ends up doing.  What will we do?  We’ve walked in this son’s footsteps too.  Will we get angry at the Father’s prodigal grace?  Will we become judgmental, looking down our noses at those who can’t seem to get it right, wanting them to be “good” like us before we permit them to join us?   OR will we grab a glass and celebrate?  Will we learn to laugh out loud at the grace of God who wants all of His children—the rule-keepers and the rebels, the first born and the last born—at His eternal party?  Will we come to Communion rejoicing that Jesus receives sinners and eats with them?  Will we “get it,” that grace that’s bargained-for and worked-for isn’t grace at all?  Will we draw strength each day from the fact that we who were dead in sin are now alive forevermore in Jesus?  Whatever happens, of this we can be certain:  Our Father is waiting to welcome us. 

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

Do Not Forget the Lord

 Jesu Juva

Deuteronomy 6:4-12                                              

March 26, 2025

Lent Midweek 3                          

Dear saints of our Savior~

        I still remember the very first sermon I preached from this pulpit back in 2003.  First sermons are easy.  First sermons are forward-looking and hopeful.  First sermons are aspirational and motivational.  But last sermons—final sermons—they tend to be a little more grounded—more practical and down-to-earth.  I haven’t given any thought whatsoever to my final sermon from this pulpit.  But then again, any sermon could be my farewell address.  You never know.

        But Moses—he knew.  The book of Deuteronomy is essentially a farewell sermon from Moses to the people of Israel.  It’s Moses’ swan song—his grand finale—and he knew it.  Moses was about to depart in peace; and the children of Israel were about to take possession of the Promised Land.  And Moses’ valedictory homily is every bit as down-to-earth as you might imagine.  A good example can be found in tonight’s text from chapter 6:  “Take care,” says Moses, “lest you forget the Lord.”  Do not forget the Lord.

        Forget the Lord?  How could the children of Israel forget the Lord?  The Lord had been their constant companion for forty years—ever since the day He delivered them from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.  The plagues, the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea—it was all the Lord’s doing. How could Israel forget the Lord?  All they had to do was look up and see the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.  All they had to do was gather up that miraculous manna every morning and quail every evening.  There was water from a rock to drink.  And let’s not forget the Tent of Meeting—the Tabernacle—right in the middle of their campsite—the very place where Moses and the Lord met together face-to-face.  Why in the world would Moses feel the need to preach:  Do not forget the Lord?

        Moses knew what was next for God’s people.  The Promised Land meant great cities they did not build, and houses full of good things they did not fill, wells they didn’t dig, vineyards they didn’t plant, accoutrements and accessories aplenty.  Israel was movin’ on up to a deluxe life of plenty in the Land of Promise.  And Moses knew what that meant.  Moses knew that nothing makes people forget the Lord faster than a life of leisure and ease.  The influence of affluence makes it easy—so incredibly easy—to forget the Lord, (even though He is the Giver of every good and perfect gift).

        Who among us can deny the negative spiritual side effects of our affluence?  I don’t care what the numbers are on your tax return this year, we are collectively the richest, wealthiest people to ever walk the face of the earth.  We live in cities and homes we did not build.  Food we did not grow or gather—food from all over the world—fills our kitchens and pantries.  Our fridges and freezers are overflowing.  Our cup runneth over.  Like the rich fool of Jesus’ parable, our biggest problem is that we have to tear down our barns to build bigger barns so that we can store all our crops, all our grain, all our goods.  But as you eat, drink, and be merry, be mindful of this refrain from the mouth of Moses:  Take care lest you forget the Lord.  Be careful that you don’t forget the Lord.

        How do we do that?  What does it look like to remember the Lord while living in a land where we lack nothing?  In the Bible, “to remember” is much more than a mental activity.  “To remember” means to take action.  “To remember” is not just thinking, but doing.

        To remember the Lord in faith begins by hearing the Word of the Lord—by holding it sacred and gladly hearing and learning it.  Moses told the Israelites that God’s Words should be in their hearts:  Teach them diligently to your children.  Talk of them all day long.  Bind them on your hands; write them on your doorposts.  Or, as St. Paul wrote to the Colossians:  Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.  Hear the Word of the Lord; and so remember the Lord.

        There is also another way to remember the Lord.  And it’s particularly effective for those of us who enjoy the rich blessings of life in the Promised Land.  Keep in mind that “to remember” in the lexicon of the Bible means to act—to do something.  No act helps us better remember the Lord than what we are about to do in just a few minutes.  We call it the “offering;” but it is really your opportunity to remember the Lord in a very practical, tangible way.

        You remember the Lord whenever you take a portion—a percentage—of all your grain and your goods and your barns—and give those blessings back to the Lord.  From His gifts to you . . . you give to Him.  Take stock of all the stuff you so casually call your own; and give a portion back to the Lord—intentionally, thoughtfully, prayerfully.  Let it go.  Give it away to the God who gave His life to save you.  Being rich toward God is to remember Him.  Nothing focuses your faith—nothing puts your life into proper perspective more quickly—than pulling out your checkbook—than living and giving generously.  It’s a kind of discipline—a type of training—by which we live carefully and joyfully so as not to forget the Lord.

        Our sinful nature always surveys the scene and says:  You worked for it.  You earned it.  It’s yours.  But we who live in the Promised Land know otherwise.  We can’t help but remember that everything we have is from the Lord.  He has brought you to this place of plenty.  You may not have walked through the Red Sea on dry ground; but you have been born again in the cleansing waters of Holy Baptism.  You may not have been fed with manna from heaven; but you have been fed with the precious body and blood of Jesus in His Holy Supper.  None of us has lived a life of slavery; but you have been freed indeed from sin, death, and hell by the crucified and risen Savior.

        We love because He first loved us; and we remember because He first remembered us.  And if this should happen to be my final sermon, you can just forget about me—that’s fine.  But don’t forget the Lord who loved you and gave Himself for you.  Don’t forget the Lord who forgives all your sins.  Don’t forget the Lord who is leading you through years of tears and trouble to the true, eternal Promised Land.  That’s where Jesus has gone to prepare a place for you.  The cost of admission has already been paid by Him.  Don’t forget Jesus; for He will never forget you.

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

Remember Lot's Wife!

 Jesu Juva

Luke 17:32                                                      

March 19, 2025

Lent Midweek 2                        

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Do you remember Lot’s wife?  You should.  You’re supposed to.  Jesus says exactly that:  Remember Lot’s wife.  She was from the city of Sodom.  Lot had taken her as his wife after Uncle Abraham had let him choose the land where he and his flocks would settle. 

        Later on, we learn that both Sodom and Gomorrah were terrible twin cities—notoriously evil.  The wickedness of those places was so great that the Lord decided to destroy them both.  Two angels told Lot not to linger.  Get out fast and don’t look back!  But as fire and brimstone rained down from heaven—as Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed by God’s righteous wrath—Lot’s wife—she looked back.  And she became a pillar of salt.

        Why did she look back?  And why should we remember her? 

        As a little boy this story always bothered me because I was a little pyromaniac.  I was very fascinated by fire and flames and fireworks.  I feared I would have been just like Lot’s wife—rubbernecking with eyes wide open to take in the divine pyrotechnics.  Who could keep from looking at a firebombing so fierce?

        Of course, now I know that I was remembering Lot’s wife for the wrong reason.  Her looking back had more to do with her heart than with her eyes.  Her heart was attached to the things of her past—to what she was leaving behind.  Her forward momentum halted because her faith was faulty. At some level, she loved her life; and lost it.  She became a statue of sodium—a pillar of salt.  Remember Lot’s wife!

        The lesson of Lot’s wife isn’t easily learned.  For in fact, we are all a lot like Lot’s wife.  It doesn’t seem likely that Lot’s wife was attracted to the vices and depravities of her doomed city.  Perhaps what led to her downfall was the powerful pull of home—a nostalgia for the comforts of the past.  She was likely leaving behind a nice house like yours.  Perhaps on some doorframe was inscribed the heights of their growing daughters at various stages and ages.  A table where birthdays and holy days had been celebrated with love and laughter.  A well-manicured garden with spices and produce and flowers, surrounded by an elegant wall of stones.  We all crave that kind of carefully crafted normalcy.  Who among us could just walk away as it all goes up in smoke . . . without looking back?

        The life of the Christian is always a life of forward momentum.  Jesus doesn’t say, “Stay put.”  He says, “Follow me.”  He teaches that His followers should always be prepared and ready to let go and get going.  Just as it was in the days of Noah.  Just as it was in the days of Lot.  We must be cautious about becoming too comfortable with the status quo.  We must be careful with our attachments to the things of this world (even when those things are good things).  We must practice the difficult discipline of not lingering too long.

        It’s no coincidence that the Christian life is likened to running a marathon in Paul’s epistles.  It’s no surprise that the author of Hebrews is at his most memorable when he writes:  Let’s run!  Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.  Are you ready to run?  Are you “good to go” with the life of faith you have been given?  Are you able to say together with St. Paul, “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal?”  Are you ready to really remember Lot’s wife?

        Contentment is good; but contentment can quickly evolve into complacency.  Nostalgia for the comforts of the past can quickly crumble into the weary boredom of stagnation.  And that quest for comfort can quench the flame of faith.  Don’t stop and smell the roses!  (You heard me. Don’t do it!)  Don’t linger longer!  Don’t look back.  Let go and get moving!  Let go and get growing!  Follow where Jesus is leading!

        Where can you go?  Where can you grow?  Where is the Lord leading you?  In what ways are you called to lose your life so that you may keep it for eternal life?  Is it growth in giving?  Growth in service?  Growth in a life of prayer and Bible study?  Are you called to make big strides in your marriage, in your calling as husband or wife, son or daughter?  What steps can you take to be a better steward—to be generous toward God for all His benefits to you? 

        And just as importantly, what’s holding you back?  What sins are entangling you, keeping you from a deeper, richer life of discipleship?  What’s causing you to look back like Lot’s wife?  What do you need to lose—to leave—to let go of?  To remember Lot’s wife is to prepare our hearts to be painfully severed from even those things we hold near and dear.  Sometimes even blessings must be left behind.  And remember, you can never outrun temptation.  The further you go in running the race of faith, the more miles you put in the rear-view mirror—the more tempting it becomes to slow down—to stop—to look back.  Sadly, it’s never too late to turn into a pillar of salt.

        So see the Savior go and blaze the trail before you.  Watch Jesus just walk away from the kingdom, the power, and the glory that were His as the royal Son of God.  See Him humble Himself, to take on our flesh, to walk the way of humanity, surrounded by trials, temptations, and loss.  But Jesus never lingered long in any one place.  He was a man in motion.  He set His face to go to Jerusalem, to suffer many things and be rejected by His own people. 

        Nothing could deter Him from His rendezvous with the cross.  Not the applause of the crowds, not the distractions of demons, not the disappointing conduct of His own disciples.  His forward momentum never failed.  He never looked back.  He never stopped placing one foot in front of the other until those feet were nailed to the cross.  He came to save us from our sins by becoming sin for us.  He lost His life for us at Calvary so that He might share His life with you—in the water of your baptism, in the bread that is His body and the wine that is His blood.

        Seek to preserve your life, and conserve your life, and hang on to your life; and you will lose it.  But lose your life in Jesus—follow where He leads—and oh, the places you will go.  Tonight He extends His nail-scarred hands to you, to pull you ever forward, deeper into discipleship, closer to Him, through death to life everlasting.  And as you go on your way, remember Lot’s wife.

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

A Prophet's Pain

Jesu Juva

Jeremiah 26, Luke 13:31-35                            

March 16, 2025

Lent 2C                                                  

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        A good prophet is always a pain in the neck.  Genuine prophets—bonafide messengers from God—are always intrusive and abrasive.  They couldn’t care less what your itching ears want to hear; because they aren’t accountable to anyone except the Lord.  So most of the time prophets aren’t popular, polished, or politically correct.  And they’re not terribly tactful either.  All they care about is what God has given them to speak.

        But bearers of bad news often take a beating.  Prophets of doom and gloom aren’t too popular. Consider Jeremiah.  You’d be hard-pressed to find a more faithful prophet.  But like most prophets, Jeremiah had to preach an unpopular message:  Jerusalem, that holy city with its holy temple, would be invaded, overrun and destroyed.  And citizens who survived—Jerusalem’s best and brightest—would be carried off to exile in Babylon for 70 years.

        It would be as if I preached that the United States was in its final years—that the armies of Islam would soon roll right down Santa Monica Boulevard, beheading all who will not bow the knee to Allah and his prophet Mohamed—and that those who did survive would be exiled to the Middle East to serve Islamic overlords—that this holy house, dedicated to our Savior, would be stripped of everything sacred, and would soon serve as a mosque. 

        What if I preached that message week after week?  How well would that go over?  Do you think attendance would drop?  Would you be patting me on the back?  Or changing the locks on the parsonage?  Or perhaps I should expect to hear what Jeremiah heard after he preached all that the Lord had commanded him to say, when all the people grabbed hold of him and said, “You shall die!”  It’s all part of a day’s work for a true and faithful prophet.  

        Today’s readings make it clear that God—and His messengers—are on the same team.  God and His prophets are a package deal.  You can’t profess your love for God while, at the same time, stringing up God’s prophets by their big toes—which is what the people of Jerusalem were known for.  In the same breath they would bless the name of the Lord; and then tell Jeremiah, “We can’t stand your preaching.  It’s depressing.  It’s unpatriotic.  It’s demoralizing the people.”  That’s why the movers and shakers of Jerusalem thought they were doing God a favor by killing off that killjoy named Jeremiah.

        By the time Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem six centuries later, that city’s appetite for persecuting prophets was legendary.  You can almost sense the sarcasm in the Savior’s voice when the Pharisees warned Jesus that Herod wanted to kill him:  “Gee whiz,” he seems to say, “it’s hardly possible that a prophet could perish away from Jerusalem.”  Jesus then called Jerusalem “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” by God.  I’m sure that went over like a lead balloon with the Pharisees.  Probably didn’t sit too well with the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce either.

        But did you notice that Jesus took no delight in delivering that rebuke?  He took no pleasure in pointing out how far Jerusalem had fallen—or how soon God’s judgment would be poured out there.  No, it broke the Savior’s heart to point out the sins of Jerusalem.  He wept:  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!  Unbelief is what Jesus was up against.  And unbelief always breaks the Savior’s heart.  He takes it personally.  It’s a crying shame.

        Unbelief also brought Saint Paul to tears.  Did you catch that in the reading from Philippians?  It’s a remarkable passage.  He writes: For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, [many] walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.  Their end is their destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame. 

        Sentences like those remind us that there’s nothing new under the sun.  For we too live among the enemies of the cross of Christ.  We too live among people whose gods are their bellies—people who are ruled by their appetites—people who delight in the deaths of the unborn—people who want to force you to accept and celebrate their perverse lifestyles as normal and wonderful—people who would gladly put you in prison simply for holding to God’s truth about the sanctity of marriage, about the sanctity of sex, about the sanctity of human life.

        How does it make you feel to know that the enemies of the cross of Christ are advancing on all sides?   Does it make you angry?  Or afraid?  Does it frustrate you and make your blood pressure rise?  Does it make you stick your head in the sand and pretend that those enemies aren’t really there?  Do you wish your pastor would just shut up about it all?  Or, does the unbelief of this dying world break your heart?  Do you weep over this world with Jesus?  Does the unbelief of those around you cause your heart to ache?

        There’s a warning here for us.  Just as Jerusalem rejected the prophets and even rejected the Christ, we too can forfeit our salvation.  Jerusalem would not repent.  They would not trust.  They would not believe.  They would not abandon their idolatries and adulteries. They rejected the One who came in human flesh to save them.  Live like that—refuse to repent—and you will face eternal death.

        Or, be safely gathered into the eternal life that is freely found in Jesus.  Jesus describes Himself today in a way that few people in my generation can picture.  He speaks of a mother hen and her chicks.  Used to be that everyone had hens and chicks.  But not so much these days.  Jesus speaks of Himself as a mother hen clucking after her little chicks, trying to gather them under her protective wings out of harm’s way, willing to sacrifice herself to save them.  And yet, they refuse. 

        That’s the love of Jesus for Jerusalem, for His church, for you.  He longs to gather you under His wings.  He wants to shelter you under His protection and grace, to guide you in paths of righteousness and safety.  He was willing to go up to Jerusalem and die for you—for all—even for those enemies who hated Him and wanted Him dead.

        Why does Jesus do it?  Why does He perpetually send His pesky prophets and pastors into our lives?  Because He loves you.  Because He wants to save all.  He doesn’t want you to go it alone.  In the kingdom of God there are no rugged individualists, no independent Christians.  Hens and chicks that wander off alone are destined to become fox food.  Far better for us to take Jesus at His Word—to accept the reality of what we are:  just a brood of helpless hatchlings—cheeping chicks hidden safely under the Savior’s protective wing.  In every sermon you hear—in the words of His prophets and apostles—Jesus calls you to safety, to shelter and mercy beneath His outstretched arms.

        Those same arms were also stretched out on the cross, to bear your sin.  Those were the arms that reached out to welcome you in the waters of your baptism.  Those are the arms that comfort and console you when your life is touched by death, reminding you that your citizenship is in heaven—that the Savior will one day transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.  The arms of Jesus invite you to His Supper to be fed with the bread that is His body and the wine that is His blood—for the forgiveness of every sin.  It’s a wonderful place to be—nestled in the warmth and protection and love of Jesus.  There you are safe.  There you are forgiven.  There you have life that lasts forever.

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

 

Remember You Were a Slave

 Jesu Juva

Deuteronomy 5:1-5, 15                                   

March 12, 2025

Lent Midweek 1        

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Were you there?  The hymn we just sang asks that question a dozen times, by my count.  Were you there when they crucified my Lord?  When they nailed Him to the tree?  When they laid Him in the tomb?  When God raised Him from the tomb?  Were you there?

        This question is more than just a poetic device.  In fact, those words weren’t conceived by any poet, but by slaves.  This is an African American spiritual.  The precise origins of the hymn are unknown; but both text and tune were conceived within a community of slaves in the American south in the 1800s.

        Were you there when they crucified my Lord?  Taking the question at face value, the obvious answer is, “No, I wasn’t there.”  We were all born on the wrong side of the world, about two thousand years too late to be there.  But for the original singers of this spiritual song, the answer wasn’t so clear cut.  They were there—or they were at least close enough to Calvary’s cross that it caused them with emotion to tremble, tremble, tremble.

        A similar question pops up in tonight’s text from Deuteronomy.  The Israelites are amassed on the edge of the Promised Land.  Before them lies the destination of their dreams and the fulfillment of God’s promise.  Moses prepares the people for this new beginning with a reminder from history:  Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today.  The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain. . . . Remember, you were a slave in Egypt.

        Those statements from Moses are problematic—from the perspective of history.  For in Deuteronomy Moses is addressing an entirely new crew of Hebrews.  The crowd that was about to take possession of the Promised Land was an entirely different crowd from that group of slaves that had marched through the Red Sea on dry ground and received the Law at Sinai.

        The witnesses to those events—the ones who were indeed there when God parted the waters and delivered His people—they had all perished.  Forty years had gone by.  The exodus lasted forty years—not because it took that much travel time, or because of some glitch with the GPS—those forty years were a divine punishment levied against all the faithless naysayers who did not believe God’s power to provide victory over the gigantic, well-fortified residents of Canaan.  Apart from Caleb and Joshua, nobody who exited Egypt would enter the Promised Land.

        How then can Moses tell this new crew of Hebrews:  You were there?  How can Moses say:  Not with our fathers, but with us?  How can Moses say:  You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt?  How could they remember what they didn’t experience?  Were they there when the Lord brought them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm?  No, they were not there.

        Behold the power of remembrance.  Where the things of God are concerned, shared remembrance can create a communion in past events.  It’s a communion so strong that it may be said as a statement of fact:  I was there.  Not hyperbole.  Not just a figure of speech.   I was there.  I saw it happen.  I was a slave in Egypt.  With the things of God, time can be transcended by the power of remembrance.  Where the living Word of God is concerned, the past is discovered to be mysteriously present.

        By recalling the memory of slavery—by embracing that memory—God’s people can confess that they have personally experienced God’s power to save.  Redemption is real.  Even as the Israelites were about to begin a new life of freedom in the Promised Land, Moses calls them to remember that they were not always free—and that their freedom is a gift of grace and mercy.  Don’t forget the desert.  Don’t forget the shame of slavery.  Only by recalling what I was can I confess what I have become by grace through faith.  Remember you were a slave in Egypt.  You were there.

        Like Israel, we should remember where we have been.  We too are called to look back on the shackles of our past.  We must descend into what St. Bernard memorably called the sewers of remembrance.  Even St. Paul who enjoyed the full freedom of faith in Christ—even Paul remembered his own Pharisaical captivity:  You have heard of my former life . . . how I persecuted the church of God violently (Gal. 1:13).  Paul shows us the need to remember even those things we might prefer to forget.  We shouldn’t dwell on those things or wallow in them.  But we must remember where we have been.  Remember you were a slave in Egypt.

        Remember when you were enslaved by some vile idol.  Remember when you were a rebel.  Remember when you set out from home and proudly embraced the life of a prodigal.  Remember when you were enslaved by your passions—the months and years you wasted—living like a slave to sin.  Remember when in pride you turned your back on God, and on His gifts, and on your family in Christ.  You were there.  And sometimes, that should cause you to tremble with tears.

        God would have you remember such things not to cause you guilt and shame, but so that you might remember and re-live your ransom—so that you might dwell on God’s gracious deliverance.  And to keep thanksgiving alive in you.  Only in remembering where we’ve been can we rejoice in all the ways God has led us and fed us and loved us, and made us to be His honored guests of grace.

        Were you there when they crucified my Lord?  You were there.  Even as Jesus said, “It is finished,” that ending was just a beginning.  What Israel thought was the end of the Exodus, turned out to be much more than the beginning of Promised Land living.  That journey onward and upward into the Promised Land foreshadows the very journey you are on.  Heaven is your home.  Because you were there. 

        Surely you remember the water that flowed from the Savior’s side—the same water that washed you and purified you from all sin and shame in the splash of your baptism.  Surely you remember the blood that flowed from the Savior’s side—blood that flows through time and space from the cross to the chalice to your lips, for the forgiveness of sins.  Through these precious means you enter the story of salvation.  Your history is redeemed by the eternal God who entered the tyranny of time, to give you life eternal.

        When you look back at where you have been, you will see it.  In each act of deliverance, in each episode of rescue, every time God snatched you from slavery—each of those moments from your history is a sign of God’s great love and His amazing grace, which culminated at Calvary.  He did this for all of us, who are all of us here alive today:  We were there.