The Narrow Door

Jesu Juva
St. Luke 13:22-30
August 25, 2019
Proper 16C

Dear Saints of Our Savior~

When you ask a question of Jesus, don’t expect a direct answer. It often seems that Jesus doesn’t give direct, specific answers to His questioners. It’s not that Jesus doesn’t know the answer. And it’s not that Jesus is afraid to give a truthful, honest answer like so many politicians these days. But much of the time people simply ask the wrong question. Yet Jesus always responds. Despite our inability to ask the right questions, Jesus, thankfully, always tells us everything we need to know.

Lord, will those who are saved be few? That was the question some anonymous person tossed at Jesus as He was on His way to Jerusalem. It’s not a bad question per se. In fact, maybe you’ve wondered the same thing. Are only a few people going to be saved? You have to wonder, don’t you, as you look around at the world today? And, sadly, you really have to wonder as you look around at the church today. Today many churches have become houses of entertainment or places of personal therapy where the main goal is to soothe your self-esteem and make you feel good. Gone are the days when most churches stood firm on the teachings of Scripture. Gone are the days when the main thing in most churches was repentance over sin and forgiveness in the name of Jesus. It all starts to make a person wonder, Lord, will those who are saved be few?

When that question came His way, Jesus had more to go on than we do. As true God, Jesus knew right away what was going on inside the heart of His questioner. Jesus knew the person’s motive—knew, in fact, whether that person would himself be saved. Jesus knew it all as He prepared to give His answer. But we don’t know any of that. We aren’t told what prompted the question.

Lord, will those who are saved be few? Perhaps the questioner was worried, or despairing. Perhaps as he surveyed the huge crowds who were swarming around Jesus—perhaps as he took note of the vast number of disciples whose lives were turned around after an encounter with the Christ—perhaps he began to wonder, “Is there room enough for me in God’s kingdom? Do I measure up? Do I have a reservation at the heavenly banquet—can I be sure of getting a seat? Or do I need to be worried?” Perhaps he asked the question in angst: Lord, will those who are saved be few?

Or, on the other hand, perhaps it was pride that prompted the question. Maybe the questioner was smugly secure in his salvation. “Jesus, I know I’m in. I know I’m good enough. But take a look at all these other losers hanging around—prostitutes, tax collectors, Gentiles—You’re not telling me that these types of people are also part of the Kingdom of God, are you?”

We need to be wary of that attitude—we who know what it feels like to sit in a pew on a regular basis. Do you ever catch yourself thinking along the lines of, “I thank you God that I’m not like other people who don’t have the decency and common sense to come to church on Sunday morning? I thank You God that I’m not like all those sinners who don’t even realize how sinful they are. I thank you God that I belong to a conservative church with a conservative pastor, and not one of those anything-goes churches.” We need to watch out that we don’t start thinking of church as the equivalent of a political party, where all the like-minded get together and talk about how stupid everyone else is who doesn’t see things our way.

But whether the question was asked out of angst or out of pride, at least the salvation of other people was a concern for the questioner. Is it also a concern for us? Do we have a collective concern that when people come from the north, south, east and west to take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God that the halls of heaven will be filled to capacity? Or is our sin one of apathy or indifference? We’re awfully glad to be saved by grace—delighted to be baptized—to call Jesus our friend. But as for those outside the kingdom—those who will be eternally shut out to weep and gnash their teeth—how much concern do we have for them?

A parable is told of a tidy little church filled with nice people. There was always something going on—fun sorts of activities—service projects. It was a lovely church where the gospel was preached and people truly cared about one another. But in the back of this church was a little box—a box covered by a film of dust and the remnants of a few cobwebs. But if you looked closely enough at the box you could still see its purpose which was engraved in bold letters on the lid: “Mission Offerings.” That unused offering box for missions spoke volumes about that church. They were complacent. They were comfortable. They were selfishly unconcerned about the salvation of others. It never would have occurred to them to earnestly ask whether only a few were going to be saved; and then to earnestly do something to increase the “few” by at least a few more.

Jesus’ answer to today’s question leaves no room for complacency: “Strive,” Jesus said—literally, “struggle—to enter through the

narrow door, because many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” There is an urgency attached to the gospel because the way into the kingdom of God is incredibly narrow. Everything else is a brick wall. There is only one, narrow door. Forget what you hear out there in the pop culture and pop spirituality about how we all worship the same God—or how all religions are more alike than different. No, the truth of the matter—the only truth that sets you free—is that the opening to eternal life with God is a thin, narrow, cross-shaped opening in a solid wall—a solid wall that sinners cannot penetrate in any other way. That wall says, “Be perfect, be holy, keep every commandment in thought, word and deed or else you cannot enter.” It doesn’t matter how hard you hurl yourself against that wall. You can’t make it through on your own.

There is only one way through that wall of Law to God, and that’s through the narrow opening created by the perfect life and sacrificial death of Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus Himself is that narrow door that leads to life—a door that is no wider than the distance from one nail-pierced hand to the other.

This is what makes the Christian faith distinct from every other religion out there. You don’t work your way in. You don’t pray your way in. You simply trust that you are in by virtue of the death of Another. You trust that you are righteous before God—not for what you have done, but for what Jesus has done and given to you. You simply trust that in baptism you are united with Jesus in His death and His resurrection—that you are freed from the curse of the Law—that in Jesus Christ you have been pulled through the very narrow door created by His death on a cross.

The way to salvation is a narrow, exclusive way. “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” Jesus said. His death and resurrection are the only way that leads to eternal life. There is no other way. All other paths—no matter how pious, how religious, how rigorous, how full of works and rituals and disciplines—they all run headlong into the brick wall of the Law.

But hear this: through Jesus—through faith in Jesus as your sacred substitute—you can be absolutely sure and certain—joyfully confident—that your sins are forgiven, that you have a place at the feast in the kingdom of God, that you as a baptized believer matter to God eternally. Nothing can snatch you out of His nail-scarred hands.

The door to life is narrow indeed, but it’s just wide enough that any and all who believe can be led right through it. Jesus Christ died for all. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the whole world—who calls His followers to make disciples of all nations. Just as one man, Adam, dragged all of humanity into sin and death, so also one man, Jesus Christ, pulls all humanity into His forgiveness and life by His own death and resurrection. This doesn’t mean that all people will be saved, although that’s what God earnestly desires. This means that there’s always, always room for more in the kingdom of God—that our gifts for missions are eternally important, that many who appear to be the last, the least and the lowly of this world, will end up in first place when all the dust settles in the life of the world to come.

Will the number of those saved be few? Tough question. One that we can’t answer directly. But whatever the answer, the key to that answer is Jesus. He is the narrow door that leads to life. He is the firstborn of all creation, who finished dead last on a cross, who now lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

The Hammer of God

Jesu Juva
Jeremiah 23:16-29
August 18, 2019
Proper 15C

Dear Saints of Our Savior~

God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. God’s Word is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. God’s Word is truth, spoken by prophets and apostles, carried along by the Holy Spirit. God’s Word is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. God’s Word is like the rain and snow that fall from heaven, giving life and growth and always accomplishing what God desires.

But wait, there’s more! That’s not all we can and should say about the Word of God. For today the Lord reminds us through the Prophet Jeremiah that the same Word of God that comforts and consoles us—the same Word of God that lights our path and gives us hope—is also given for a different purpose: Is not my Word like fire, declares the Lord; and [is not my Word] like a hammer that breaks the rock in

pieces?

What kind of a God is this, whose Word consumes like fire and crushes like a hammer? What kind of a God is this, whose Word provides surpassing comfort—and, also, additionally—crushes us to pieces like a sledge hammer? This God is our God—the Holy Trinity. He is both the God of fierce Law and the God of sweet Gospel. Perhaps if we could just embrace this hammer of God and come to terms with the hellfire it threatens, then what Jesus Christ has done (and still does!) for us would become that much more precious and meaningful for us.

But truth be told, we don’t much care for the Law of God and the sometimes painful course corrections it prescribes. After all, who wouldn’t prefer to be the hammer instead of the nail? Even though God uses the hammer of His Law because He loves us—and because He wants the very best for us—yet we do all we can to avoid it. If you’ve ever had your thumb smashed by the blow of a hammer, then you can understand why God’s children don’t always appreciate the hammer of God’s Law.

Jeremiah’s job was to wield the hammer of God in the years leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem. His job was primarily to pummel the people of God with the Law of God—to call them to repentance for all of their idolatries and adulteries—and to warn them about the “Babylonian chain saw massacre” that was about to level everyone and everything in its path.

But rather than hear the Law of God preached by Jeremiah, the people preferred what the false prophets were peddling—lies and dreams and deceit, to be sure. But it all really sounded good compared to what Jeremiah was saying. The false prophets proclaimed peace and love and unicorns and rainbows. “It shall be well with you,” they said. “No disaster shall come upon you,” they declared. The false prophets preached what the people wanted to hear. They were experts at scratching itching ears. They knew how to make people feel good about themselves, no matter how many sinful choices they were making each and every day. The people needed the hammer of God; but what they chose was a tickle-feather from the false prophets.

We, too, need the hammer of God’s Law. We need to be corrected and crushed for our sins. We need to be broken into pieces so that we can know the real peace of God. We, too, live in a world of idolatry and adultery, where immorality is practiced and approved and celebrated by a plurality of the population. And for those who don’t jump on that bandwagon, well, persecution is coming.

What will you do when the hammer of God is brought to bear on your life—on your immorality and adultery—on your pride and arrogance in the face of God’s Law? What will you do when the bright light of God’s Law exposes the filth of your sin? What will you do when you can no longer pretend that your pride is somehow permissible—that your immorality is okay—that your false gods are no big deal? Will you beat your breast and say, “God be merciful to me, a sinner,” or will you beat a path to the nearest false prophet to be affirmed and complimented on your courageous lifestyle choices?

And what about pastors—the “sons of the prophets” who follow in the footsteps of Jeremiah? The Lord says, “Let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully.” All pastors have to work with is the Word of God—fire in one hand and a hammer in the other. Believe it or not, I didn’t become a pastor because I relished the idea of hammering people with the Law. Personally, I would rather not do it: avoid making a scene, keep the peace, do no harm. I need to remember that there’s no harm in the hammer of God’s Law—that behind God’s Law is God’s love—God’s love for sinners. Let him who has my Word speak my Word faithfully. So, help me, God. God, be merciful to me, a pastor.

The hammer of God’s law is given to demolish all of our pride and arrogance, all of our idolatries and adulteries. But from that wreckage—from the wreckage of our lives—Jesus Christ is building something new and holy and pure. For this reason, the hammer of God is God’s gift to you just as surely as His full, free, blood-bought forgiveness is also His gift to you.

In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus said that He didn’t come to bring peace, but rather division. It sounds so strange to our ears. But the hammer of God’s Law and the life of repentance that follows necessarily bring division. It’s a division that even cuts through our families and our closest relationships. When we have to tell the people we love that the choices they’re making are wrong, dangerous, harmful—division is sometimes the result. And that division sometimes runs right through each one of us—we who are simultaneously sinful and righteous. The hammer of God needs to smash the idols of our Old Adam so that the New Man might be drawn ever closer to Christ.

Jesus doesn’t promise His followers a peaceful life or even a peaceful family life. The hammer of God doesn’t make things easy for anyone. But the peace of Jesus Christ is a different kind of peace. It’s not the absence of conflict. It’s not something the world can give or know or negotiate. It’s the peace of sins washed away in the blood of the Lamb. It’s the peace of God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our trespasses against us. It’s the peace of God’s justifying Word which declares you righteous for Jesus’ sake alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. It’s the peace of a quiet conscience that dares to believe that now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus—that if anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation.

At the cross all the power of sin to paralyze, all the power of death to terrorize, and all the power of hell to destroy—is finished. With His holy, precious blood Jesus Himself declares, “It is finished.” So when the day comes that you find yourself beneath the hammer of God’s judgment, remember that God is for you, not against you. Remember, also, that other hammer—the hammer that drove nails into the flesh of the Son of God for your sake—for your sin—to save you. God is indeed serious about every sin we commit; but Jesus Christ has also paid for every sin we commit. So let’s fix our eyes on Him—on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

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

Drifting toward Idolatry

Jesu Juva
St. Luke 12:13-21
August 4, 2019
Proper 13C

Dear Saints of Our Savior~

Jesus said, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

I’ve lived in this neighborhood long enough that I can remember a day when many of you lost a fair share of your possessions. Nine summers ago, late one afternoon, it began to rain hard and it didn’t stop for hours. Over seven inches of rain fell that day. No one died in those flood waters, but . . . .property and possessions were ruined. Stuff that was securely stowed in basements—that same stuff had to be piled high at the curb—soggy, and moldy and ruined. After the storm there wasn’t a street without ruined possessions piled high, headed for the garbage dump.

On the one hand, it was just stuff, right? But our lives often become intertwined with our possessions. Much of our stuff is invested with meaning and emotion: a wedding dress, a photo album, love letters from long ago. It’s painful—it hurts—to lose those kinds of possessions. They are, in a sense, reminders of God’s goodness and mercy. But that is all they are, just reminders. Those things themselves have nothing to do with who you are in Jesus Christ. Your God treasures you and loves you no matter how much or how little you have. You are a child of God, holy and dearly loved, come hell or high water.

But possessions can also be perilous. There is always the temptation to draw our meaning and security and identity from the stuff around us, rather than from the God who created us, redeemed us, and makes us holy. And when this happens—when our deepest sense of identity comes from the material things around us—the problem runs far deeper than simple greed. Greed, we learned from Colossians today, is really idolatry—having another god.

The drift toward idolatry always happens slowly and gradually. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I think I’m going to start committing idolatry today. Starting today, I’m going to draw my security, my identity and my very life from the people and possessions around me.” Of course, that’s not the way it happens. But how does it happen? How do greed and idolatry take over?

The parable we heard from Jesus today is a case study on greed and the drift toward idolatry. It’s often called the parable of the rich fool; but I think that title makes it far too easy to dismiss the main character as someone that most of us could never identify with. I think he’s not so different from us. For instance, please notice that the rich man got rich, not through scheming or stealing or gambling. No, Jesus reports that the man was a farmer, and that his land produced a good crop—a bumper harvest. It was God who provided the seeds, the sun, the soil and the rain. It was God who gave the growth. It was God who gave the man his wealth.

Do you believe that about your wealth and your possessions? Do you believe that it is God who has placed these things into your hands? Or perhaps it’s not so black and white? Perhaps your possessions and wealth are 50 percent your accomplishment and 50 percent God’s gift. Or is it 70-30 or 80-20? Is all that you have a gift from God? Or would you be more inclined to say, “I worked for it. I earned it. I bought it. It’s mine?” How you view your possessions reveals a lot about your spiritual health.

As for the man in the parable, we don’t know exactly how he viewed his spectacular harvest. His plan to build bigger barns was a

sensible thing to do. Without barns to store it, his crop would just pile up on the ground and eventually become rotten. Nor do I think we can find fault with the man’s decision to “take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” Those words don’t sound much different from what King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes about how “a man can do nothing better than eat, drink and find satisfaction in his work.” There’s no crime in enjoying God’s good gifts. Would you honestly have done anything differently if you had been in this man’s shoes?

Then why—why does God eventually call the man a “fool?” How was it that this man quietly, slowly, almost imperceptibly drifted into idolatry? How did this farmer become a fool? What kept him from being “rich toward God?” Well, judging from the words of the parable, perhaps the man started to drift when he called the crops “my” crops. Perhaps he drifted a little further when he called the barns “my” barns. Perhaps he drifted further still when he called the grain and the goods “my” grain and “my” goods. And at one point the man refers to his very soul as “my” soul. It’s just a tiny, two-letter word—a possessive pronoun that can’t even stand alone. But how you use your possessive pronouns can make all the difference between being wise—or being a faithless fool. Perhaps the road to idolatry is paved—not so much with money—but with all the wrong possessive pronouns.

There’s only one remedy for those who have drifted into idolatry—those who sinfully refuse to see God as the giver of every good and perfect gift. The remedy we need to reverse course is contentment. “Godliness with contentment is great gain,” the Scriptures say (1 Tim. 6:6). I love the way old King Solomon describes contentment in today’s reading from Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing better for a person than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without Him, who can find enjoyment?” Being satisfied with what we have—being content with what God so graciously gives us—that itself is a gift from God. This is the gift of contentment. This is the remedy for idolatry. Do you have this gift?

There was one man who was perfectly content—a man who found perfect fulfillment in the work He was given to do. His work, He said, was to do the will of the Father. And the work He did, He did for you and for your salvation. As a true man like you, Jesus toiled and labored under the same hot sun that shines down on us in these dog days of summer. With all knowledge, wisdom and skill Jesus set out to do the work appointed for Him. His work reached its climax on Good Friday. It was a labor of pain and grief. And all that Jesus accomplished at that placed called “Golgotha”—the forgiveness of sins, opening the kingdom of heaven to all believers—these precious gifts Jesus gives away—gives away to those who follow Him in faith. You didn’t work for it. You didn’t earn it. You don’t even deserve it. And that’s why we call it “grace.” (Amazing grace!)

In your baptism Jesus filled the empty void inside you—that same empty void that always wants to name and claim everything as “my” and “mine.” Jesus has filled that void with His Holy Spirit, who daily and richly forgives you all of your sins. And in place of those sins, Jesus gives you His perfect record of obedience. His perfect work record belongs to you, and your future is now tied to Jesus. “You died,” Paul wrote, “and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” In that resurrection promise you have contentment. You don’t have to run on empty. You don’t have to run the rat race for more and better and bigger. You can be content with what you have because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Heb. 13:5).

What does this mean? It mean that your life, as you now live it, is not a matter of building bigger barns to store and accumulate more and more so that someday you can be content and secure. It means that today—regardless of your circumstances—regardless of your inventory—today you can live secure and content in Jesus. It means living by faith in the Son of God who loves you and laid down His life to save you.

So let it begin today. Let someone else chase after the wind. A person’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. Watch out when you find yourself attaching the word “my” and “mine” to the people and things of this world. Rather, count the blessings God so richly gives. Rejoice in your work. And you will learn to enjoy life through God’s gift of contentment.

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