Guest preacher: Rev. Kevin Robson, LCMS Chief Mission Officer
Old Testament Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-26
Epistle: Colossians 3:1-11
Holy Gospel: Luke 12:13-21
Category: Sermon Page
Sermon Page
Grace Lutheran Church (LCMS)
Guest Pastor: Rev. Robert Zagore, LCMS Executive Director of National Mission.
Sermon Text: Luke 11:1-13
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread,
4 and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
July 17, 2022
“Distracted Discipleship and the One Thing Needful” (Luke 10:38-42)
Are you anxious and troubled about many things? Does your busy-ness distract you from the one thing needful? If so, join the club. That’s where I find myself all too often. But if that’s you too, then our message today is what you need to hear. For Jesus is in the house today, and when Jesus speaks, we need to listen. And so our theme this morning: “Distracted Discipleship and the One Thing Needful.”
Our text is the Holy Gospel for today, from Luke chapter 10. Jesus enters a village. We know from elsewhere in the gospels that this village is Bethany. Two sisters live there, Martha and Mary. I mention Martha first, because she seems to be the one running the household. It says that Martha welcomed Jesus “into her house.”
What else do we learn about Martha? Well, I’m going to go ahead and call this woman “the Martha Stewart of Bethany.” Like Martha Stewart, this Martha is “the hostess with the mostest.” She pulls out all the stops for her honored guest. She’s busy, busy, busy, getting things ready. I can just see her in the kitchen, preparing the hors d’oeuvres: crab cakes, deviled eggs–no, wait, scratch the deviled eggs. And ixnay on the crab cakes too; they’re not kosher. Better go with the gefilte fish and chopped liver paté.
Martha is hustling back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room: getting out a nice table runner, putting a beautiful hydrangea arrangement on the table as the centerpiece. So many things to do to make things nice for Jesus!
Meanwhile, what is her sister, Mary, doing to help? Nothing! “Are you kidding me?” Martha thinks to herself. “I’m out here slaving away, while my sister is in the living room, just sitting on her behind!” Yeah, Martha, your sister Mary is sitting is in the living room, alright, because that’s the room where the living Lord Jesus is, and he’s giving out his words of life to those who will listen.
But Martha doesn’t get that yet. She’s preoccupied with all the preparations. So she goes and complains to Jesus: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” Yeah, you tell him, Martha! Then he can tell Little Miss Lazybones to get off her duff and get out to the kitchen!
But no, Jesus does not do that. Instead, he’s got a word to say to Martha: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
This is a rebuke from Jesus, but it’s a gentle one. He’s not blasting away at her, like he does with the scribes and Pharisees. He’s giving her a kind correction. You can hear it in his voice: “Martha, Martha,” he begins. When someone does that repeating of a name in the Bible, it usually conveys an attitude of care and concern and love. Think of David saying of his son, “Absalom, Absalom”; or Jesus saying to Simon Peter, “Simon, Simon”; or Jesus lamenting over the city, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Here it’s “Martha, Martha.” What Jesus is about to say is prompted by love.
Dear friends, when Jesus has to give you a mid-course correction, even a gentle rebuke, he’s not doing that out of anger. He’s doing it out of love. He’s not rejecting you; he’s correcting you. And sometimes we all need that. Your good shepherd knows you by name, and when you go astray, he loves you enough to call you back on the right path.
Which is what he does with Martha: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,” he says. You see, that was Martha’s problem here. You’ve seen those warning signs on the highways about the dangers of “distracted driving”? Well, Martha is having a problem with “distracted discipleship.” Martha, Martha, forget the hors d’oeuvres and the hydrangeas! At least for a bit. Your priorities are out of whack. Oh, there will be a time for all that. But something else is more important right now.
Which Jesus now gets to: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.” Note the contrast between the “many things” and the “one thing.” There are so many things that Martha is anxious and troubled about. But in the process, she’s missing out on the one thing she really needs.
And what is this one thing needful? Jesus tells us: “One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion. . . .” This seems counterintuitive in a way. It goes against our way of thinking. We usually think, “Don’t just sit there; do something!” But Jesus turns it around: “Don’t just do something; sit there!” There is a time to sit, and there is a time to serve. Just don’t get them confused. And this was a time to sit. Because Jesus was doing the serving.
“The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The one thing needful is to be served by Jesus. It’s like what Jesus said to Peter when Jesus came to wash his feet: “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” We need to be served by Jesus. That’s the number-one priority. All things else, including our acts of service, fall in line after that. Martha needed to learn that.
And so do we. How has Jesus served us? By going to the cross and giving his life there as our ransom, as our redemption. We needed that above all. For we were lost and dead in our sin, and all our activity, all our busy-ness, could not rescue us from that. Only Jesus could. And he has. Our beautiful Savior has purchased our forgiveness by his holy, precious blood. God counts us righteous for Christ’s sake. It’s nothing we did. It’s what he has done for us. We have forgiveness, life, and eternal salvation in his holy name. And Jesus’ words give us what he won for us.
Mary is soaking up those words of Jesus. And Jesus isn’t going to let anything interfere with that. He tells Martha: “Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” “Martha, you may have been preparing a five-star, six-course meal. But Mary has already chosen the best portion on the menu. And I’m not going to let you take that away from her. In fact, you would do well to sit here and join her.”
Friends, do you ever let your busy-ness or your being anxious and troubled about many things–do you let that distract you from the one thing needful? For instance, any time you let something else get in the way of your coming to church on Sunday morning and receiving from Jesus–unless there’s an ice storm or you’re sick or something like that)–any time you choose to skip out on church when you could be here, you are making the wrong choice. You’re pulling a Martha, when Jesus would have you be a Mary.
It’s Third Commandment stuff: “The Third Commandment. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” “Hold it sacred”: That means, Don’t let anything else get in the way. I’m going to be on vacation the next two Sundays, but I’ve already scouted out where I’ll be going to church. Because it will be Sunday morning, and that is sacred time. It’s the Lord’s Day, when Jesus is giving out gifts, and so that’s where I want to be. No matter how long I live, I will always need the one thing needful. By the way, if you are ever going to be out of town on a Sunday morning, and you need help finding a good church to go to, I can help you with that.
Today you are here in this church, in God’s house, where Jesus is giving out his goods. You have chosen the good portion, and it will not be taken from you–not now, not ever. Jesus is here in the living room, and you are sitting and listening to his words of life. Jesus is doing the serving, and you are on the receiving end. That’s a good place, it’s the best place, to be. Here Jesus has prepared a table for us, the Lord’s Table, where you will receive from his hand his very body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins. This is a foretaste of the feast to come, for our risen Lord has ascended into heaven and is preparing a place for us to be there with him.
Brothers and sisters in Christ–including you sisters Martha and Mary–when you get distracted in your discipleship, remember this: The one essential thing, the one thing needful, is to be served by our Lord Jesus Christ and to receive from him.
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
July 10, 2022
“The Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:25-37)
Our text is the Holy Gospel for today, from Luke chapter 10. It’s the parable of “The Good Samaritan.” And, as often happens, there’s something that happens in real life that leads Jesus to tell this or that parable. On this occasion, it’s an interaction Jesus has with a certain lawyer in the crowd. Now when it says “lawyer” here, it’s not talking about the kind of lawyer you see advertising their law office on a billboard or TV commercial. It’s not the kind of prosecuting or defense attorney you see portrayed on TV shows or movies. No, when it says “lawyer” here, it’s talking about an expert in the Law of Moses. This would be a Jewish scholar who knows all the moral, civic, and ceremonial laws of ancient Israel, as found in the books of Moses.
This expert in the Mosaic law asks Jesus a question: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And, as Jesus often does, he answers a question with a question of his own: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And the lawyer replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus commends his reply: “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
Notice what’s going on here. The lawyer asks, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Do you see what’s wrong with the premise of the question? It presumes there is something you can do to earn eternal life by way of your works. And that isn’t going to work. You and I and that lawyer back then–we can never do enough works to earn our way into heaven. Our good works aren’t good enough. They can’t offset or outweigh our sins.
So Jesus needs this lawyer and us to realize this, that we can’t do enough to gain eternal life. He tells the lawyer, “You know the Law of Moses. How would you sum it up?” And the lawyer responds with two verses from the Old Testament that really do sum up what God wants us to do: to love God with everything that’s in us, and to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. And Jesus says: “That’s right. Go ahead and do those two things, love God, love your neighbor, do them consistently and perfectly your whole life long, and you will indeed gain eternal life by way of your works.”
Oh, now the lawyer is on the spot. He realizes that’s a pretty tall order, so he tries to cut it down to a manageable size. “Love God? I can put on a pretty good show for that. I can make it look like I love God by going through all the religious motions. But loving my neighbor? People might notice when I’m not acting so kind toward my neighbor.”
So, what the lawyer does in order to justify himself–that is, to make himself look good after painting himself into a corner for having just said that you need to love God and love your neighbor to inherit eternal life–“desiring to justify himself,” he says to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
The lawyer is trying to make loving my neighbor into something manageable, into something I can do a pretty good job at. Thus, if I can limit who my neighbor is, that makes my job a whole lot easier. Because I know I can love the people who love me, the people I like and get along with. Yeah, I can love my own peeps pretty well. As long as I don’t have to love those other people, the people I don’t like, the people I look down upon. So, Jesus, who qualifies as my neighbor?
And that leads Jesus now to tell a story, to make the point that the loving-your-neighbor commandment doesn’t depend on who qualifies to be your neighbor. God doesn’t put a limit on that. You’re looking at it the wrong way, son!
And that brings us to the parable itself. Jesus begins: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.” Well, those guys, yeah, the robbers–they certainly are not loving their neighbor as themselves! They’ve robbed the poor guy, beat him up really bad, and left him there lying on the road! And I, I’m not like them! I’ve never robbed anyone or beat them up half-dead. OK, so far, Jesus, I’m on board with you. I’m keeping the commandment very well compared to those guys! Good for me!
But the story is just beginning. Jesus continues: “Now by chance a priest was going down that road.” Oh, a priest! Now we’ve got a good guy entering the story. I’m sure he’ll do the right thing. I mean, he’s a priest, after all, and who can be holier than that? “Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him . . . he passed by on the other side.” Oh. “He passed by on the other side.” That doesn’t sound very good when you put it that way. But, uh, maybe he was in a hurry to do something religiously important. Or maybe he avoided the half-dead guy because he thought the fella was 100% dead, and coming into contact with a dead body would make him ceremonially unclean. Or–well, anyway, I’m sure the priest had a good reason.
Next man up: “So likewise a Levite.” Ah, a Levite! Another good guy. The Levites did all sorts of things at the temple, and they knew the Levitical laws inside out. But wait: “So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him . . . passed by on the other side.” Ugh. Now we’re oh-for-two. Two highly religious guys, and neither one of them does anything to help the half-dead guy on the road. It sounds like Jesus is making a point here.
He is. And the point is, it’s not just the robbers who broke God’s law by beating the guy up and stealing his stuff. They committed what we call sins of commission, actively doing wrong to one’s neighbor. But the priest and the Levite are breaking God’s law, by not doing anything to help the poor guy. He was lying right there in their path, and they went out of their way to not help him! They are committing what we call sins of omission, when, even if we haven’t done anything wrong, we don’t do anything right, either! We choose not to help our neighbor, when we have the opportunity to do so. That ain’t right, either.
So the beat-up, half-dead guy is still lying there, and no one is helping him. Soon he’ll be a fully dead guy in the middle of the road, stinkin’ to high, high heaven! Is there no one who will stop and help? Wait, I think Jesus sees someone coming. . . . “But a Samaritan. . . .” Oh, wait. False alarm. It’s only a Samaritan. He can’t be any good. He’s a Samaritan, after all, and we all know the Samaritans are a bunch of low-lifes who aren’t as good as us Jews. “But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him . . . he had compassion.” Huh? What? The Samaritan had compassion on him? How can that be? Well, OK, he was moved with pity. He felt sorry for the guy. Fine. But then he must have moved on, right?
Wrong. True compassion is more than a feeling. True compassion will move you into action. And that’s what this Samaritan does: “He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.” What the Samaritan does actually helps the guy. He treats the man’s wounds. He puts him on his own animal, which means the Samaritan has to walk. He takes him to an inn, where the fella can recuperate. The Samaritan takes care of the beat-up guy. This is very inconvenient. The Samaritan went out of his way, not to avoid the man, but to help him.
What’s more, Jesus says, “The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’” This is costly love! The Samaritan goes the extra mile and spares no expense to love his neighbor in very practical care and help. Jesus is saying, this is how you keep God’s law of loving your neighbor as yourself.
Friends, this is exactly what Jesus has done for us. He saw us lying there on the road, not just half-dead, but fully dead spiritually. That’s what we were, dead in our trespasses and sins. Dead, unable to help ourselves. But the Son of God came down from heaven and came to where we were, and he had compassion on us. He didn’t pass us by. No, Christ came and dwelt among us. His compassion moved him into action.
Jesus’ love is a costly love. He has redeemed us, not with gold or silver, but with his holy precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death, which are worth far more than all the denarii on earth. Christ lifts us up by raising us up to new life and eternal life in the waters of Holy Baptism. He brings us into the welcoming inn of the church, where the Holy Spirit cares for us through the means of grace, and the holy people of God care for one another. Jesus comes today with healing, the perfect and eternal healing promised in the bread and wine that are the body and blood of Christ.
The good Samaritan in the story is acting like how Jesus himself acts toward us. This is how you love your neighbor as yourself. So, now Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three”–that is, the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan–“which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” And the lawyer has to answer, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus says, “You go, and do likewise.”
Notice, lawyers, it’s not about who qualifies as your neighbor, to be worthy of your mercy. No, it’s about: Are you a merciful person? Will you be a neighbor to whomever it is who lies in your path? That’s what the loving-your-neighbor commandment means. And, all you lawyers out there, if you go and do likewise, you will soon discover you don’t do as good a job of that as the Samaritan in the story. Thus you will learn that you are not able to inherit eternal life by what you do. Your works aren’t good enough.
But there is one whose works are good enough. It’s Jesus. It’s through his good works of loving his Father and loving you, the dead guys on the road–it’s through Jesus Christ that you will surely inherit eternal life. For, dear friends, Jesus is our Good Samaritan!
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
July 3, 2022
“Peace Be to This House!” (Luke 10:1-20)
“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Yes, peace to you! Peace be to this house! That’s what Jesus told me to tell you, isn’t it? He sends out his laborers into the harvest field and instructs them, “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house.’” So today, the first thing I want to say to you is what Jesus told me to tell you: Peace be to this house.
Friends, today I want to tell you why you need this peace and what kind of peace it is. I want to tell you where this peace comes from and how it gets to you. And I want you to know how you can be sure that you have this peace. So our theme this morning: “Peace Be to This House!”
First of all, why do you need peace? Simply put, because we all are surrounded by conflict in many ways. We have conflict in the home, conflict between husbands and wives, conflict in families. On a larger scale, as we’ve seen in our country this past month, we have conflict and division in our nation. The whole world is in desperate need of peace.
But all these conflicts are symptoms of an even deeper problem, which is our conflict with God. We fight against God, we fail to listen to his word, we refuse to walk in his ways. Our basic conflict is with God. Each of us wants to be his or her own god. We want to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, instead of trusting our Creator’s direction for our lives. This has been going on for a long time. It’s called sin. And it’s a killer. Literally. “The wages of sin is death,” the Bible says. So, how can we have peace when we have death looming over us, like the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads? Our guilt before God is tucked away in the back of our conscience, and you can hear it if you listen closely. This, in spite of all the numbing agents we use in our guilt-free society to block that sound out. Deep down, though, we know that something is terribly wrong between God and us. And there’s nothing we can do to change it.
So we need peace. We need something real that can deal with our deep-down problem. We need what Jesus offers. Jesus tells us of a peace that will deal, effectively, once and for all, with our big problems of sin and guilt and death. A peace that will break down the wall of hostility and conflict that we’ve raised up against God. Only Jesus gives this peace.
The thing is, though, even when you have this peace, your life may not look all that peaceful. In fact, your life–the outward circumstances of your life–may look rather stressful. In our text, Jesus sends out his laborers into the harvest field, but it’s no bed of roses. He sends them out like lambs in the midst of wolves. And a lamb doesn’t stand much of a chance against a bunch of wolves. Being a Christian can be difficult, even dangerous. Not very peaceful–outwardly, at least. Even so, there is a peace that Jesus gives that can deal with our trouble-filled life. We need it. Man, do we need it!
So where does this peace come from, and how do you get it? Jesus tells us. He says, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” That’s what he tells his messengers to say on his behalf as he sends them out: “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”
You see, the peace that Jesus gives only comes with the coming of the kingdom–the kingdom of God, that is. The kingdoms of this world, the kingdoms that men come up with, cannot produce this peace. Only God can, and when his kingdom comes near to us, that’s something new and different from what the world can come up with.
The coming of the kingdom of God brings with it all the blessings of that kingdom: peace, joy, wholeness, healing. Peace with God forever. The beginnings of peace now also among us, as in the church we learn how to love and forgive one another. Peace within our souls, knowing that God is at peace with us and he accepts us and takes us for his own.
Yes, even joy, rejoicing, the kind Jesus is talking about when he says, “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Did you know that, that your names are written in heaven? They are! God knows you and loves you and cares for you–yes, even you! He took you for his own and wrote your name in heaven when he put his name on you in Holy Baptism, the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Your name is written in heaven, written there in the Lamb’s book of life, written in the precious blood of Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
So that’s how it works: The kingdom comes to you. You don’t earn your way into it. God writes your name into his book. You don’t write it there yourself. God comes to you. He is the source of your peace. And that makes it a peace you can rely on. The direction is always from God to us. He gives us his gifts. He finds us when we weren’t even looking for him. That is the way of God’s kingdom.
“The kingdom of God has come near to you.” Jesus tells his messengers to say that, because Jesus himself has come near to you. The Son of God came down from heaven and became man. He became one of us, lived where we live. He experienced the conflict and fighting and lack of peace that this world has to give. Jesus stood where we stand. Indeed, he stood in our place. He took into himself, in his body, our sin and death. Jesus experienced the wrath of God in our place. Even though he had done no wrong, he took the judgment for us wrongdoers. Now there‘s no more judgment standing against us. Jesus took it all. He drank the cup of God’s wrath and leaves us a cup of blessing in its place.
Jesus did this for us on the cross. That’s where the kingdom of God finds its strange destiny. It doesn’t look right for a king to be hanging on a cross, but there he is: Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews–and the king of the Gentiles, too. He is your king, and the kingdom of God comes near to you in the Christ of the cross.
The kingdom of God has come near to you! That’s why Jesus came, to establish the kingdom of God here on earth. And mission accomplished! He did it! He did it all. Jesus rose from the dead, showing that the chains of sin and the shackles of death have been shattered. The serpent’s head has been dealt a death blow. Satan no longer reigns over us. We have transferred kingdoms. Christ Jesus has brought us into the kingdom of light and life, the kingdom of God.
This is for you, and God wants you to know it. That’s why Jesus says to his messengers, “The one who hears you hears me.” You see, when you get this good news from Jesus’ messenger–that is, from your pastor, the minister of Christ–it’s as good and as certain as if Jesus himself were standing right here delivering it into your ears. “I forgive you all your sins,” your pastor says–and they are forgiven! Not because there’s anything special about your pastor as a man –there isn’t. It’s just that Jesus wants you to hear it with your own ears and to know that it’s for real. So he sends his spokesman, his ambassador, here to you, just like he sent out those messengers so long ago.
You are listening to Jesus every Sunday when you come here and listen to his preacher. God wants you to know that your sins really are forgiven! The kingdom of God comes near to you–right here, where the Word is being preached! You’re listening to Jesus! Jesus comes and speaks to you, here in the preaching of the Holy Gospel and in the words that consecrate the Holy Supper. Jesus is speaking to you! He really wants you to know these things and to receive his life and forgiveness.
You see, when Jesus speaks, things happen. His word delivers what it says. When he says, “I forgive you all your sins,” it really happens. When he says, “This is my body, this is my blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins,” that’s what you are receiving. When Jesus says, through his messenger, “Peace be to this house,” that is exactly what you get: real peace, peace from God and peace with God. It happens, because Jesus says so.
This is not some vague, nice wish: “Peace be with you,” as sort of a “Have a nice day.” No, this is the real deal. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” Jesus assures us. “Not as the world gives do I give to you.” This is the peace that comes with the kingdom of God, the peace that Jesus speaks through his word, the peace delivered by his messengers. This is the “realest” kind of peace you can have. You can bank on it. You can build your life on it. You can take it to the bank–take it to your house, take it to your school and workplace–every place where you need God’s peace to rest upon you. Take this peace even to your deathbed. Yes, the peace of God will sustain you even there.
And so today, and every time I preach God’s word to you, I always close with these words that you can count on: “The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Amen.