Surprise Ending

Jesu Juva

St. Matthew 28:16-20                                         

May 31, 2026

The Holy Trinity A        

Dear saint of our Savior~

        This Holy Trinity Sunday takes us to the very end of Matthew’s gospel.  And the reason for this jump to the finale  is obvious.  Here we have the most holy name of God spoken directly from the lips of Jesus.  Here our Lord clearly commands that all nations should be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  With that name on our lips, our babies are baptized.  With that name on our lips, we are gathered into God’s holy presence for the Divine Service.  And with that name on our lips, we begin and end each day.  When you invoke the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, you are declaring before heaven and earth that you have been received into fellowship with the one true God.

        The ending of Matthew’s gospel is well-known.  We hear it so often that we miss how this ending is also a surprise ending.  This ending takes some unexpected twists and turns.  This ending has some surprises you just might have missed.

        One of the biggest surprises for me comes as the Eleven gather on Galilee’s high mountain.  Matthew tells us that there the Eleven saw Jesus, there they worshipped Jesus, and there some doubted.  Wait . . . what?  Some doubted?  I didn’t see that coming.  “Some” of the Eleven who saw Jesus with their eyes, and who worshipped Jesus on bended knees, and who would preach Christ crucified to the ends of the earth—even among them, Matthew reports, some doubted.

        What, exactly, did those doubters doubt?  What was their doubt about?  We don’t know.  While the Holy Spirit inspired Matthew to include this surprising fact, we don’t get the details.  What we can know for sure is that “doubt” isn’t the same thing as “faithlessness.”  It’s not that some of the Eleven didn’t believe that Christ was risen from the dead, or that His Word is truth.  What “doubt” means here is that they were hesitant.  They were unsure.  They were unsteady.  They were unconvinced about exactly what to expect.  Even as they all saw Jesus and worshipped Jesus and loved Jesus—even then, some doubted.

        That’s shocking and surprising on one hand; but on the other hand, I can see it.  None of us is immune to this same kind of doubt.  It can eat away at you even while you’re sitting in church, confessing the Athanasian Creed, or receiving the body and blood of Jesus.  Even then, this kind of doubt can find you and steal from you the joy and confidence that could be yours.

        This doubt doesn’t deny that Christ is risen.  It doesn’t deny the divinity or the humanity of Jesus.  It doesn’t deny His death on Calvary’s cross or His glorious resurrection.  No, this doubt simply denies you the benefits of what you believe.  It renders you uncertain and unconvinced that our Lord’s loving and gracious care will find its way into the nooks and crannies of your life, with all its crosses and heartaches, sorrows and sins.

        Like the Eleven who gathered on the mountain with Jesus, we don’t have a record of spiritual success.  We do have a record of broken promises, selfish desires, and sin-filled thoughts, words, and deeds.  With a record like that, doubt has a way of distracting us from God’s gracious care, and hindering God’s work in us.

        But the surprises keep coming in Mathew’s glorious conclusion.  Jesus starts talking!  And the words of Jesus change everything.  Doubt is dispelled.  It turns out, Jesus has plans and promises for His frail, faltering disciples.  It turns out that Jesus wants more disciples.  That’s no surprise.  Since Jesus let loose with His very first “follow me,” it was clear that Jesus really wants disciples.  The big surprise is that Jesus is going to use disciples . . . to make disciples.  He’s going to use frail, faltering, doubting disciples to draw men and women to Himself, and to deliver His gifts of life to the world.

        Jesus uses disciples to make disciples of all nations.  Once again, surprise!  “All nations” doesn’t just mean all nationalities.  All nations was the most inclusive phrase Jesus could have used.  All races, all ages, all backgrounds.  Jesus wants disciples from all demographics. All are wanted.  All are died-for.  All have been reconciled by Jesus.  The blood He shed atones for all.

        To make disciples of all nations Jesus doesn’t use special effects and miraculous signs.  Jesus uses the surprisingly simple means of water and the word—baptizing and teaching.  Through water and the word, you were first claimed by the Holy Trinity.  Those words and that water changed everything for you—gave you a new birth, and a whole new identity as one redeemed by Christ the crucified.  You yourself became a disciple of Jesus that day.

        To that cleansing splash Jesus adds: teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  Did you catch that little word “all” in there?  It’s important.  We don’t get to pick and choose which of Jesus’ teachings to observe and which to filter out because they don’t fit in with our crazy culture.  We don’t just teach the highlights or the bullet points—but all that Jesus has entrusted to us.

        On this particular Trinity Sunday, it’s worth noting how pastors take the lead in making disciples.  Baptizing, teaching, preaching, and absolving—setting captive sinners free.  That’s another big surprise in our Lord’s plan for making disciples.  It’s not how we would have planned it or scripted it—ordaining sinful men in an office with such awesome responsibilities and privileges.  Today we give thanks for Pastor Moldenhauer and Pastor Bakker who each celebrate twenty years of disciple-making.  Every pastor is an unlikely pastor.  Every pastor is something of a surprise—just ask those who knew them when they were seven, or thirteen, or eighteen.  But God has called them, and Aaron and Jonathon have done their disciple-making duty with distinction for two decades now.

        But no disciple could be called or crafted without our Lord’s final promise.  St. Matthew saved the best for last.  It’s the final sentence of His gospel that seals the deal for doubting disciples:  I am with you always, to the end of the age.  What a surprise!  What a comfort!  Who would have guessed it?  The same Lord Jesus who ascends higher than the heavens—He is with us always.  At the beginning of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus comes as Immanuel—God with us.  And at the end of Matthew, Jesus promises to be with us always. 

He is with us indeed; but not in some secretive, spiritual way.  He is with you in the Word of the Scriptures.  He is with you in the washing of Holy Baptism.  He is with you in the bread that is His body and the wine that is His blood.  He is with you—and for you—bringing forgiveness of sins and faith and joy and hope and doubt-dispelling confidence.

        Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.  Amen.       

 

Fire, Wind, & Words

Jesu Juva

Acts 2:1-21                                                         

May 24, 2026

The Day of Pentecost           

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        You heard the highlights of Pentecost a few minutes ago from Acts 2:  The wind and fire of the Holy Spirit, and the words delivering the good news about Jesus to all who heard them.  The Word of God preached and proclaimed in all the languages of the known world.  A day full of grace.

        Some refer to Pentecost as the church’s birthday, but that’s not completely accurate.  It’s more precise to say that the church was born on Good Friday from the wounds of the crucified Jesus.  The blood and water, the cry, “It is finished,” the temple curtain torn in two from top to bottom—these tell the story of the birth of the church.  So, there was already a church before there was a Pentecost. 

We heard about that pre-Pentecost church last week from Acts chapter one: It included the Twelve apostles (with the newly minted Matthias), and Mary the mother of Jesus.  They were all together in one place—a congregation of about 120—about this size—the entire holy, Christian, apostolic church all packed into someone’s living room.

        Pentecost was actually an Old Testament festival—occurring 50 days after Passover.  Jews came to Jerusalem at Pentecost to present the first fruits of the winter wheat harvest to the Lord.  They came to Jerusalem to do something for God.  But on this particular Pentecost, God turned the tables on those pilgrims.  God poured out on them the gift of the Holy Spirit—doing far more for them than they could ever do for Him!

        In fact, the Lord stole the whole show that day, so to speak.  There was the sound of a mighty rushing wind.  Fifty days earlier the risen Christ had breathed on His disciples.  That was a little breath—a gentle breeze.  On Pentecost comes a fresh gust of gospel good news.  And then comes the fire.  As John the Baptist had said concerning Jesus:  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  Tongues of fire come to rest on the members of that congregation, and they aren’t burned or singed in the slightest.

        Now with the fire and the wind come the words—words given by the Holy Spirit.  This is what the Holy Spirit does.  He’s in the word delivery business.  He is the UPS man of the Holy Trinity—taking the words of the Lord and delivering them personally to us.  The forgiveness and life that Jesus died to win for all can only be delivered by way of mouths speaking words.

        And those words must be understood!  And that’s been the perennial problem ever since God confused the languages way back beneath the tower of Babel.  On that day God jumbled up our nouns and verbs and we’ve been straining to understand each other ever since.

        On Pentecost, God undoes the curse of Babel in a most unexpected way.  He didn’t create one, new language for the church.  Instead, the Spirit preached in many languages all at once, and each person heard the good news about Jesus in his own native language and dialect.  St. Luke lists them off, so we get the point:  Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, not to mention the good folks from Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya and Rome.  They all heard the mighty works of God for their salvation in their own mother tongue.  It’s an audible object lesson, teaching that what Jesus said and did, He said and did for you personally—for you, whatever your nouns and verbs sound like.  This Jesus who is for all, who lived for all, who bore the sins of all, who died for all, who was raised up for all and who will raise all on the last day—He is also for you as your own two ears can testify (thanks to the Holy Spirit).

        The fire, the wind, the words: It was a Pentecost to remember.  But I always like to say that we’ve got Pentecost every Sunday.  Today, here and now, we’ve got the words of God being delivering by the Holy Spirit into your ears and heart.  Each Lord’s Day the good news goes forth:  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.  The trouble is we don’t believe it.  The truth is we’re bored. 

        You see, the Old Adam in us loves the religious special effects of the first Pentecost.  We like our religion with a dose of fireworks and maybe some special lighting and a fog machine thrown in for good measure.  We like it when religion sends a chill down our spines and puts a lump in our throats.  Somehow just listening—just hearing the works of God declared in our own English language just doesn’t seem to satisfy.  How easy it is to be bored—to despise preaching and His Word rather than hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it (even on a holiday weekend).   

        Many churches have recognized this spiritual boredom among their members.  They’ve sought to up the ante by doing whatever seems novel, whatever seems relevant to pop culture, whatever will get people talking and create a buzz.  But whatever you do, the conventional wisdom seems to say, don’t subject people to hearing and learning the Word of God.  It’s almost as if the Holy Spirit just can’t get the job done without our creativity and marketing skills. 

But here’s the truth:  Do you know what would happen if every Sunday were as spectacular as that first Pentecost?  Do you know what would happen if I preached every Sunday with a tongue a fire on my lips and the sound of a rushing wind blowing through the room?  Do you know what would happen?  We’d get bored with that too. 

        Beloved in the Lord, the problem isn’t with the Spirit-delivered good news about Jesus.  The problem is human hearts from Mesopotamia to Milwaukee are afflicted with sin.  By nature we hold sacred what is profane; and we denigrate what is holy.  We prefer being entertained to being enlightened by the Holy Spirit.  But the Spirit’s special work is to turn us from that sin—to create in us clean hearts.  This is why we need Pentecost every Sunday—to call and gather and enlighten and sanctify the likes of us, and keep us with Jesus Christ in one true faith.

        Beloved in the Lord, whether we hear a mighty rushing wind or not, whether we see tongues of fire or not—we have Pentecost every Sunday.  In the humble words preached from pulpits like this one, in the humble water of Holy Baptism, in the simple bread and wine that is His body and blood—there is the power—there is the wind in the sails of the church.

        That wind is still blowing in our sails right here at Our Savior.  For over 90 years the Holy Spirit—the Lord and giver of life—has been at work among us.  The Spirit’s work has not been for Parthians, Medes and Elamites, but “for you”—working the miracle of faith in your heart and keeping you with Jesus—doing for you what you could never do for yourself. 

        Here’s some history for you:  Eighteen years ago this week our congregation did not gather between these four walls to celebrate Pentecost.  I wasn’t standing here.  You weren’t sitting there.  We were not in this sacred space. . . because we were worshipping in the fellowship hall downstairs. . . because we were building a choir loft and installing a pipe organ in this space.  Eighteen years ago not everyone was thrilled with that decision. Some felt it was unnecessary and too expensive.  Today we enjoy the blessings and benefits of that project every time we gather.  It happened only because the Holy Spirit led the saints of Our Savior to respond to God’s love in Jesus Christ with generosity. 

In a few more weeks we’ll be moving again—back down into the fellowship hall.  And once again, God the Holy Spirit will “outgive” us all.  And the important work of the kingdom—which kicked off on the Day of Pentecost—will continue here long after you and I have entered the Kingdom of glory with Jesus Himself, and all the company of heaven.

        That “kingdom work” happens here every Sunday.  If you’re looking for fireworks you’ll miss it.  But here’s what to look for:  the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of bread in the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s liturgy of life, and the fellowship.  Where these are going on, where the Gospel is preached and the sacraments are administered according to Jesus’ words, there is the Spirit.  There’s the wind in our sails.  There is forgiveness, life, and salvation.  For you.

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