Transfiguration sermon

Posted on February 14th, 2011

Life is filled with the mundane, some happy and some not so much: endless driving runs to work, school, lacrosse practice and ballet lessons; broken water heaters, chili suppers, baby showers, and cracks in your windshield. The accident of birth lands some in a place of wealth and freedom, and others in a place of poverty, tyranny, and terror. People are born and grow, eat and sleep, marry and have children, get sick and die. Helplessly trapped in our mortality, in our human limitations, men look for restoration, renewal, reformation, or hope that through evolution, education, and technological advancement we can climb out of our pit, ascend beyond our diseases and wars and debts and finally conquer death itself.

The Jews were looking for a restoration of David’s kingdom, and those who read the prophet Isaiah were waiting for a Messiah to usher in a new creation where lion would lie down with lamb and deserts would bloom and gush with springs of water.

Three of Jesus’ disciples get to see a glimpse of the restoration that the Messiah would bring, but then are immediately told something that seems at direct odds with it. First they see Jesus radiating light blinding as the sun, from within Himself — His form still that of a human being, and yet at the same time celestial. This is the divine nature manifested, epiphanized in the human nature of Jesus, showing that He is at the same time true God, begotten of the Father, and true man, born of the virgin Mary. And then, as they descend from the mountain, He talks of His resurrection from the dead: “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.” Which means, of course, that He is going to die. How can the Messiah die? How can one who is true God die? That did not meet their expectations.

The LORD Jesus, although He is true God, did not exercise the powers of His divine nature for His own benefit in the time preceding His resurrection. As true man He hungers, thirsts, feels pain, grows tired, gets warm or cold. As a man He is tempted in every way we are, yet without sin. Finally, as a man He is bruised, abused, beaten; He bleeds, He cries out in agony, He dies. All of this—the setting aside of the powers of the divine nature (which He could have exercised for His own benefit)—is called the humiliation.

In today’s feast of the Transfiguration, the veil of that humiliation is pulled back, and Peter, James, and John get a glimpse of who Jesus truly is. Peter in Matthew 16 had just confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Messiah, but even now they do not fully understand that Jesus is not simply a great teacher, an inspiring Rabbi, a holy man, a prophet like Moses and Elijah. Peter puts Jesus on the same level as Moses and Elijah by offering to build three tabernacles, one for each.

But one of these men is not like the others. The Lord JESUS stands in continuity with Moses, Elijah, and all the prophets, but also stands apart as the One to whom they all bore witness. The Lord JESUS is the self-same LORD who revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush. As the bush burned with fire but was not consumed, so the human nature of Christ was (and is) filled with the divine nature but not destroyed.

The Father’s voice that came from the cloud spoke the same words as at Jesus’ baptism—“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”—but now adds this instruction: “Hear Him!” What Peter, James, and John heard directly, we hear also, through the media of Bible and preaching. We also are told to listen to Jesus and follow His voice alone. The voice of the world says to look out for yourself first of all; the voice of your flesh says to give in to your lusts and sinful impulses; but only the voice of Jesus—only the words of Jesus and the Word that tells us about the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection—only that Word is a trustworthy guide through this valley of the shadow of death.

Peter, James, and John are about to follow Jesus to His gruesome death, and Jesus gives them this vision of the Transfiguration to bolster their courage for the trials to come. As we journey through the mundane, bear our crosses, and finally descend to our own grave, the account of the Transfiguration of Jesus is told to us so we will know that the way of sorrow, the way of suffering, our experience of every temptation and evil was already undertaken by the Godman for us and our salvation, and He will bring us to share in His glory after our own baptism is finally brought to completion in our death. The Transfiguration of Jesus, like the resurrection, is a foretaste of what is to come for our bodies and for all creation.

But Peter wants to stay, skip the way of the cross, and build booths—tabernacles—perhaps as a shrine for future generations to come visit, pray and worship. Peter does not yet understand that the cross must come first, and that the place of worship will be wherever the flesh of Jesus is. His body is the new tabernacle. Remember how back on Christmas Day we heard from John’s Gospel that Christ is called “The Word,” and that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”? Now remember back on the Second Sunday after Epiphany, the changing of water into wine at the wedding at Cana, how I spoke to you these words from the book of Hebrews, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” We talked about this passage in light of the great gifts that Jesus instituted, Baptism which washes the body with water, and the Lord’s Supper where our hearts are sprinkled clean with the blood of Jesus.

But the writer to the Hebrews just before these comforting words compares the sacramental worship life of the New Testament church to the Old Testament tabernacle and implies that all Christians, as a royal priesthood, have the right of access into the holy of holies through the blood of Jesus. Listen to how the writer to the Hebrews puts it:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. (Heb. 10.19-22)

“We have confidence,” that is, the right of access, “to enter the holy places.” How did the Old Testament priest enter the Holy Place? With blood, the blood of the sacrifice. How do we enter? With the blood of Jesus. This is no metaphor, no symbolic way of speaking; the Scripture tells us that this is the “new and living way.” As the Old Testament priests went through the curtain, the veil, so do we enter “through the curtain, that is, through [Christ’s] flesh.” Jesus is both High Priest and victim, a priest who sacrifices not a bull, goat, or lamb, but sacrifices Himself. So where do we receive the benefits of His sacrifice? Where His flesh and blood are. And where are they? Where He has promised them to be, in His Supper; and in case we were in doubt that Jesus means it when He says, “This is my body,” “This is my blood,” the Apostle Paul confirms this by saying, “The bread which we break, is it not the communion in the body of Christ?” And, “The Cup of Blessing which we bless, is it not the communion in the blood of Christ?” This is why, among other things, there cannot be tabernacles built on the mount of Transfiguration, as though there, or in Jerusalem, or Rome, or Wittenberg, or Geneva, is the holy place of worship. Christ is present with His gifts wherever the Church gathers in His name around His Word and Sacraments.

There will not be a single place that will be the locus of worship, but the gifts of God will be wherever the body of Jesus is, and by His Word the body of Jesus is made present wherever the Church gathers in the name of Jesus.

None of this do the disciples understand yet. On the way down from the mountain, they ask Jesus,

“‘Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?’ He answered, ‘Elijah does come, and he will restore all things. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.’ Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.” (Matthew 17.10-13)

Did you catch those beautiful, hopeful words of Jesus, about the restoration of all things? But Jesus’ way of restoring all things is not the way the disciples would choose, nor the way we would choose. In the words of Stanley Hauerwas, “‘To restore all things’ does not mean everything is going to work out the way we want it to work out.” The Transfiguration was not an end in itself, but a glimpse of the end as they journeyed to the cross. On the cross, in His suffering and death, is how Jesus accomplishes the restoration of all things, and for us, it will come after we have died to the flesh, died to sin, and are raised, restored, renewed, reformed in our death and on the last day.

So what does all of this mean for you now, as you go back to the mundane, to the broken water heater, the cracked windshield, the laundry, and getting ready for another week, to slog it out again and again and again until you die? It means that in the vision of the Transfiguration, and finally in the resurrection of Jesus, you know what the end is. You belong to Jesus, in whom is the true renewal, the true restoration of all things, the resurrection and the life. The life of the church, and your life as a disciple of Jesus, is an alternative to the values and standards of the world. We are in the world, and thus we use money and homes and cars, have jobs and vote and pay taxes, but our life is not wrapped up in the world’s priorities. Possessions and reputation and carnal pleasures are not what define you or give your life meaning. As disciples of Jesus you follow Him to Jerusalem, you bear your crosses, you live under the banner of the forgiveness of sins—praying for your own forgiveness and forgiving those who trespass against you—always knowing that what is coming for you is not just another week of work, another set of problems, minor victories, little joys, but all ending in death; what is coming for you and all believers in Christ is the parousia, the return of Jesus the transfigured and resurrected One, and the restoration of all things. In Him your sins are forgiven and you are righteous, and even your dead body shall be transfigured to be like His glorious body, and you shall abide in His kingdom forever and ever and unto the ages of ages. +INJ+

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The Transfiguration of Jesus and the morning the Church expects for all creation

Posted on February 12th, 2011

I came across a reference to this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins while reading Hauerwas’s volume on Matthew. Beautiful in light of tomorrow’s feast:

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck* his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

*reck: to heed, regard, care for, take account of

Categories: Theology

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Sermo Dei: Psalm 53

Posted on February 9th, 2011

Wednesday after Epiphany 5

Psalm 53

February 9, 2011

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” We would like to see in this passage a critique of atheism. Truly, atheism denies what is self-evident; we can no more look at the world and say, “There is no designer, no creator,” than we can look at an automobile, or a computer, or the Washington Monument and say, “That happened by chance, no designer or builder was involved.” Atheism is foolish; it takes enormous faith to believe that everything came from nothing with the aid of no one for no purpose whatsoever. Atheism is foolish, but that is not the foolishness indicted in tonight’s Psalm.

For in the Word of God, “Fool” is not an intellectual judgment, but a moral one. Folly is deliberately chosen; the problem is in the heart, not the intellect. The fool does not understand because he chooses not to understand. He hardens his heart. Thus he wills to do evil and believe falsely. The fool, in saying there is no God, sets himself up as god. He makes a conscious choice to disregard the commandments. The fool justifies himself and his actions as right irrespective of what the Word of God says. The Lord has said, “Do not be angry with your brother,” but the fool speaks in wrath. The Lord has said, “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife,” but the fool imagines and meditates on a woman not married to him. The Lord has said, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble,” but the fool looks instead to his own devices to rescue himself.

Who is this fool, the one who is corrupt, doing abominable iniquity? Let us find this fool, so we can declare to him his folly! Before the first verse of tonight’s psalm is concluded, the fool has been identified: “There is none who does good.” As Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”, so the Word of God points an accusing finger at every child of Adam and says, “You are the fool!” “God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.” Are there any to be found? No! “They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”

Folly then is not merely the product of a poor education or upbringing. The source of folly is original sin. We love corruption, we are all narcissists, we are all self-absorbed, imaging everything to revolve around my needs, my wants, my hurts, my feelings. “There is no god” is not the declaration of the atheist, it is your declaration when you sin.

What happens to the fool who will not heed the Word of the Lord and turn back from his folly, i.e., repent? “God scatters the bones” of that one. The scattering of bones is both a dishonoring of the body in death, and a declaration that this body will not rise again. (This, by the way, is why the Christian Church discourages cremation. Some Christians have practiced cremation for misguided reasons, and those done in ignorance we do not condemn, especially at the time of death and mourning. This is why we have had funerals for those cremated even here in the church. But the practice of scattering bones, or worse, burning even the bones into ash and especially then the scattering of those ashes is a pagan practice with its origins in a denial of the one true God and God’s promise of resurrection.)

See then God’s judgment on those who rebelled against Him in tonight’s reading from Jeremiah: “The bones of the kings of Judah” and the people of Jerusalem “shall be brought out of their tombs,” and spread out on the ground. They are not buried, but instead treated like dung. They did not know God, but instead followed their own course. They were God’s people, but they did not know “the just decrees of the Lord.”

We are indicted under the same condemnation. St. Paul writes in Romans that no one has done good, no man can be justified, declared righteous, before God. So let us not boast that we are not atheists. Instead, let us acknowledge our atheism, the many ways in which we have set aside the Word and Law of God and instead made ourselves God, boasted in ourselves, justified ourselves, and condemned others. “What becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.” Why? Because a man “is justified by faith apart from works of the law,” faith in Jesus who atoned for our atheism, our godless lives and thoughts, and brought us back to God.

Truly salvation has come out of Zion, in the Child born of Mary, who faithfully submitted to God in circumcision and presentation, who heard the Word in the temple and learned it with all His heart, who turned water into wine and healed the centurion’s servant, who stilled the storm and journeyed to Jerusalem to make Himself the propitiation for our sins. Let us kneel then and confess our folly, and pray to God to remove our foolish hearts and give us hearts of wisdom, confessing Jesus our Savior. +INJ+

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For Immanuel members

Posted on February 9th, 2011

You can get Immanuel news and announcements at the blog on our church website – click here.

The feed link (if you use RSS/feed reader such as Google Reader or Net News Wire) for the News blog is here.

Categories: Theology

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Epiphany 5 sermon

Posted on February 8th, 2011

Note: You can find the audio here (or subscribe to the podcast here).

THE PARABLE OF THE WHEAT AND THE TARES – Matthew 13:24-30 – Epiphany V

While in high school and college, I made some easy money mowing lawns each summer. I was surprised that one of my customers kept me on after the first time I mowed his lawn, because I managed to mow down with efficient zeal what I guess were the beginnings of some flowers, or plants, or whatever they were. What looked like out of control weeds to me were in fact something precious to him. All I could say was, “Sir, forgive me, for I know not what I do.” He was a kindly Christian man, and he not only forgave me, he paid me more than I deserved.

In today’s parable, the master is far more cautious and careful than I was. When you can’t be sure if it’s weeds or good seed, leave it alone!

Now on Sundays we look at Bible passages in isolation, which is okay for the sake of time, but these things are in the order they are for a reason. The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds comes immediately after the Parable of the Sower (which we will hear in a few weeks). The Parable of the Sower is about hearing the Word of God. The Sower, i.e., the Lord, is reckless with His seed, His Word, scattering it all about. But He is not at all reckless about tearing up that which is growing. About that He is very cautious.

Now remember, a parable is an earthly story that teaches us about heavenly realities. So what are these things? Jesus Himself later explained the parable to His disciples when they asked, saying,

He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Only at the end will it become completely clear who are the wheat and who are the tares, who belongs to the Lord and who is to be thrown into the fire of judgment. For now, we have to remember and be aware that Satan is the enemy of the Lord’s church, and he is tirelessly sowing poisonous seeds, trying to ruin the Lord’s harvest. This is true especially in the church. In the words of Daniel Defoe,

Wherever God erects a House of Prayer
The devil builds a chapel there.
And ‘twill be found upon investigation
The latter has the larger congregation.

What particularly astonishes me about this parable is what it reveals about the character of God. If it were my field and the enemy had sown tares, weeds, with the aim of destroying the crop, I think I would fall into the trap and go out and promptly seek to tear up anything that looked faulty. But the Master, the Lord, is far more patient. He is willing to wait and be patient, because He doesn’t want any of the good wheat, His faithful Christians, to be destroyed in the process of weeding.

It’s important to understand that what is called “tares” or weeds in this parable is a plant called darnel. It is “organically related to wheat, and at the early stages of growth one cannot distinguish darnel from wheat, they look so much alike” (Pless). They can only be distinguished upon maturity; while they are growing, they appear identical. At harvest, it will be obvious which is which, and the wheat can be separated out then. The farmer could attempt to distinguish the wheat from the tares, but he would likely destroy a lot of good wheat in the process.

Our Augsburg Confession tells us that in the church on earth, “many false Christians, hypocrites, and open sinners remain among the godly.” We should not try to root out all hypocrites; and I suppose if we did, we would have to exclude every one of us! Unless the case is extremely obvious and apparent so that the pastor can exercise needed church discipline, as is his responsibility, we should let it alone. God does the judging.

I have often been surprised at how wrong I can be about people. Church members that seem to be the most zealous, the most faithful, the most supportive, end up causing great trouble spreading wicked slander and false reports. And those that you think aren’t paying any attention and are just going through the motions end up showing themselves to be very faithful and pious. One of the best things to ever happen to me as a pastor was a man who told me he didn’t believe a certain Biblical teaching, and nothing I could say would ever change his mind. Not long before he died, he asked me if I remembered him saying that. “Yes,” I replied, and he proceeded to tell me he had, in fact, changed his mind! A man I was convinced was a weed at the end was shown to be wheat. I suspect God gave me that experience to temper my highly judgmental nature. I simply don’t know how it’s going to turn out, so keep preaching the Word of God and let God do the work.

There is a place for church discipline. When someone persists in willful, unrepentant sin, they should be admonished by the pastor and finally, if they refuse to listen, they must be put out of the church.

Most of the time, however, the situation is not so easily solved—not that church discipline is ever easy. We must not imagine that we can find and join a church without sinners, or cleanse our own church such that all sin is rooted out. The Lord’s church on earth consists of nothing but sinners. So today’s parable not only gives good guidance for pastors to not be quick to tear apart the church trying to root out every sinner; it also gives good guidance to each of us in our personal lives in dealing with sin. The epistle appointed to go along with today’s parable is perfect, for it tells us how to deal with sin that comes our way within the church: with “patience,” just as the Master prescribed in the parable. With “patience, bearing with one another.” That is the life of a Christian – patiently bearing each others sins, burdens, problems, weaknesses. Imagine how your marriage, your school, your workplace, our church meetings, would be transformed if we responded to the weaknesses of our fellow sinners with such patience! “And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

We cannot tell the wheat from the tares, the hypocrites from the godly. And the truth is that, however we might wish to be godly, there are times when act like God-forsaken hypocrites.

Parables are illustrations, and we must be careful not to carry them too far. For while true wheat may not transform into a weed, and a weed will not become wheat, the category in which we belong can change. Sinners can repent, and people with faith can fall away. So we would do well to treat others as though they are the wheat, and be patient and forgiving; and at the same time look at ourselves as tares, weeds, as false hypocrites. Root out the hypocrisy in your own life, and don’t worry about your neighbor’s sins. Look at the plank in your eye, not the speck in your neighbor’s.

Judgment belongs to God, not to us. As for us, God has ordained the peace of God to rule in our hearts and the Word of Christ to dwell in us richly. It’s difficult to translate into English, but the last part of today’s Epistle doesn’t quite capture the implications of what Paul actually says. “Be thankful,” our translation says. It’s the only place in the New Testament where the verb eucharistein, “to give thanks,” shows up as a noun. “Eucharist” comes to be a word for the Lord’s Supper, because Jesus took the bread and gave thanks (eucharist) before giving it to the disciples saying, “This is My body.” The closest we can put St. Paul’s words into English would be something like, “Be doers of thanksgiving,” or perhaps just, “Be eucharistic.”

Our Lord Jesus is the true wheat, which, as He said in John 12, is planted into the ground and springs forth to bear fruit. In His death He was planted in the ground, and in the resurrection He sprang forth to life. Only in Him is there no hypocrisy, only in Him is perfection and no weeds or poisonous seed. Receiving the wheat which is His body He forgives our sins, our hypocrisy, and roots out that which is false and weedy in us. Come, kneel and confess your sins, and thankfully receive Him who is the finest of wheat, your crucified God.

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Worst halftime show

Posted on February 6th, 2011

since the wardrobe malfunction, easy. These people have one talent: being annoying. The lady singing the national anthem was terrible too. Who picks these things? I’m assuming they’ve already been fired.

Categories: Music

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Epiphany 4 sermon

Posted on January 30th, 2011

One of the classic conundrums of religion and spirituality is the problem of evil. If there is a God, why does He permit bad things to happen? A 1981 book by Rabbi Harold Kushner helped phrase the way this question is usually put: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Of course, this presumes there are good people. From a human perspective, there are civilly righteous people—those who pay their taxes, drive the speed limit, treat others fairly. From God’s perspective, however, there are no good people. “There is no one good, no, not one,” says the LORD. All have gone astray, no one seeks God. Before God destroyed most of the human race in the ancient flood, He announced that the judgment of the deluge was coming because “every inclination of the thoughts of man was only evil all the time.”

And so the waters came. Waters cleanse, and give life, but water also destroys. The waters of the Red Sea parted for the Israelites, but came down to drown hard-hearted Pharaoh’s army. God’s wrath rose up in the storm that came upon Jonah’s boat, as we heard earlier. On that boat Jonah slept. He slept secure, but that wasn’t a good thing. He was secure in his sins. Aroused from his slumber, he is thrown into the sea, there swallowed by a great sea creature. God’s Word describes Jonah as being in Sheol, a Hebrew word that means a pit, the depths, the grave, the place of the dead, and finally, Hades or Hell. It’s an extraordinary tale, but I believe it to be true.

And what is more, it is a type, a foreshadowing, of something greater which was to come. Jonah was in the belly of the beast three days, and this was a sign of Jesus, the greater Jonah, who was in the belly of the earth three days. As the beast spewed Jonah forth unto dry ground, so our Lord JESUS rose from the dead, coming forth from the belly of the earth on the third day.

The Jonah story is echoed in today’s Gospel reading, though, in another way. The boat is overwhelmed by waves, for a seismic disturbance, an earthquake, has rocked the floor of the sea, causing the waves to rise up and begin swamping the boat. And like Jonah, Jesus is asleep. Only, Jesus does not sleep in the security of sin. Jesus sleeps securely because He has nothing to fear from creation.

The disciples of Jesus, though, have plenty to fear. They fear the storm will sink their boat and they will drown in the sea. Why does this storm come? We can speculate that God allows this particular storm at this particular time to teach the disciples a lesson, but that is just speculation. What we do know is that since the fall, since man’s fall into sin, creation is hostile to mankind. The earth, made for our first parents’ pleasure, delight, and sustenance, now brings forth thorns and thistles, and a loaf of bread requires much hard labor, farming, grinding, kneading, baking, or the money to buy all those services. Bedbugs infest hotels, tyrants slaughter their own people, cancer invades our bodies. So the question isn’t why does God allow the storm, but why is it ever sunny? The question isn’t why bad things happen to good people, but why good things happen to us bad people?

In the midst of the storm, the disciples of Jesus do the only thing they can do: they go wake up Jesus. His sleeping, they surmise, is a sign that He does not care. Mark’s Gospel tells us that when the disciples wake up Jesus, they say to Him, “Do you not care that we are perishing?”

And that’s the way life often seems when we are in trouble. God seems nowhere to be found. He is sleeping. Jesus rebukes the disciples not for waking Him up, but for not believing and trusting that He would care for them whether He seemed to be awake or asleep, whether He was in the boat or not.

A favorite word of mine is the word of rebuke that Jesus uses; it’s one word in Greek that becomes five in English: “O you of little faith.” The emphasis here is on little. “Little” is bad, but it’s not as bad as “none.” They have little faith, but they do still have faith. That’s why they woke up Jesus and said, “Kyrie! Lord, save us!” That’s the cry of faith, little as it may be.

Not a few of you have told me in times of despair that you worry you don’t have enough faith, that you have failed, that there is something lacking in you, and therefore God will most likely reject you. You want Him to be awake, but He seems asleep, and if He does wake up to you it will most likely be in wrath and judgment.

This, my dear friends, is an understandable but terribly incorrect view of faith. Faith, you see, is not something you do or produce. Faith is God’s gift, produced by the Holy Spirit through the Word, and built up and replenished through the Word, and through the visible Word, i.e., the Sacraments. My advice to you when you have these worries about your faith is to forget about your faith and pay attention to the object of faith. Forget about faith and look to Jesus, the author of faith. Forget about the storm and look to Jesus the captain of our souls. Forget about your faith and listen to the Word of the One who says, “Trust Me.”

Now the fear of the disciples in the storm is the fear of death, and of God’s judgment. Jesus stills the storm and rescues them, and ultimately fulfills the sign of Jonah by rising from the dead. Therefore in the face of literal, earthly storms, and finally our own death, God calls us to trust Him when He says He is with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and when we are afraid, He invites us to cry out to Him, Kyrie eleison! Lord, have mercy! Lord, save us! Jesus, help!

All of this pertains to literal, earthly storms. However, there is another way to view the storms as well, in a symbolic or moral way. Does a word from someone make you annoyed? That is the wind. Do you respond in anger? That is the storm. That storm is in danger of causing another kind of shipwreck, the shipwreck of your soul. Do you have poor control of alcohol? That is a wind. Is your drinking out of control? That is a storm. Go rouse the Lord and cry out, Jesus, save me! Only in His Word can the storm be stilled. Are you enticed by the allure of a woman not your wife? That is a wind. Do you act upon your lust? That is the storm. When the storm rises, go rouse the Lord and cry out, “Lord Jesus, help!” All of this was taught to me by that great doctor of the Church, St. Augustine, who said in a sermon on this Gospel, “A temptation has sprung up; it is the wind; thou art disturbed; it is a wave. Awake up Christ then, let Him speak with thee.” Only when Christ speaks with us can the storms cease.

In summary, life is filled with storms, both the literal hostility of creation to us, threatening us with death, and the metaphorical storms of the chaos of our sins and the disturbances in relationships with the people around us. We know why these bad things happen to us bad people—we are sinners in a broken and fallen world, consigned to death. We must not be surprised when the storms come. But when they come, be as the disciples. Cry out to Jesus, though He seem asleep to you and far away from your little boat. And when the storms of life draw to their close, know and be joyful that our Lord has promised to see you safely to the other side, even as He completed the sign of Jonah and rose again on the third day. With Him you shall rise and live in His kingdom unto the ages of ages.

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Wordle of Epiphany 4 sermon

Posted on January 29th, 2011

I love Wordles. There’s a very interesting comparison of State of the Union speeches in Wordle format here. Seeing it inspired me to run tomorrow’s sermon through the Wordle generator. Here’s what came out:

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