Eat This, not That

 Jesu Juva

Jeremiah 1:4-10                                                               

 January 30, 2022

Epiphany 4C                                       

Dear saints of our Savior~

          You’ve got to taste this.  When was that last time you heard those words?  You’ve got to taste this.  Perhaps a fantastic bottle of wine has just been uncorked.  Or maybe your favorite chef at your favorite restaurant has just given your taste buds a thrill.  Or perhaps you’ve attended one of our Lenten suppers here at Our Savior, expecting the usual Jell-o salad and ham, only to bite into some tasty dish that really knocked your socks off.  You’ve got to taste this.  I hear it every Lent.

          But these fine dining experiences pale in comparison to Jeremiah’s meal in today’s Old Testament reading.  This passage describes the day when the Lord called Jeremiah to become a prophet.  The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.  The Lord declared that He formed Jeremiah in the womb, that He knew Jeremiah and set him apart even before he was born.  God called Jeremiah to speak His Word fearlessly to both the faithful and the faithless. 

          But Jeremiah, like every other man called by the Lord, was reluctant and unsure.  Some scholars believe that Jeremiah may only have been twelve or

thirteen years old when the Lord called him.  And so, to clinch the deal—to deal with Jeremiah’s doubt—the Lord says in effect, “Jeremiah, you’ve got to taste this.”  “Then the Lord put out His hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, ‘Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.’”  Jeremiah would later reflect on that day when the Lord called him.  And when Jeremiah remembered his call from the Lord, he said:  When your words came, I ate them; they were the joy and delight of my heart” (Jer. 15:16).  Jeremiah dined that day on the Words of the Lord.

          The call of Jeremiah is all about the Word of God.  And while we normally think of hearing God’s Words through our ears, the Scriptures sometimes describe the Word as edible—something received by way of the mouth.  Or perhaps you recall the words of that old prayer which begins this way:  “Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them . . .”  God wants us to inwardly digest His Word.  For with that Word in us, we’re ready to face a world of opposition and temptation.

          That’s certainly how it was for Jeremiah.  The Words that the Lord put into his mouth sustained and strengthened him.  Jeremiah needed that strength.  He, perhaps more than any other prophet, was the proverbial bearer of bad news.  He was the messenger that everyone wanted to shoot.  His main message to his countrymen was that the armies of Babylon would soon overrun Judah and Jerusalem and destroy everything, including the temple.  Meanwhile, legions of false prophets were preaching about how to “make Jerusalem great again,” and how to “build back better.”  Jeremiah’s doom and gloom wasn’t very popular.  I could probably achieve that same level of popularity by preaching that Chinese troops will soon be storming the beaches of California.

          With the Words of the Lord in his mouth, Jeremiah was ready for everything life would serve up.  During Jeremiah’s ministry, God’s people would lose everything:  temple and sacrifice, their monarchy, their cities, their land, their homes.  Everything would be stripped away.  But through it all, they would still have the Word.  They would still have the promises of God—promises for hope and a future—promises for prosperity and not harm—promises of the Messiah who would one day come.  That Word, inwardly digested, strengthened the faithful through times of terror and exile, siege and sorrow. 

          That’s how it is for you and me, too.  Our God places His Word in our mouths so that we can taste what Jeremiah tasted—so that we can taste and see that the Lord is good, even when our lives are filled with losses and sin and fear.  You’ve got God’s Word to chew on.  You’ve got His promises when you hunger and thirst for righteousness.  You can graze on His goodness, marinated in His mercy.  He always provides a feast for the least.

          It all sounds so easy, doesn’t it?  Feast on God’s Word and you will have what you need!  But God’s Word isn’t the only thing being cooked up and spooned out to you.  You do have other dining options available.  Some of you who have done a lot of dieting can perhaps identify with this.  You know what’s good for you.  You know what you should eat and you plan accordingly—down to the last carb and calorie. You know what to eat; and you know what to avoid eating.  Sounds easy. 

          So you make plans—plans to eat this, and not that.  For breakfast you’ll have blueberries with whole grain oats, sprinkled with hemp, chia seeds, and flax. Plus 3 Brazil nuts.  And a half cup of black coffee.  For lunch you’ll have four ounces of lean broiled chicken breast on a bed of baby kale, and one fat-free, gluten-free Oreo cookie.  Then for an afternoon snack, the rest of the package of Oreo cookies, washed down with a quart of chocolate ice cream. Then for dinner two loaves of garlic bread (heavy on the butter), large pizza (extra cheese), milkshake and cheesecake for dessert, washed down with a bottle of wine.

          Sound familiar?  We know what we should eat.  You know you should eat this and not that.  In the same way, you know that God’s Word is good for you, and you try to stay on a spiritual diet of God’s pure organic Word.  You know you’ll be better off if you do, for that Word always brings health and healing and strength and life.  But then we slip:  one Oreo cookie, one crumb of coveting, one piece of pornography, a few thin slices of slander, a sip of sarcasm aimed at your spouse, followed by some boiled rage and a dash of revenge and a few ounces of immorality, and then the rest of the box of Oreos!  You intend to ingest only the best.  But instead, you’ve made yourself spiritually sick—stuffed yourself with what is sinfully delicious.

          Worst of all, you have an enemy who thrusts this junk food in your face, on silver platters, and with a sly grin watches it all disappear.  Stuffed with Satan’s miserable morsels, our hunger for the Word of God is gone.  Our desire to inwardly digest God’s Word becomes a chore and a bore because we’re bloated and burping with the kind of devil’s food that leads to death.

          But the Lord who called Jeremiah also had one more Word for you—one more Word to serve His people—a Word more vindicating and victorious than any word ever spoken by Moses and the Prophets.  Coming down through the galaxies, descending into our solar system, past stars and sun and moon, this Word . . . became flesh and appeared on a dark Judean night, in the soft cry of a baby boy.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  And this baby boy—the Son of God, our Savior—He had a simple menu awaiting Him.  There was but one entrée on the menu of the Messiah.  The author of Hebrews tells us:  God sent His Son “so that . . . He might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9).

          A menu of misery was waiting for Jesus.  Think of the awful flavors that assaulted the Savior’s taste buds on Good Friday:  the spit of the soldiers, the sour wine that tasted of vinegar, the sweat that ran down His cheeks, the taste of His own blood.  But there was even something more that Jesus consumed that day.  He also drank the cup of the Father’s wrath to the very last drop.  Jesus consumed the wrath of God that was rightfully aimed at you—wrath that you deserve for every piece of forbidden fruit you have ever tasted.  But all of your sin, and all of its punishment—it was all laid upon Jesus—on Jesus, and no longer on you.

          I’m so glad to remind you that Jesus not only tasted death, but He swallowed death completely.  That’s why it says in 1 Corinthians 15 that death has been swallowed up in victory.  Death with its insatiable appetite has been beaten and eaten by Jesus the Christ.  That means that you are going to live forever!  That means that your name is on the guest list for the feast of feasts in heaven, where calories and carbs are no cause for concern. 

          This Jesus, who tasted death for you, is here today to feed you with His holy Words and with His precious body and blood.  Today He brings you a foretaste of the feast to come.  “Take and eat,” He says, “for the forgiveness of sins.”  Nourished by that forgiveness, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  He gives you His Holy Spirit so that you can stick to the only diet that really matters—the only diet that will equip you to live forever—the only diet that fills your life with faith and hope and love.  And—get ready because—when He puts His words in your mouth, well, you can’t help but say, “You’ve just got to taste this!”

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

Fulfilled in Your Hearing

 Jesu Juva

St. Luke 4:16-30                                                               

January 23, 2022

Epiphany 3C                          

Dear saints of our Savior~

          During a pastor’s very first sermon . . . nobody smiles.  Doesn’t happen.  This is partly because rookie pastors tend to preach their first sermons in front of the hometown crowd—before people who knew him way back when—long before he ever set foot in a pulpit.  No one smiles during his first sermon because half the congregation remembers the preacher when he was in diapers.  And the other half are too busy saying to themselves, “Who does this guy think he is?”

          I’ve told you before about my first sermon before a live audience.  I’ll spare you all the gory details.  Suffice it to say, I was only about a page into the sermon—just getting warmed up, as they say—when a dear elderly woman slumped over in her pew unconscious.  Well, yada, yada, yada . . . I never did get to finish my sermon that day—what with the paramedics and the ambulance and all.  And as you might imagine, nobody was smiling.

          I’m comforted, though, by the fact that there wasn’t a single, smiling face when Jesus preached His first sermon either.  Jesus had returned to His hometown of Nazareth, the city where He had been brought up.  On the Sabbath Day Jesus

went into the synagogue, as was His custom.  And He stood up and read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.  That was the Word of the Lord.  So far, so good.

          But then Jesus sat down to begin the sermon.  Every eye and ear was fixed on Jesus—the local boy who was quickly gaining celebrity status.  Jesus said:  Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.  What Jesus was saying was that He was the Lord’s anointed.  He was the Messiah—the One whom God had sent full of the Spirit to proclaim good news and set captives free.  At first, the hometown crowd approved and spoke well of Jesus.  Then, what Jesus said began to sink in.  The situation deteriorated quickly—so quickly, in fact, that the congregation transformed into a mob which drove Jesus out of town, with the intention of sending Him flying headfirst over the nearest cliff.  Oh, and, nobody was smiling.

          What got Jesus into trouble was telling the truth.  Every preacher called and sent by God is, in some sense, a truth-teller.  And telling the truth—the unvarnished truth—is always a dangerous activity.  All Jesus did was point out the obvious:  No prophet is acceptable in his hometown.  The whole nation of Israel had a long history of being inhospitable and unaccepting to the prophets whom the Lord had sent. 

          Jesus singled out Elijah and Elisha as perfect examples.  Elijah miraculously multiplied the oil and flour of a gentile widow in Zarephath, even while the King and Queen of Israel conspired to kill him.  Elisha miraculously healed a gentile general called Naaman of his leprosy, even while suffering contempt from his fellow countrymen.  These prophets from God were not welcome among the people of God.  Any Israelite kindergartner could have told you these things.  Jesus was just pointing out the naked truth that God’s people often don’t like to hear the truth about themselves.

          We’re not much different.  The truth about us is painful.  It hurts to hear the truth that we would each prefer a thousand pats on the back to one loving word of correction or rebuke.  It hurts to hear that, while we expect others to be patient and forgiving of our shortcomings, we have zero tolerance for the smallest imperfections in others.  It hurts to hear the truth that we find it far easier to despise preaching and God’s Word, rather than gladly hear and learn it.

          Another truth that’s often difficult for us to hear is the truth about abortion.  Forty-nine years ago this month the US Supreme Court legalized the killing of the unborn.  And since then millions of human lives have been snuffed out because they were viewed as inconvenient, unwanted mistakes.  Christians ought to be the ones leading the charge and speaking the truth about God’s gift of life and the horror of abortion.  But speaking that truth—well, it might just get you run out of town, thrown over a cliff, or worse.

          All of human life is sacred and precious to Jesus.  There is no human being for whom Jesus didn’t die—no baby whom Jesus didn’t reconcile and redeem on His holy cross.  God creates life—redeems life, and makes life holy.  We are constantly tempted not to talk about that truth.  After all, what difference can one voice make?  Or one donation?  Or one hour of volunteering?  Or one prayer?  The Lord doesn’t call us to solve the problem or to defeat the culture of death singlehandedly.  He simply calls us each to be faithful—to speak the truth in love, to friend and foe alike.  And just maybe this will be the year when Roe v. Wade will be struck down—and the tide will be turned—and the momentum will shift—and thousands of babies will be conceived, and be born, and will smile their very first smiles.

          Will you pray for that?  Will you advocate for that?  Will you bear witness to the truth that God loves life?  If so, you’ll need to step away from that Nazareth mob that didn’t want to hear the truth, and open your ears to the Word of God.  Step into the waters of the Jordan River along with Naaman, taking God at His Word, and watch the leprosy of your sin be washed downstream.  Kneel beside the widow of Zarephath, and rejoice to receive the holy food that your God provides at this altar—the body and blood of His own dear Son, miraculously distributed in bread and wine, for your forgiveness.

          In fact, if we are to embrace God’s truth and speak that truth, then we need to hear it—read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it.  We need to join the returning exiles of Jerusalem, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah.  We heard about them in today’s OT reading—how they gathered at the Gate as “one man,” packed tightly together, demanding to hear the life-giving Word of the Lord.  Men, women, and children all stood and listened for six hours straight to hear the Word of the Lord which they hadn’t heard together in more than a generation. 

          Those exiles show us what it means to hold God’s word sacred, to gladly hear and learn it.  They listened long and hard, in faith.  Faith doesn’t look at the clock and say, “Is it time to go yet?”  Faith says, “Couldn’t we hear some more?  Keep giving us the Word; we can’t get enough of it.”  They stood for six hours with no shade, no padded pews, no pipe organ, no climate control.  They listened to the truth of God’s Word—held it sacred.  They listened in faith.  They repented.  They recognized how sinful they were . . . and how gracious the Lord is.

          But we can’t finish up today without heading back to Nazareth, and watching the aftermath of Jesus’ first sermon.  Even as the crowd that day wanted to kill Him, Jesus went away, passing through their midst.  Miraculously, mysteriously, Jesus dodges the bullet and slips away unscathed.  It’s a strange ending.  But it had to end this way because His hour has not yet come.  In due time, He would be rabidly rejected by men—a man of sorrows, not success.  He came to His own but His own did not receive Him.  Jesus is the rejected and reject-able Messiah, who won’t force His gifts on anyone.  Three years later they would lay hands on Jesus again—and He would allow it.  And He would be crucified.  And in that death He would answer for your sin and die your death.  No matter how rejected you may feel at times—no matter how terribly you may have tampered with God’s truth in your life—Jesus Christ stands ready to forgive you and love you.  Your sins are forgiven in His blood.  And now there is no condemnation for you—for all who are in Christ Jesus.

          And if that good news doesn’t bring a smile to your face, then I don’t know what will.  You have my permission to smile as this sermon winds down.  Today the Scriptures are preached and fulfilled in your hearing.  Today your sins are forgiven.  Today you stand justified before God in Jesus.  You are His dear child through the cleansing power of Baptism.  And the joy of the Lord is your strength. 

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

The Best for Last

 

Jesu Juva

St. John 2:1-11                                                                 

January 16, 2022

Epiphany 2C                                                  

Dear saints of our Savior~

          Today we have the very first of Jesus’ miracles: water into wine, and wine of the highest quality.  Although this is the first miracle of Jesus, it probably isn’t His best miracle.  That is to say, it just doesn’t carry the same profound gravitas as when Jesus stood outside the tomb and said, “Lazarus, come out!”  Or when He stared down the wind and the waves and said, “Peace!  Be still!”  Or when He told the paralytic, “Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.”  Running out of wine at a wedding reception just doesn’t seem to be the end of the world, after all.

          But there is a lot of comfort in the fact that Jesus first chose to reveal His extraordinary power in a very ordinary situation.  It’s the kind of situation in which we all find ourselves from time to time.  Our problems are not all earth-shaking matters of life and death.  Sometimes the wine runs out.  Sometimes the car won’t start.  Sometimes the furnace goes kaput.  Sometimes our organized little world starts to unravel . . . just like that time when the wine ran out at Cana.

          Personally, I never get tired of preaching on this miracle.  Preaching a sermon on the wedding at Cana is a little bit like opening a bottle of fine wine.  It’s a vintage you know quite well.  You know its bold, zesty flavors as well as its more subtle surprises.  It never fails to satisfy.  So let’s savor this old vintage from John chapter 2.  Let’s sniff the cork, twirl the glass, let it breathe, and prepare for a few surprises.

          The very first detail St. John gives us is that all this happened “on the third day.”  Now, this doesn’t merely mean that it happened on a Tuesday.  This phrase is pregnant with possibilities.  Did you realize, for instance that the “third day” of creation was the day on which the Lord called forth vegetation from the earth—including grapevines—each according to their kinds?  And by the time Saint John wrote down these words, he knew the significance of “the third day,” just like you know it and confess it:  On the third day He [Jesus] rose again from the dead.  On the third day death was destroyed by the only Son from heaven, and the party of all parties got underway in heaven.  The wedding at Cana is a preview—a sign—a foretaste of the heavenly feast to come.

          This was a wedding feast.  And that’s more than just a coincidence.  It’s not just an insignificant backdrop for Jesus to manifest His glory.  Wine and weddings go together wonderfully.  Wine is all natural.  Wine is the natural, normal way for grapes to get used.  Marriage, like wine, is also a natural, normal occurrence.  The joining together of a man and woman is all-natural; it’s as organic as creation itself—as old as Adam and Eve.  At the very least, our Lord’s presence at these nuptials shows that marriage matters to Jesus.  Marriage is His gift—the foundation on which all human life is based.  So, let’s honor marriage—let’s honor families and parents and children and babies as some of the most precious gifts God has ever given.

          And speaking of parents, the mother of Jesus is also in attendance at this wedding.  It’s Mary who first tells Jesus that the wine had run out.  Woman, what does this have to do with me?  My hour has not yet come.  He calls His mother, “woman,” and some people think that’s a bit disrespectful.  But He also called her “woman” while hanging from the cross:  Woman, behold your son.  And no one thought it was disrespectful to commend His mother to the care of His beloved disciple.  When Jesus talks about “my hour,” He’s talking about His death on the cross.  That’s why He came.  Manifesting His glory wasn’t the main thing for the Son of Man, unlike suffering and crucifixion.

          We honor the Blessed Virgin Mary for her faith.  And in this little episode we see her faith in action.  She’s confident Jesus will act.  She doesn’t know what Jesus will do; but she tells the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.”  Those happen to be the final words of Mary recorded in the Scriptures.  Let those words be her lasting legacy.  For we really can’t go wrong taking Mary’s words to heart:  Do whatever [my Son] tells you.  After all, He’s the one who died on the cross and rose from the dead to save you.  If Jesus says to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, then we should do it.  If Jesus says to forgive those who sin against us, then we should do it.  If Jesus says not to separate what God has joined together, then we should work to protect and preserve marriage at every opportunity.  Do whatever He tells you.

          Things start to get interesting when Jesus tells the servants to fill up six stone water jars—jars that were supposed to be used for the Jewish rites of purification.  That’s important.  The Jews washed themselves with water from these jars to make themselves spiritually clean—to make themselves more acceptable to God.  But

you know what happens next.  The master of the feast takes a sip of the new wine from those very same jars and immediately calls over the groom.  Listen, buddy, someone’s made a mistake here.  You’re supposed to serve the good wine first.  Then, after everyone’s senses are a little dulled, you slip in the cheap stuff.  But you have saved the good wine until now.  You have saved the best for last.

          Let me help you savor what’s going on here.  When Mary says, “They have no more wine,” she might just as well have been talking about the Jews of the Old Covenant.  Their time was just about up.  The time for a new covenant was drawing near.  They were hopelessly mired in the law—in keeping rules and regulations and ceremonies—with nothing to show for it but six stone jars of water.  That’s about as far as the law of God can take you.  At best, it can only give you clean hands; but it can’t purify the heart of a sinner.  And that’s a problem.  “The law came through Moses,” St. John wrote in chapter one, “but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

          Beloved in the Lord, savor what this sign means.  Drink deeply of the new joy He brings.  In Jesus the old has gone, and the new creation has come.  In Jesus, Old Testament bath water becomes New Testament wedding wine.  Jesus fills up the commandments of Moses with His own perfect obedience.  That’s why He came—to fill it up to the brim with Himself, and then to die an innocent death on the cross, to pour out His blood like fine wine from heaven to make glad every heart with the joy of His forgiveness, life and salvation.

          When the bartender says, “You’ve saved the best until now,” that’s more than a comment on the wine.  It’s a comment on Jesus.  God has truly saved the best for last in His Son, Jesus Christ.  In many and various ways God spoke to His people of old by the prophets, but now in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son.  The promises, the prophets, the priests and the ceremonial laws of the OT—they were good gifts of our good God.  But something far better comes our way in Jesus.  He is truly the best vintage, God’s private reserve, set aside from before the foundation of the world and appointed to be poured out generously in the fullness of time.

          Jesus’ coming spells the end of all attempts to wash ourselves up and clean up the mess of our own sin.  You can’t do it no matter how much you wash and bathe and soak and scrub.  You will never be pure enough.  But Jesus does it for you in His dying and rising.  He takes your sin and gives you His purity.  All who believe in Him are completely cleansed and purified by grace.  And that’s something worth celebrating and, I’m sorry, but grape juice just doesn’t cut it.  Jesus has come and brings pleasure eternal.  In Jesus you have a place at the wedding feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, where the meat is richly marbled and the where the wine never runs out.

          Have we made too much of this first sign of Jesus at Cana?  No way!  In fact, there are a few drops more of this text left to enjoy.  We can’t quit until you recognize this:  that what goes on right here at Our Savior every Sunday is more marvelous and more meaningful than what happened at the wedding at Cana.  Here Jesus takes water and makes water a sign—a baptism—a sacrament of His death and resurrection life which is given to you in the splash of your own baptism.  Here Jesus takes bread and gives it as His body; here Jesus takes wine and gives it to you as His blood.  Right here every Sunday we have a wedding feast where Jesus is the groom, Jesus is bartender, Jesus is even the food and drink.  And best of all, you are His honored guests.

          One day it will all be clear—how our God always saves the best for last.  And, He has one more vintage yet to uncork—that’s you.  You are still aging in the bottle, so to speak.  God isn’t finished with you yet.  Your hour has not yet come.  It will come soon enough, at a time when the world’s party will have run dry, when Jesus appears in glory to raise the dead to life.  And then, with a new, resurrected body and joy overflowing, you will fully experience what today you can only believe:  God has saved the best for last, and the best always comes with Jesus.

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