There is a vineyard, and it needs to be worked. Its owner goes and calls workers into his vineyard. Throughout the day, he continues to go out and call others in. At the end of the day, the wages are to be given. And when they are, it is those who worked only an hour who come first. They are given a full days’ wages. In fact, everyone gets the same. No matter if you worked an hour or the full day. All are made equal. To no one’s surprise, those who worked a long day are upset. But the master reminds them that they are receiving exactly what they were promised. Exactly what they agreed to.
Like work in a vineyard, the Christian life is not a life of leisure or sloth. We are not called to loiter around and simply wait for heaven. We have been called into the vineyard. Christ has come to you and for you. He has chosen you to work in his vineyard; to be a part of his church. He has redeemed and saved you by grace.
This parable speaks of God’s goodness and his grace. The workers receive out of the generosity and goodness of the master. They have work because they are invited. Their calling into the vineyard is by grace. So also, for us. We are brought into our Lord’s vineyard by grace and grace alone. And we receive life and forgiveness of sins out of His mercy and grace.
Rev. Brent Keller Peace Lutheran Church Alcester, SD
For churches that use the historic, one year lectionary (cycle of readings), Epiphany has passed and, last week, they celebrated our Lord’s Transfiguration. They now focus on our Lord’s Resurrection, the victory Christ won for us as he died on the cross and then triumphantly rose from the dead. They do this in stages: Pre-Lent, Lent, and the Passion. Today, they are in Pre-Lent (nicknamed the ‘gesima’ Sundays for the Latin titles of the Sundays). For churches using the three year lectionary, Epiphany lasts a few more weeks. When Lent comes, all of the churches will be on the same calendar again.
In the early church, catechumens (learners) were baptized on Easter, and Lent was a sort of final and intense preparation. And so, the Sundays before Lent aim to equip the students for Easter and to remind the baptized of what is to come. The Epistle texts will present the Christian life as a race, as a contest that requires constant self-discipline and self-control, as a demanding life filled with labor and suffering. In a few weeks, Lent will teach that the Christian life is selfless and motivated only by love. Our Gospel texts speak of God’s call for us to be laborers, of the education and training in God’s ‘school of life,’ of the enlightenment of God’s rich grace upon all who seek it. Pre-Lent seeks to prepare for Lent and Easter in this way because the new life we are raised to live is one that lasts forever.
This summer the world will turn their eyes to Tokyo. Some of the most elite athletes in their various sports will take the field or arena or ring. They were born with natural gifts in whatever their sport is. Yet despite this natural gift, they have still had to prepare for this moment since they were young children. They are always laser-focused not just on qualifying and competing, but on bringing home gold. They will have trained and competed with little to no regard for their body. All that matters is being on top of that podium in July and August.
The Olympic games were centuries old when St. Paul writes his first letter to the Corinthians. That said, they were a much different event then than they are now. What isn’t different, however, is the effort put in. And Paul knows it.We each have a race to run, and none of us knows how long it will last. This is why continual training is required. Why self-discipline and focus are paramount. Lent is a time of battle. It is a time of preparation and repentance. But it is also about grace. About hearing what Jesus has done for us in his coming, culminating in his death, burial, and resurrection that all your sins are put away and forgiven.
Rev. Brent Keller Peace Lutheran Church Alcester, SD
Martin Luther described two ways to think or talk about God. One starts with what people do — how can we please God? It begins below with us and climbs up a staircase to heaven by our own efforts. The other starts with what God does: the Father sending his Son to save the world, the Son dying so we might live and the Holy Spirit bringing the gifts to sinners. The theology of glory is from below and gives glory to people, the theology of the Cross and is from about, focusing on Chris who died of us all.
These two approaches to understanding God end up in two very different ways of thinking. The theology of glory is not satisfied with what the Bible says about him, salvation and they way we should live our lives. It peers into the unknown things of God, using human logic and experience to form theories about him and believe them as if they were facts. Ironically, the result is making God over in our own image rather than in allowing God to remake us in the image of his Son. In reality, it makes us into god and god into our servant.
The theology of the cross, instead, knows nothing but Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2) It is the theology that begins with the way that God has revealed himself to us in his word, in the cradle and on the cross. It begins with the mindset of Jesus, who did not hold onto his glory as God, but emptied himself of it, became man for us, suffered and died for us. (Philippians 2:5-11)
Rather than look for our own glory, taking credit for our works, our understanding and looks for rewards in this life, the theology of the cross calls on us to think like Jesus thinks, to set aside our interests to serve God and our neighbor. It is content to take up its own cross and follow Jesus, through suffering, to death and to life eternal.
From the earliest days of the Christian faith, Christians have used the sign of the cross to remember the sufferings and death of her Lord and Savior. Not only did they use the sign to identify each other and during worship, they hung artistic versions of the cross. On the wall of a large room in Herculaneum, destroyed with Pompeii in 79 A.D., a cross-shaped mark was found in one of their walls.
Beginning at the end of the Fifth Century (400s AD), representations of the body of the dying Jesus began to appear on crosses. These became known as crucifixes. Churches throughout Christianity used crucifixes universally. It wasn’t until the 16th Century (1500s AD) that anyone objected to them. During the Reformation, the Reformed and Anabaptist traditions objected to them, thinking that crucifixes and Christian art in general were idols. Luther and the Lutheran tradition rejected this charge, contending that such depictions were an aid to devotion. No one was worshiping them. They were inspired by their art and their imagination turned to the events they represented.
So Lutherans continue use crucifixes until this day. Many of the great artists and musicians since that day were Lutherans and used their talents to enhance their churches and worship. Only in the last century, and in the United States, when Lutherans began to worship in English, did this begin to change. Their friends, families and neighbors accused them of being “too catholic,” not realizing that they were out of step with a sixteen hundred year old practice of the Christian Church.
There is, however, a deeper theological issue. When asked why they feel the empty cross is better than a crucifix, our non-Lutheran friends often object that Jesus did not stay on the cross, but is now risen from the dead. They think we need to focus on the Resurrection. Yet this is not what St. Paul tells the Corinthians, who said, among other things, ” I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2) The focus of Christian preaching is to be on the cross. The crucifixes do just that. Christ is indeed risen from the dead, but he retained his wounds eternally to proclaim that sacrifice. And because he is risen, that sacrifice is now wherever Christians gather in his name.
So, far from apologizing for crucifixes, Lutherans are proud of them. For they are a symbol, pointing to the sacrifice that won our salvation. They remind us of the Lamb-who-was-slain for our sins and sins of the whole world.
The cross is precious to Christians. It stands for our salvation, paid for by the sufferings and death of God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Over two thousand years, we have drawn it, worn it as jewelry, sung about it in our most beloved hymns, woven in it cloth and into the words of our sermons, teachings and conversations. In our liturgy, we make the sign of the cross to remind us that all the gifts being given by God in worship come to us by the power of that cross.
The cross is the deepest wisdom of God It is God’s answer to sin, suffering, grief and death. We are tied to it when we receive his body broken there with bread and when we drink his blood shed there with wine. When Jesus died on the cross, we died to sin and when he rose from the grave, we rose to new life. To this day, Christians literally die rather than forsake the cross.
In the cultures shaped by the faith, the cross is everywhere, you only have to look. It is hard for us to imagine why non-Christians either do not understand it, think it doesn’t make sense, or worse, are offended by it. Even though they see the evil in this world, they do not believe they themselves are evil. They do not understand the depth of God anger against the evil that has ruined his world, brought death and suffering into it and separated him from his children, whom he loves. They don’t realize that only death and eternal destruction can be the only way to satisfy that anger. They don’t get that means every person must pay that price. Finally, it doesn’t make sense to them that God would pour all that wrath out on his son — himself really — rather than let us suffer it. They think the whole plan is stupid.
But in the cross, which appears to be weakness, is really God’s strength. It is the power of God that destroys death and sin in us. It is the greatest wisdom, for it is the solution to our dilemma. He pays the price we cannot pay and forgives them forever. There may not be a free lunch, but there is free salvation. This is the good news that we preach.
During Friedrich Wyneken’s theological examination, the interviewer said: “As is well known, miracles no longer occur nowadays. It only remains to be asked, if there really were miracles in former times or not.” He then asked Wyneken: “What do you say to that?” Friedrich replied without further reflection: “God is a God who does miracles daily” The young pastor had a point.
A miracle is something that happens that are beyond our ability to understand. As much as modern science has discovered, there is much more that we can’t figure out. Miracles break all the rules. The earth’s tilt on its axis and orbit around the sun are just right to maintain life. The cycles of seasons, rain and snow, heat and cold, allow the wide variety of life that support us and give us pleasure. How this all happens we are barely able to understand. These and everything that give us life are nevertheless very real, reliable and regular. In addition to these, God works through everyday people in our lives to make them what they are, all at the inspiration and provision of our Heavenly Father. God gives us all these things and more without fanfare and almost completely without thanks from us.
When we speak of miracles, though, these everyday acts of God are not what we think of. Our mind goes to the healing and suspension of nature that Jesus performed that continued in the ministry of the apostles. To a certain extent, this is deceptive. The events recorded in Scripture from the time of Abraham through the exile of St. John to Patmos cover two thousand years. As wonderful as miracles are, they did not happen all the time. Sometimes hundreds of years pass between them. Because they are all written about in the same place, we get the impression they were constantly present. Only in the ministry of Jesus was this true, and then only for the three years of his ministry.
It is possible that God does act in these ways today, but we do not know. Scripture does not say they have ceased nor that they will continue. What we do know is that God does care for us, heal us today and we occasionally can’t explain how. The miracles we do know about, however, are right under our nose. In water, he adopts us as his children and created knew hearts in us. In bread and wine, he gives us his body to eat and blood to drink to forgive us our sins and give us everlasting life. The greatest is yet to come for us. On the day our life here ends, he will take us to be with him forever and on the last day, raise our bodies from the grave. On that day, when he restores us and all creation, that will be one of the greatest miracles of them all.
From the time our parents gave us children’s Bible story books, through Sunday school and Confirmation classes, to the regular readings in worship services, we hear about the many miracles that Jesus performed. He healed the sick, raised the dead, fed a crowd of five thousand — and a crowd of four thousand — with a few loaves of bread and several fish. It is easy to get the idea that he spent all of his time doing wonders. Yet he wasn’t always stilling storms, turning water into wine and healing people. In fact, for the first thirty years of his life, we do not hear of him doing even one So, why did Jesus do miracles?
First of all, Jesus did his miracles for the same reason he did everything else — to fulfill the promises of the Messiah proclaimed throughout the Old Testament. Unlike us, God keeps his Word. (see Luke 24:44) Second, miracles demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah and God Himself. (Matthew 11:4-6, John 14:11)
The miracles also do two other important things. One is they tell us something about Jesus and so about God. He has compassion on us and in our sufferings. (Matthew 14:14, Matthew 15:32, Luke 7:13-16) Unlike everyday miracle workers, who make a big show of their work, he spoke very few word when he worked miracle. The other thing they do is strengthen faith. The Evangelist John sums it up well: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30-31)
As great as these signs were, they were temporary. The wine at Cana was drunk, the calm waters became wild again, the five thousand would be hungry again, those healed, even raised from the dead, would die. But one miracle would last forever. Jesus died for the sins of the world, shattering the power of sin, death and the devil. He died and rested in the tomb and then rose from the dead breaking the seal of the grave forever. That was the greatest miracle of them all.
The best comparison to sin is leprosy. This skin disease, at its best, discolored your skin and hair while exiling you from your community. So, no family and no worship in the Temple or Synagogue. So, if you’re a Jew, you are cut off from your people and your God. At its worst, it exiled you while also wasting you away to death. Your skin becomes lumpy and scarred. Your fingers and toes begin to fall off. Eventually, you die from this disease and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. In St. Luke’s account of Jesus healing a man with leprosy, the man is described as being “covered in leprosy,” and so we know that his disease is both a bad case and advanced.
He takes a great risk in coming to Jesus. He isn’t allowed to do it. But his situation is so dire, that he is willing to risk it all and come anyway. And when he does, he begs for mercy. “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” Jesus is, and Jesus does. Jesus touches this unclean man, and that touch makes him clean.
We also hear in 2 Kings 5 about a pagan who is struck with leprosy. This man is a commander of the army of Syria, an enemy of Israel. A child he took from her home tells him of a man who could heal him, so he goes. He expects a show and brings costly gifts to pay for his healing.
Yet he is disappointed when there is no show. In fact, he doesn’t even get an audience with the prophet. It is a servant who goes and tells him to, “Go and wash in the Jordan….” He is angry he wasn’t told to do some great thing or to wash in one of the nicer rivers of his land. But his own servants remind him of the good news: Has he actually said to you, “Wash and be clean?” And so Naaman goes to the Jordan, washes as instructed, and is made clean. He is cleansed of his leprosy. And not only cleansed, but his skin is restored like that of a child. It is made better than it was when he contracted the disease.
Naaman sees he
is clean and has an epiphany. He realizes that this cleansing, through such
simple means as water from the Jordan, was the work of God. The text goes on to
tell how the gifts he brought were refused, for miracles and healings are not
to be purchased. It goes on to tell that Naaman knows he continues to need
forgiveness; continues to need absolution as he serves his king. When all is
said and done, Naaman is clean and goes in peace.
We confess with King David that we are conceived in iniquity. This means that since the Fall, we all have a spiritual leprosy like Naaman and the man who came to Jesus, from our very beginning. It is eternally fatal. There is no human cure. We are by nature exiled from our God. We need mercy. We need a Savior.
And in the Lord
Jesus Christ, mercy is given as he comes to stand in our place. To touch us and
take away our leprosy and make us bright and shiny and new. He takes on our
flesh to be our savior and substitute. Instead of suffering the eternal agony
and punishment that we deserve for our leprous condition, he is lifted up on
the cross, suffers and dies in our stead.
In this, he has already suffered for our leprosy. He has already been condemned by the condemnation we are owed. He has taken away all our sin and shame. And in our baptism, he makes us new. In our baptism, he promises to cleanse us, give us new life, and forgive us all our sins. In our baptism, Jesus shows us mercy. He says, “I will; be clean.”
The promises attached to simple water brings forth life from dead sinners. Sin is forgiven. Deliverance from death and the devil is delivered. And just like it wasn’t the words of the prophet or his messenger that accomplished the miracle, it wasn’t the words or hands of a pastor that did it either. It is the word and work and promise of God.
Rev. Brent Keller Peace Lutheran Church Alcester, SD
In John 2, we find our Lord at a wedding. He is there along with his mother and his disciples, all invited guests. In the course of the celebration, they run out of wine. And in the first century, running out of wine at a seven-day wedding feast was not a good thing for the host. It would be rather shameful, in fact. And so Mary comes to Jesus and tells them that the wine was gone. And already, we see she believes in her son. But we also see that she doesn’t have a full understanding.
Jesus responds to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” Of course, he is right. Having enough wine is not his responsibility. Ensuring that the banquet continues as normal is not why he has come. Undeterred, faithful Mary looks at the servants and tells them, “Do whatever he tells you.” And they do. And what are they told? To take the six stone water jars, jars used for ceremonial cleansing, and fill them to the brim. Fill them until they are about to run over. And they do.
And they obey the Lord when he tells them to take this water from the jars to the master of the feast. Now think about this request: You are to take the water that people wash their hands in and give it to your master to drink. It is water that you wouldn’t want to drink, but you are to give it to your master. How many of you would be willing to do that? Even if you wouldn’t, they do. “Do whatever he tells you.”
The water, now
wine, is brought to the master of the feast and he tastes it. And when he does,
it is not dirty water that hits his palate, but the best of the best vintage of
wine you could imagine. Only better. His response says it all. He calls the
bridegroom and, in a way, chides him for bringing out the best wine later on in
the feast.
Jesus submits to his mother and ensures that the joy of the feast is not interrupted. His time is not yet come, but he uses his power to provide for the needs of the newly married couple. But why? Jesus isn’t responsible for there being enough wine. He isn’t required to do anything. Why act? Because the is the first of his signs and upon doing it, he manifested his glory. And he manifests his glory for one simple reason: that his disciples would believe in him.
Throughout the
ministry of Jesus, the disciples are witnesses to the teaching of Jesus. The
miracles of Jesus. They see and experience his joy and pain. Reception and
rejection. As they walk with him, they learn to trust him. To believe that he
is the Son of God and the Redeemer of the world. But even as they do so, they
stumble and fall. At times, they doubt. And that should provide us some
comfort. They were with Jesus as he walked among them. We, some
two-thousand-years later, are with him, but we do not see him in the flesh.
Though we don’t
have Jesus in the body with us, we do have what the Holy Spirit had the
apostles write down for us. We have the Word of God. And in it, especially in
the Gospels, we read what Jesus did and what he has done for us. The Apostle
John even gives the reason for writing his Gospel: That all those who hear it
would believe in Jesus. That he is the Son of God, and that believing in him
you would have eternal life.
We see in the miracles of Jesus that they are not to make us “healthy, wealthy, and wise,” but to be wise in what is the Truth. To be wise in knowing and trusting in Jesus. This first and chief sign of Jesus at a wedding in Cana clues us into what all the Gospel, and indeed, the Bible is about. It is about Jesus. How he creates all and then comes to it after it falls to restore it.
The wedding in Cana is a joyous festival, but it runs out of wine. The church throughout the world today celebrates the joy of Christ weekly by coming together, hearing the Word, and participating in the sign, the sacraments, that our Lord has given us. But we also wait for the culmination of the wedding in Cana. We wait for our own wedding feast as the Bride of Christ. It is there that he will again bring out the best of the best wine, and we will live eternally with him.
Rev. Brent Keller Peace Lutheran Church Alcester, SD
Sometimes when surveys are taken of what people believe, the question is asked, “Who do you think Jesus is?” Good question. Jesus himself asked his disciples this question. Among the most popular answers are: “He was a great teacher” and “a new lawgiver — like Moses.” What people mean by this is often a guy with good advice into how you can live a good life here and now. From this perspective, there is nothing like the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew’s version) and the Sermon on the Plain. (Luke’s version) On the top of the list of most familiar teachings are: “Do to others what you would have them do to you,”(Luke 6:31) “Judge not,” (Matthew 7:1) and the Beatitudes. (Matthew 5:1-11, Luke 6:20-23)
Many sermons, Christian commentary and devotional literature treat the Beatitudes as a kind of recipe for the Christian life. They teach that Jesus is giving a new law on how to live your life at a higher level. They are taught to be the way to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) But such an analysis is missing the point. These are more descriptions of what Christians are like than what they must strive to do. They are predictions and promises, not commands to do to be saved or to be Super Christians.
But how can these be true? It is obvious to every Christian that they are far from poor in spirit–we think very highly of ourselves; we do not mourn our sins often — we kind of like them; we may say we want to be righteous, but keep our own favorite sins; we are mixed up at heart between the good we want to do and the evil we end up doing; we often want to carry grudges and have it out with our neighbor and dread persecution. Jesus’ line: “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” haunts us.
Yet the promises of the beatitudes come true because Jesus lived them out perfectly. Having done so, he took our sins and imperfections to cross where he died to pay their debt and broke their power over us. Now when God sees us, he sees only the ways we live the blessed life and not the way we fail to keep it. These blessings and others like them in Scripture are also promises of the way life will be for us when we live in the eternal kingdom after Christ at last returns to take us home. So, we are blessed and will be blessed, in God’s kingdom now and in his kingdom come.
