Sermon #1,069: Luke 9:23-26, (#251, 252, 559, distrib. hymns 302, 422) (Invocavit, First Sunday in Lent), Bethany-Princeton MN

Transcription

1 Sermon #1,069: Luke 9:23-26, (#251, 252, 559, distrib. hymns 302, 422) (Invocavit, First Sunday in Lent), Bethany-Princeton MN THE SIGN OF THE CROSS Prayer: Merciful God, Your Son, Jesus Christ, was lifted high upon the cross that He might bear the sins of the world and draw all people to Himself. Grant that we who glory in His death for our redemption may faithfully heed His call to bear the cross and follow Him, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (Collect for Holy Cross Day, September 14) The Text, St. Luke 9:23-26, Then He said to them all, If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 24 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. 25 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? 26 For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father s, and of the holy angels. 51 Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, 52 and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. 53 But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. 54 And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did? 55 But He turned and rebuked them, and said, You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. 56 For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men s lives but to save them. And they went to another village. 57 Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, Lord, I will follow You wherever You go. 58 And Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. 59 Then He said to another, Follow Me. But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. 60 Jesus said to him, Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God. 61 And another also said, Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house. 62 But Jesus said to him, No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. Amen. Dear fellow redeemed in Christ: I cannot by my own reason or strength love the cross. That statement does not seem quite right to Christians because we do love the cross. That s just because you ve learned what it means. You know that without the cross there is no forgiveness. It s called Good Friday because what He did there is good. 1

2 But the fact that you believe this, and think this way, is a sign of how the work of the Holy Spirit overcomes your human reason. Human reason is a slave to the old Adam, the sinful flesh, the sin in you which is always saying, That doesn t make sense to me! It doesn t want to listen to what God says. It wants God to take orders from me, according to what makes sense to me. So even though loving the cross seems so natural for us Christians, this is faith speaking. It is not your human reason. In Luke 9:23, Jesus has just declared to His disciples for the first time that He will suffer and be killed (and also that He will rise from the dead). In the other gospels, at this point, Peter says, in essence, No way! which is the response of human reason -- followed by Jesus telling him, Get behind Me, Satan (Mt 16:23). We who know how the story ends are impatient with Peter here. It was all part of a plan, God s plan, y know? Yes, we think we ve figured out the cross. We know all about it. But Jesus goes from the talk of His cross to your cross. That s a different matter, we think. Jesus cross: makes sense. Our crosses: don t make sense. Luke tells us: He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. This is the part about Jesus cross, Luke s statement about how unwavering Jesus was in His determination to lay down His life. Then, one by one, we meet three people who don t understand what it means to follow Jesus. He responds to each directly, but really He is doing this for the benefit of His disciples. These three strangers didn t hear Jesus say: If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. But the disciples did. So when Jesus says, The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head, He is saying for His disciples benefit -- this is what it means to take up your cross and follow Him: that you will be homeless in the world. Then when He says, You go and proclaim the kingdom of God, He is saying this is what it means 2

3 to take up your cross and follow Him: proclaiming Christ s kingdom is going or departing from something that s comfortable or familiar. Finally, when He speaks of being fit for the kingdom of God and not looking back, He is saying this is what it means to take up your cross: the only thing that matters is being fitted for His kingdom. Not even family attachments burying a parent, or saying goodbye to family are to get in the way. Human reason responds: Too hard, Jesus! This is what s the word that comes to mind? unreasonable! We don t have a problem with Jesus cross, we have a problem with our crosses. That s just the problem. That s why Jesus connects the two, and whenever He speaks of His cross, He also speaks of our crosses. If I have a problem with my crosses, I really have a problem with Jesus cross, no different from Peter. What are our crosses? I was always taught that Lutheran doctrine teaches that the Christian s cross is not every bad thing that happens to you, but only what you suffer for the sake of Christ. However, listen to what Martin Luther says about it. He says the holy cross is that Christians must endure every misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil, the world and the flesh (as the Lord s Prayer indicates) by inward sadness, timidity, fear, outward poverty, contempt [from others], illness, and weakness, in order to become like their head, Christ (LW 41:164). In fact, Luther says that when you want to know where the true church is, you recognize it in the pure Word, the Sacraments and the work of the Ministry, but he adds that you recognize the true church because it possesses the holy cross, these very crosses, it s a sign of being a Christian, being in Jesus church. In other words, your cross is a sign. Your crosses are a sign. They are a sign that you are a Christian. Which is the exact opposite of how we think. 3

4 You are tempted to think, when the crosses come, that God is far away from you; that He has forgotten you. You are tempted to deny the crosses. If death or suffering is in the picture, you won t go there. If someone difficult is in your life, you are tempted to forget them or avoid them, or just not forgive them. If there is a sadness and you can t feel happy, you think something is wrong with you. You want to distract yourself from what, we call them problems, but Jesus is here to tell you that they are crosses, and while some distractions are innocent we must be careful that we are not refusing to take up the cross and carry it in faith. The world we live in wants to convince you that no struggle is good and to lay it down, not take it up. Depression is a cross, part of the inward sadness that Luther mentioned; human reason says that giving it all up and committing suicide is OK. Having a child with a long-term illness or disability is a cross; human reason says that giving up the child so you can have your own life and not struggle so much is OK. If someone has a homosexual attraction, that too is a cross, something to struggle against; human reason says that there is no need to struggle with that but one should be encouraged to be yourself and not practice self-denial. Here s how human reason talks: Not unreasonable for Jesus to die for me, but unreasonable for me to make that sacrifice. We are good at receiving, but not good at giving giving up ourselves. That is human reason talking. Every word Jesus speaks here about His cross and our crosses is a blow to human reason. He would tell us that it is good to struggle with the cross. Luther said taking up the cross causes pain. But even when it s painful, struggling with it is a sign that faith is working, working against human reason and the flesh. So the cross is a sign. Your crosses are a sign that you belong to Him. How do you know that? You are baptized. And guess what happened in your baptism? You were signed with the cross. You received the sign of the cross on your 4

5 forehead and on your breast. It is the sign which Satan s legions fear. But it also is what makes Satan active in your life. The crosses come because you are baptized. You are a threat to the devil s kingdom. Your faith the gift you received in baptism is a threat to him. So he works on your reason, on your sinful flesh which doesn t want to sacrifice, deny yourself, or bear the cross. But your baptism is stronger. We teach that baptism isn t just a date on the calendar of your life, it isn t I was baptized on such-and-such a date, but rather we learn to say I am baptized. You make the sign of the cross daily, which reflects Jesus words here that His disciple is to take up his cross daily. Because the crosses are there every day, the devil hopes that you will say it s too much, give up, and refuse to take up the cross. But if the crosses are connected to your baptism, if you only have them because you ve been signed with the cross in baptism, then what do you do with these crosses? You baptize them. You bring them to the water of your baptism each day. You make the sign of the cross in remembrance of Your baptism, and then you are connected to Christ, the true Baptizer, whom you first met in baptism, that you might be His own and live under Him in His kingdom, with whom you were buried by baptism into death that you might walk with Him in newness of life, unhurt by anything, and who will never leave you. You know that His cross gives you the strength to take up your cross and follow Him. Just as you learn to love Jesus cross even though it was vile and shameful because you know what it gives you, so too do you learn to love your crosses even though it looks absolutely repulsive to the world and even feels that way to you according to your human reason and sinful flesh because these crosses make you closer to Jesus and keep you looking to His cross. 5

6 This is basically what Luther says, in another writing of his called That a Christian Should Bear His Cross With Patience : For the children of God the holy cross serves for learning the faith, for learning the power of the Word, and for subduing whatever sin and pride remain. Indeed, a Christian can no more do without the cross than without food or drink. Why should cross and trial grieve me? Christ is near with His cheer; Never will He leave me! Amen! 6