Selected for Suffering

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann

Acts 9:15&16

Third Sunday of Easter - Confirmation

This is a week of big events.  Here, of course, it’s Confirmation Sunday—a special day particularly in the lives of three of Glendale’s young people; but one that’s important for all of us as we consider our own promises made to God, and recommit ourselves to the task of helping one another, especially our three confirmands, to keep the vows that have been made to God and one another.   So, today is a big day, here; and this past Wednesday was a big day at the seminary.  Most of you know that it was Call Day.  That’s the day, of course, when the men who are set to graduate are given their first assignments in the church and told where they will be going to serve God’s people as a pastor.  It’s also the day when second year students find out where they will be spending the next year working and learning as a vicar.  Our own second year student, Nate, is heading south for a year in Florida.  My son will be across the state in the Kansas City area.  And one of your former field workers, Joe Leech will be moving east to become the pastor of a congregation in Pennsylvania.  Call Day is an exciting time, not only for the men and their families who are learning about their future; but for the whole church.  It’s exciting to see how God is at work providing for his church.

We heard about another call day in our first reading from Acts.  It was call day for the Apostle Paul.  Well, I suppose it was more like call days since the process was spread out over a few days.  First, Paul had been knocked off his horse and struck with blindness when Jesus appeared and abruptly ended Paul’s plan to make more trouble for Jesus’ followers.  Paul spent the next three days in darkness, fasting, repenting, and contemplating his encounter with Jesus.  Then, relief came.  Ananias arrived with God’s grace.  He laid his hands on Paul, prayed, and everything changed.  Literally, the scales fell from Paul’s eyes—but more importantly, he was transformed.  No longer on a mission to stamp out Christianity, Paul was now on a mission to spread the news of Jesus as Savior and Lord.  He would become the apostle to the Gentiles.  His life purpose would be to spread the news of Christ crucified and risen to those outside the Jewish community.  Paul did the work.  He confirmed to all he met the reality that God had given him grace, and that he was the disciple of Jesus.  Trusting God’s promise, and using the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul would have extraordinary success and accomplish remarkable things as he confirmed his faith again and again.  And it all began outside of Damascus on Paul’s call day.

Ok, so, you’re not an apostle.  And maybe you’re not a pastor or a teacher or church worker and you’ve never gone through a Call Day or received papers declaring that you were called or placed for work in God’s church.  It doesn’t matter.  You’ve been called as well.  In fact, God has called you on many levels at many times in many ways.  It began when he called you to faith at the baptismal font.  There, in those waters, not only did he wash away the condemnation for the sin you inherited from Adam, along with a lifetime of your own actual sins, but he also claimed you as his own child and gave you his Holy Spirit so that you could follow Jesus as his disciple.  At the font, he called you to be his own, to live your life his way.  Your call day was the day of your Baptism when you were called to faith.  But that was not your last call day.

In your life, in the specificity and the details that define and direct your unique, individual life, God has given you tasks to perform and work to do for the good of the people and the world around you.  In theology, we call these individual tasks and responsibilities vocations—literally callings.  So, it’s quite right to say that God has not only called you to faith, but also called you to do work in this world.  Some of the time, some of that work can be quite exhilarating and exceptional; most of the time, though, the tasks you have been given to do likely seem rather mundane and uninteresting.  In fact, you may not even recognize that the work is given to you by God.  It’s just too ordinary and too routine.  There’s nothing special or spiritual about it.  But, the truth is that most of the things that God calls you to do are quite common and unexceptional.  Children are called by God to be good students and cheerful and respectful helpers at home.  That’s what God wants them to do.  Parents are called to raise their children to be lifelong followers of Christ who have upright and noble character.  Employees are called to do honest careful work that helps their employers.  Employers need to be fair and generous with their workers and their customers.  And so it goes.  Whatever your position in life, in the context of your relationships and responsibilities, God calls you to do your work his way.  God calls you to serve those around you.

There is, though, still another sort of call that God issues.  At least, it was part of the call that came to Paul.  God called him to serve, he would serve as the apostle to the Gentiles.  But, God also called him to suffer.  It was part of the arrangement from the very beginning.  Suffering was one of the essential elements of God’s call to Paul.  God called him to faith, he called him to serve, and he called him to suffer.  For Paul, the three calls came all at once.  Paul was going to follow Christ in faith.  He was going to serve.  He was going to suffer.  It was all part of God’s plan.  It was all part of God’s call.  God’s call was definitely fulfilled.  For the sake of the Lord who had called him, and for the sake of the work he had been given to do, Paul suffered.  He was stoned, whipped, beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, snake-bit, ridiculed, and slandered.  Those were the obvious. external afflictions he endured.  But his call also caused him to suffer inwardly and spiritually.  When people refused the Gospel, rejected God’s truth, fell back into sin, or yielded to Satan’s temptations and lies, Paul grieved and suffered.  God’s call was for Paul to suffer—not for the sake of suffering, but simply because suffering always goes hand-in-hand with God’s call.  Always.  And, you can guess what that means.  It means that your call is not different than the call of Paul.  You also have been called to suffer.

I know, this is not something you hear often.  In fact, there are plenty of Christians around who would have you believe that following Christ means a life that is happy, carefree, and certainly void of sorrow or suffering.  It’s not true.  God’s word is quite clear.  The call is to follow Jesus.  The call is to do what Jesus did.  God calls you to serve and to suffer.  Suffering is always part of the Christian life.  Always.  It is a recurrent theme throughout the Bible and the church’s teaching.  When you determine that you are going to live God’s way and do everything that you do in line with God’s purposes and priorities, it comes at a price.  Paul knew it.  Every serious follower of Jesus knows it.  No one can answer the call of God, and avoid the reality of suffering.  God calls you.  He calls you to suffer.  And, that…is a problem, isn’t it?

It’s a problem because the last thing that any of us ever wants to do is to suffer.  In our world, Suffering is probably the single greatest evil that there is.  In our culture, in any culture I suppose, suffering is avoided, shunned, and feared.  Suffering is the one thing everyone agrees must be eliminated.  It is so obvious an assumption that no one would think to question it.  Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you that suffering is the worst thing in life.  It’s the starting premise for virtually every way of thinking: pleasure is good and encouraged, and suffering is bad and rejected.  So, to be called to suffer seems to make no sense at all.  But, that is exactly what God calls his people to do.  It’s what he calls you to do.  It is the shock of the Christian life, a bitter and hard truth.  Called to follow Christ, you must follow him all the way—which means being out of step with the world’s values and priorities, which means being rejected by the world, which means suffering.  It’s not easy, but it has to be this way.  Christians must suffer because Jesus suffered.  We should expect nothing other than what he endured.  When you experience hostility, difficulty, and pain because of your commitment to follow Christ, you are in league with your Lord.  You are joined to him.  The worst thing that can happen to you is not that you suffer; no, far worse than that is that you might stop following Christ, or prove faithless.  There is something much worse than suffering.

This is a hard reality.  But, it is the Christian reality.  God’s will is for a church filled with people who have answered his call and who are ready to follow Jesus completely: in the way of faith, the way of service, the way of suffering.  There is no higher privilege than to be called by God.  Whether you are in grade school, a new confirmand, in the prime of life, or far along in life’s journey, you have been called by God to follow in the way of faith, to serve those around you, and to suffer for his truth.  This is the way that Jesus always leads.  It is the way of self-denial, it is the way of sacrifice for the sake of God’s will, it is the way of the cross.  To answer God’s call is to take your place in the long line of committed disciples all marching purposefully and confidently behind Christ on the way to the cross—on the way to the death of yourself.  Do you get it?  Do you see how this Christianity thing works?  It’s not about what you get.  It’s not about the benefits or the perks.  It is about what it means to hear and answer the call of Christ.  Discipleship is all or it’s nothing.  You don’t have faith just most of the time.  You don’t serve others only when it’s convenient.  You don’t suffer only if the pain is not too bad or too long.  You suffer and serve and follow in only one way: all the way.  You are joined to Christ completely.  You follow him completely.  This is the promise that you, three confirmands make today.  This is the promise all of you made when you answered the call of Christ.

This truth is powerfully at work every time we celebrate the sacrament of Communion.  In the sacrament, you are joined to Christ.  In your body, you receive the body and blood of Christ, the vivid marks of his own passion and suffering.  In and through the marks of his pain, sorrow, and sacrifice, you are joined to Christ.  You are entwined and united with Christ in the agony of his cross.  In the Lord’s Supper this all becomes your reality.  The way that Jesus goes, you go.  He goes through suffering, so do you.  He goes through glory, so do you. You are called to follow Christ, to share in all of his lif: so you share in his suffering, his salvation, his resurrection, his everlasting triumph.  The call to follow Christ in faith, service and suffering is the call to live a life with the greatest possible significance.

You have been called by God.  He has called you to faith.  Cling to his promise.  He has called you to serve—recognize the vocations he has given you, and do them with zeal.  He has called you to suffer—don’t resist this part of the call.  Simply trust the way that God leads; and when the suffering for the sake of his truth comes, and it will come, be glad and count it a blessing and gift.  However he leads, wherever he leads, God will fulfill his purpose for which he has called you.  He did it for Paul.  He will do it for you.  He has called you; he will keep you…now, and for eternity.  Amen.

Endings & Beginnings

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann

John 20:21-23

April 23, 2107  2nd Sunday of Easter

As a rule, beginnings come first, and endings come last.  You read the preface before you read the postscript.  You watch the opening scene before the credits.  You begin your meal with a salad and wrap it up with dessert.  You begin your day when the sun rises, and get ready to complete it when the sun settles over the western horizon.  The starter pitches the first, and the closer gets the ninth.  Beginnings are first, at well…the beginning.  Endings come at the end.  Unless, you’re one of those people who peek at the final pages of a book first, to see how it ends, and then go back to chapter one.  In that case, everything gets turned around.  Of course, such a practice seems somehow to violate the very laws of nature.  It’s an affront to the order of things.

Easter certainly challenges the usual order of things.  The whole reason that people resist the message of Easter is that graves are supposed to be the end, and not the beginning.  Dead people do not come back to life.  Death is the end, not the beginning.  But, there are actually a number of endings and beginnings that are pushed out of place on Easter.  Mary’s grief ends and her joy begins at a tomb.  For the disciples, the third day of grieving brought an end to resignation and despair, and inaugurated a new conviction and courage that would become a hallmark of the eleven.  In both of these cases, the ending and the beginning seem to have been reversed.  But, perhaps the most significant inversion of endings and beginnings was the resurrection itself.  The resurrection of the dead is the last great event that will be recorded in the history of this time-bound world.  But, that event was snatched out of its place at the end, and brought forward into time and inserted at a beginning.  The resurrection of the dead, was previewed on Easter, and the out-of-place end event brought a remarkable beginning.

Jesus’ resurrection did mark the end.  It was the end of his earthly ministry, and the completion of the mission he had been sent to accomplish.  He had come according to God’s plan to fulfill the Father’s purpose.  The Father sent Jesus to redeem and restore his good creation.  Of course, that purpose had to be accomplished through the cross.  It’s important to remember that the suffering and death of Calvary were not an interruption of Jesus’ work, but the fulfillment and culmination of his work.  He had been sent to suffer and die.  That had always been the plan.  Jesus began his ministry with the cross as the goal.  The cross was the place of sacrifice, the place and the means for sin’s horrible price to be paid.  Jesus paid it.  He suffered God’s wrath.  He suffered hell—separation from the Father.  He died.  His earthly mission was complete.  The resurrection on Easter morning was the proof of the work’s completion.  The debt of sin had been canceled.  Sin, Satan, death, and hell were all defeated.  There was nothing more to be done.  That’s why Jesus descended to hell—he went there to declare the absolute victory and the salvation of God’s creation.  Jesus’ work was complete.  But the work of the disciples, the work of the church, was just beginning.

Easter marked the conclusion of Jesus’ earthly mission, and the commencement of the disciples’ mission.  That was the point of that period of forty days that elapsed between the resurrection and the ascension.  Those were the days of transition.  The end of the Easter mission was the beginning of what would be the disciples’ Pentecost mission.  During the days after Easter, things were not the same anymore.  Jesus would appear and spend time with his chosen disciples, he would even eat with them and teach them, still answering their many questions; but he was not with them the way that he had been before Easter.  Now, his time with them was intermittent, now he was just visiting to equip and encourage—he wasn’t publicly preaching or healing or living with them anymore.  That work was done.  Now, a new work was about to begin, now it was time for the work of the disciples to begin.  Of course, the eleven had already been practicing for this new mission.  Jesus had sent them out on short mission trips, and everything he’d taught them had been with this new beginning in mind.  Now, though, it was time to do the actual work.  Easter was the beginning of the disciples’ mission.

Jesus’ post-resurrection work preparing his disciples began already on that first Easter evening with the first word of Jesus to his disciples: “Peace.”  That’s what they needed to hear.  It was more than a friendly greeting.  This word was the assurance that things were right.  Remember, things had not gone well for them on Thursday and Friday.  They had all deserted Jesus and fled for their lives.  When Jesus spoke the word of Easter peace, it was the assurance of reconciliation.  The relationship with Jesus and with the Father had been restored.  The emptiness had been filled up with the living presence of Jesus.  The time of sorrow and futility was over.  Easter had finished it forever.  Now, it was time to move forward with bold confidence.

Easter means the same thing for you, the disciple of Jesus, here, today.  The anxiety and stress of life is blown away—you have God’s forgiveness and peace.  You live in harmony with God, at peace as his own child.  He will not change his mind about you.  Your future is secure for eternity.  And, the time of frustration, worry, and heavy-hearted disappointment or defeat in your day-to-day living, is also over.  Jesus is alive.  He is at work in you and for you.  His purposes will be accomplished in your life.  There is no reason for despondency or fear.  Jesus, your Lord, lives.  Easter ends all that tears us apart and drags us down.  And, Easter begins a life of new purpose.  Jesus twice assured the beaten down and defeated disciples of his peace, and then he gave them their new reality: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  That’s it.  That’s the mission of Jesus’ disciples.  Over those next forty days, it was the recurrent theme of every encounter Jesus had with the eleven: “Go.  Go and make disciples.  Go teaching and baptizing.  Start in Jerusalem and keep going until every person in every place knows God’s reality.  Go!”  That was the mission of the disciples.  That’s still the mission for you, Jesus’ disciple.

The torch was passed at Easter.  Salvation had been won.  Restoration was done, grace was secured.  Now the messengers were being sent.  Their work was unambiguous, and it was life-consuming.  What Jesus had accomplished, they would proclaim.  What Jesus had secured, they would deliver.  What Jesus gave, they would give.  The peace he brought to them, they would bring to others.  All over the world, from Jerusalem to the far corners of the most remote, God-forsaken place on earth, God’s message of peace would be delivered one person at a time and people would be God-forsaken no more.  That was the mission that began on Easter.

God the Father sent Jesus.  Jesus sends you.  Easter is the beginning—the beginning of your mission, the beginning of your service to those around you as you deliver God’s gifts to them.  How is your God-given mission going?  Christians have a tendency to celebrate the Easter ending, but downplay or dismiss the Easter beginning.  We like the end of futility and fear.  We like the end of condemnation.  We like the end of death and hell.  The ending we like.  The beginning, the Easter mission, the going and giving part…not so much.  But, both are parts of Easter.  Easter is an ending and a beginning.  To neglect the beginning of the mission is to miss the fullness of Easter, it is to diminish the work of Jesus.  Easter means the end of you having to worry about getting right with God—Jesus has taken care of that.  But, Easter does not mean the end of your responsibility to those around you.  In fact, Easter mean the beginning of your mission to share God’s truth and grace with those around you.  Easter does not exempt you from service, it equips and sends you for service.  The mission cannot be ignored.  It is the mission of Jesus.  It has been given to you.  

Doing the mission does not save you.  It does not make you more acceptable to God.  It does not earn you more grace or qualify you for more blessings from God.  Doing what Jesus sends you to do is actually not about your relationship with God, it’s about your relationship and responsibility to those around you.  The mission is waiting.  The people around you are waiting.  They may not know it, and rarely admit it; but they are waiting.  They are waiting for what God has for them.  They are waiting for you to bring it to them.  You have no choice.  Jesus has risen.  He has sent his disciples.  He has sent you.  You cannot opt out.  Easter needs to begin in your life.  You are to go with the Gospel.  You are to live every part of your life following Jesus, obeying the Father’s will.  What difference does the Easter resurrection make in your life?  It should make all the difference in the world.  It should affect your job, your marriage, your kids and the way you raise them, your hobbies, your leisure habits, your yardwork, your attitude, your driving, your giving, your shopping, your talking, your everything.

The mission will not be easy.  You’re going to need help.  That’s why Jesus gave his peace.  The certainty of your eternal right standing with God is the foundation and unshakeable reality that makes your mission possible.  But, Jesus gave more.  He gave his peace, and then he gave the Holy Spirit.  Jesus’ breath, his spirit, gave the Spirit; it gave his Spirit; it gave the Holy Spirit.  The same Spirit was hovering over the waters of creation on the first day of the universe.  The same Holy Spirit was exhaled in the Garden of Eden into newly shaped mud and Adam became a living being.  The same Spirit blew through the valley of dry bones and Ezekiel watched a slaughtered army rise up alive.  That Spirit was breathed in the upper room on Easter and all the disciples were made into new creations.  Now, they were God’s living army, his servants, his messengers ready to do his mission.  The work that began there in the upper room is not done, yet.  And the Spirit is still being breathed out onto God’s people, today, to prepare, protect, and empower Jesus’ disciples to do the mission.  God breathed his Spirit onto you.  He breathed his Spirit into you.  At the baptismal font, not only did he claim you as his own, but he also filled you with his Spirit.  You are equipped.  Jesus has called you.  He’s given his Spirit to you.  You are ready for the mission.  You are ready to deliver God’s reality, the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, to those around you.  Through you, the Gospel of Christ continues to spread out into God’s world.  Through you, God makes people into his people.  Through you, God remakes people one at a time as each one hears and receives what God gives.  You are God’s chosen disciple to do his chosen work.

The Easter endings are familiar, now it’s time to embrace the Easter beginnings: the beginning of your mission to live and declare the reality of God’s truth and grace, the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, for this world.  Your work is clear.  It’s waiting for you.  It is not too late to start.  Maybe you’ve never quite taken the mission seriously before.  It’s time, now, to begin.  It’s time to end your days of spiritual sloth and apathy.  It’s time to get busy doing the mission Jesus has given you to do.  It’s Easter.  The tomb is empty.  Death is done.  Now, the mission begins.  Amen.

Unsealed

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann

Matthew 27:62-66

The Resurrection of our Lord,  April 16, 2017

Tamper-evident packaging has become a standard part of life.  Purchase a bottle of pain-reliever and you are forced to run the gauntlet of security measures before you can actually get to the relief.  First the flaps must be torn off the box—the glue is designed not to pry apart.  Then there’s printed shrink-wrap holding the cap in place.  Once that’s removed, you’ve got to solve the child-resistant cap which technically isn’t a security measure, but one for safety—though it’s hard to tell the difference.  With the lid off, there’s only one more level to conquer—the worst of them all:  that tough multi-layered skin across the mouth of the bottle that must be punctured or torn or otherwise demolished.  It cannot be peeled off cleanly; and, for those of us who like to keep things neat, that frayed, sloppy edge is the source of endless aggravation.  But, it’s by design.  The layers of protection are meant to give the consumer confidence that the product she holds is safe and untouched by sinister hands—though sometimes, it seems the goal is that it be untouched by consumer hands.  The idea of a seal is not to prevent something from being opened; the idea is to ensure that anyone who is interested can tell that it’s been opened.

Seals have been around for thousands of years.  And just like our tamper-evident seals, the purpose of ancient seals was not to impede access; locks, iron doors, moats, and chain did that.  The goal of seals has always been to prove the authenticity of things.  Some of the oldest seals were cylinders inscribed with a unique design or declaration.  The seal would be rolled in wet clay leaving its distinctive mark.  It wasn’t long before signet rings replaced the cylinders.  Clay or wax seals on envelopes or packages could be stamped with the ring verifying both the sender and the contents.

So, on the morning after Jesus had been killed and buried, the leaders of the Sanhedrin knew that what they needed was a seal.  They needed a seal on Joseph’s new tomb that had become the grave of Jesus.  It seems that these leaders had a better memory of Jesus’ words and promises than his own disciples did.  The leaders remembered Jesus’ declaration that after three days he would rise again.  Schemers that they themselves were, it occurred to them that some of Jesus’ followers might scheme to steal the corpse and then declare a resurrection.  They decided they needed to preclude any chance of this happening.  Of course, their concerns were unwarranted.  Their fear of a plot grossly over-estimated the capabilities of the disciples, who were worried about more pressing issues—like staying alive.  Thoughts of resurrection did not even occur to them; the proof is their determined refusal to believe the news when the women announced the resurrection to them.  The idea of a resurrection was the last thing on their minds; but it was foremost in the thoughts of the temple leadership.

The seal didn’t make the tomb impossible to open.  It was just a seal—probably some cord or string stretched across the opening and fixed on each end with a lump of clay or some wax.  Then that glob of wax or clay would have been imprinted with someone’s official seal.  With the seal in place, no one could tamper with the grave.  Of course, it’s wonderfully ironic that the effort to secure the tomb actually served to secure the truth of the resurrection.

With the seal in place and the guards on duty, Jesus rose.  Long before the women arrived at the spot, very early on Sunday morning, Jesus returned to life in all of his holy, divine glory.  With the seal still on the stone, the tomb was already empty.  No one was there to watch when Jesus triumphed over death.  And no one needed to roll back the stone to let the living body of Jesus out.  Fully God, and yet fully human, Jesus simply passed through the stone walls of the tomb.  Nothing in creation could stop the resurrected Lord.  Jesus rose from the dead without disturbing the stone or the seal.  He didn’t need to open the tomb.  He simply left.

But, the seal was certainly broken, and the stone was rolled back to open the grave wide.  It was not opened to let Jesus out, but to let the witnesses in.  Human eyes needed to see the evidence.  A detachment of petrified soldiers needed to see the vacant tomb.  Peter and John needed to see the grave cloths lying in the shape of a corpse, but now empty and flat.  They had to see the head linen folded up neatly by itself.  The seal was broken.  God broke it and opened the grave so that everyone could see the truth: there was no body.  It was gone before the seal was gone.  The miracle of Easter had happened as predicted.  The tomb of Joseph was empty again.  It would one day be available for its owner after all.  Jesus was alive; no tomb could hold him.

God was breaking many seals that Easter morning.  The seal on the tomb was only the beginning.  There were also all those seals on the hearts and minds of Jesus’ disciples.  Both the men and the women who had been following Jesus knew what they thought.  They knew what they felt.  The heartache was seared into them.  The knowledge of what had happened was inescapable.  Their conviction of sorrow and hopelessness was sealed.  Jesus was dead.  The thrill of following him was over.  The dreams had evaporated suddenly and horribly.  Their joy was gone.  Their hope had died with Jesus.  The women, remember, were on their way to care for a corpse.  They were not thinking resurrection thoughts.  They only wanted to give Jesus a “decent burial”.  So, they spent a pile of money on expensive spices and ointments for the beaten, broken body and set off to do their final duty for Jesus.  Their minds were sealed: Jesus was dead.  It was over.  The men were in even worse shape.  Their despair and fear had crippled them.  Like scared rabbits, they cowered out of sight and grieved all that was lost.  The sudden tragedy of Friday had knocked them senseless.  Their minds were sealed with certainty: Jesus was gone.  It was over.  Stubbornly sealed in their unbelief, they refused to accept the reports of the resurrection.  On Easter morning, God had to deal with all those seals.  He broke them all.  He broke them with the living reality of Jesus.  The empty tomb and empty grave linen forced a new thought; but, it was the living presence of Jesus with a physical body and blood that broke the seals of unbelief forever.  Jesus was alive.  There was no doubt.  The seal of disbelief, defeat, and despair was destroyed.

God still breaks seals, today.  Every time that an unbeliever repents and comes to faith, another seal has been broken.  The seal of sin and disobedience is shattered and another person that had been closed and sealed to God’s grace is opened.  The forgiveness and love of God floods in.  Even in the lives of Christians, there are seals that still need breaking.  You have your ideas about what God can’t or won’t do: he can’t allow something terrible to happen; he won’t allow you to suffer; he will shower you with material blessings.  Your neat, simple ideas are set and sealed—even though they are very wrong.

Sometimes the ideas you have sealed in your thinking are about what you think you can or can’t do.  You’ve convinced that no matter what, you can’t stop worrying.  It’s impossible to let go and trust enough to count on God to handle everything the right way.  Like the disciples, you are sealed against faith in God’s promises.  Or you may be quite certain that you cannot speak out loud to another person about your faith in Christ.  The idea of verbally witnessing to others strikes terror in your soul.  You can’t do it…you won’t do it.  Your mind is closed and sealed.  Or you look at your budget and decide with conviction that it is impossible: you cannot give to God’s church the way that God directs.  A tithe is out of the question; you simply won’t be able to make ends meet.  It can’t be done.  On this subject, your mind is shut tight and sealed.  Or perhaps it’s your neighbor that is the problem.  “Love your neighbor as yourself?  You’ve got to be kidding,” you think, “you obviously don’t know my neighbor.  There’s no way that I can love him—even if I do work with him every day.”  Your mind is made up and sealed tight.  Submit to your husband, love your wife sacrificially…no this view of marriage is too hard.  It’s not realistic.  You’ve already tried it countless times, and it’s not going to happen.  You’re done.  Your mind is closed and sealed.  It happens a lot, doesn’t it?  You make up your mind about something.  You’ve decided.  You’ve reached a firm conclusion and it’s not going to change.  You are positive that you’ve got a handle on the truth, and that’s it.  Your mind is closed and sealed.  No one’s going to mess with it.

But it is God’s plan to do exactly that.  God wants to tamper with the neat, secure seals in your life.  He wants to open your hard, closed heart and your narrow, sealed thinking and give you a new way of experiencing all of life—his way.  He wants to break the seals that limit your faith.  He wants to smash the seals that constrict your Christian living.  The disciples had made up their minds about Jesus and his death.  But God came and broke their silly seals of certainty.  He still does that.  He still comes to people and opens minds to saving faith.  He still comes to people and breaks stony hearts.  He takes even the closed, sealed lives of hurt and bitter people and forces them open, breaking the foolish seals and pouring in his love.  If your mind is closed and sealed, if your heart is hard and tight about someone or something, be warned: God is determined to break that seal.  Through his word and through his truthful messengers, he will challenge your neat, clean, and wrong ideas, and give you instead his liberating truth.  God breaks seals.  He broke dozens on Easter morning.  He wants to break a few hundred more this morning.  He wants to break yours.  Don’t put limits on God.  Don’t tell him what he can’t do in your life.  Don’t tell him what you can’t do as you follow him.  For the disciples, an Easter resurrection was impossible.  It could not be.  But, God had a different idea.  If you’ve closed and sealed God out of some part of your life, you can be sure that he has another idea.  You can be certain that he will break that seal and open you to his truth and his love.

The Easter seal has been smashed.  That means that when Jesus is done breaking into your hard, sealed heart, forming you into his own disciple, you can be certain that he has yet one more seal to shatter.  This day of resurrection is the promise of the last and ultimate day of resurrection.  On that coming day, every sealed tomb, every sealed grave, every sealed casket will be broken open.  Yours will be broken open, and you and all of God’s people will step out of the grave and into the glorious reality of God’s new heaven and new earth.  God will unseal your tomb, and you will be alive—perfectly, wonderfully alive—and fully restored to live with Christ in his kingdom, forever.  That’s your unsealed Easter reality.  Today is just the beginning.  God’s not done breaking seals.  Amen.

The Thief of Calvary

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann

Luke 23:39-43

Good Friday  April 14, 2017

Seeing is a complicated thing.  The physics and physiology of seeing is extremely intricate and complex involving light and lenses and retinas and nerves and brains.  But, that’s not the part of seeing that is so complicated.  Seeing is complicated because in spite of the information our eyes take in, and regardless the images our brains process, what we actually see is dependent on our own subjective understanding of what we see.  One man observes a house in flames and sees personal danger and steps back, another takes in the same sight and sees great need and steps forward to intervene.  One woman gets caught in a traffic backup and sees only endless cars, a shattered schedule and a disappointing day, another sees an opportunity to make a surprise phone call to an elderly aunt.  One person sees a lifeless tree with branches rattling in the wind and shuffles by without a thought; another sees a fascinating pattern of death and life in stark black and white and exults in the power and intricate beauty of God’s creative hand.  Seeing is a complicated thing.

Tonight, we are compelled to look at the controlled chaos of the place called Golgotha.  There are the guards and the leaders of the people and the curious crowd along with a little knot of weeping women.  And, there are the crosses.  They can’t be missed—three of them, and suspended from each an unfortunate victim of Roman justice.  It’s impossible not to notice them.  In fact, it’s impossible not to stare.  Here three men hang already as good as dead, but cruelly still alive.  To watch them is to watch the dying—and in such a horrific way.  The scene is familiar; you can readily paint the spectacle in your mind.  But, what do you see?  It’s complicated.  Perhaps we don’t all see the same thing.  Indeed, I’m certain that we don’t all see the same thing.  Even those who were eyewitnesses couldn’t agree on what they saw; and those who were right in the middle of it did not see the same thing.

We don’t know exactly when it happened during the six hours that Jesus hung on the cross, but at some point—probably in the early hours of the torture, an odd sort of conversation broke out on Golgotha.  It’s remarkable because it’s a conversation taking place not among the leaders or the ladies or even the guards at the foot of the crosses.  This conversation is coming from the crosses.  The condemned, the crucified, the dying, are talking.  Well, they are talking as best they can.  Conversation is not easy on a cross.  Every word comes with a price in pain and lost breath—a precious commodity to one nailed to a tree.  But, despite the cost involved, the men speak.

The conversation begins with a word from one of the nameless convicts.  Actually, he’s not looking for a conversation.  He opens his mouth only to add his voice to the others who are sneering and jeering at Jesus.  How odd is this: the condemned mocking the condemned?  It’s audacious and ridiculous and desperate.  But, what else can a condemned man do, but divert his agony for a second or two by adding to the pain and sorrow of a fellow sufferer?  It’s not so unbelievable, is it?  Sad and pathetic as it is, we’ve seen this kind of human behavior: the helpless and destitute making the lives of other helpless people a little worse.  The vile man with the mouth full of angry hatred sparks a response—but not from the target of his attack.  It is the man on the opposite side of Calvary who speaks.  He has his own harsh words of rebuke—but they are aimed not at the one in the middle, but at the one who mocked.  Summoning his own energy, he demands that first speaker to be silent.  We delight in the sense of justice and even dignity at work in this man.  But, then he does more than delight, he amazes.  Done with the rebuke of his fellow criminal, done with his affirmation of the inexorable force of justice, he has more words—these directed at Jesus, and they are not words of hatred or contempt.  To Jesus, the one who has been literally right in the middle of the previous conversation, the second criminal speaks a word of request.  He wants something from Jesus: he wants to be remembered when Jesus comes into his kingdom.  This man wants Jesus’ blessing.  He wants Jesus’ grace.

The skeptical and the cynical could easily see in this plea one last act of thievery on the part of the dying man.  A con-man to the end, he wants to hedge his bets, and makes an appeal to an obviously religious and spiritual man in the hope of perhaps catching his coattails and sailing into the next life in a better situation than what he had deserved.  He’s nothing but a thief yet again—spending a dying breath to steal a blessing.  It’s possible.  But, his actual request indicates something more.  He does not ask Jesus to put in a good word for him when they appear before the ultimate judge.  He doesn’t ask him to offer a prayer on his behalf.  No, he asks Jesus to remember him when Jesus comes into his kingdom.  This is breath-taking.

In all the pages of Scripture there is no more startling and remarkable portrait of surrendered faith than this.  The criminals on either side of Jesus look toward the central cross and their eyes take in the same gruesome and pathetic image.  But, they see two completely different things.  This man, this man with the keen sense of justice sees Jesus nailed to a cross, mangled, bloody, gasping for breath and dying like himself, and he sees a king.  The eyes of both men recorded the same facts and details.  There was Jesus utterly helpless and powerless.  There was nothing about Jesus that looked like a messiah, much less anything that looked the least bit regal.  The convict could not help seeing the cross in all of its gruesome reality.  The cross and the dying body of Jesus filled his vision—but that is not what he saw.  No, he saw a king.  Jesus was slowly, painfully dying just like he was, that could not be denied; but this man saw on that cross a king with a coming kingdom, because unlike the other condemned man, this man saw with the eyes of faith, and that changed everything.

Where did the man get such a remarkable faith?  We’re not told.  Perhaps, he was moved by Jesus’ surprising intercession made on behalf of his executioners when he pleaded with his father to forgive them in their ignorance.  Maybe it was that prayer from the lips of Jesus that was the thing that prompted this criminal not only to recognize justice, but to recognize the one who justifies.  Hearing Jesus’ prayer may well have convinced him: this is no ordinary man.  No mere man could pray like that.  Whatever the reason, the convict offers a prayer of his own: “Jesus, remember me.”  This is the prayer of faith. It is all the more amazing that it is spoken to Christ as he is crucified.  This is faith worked by the Holy Spirit and thriving in this new believer.

The man believed.  The man saw Jesus crucified; the man saw his king.  He saw with the eyes of faith.  He did not have the benefit of Easter glory to see.  He did not have the image of Jesus ascending above the clouds in splendor.  He did not have the awesome picture of the Holy Spirit’s Pentecost-outpouring-of-power.  He did not have any of these scenes of heavenly glory to fill his vision.  His only vision was Jesus nailed next to him.  Yet he believed.  This man, this evildoer and outlaw, this convict turned convert stands for all time as a lasting word of conviction against all who would come after him who do have the benefit of the glory and the power in full evidence and yet refuse to believe.  He believed seeing only the cross.  A dying man filled his vision, but he saw a king coming into his kingdom.  He saw his Lord.

How sad, how tragic, that so many today struggle to believe even when they have before them not only the cross but the resurrected and glorified Lord.  Yet, in spite of the power and glory, they still can’t see the king.  But, perhaps that’s the real problem, after all.  Perhaps, there is too much glory, too much sunshine, too much going their way, and it obscures and distorts their sight.  They can’t see what they need to see.  They can’t see a king or a savior because they think they need neither.  Each man becomes his own Lord who needs no king to lead.  Who needs to be troubled with the claims of a king who can rescue and redeem—rescue and redeem from what?  But a man dying on a cross knows his need.  Comfortable, and secure, we are prone to forget the reality of our need and the crisis that awaits each of us.

But, the crisis does always eventually catch up with us.  To our surprise, or at least to our dismay, the hard realities of life inevitably crash in on us and we find ourselves not so different than the dying convict.  A close and trusted friend betrays a confidence and tramples your friendship.  Children once loving and sweet grow sullen and disrespectful—their insolence devastating every member of the family.  The love that fed and nurtured a marriage withers away and the relationship dries up.  An illness lingers and deepens.  Wars drag on, and deployments tear relationships apart.  People we love change and die and leave.  Life slows down and the joy drains away.  Whether in a sudden burst or by degrees, the crisis always comes.  It cannot be avoided.  In reality, none of us is so very different from the convict on the cross painfully aware of the score and his own hopeless situation.

When you know your need, when the crisis descends, when you feel your own desperate terror, you need to look where the thief looked.  More importantly, you need to see what he saw.  Look at the cross.  You don’t see any splendor or majesty there.  You don’t see power or glory there.  Look at the cross, and see what is there: see Jesus hanging by nails, torn, gasping, suffering, dying.  Look at the cross and see what the thief saw:  see your king.  Indeed, the throne is strange, the attire is shocking, and the crown is horrific.  But this is your king—this is your God.  And it is precisely in the suffering and the agony and the horror of that cross that he is your king and your God.  The cross is his glory, the glory of perfect love.  Calvary is his splendor, the splendor of grace in deliberate action.  The suffering is his power, the power of infinite sacrifice.  Look at the cross and see, there, your Lord in all of his glory and splendor and power.  See what the thief saw.

The thief prays.  He prays to his king for some tidbit, some small shred of mercy.  He asks only one thing: “Jesus, remember me.  When you come into your kingdom, when you are fully and finally enthroned in eternal resurrection glory, remember me.”  The man prays, and the king responds.  Now, Jesus looks, and he sees what is there, not a dying and pathetic miscreant finally getting what he deserves.  No, Jesus sees his own creation, his own brother in the flesh, his own royal subject, his own disciple.  Jesus sees faith.  And so, our Lord speaks from the cross, and grants the request…and he gives even more than requested.  The man wanted only to be remembered, someday.  Jesus responds by promising paradise…today.  That very day, the man would taste the bliss of paradise in the presence of God.  He received the gift of life eternal.  The dying man did nothing—no good works, no reformed life, no sacrificial giving, no self-giving service to others.  He did nothing, and he got everything.  Jesus simply snatches him from destruction.  He steals his sheep from Satan and hell.

In the midst of your crisis, or at least aware of the impending crisis and your own crushing need, join your brother, the crucified criminal who is getting what he deserves.  Follow his gaze: look to the cross, and there with the eyes of faith, see what he sees.  See your king.  And, seeing your king, ask from him what you do not deserve.  The prayer does not need to be detailed, eloquent or fluent.  You need ask nothing more than the criminal asked: Jesus, remember me.  That’s the prayer of faith, the prayer that sees what only faith can see: the king who dies for you, the king who lives for you.  Speak the simple prayer.  The king will fill in the details.  He will provide the answer that you need, and that answer will be far more than you asked, and far more than you ever dreamed.  Snatched from death and hell, the shepherd steals one more sheep back for himself.  He steals you.  You belong to your king forever; you also will join him in paradise.  Amen.

Surely

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann

Mark 14:17-20

Maundy Thursday  April 13, 2017

This is it.  This is the day, this is the night, this is the time, when everything comes together.  This is the night when the Passion begins, the night when our Lord’s journey to the cross accelerates alarmingly.  This is the night when all of history and all of time seems to swirl and hurtle toward one critical moment, one singular event that becomes the hinge and center directing and transcending time and recalibrating all of history.  But, that’s later.  Before the cross, the torture, the trial, the arrest, and the betrayal, we have tonight.  Before the horror and the disaster, God provides a respite.  For the twelve it was Passover, for you it is the festival called Maundy Thursday.  White on the altar tells us that this is a holy celebration—and so it is, a pause for nourishment, an hour to revel in God’s work.  Here, in God’s church, we live the reality of what God has done and is doing; tonight, we retrace the story.  With the twelve, we follow Jesus into the upper room and relish the celebration of God’s deliverance of Israel.  That’s how it works in the church.  Time runs together.  The past is present reality and the future is palpable all around us.

It was certainly that way for the twelve.  They reclined around the table that night with a tangible awareness of the past, and a sense of peace and confidence about the future…and why not?  The memory of Sunday’s exuberant arrival in Jerusalem was still vivid.  They could hear the glad shouts of “Hosanna” echoing still.  They had watched and listened with delight as Jesus had sparred that week with the brightest and shrewdest of the rabbis and political elite—and had put them all to shame.  Jesus had never looked more poised for an ascent to the halls of power and authority in Israel.  And, here they were, Jesus’ hand-picked, chosen twelve.  They were the real disciples.  They had been with Jesus from the beginning, following him all over Galilee and Judea learning much and growing much—being groomed, they were sure, for positions of service and authority within the ranks of Jesus’ coming kingdom.  And so, they were.  But, they had still a few more things to learn, and the growth that was yet to come would prove the most painful of all.  Of course, the disciples lounging with Jesus in the upper room knew none of this that Passover night, so we can understand their reaction when Jesus declared an impending tragedy: he was about to be betrayed…by one of them.

In Greek, the recorded response is only seven letters long, two short words: μητι εγω.  In English, it usually gets translated, “Surely, not I?”  But, the meaning is a bit more nuanced.  The sense is, “No way it’s me…right?” or perhaps, “You don’t mean me, do you?”  It’s a question that expects an emphatic “No!” for an answer.  It’s a question that’s actually more of an assertion.  We are left to guess what it might have been like at that moment during the meal.  But, Mark does add one more detail.  The twelve didn’t blurt out their question all at once.  Rather, each disciple asked individually, one at a time.  Maybe they worked their way around the table, maybe they followed some acknowledged order of rank, or a deference based on age.  The first—was it Peter?—asked, and set the pattern: “Surely, not I?” and then another, “Surely, not I?” and then another, and then the scene became a sort of ritual, each man speaking the same words.  There was no way for any of the group to avoid asking the question, now.  It had to be asked by each one: “Surely, not I?”  If Jesus said anything in response to each query, Mark doesn’t tell us.  I suspect that Mark records nothing because Jesus said nothing.  It’s only later in the conversation that Judas is finally revealed as the traitor—a detail supplied not by Mark, but by Matthew’s account.   No, I think Mark tells all that there is to tell about this moment.  Each disciple’s question is met with the same silence.  I wonder how they asked the question…was it said with a hint of indignation?  Were they offended that Jesus could suggest such a thing: “Surely, NOT I!?”  Were they hurt that Jesus could implicate them, “Surely, not I.”  Or was there a bit of confident bravado in the words, “Surely, not I!”  Yet, after each iteration of the question, however inflected, there was that same stony silence.  Did the silence rattle their confidence?  Did they begin to waver in their certainty?  Maybe, by the end of the litany-of-questions, the brash declaration had withered to a hesitant and doubtful plea, “Surely, not I?”  It would have been right if it had come to this.

Confidence comes easily enough to most of us, doesn’t it?  Oh, I know, when you’re put in the spotlight, you are quick to offer an appropriate and expected display of humility, and self-effacement, maybe even some self-deprecation.  We all know that we’re not supposed to be too full of ourselves.  And, of course, you know that you have some areas or arenas in which you feel at least a little inadequate and insecure.  Still, at the core, you know the kind of person that you are, and the kind of things that you would or would not do.  There are fundamental issues of right and wrong that are simply non-optional for you. In the things that matter, you know what you are made of, and you know your capabilities.  You can even point to evidence of the kind of person that you are.  There are severe trials, maybe even some tragedies that you have overcome.  There is the family that you have held together, and the children that you have raised.  There are the temptations you have faced and conquered, the habits you have beaten.  You’ve proven yourself in school and at work.  You’ve been a respectful and affectionate son or daughter.  You don’t do the sort of things that your classmates routinely do.  You’ve been a loyal friend, and a neighbor respected by all.  You’ve provided a comfortable retirement for yourself and for those you love. And you do your best to be a good church-member, giving your offering faithfully and generously, and never missing a worship service—not unless you’re incapacitated.  You do things right, and work hard to make sure that it becomes a way of life for you.  When it comes to following God, and obeying his will, you know what counts, and you strive to do it.  You’re not so different, then, than the rest of the disciples.  So, take your place there at the table with the twelve.  Choose a humble seat, of course, one down by Thomas and Thaddeus.  And then, when it’s your turn, look your savior in the eye, and you ask him the required question: μητι εγω, “Surely, not I?”

How did your voice sound?  Was it confident and self-assured?  Were there overtones of sorrow and regret that Jesus could suggest that you might be capable of betrayal?  Did you say it with a hint of hesitation and fear?  Did you doubt yourself?  Is it possible, after all?   Is it possible that even you might be able to betray Jesus?   Surely…not…I?”  The I is the problem.  It always is.  Less than ten hours after that Passover meal, Judas betrayed Jesus, Peter denied Jesus, and Thomas and Thaddeus, and Simon and James and the rest of the disciples, all abandoned Jesus.  They had been warned.  It didn’t matter.  When the moment of testing came, they failed, completely.  “Surely, not I?”  Silence, and then the grim reality: utter collapse, total failure.  The outcome is always the same when “I” is at the center.  The I is so vulnerable, so fragile, yet so full of itself that it does not see even its own inability and its own peril.  You cannot trust yourself.  It does not matter what is in your heart.  It does not matter how sincere you are.  It does not matter how much you truly love God and earnestly want to follow him.  When the question is about you and about what you can do, the outcome is invariably, surely, the same: defeat, denial, death.

Jesus knows all of this, of course.  As the disciples each ask in turn, as you take your turn, and ask, “Surely, not I?” …Jesus already knows the answer.  He knows the reality.  And he responds…by giving grace.  It is to these twelve—full of confidence, full of sincerity, full of themselves—it is to them that he gives himself: his true body, his true blood.  He sees how fragile, how weak, how empty they are; and he gives them what they need: the gift of forgiveness and strength and certain hope in the meal of Holy Communion with himself.  Regardless what was going on in their hearts, no matter what thoughts they were having, in spite of all that would unfold in a matter of hours, Jesus looks at each disciple…and gives.  He gives grace.  He gives forgiveness.  He gives himself.  He does it all.  The I is irrelevant.   The I brings nothing to the table.  The I does not earn and surely does not deserve what is given.  But, Jesus gives anyway.  He gives to Judas.  He gives to Peter.  He gives to Thomas and Thaddeus.  He gives to Simon and to James and to John and…and to you.  He gives to you.  You bring nothing to the rail tonight, not commitment, not self-confidence, not sincerity, not humility, not compassion; you bring nothing—nothing but yourself and your failures and your regrets and your emptiness.  And here, at this rail, the meal of the upper room is extended into the present, into this here and now, and Jesus himself meets you, and Jesus himself feeds you.  That’s grace, and that’s what tonight is all about.

Following Christ is, finally, not about doing, or being, or performing, or becoming.  Following Christ is ultimately about receiving.  That was the unmistakable message of Jesus’ last Passover meal with the twelve.  It’s the same message of Maundy Thursday, 2017.  “Surely, not I.”  Exactly.  It’s not about you and your doing.  It’s about Jesus and his giving.  It’s about Jesus and his certain promise.  You can never be sure of yourself and what you can or can’t do.  Like the twelve, you too are fragile, vulnerable, and certain to fall.  But, tonight Jesus comes to you, anyway; and no matter what you have done or will do, no matter who you are or will be, no matter what; Jesus gives you himself.  He’s here giving you the gift he gave the twelve: his true body, his true blood.  You do not make it happen.  You do nothing to make it real.  It’s all his giving.  It’s simply his promise in action.  Because of his promise, you receive his body and his blood—the same body nailed and blood shed on the cross of Calvary—the same body broken and blood spilled that prompted the centurion to confess: “Surely, this man was the Son of God.”  Indeed, surely.  The same body and blood surely are here tonight.  Surely, this is the Son of God, here, for you.

Only one “surely” matters—it has nothing to do with what you have done or what you will do.  The only surely that matters is the surely that centers on Christ and his promise.  Surely, he is here.  Surely, he comes with his grace.  And you, so susceptible, so prone to fail, so quick to fall—you are on the receiving end of his grace.  Surely, this is Christ, for you.  Amen.