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Gate of Heaven

Reminiscere (2016)

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Reminiscere

February 21, 2016 AD

Old Testament: Genesis 32:22-32

Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-7

Gospel: Matthew 15:21-28

Click here to listen and subscribe to Pastor McClean’s sermons on iTunes.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

From the Gospel for this the second Sunday in Lent:

“But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help!’ And He answered, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ Then Jesus answered her, “O woman great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.” – Saint Matthew 15:25-28

It’s often been said that we Christians learn more from the hymns we sing than from the sermons we hear. Well that’s of course a humbling thought for preachers like me, but I happen to believe it’s true. We Christians learn more from the hymns we sing than from the sermons we hear. So if you remember nothing else of what I say this morning, remember these words of a hymn which I believe wonderfully expresses the teaching of the Gospel for this second Sunday in the Lent. Speaking of the Savior the hymn-writer says:

When darkness veils his lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
   On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
   All other ground is sinking sand.

“When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace.” And you might well say that in the gospel just read darkness does veil Christ’s lovely face; in fact you might say that we see a stern and unfamiliar Jesus.

After a confrontation with the self-righteous scribes and Pharisees— the religious establishment of Jesus’ day— Jesus leaves the familiar neighborhood of Galilee and withdraws to the Gentile territory of Tyre and Sidon. And there a Canaanite woman, not a Jew but a Gentile, comes and pleads for Jesus’ help. To the Jews this Canaanite woman is a nobody and on top of that has a daughter “severely possessed by a demon.”

And yet this Canaanite woman comes to Jesus, no doubt having heard of Him through the crowds which not only heard Him but also witnessed His healing of those who were sick and troubled. She addresses Him as “Lord,” and “Son of David,” as the long-awaited Messiah and Savior. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.”

But Jesus doesn’t say anything in response to her plea, and His disciples urge Him to get rid of this nuisance! Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But the Gentile woman doesn’t give up but comes and kneels at Jesus’ feet saying, “Lord, help me!” And Jesus replies: “It is not fair to take the children’s bread”— meaning the Jews’ bread— “and throw it to the dogs”— meaning the Gentiles, like this Canaanite woman. But the woman still doesn’t give up! “When darkness veils His lovely face I rest on His unchanging grace…” She speaks words of astonishing faith and humility: She replies, “Yes, Lord”— she doesn’t contradict Jesus— “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” As if to say, “Well as a Canaanite and not a Jew, I’m not much, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Such humility. Such faith in Jesus. And Jesus replies, “O woman, great is your faith!” and her daughter was instantly.

So what is Jesus teaching us here?

First of all, we learn that we must expect times in our lives when God seems strange, distant, when He seems to be indifferent to our plight and our cries for help. So it was with this Canaanite woman and such is the experience of every Christian. In such times God is teaching us to trust Him— no matter what! One thinks of the words of the much-afflicted Job: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

The second thing we learn here is that God never fails to answer our prayers in His time and in His way, even when we seem to be waiting for an answer for months and even years on end. He alone knows what is best for you and for me, and He also knows that at times carefree, happy days can be the greatest danger of all, as we then so often forget Him. And that is why in the ancient Litany, which Dr. Luther held to be the best prayer on earth after the Lord’s Prayer, the Church prays that God would deliver us not only “in all time of our tribulation” but also “in all time of our prosperity.”

Finally, the sufferings we Christians in fact endure are not punishment, because Jesus on the cross bore all the punishment we by our sins have deserved. Yes, we do indeed experience the painful consequences of our sins, but this is not punishment but rather a way in which a merciful Lord permits us to experience sin’s painful consequences so that we may turn from them and live.

“When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace.” Even when the face of Jesus seems stern and strange, it is still always the face once crowned with thorns out of love for you and for me and for every child of Adam’s lost and fallen race. No one could see God’s love in that crucified body, that thorn-crowned face, but there most clearly God’s heart of love is revealed. And there can be no greater proof of His forgiving love than the gift He now gives us at this altar— the truly present body which once hung on Calvary’s cross, and the out-poured blood received under the outward appearances of the consecrated bread and wine. Here truly we taste the goodness of the Lord!

When darkness veils his lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
   On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
   All other ground is sinking sand.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. +Amen.

Gate of Heaven, Uncategorized

Invocavit (2016)

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Invocavit

February 14, 2016 AD

Old Testament: 1 Samuel 17:40-51

Epistle: Hebrews 4:14-16

Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11
 
 
 
Click here to listen and subscribe to Pastor McClean’s sermons on iTunes.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text for this day is from the third and fourth chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel:

And when Jesus was baptized, He went up immediately from the water, and, behold, the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him; and, lo, a voice from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased.” Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And the tempter came and said to Him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

It was of course C. S. Lewis who said that Satan’s greatest success in modern times is his success in persuading countless souls that he is a harmless myth— despite the fact that the last century saw evil perhaps unparalleled in human history. And what shall we say of this new century, now halfway through its second decade? Well, C. S. Lewis was right! Satan’s greatest success is his success in persuading countless souls that he is a harmless myth, a joke.

Not so St. Paul who wrote of Satan, “We are not ignorant of his devices.”

The gospel writers Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us that immediately after Jesus’ baptism He was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.

Now there is a great deal which can be said about this deeply mysterious story of God-Incarnate’s battle with the Prince of Darkness, but for today let’s focus on just one aspect of that battle. At Jesus’ baptism, just before His fasting and temptation, Jesus hears the voice of God the Father proclaim: “This is My Beloved Son.” But what then does Satan do? He tries to sow seeds of doubt in our Lord’s mind and heart. God the Father says, “This is My beloved Son!” Satan whispers, “If you are the Son of God…”— if you are the Son of God— “command that these stones be made bread… if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple…,” as if to say, “God the Father’s word is not enough. ‘This is My beloved Son’? Let’s have some proof here.” Satan says, “If you are the Son of God,” echoing his words to Eve at the very beginning of the human story: “Did God say? Did God really say?” No wonder we call Satan “The Old Evil Foe”— up to the same old tricks he’s been up to since the beginning.

Now at your baptism, you didn’t literally hear God the Father say, “This is my beloved Child,” but you were through the waters of that heavenly washing truly made “the child of God, a member of Christ, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” But just as Satan tried to sow seeds of doubt in the mind and heart of our Lord, just so he tries the very same thing with us. He tries to bring about doubt as to what and who by God’s tender mercies we truly are.

Sinners, yes! But sinners forgiven and cleansed through Jesus’ precious blood: as our baptism assures us, as the word of absolution assures us, and as Christ’s truly present-in-the-Sacrament Body and Blood assure us. More than anything else Satan wants you to forget, to forget all that. He wants to sow seeds of doubt in your mind and heart: “You? You as you are!— a child of God?” Satan whispers, “How can that be? Just look at all your troubles and difficulties. Yes, look at your sins!” And Satan is past master at bringing to life the memory of sins long ago repented of, forgiven, but which still come back to trouble our conscience. “You, you as you are, a child of God?”

Our Lord held fast to the word His Father spoke at His baptism: “This is My Beloved Son”; just so we cling to God’s word of tender mercy put upon us with the water of our baptism whose power is the Blood of Jesus. Just listen to some wonderful words of that splendid preacher John Donne. Donne says:

Against this [accusation of the devil] there is no other medicine but the blood of Christ. And therefore, whensoever this apprehension of God’s future judgment bites on you, be sure to present to it the blood of your Savior. Never consider God’s judgement for sin alone but rather in company with the blood of Christ. It is but the hissing of the Serpent, the whispering of Satan when he surprises you in a melancholy midnight of dejection of spirit and lays your sins before you. Look not on your sins so inseparably that you cannot see Christ, too! Come not to Confession to God without consideration of the promises of the Gospel.

In the words of John Newton:

How sweet the name of JESUS sounds
In a believer’s car!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.

By Him my prayers acceptance gain,
Although with sin defiled;—
Satan accuses me in vain
And I am owned a child.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus to life everlasting. +Amen.

Gate of Heaven, Uncategorized

Ash Wednesday (2016)

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Ash Wednesday

February 10, 2016 AD

Old Testament: Joel 2:12-19
 
 
Gospel: Matthew 6:16-21
 
 
 
 
Click here to listen and subscribe to Pastor McClean’s sermons on iTunes.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Gospel which was read just a few minutes ago is a portion from Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount where he talks about prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. He doesn’t command His followers to pray, to fast, to give alms; He assumes that His followers will pray, and fast, and give alms— the three traditional disciplines of the holy season of Lent, which we begin this night.

After a long and difficult winter, the kind of winter we’ve been having this year, just about everybody welcomes the coming of spring: the long winter nights give way to days of increasing light, winter’s cold and ice and snow are banished by the warm spring days; the crocuses and daffodils begin to lift their heads above the soil, and wherever we look we see signs of new and radiant life. Yes, after a long and difficult winter we welcome the coming of spring!

Well, spring in that sense is still some weeks away; but today, Ash Wednesday, we begin that season of the Church year which has often and rightly been called “the springtime of the soul.” In fact the word “Lent” is derived from an Old English word, lencten, which simply means “spring.”—”lencten” probably because of the lengthening days. And just as we welcome the coming of spring, just so we Christians welcome this “springtime of the soul.” For during this holy season, the seed of new and eternal life which was planted in us in Baptism is nourished and grows:

All the winter of our sins,
Long and dark, is flying
From His light, to whom we give
Laud and praise undying.

The “winter of our sins” is banished by the light and love of God’s crucified and risen Son. And those traditional Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are aids in reaching out for that love and light.

In prayer we consciously reach out for love and light for others and for ourselves. Through alms-giving, which includes every act of kindness and generosity toward others, we try to reflect in some small way God’s kindness and generosity toward us poor sinners. In fasting we experience hunger and thereby learn that we are needy, radically dependent beings whose life is not our own: “It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves,” and by foregoing for a season perfectly good and legitimate pleasures we get rid of some of life’s distractions so that we can more clearly see ourselves as we are, God as He is, and also what God is asking of us through all the seemingly  insignificant instances of life as we experience it day by day. As the nineteenth century Christian poet John Keble put it:

The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves— a road
To bring us daily nearer God.

And so the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving can be compared to weeding your garden— not an end in itself, but a means to an end. You weed your garden so that the flowers you’ve planted won’t be choked by weeds nor their beauty hidden. Weeding is not an end in itself and the traditional Lenten disciplines are not an end in themselves, still less are they a means of somehow gaining God’s favor! For God does not need our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; you and I do! Because through them we weed the garden of our souls so we can then bloom with the fruit of the Spirit: the “fruit” that is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

So how is it with you, with me, as we again begin our Lenten journey to Calvary’s cross and on to the Lord’s resurrection? Is it still winter— our hearts cold and hardened with apathy and indifference, resentment and bitterness, perhaps even a dose of despair? Is our practice of religion cold and formal, or is it the expression of a grateful heart warmed by love beyond understanding— the love of God who came down into our terror and torment and death to raise us up into His life and freedom and joy?

If it is still winter in our hearts, then the Lenten spring is here to bring us back to life: to warm our hearts with the fire of Christ’s love and to revive our flagging spirits through the gentle dew of His mercy toward us sinners— sinners, who by our misuse of God’s gifts have made of God’s good world a veritable wasteland of sorrow and want; and who, by sinning against one another, in fact sin against the One who has called each one of us out of nothingness into being: God who is Love. It was Saint Isaac the Syrian, a fourth century Bishop of Nineveh, who wrote:

Those who understand that they have sinned against love undergo greater sufferings than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart which has sinned against love is more piercing than any other pain.

Well those are not just words of a Christian bishop who lived more than fifteen hundred years ago. I can truthfully say that they ring true to my own experience. And what a terrible thing it is to realize that I have sinned against someone who loves me very much. And that is true of every last one of us because each one of us has sinned against Love: the eternal Love who called us into being and then saved us from sin and death by His bitter passion and death. Yes, “the sorrow which takes hold of the heart which has sinned against love is more piercing than any other pain.”

Healing for that pain can only be found through the “tree” which Saint John, exiled on Patmos, saw in mystic vision: that “tree” which is the cross of Jesus, “the tree of life whose leaves were for the healing of the nations.” There alone do we find healing for the wounds of sin, balm for our troubled consciences, and peace through the precious blood of Jesus which cleanses and refreshes every sad and broken heart.

After a long and difficult winter, we welcome the coming of spring. Let us then welcome the coming of Lent, the “springtime of the soul.” In the words of the ancient liturgy:

The Lenten spring shines forth,
The flower of repentance…
Let us cast off the works of darkness,
Let us put on the armor of light,
     that passing through Lent as through a great sea,
     we may reach the third day resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of our souls.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus to life everlasting. +Amen.

 

Announcements

Special Announcement: Divine Service Cancelled

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We will unfortunately not be having Divine Service tomorrow, January 24th (Septuagesima Sunday), due to the blizzard. Stay home, read the Word, sing a hymn, and look forward to next Sunday when— Lord willing— we will gather around Christ’s gifts once more!

The Scripture readings for tomorrow are as follows:

  • Old Testament: Exodus 17:1-17
  • Epistle: I Corinthians 9:24-10:5
  • Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16

The hymn of the day is “Salvation Unto Us Has Come,” which is #377 in TLH and #555 in LSB.

May God— the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit— give His holy angels charge over us and keep us all safe and warm during this time of inclement weather.

 

Under the +Mercy

Vicar Demarest

 

Gate of Heaven, Uncategorized

Trinity 24 (2015)

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Trinity 24

November 15, 2015 AD

Old Testament: Isaiah 51:9-16

Epistle: Colossians 1:9-14

Gospel: Matthew 9:18-26
 
 
 
Click here to listen and subscribe to Pastor McClean’s sermons on iTunes.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

“And when Jesus came to the ruler’s house, and saw the flute players and the crowd making a tumult, He said, ‘Depart, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed Him to scorn.” (St. Matthew 9:23f)

At this time of the year when earth begins to feel the cold hand of winter, the hours of darkness lengthen, and nature itself in some sense dies, we Christians begin to think about the  end: the end of life, the end of the world. But we do that in the dazzling light of Jesus’ resurrection, of which the raising of Jairus’ daughter in the Gospel just read is a sign— a sign pointing forward to Jesus’ resurrection and ours, when in the end He comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. But the mourners just laugh Jesus to scorn.

christ-1522Now it’s no secret that we live in a day when the resurrection hope is dismissed as a matter of little concern which one may or may not believe, or else is trivialized as nothing more than a poetic way of saying that— well— despite everything, life still— somehow— has meaning. Now this faith weariness, this loss of Christian nerve, this death of genuine hope is of course by no means something new. You might even say that it’s as old as the human story. Job asks, “If a man die, will he live again?” And the New Testament Scriptures give plenty of evidence as to how this hope was then dismissed by both Jew and Gentile. The party of the Sadducees in Judaism knew nothing of the resurrection hope, and when Saint Paul preached the resurrection to the sophisticated audience gathered on Mars Hill in Athens, “some mocked him and others said, ‘We’ll listen to you again some other time,'” more or less dismissing him out of hand. Yes, the rejection of the resurrection hope is nothing new!

In fact members of the Church St. Paul founded in the city of Corinth kept asking— anxiously, “How are the dead raised? With is what kind of body do they come?” And St. Paul answers their anxious question by using a comparison: the picture of seed sown in the earth. Of the body buried and risen St. Paul says, “What is sown in the earth is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

And it is at this point that one so often finds confusion worse confounded because that word “spiritual” is one of the slipperiest, most easily misunderstood words there is! It can mean so many different things! And so today, just as in St. Paul’s day, when we people hear the word, “spiritual,” they jump to the conclusion, “If spiritual, then certainly not bodily.” But that conclusion contradicts everything we as Christians believe!

For us Christians spirit and body are by no means mutually exclusive, since God who is spirit in fact took on Himself from blessed Mary a body and has never put it aside— although that body born of Mary, crucified and buried, is now risen and wondrously changed in a way we can’t even begin to understand this side of our own resurrection. So when Saint Paul speaks of the resurrection body as a “spiritual body,” he doesn’t mean “not bodily at all”, but a body totally responsive to the Holy Spirit who, as we learned in our Catechism, “will on the last day raise me me and all the dead and give to me and all believers in Christ eternal life.”

The life we now know, this side of the resurrection— despite all its tragedies, sorrows, pains and absurdities, its own manifest injustices and intractable problems— is nevertheless God’s precious gift, full of joy and delight and wonderful surprise— truly a gift of love! And where there is so much love, there must be more, always more. And how do we know that? Because on the first day of the week the Lord of Love rose from the dead. And not only on Easter Day but every Lord’s Day we celebrate His glorious resurrection, receiving Him in that wonderful Sacrament which is me the sure Pledge of our own resurrection, as we hear in the dismissal from the Lord’s Table: “The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen and preserve you in body and soul to life everlasting.” And so here at the altar we know and truly receive our Savior’s hope-sustaining love.

Preaching to some no doubt skeptical Oxford undergraduates about fifty years ago, Austin Farrer had this to say:

They think too little of [God’s] love who call this hope in question. Belief in this infinite and invaluable gift, this partaking of God’s eternity, is the acid-test of genuine faith. Leave this out of account, and you can can equivocate forever on God’s very existence: your talk of God can always be talk about the backside of nature, dressed in emotional rhetoric. But a God who reverses nature, who undoes death, that those in whom the likeness of His glory has faintly and fitfully shone may be drawn everlastingly into the heart of light and know Him as He is: This is a God indeed, a God Almighty, a God to be trusted, loved, and adored.

Saint John put it so simply: “Beloved, we are children now. But it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when He appears we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.”

And now the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, to life everlasting. +Amen.

 

Gate of Heaven, Uncategorized

All Saints Day (2015)

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OSLC 5All Saints Day

November 1, 2015 AD

First Reading: Revelation 7:9-17

Epistle: 1 John 3:1-3

Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12

Click here to listen and subscribe to Pastor McClean’s sermons on iTunes.

Whenever we say the Apostles’ Creed— and if we follow Dr. Luther’s instructions in the Small Catechism we say the Apostles Creed twice a day, morning and evening— whenever we say that Creed we confess our faith in the Holy Christian Church the Communion of Saints: the Holy Christian Church which is the Communion of Saints. And it is especially on this Festival of All Saints that we rejoice in this truth— or, to speak more accurately, in this blessed reality.

It was Pastor Wilhelm Löhe, one of the great Fathers of the Lutheran Church during the nineteenth century, who said:

When I was young I thirsted for an eternal fellowship. Now I know an eternal fellowship which becomes more and more close and binding— the holy Church! From it death shall not separate me, but death will for the first time bring me to complete enjoyment of love and fellowship. [For] there is one eternal Church, part to be found here, and part to be found in eternity.

I believe in the Holy Christian Church, the Communion of Saints— here on earth and there in heaven. As we sang in William Walsham Howe’s wonderful hymn:

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine:
Yet all are one in Thee for all are Thine.

Or as we sang in the sermon hymn:

One family we dwell in Him,
One Church above, beneath:
Though now divided by the stream
The narrow stream of death.

I believe in the Holy Christian Church, the Communion of Saints.

Long before the coming of our Lord the author of the Book of Proverbs said: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Well in the first reading from Holy Scripture we have a fragment of the vision of Saint John exiled on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. We usually call that vision The Revelation to Saint John. And at its very beginning Saint John says, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day”— the day when all the seven churches of Asia Minor to which he wrote would have been gathered for the weekly celebration of the Holy Communion on the day of the Lord’s resurrection. The late Austin Farrer put it this way:

One Sunday it happened that St John could not be at church with his friends, for like Elisha, like Jesus, he was taken by the armed men and held in prison. But God consoled him with a vision: he saw the Christian sacrament that morning not as we human beings see it, but as it is seen in heaven. His spirit went up; he saw the throne of glory and the four cherubim full of eyes in every part who sleep not saying Holy, Holy, Holy. And he saw the Lamb of God: a Lamb standing as though slaughtered; a Lamb alone worthy to open for mankind the blessed promises of God. He saw the Lamb, and then the angels. I saw, he says, and heard the voice of many angels round about the Throne, the number of them ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to be receive power and riches and wisdom and honor and glory and blessing…

And he saw the saints standing before the throne of God and the Lamb. And who are the saints? Those who had come out of great tribulation and had washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, the gentle Lamb who leads to springs of living waters and wipes away every tear from their eyes.

You and I are not yet there. We are only on the journey; they are at journey’s end— in the nearer presence of the Lord in whom is all our life and hope. As Pastor Löhe said, “There is one eternal Church, part to be found here and part to be found in eternity.” But it is one eternal Church, and both here on earth and there in heaven Christ’s people worship before the throne of God and the Lamb. In heaven the saints see Him. Here on earth we find Him hidden under the outward appearances of bread and wine. But we with the saints in heaven acclaim Him as the Lamb slain for us all, washing away our sins through His most precious Blood, feeding us with the heavenly Food for our journey— His Body given, His blood shed— and worshipping Him as do the saints and the angels in the words of the thrice holy hymn: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth: Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest!

I believe in the Holy Christian Church: the Communion of Saints. God grant that we may rejoice not only on this All Saints Day but every day in that blest communion, fellowship divine, until we too are called to Christ’s nearer presence and join in worshipping Him before the throne of God and the Lamb.

And now the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, to live everlasting. +Amen.