Encore Post: Childbirth was an exciting and frightening event at the time of Jesus. Many children and their mothers died soon after a birth. When both mother and child survived the ordeal, God’s law required male children to be circumcised on the eighth day following their birth. After forty days — when the greatest danger to the life of the mother and the child had passed, they were to present themselves at the temple to make a sacrifice. For the woman, this sacrifice made her clean again and able to return to worship God.
During the time of Jesus, Rabbis gathered in the temple in the court of the women, the closest to the Holy of Holies a woman was allowed to go. They would take each child in their arms and bless them. So it was that the Holy Spirit directed Simeon to Joseph, Mary and Jesus. The Spirit revealed to Simeon that Jesus was the coming Messiah. By the prophecy given to Him, Simeon pointed to Jesus’ mission to save both Jews and Gentiles and to the cross. Simeon’s song of joy is still sung by the church in worship.
Anna was a prophetess, like Miriam and Deborah, one of very few women God used to speak to His people. She likely served in the temple to help with a variety of tasks. In her devotion to God, she also saw Jesus and had the privilege of telling everyone that the Messiah had come.
On February 2, the Church celebrates the presentation of Jesus in the temple and the singing of Simeon’s song, known as the Nunc Dimittis. We also sing this song every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
In Jewish custom, when someone dies, they are washed and laid out for mourning only a short time. They had to be buried as soon as possible, no longer than three days after death. Peter came to the room while they were grieving Tabitha.
Peter had been with Jesus all three times he raised people from the dead. Just as Jesus and the prophet Elijah did, he took the mourners out of the room and then prayed. This is very different than the healers of that day — and now — who make the event into a big show and who take all the credit. Very simply, he told her to get up, and she did. Peter then brought the woman to her friends, who spread the word throughout Joppa.
As with the miracles of Jesus, there are two messages for us in this story. One is that God cares about His people and grieves with them. Tabitha would once again die – and will rise again on the last day. Here God turned grief into joy for those He loves.
The more important message, however, is that the Gospel which Peter preached is true and from God. It creates faith in the hearts of those who become believers. The focus is on what God is doing and not what we do.
This story also calls are attention to a faithful servant of God — Tabitha. She has been an example for the church throughout the ages of those who give their lives to care for others. This we have in common with her. Our calling is to care for others and honor those who care.
As a Roman citizen, Paul had the right to be tried by the emperor himself. Since the High Priests had decided to kill him, Paul exercised that right. Traveling by ship was still the quickest way to get to Rome, although it was risky, especially in the fall, when Paul’s ship set sail. Having arrived at a small port in Crete, the group had to decide if they would want to try for a larger port to their west. Paul had a vision of danger, and warned the party without success.
When a ship in this circumstance runs too close to shore, sailors would throw all unnecessary cargo overboard. St. Paul’s crew did this and put down the anchors as well. Since this left the boat at the mercy of the winds, sailors would always look for other options. Normally it is not wise to attempt to land in an unfamiliar place without aid. St. Paul’s crew had no better option and ran the ship into a sandbar attempting it.
Throughout this ordeal, God kept Paul and his companions safe as He promised He would. Paul’s calm in peril impressed all the pagans who traveled with him. These events are remembered to this day in Malta, where they were stranded over the winter.
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
Sermon on Revelation 7:13-17 All Saint’s Sunday October 30, 2022 Saint Paul Lutheran Church And Trinity Lutheran Church McGregor and Guttenberg, Iowa
Text: “Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. “Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Prayer: For all the saints who from their labors rest, Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. Amen.
Christ is Risen!
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who by his death has destroy death and by his rising again opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Introduction: On this All Saints 2022, a flood of thoughts and emotions occupy my thoughts. Three years ago on Reformation Day, Evangeline Charissa Keller was baptized into the name of the Triune God by her father in the NICU in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Her entrance into the world was dramatic and the shadow in the back of my thoughts as we drove there was the remote possibility that she, her mother — my daughter Hanne — and her father could be at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb by that day. The Lord had mercy and blessed the work of doctors, nurses and many others to perform near perfect procedures. They all came through well and thrived as I preached for my son-in-law that year’s All Saints divine service. It was as if the Holy Spirit whispered “not yet, not yet.” In the years since, all is very well with them and a very bright three-year-old joined her six-year-old sister in delighting and challenging her mother and father.
Our text this morning opens the curtain of heaven for us to see the throne of God. There gathered before the Father and the Lamb of God are the children of God from every time – Adam and Noah, Joseph and Moses, David and Elijah, and all those trusting in the coming Messiah. There are also the Apostles and Evangelists, Christians from every time and place, language and nation, and people much more familiar to me.
I remember my own grandparents and grandparents-in-law, who lived and prospered through incredibly hard times, kept the faith in their own … unique … ways, who were often living examples of saints and sinners at the same time. I remember my grandmother Smith reading from the big, KJV family Bible to me as a child on her lap. I remember my grandmother Schneider and her aunt who gave me my first Greek New Testament as a confirmation gift. There are my parents and parents-in-law, troubled in troubled times, yet who still kept their faith. Also present is my father, that bruised reed the Lord did not break. And now in 2022, my beloved wife, Kris, has joined them. She loved me, her children and grandchildren through constant pain all of her life, produced endless beautiful and practical crafts that blessed many. Her straightforward, rock-hard faith was an inspiration to me and to many. All are at rest with their Savior, along with two grandchildren whom the Good Shepherd folded in his arms while still in the womb. Many others are there, too. My Fathers and brothers in the faith that taught me and many others and laid the same stole of ministry on me as I have now laid on my son-in-law and spiritual sons. I am thankful for them and for their confessions, praying to be as faithful to the Lord as they were.
So, how did they get there before the throne? Born sinners they struggled with the Old Adam and Old Eve until the day they died. Yet when they were baptized, Jesus united them with his death. When he rose from the dead, he opened the way for them – and us – to be with him forever. He, the Lamb of God took away the sins of the world – their sin, our sin. At their deaths, his angels came, gave them the white robes of his righteousness and the palms of victory they wave before the throne.
In life, he was their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might; he was their Captain in the well-fought fight. Now they rest from their labors and God has dried every tear from their eyes. Yet to me, and to you, the Holy Spirit still seems to whisper, “Not yet, Not yet!” We feebly struggle, they in glory shine!
Eight years ago, I struggled with a massive infection in my heel. Several times I told my pastor that I still believed what I taught and confessed these thirty-seven years as I went to surgery. Later I was told that I was on the threshold of attending the Marriage Feast. It was as if the Holy Spirit had said, “not yet, not yet.” In the years since, I have continued to preach, to teach, cared for my home congregation when our pastor was on the threshold himself, presided at the weddings of two of my children, seen all my grandchildren save one baptized with the same baptismal shell with which their parents and others were baptized, began to pass the baton on to four of my spiritual sons, welcomed a brand new pastor to our home congregation, and, with him, mentor vicars. God has blessed me more than I deserve.
And now I reflect that I was blessed to celebrate All Saints Day with my wife thirty-four times, thankful for each day we were together, praying to thank the Lord for those safely home. Now I pray after receiving the Lord’s Supper to thank God for my late wife, an ever-growing list of grandchildren, my children and their spouses. I will rejoice that this year I can still hold their hands, speak with them through the ether and see them all once in a while. Soon, all too soon, the angels will come for me or one of them, to join those at the Feast as the Holy Spirit no longer says, “not yet” but the Lord Jesus says to one of us, “welcome to the joy of your Father.”
And yet there breaks a more glorious day. The saints triumphant will rise in bright array; The King of glory passes on His way. Sin and death will die. The world renewed, restored and be transformed, fit for eternity. God will pitch his tent with us and live with us forever. And he will dry every tear from our eyes.
Christ is Risen! Amen, come Lord Jesus, come!
Prayer:
Oh, may Thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold, Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old And win with them the victor’s crown of gold! Amen.
Now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, set watch over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus to life everlasting.
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
Sheep are not the cuddly, fluffy, pure white creatures we see in paintings and picture books. They are dirty, smelly, noisy and interested in only one thing – food. They wander wherever they want to go and do not pay attention to the dangers of world around them. They often walk off cliffs, in the path of wolves and other predators and are easily separated from the flock.
For this reason, shepherds often took their flocks out together. If one got lost, then, helpers would watch those that did not wander while the shepherd. Shepherds often loved their sheep the way we love our pets. If a sheep or a lamb was too weak to walk, they would carry the sheep on their shoulders. If a lost sheep was found, everyone would rejoice.
Shepherds and sheep appear often in the pages of the Bible. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and David were shepherds. The Bible calls God our shepherd. He feeds us, guides us safely through the wilderness, finds us when we are lost, binds up our wounds and carries us home. Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd. We hear His voice, we follow Him and He lays down His life for us. The Christian Church from the very beginning called its leaders pastors, which comes from the Latin word for shepherd. God calls pastors to care for His people – His sheep – the way He cares for them.
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
The Parable of the Lost Son is one the most loved of the stories Jesus told. Everyone can relate to it. We see a very strong love shown by the Father to both His sons – the responsible one as much as the wasteful one. In the time of Jesus’ ministry, a father normally did not divide his property while he was alive. In the story, when the younger son asked for his inheritance, he was saying “I wish you were dead.” Still the father did what his son wanted. The father so loved his son that he kept looking for him to return.
When the younger son came back, the father saw him and did what men at that time did not do – he ran to meet his son. He would have to pull up his robes to do so and would be embarrassing. He did not wait for the younger son to apologize. Instead, he dressed his son as one of his own heirs and threw a very big party to celebrate his return.
When the older son was so angry that he did not come to the party, he was insulting his father. Yet his father came out to plead with him. The older son continued to show disrespect when he lectured his father. Yet the father still speaks to him tenderly. “All I have is yours,” he said, “but we have to rejoice, for your brother who was dead is now alive, was lost has now been found.”
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
Encore Post: When Martin Luther was born, Europe, including Germany, was changing. The discovery of America and trade routes to India and the Far East brought a flood of goods, gold and ideas fueled changes in everyday life. After many years of population decline due to disease, life for the lower and middle classes improved and births filled their ranks. The ideas of the Renaissance brought changes in art, music, philosophy and theology. Inventors brought new technologies to everyone, one of the most important being the printing press. People could afford to buy and own books for the first time in history.
All these changes caused the everyday languages people spoke — the vernacular language — to adapt and grow. The isolation of medieval society, made up of patchworks of small territories, free cities, and counties (territories ruled by counts, princes and knights), meant that thousands of dialects made conversation between everyday people difficult. The Latin language unified the ruling and educated classes somewhat. The Church discouraged the use of translations of the Bible, convinced that unlearned people studying it directly would multiply heresies. They did not need to worry. Most vernacular translations were virtually unreadable: wooden, word-for-word representations of the Latin Vulgate.
As the Reformation took hold, both Luther and his friends became convinced that everyday people needed to be able to read the Bible in their own language. The fast pace of events, his ever-growing insight into the teachings of God’s word and the need to write a high volume of tracts kept the reformer from translating the Bible himself. In 1521, when his prince put him in his Wartburg Castle for safe keeping, he finally had the time. He produced a first draft of his German New Testament in eleven weeks. It was published in September 1522. It sold out immediately. Luther followed with a revision in December of the same year.
Luther’s work was a masterpiece of the emerging High German Language. His use of his prince’s Saxon Court German, well understood throughout German lands, supplemented by words spoken by everyday people throughout Germany was easily understood, sounded natural to people when read aloud and designed so that no one would suspect its writers were not Saxon peasants. It was so widely published, bought and read that it brought about a common German language.
So impressed was Luther’s disciple, William Tyndale, it shaped his own translation of the Bible into English. In 1611, when King James’ translators produced the King James Version of the Bible, they, in turn, used most of Tyndale’s work. So it came to be that the standard Bible translations of Germany and the English speaking world came largely from the labors of Luther to bring the Bible to the homes of everyday people.
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
Encore Post: Ruth was a gentile and as such cut off from God and His presence. When she married Naomi’s son Mahlon, Ruth became a Hebrew and one of God’s people. When Naomi’s husband died, her sons were her only means of support. When these sons in turn also died, she was a widow without sons — helpless in a society where having husbands and sons are key to survival. On top of that, she was in a foreign country, where no one cared about her. Yet all she could think about was her daughters-in-law. She tried to send them home to their families, but only one of them went back.
Because Ruth truly loved her Naomi and loved God, she refused. She would never leave her mother-in-law. Whatever would happen to Naomi, she would share her fate. So, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law went home to Naomi’s family — the Bethlehem in Judea. Does that town sound familiar?
While she was gathering the grain left in the field for the poor, she met a relative of her late husband. This man, Boaz, went out of his way to provide for Naomi and her daughter-in-law. He claimed the right to marry Ruth under the Levirate law — the nearest male relative marries a widow and their children become the legal heirs of the deceased man.
When he did this, Boaz showed the true, selfless character of a redeemer. God blessed this marriage with children. Their son Obed would later marry. Obed’s was the father of Jesse, whose son was King David. And so the self-giving nature of Ruth and Boaz was blessed. In this way, God put a gentile into the family tree of the Son of David — and his own Son — Jesus (Matthew 1:5, ).
Encore Post: In my first post about accepting Jesus as your personal Savior, I explained that you do not need to do so. Why? Because God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has already accepted you. God made you his child when God the Father loved you before he made the world, chose you to be his own, rigged your future to make sure you would be adopted as his child. The Son became man, shed his blood to redeem you and the Holy Spirit sealed you in baptism and lives within you as a down payment on your eternal life. (see Ephesians 1)
So, where does that leave those who have pledged their lives to Jesus, invited him into their hearts and believe they are born again? The bottom line is all of this shows some sort of faith in Christ and trust in his promises. That faith saves them. They are mistaken that the commitment in any way saves them. The reason: it is God’s grace alone, received by faith alone that saves us. They have the cart before the horse. Works do not save you. Salvation gives us the power to do good works — including giving our lives to Jesus. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
In fact, Lutherans make commitments to serve God and their neighbors all the time. It begins with vows at our baptism — made by us when we are baptized as adults and for us when we are baptized as children. In every divine service and in private confession, we confess our sins and confess our faith in the ecumenical creeds. At Confirmation and every time we join a new congregation, we renew these vows. These frequent confessions and pledges have a very practical value. Since Christians continue to sin the rest of their lives. It is only at death the we are sin-free. These confessions tap the power of the gospel to strengthen our faith.
The trouble with depending upon our own strength to commit our lives to Jesus for salvation is we can never be certain we’re saved. Were we sincere? Did we really commit our lives to Christ? Or were we in it for the approval of other or to escape hell. So many re-commit themselves at every opportunity. We become unsure of whether God loves us and whether he really love us. This could, ironically cost us our faith and salvation. This is why Lutherans insist on the gospel
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
Sermon on Matthew 9:36; Luke 10:1-20 4th Sunday after Pentecost Our Hope Lutheran Church 3 July 2022
Text: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest… “Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you” … “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” … Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Intro: These past few months have been filled with tragedies that made the news. School shootings, natural disasters, brutal warfare, the incredible evil one human being can do to another, especially the innocent and defenseless. We confront this coming out of a truly scary plague and the overreaction of those who meant well making it worse. We can’t help but feel bad for people. And so we reach out and offer our thoughts and prayers – and we follow through, too! It all seems so weak a response. What can you do when you want to do something! When there is not much you can do?
A question that leaps to mind – especially for a man of my generation – is what would Jesus do? The gospel lesson and its sister passage in Matthew begin to answer that question and its follow up – what would Jesus want us to do?
Jesus reacted as Jesus often does… his heart went out to them and he sent help.
Christ’s heart goes out to us.
There are several Greek words the New Testament uses to talk mercy talk. Two of them are:
ἔλεος – to be kind to people, even if they do not deserve it. It is used in the most ancient prayer of the church — Κύριε, ἐλέησον, Lord, have mercy
Σπλαγχνίζομαι – To feel compassion in your internal organs. In the New Testament, it is almost always entirely used of Jesus. The closest we can come to translate it is to say: “his heart went out to them” or “it broke his heart.”
Our English word is not too bad – it comes from latin: compassio – to suffer with.
When Jesus’ heart goes out to people, compassion results in action.
He feeds 5000.
He heals the sick.
He raises the dead.
He calls on us to pray – and sends workers out.
Sometimes our compassion doesn’t go that far.
We see something and say, “that’s awful”
Sometimes we pray, which is not chump change, by the way, but that’s it.
Once in awhile, our heart itself moves, and we do something. But not much.
God wants us to always have compassion, but most of the time we don’t have that emotional bandwidth. Our heart is not in it.
Jesus invites us to share his compassion.
Why didn’t God just crumple the world into a ball and build Earth 2.0? He loved us.
The heart of God went out to us, and his Son became one of us.
He lived a perfect life for us, suffered and died for us, rose again for us, because he had to do something, but not just anything!
The Holy Spirit took out our heart of stone and gave us a heart of flesh in Baptism.
Now we want to show mercy, as our Father shows mercy.
Conclusion: So what to do? Pray for sure. Jesus invites you to do so. Donate? Of course; either in kind or cash. Roll up your sleeves and go to work on the ground? There are many churches and non-profits here in the Fort that would love to have you. Mister Rogers used to say, when asked what to tell children with disaster comes to TV was, “Look for the helpers. There are always helpers.” Maybe one of them is you.
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
