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Ash Wednesday (2016)

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Ash Wednesday

February 10, 2016 AD

Old Testament: Joel 2:12-19
 
 
Gospel: Matthew 6:16-21
 
 
 
 
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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.

 

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Quinquagesima (2016)

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Quinquagesima

February 7, 2016 AD

Old Testament: Isaiah 35:3-7

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Gospel: Luke 18:31-43

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.

“Jesus stood still and commanded [the blind beggar] to be brought to Him. And when he had come near, He asked him, saying, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ He said, ‘Lord, that I may receive my sight.'” – St. Luke 18:40, 41

Although many of us have difficulty with our eyesight from time to time, I doubt that any of us can have any real sense of what it’s like to be blind. But we can perhaps at least imagine the desperation of the blind beggar in today’s Gospel, no doubt reduced to begging by his blindness. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” he cries out and keeps on crying out despite all the efforts of the crowd to silence him. Jesus commands the people to bring him to Him and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?. . .Lord, let me receive my sight!” And Jesus then says, “Receive your sight, your faith has made you well!” In His compassion our Lord restores his sight and he follows Jesus on the way to Jerusalem.

Now that blind beggar’s prayer; “Lord, let me receive my sight” must be your prayer and mine as well. For although we’re not literally blind, we’re blind in a far deeper sense: blind to the love and the will of our Maker. For if we really saw God clearly, our hearts would be continually overflowing with peace and joy. But since they are not, we too need to pray with that blind beggar, “Lord, let me receive my sight!”

The trouble is that, instead of clearly seeing the love and the will of God, we’re distracted: we see all kinds of other things instead. And you have to be careful about what you see!

Now I happen to have a dear friend in another part of the country who’s struggled with depression all his life. But his depression isn’t helped by what he chooses daily to see. Not content with looking at one or two news reports, he tends to keep watching the news all day long! And that, I submit, is enough to depress even the most cheerfully disposed person! And then there are those of us who are tempted to spend our time constantly following the latest scandals and tragedies in the Church and in the world— or even worse, materials not fit for human consumption, let alone for any Christian trying to follow the holy Jesus who said, “Blessed are the pure in heart…” You have to be careful about what you see!

Now we are naïve if we think this is a small matter of no consequence, if we fail to realize that Satan uses all of this to blind and confuse and alienate us from the life of God. For the more careless we are about what we choose to see, the greater the danger of being plunged ever deeper into spiritual confusion and darkness. You have to be careful about what you see!

Lent begins this Wednesday. And what is Lent for if not that time of year when, more than at any other time, we in fact gaze on Jesus? Lent in fact is all about seeing: about seeing ourselves as we are and our Maker as He is.

It’s a time for seeing ourselves as we in fact are: not as we’d like to be, nor yet as we fancy ourselves to be, but as we in painful fact are. Honest and thorough self-examination in the light of God’s Word written should quickly dispel any illusions we might have. For example, just how well do you and I measure up in the light of Saint Paul’s great hymn to love as we heard it in the Epistle for this Sunday?

“Love is patient; love is kind, and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish; not quick to take offense. Love keeps no score of wrongs, does not gloat over other people’s sins, but delights in the truth.”

Yes, in self-examination and in confession we see ourselves as we truly are.

But then in the word of pardon spoken by the pastor, whom God has put there to do just that, we see God as He truly is, who knows us better than we know ourselves yet loves us still; we see Jesus the crucified and risen Friend of sinners. And what else is the Sacrament we receive this day but the means whereby we see: see the love which brought the eternal Son of God to the shameful cross to cleanse us through His precious blood and make us His?

You have to be careful about what you see! “Lord, let me receive my sight.” In the wonderful Epistle for this Last Sunday before Lent, Saint Paul says, “Now”— in this life— “we see through a glass darkly, but then”— in heaven— “face to face.” And Saint John says of the redeemed in heaven: “His servants shall worship Him for they shall see His face.” But for now,

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind—
Yea all I need in Thee to find,
     O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

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

Advent 2 (2015)

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Advent 2

December 6, 2015 AD

Old Testament: Malachi 4:1-6

Epistle: Romans 15:4-13

Gospel: Luke 21:25-36
 
 
 
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Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

– St. Luke 21:28

I wonder how many times you’ve found yourself asking, “Where will it all end?” That’s not the kind of question we’re likely to ask when things are going well, but I’m sure we’ve all asked that question in times of personal crisis, or when faced with family difficulties that just won’t go away, or on those days when we become so painfully aware of the violence and conflict in the world, of the deprivation and hunger, the sheer misery that mark the lives of millions. It’s then that we find ourselves asking, “Where will it all end?”

Just a few short days after those terrible events we’ve come to call “9-11”, I received a beautiful card from a very dear and considerably older friend encouraging all of us “to remain strong in faith and prayer because,” she said, “no matter what might happen in the meantime, we Christians already know how the story ends.”

And how does the story end? In the coming again in glory of our Lord Jesus Christ to judge the living and the dead and to usher in His beyond-imagination glorious kingdom which in His love He prepared for us from the foundation of the world. That’s where it will all end!

To many people of course our Christian belief in Christ’s coming again has nothing to do with the urgent demands of life; it seems to deal with what to them is at best an utterly remote possibility— in fact an event that in all likelihood will never take place and therefore can be safely ignored. And if truth be told, even within the visible Church there are people who have in fact abandoned this hope in part because misguided teachers have so distorted our Lord’s teaching about this with all kinds of bizarre notions and have even attempted to predict the exact day and hour of His coming— despite the fact that our Lord Himself said: “Watch, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” and “the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

In the Gospel for this Sunday our Lord does in fact speak of the signs of the last days: “signs in sun and moon and stars and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring. . .men fainting with fear and foreboding at what is coming on the world.” But what is so often forgotten is that, according to Holy Scripture, all days from Christ’s first coming in lowliness until His second coming in glory are in fact the last days – the days when God is at last bringing to completion His truly loving purpose for the whole creation. Saint John wrote, “Children, it is the last hour,” and Saint Paul addressed the Christians of his day as those “upon whom the end of the ages has come.”

And so when Jesus says, “When you see these things place, you know that the kingdom of God is near,” Jesus is speaking in terms not of our human time-table but in terms of God’s time-table which is another thing altogether— the Lord “with whom one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.” In a word, the signs of which Jesus speaks tell us that He is coming, not when He is coming as Jesus said, “Watch for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” and “Watch, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

Someone has said that our Lord’s coming again has to do not with a date but with an attitude. “Not a date” because the day and hour of His coming are known only to Him, “but an attitude”: an attitude which is neither cynical despair and resignation nor naive optimism but rather a deep and abiding hope which can face the very worst and still rejoice because it is hope grounded solely in Christ: the Lord who through forgiveness makes each moment of our lives a new beginning, who brings good out of evil, life out of death, and who will in the End deliver the dying creation and wonderfully transform all things by the light of His resurrection. As Saint Paul writes to the Church at Rome, “Creation itself will”— in a way we cannot now even dimly imagine— “be delivered from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

We live in a dying world and you and I are dying people; the grave awaits each and every one of us, and the world as we now know it will come to an end. The signs of which Jesus speaks in this day’s Gospel tell us that this is so: “signs in sun and moon and stars and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring. . .men’s hearts fainting with fear and with foreboding at what is coming on the world.” In fact all the dismal and destructive realities of life tells us that this so. But if we remember and take seriously the words of Jesus, these signs— these grim reminders of our own mortality and of the world’s approaching end— are no cause for despair. Seen with eyes of faith, they are even reason for hope because they tell us that the Lord we love and long to see is in fact on His way; He is coming to gather His redeemed children into the kingdom which in His love He has prepared for us from the foundation of the world.

So where will it all end? Not in death and oblivion, but in the coming again of the Lord whose love we already know through His manger, cross, and open tomb. So, “When all these begin to take place, look up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.”

And so I would like to conclude this morning with some beautiful, yes, poetic words of John Henry Newman about the altar, the altar of the Sacrament, as this place where our hope is kindled and sustained. Newman says,

But while the times wax old, and the colours of the earth fade, and the voice of song is brought low, and all kindreds of the earth can but wail and lament, the sons of God “lift up their heads for their redemption draweth nigh.” Nature fails, the sun shines not, and the moon is dim, the stars fall from heaven, and the foundations of the round world shake; but the altar’s light burns ever brighter; there are sights there which the many cannot see and all above the tumults of earth the command is heard to show forth the Lord’s death and the promise that the Lord is coming. “Happy are the people that are in such a case!” who, when  wearied of the things seen can turn with good hope to the things unseen; yea “blessed are the people who have the Lord for their God.” “Come unto Me,” He says, “all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Rest is better than toil, peace satisfies, and quietness disappoints not. These are sure goods. Such is the calm of the heavenly Jerusalem , which is the mother of us all; and such is their calm worship, the foretaste of heaven, who for a season shut themselves out from the world, and seek Him in invisible-Presence, whom they shall hereafter see face to face. (J. H. Newman, Parochial & Plain Sermons VII, l58f)

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

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.

 

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The Festival of the Reformation (2015)

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OSLC front Holga-ishThe Festival of the Reformation

October 25, 2015 AD

First Reading: Revelation 14:6-7

Epistle: Romans 3:19-28

Gospel: Matthew 11:12-19
 
 
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The Joint Reformation Service which will take place this afternoon is an old Baltimore tradition. Way back in late October 1949 my father told me that the preacher at the Joint Reformation Service that year would be a certain Dr. Pelikan. Only a few weeks before our family had been in Florida, and for the first time in my life I had in fact seen pelicans. And so my seven-year-old mind wondered what on earth a Dr. Pelikan would look like! Well, he in fact looked much like any other pastor. I don’t remember what he said, but as the years went by I learned that this Dr. Pelikan was one of the greatest Church historians in twentieth-century America.

My reason for talking about Dr. Pelikan this morning is that he said something worth thinking about as we celebrate this Reformation Sunday. And what he said was this:

The Reformation was a tragic necessity. It was tragic because the opposing groups could not agree and so the visible unity of the Western Christian Church was destroyed and remains so to this very day. But the Reformation was also a necessity because in the late medieval Church the Gospel had been obscured, the Good News that we are saved not by anything we do, but by what has God has done and continues to do for us through His Son Jesus Christ.

Of course the Gospel had not been completely lost, because the Church cannot live without the Gospel, and Christ promised that “the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church.” And so despite all the errors of the Church before the Reformation it was still the Church— the one flock of Jesus the Good Shepherd who never fails to feed and protect all those who place their trust in Him. And so Dr. Martin Luther was not the founder of some new religion but rather the Reformer whom God raised up to restore to His Church the Gospel in its purity.

I’ve often said from this pulpit that so many people think of the Gospel as good advice. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or to put it in Biblical words: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” These words are of course true but they are not the Gospel, because the word ‘Gospel’ doesn’t mean good advice but good news. The world has all the good advice imaginable but what the world does not have apart from the Gospel is the forgiveness of the world’s chronic inability to live by the good advice it already knows, or to put that in biblical language, forgiveness for its sin.

And by sin we don’t simply think of murder and drunkenness and adultery and fornication and stealing but also of the resentment and hatred in our hearts, our indifference to the plight of those in such desperate need, our discontent and lack of gratitude for all the gracious gifts of God, our anger that our prayers have not been answered in the way we wish, our impatience with God, and lack of trust in His goodness and love. And so we are sinners in need of forgiveness of our sins.

The Gospel is the good news that our sins are forgiven by God who loves us not because we are so lovable but because He is love. As Dr. Luther sings in one his many wonderful hymns:

But God beheld my wretched state
Before the world’s foundation.
And mindful of His mercies great
He planned my soul’s salvation.
A father’s heart He turned to me
Sought redemption fervently:
He gave His dearest treasure.

He spoke to His beloved Son,
“‘Tis time to have compassion,
Then go, bright Jewel of My crown,
And bring to man salvation.
From sin and sorrow set him free,
Slay bitter death for him that he
May live with thee for ever.”

Yes, God sent His dearest Treasure to be our Saviour. And in a wonderful Christmas hymn Dr. Luther sings:

He whom the worlds cannot contain,
Doth in Mary’s lap repose.
He is become an Infant small
Who by His might upholds all.

Look to the Child of Mary, look to the crucified Savior! That is where we see God with eyes of faith, that is where we see His love. The preaching of the Gospel points you to Him. Baptism clothes you with the spotless robe of Jesus’ blood and righteousness. And now again at the altar He truly feeds you with His precious Body and Blood.

Yes, the Reformation was tragic in the which followed, but it was also necessary so that believers might again see with clarity the love of God which brought Him to the manger and the cross, the Lord who now lives and rules all things for the good of His holy Church, His Body and beloved Bride which in the end He’ll bring to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in His kingdom.

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

 

+INJ+