Today the Church commemorates the man who wrote what scholars believe is chronologically the first of the Gospels, Saint Mark. This morning’s Gospel records our Lord’s commissioning of the Seventy as a kind of “advance team.” They were to precede Him wherever He would be going to prepare the way. In a sense, that’s the same mission He’s been sending pastors on ever since. Jesus will return to this earth some day, at an hour known only to the Father, to judge it and to receive those who belong to Him into His Father’s glory. In the meantime, He sends messengers ahead of him to prepare the way.

In any case, the Greek word “Apostolos” means “one who is sent.” God sent Mark, who not only wrote the Gospel that bears his name but by tradition brought Christianity to Africa. Christ sent the Seventy on their mission. And it is fitting on my last Sunday as the one sent to Saint Mary, as we await the arrival of Pastor Jeff Siegel, the one God is sending to take my place, that we pause and contemplate what it is to be sent by God to be about the task of preparing Christ’s way.

“Go your way,” Jesus says to the Seventy. “Behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves.” According to tradition, Saint Mark- like all the apostles except John- died a martyr’s death, dying while being dragged through the streets of Alexandria. We do not know how many of the Seventy eventually shared his fate, but it was probably a large percentage. Many of them would have gone through the persecution by Nero that took the lives of Mark and his fellow apostles. We don’t know what sort of opposition they might have met during their first mission, while Jesus still visibly walked the earth. But it would be safe to assume that not everybody received their announcement that Jesus of Nazareth was coming to town with enthusiasm. There would have been scribes and Pharisees and Zealots and all manner of others whose personal agendas might not find His presence congenial. There would be suspicious Roman officials. And there would be the usual assortment of skeptics, naysayers, and just plain grumps to contend with.

Pastor Christopher Esget of Immanuel in Alexandria, Virginia, where I was a member when I lived in the Washington, D.C. area, tells me that to be seen wearing clerics in the District is to invite adventure. All sorts of reactions- some hostile, and some crazy, and most unusual-greets a person in our nation’s capital who is identifiable by his clothing as one sent by Christ. Of course, the cross is the mark of Christ’s ownership; anyone identified by the world as belonging to Jesus will experience the same hostility the world showed Him. And sometimes, for His sake, people are extra nice to those whom He has sent. But to be one of Christ’s sent ones is, in a sense, to walk the point. To be a pastor is to be full-time, by one’s very vocation in life, what all Christians are by virtue of the mark of the cross traced on their foreheads at baptism: targets for the world’s hostility toward the One Who sent them.

But not only for the world’s hostility, and not only toward Christ. The president of my first congregation was amused to hear that a few nights before my ordination, weary from selecting lessons and putting together a bulletin and a service, several of us had joked about 1 Kings 19:10 as an Old Testament lesson: “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” Anybody in the public eye is going to undergo criticism, some justified and some not. People today inside the church as well as outside it also have their own agendas and ideas, and anybody who has had much experience of congregations knows that every pastor takes his lumps, some deserved and some not. He is vulnerable by the very nature of his position. Count on it: there will be times when Pastor Siegel is going to take his lumps from members this congregation, rightly or wrongly, and no matter how good a job he does. It’s in the nature of the game that those who are called to prepare the way for the return of Jesus will be well acquainted with the cross. A servant, all, is not above his Master.

While there are embarrassing exceptions, people whom God sends tend not to get rich. It’s the nature of the situation here at Saint Mary that the call to be its pastor must of necessity be a bi-vocational call. Pastor Siegel has his pension from the military, and his wife’s salary, and will doubtless have no trouble with his tech background finding another part-time job to supplement the family income. But there is still an application in his sending of the words which Jesus speaks in our text: “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”

Quite independently of how you treat Jeff as Jeff, Pastor Siegel will deserve your respect and your support- not for his sake, but for Christ’s. We don’t call men who wear funny collars “reverend-” which means “revered,” or “respected-” because they’re such fine fellows, or even because in themselves they’re such wonderful examples. Just as Paul apologized to the High Priest who had just ordered him struck for disrespectful words he’d spoken to him without knowing his identity, so the laziest and most morally dissolute and the least respectable of people whom Jesus has sent deserve both respect and support for His sake, if not for their own. An insult to the British ambassador is not simply an insult to a man. It’s an insult to the Queen. The same is true of those sent by the King of Kings.

And Pastor Siegel will need your support and your respect, because he is undertaking a very difficult task that requires it if Saint Mary is going to prosper. The problems of this congregation may be a part of your life; they will be the focus of his. You will never know the sleep he will lose and stress he will bear as the one whom Jesus has sent to this place. It will be his job to step on toes, to risk bruising egos, to deflate agendas, and to risk hurting feelings- because, as Hebrews 13:17 says, he will be keeping watch over your souls, as one who will have to give an account. Let him do this, as the author of Hebrews continues, “with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

And there is room here for a great deal of joy. However many of the Seventy or of the Apostles died as martyrs, and whatever difficulties and crosses may be the lot of those whom Christ sends today, the task itself is a joyful one. “Heal the sick,” Jesus tells the Seventy, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’”

To be one who has been sent by the Savior of the World is to be, in the words of the pastor in Bo Giertz’s The Hammer of God,
to be like the warden of a jail who visits those in the cells with a letter of pardon in his pocket. It is to be the means by which Jesus speaks words of comfort to the distressed, of healing to the afflicted, of hope to the bereaved, and of release to the burdened. It is to have the incredible privilege, honor and joy of saying week after week to sinners who come to God’s house burdened by their guilt, “Upon this your confession, I, by virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the grace of God un to all of you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all of your sins.” It is to be the human means through which, by water and the Word, the Holy Spirit gives children of wrath new birth as sons and daughters of God, and the body that was broken and the blood that was shed upon the cross for sinful human beings are administered to feed the dying with the very life of Christ.

Doing all of these things was my great and joyful privilege for fifteen years, about three of which were spend in your midst. I will remember the joy I have known as the one sent by Jesus to you all my life, and treasure the friendship and the kindness you have shown me.

But now… rejoice! Rejoice because Pastor Jeff Siegel is coming, and he is sent by Jesus Himself to prepare His way. Rejoice, because Jesus sends him to forgive your sins, in His stead and by His command; to be the means by which, through water and the Word, the Holy Spirit gives children of wrath new birth as sons and daughters of God, and to call those who are already baptized to their baptism. Rejoice, because Jesus sends Him to baptize new ized back to their baptism. Rejoice, because he ciomes to administer Christ’s living body and blood to you, so that He might live in you, and you may live in Him.

Rejoice- because, as ordinary a man as Jeff Siegel may be, Jesus Himself is sending him- and in his coming the Kingdom of God comes near to you.

I’ve always felt sorry for ministers who choose their own sermon texts. Time after time, I’ve found that God uses the lectionary system to provide congregations with exactly the word they need to hear on exactly the Sunday when they need to hear it. And here we are, on the day when we meet to consider extending a call to a new shepherd for Saint Mary, considering Jesus’ description of Himself as the Good Shepherd.

The Latin word for “shepherd,” of course, is “pastor.” The flawed and very human men we call by that title are pale reflections of the Chief Shepherd Who has called them through the voice of the Church, and under whom they serve. There are some who are called “pastor” who are great preachers. Others are gifted counselors. Many have other gifts. We do well to consider a man’s gifts when we consider extending him a call to be our pastor. But there is one qualification which goes beyond all the others, and without which the most otherwise gifted of men are entirely unfit for the job.

In the voice of true pastor we will hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. In fact, Jesus tells us in our text that His sheep will recognize His voice, and will follow Him- but that they will not follow another. No sheep who belongs to Jesus will want anything to do with a shepherd in whose voice they do not hear His voice. As intimidating and awesome and downright ridiculous thing as it is to men who know their own frailties and shortcomings all too well, God sends pastors to Christ’s flock to be the means by which the Good Shepherd cares for His sheep.

My younger sister once told me about a day when we were in high school when Luther South’s A Capella Choir was rehearsing an anthem to perform during the Divine Service at a local congregation. During a break, she and several other choir members were blowing off steam and generally acting silly. They climbed into the pulpit and began pretending to preach. But that didn’t last long. They were shamed by a brass plaque on the lectern of the pulpit bearing the words the Greeks spoke to Phillip, as recorded in John 12:21: “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

And that, in five short words, that sums up the whole purpose of a sermon. That being the case, it follows that the Jesus one is shown from a pulpit needs to be the Jesus Who describes Himself in this morning’s text. The sheep need nothing less than the Good Shepherd, Who alone can protect and nourish and care for His sheep.

I think it’s significant that the first thing Jesus says about Himself- about the Good Shepherd- is that He lays down his life for the sheep. There are a whole lot of things a pastor might say of a Sunday morning to his flock- and Christ’s. There are a whole lot of things pastors do say to their congregations on Sunday morning. Some preach about social justice- and make no mistake; God is very much in favor of social justice. Some give advice about how to manage one’s anger, or one’s time, or one’s money. Surely good stewardship of these are things very much to be desired. Some are very eloquent about “biblical principles” concerning this or that or the other thing. Some suggest ways in which their congregations can make their lives “purpose driven,” or reflective of some other homiletically human fad. And some let their congregations have it with both barrels, and deliver a healthy, wholesome dose of the Law.

That last, surely, is the duty of any Christian pastor. A sermon in which God’s Law is not proclaimed in all its sternness may be many things, but it is not the voice of the Shepherd. Jesus knew when to be harsh in His application of the Law, and when to be gentle. He tailored His proclamation of the Law to the condition of His hearer. But He never pulled His punches. He never presented His Father as anything less than He is: a God of absolute holiness, a consuming fire in whose Presence nothing sinful or unclean can survive. Jesus was never one simply to encourage people to do their best, and tell them that God would be satisfied with that. Jesus told people the truth about God, and the truth about themselves.

“The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” And good shepherds must be willing to do that. We do not crucify our shepherds these days, like they crucified Jesus. And comparatively few pastors have to fight off literal wolves, however thick the woods may be with metaphorical ones preaching various legalisms and alien Christs and sometimes even themselves. But when I was growing up, I imagined that pastors were people whose positions and work were understood by their flocks to involve telling them, not what they wanted to hear, but what they needed to hear, even when it’s unpleasant.
If that was ever true, it hasn’t been true for quite a while.

Flocks have Old Adams. Sometimes- depressingly often in this day and age- sheep turn out to have teeth. An increasing number of pastors find their calls terminated without just cause simply because they told their congregations the truth. And often the Old Adams even of the finest of Christians bristle at being exposed for what they are. Seldom to undershepherds of the Good Shepherd literally have to lay down their lives for the sheep. Seldom, as in the days of the early persecutions, to pastors have to literally sacrifice themselves to keep their parishioners safe. But to be a sub-shepherd worthy of the name nevertheless requires courage- courage to proclaim the whole counsel of God’s Word, even when you, the sheep, don’t want to hear it- and sometimes courage enough to be shown the door rather than open the gate of the sheep-fold to the wolves.

It must be God’s Law that a faithful shepherd proclaims. It dare not be watered down. Nor dare he allow it to be contaminated by human plans and techniques and programs and ideas. He must boldly and courageously feed his sheep the food which will enable it not only to live a spiritually healthy life, but above all never leave it in doubt as to its deepest need of all.

The pulpits of America are full of pastors who fail because they pull their punches when it comes to proclaiming the Law. But they are also full of pastors who proclaim the Law accurately, and in all of its sternness and severity, who never fail to rebuke and reprove sin, and who never mix human philosophy – but who nevertheless fail their sheep every bit as completely and disastrously nonetheless.

No, there is one absolutely vital element without which a preacher might as well not bother wasting his breath, no matter how accurately and how powerfully and how faithfully he proclaims the Law. As important as the proclamation of the Law truly is,
it simply isn’t enough.

It doesn’t matter how strictly we may try to follow the Law. We will still fail- not sometimes, but always. At our best and holiest of moments our hearts and minds and motives will still fall short of God’s minimum standards. No matter how “purpose driven” our lives may be, our purposes will always fall short of God’s. The best advice and guidance in the world does nobody any good unless they keep it- and there’s the rub.

The story is told of an inner-city mission at which a well-intentioned preacher gave an oration to the homeless men about to receive their free dinner which concluded with a stirring recitation of Rudyard Kipling’s If, ending

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the earth, and everything that’s in it-
And what is more, you’ll be a man, my son!

Respectful silence filled the room, until it at last it was broken by an equally respectful, but despairing reply from a pew somewhere in the back: “Yeah. But…what if you can’t?”

And no matter how our Old Adams may flatter themselves, or what any of the false shepherds out there may say, that’s the problem with all that good, human advice we hear from so many pulpits, and even with the pure, stern proclamation of God’s own Law, if that’s the only food a shepherd feeds his flock: we can’t. We haven’t, we don’t , and we can’t. And yet, we must.

There is only one solution to our dilemma. There is only one rescue for people like you, and like me. We need to be shown the Good Shepherd, Who lays down His life for His sheep. We need to put our trust and our hope and our confidence in the One Who died so that we might live, and Who sacrificed Himself to save us from Satan’s jaws.

We need to be shown the One Whose righteousness covers our lack of it, and who walks beside us along the path of life wielding the Shepherd’s Crook of the Law in its Third Use- as a guide, rather than a club- keeping us in the way of safety and away from the serpents and the jimson weed that lay along the path.

We need to know, rather than wandering aimlessly, to listen for the Voice of the Shepherd. And if we hear His Voice of the one He sends for no other purpose, finally, than to show us Himself, we need fear no danger, no want, and no evil.

Every year on this day I’m in the habit of preaching on the story of the unofficial patron saint of the State of Missouri, the original Show Me Kid, St. Thomas. But that means missing out on one of my favorite texts in the whole Bible- this morning’s Old Testament Lesson.

Ok, it’ kind of a weird vision. Ezekiel finds himself standing in the midst of a valley full of dry bones- and the bones come to life. But the way they come to life is pretty vivid. The point of the text is hard to miss. And it’s an important point in this world we live in today.

Despite a superficial Christianity, ours is essentially a pagan culture. Faith tends to go no deeper than symbols and names. If most of us give some sort of allegiance to Jesus, it’s a Jesus we ourselves construct to our own specifications, having significance and a message we ourselves design for him.

A year or so ago, Newsweek editorialized that biblical authority- not a specific theory or concept of biblical authority, mind you, but biblical authority as such- is “the worst kind of fundamentalism.” Not quite a year ago, the largest church body in America claiming the name “Lutheran” officially decided to disregard the clear and consistent teaching of Scripture, and not only to ordain practicing homosexuals, but to equate allegedly “committed” homosexual relationships with holy matrimony. Only this past week, I came across a blog by an ELCA pastor attempting to do something some of my seminary professors used to try to do, and even quoting one of them. He wanted to argue that unbelievers will be given a second chance to believe in Jesus after death, and that maybe nobody will be in hell after all. He even cited what seems to me, after some research, to be a totally fictitious quotation from Martin Luther in the defense of that argument.

There seem to be no limits on how far we will go in this day and age in constructing a god for ourselves created in our own image, instead of worshiping and trusting in the One Who created us in His. The Constitution gives people the political freedom to do that, if they choose. Certainly belief cannot be coerced; Pastor Matthew Harrison- the man who, if God chooses to restore orthodoxy to the Missouri Synod, may well be elected its president this July- recently said that orthodoxy is something that must of necessity be modeled by conviction, rather than imposed by force. But there is nevertheless a major
problem with creating a god in one’s own image, and imposing our own values and preferences upon that idol. It’s a problem the prophets pointed out more than once to the Children of Israel, who also had a penchant for worshipping idols. The problem is that whether you make a statue of a self-invented god or not, no idol can finally help you. Idols can’t save. Idols can’t forgive sins. And idols certainly can’t give life to the dead.

No god we create in our own image can do any of those things. Only the God Who created us in His image, and has begun its restoration in the redemptive life and death of Jesus and the faith which is worked in our spiritually dead hearts by the Holy Spirit’s testimony to Jesus can do any of those things.

And there is no idol as deadly as our own pride. This has been a place where people at times have responded rashly and emotionally and judgmentally to others, and failed in our duty to bear one another’s burdens. We have been quick to anger, and sometimes slow to seek to understand. Such things work death. They are not the means by which dead bones are brought to life, but rather the means by which they are ground into dust.

Human anger, as the Apostle writes, does not work the righteousness of God.

Our text is a very pointed one. These are not mere dead bodies in the midst of which the prophet stands. These are disarticulated bones. The flesh has rotted away from them. There is nothing about them that suggests or speaks of life. In fact, their very appearance bespeaks death and utter hopelessness that the skeleton and especially the skull have come to be symbols among us of those very things. And these were not even skeletons. They were nothing but scattered, dry, dead bones.

The question God asks Ezekiel seems to answer itself. “Son of man,” God asks, “can these bones live?” We all know, of course, that “dead” means “dead.” Can mere bones-bereft not only of breath, but even of flesh and sinews- live? Of course not!

But Ezekiel does not forget that the One with Whom he is speaking is the One who created the universe itself out of nothing, and made the very first man out of mud- and then breathed His Spirit into that lump of clay, and made it live. Can these bones live?
If God so decrees, of course they can- and Ezekiel knows as much. God has done much harder things!

On the other hand, Ezekiel doesn’t know where God is going with His question. Perhaps it’s merely rhetorical. So he plays it safe. “O Lord Yahweh,” he says, “You know.”

It’s hard to go wrong betting on God’s omniscience, after all!

And God told him to prophesy to the bones. To “prophesy,” of course, is not to predict the future. The prophets sometimes did that, but that wasn’t their main job. To “prophesy-“ to be a “prophet-“ is simply to declare the Word of God.

And the particular word that God commanded Ezekiel to proclaim answered God’s own question. “Prophesy to these bones,” God told him, “ and say to them, ‘O drybones, hear the word of Yahweh! Thus says the Lord Yahweh to these bones: ‘Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. I will pub sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am Yahweh.’”

So Ezekiel prophesied to the bones. There was a great rattling sound. And suddenly, the bones came together and formed skeletons! And then muscles formed around the bones, and skin. And where there had once been only dry, disarticulated bones, now there were dead bodies.

But the bodies were still dead. So God told Ezekiel to prophesy again- this time to the breath, that it might enter the bodies, and that they might live. So Ezekiel called in God’s Name to the four winds, and commanded them in God’s Name to come into the dead bodies. And suddenly all those bodies drew breath, and stood upon their feet, and lived.

Now, this is the point at which it’s easy to go wrong. This is no subtle point here. The
Whole text hangs upon it. What Ezekiel is describing is not a game of Dungeons and Dragons. The issue here is not how many hit points the bones had, nor of God having given Ezekiel a spell of resurrection. Somehow, even when we’ve gotten it through our heads that God gives spiritual life through the Word and not through our own plans and programs and efforts, we often still end up thinking of the Word is a kind of magic wand which we can wield in order to bring about the results we desire.

But here is a crucial point. Remember the sorcerer who made precisely mistake when they saw Paul healing in the name of Jesus, and tried to cast out a demon using the Name of Jesus as a kind of magical incantation? It didn’t work, did it- not even in the obviously laudable task of casting out demons! Instead, when the wizard bade the demon be gone in the Name of the Jesus Whom Paul preached, the demon replied, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know- but who are you?’ – and turned on the wizard, and attacked him!

Even when we figure out that it’s the Word of God that gives life to the dead, as the author of Hebrews says, and calls into being things that do not exist that, we are apt to miss the point that we cannot control the Word of God! Through the Word, God works faith, yes- but as the Augsburg Confession is careful to point out, He does so through the Word when and where He pleases!

Today we look around us, at our nation, our state, our city, our community- and, yes, our congregation- and we ask God and ourselves the same question that God asked Ezekiel: can these bones live? We will have totally misunderstood His answer unless we take into account the way our text ends. God declares to the spiritually dead House of Israel, all but destroyed as a people and taken away into exile, “Then you shall know that I am Yahweh, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves. I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, Yahweh, have spoken it and performed it.”

Don’t get me wrong: evangelism programs are fine. I think we here at Saint Mary have realized by now that cleverness and salesmanship do not either keep a congregation alive, or cause it to grow. We spend a lot of time agonizing about how to get the Word out of these doors, out there to the streets- to people who are dying spiritually, and need to have the breath of the Spirit Who comes through the Word breathed into them. I wish Saint Mary well with such efforts.

But there is, nonetheless, a point that should not be missed: it is not we who “grow” the church, not even by our efforts to spread the Word. It is God. On the other hand, if this congregation is a community of people that lives by the word of forgiveness rather than condemnation through which God breathes life into dead bones, then we can expect Him to do precisely that in this place.

Perhaps the greatest program of evangelism we can perform is to forgive as we have been forgiven, to bear one another’s burdens as Christ has borne ours, and to be, as the first Christians were, a community of people that causes outsiders to marvel and to say, “See how they love one another.”

Can these bones live? The answer is not to be found in our ability to use the Word of God as a magic tool to bring the dead the life. Rather, the answer is to be found in God, and in degree to which this congregation is about forgiveness and reconciliation and new life. That, of course, and the centrality of the Word and the Sacraments through which God works them- not when and where we will, but when and where He will. Mind you, this ought not to be an excuse for complacency. But it ought to be an inoculation against anxiety and despair, and against the temptation to think that even the Word of God is something which we use, rather than being something through which God uses us.

I would ask you all to reflect that when Saint Mary was growing, and the future looked so bright that we were contemplating having to knock a hole in the wall to accommodate the overflow, it was not because we were doing anything different from the point of view of evangelism than we are doing now. Nor, when attendance started going down, was it because we were not doing something we had been doing before.

As heartily as I commend this congregation’s concern for evangelism, let it not be forgotten that it is God Who is in control. It is He Who works faith through the Means of Grace, not when and where we want, but when and where He will. It’s a subtle temptation, the trap of relying on our industry to breathe God’s spirit into the dry bones of in our congregation, our community, and our world, instead of relying on God to bring His Word to people through us.

As St. Ambrose said so aptly, the Church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners. We should not be surprised to find sick people in a hospital. That is especially the case because we are here because we, ourselves, are sick.

We should not be amazed that it is wounded people who need healing, or broken people who need wholeness. We should not be surprised that it is the dead places in our hearts- and most of all in our own- that most need God’s life-giving Word spoken to them.

Never fear, people of Saint Mary: if this is a place where God’s Word is proclaimed in its truth and purity, and the Sacraments are administered according to their institution, and this is a community of people who forgive when we are sinned against and bear one another’s burdens instead of making them heavier, then God will give life to the dead in this place. That is no guarantee of numbers or budget, and it’s remotely possible that it may not be God’s will for some reason we cannot see ourselves not to keep this place open even so.

But frankly, I find it hard to imagine that. There just aren’t that many of such places, and it seems to me that God would move heaven and earth to keep one open. And there is no shortage of dead bones in this world that need to be brought to life. And whatever God’s plans may be for this congregation as a congregation, we have His Word on it that where His word is proclaimed in its purity and His Sacraments are administered in agreement with it and according to their institution, there He will perform no less a miracle than giving life to the dead, of calling into being what does not exist, and to working greater wonders than we can imagine.

What a strange ending our text has this morning! Here the Marys and Salome had gone to the tomb, mourning for a dead Lord, and expecting to complete the sad task of embalming Him. Instead, they found the stone at the tomb’s entrance rolled away, and an angel sitting next to it- with the incredible news that the One they mourned was alive!

“Go!” the angel said. “Tell His disciples. Tell Peter. He is not here. He is risen!” So do they go and do as they had been told? No. They don’t tell anybody. Are they overcome with joy that Jesus wasn’t dead anymore? No. Instead, Mark tells us, they were afraid.

Now, it’s a very human thing to be afraid. We live in a universe over which we have even less control than we tell ourselves we have. Go out to Ashton Observatory outside Baxter some Saturday evening this summer, and listen to the lecture. Take a look through the telescopes. Something will sink in that you already know: that there’s a whole lot of stuff out there, that it’s a lot bigger than you are, and that there is very little that you can do about most of it. An asteroid could come hurtling toward us at literally any moment entirely unseen, blindside us, and slam into the earth with enough force to raise a cloud that would doom all life on this planet. A nearby star could go nova, and flood us with lethal radiation. In the southern summer sky, in the teapot of Sagittarius, is the center of our galaxy, in which there resides a gigantic black hole. Scientists believe that unless something else happens to first, someday the whole planet is going down the drain.

But you don’t have to look out into space to be frightened by the universe we live in. Pick up a copy of the Register and you’ll read about ordinary people, minding their own business, who are murdered by maniacs. The CIA says that Iran has had the ability to build nuclear weapons since last year; the threat of nuclear disaster that we thought we’d put behind us with the collapse of the Soviet Union suddenly seems at least as real as it ever was. You can be hit by a car crossing the street. The roof can fall in on your head. If you were to sit down and compile a list of things that you could be afraid of, it wouldn’t take long for that list to get pretty long.

And then, there’s death. We never know for certain when a visit to the doctor can end with a death sentence. Heart attacks and strokes strike people down in the prime of life every day. Nobody gets out of this world alive. It’s a scary place, this world of ours. It can seem arbitrary and cruel. And one can never tell when the roof is going to cave in, either literally or figuratively.

And then, there’s that angel thing. If you were to see an angel, I doubt that he would look much like those effeminate, fluttery critters you see on Christmas cards. It’s remarkable the percentage of the time a person in the Bible encounters an angel, and before anything else can pass between them the angel has to say, “Don’t be afraid.” Yes, I imagine the Marys and Salome must have found the whole experience pretty overwhelming. Death itself, and the magnitude of their loss, was enough to have thrown them for a loop. And now, on top of it all, they were talking to an angel!

And fear can be an overwhelming thing. It seems that the Marys and Salome were so filled with fear by their encounter with the angel that the news he brought didn’t sink in. Jesus- Whom they had loved so deeply and knew so well; Whom they had seen scourged within an inch of His life and crucified; Whom they had watched die an agonizing death on the cross, and had buried with their own hands- was alive. They hadn’t lost Him after all! Perhaps the news was too good to readily believe. And doubtless the shock of having a conversation with an angel played a role, too. But their reaction to what the angel told them wasn’t joy. It was fear. Rather than running as fast as their legs could carry them to the disciples and to Peter with the joyful news, they said nothing to anybody.

It was all too much. It was all too overwhelming. Those of us who have lost loved ones, especially unexpectedly, know the state of shock the experience can put us into. It might well be that their nervous systems had simply had more than they could bear. But it might have been something else, too.

It might have been that they wanted so badly for the angel’s news to be true that they couldn’t bring themselves to risk believing it. Actually, I have a hunch that that’s the most likely explanation of all. They had just lost Someone they dearly loved. Perhaps they simply couldn’t bear the prospect of believing the angel’s incredible news, and then having it turn out to have been a group hallucination, or a cruel joke, or any of the hundreds of explanations for the experience that seem far more likely than somebody coming back from the dead.

How very much like them we are! We gather here this Easter morning to celebrate the most joyful of all possible news. Christ is risen- and because He is risen, all of those things in this dangerous universe which we might, with reason, be afraid of are no longer threats. If Christ has conquered even death, then the movements of heavenly bodies and the affairs of nations and the condition of our own inner plumbing are under His control, too. If Christ has conquered death, then there’s nothing that tomorrow might hold which He doesn’t have under His control. If Christ has conquered death, then He has conquered sin, as well- and atoned for all those things of which our consciences might be afraid, and taken away His Father’s anger at them. If Christ has conquered death, then the loved ones we have buried and who have died in Him are not lost to us forever after all.

If Christ has conquered death, then we don’t even have to be afraid to die.

It’s all a great deal to take in, isn’t it- even for we who live two thousand years later, and are here this morning because we profess faith in the news the angel gave those women on the first Easter morning! When we this church this morning, we will once again find ourselves living in a world of uncertainty, of threatening possibilities that are largely beyond our control. We will still miss the loved ones with whom we have celebrated previous Easters. We will still look forward into a future in which there seem to be very few guarantees, and a great many things that can go wrong.

We do not know what even tomorrow may hold. We do not what we may have to face before this day is over. We do not even know whether we will be alive to see this day end. And what if it isn’t true? Do we dare to believe the message the angel brought to the women at the Empty Tomb, and risk disappointment? After all, we haven’t seen the angel. We haven’t seen the Empty Tomb. Isn’t the news we’re here this morning because we have heard just a little too good to be true? No. Isn’t it a lot too good to be true?

Yes, the fear of those women is very understandable. It finds an echo in our own fear. But in the midst of the fear and the unbelief that is the condition in which fallen human beings like us find ourselves living our lives, the voice of the angel rings down through the centuries, and endorsed by the testimony of God’s Holy Spirit it, too echoes in our hearts: “Do not be afraid! He is risen!”

In one sense, Saint Paul was right: if Christ is not raised- if our faith is in vain- then we who believe the angel’s message are indeed of all people the most miserable. If Christ is not raised, and we are building our lives upon a lie, then that is the cruelest of all of the cruelties this frightening and arbitrary world inflicts upon us. We run a risk in believing the angel- the same risk the Marys and Salome ran.

But night before last we gathered, some of us, in this very church to hear a story whose ring of truth is unmistakable. That part of the story nobody- no matter how cynical- can doubt. We heard how the only a being ever to live to deserved none of the cruelties of this world nevertheless became their victim. The cross rings true for all of us, because all of us know about the cruelty and unfairness of this world we live in. The cross rings true because we, too, have suffered.

The cross is a reality none of us can deny, as much as we might like to. In our moments of doubt and despair we’re tempted to believe that it has the final word- that guilt and suffering and death and disappointment are finally all there is. We can choose to believe that. But if we believe that, even if we’re right, it means that finally all of existence is a very bad joke at our expense, and the punch line is the grave.

Or we can believe the angel. And if the angel is right, then we never have to be afraid again.

It’s a lesson most of us learn somewhere along the road to adulthood: sometimes the worst part of things isn’t experiencing them, but anticipating them.

When I was a child, I lived in absolute horror of shots. I well remember the agony of sitting in the doctor’s office, jumping every time the buzzer on the receptionist’s desk went off, hoping against hope that it wasn’t Doctor Hatzis telling her to send in the next patient- or, if it was, that somebody else would be ahead of us. The actual pain, of course,
was minimal, and only lasted a second. But the anticipation made the wait seem like hours of utter agony. It wasn’t until I got a little bigger that it sunk in that the anticipation was very, very much worse than the experience.

And it’s always that way, isn’t it? Even when bad things we’ve been anticipating happen, a part of us is relieved. The worst part is the waiting.

But it was no mere prick with a hypodermic needle that Jesus anticipated on the first Maundy Thursday night. The spikes they drove through his ankles and wrists were much larger than mere needles- and if they were likely not nearly as sharp, that made things worse, not better. The hours hanging there, suspended by those horrible wounds in the Palestinian sun while the blood drained from His body and he became more and more dehydrated, and more and more exhausted from the labor of pushing himself up against those very wounds in order to simply fill his lungs for one more breath were, if anything, an even greater horror than the nails.

And then, there is death. The mystery of the person of Christ is one we will never fully understand in this life. He knew what was coming. Yet somehow this knowledge did not shield him from an essential part of being human: the fear of death. His divinity knew what lay on the Other Side. But so great was His commitment to walking in our shoes every step of His earthly way that He chose not to make that knowledge available to His humanity.

But the agonies of crucifixion were not the worst part. Far from it. Jesus knew that first Maundy Thursday that He would bear the next day the guilt and the retribution of every sin that had ever been committed, or ever would be. The crushing weight of that burden is something we cannot imagine. And that- the literal torments of the damned- was the worst thing of all. No, Jesus could not comfort Himself with the thought that perhaps the agonies of the next day would not be as bad as He feared. He knew full well just how bad they could be.

With agony that great, and suffering that profound, speculation is in a way rather silly. But one thing is certain. Our own experience of humanity. tells us that the suffering which He underwent on the day before His death itself was beyond imagining, and might perhaps have even approached what He experienced on the cross. The image which Scripture paints is vivid: He lies there in the Garden in an agony so great that He sweated blood, pleading with His Father that if there be any possible way, this Cup might pass from Him.

But before that, He met with His disciples in the Upper Room. And there, the Lord of all Creation did something amazing: He washed the feet of the very sinners for which He was about to die. And not just any sinners, either. Among the feet He washed were those of Judas Iscariot.

And He said to His disciples- those in the room with Him that night, and those in this church this evening- “Do this.” Love each other, He said, as I have loved you. It is from this mandaumus- this mandate- that Maundy Thursday gets its name.

And how much is that? How much did Jesus love us, and bid us love each other? I don’t have the words to tell you. No mere human does. Words cannot convey that love- unless they’re the Words of the Gospel, which tell of His suffering for our sins and bearing our burden and dying our death that we might live forever as what He was by right: a Son of the Father.

And He did something else, too. He took bread, and gave thanks, and broke it. He took a cup of wine, and blessed it, and distributed it to His disciples, and spoke those mysterious words whose power is so great that many even today who are His own sincere disciples simply cannot bring themselves to believe that He really meant them: “This is My body. This is My blood.”

How much did He love us? How much did He bid us love each other? To the point of giving us His own body, and nourishing us with his own blood, and bidding us draw our life from His death. How great and how many are the offenses that we must forgive? How far does the love which Jesus commands us to imitate reach? It reached Judas, whose feet He washed and to whom also He gave His body and blood- the body and blood of the sacrifice which would have washed away even the guilt of Judas if Judas had not despaired instead.

This is a grave burden our Lord’s command puts upon us this Thursday of the Command that we love one another as He loved us. Our shoulders cannot begin to bear it. We sink under the load of it even as we sit in our pews. The Law inherent in this particular commandment of our Lord is so appallingly unbearable that only the most deluded among us could even begin to imagine that he or she could bear it.

But wait a moment. How great is that burden? The rest and the healing we receive is far greater. For the One Who commands us love each other as He loved us loved Judas, too, and washed his feet, and fed him His own body and blood.

The love He bids us imitate is a love which goes beyond forgiving those who do not love in return, and who stumble under the burden of His command to love as they have been loved. The love encompasses them, too. It forgives their failure- and atones for it. It bears the burden even of our failure to love as we have been loved.

It is a love so great and so amazing that no burden- not even the burden of the command to love with the total self-abandonment with which Jesus loved us- can crush the one who is not merely strengthened for its bearing but forgiven for his failure to bear it, because it lifts him from beneath it and sets him on his feet again and fills him with the wonder and the amazement that this burden, too- the burden of our failure to love as we have been loved- is part of the burden which Jesus Himself carried through the events of His passion, and was crucified with Him on the cross.

How much does Jesus love us? “This much,” the poster quotes Him as saying- as He stretches out His arms- and dies. And the burden of having to forgive is caught up in the
realization of how much we have been forgiven. The hopeless task of loving as much as we have been loved dissolves in the realization that He has loved us so much that He has borne for us even the burden of own failure to love as He loved us.

He who bids us do what we ourselves can never do- to love as He has loved us- not only forgives our failure, but through the power of the Gospel fills us with the very love which

When I was a member of Park View Lutheran Church in Chicago, an ALC congregation, my pastor was Dean W. Nelson. He is now the bishop of the Southwest California Synod of the ELCA, which includes Los Angeles.

Sometime during the night on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, Pastor Nelson used to leave the parsonage and go next door to the church. There, on the lawn- where it would be seen all week both by people passing by the church and by people on the way inside- he would erect a wooden cross. At the top of that cross he put a sign, bearing the words of Lamentations 1:12a: “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?”

On Easter morning, that cross would be covered with plastic lilies. But until then- all week long- it bid all of us who saw it reflect on the question Jeremiah asked as it applies to the suffering and death of our Savior.

There aren’t as many people here this morning to waive their palms as usual on Palm Sunday. I’m speaking metaphorically, of course; we haven’t actually used palms for a couple of years now. The budget, you know.

And you don’t really need palms on Palm Sunday. You don’t need a donkey, either. The presence of Jesus is mandatory- and He’s here this morning as usual, in His Word and Sacrament. And you need the crowds. But the crowds have been sparse of late. No matter. Two or three of us will do.

Today we open the holiest week of the Christian calendar. It begins with our Lord being hailed as a king- hailed in terms that were a threat to both the leaders of the Temple cult and to the Romans. The crowd called on the Son of David to save them. To invoke the name of Jesus’ royal ancestor was an implicit challenge to Caesar. To call on this particular Man to save was a challenge to the scribes and the Pharisees and the priests and the Levites.

Who is threatened by our presence here this morning to call upon the Son of David to save us?

The devil is threatened. He’d rather we were still in bed, or at work, or almost anywhere but here.

The world is threatened. Our presence here this morning means that we have priorities other than those which clamor for our attention elsewhere.

Our flesh is threatened. There are plenty of places where it would be easier and perhaps more convenient and even fun to be.

But here we are, greeting Jesus on the first day of the Great and Holy Week of the liturgical calendar, calling on the Son of David to save. And save He does. The drama we recall this week is the story of our redemption. Here, if we have ears to hear it, is word of the purchase of our souls from the grasp of Satan, the Sacrifice that once and for all saves us from our sin, and the death of death itself on Easter Morning. Here is the very body that was broken on the cross, and the very blood that was shed there, distributed with the personal reminder that it was given and shed not simply for the world, but for an individual- namely, you.

Through the word of the cross and the body that was broken there and the blood that was shed there Jesus answers our Palm Sunday prayer. “Hosanna,” we call out. “Save us!” And save us He does.

We ought to gather here to remember that terrible night when He instituted the Supper which feeds our souls every week, the night when He gave us the Great Commandment that we love one another, and allowed Himself to be betrayed to the powers of darkness so that He might take upon Himself what we ourselves had coming.

We ought to gather here to recall those three terrible hours when He hung there on the cross under His Father’s curse, that we who deserved that curse might become a blessing, and receive what only He of all the men and women who have ever lived has deserved: eternal life in the presence of a God we can call upon as our Father, too.

At present, though, there are no plans for us to do that. There are other priorities.

But we face a trip to Calvary of a different kind in a very little while. After the service we will meet to consider the fate of this congregation. There are those of us- and I have to include myself among them- who have not always, as Paul bids us in our Epistle, had the mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, and been willing to humble ourselves. Pride has played no small role in bringing us to this day.

There are those of us- and I have to include myself among them- who have had other priorities. And so, Saint Mary walks its own Via Dolorosa this afternoon. We decide, we who pass by, what the Word of the Crucified, and His Body and Blood, are to us.

We decide whether the presence of an orthodox, confessional Lutheran congregation in Des Moines where the pure and unadulterated Word of God is proclaimed, and the sacraments are administered according to their institution, is as important as- other things.

We decide on the relative merits of our children being taught the Word of God in its truth and purity, as opposed to- other things.

I know. Some of the people who ought to hear this aren’t here. To some extent, at least, I’m preaching to the choir this morning. It is in the nature of journeys to the cross- whether the one Jesus undertook that first Holy Week, or the one we take together this morning- that they involve yielding control, and facing events whose direction we cannot predict and may not even be able to affect.

But when Jesus walked the way that led to Calvary, it was not by accident. Even that terrible journey was not outside His Father’s control and will. And neither is our journey today.

It has been said- and said truly- that only God can either open or close a congregation. The One we greet this morning with cries- however few in number we may be- of “Hosanna! Save, O Lord!” will be with us at the meeting after the service, just as He is in its midst. His will is going to be done. In that, there is comfort.

Whether it will come as a judgment upon us, or a blessing, we cannot say. We will not even be able to say that with any certainty when the meeting has ended. But just as God remained in control even when His Son rode into Jerusalem on the back of that donkey, heading to His death; just as God remained in control during the terrible hours in the Garden, and while the scourge bit into the Savior’s back, and when the nails pierced His hands and feet, and when the Author of Life yielded Himself to death, so God will remain in control no matter what happens here today.

And God’s will is going to prevail. Nothing that happens here this afternoon will change that. The victory Jesus won over sin and death and the power of the devil will remain in force no matter what is decided, and no matter whether or not we are able to implement any decision we might make. Christ will remain the risen Christ no matter in what frame of mind- or even whether- we gather here next Sunday to celebrate the Resurrection.

For the Good News- the very heart of the Gospel that gives this and every Christian congregation its entire reason for existing- is that God is faithful even when we are not, and that no matter what our priorities may be, we will remain His chief and highest priority. Our baptisms will remain in force and He will remain as faithful a God, and Christ as great a Savior, no matter what may happen either this afternoon or in the weeks and months and years to come.

But as we gather- or rather, as we remain gathered here after the Benediction- let us heed the words of our text.

Let us leave ourselves outside of that meeting. Let us empty ourselves. Let us put our pride aside, and humble ourselves. Let us seek the path of obedience- and, despite egos and rival priorities, seek the path of obedience, even if it hurts.

It hurt Jesus. But our faithful God brought Easter out of Good Friday. And no matter what the outcome of our meeting may be, next Sunday will still be Easter, Christ will still be risen, sin, death, and the power of the devil will remain broken and defeated foes- and God will still be in control.

Several times this past week, I’ve come across remarks to the effect that somebody has a problem, not with Jesus, but with His followers.

I once asked a confirmation class what we meant by Christ’s humiliation. One girl didn’t even miss a beat. Christ’s humiliation, she answered, is us. I laughed so hard I was afraid I was going to be sick. She had a point, of course. We sinners don’t do a very good job of representing Christ in this world. That girl’s answer to my question is an indictment of all of us. It gives every single one of us good reason to blush.

But I don’t necessarily assume, when I hear somebody say that they like Jesus but don’t have much time for His followers, that their problem is really with the Old Selves which never seem to get the memo that we’ve been baptized. Very often people who make such comments really don’t have much of a clue just what Jesus had to say. In fact, these days one is at least as likely to hear that comment when Christians are accurately representing Christ as when they aren’t.

This is not a polite conversation Jesus is having with the Pharisees in our text. They accuse Jesus of being possessed by a demon. He comes right out and calls them liars. And the issue is exactly what is often at stake when people hypocritically claim to prefer what Jesus has to say to what Christians say when they accurately represent Him.

C.S. Lewis pointed out once that English history is full of this sort of thing. It’s bad form to attack the King. So one claims to be completely loyal to the King, and that one’s problem is really with his advisors, or his officers, or somebody else who can serve as a convenient target under the dishonest pretext that the policies being objected to really aren’t the King’s, but somebody else’s. I used to hear that sort of thing a great deal in the ELCA. Jesus wasn’t the problem for the feminists I knew in seminary; their problem, they used to say, was with Paul.

But Paul received his mission, his authority, and his message from Jesus. What was really going on is exactly what Lewis described: if you don’t like the King’s policies, attack His ministers. That way you can have your cake and eat it to. You can hypocritically present yourself as an admirer of Jesus who just happens to abominate everything He stands for. You can even pull off another stunt that’s popular these days: you can invent a Jesus of your own, and claim to follow that “Jesus-“ while completely finessing the point that Jesus is on record as being on the opposite side of whatever issue you’re debating.

Thomas Jefferson did that. He published a pamphlet called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, which was nothing more or less than a harmony of the Gospels that omitted all references to Christ’s divinity, to His miracles, or to anything else that Jefferson considered “contrary to reason.” The problem, of course, is that doing that is like publishing an edition of War and Peace that omits all mention of Russia!

As a moral philosopher, Jesus was distinctly third-rate. After all, it’s the hallmark of a decent teacher of morals that it ought to be possible to follow His teachings! True enough, the teachings of Jesus have social implications. But Jesus was neither a political philosopher nor a politician. Nor was He willing to be simply a good man and a fine example. If He’d been willing to be that, He never would have had the argument with the Pharisees our text reports. This is no counterpart of Mohammed or the Buddha or Confucius or the other so-called “great religious teachers” of the human race.

No, there’s no getting away from it. Lewis was right: if somebody made the claims Jesus made, and made them falsely, he would not be a great religious teacher, a good example, or even a good man. He would then be a very bad man, and a very poor example. In fact, he would be a fraud. Or if he really believed it, then he would be a madman- as Lewis wrote, on a par with a man who believes himself to be a fried egg.

There is no escaping the import of the words Jesus speaks in our text: “Before Abraham was, I AM.”

I AM. Or, in Hebrew, Yahweh. Jesus is claiming for Himself the very Name God gave Moses when he asked whom he should say sent him. Jesus claims here, in so many words, to be God Himself- the Maker of all things, seen and unseen. And if He is that, then His claim on us is absolute. If He is that, we are accountable to His every word. If He is, then there is no question of taking Him on our terms, or on any terms but His.

If He is that, then it is no use inventing an idol, and calling that idol Jesus. And there is no point in trying to appeal from the Jesus of Scripture to some other Jesus we like better.

There simply is no Jesus but the Jesus of the Gospels, Who demands our total allegiance and every bit of our hearts, our souls, and our minds. There is no Jesus but the One Whose word judges us, because He stands behind the Moral Law in all its appalling rigor- and even teaches us, as He does in the Sermon on the Mount, its true meaning in terms we would rather not hear because we have not, we do not, and we cannot keep it.

This Jesus we meet this morning in our text is not the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” who personifies the niceness with which our culture identifies Him. There is nothing nice about what He has to say to the Pharisees in our text- or in what He has to say to anyone who expects to accept Him on any terms except His own, or to either put words in His mouth or take them out. There is nothing nice about what He has to say to anyone who takes Him for anyone or anything other or less than what He claims to be!

But wait a minute. What if we do take Him for what He claims to be? What then?

Jesus answers that question in our text: “If anyone keeps My word he shall never taste death.” Crazy talk? Yes- for anybody other than the One Who Jesus claims to be.

But if He is, then He stands in the breech between God’s holiness and our sin, and makes atonement with His own blood for everything that makes us less than acceptable to a holy God. If He is, then He has done battle with sin and with death on our behalf- and conquered.

If He is, then He does what no example or moral teacher or philosopher can do: He makes atonement for our failure to be and to do everything we are obliged to be and to do.

If Jesus is Who He claims to be, then those of us who are baptized into His death and resurrection need fear nothing- not even death. If Jesus is Who He claims to be, then the greatest danger the world can threaten us with, and the harshest demand God’s Law can make of us need not cause us to be afraid.

If Jesus is Who He claims to be, then there is no power in heaven or on earth or in hell itself that can stand against Him, or can deprive us of His love.

Yes, there are plenty of people in this world who would rather substitute a fictional Jesus of their own invention for the genuine article. There are plenty of people who resent the judgment His words render on them and their pet sins and pet ideas. There are plenty of people who would prefer an example, or philosopher, or a lawgiver, or a politician.

But He is more than that. He is much more. He is the God Who made us, and Whose claim on us is absolute.

He could be nothing less if He is to be what He came to be: our Savior from sin and death, and our Almighty Protector from everything of which we might be afraid.

On October 13, 1972, a plane carrying 45 members of the rugby team and staff from Stella Maris College in Montevideo, Uruguay crashed in the Andes Mountains. Twelve of them died in the crash. All but sixteen died in the two months that followed, either of their injuries or in an avalanche that struck the wreckage of their plane eight days after the crash. They were able to quench their thirst by eating snow. But what little food they had was quickly consumed. Soon, they faced a difficult choice. Having no other way to survive, they resorted to cannibalism.

Their story became a legend, largely because of a 1974 book by Piers Paul Read called Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which spent several weeks atop the New York Times best-sellers list. At least four movies have been made about the incident.

One detail I read a couple of years ago is especially interesting. It seems that from the beginning, the survivors for some reason were fixated on escaping to the west, over the mountains. What they didn’t know was that in the opposite direction- only five miles to the east- was a resort that, though closed for the winter, would have provided them with both food and shelter as they waited to be rescued. As it happens, all of the survivors were Roman Catholics, who were gratified by the news that the Church did not regard the desperate measures they took to survive as sinful. In fact, one of the ways they justified what they had done to themselves was by drawing an analogy to Holy Communion. Just as Christians eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus so that they might live, so they had eaten the bodies of their dead friends for the same reason.

One of the reasons why I’m such a firm believer in the lectionary system is that over and over I’ve seen it give congregations exactly what they need to hear on exactly the Sunday they need to hear it. I believe that this has happened again here at Saint Mary this morning. The obvious conclusion for a congregation contemplating closing its doors within weeks is that our Gospel bids us look to Jesus as the Source of what we need to survive, and that certainly is true. It has been truly said that God is the only One Who can either truly open or truly close a congregation. Whatever may happen on Sunday afternoon two weeks from today, there is one thing you can take to the bank: if God’s plan includes Saint Mary’s survival, the means by which to survive will be forthcoming, just like the bread and the fishes Jesus provided for the multitude in the wilderness. And if not, then that, too, will be God’s will.

But that’s not what I think it’s important for us to consider about this text. John 6 is one of the great chapters of the New Testament. It begins with the miracle we just heard about, the Feeding of the Five Thousand. It continues with Jesus’ discourse about Himself as the Bread of Life, and how those who eat this bread will live forever. There is no shortage of consciousness in this congregation that there are a lot of hungry people out there, who- like the members of that Uruguayan rugby team- are looking in the wrong direction for a way to satisfy their hunger. The question has been how to reach them with the Bread of Life- the bread which we have, which we feast on this morning in the Word and, shortly, in Christ’s own body and blood. We may go on asking that question. Or we may not. A more immediate issue confronts us right now.

Let’s be perfectly clear about this: the Bread of Life is available elsewhere. It’s available only a few blocks from here, at Our Savior. I don’t know much about Pastor Cole, but by reputation, at least, you’ll get it as pure and nourishing from him as from anyone in Iowa District West.

There are other Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod or ELS churches in the Des Moines area at which the Bread of Life is available. Many of the people here this morning have come from them. You are better aware than I of why you are here this morning, and not there.

They have the Bread of Life across the street, too, at the Methodist church, and down the block at the Presbyterian church and at Highland Park Lutheran. They have it at Union Park Baptist, and the Pentecostal churches east of here on Euclid, and at a dozen congregations of various flavors in this part of down and dozens more in other parts. But the degree to which any bread is nourishing tends to decrease with the amount of additives included. There’s something to be said for nourishing oneself on unadulterated food.

There is a debate about whether or not John 6 refers to Holy Communion. Luther thought not. He regarded the eating of His flesh to which Jesus refers as faith. But faith depends for its nourishment on the Sacraments. And even at the most biblical of the Protestant churches in the area, you won’t find an altar at which the words “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood” are taken seriously. You’ll have to nourish yourself instead at the mere contemplation of His absent body and blood. Nor will you be encouraged to take refuge in the promise God made to you in baptism to daily forgive and restore and strengthen you-a Promise that never wears out, and is always just as valid no matter how many times you may stray . Instead, you’ll be encouraged to remember the promise you made to God on the day you were baptized- the very promise you break every day you live.

There are fine Christian people at all those congregations. They’re going to heaven, too. But there is a dearth of churches these days in which the Word is proclaimed in accordance with a pure understanding of it, and the Sacraments celebrated in agreement with their institution, and with the Gospel. Unlike the members of that Uruguayan rugby team, there are many directions each of us might go if Saint Mary closes its doors where we might find some nourishment. But even in the Synods which historically have valued such things, it is no easy task either here in Des Moines or most places to find a congregation where we can count on nourishing ourselves on the Word as Jesus spoke it and the prophets and apostles wrote it, and the Sacraments as Jesus instituted them.

Nobody here will starve spiritually if our doors close in a couple of weeks. There are other places to go where- with some additives- the Bread of Life can be had. But a congregation where God’s Word is taught in its truth and purity and life can come to live in us through the eating of the body and the drinking of the blood of Christ are few and far between.

This is a precious thing we have at Saint Mary. And I don’t think the crisis we face is due to our failing to realize that. Some of us have to be at work on Sunday mornings if we’re going to provide for our families; that’s a dilemma more than one member of this congregation faces. I really don’t think attendance is down because people fail to value and treasure the Bread of Life, or that we’re unable to meet our budget because people don’t think it’s important.

But I do think we need to pause and consider what a precious thing this congregation is, and the price we will all pay if it’s no longer here. Here, week by week and without human addition, God’s Law is proclaimed to restrain our fallen selves, to drive us to the cross, and to inform our grateful response to God’s forgiveness. Here, week-by-week, we receive the forgiveness Christ purchased with His own blood in Holy Absolution, in the Blessed Sacrament, and in the Word of the Gospel. Here we are not left to sort the gold from the dross, and the human from the divine, or afflicted with other, man-made burdens even when having the burden of sin lifted from our souls.

Here we have the Means of Grace in all their fullness. Here we have the pure and unadulterated Bread of Life. Here every week we eat Christ’s body and drink His blood that He might dwell in us, and we in Him. Here we are enabled to take refuge in the righteousness of Jesus, rather than being required to try to manufacture one of our own.

Those are commodities that are hard to come by these days- almost as hard to come by as food in the Andes Mountains. They point us in a direction in which we will always find Christ, the Bread of Life, and not have to wander futilely in search of them in all the wrong directions. They are things worth keeping.

They are life itself- and, having found them in a place, they make that place a thing worth keeping, too.

It’s remarkable how far people will go to be right.

We live in one of the least civil times in our nation’s history. Name-calling and ad hominem arguments have pretty much replaced rational discourse and mutually respectful debate as the way we deal with our differences and determine our governmental policies. And in our personal lives, too, it’s becoming harder and harder for us to see the other person’s point of view, or even to look for it.

Interesting that this is happening at exactly the time when we are more and more embracing the notion that truth is relative, or even that it doesn’t really exist. On one hand, we can’t disagree agreeably. On the other hand, we’re more and more coming to the conclusion that there’s really nothing of substance to disagree about. Perhaps the bright side of this strange combination of circumstances is that it’s often obvious that the issues we argue about- be they doctrinal, or political, or having to do with church policy or how our households are run- aren’t really what we’re arguing about at all.

We’re arguing about my being right, and your being wrong.

Rabbinical Judaism is great for debates about the minutia of the Law. In fact, the Talmuds- actually there are two, the Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian Talmud, passed down respectively by the Jews of the Diaspora and those who returned to Palestine- are nothing more or less than collections of debates between great rabbis on such subjects. Students of the Law pour over these more or less the way students of the civil law pour over the landmark decisions of the Supreme Court and the opinions of great judges.

Jesus was born at a time when rabbinic Judaism was divided into two camps, the result of the simultaneous appearance of two of the greatest rabbis of all times. One of them- Hillel- is seen as the father of modern Judaism. The other- Shammai- represented the school which, in historical terms, lost out.

Interestingly, though, these positions were reversed in the First Century. The school of Shammai seemed to have triumphed. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were disciples of Shammai. Interestingly, on the issues where they disagreed, Jesus rather consistently sides with Hillel. Odd as it may seem, in First Century terms He might well have been thought of as, in a sense, a member of the school of Hillel.

Generally Shammai was the legalist, the strict constructionist. Hillel was the humanitarian- if not really a liberal, at least the one who would make allowances for human frailty and for the practicalities of actually living under the Law. But even Hillel was sometimes caught up in the snare of dotting all the “i’s. and crossing all the “T’s,” even when there was no real issue involved. For example, Hillel read in the Law that during the Passover meal one was supposed to eat the lamb with the unleavened bread. He took that so literally that he would put the lamb between two pieces of matzo, so as to always eat them together. That lamb-and-matzo combination went down in history as the “Hillel sandwich.” And he thought of it nearly two thousand years before the Earl of Sandwich came up with the same idea!

The Law said that a man could divorce his wife if he found anythinging indecent in her. Hillel and Shammai disagreed as to what the key word in that phrase was. Hillel took it to mean that he could divorce her if he found anything indecent in her- anything at all. One of his students actually wrote that a man could lawfully divorce his wife if she burned his dinner!

Shammai, on the other hand, read the passage as saying that a man could divorce his wife if he found anything indecent in her. Perhaps she turned out not to be a virgin on her wedding night. Perhaps she turned out to be too close a relative of his. Or perhaps she was unfaithful to him. Then- and only then, Shammai taught- was it permissible for a man to divorce his wife.

This represents the only case I know of in which Jesus sided with Shammai rather than with Hillel. Our text contains the strictest version of His teaching we have: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” But Matthew and Luke include an exception: cases of adultery. It seems that in Mark Jesus is clarifying the general principle that marriage vows are to be kept, and not broken. In Matthew and Luke, he expands on the subject, and ends up pretty much where Shammai did. The Greek word pornea- the word from which we get the term “pornography-“ includes pretty much any kind of sexual indecency. As a practical matter, though, the Church has generally understood it to refer specifically to adultery.

In 1 Corinthians 7: 12-18, Paul expands on the subject. He says:

If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her. And a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife? (NKJV)

Catholic tradition understands this to mean that divorce and remarriage is permissible in cases where one spouse is baptized and the other is not. Conservative Protestants traditionally have understood it to mean that remarriage is permissible when unbelieving spouse divorces a Christian spouse- bearing in mind that a Christian spouse wouldn’t get a divorce except for a permissible reason. Luther himself expanded the concept arguing that remarriage was possible in any circumstance in which an unbelieving spouse made it impossible, as a practical matter, for the marriage to continue. If an spouse abused a husband or wife, for example Luther would include that he or she could not be a Christian – and that the abused spouse was free to get a divorce and remarry.

As a practical matter, most churches have long since stopped trying to follow Christ’s teachings here. After all, we live in a society in which no-fault divorce is the norm. The Church often doesn’t seek to sort out the whys and wherefores of divorce anymore. And that’s disobedience.

But then, so is divorce itself. Hey, I was the unwilling party in an unscriptural divorce. So were some of you. Others perhaps initiated divorces on scriptural grounds. While I don’t know of any such cases, it’s possible that some have gotten unscriptural divorces or had scriptural divorces initiated against them, had their former spouse remarry, and then repented. But as one such person to others- as well as to those who are not in the same boat we are- let’s face it: there is no such thing as an innocent party in a divorce. Even those of us who didn’t initiate our divorces, or had scriptural grounds for initiating them, experienced the tragedy and ordeal of divorce in no small measure because of our own sin, and our own stubbornness and our own frailties. Whether or not we initiated proceedings, or had scriptural reason for doing so, we ourselves bear our share of responsibility for the breakup of our marriages. And that, rather than assigning roles of “innocent party” and “guilty party,” is the point of what Jesus is driving at.

When we’re married we make promises that God expects us to keep. But those of us who are divorced- as well as those of us who are still married- often fail to love and honor and cherish our husbands and wives. In no small measure we’re where we are precisely because we’ve played the game of trying to decide who is right and who is wrong in a situation in which nobody is innocent. And bank on it, people, none of us are.

Which is why it’s so important that whatever might be said about our divorces from a pastoral point of view, we clearly hear what Jesus is saying not only to our allegedly “guilty” spouses, but also to us: divorce is wrong. Period. Paragraph. Do not pass “Go.” Do not collect $200.

He who breaks a vow even for a good reason still breaks a vow. “I hate divorce,” the prophet Malachi quotes God as saying- and He does. Divorce cannot help but be an offense to the Faithful One Who always keeps His promises. And no amount of rationalization or fault-finding will change the fact that not a single divorced person in this congregation- and not a single married one, either- is innocent with regard to the vows we took on our wedding day.

Our eyes have strayed even if our bodies have not. Our hearts have failed to love and nurture and protect and cherish. Even if we still are married, we stand convicted before the words Jesus has for us this morning, and before the words we spoke before the altar long ago.

But God is faithful even when we are not. He is a God of grace, of second chances. Where a partner we have unscripturally divorced remains unmarried, it is our duty either to be reconciled to that partner or to remain single and celibate ourselves.

But there is Gospel here as well as Law. The God Who always keeps His promises is a God who died on the cross for all our broken vows, including wedding vows. If that partner remarries, or if the circumstances of our divorce are such that, in Paul’s words, “we are not bound,” then there is room for second chances to love another in that special way Paul uses as a model for the relationship between Christ and His Church, and this time to be faithful, even as the Church’s Bridegroom is faithful.

As with everything else in the Christian life, so it is with marriage. It’s always a matter of forgiving as we have been forgiven, and refusing to allow the fact that another has sinned against us to break our bond with them. It’s a willingness to repent and to ask for forgiveness and to receive it even when it would be easier to insist that we’re in the right and the other is in the wrong. It’s about living with another human being in the same kind of bond Christ s with His church.

And it’s about being faithful to our Bridegroom, who sacrificed Himself for us even as He asks us to sacrifice our happiness and our welfare to our spouses, and who sets us the best of examples in always being faithful, always forgiving, and always allowing fresh start, even when we are not.

Dr. Scott Peck writes of a patient he once had- a good boy, an honor student, a star athlete. His older brother committed suicide with a shotgun. He mourned for a while, displaying the predictable signs of grief and confusion suicide survivors often display. But then, he seemed to be coming out of it. His grades started to improve again. He began to be a little more the friendly, outgoing kid his friends and teachers knew.

Christmas came- and suddenly, the recovery collapsed. His grades plummeted. He became surly and withdrawn. He began to have minor scrapes with the law. Finally, he stole a car- and was caught. And so, he found himself in Dr. Peck’s office.

Dr. Peck writes that as useful as the diagnostic categories available to psychiatrists are, there’s a diagnosis missing from DSM-IV, one that would have been applicable in this case. It seems that the young man in question had received a special Christmas present from his parents- who, incredibly, couldn’t see anything inappropriate about it.

They’d given him the shotgun with which his brother had committed suicide. Dr. Peck’s diagnosed the problem as “evil.”

Few of us confront evil in its more brazen and naked forms. Soldiers sometimes encounter that kind of evil. Cops do, too. I’ve read accounts written by policemen of the deeds of other human beings that are utterly impossible to reconcile with their humanity. You don’t need levitation and heads swiveling around a hundred and eighty degrees and little girls vomiting split pea soup to encounter evil in forms that would freeze the soul of any normal human being.

Sometimes Stephen King is a surprisingly good theologian. One of his more interesting characters is a priest who is bored with the lust and covetousness and petty misdeeds of his parishioners. He wants to play in the big leagues. He wants to take on Evil, with a capital “E.” And one day, he gets his wish.

This is, of course, a Stephen King novel. The priest finds himself in the kitchen of a family in his parish, holding aloft a glowing wooden cross, and protecting his parishioners from a vampire. But the vampire is far better prepared for the encounter than he is.

“That’s well and good, shaman,” the vampire tells the priest. “You stand there wielding the tools of your trade, the symbol of your master. But I believe that my master is stronger. You disagree? Then let’s try an experiment, shall we?

“If you believe that your Master is stronger than mine, let’s put it to the test. Put down the cross. Let’s see whose faith is stronger, yours or mine!”

But he can’t. The man who was so eager to confront evil with a capital “E” is unequal to the task. His faith simply isn’t strong enough. He continues to hide behind that cross. And slowly, the glow begins to fade. Slowly it loses its power to protect. In the absence of faith, it’s only a piece of wood.

The priest is no longer able to protect his parishioners. He vampire feeds on them- and he is last seen sneaking out of town on a Greyhound bus, his neck bandaged, a broken and beaten man.

The truth of the matter is that we don’t have to open a Stephen King novel to encounter evil. We don’t even have to visit an abortion mill, or take a trip to Auchwitz or one of the outposts of the former Gulag, or to present-day China or Iran. If we’re looking for evil, we have no further to look than our own hearts.

It has been said that the ideal sermon in most people’s eyes is one that goes right over their heads- and strikes the person sitting behind them right between the eyes. But we don’t have to look to the person behind us, if we’re looking for evil- or the person in front of us, or to the right, or two the left. No, every single one of us has as much evil as he or she can handle in his or her own heart. We need look no further than our own lives.

No experiences with vampires or demonic possession or mass murderers or abortionists or even respectable people whose souls are warped enough to give their son a gun with whom his brother killed himself as a gift are required here. All we need to do to encounter evil is to look within.

And are we bored with our petty, pedestrian sins? Perhaps we don’t want to fight dragons. Perhaps we don’t want to do battle with big time evil, like the priest. Maybe we just want to live our lives and be left alone with our petty selfishness and bad habits. Maybe we’ve managed to convince ourselves that our own sins aren’t really so bad, especially when you compare them with others.

But how many people have you met in your lives who think that their own sins are particularly bad? Familiarity breeds comfort, if not contempt. Or perhaps we’re not really willing to confront the content of our hearts at all. Those who are in the most lethal spiritual condition are those who have become so comfortable with the content of their own hearts that the evil that lives there doesn’t bother them. There is no more serious symptom of spiritual gangrene than a conscience that is never troubled.

God confronts our sins in His Law. Usually these days we don’t call his credentials into question in quite the blatant way the people did in our text when they suggested that Jesus cast out demons by the authority of Beelzebub. People are more likely these days to praise Jesus to the skies- but to utterly discount those inconvenient and uncomfortable moral teachings of his. Did you squirm when I read the Epistle this morning? I did. Let me read some of it again: “But fornication and all uncleanness and covetousness, let it not be even named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”

And my own Old Adam finds that priggish, and prudish, and morally rigid. I watch South Park at times, and laugh so hard my sides hurt. Off-color jokes- just a little off-color, mnd you- and a mildly colorful expletive or two are often closer to my lips than I want to admit- and much closer than they ought to be. And even those of us who are not guilty of physical fornication have hearts and minds that are anything but pure. Paul puts foolish talk and coarse jesting right up there with the grosser sins of the flesh, and warns that they have the power to exclude us from the Kingdom of God.

It seems that we, too, need deliverance from the powers of darkness- the more so because we live in a culture and a society which caters to our Old Adams, and agrees that Paul- and God- are prudes and spoil-sports who get far too upset over far too little. Even television- once filtered through various Departments of Standards and Practices which strained out the worst filth- is becoming cruder and cruder as time goes on. We get no help in striving to keep our own minds and mouths clean from the culture in which we live, and to object to this whole process is to incur the same judgment on us that our own flesh wants to render: that we’re prudes with unrealistic standards which really aren’t to be taken seriously.

But who is not with Jesus is against Him, and who does not gather with Him, scatters. Each and every one of us, as children of the age, need rescue from this present darkness- a darkness of our culture that blinds us to the darkness of our own minds and hearts and souls.

Thus, in such seemingly small and unimportant things, does the devil stake out his foothold. Thus, in such seemingly little things, does the corruption that can end up separating us from God begin. I don’t know about you, but I suffer from that dry rot not only of soul, but of conscience.

But Jesus confronts it- and heals it. He calls us to a higher standard than the world in which we live. We, too, need deliverance from the power of the Evil One. And Jesus provides us.

In our Baptism Jesus cleanses our hearts and our consciences. My own mother only washed my mouth out with soap once when I was small. Jesus washes it out with baptismal water- a much more pleasant experience, and one which does a far better job of healing.

In that Baptism, Jesus forgives and heals the dry rot of filth which we who live in this society almost can’t help have begin to grow within us, and the deeper infection of self-will which is the birthright of all of us who are children of Adam and Eve.

And as we wend our way through the darkness of this age, Jesus reminds us that we are called to be children of Light. In baptism, we daily reclaim our identity as precisely that.

We are surrounded on all sides by darkness. But through faith in Christ, God declares us to be children of light. He forgives our slips into the mire, and strengthens us to dare to live as people who are visibly different- as children of the light, like Perpetua and her companions, whose martyrdom we remember today, and like all those Christians of every age who have been the light of the world and the salt of the earth all because they were willing not to be like everybody else.

God declares is in baptism to be different. God cleanses us daily in our baptism from our failure to be different. God consecrates us in our baptism to be a light in the darkness, a city set on a hill, a peculiar people who are looked upon as just a bit odd- because no matter what may lurk in our hearts and even bubble out into our hearts and minds and speech at times, God declares us to be children of the day, and the light of this increasingly dark world in which we live.

Are we weak? God declares us to be children of the day, and bids us lean on Him. Do we stumble? God’s grace picks us up, and gives us the light by which to walk. And no matter how great our struggle or how many times we fall, God is greater than the darkness in our hearts and minds and hearts, and bids us let Him fill us with His own light thorough the Word, the the Sacrament, and through the support of our fellow light-bearers in this place.

God grant that His light so shine in us, that others see the difference, and themselves come to walk in the light of Christ! Amen.