An Interesting Subject Line…

I recently received an e-mail from our TV provider with this subject line: “Don’t let your Sundays go to waste!  Every game, every Sunday.  GET NFL SUNDAY TICKET”

If we don’t receive every game, every Sunday then the Lord’s day goes to waste? I don’t think so.  I like football but football is not the main attraction on a Sunday.  When Bill Clinton was president, The New York Times had an ad for their rag showing  Bill Clinton holding up a copy of the Times’ Sunday edition with the caption:  “Sunday was made for The New York Times”.  I don’t think so.  We go to waste without His forgiveness, His Body and Blood, His every Word in preaching and praise:  go to waste as in starving to death.  No wonder our nation is going to waste.  There are no tickets to buy in the Church, Christ’s own Body but His Cross the sign of our admission, His price, in repentance and His peace.  Indeed, don’t let the Lord’s Sunday go waste!

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Holy Saturday: Christ in the Tomb

 

COLLECT OF THE DAY:  O God, creator of heaven and earth, grant that as the crucified body of Your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with Him the coming of the third day, and rise with Him to newness of life, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

READINGS: Daniel 6: 1-24  Psalm 16  1 Peter 4: 1-8 St. Matthew 27: 57-66

I was visiting a friend in Albuquerque, New Mexico and we went to the old town of the city.  We visited the historic church in the old town.  I was looking at sizable side altar, especially all the statuary above the Altar. Then I saw light below the Altar and I was shocked to see a life size, full color statue of Christ Jesus in the tomb, complete with casket silk, in the length of the Altar, like the picture above.  My friend had been a Dominican monk and I expressed my surprise and shock at this.  He responded that many poor people would have come to this church and here is Christ who is with them in death.  You can not get poorer than dead. Christ was dead, actually dead.  The author of life breathed His last upon the Cross.  At the risk of sounding flippant, when Dorothy’s house fell on the wicked witch, the coroner comes with the death certificate and sings:  “As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her/And she’s not only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead.”  Our Lord was most sincerely dead. He died physically and on the Cross spiritually sin, yours and mind was crucified and  there in the tomb He brought our sins for what it is: dead. This day is also called The Great Sabbath. The living death of sin was crucified and laid to rest in His tomb.  On the Third Day, at the rise of the sun, He left our sin there, as He did His grave clothes.

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Sermon, Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, 6 July, 2,014, Concordia Lutheran Mission

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” St. Matthew 11: 28

Text:  The Holy Gospel, St. Matthew 11:25–30

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, pastor and bishop, who lived in the 2^nd century, whose most noted writing was Against Heresies, wrote: 

“For error is plausible and bears a resemblance to the truth but requires to be disguised;  while truth is without disguise and, therefore, has been entrusted to children.”

The shocking part of that quote is that the truth has “…has been entrusted to children”!  Not to the adults, not to the learned, not to theologians.  This is keeping with our Lord Jesus Christ who prayed to His Father,

At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; ²⁶ yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.    St.Matthew 11

When it comes to right or wrong, adults like to think in terms of “moral grays”, make things complicated. but a child does not:  it is either right or wrong.  It is that way with the Gospel:   a child gets it. I have done wrong, God is great, He loved us upon the cross.    Creation is good.  I have done wrong.   We are forgiven. This is truth without disguise.  The Father reveals His love to children not the “learned and the wise”. Jesus Himself entrusts it to children:  even if the child is a 100! It is in keeping with Irenaeus and his love of Scripture is the lyrics of the old Sunday School song:

Jesus loves me! This I know,  For the Bible tells me so; Little ones to Him belong, They are weak but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me! He who died, Heaven’s gate to open wide; He will wash away my sin, Let His little child come in. Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.

Yet, the undisguised truth of God’s Word has so much that even the most able minds cannot understand it all.  But them some then try to fit God’s Word to their self-conceived good words and works. Self-conceived in one’s own works and words is finally self-centered.  In Irenaeus’ day there were the Gnostics who said creation is evil, spirituality is good. Plausible…except it is not the Scripture:  see Genesis 1 and the refrain, It is good, seven times culminating in the God’s declaration of His Word: And it was very good! See Jesus Christ:  God became FLESH, His own creation!  It is the heretics, who have had enough of God’s own truth, to disguise and then complicate the truth of God’s own Word, now looking to themselves and a ‘superior’ spirituality.  It looks good but it is a wolf disguised in sheep’s clothing (see Matthew 7:15).  Beware,  said faithful pastors like Irenaeus.  Irenaeus also famously said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”  How?  Answer:  Jesus loves me.  Upon Him, the solid rock, we can grow and be edified, built-up by the Holy Spirit.  A child can get it and it is entrusted to His children of all ages and for all the ages until He comes again.

At that time, Jesus prayed the first part of today’s Gospel.  At that time, when things were going against Him and folks were just not getting His invitation by His grace alone to the eternal life He offers in God’s own forgiveness.  The deaf hear, the blind see, the dead are raised and blessed is he who takes no offense at that, Jesus said to John’s disciples earlier in chapter 11.  Children, infants are not in control.  They are dependent.  Those wise and understanding in their own eyes are not dependent and think they are in control over their salvation.  Not a baby, actually, not any man.    

Filled with one’s own wisdom, fame, power, and wealth, the learned and understanding, cannot be filled with the Lord.  It  is in our time we have the expression, He or she is filled with himself.  But not only individuals but nations and religions.  Jerusalem, which should have filled with the Lord as no other city on earth, was very filled, obese with their own spirituality and their King came riding in lowly and riding a donkey, emptied of fame, fortune and riches.  He was emptied, it says in the Bible, even death on a cross.Many suffer from spiritual obesity going from one leaking cistern to another.  Spiritual obesity is starving to death People go to and fro seeking spiritual experiences but the one spiritual experience all avoid like the plague is what the Lord says to us in His Law.  God’s Law will empty any one of us.  His Law is good, love is good, as the command is good, but I do the very thing I hate and this the Law shows me.  The great apostle Paul understood that in spades.  As a Pharisee he was probably well acquainted with the phrase: to put on the yoke of the Law, God’s Law. He knew this conflict in his soul, actually Paul called that spade a spade, he called in it a “war”, which is in everyone’s soul in Christ Jesus.  Jesus prayed, Come to me all who are burden and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Jesus answered Paul’s prayer.  The dictionary definition of rest is: 

a bodily state characterized by minimal functional and metabolic activities

a :  freedom from activity or labor

b :  a state of motionlessness or inactivity

c :  the repose of death

The conflict in Paul did not mean to try harder to be saved or get good with God, another self-help book, another TV guru.  The conflict means only one thing, the third dictionary definition of rest: the repose of death.  Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Not me, not you, Come to Me all who are burden and heavy laden. Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. His Law exposes the inner wretch in us that we can sing, Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. This is, as Jesus says, the Father’s gracious will to so reveal to us His Son. He chooses to reveal this to those who know their burden, Come to Me. The Word of God has two parts:  contrition and sorrow over sin, the weak and weary soul and the second part, the Gospel forgiveness and so the Lord gives us the Sacraments with those two parts,

“Here there are two parts. The “labor” and the burden signify the contrition, anxiety, and terrors of sin and death. To “come to” Christ is to believe that sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake. When we believe, our hearts are brought to life by the Holy Spirit through Christ’s Word. Here, therefore, are these two chief parts: contrition and faith.” (The Book of Concord:  Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XII, Repentance)

From the learned Book of Concord and a child can understand it.

We are in the midst of summer and vacations.  Is rest and vacation the same thing?  And the congregation responds:  Good question, Pastor!  Maybe you, or family and friends, have said after a vacation:  “I need a vacation”, because many get tired by the effort and planning to “get away from it all”.   “Vacation” is from the verb “to vacate” which means a person’s active will and works to leave and go some place else, with the hopes that a change will be relaxing, but it may not be necessarily restful.  We “vacation plan”.   “Rest”, on the other hand, is utterly passive.  Rest, Sabbath is God’s plan.

“You shall observe the worship day,

That peace may fill your home and pray,

and put aside the work you do,

so that God may work in you.

Have mercy, Lord.” (#581,Lutheran  Service Book, “These are the Holy 10 Commands, by Martin Luther)

 Rest means to entrust one’s self in it’s entirety to something or someone greater than myself, as in the hymn lyric, “I rest on His unchanging grace”.  Rest means in a word, doing nothing. Rest means being, not doing, and we will so serve actively in His grace. Rest means ceasing to create the world and receive the Lord’s creation as His gifts to us all.  And as Lutherans are want to say Biblically, doing nothing to save oneself. Our works, however good, cannot save us, only His good work in Jesus Christ has.  The word translated as “little child” can also be rendered infant. Helpless as a baby, is an old expression.  It’s not God helps those who help themselves, it is God helps those who can’t help themselves.  Natalie and were married 27 years ago on July 4^th and as the pastor said, Interdependence Day. Our help is in the Name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Rest means the one who is “gentle and lowly in heart”.  His yoke is not the Law but Grace, means “learn from Me”, not new rules and regs, new powers and principles, but learning Christ Jesus for life, the reign of the Lord,  eternal life day by day and yes, by prayer, Sacrament, Scripture, and  “you will find rest for your souls”.  In the Name of the Father, and of the +Son and of the Holy  Spirit. Amen.

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Aargh! Indeed! What about the 3rd Commandment?

Indeed, how did ‘our‘ Sundays get so crazy?!  This article in the 8/28/11 Parade magazine has  7 or so steps you can do to “take back YOUR weekend” (emphases my own).  The article points out that so many activities and chores are shoved into Saturday and Sunday. ‘Church’ is even listed at the end of the list as one of the activities. And of course, that is the last mention of ‘church’ in the article.

This article points to  the 3rd Commandment:

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

In his teaching on the Commandment, Martin Luther says that the general worker needs a day of rest, but that’s all it becomes.  Even worse for all sorts of folks who, “…sin against this commandment who grossly misuse and desecrate the holy day, as those who on account of their greed or frivolity neglect to hear God’s Word or lie in taverns and are dead drunk like swine.”  Sadly, the difference between the 16th and 21th centuries are not all that difference due to the sloth of the Old Adam. I have a copy of a New York Times ad which states (from memory): The New York Times :  What Sundays are Made For. AARGH!  No. Truly, then ‘our’ Sundays become crazy, all upside down, not right in the head or the heart.

But Luther asks and answers the question:  What makes Sunday holy?  Answer:  the Word of God.  The Lord’s Word is the only way that Sundays do not become crazy!  For this article, the opposite of crazy is holy. It is His Word that makes holy the day but even more, by faith, the Word of God makes holy, or sanctifies you and I.

• Personally, I think it significant that in other languages, such as Spanish, the 1st day of the week is called Domingo, the Lord’s Day. But Luther points out that during the week, as the Lord’s Church, we can come together for instruction in the Scripture and those hours are also Sabbath, rest, resting in His Word. Nevertheless, I think something is amiss when a day is considered ‘mine’, as in, “my Sunday”. It’s a day to remember that “without aid He did make us” (hymn verse)  and without our aid He did  redeem us.
• I also think it is significant that the Lord’s Day, the Third Day in which He rose again from the dead, is the 1st day of the week, NOT MONDAY!  First things first to properly put into peace, not craziness, the work week:  His Word of Law and Promise.
• I think it is significant that the commandment right after the 3rd (yeah, I know the 4th!) is “Honor your father and your mother”.  The Lord’s day is for the family in Christ and all the households therein.
• It is also significant that  on the first day of the week, the same day the Lord rose again, the Lord created light by the light of His Word. If it’s own ‘lights’ by which we think we see then the darkness is great indeed! (see Luke 11:34-36)  But by the light of His Word we walk: “Thy Word is lamp unto feet, and a light unto my path”.  (Psalm 119:105)

And there is another level craziness to “what happened to OUR Sundays” when, as Luther taught, “… that other crowd, who listen to God’s Word as to any other trifle, and only from custom come to preaching, and go away again, and at the end of the year know as little of it as at the beginning.”  And again from the Large Catechism:  “Likewise those fastidious spirits are to be reproved who, when they have heard a sermon or two, find it tedious and dull, thinking that they know all that well enough, and need no more instruction. “  In our day and time those fastidious spirits want religious entertainment on a Sunday, not engagement. We want to satisfy the flesh, not have it crucified and so all the contemporary worship mania (see the funny video below).  And Luther calls this  need for no more instruction by the deadly sin of  sloth.  “…a malignant, pernicious plague with which the devil bewitches and befuddles the hearts of many so that he may take us by surprise and take the Word of God away from us.”  The Church becomes a religious club in which the Word is read but then ignored or debated or “dialogued”.  Sundays have become crazy in many churches looking calm.   From the conclusion of Luther’s explanation of the 3rd Commandment:

For let me tell you this, even though you know (the Word) perfectly and be already master in all things, still you are daily in the dominion of the devil, who ceases neither day nor night to steal unawares upon you, to kindle in your heart unbelief and wicked thoughts against the foregoing and all the commandments. Therefore you must always have God’s Word in your heart, upon your lips, and in your ears. But where the heart is idle, and the Word does not sound, he breaks in and has done the damage before we are aware.101] On the other hand, such is the efficacy of the Word, whenever it is seriously contemplated, heard, and used, that it is bound never to be without fruit, but always awakens new understanding, pleasure, and devoutness, and produces a pure heart and pure thoughts. For these words are not inoperative or dead, but creative, living words. 102] And even though no other interest or necessity impel us, yet this ought to urge every one thereunto, because thereby the devil is put to flight  and driven away, and, besides, this commandment is fulfilled, and [this exercise in the Word] is more pleasing to God than any work of hypocrisy, however brilliant.

“And celebrate the worship day                                                                                                    That peace may fill your home, and pray,                                                                              And put aside the work you do                                                                                                     so that God may work in you.                                                                                                      Have mercy, Lord!”

(“Here is the Tenfold Sure Command, by Martin Luther, #331, Lutheran Worship

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