The King on the Cross

[Below you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville Ohio, earlier today. You'll also be able to view both worship services. Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Church Year.]

Luke 23:27-43

In today’s Gospel lesson, we read what may be the unlikeliest prayer ever. One of the criminals crucified with Jesus says to the Lord, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23:42)

Here, the second criminal to speak at Jesus’ crucifixion confesses his belief that Jesus is the King of all kings.

More than that, we see he believes that Jesus, beyond death, will claim His eternal kingdom.

There are two things that make this prayer so unlikely.

The first is that a dying man, like Jesus, doesn’t look like someone about to claim a crown.

The second is that at this moment, the whole world seems to be mocking Jesus. The Jewish religious authorities, the Roman soldiers, and the other criminal being crucified all mock Him, challenging Jesus to save Himself as He had saved others. Even the sign on Jesus’ cross mocks Him. “I-N-R-I,” it says, abbreviating the Latin phrase, “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum,” “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

Yet, the second criminal prays to Jesus as his King, God the Son, and asks to be part of Jesus’ eternal kingdom. How does this man know that Jesus is King and that even he, who Luke describes in the Greek in which he wrote his gospel, as an “evil doer,” can be part of Jesus’ kingdom?

The second criminal knows these things for the same reason you and I–and anyone else–can know that Jesus is King and that we can be part of His kingdom. On the cross, Jesus preached the good news of new and everlasting life with God for all who repent and believe in Him. This happened when Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

Now, it’s obvious that this is an incredibly gracious prayer. Jesus is praying that the Father will forgive those who are killing Him! But who exactly is killing Jesus?

We find our answer in the three predictions Jesus makes of His crucifixion as recorded by Luke.

In the first, Jesus says that His fellow Jews will crucify Him. (Luke 9:22)

In the second, He says that “men,” that is, all humanity, will put Him on the cross. (Luke 9:44)

In the third, Jesus says that Gentiles, non-Jews like you and me, represented by the Romans, will crucify Him. (Luke 18:32)

Every one of us, by our sinful natures, by the sins we commit and the righteous thoughts we fail to hold and the righteous deeds we fail to do, are responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion.

So, in this prayer, Jesus prays for the forgiveness of us all, the whole human race, including you and me. Jesus prays that all of us who crucify Him will be sheltered in the grace that He, the sinless King Who died and rose for sinners, can give. Jesus prays for you!

In Jesus’ prayer, the second criminal heard both the Law that condemns sin and the Gospel that sets those who believe in Him free from our common human slavery to sin. In response to the conviction of his sins by God’s Law by confessing his sin, just as we do every time we gather to worship. “We are punished justly,” he tells the other criminal, “for we are getting what our deeds deserve.” (Luke 23:41)

But in Jesus’ prayer, this man also heard the words of the King of all creation, “the image of the invisible God,” according to our lesson from Colossians for today, the One through Whom “all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:13, 16-17)

He knew that Jesus had power over everything! In the Word of Gospel Jesus spoke in His prayer, although His body was bloodied and broken, the second criminal saw the King and Maker of all things Who would not be deterred from loving His children or dying for our salvation even as He was dying at our hands. And so, the criminal confesses faith in Jesus, asking Jesus to remember him when He claims His Kingdom, which Jesus will do on Easter Sunday morning.

To this man, an inveterate evildoer and a criminal his whole life, Jesus speaks a Word of gospel promise: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) Notice that Jesus lays down no pre-conditions for the man to earn his salvation. The Word of God from Jesus has led the man to believe and that is all that sinners like you and me need to be assured that one day, we too will be with Jesus in paradise! 

The two criminals in our gospel lesson show us that there are really only two possible ways we can respond to Jesus on the cross. 

The first possible response is for us to hate Jesus. You see, if my sin and your sin is so serious that it requires the sinless Son of God to die for me, there’s no way I can deny that I’m a sinner. The death of the innocent Savior Jesus shows us that we all are, as the apostle Paul writes in Romans, “filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity…full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice…gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; [inventors of] evil;…[people with] no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.” (Romans 1:29-31)

I’ve read that passage to some people and heard them say, “Sounds like Congress.” But I say, we all need to look in the mirror. In truth, it sounds like every single one of us. 

You may say you don’t know anybody who hates Jesus. But, friends, have you ever heard anybody say—or, have you yourself ever said—“Jesus was a great teacher” or “Jesus was a good man” or some such nonsense? When human beings say things like this, they’re really saying they reject God’s verdict on the sinful nature into which each and every one of us was born.

The ancient saints knew this.

David, called out for adultery and murder, knew that while he was made a saint by God’s grace through faith in God, he was nonetheless a sinner. “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5)

And Job, despite his faith in God, knew that he had inherited sinful impulses from a fallen human race: “Who can bring what is pure from the impure?” he asks, then answers, “No one!” (Job 14:4)

You see, we like to delude ourselves that we’re just good enough to earn God’s forgiveness, just righteous enough to earn a place in His kingdom. The King of all kings blows that foolishness to bits. You and I, folks, by our sinful nature and the sins we commit because of it are what drove the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet!

But, there is a second response we can have to Jesus hanging on the cross: We can hate our sins.

This was the response of the second evildoer. He knew that he deserved to die for his sins. He was horrified that his sins required Jesus to suffer so much. He was overwhelmed with gratitude that God would stoop all the way down to a cross because of His love for us. The man hated what he, by the decisions he’d made, the wrongs he’d done, and the good he’d failed to do, all of which had brought Jesus to this place of torment, mockery, and death.

When, by the power of God’s Word, we hate our sins enough to see the King on the cross as our God and Savior, we know to pray, “Jesus, remember me in Your Kingdom.”

And we can know that Jesus will remember us and does remember us even now!

God’s Word is clear: “…the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

Dear friends in Christ, this gospel word is for you too.

Christ the King has died for you.

He offered Himself up as the perfect sacrifice for your sin.

He prayed and still prays that you might know God’s forgiveness.

And to those who turn to Him in repentant faith, He offers life with God that never ends.

Elsewhere, Jesus says, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

May we daily listen to God’s Word that leads us to hate our sin and to love our King, Jesus, and so be assured of our place in His kingdom always. Amen

Seeing the One We Need

Below you'll find online worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, for this past Sunday, April 26. We hope that it will help you grow strong in faith in Jesus, whether you already know Him or not. Below that then is the written text of the message included in the worship. God bless you with a safe and healthy week.



Luke 24:13-35

Today, I want to focus on two verses from our gospel lesson: “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him…” (Luke 24:30-31) 

Here is the moment when, on the first Easter Sunday, two of Jesus’ disciples, after walking on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus with a mysterious stranger, realize that this stranger, Whose unfolding of God’s Word had made their hearts burn while they walked together, was Jesus: crucified, dead, buried, now risen from the dead. 

They’d been blind. 

But now they could see.

During His ministry, Jesus had spoken about what He intended to accomplish in Jerusalem. 

“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Luke 9:22) 

“For the Son of Man in his day,” Jesus says in Luke 17:24-25, “will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.”

To eyes blinded by sin though, a gracious God going to the lengths that God goes to in Jesus in order to seek and save those lost in sin, death, and darkness, is beyond imagining. 

The blindness of the human race goes back to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. After they rebelled against God and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “...the eyes of both of them were opened” (Genesis 3:7). 

Before, they had seen only God and what was good. 

Now they saw evil. 

From that point forward, whenever the human race gave God a thought, it imagined that God was as lacking in grace and charity they themselves. 

They saw God as a Being to be placated by religious acts, a Deity who demands perfection. 

Or, they were, like me at one time in my life: fools, of whom God’s Word observes, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’...” (Psalm 14:1)

In the risen Jesus, our eyes are opened to Who God really is. 

We see that He is the God Who, out of His grace and love, called ancient Israel to be His own people who would carry the light of His love to all the nations, despite the smallness of Israel’s numbers and power, despite its sin, idolatry, and lies. 

In Jesus too, we see the God Who sent His Son “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). 

This is the God Who, desperate to restore us to the life only He can give, is indifferent to the humiliation others might see in His becoming... 

• like a widow scouring her home for a single lost coin (Luke 15:8-10, or 
• like a shepherd who has 99 sheep securely penned for the night, but still seeks the one that’s lost (Luke 15:3-7), or 
• like a father who doesn’t care what the neighbors say because, though his son has squandered everything he gave him--every blessing--and shown him complete disrespect, will still anxiously look down the road hoping for his return and throw a party when that lost child returns. (Luke 15:11-32)

For three years, disciples like Cleopas and the other disciple who walked to Emmaus on that first Easter had followed Jesus. They hadn’t understood it when Jesus foretold His death and resurrection. 

In Jesus, they had heard the voice of God and had seen, in Martin Luther’s wonderful phrase, “God’s loving face.” 

But they were blind to all of Jesus’ promises, assuming that as Messiah, Jesus would go to Jerusalem and claim His kingdom.

They were right, except that the kingdom of the Messiah, the Christ, could not be claimed before Jesus dealt with our blindness. Until it was overcome forever. 

All who follow Jesus must learn to see the world aright. 

First, we have to see that we are sinners. Jesus didn’t just die for all those “other people” over whom we tsk and shake our heads. We too are sinners whose blindness causes us to brag, tear others down, to be unkind, to hoard paper towels, toilet paper, and disinfectant, to think we’re always right and the other guy is always wrong, to covet, steal, take God’s name in vain, gossip, and lie. The cross should open our eyes to our sin. The condition of sin into which each of us is born and which we blindly indulge, is so bad that it required the sinless God of all creation to take on human flesh, becoming the only human being who could offer a pure sacrifice acceptable to God to overcome the power of our sin. 

And it’s for blind people like us, prone to look no further than our own interests, desires, and preferences, that Jesus came to die...and rise.

Which brings us back to the road to Emmaus. 

Two disciples walk on that road, so blinded by sin and habitual ways of thinking and religion, that they can’t accept the report of the women who had returned from the tomb with news that Jesus was raised from the dead. “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” Jesus tells them while they still don’t recognize Him. (Luke 24:25) 

It’s at this point that Jesus begins to open their eyes, showing them God’s Law is not meant to be the last word over their lives or their eternities. He shows them from Moses and the Prophets that the Messiah was always meant to do what Jesus did...to die and then to rise. 

Jesus points them to the gospel, the good news: God has conquered our sin and our death by dying and rising and all whose eyes are opened to their need of what Jesus accomplished in His death and resurrection and trust in Jesus are no longer lost. God finds us and saves us by His grace in Jesus!

The night is closing in when Jesus and the two disciples come to Emmaus. It will soon be too dark to see and therefore, to travel. They beg Jesus to stay with them. 

It’s at a table in Emmaus that it happens. 

Jesus breaks the bread and blesses it and starts to give it to them, as He has so many times before, and THEY SEE. 

After Jesus reveals Himself to them, their eyes are opened to what Jesus had done--died for the sin of all people and risen so that all who trust in Him can live with God now and always, the darkness outside doesn’t matter to the disciples. Despite the dangers posed by wild animals and highway bandits, they race back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples that they have seen Jesus, risen. Their eyes are open. 

They can testify in the words of John Newton’s hymn, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”

The same is true for you and me. When God’s Law shows us our need of a Savior and His Gospel presents Jesus as that Savior Who saves us by God’s charity--His grace--through faith in Jesus; whenever His Word causes our hearts to burn within us; when we are claimed by God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--in the waters of Holy Baptism; and when we see Him again (and we will see Him again!) in the breaking of the bread at Holy Communion, our blindness gives way to seeing God in all His glory, grace, and love. 

We move out of the darkness of our cramped, self-serving lives into the bright spaciousness of His kingdom. 

We can marvel, revel, and celebrate the reality that the apostle Peter says belongs to all believers in Jesus: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9) 

This week, listen to Jesus’ Word, heed His call to repentance and renewal. He will come to You not only as God the Son Who died for Your sins but also as God the Son Who rose to open Your eyes to see how much He loves you and the new life He gives to you. 

Look to Jesus and you will see. And you will believe. 

Amen

The Big Surprise

[This message was shared during the three Easter Sunday worship services with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio and our friends and guests. Plan on worshiping with us this coming Sunday. Traditional worship happens at 8:45 AM and Modern worship happens at 11:00 AM.]

Luke 24:1-12
On the first Easter Sunday morning, Jesus’ disciples were taken by surprise. None of them had expected that Jesus would rise from the dead.

We may find their surprise surprising. After all, Jesus had told them often enough what He was on earth to do. 

For example, Jesus once told His followers, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life (Luke 9:22).” 

Later, speaking of Himself in the third person as “the Son of Man,” Jesus said: “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be delivered over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; they will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again (Luke 18:31-33).”

The gospels tell us that every time Jesus mentioned that He was going to be crucified and then rise from the dead, they didn’t get it. 

Their incomprehension is understandable for several reasons. 

For one, I doubt that any of us have ever known someone who was dead for several days, then brought back to life by God the Father. Neither had the disciples.*

The other reason the disciples would have found Jesus’ prediction of His own death and resurrection incomprehensible was cultural. While many Jews believed that there would be a resurrection of God’s righteous people (like the Pharisees), they didn’t believe that one individual could be raised from the dead. For the Jews, resurrection was a group activity to take place at the end of history.

And so, the first Easter Sunday caught the first disciples off-guard. We see that in our gospel lesson, Luke 24:1-12. Let’s take a look at it together. 

Verse 1: “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.”

A contingent of Jesus’ female disciples, people who have followed Him since His ministry began in Galilee go on the first day of the week, Sunday, to anoint Jesus’ dead body. This day will also turn out to be “the first day” of a new life for them and all who confess Jesus as their Lord. But they don’t know that yet.

Verse 2: “They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.”

Luke’s account of the first Easter begins much as his account of Jesus’ birth began. Just as an angel came to Mary, a young woman who trusted in God, to give the surprising news that she would bear the Savior of the world, on Easter, women who trusted in God were met by two men we will learn later in Luke’s gospel were also angels, to give equally surprising news. If any so-called Christian tries to tell you that women are inferior to me, don’t believe them. A man didn’t give birth to the Savior; a woman did. (Most women will tell you that if birthing were left up to men, there would be no new babies born.) Men weren’t the first ones entrusted with proclaiming the Easter message; women were.

But, lest we think this means women are perfect, we come to verse 5: “In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: “The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.”’ Then they remembered his words.”

The women, overwhelmed by the gleaming angels reflecting the blazing perfection of God, fell to their knees while the angels chastised them. “Why are you looking for a risen Savior in a place for the dead? [It's like the angels are telling them, "Duh!"] Don’t you remember all the times He told you that He was going to rise again?” It’s with this reminder that the women, who had heard Jesus foretell His death and resurrection, remember.

Haven’t you had the same experience? You’ve had to be reminded of something repeatedly before you could remember it...and maybe you don't remember even then.

In one of his Narnia books, C.S. Lewis tells about an important message being entrusted to a young girl named Jill by the fictional Christ figure of those books, Aslan. Make sure you review what I’m telling you all the time, Aslan tells Jill, otherwise you might forget it. Of course, Jill doesn’t do what Aslan tells her to do and when the time comes for her to remember the message, she’s forgotten it all together.

Sometimes, I allow myself to get so caught up in the stuff of life that I forget about God’s promises. 

Ones like, “I am with you always (Matthew 28:20).” 

And like, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die (John 11:25-26).” 

Or, “...whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (Colossians 3:17).”

The Bible repeatedly tells us to remember God’s Word and God’s promises. God told His ancient people: “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).” And, in the New Testament book of Hebrews, God tells Christians through the preacher: "...let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another..." (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Had Jesus’ first disciples spent more time listening to and reminding themselves and each other of God’s Word, they wouldn’t have been so surprised that first Easter. 

And though God's love for us, its depth and breadth, always is surprising me, aybe we wouldn’t be so surprised by the things that happen to us in this life or so hesitant about following where Jesus leads us if we spent more time remembering God’s Word and God’s promises given through Christ! 

We need to learn to be less self-reliant and more God-reliant.

Verse 9: “When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”

Faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, the faith that saves us from sin and death, isn’t easy. One of my favorite Christian musicians, Steve Taylor, says simply, "It's harder to believe than not to to."

We can’t decide to believe. Faith is a gift from God given to those who are willing to believe, who understand that the notion of a risen Savior is nonsense to a disbelieving world. 

It will seem like nonsense to us too, unless we leave ourselves open to the Holy Spirit giving faith to us when we’re faced with temptation, despair, adversity, grief, or death. We need be open to letting God surprise us again and again! 

On Friday night, after the Good Friday service, Sarah and I watched a documentary about the evangelist Billy Graham. It recounted the famous crisis of faith that Graham underwent while preaching under the auspices of Youth for Christ. He was a modern man living in a modern world. How could he believe in the Bible? 

Ultimately, Graham knelt down in a woods with an open Bible and told God, “I don’t understand everything in this book. But, I ask You to help me to trust in it as Your Word, just as I trust in Jesus.” 

Graham learned what I have learned and relearned as a disciple of Jesus: If I am open to trusting in Jesus, He will empower me to trust in Him. 

If I will only bring my needy, sinful, mistake-riddled life to Him, He will breathe the new life of faith into me. The apostle Paul writes: “...no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3).” 

The Holy Spirit wants to give you a deep, growing faith in the risen Jesus. Are you willing to receive Him by faith today and each day? That’s the question for us all in the face of Christ’s Easter surprise.

As many of you know, some forty years ago, God brought me out of implacable atheism to faith in Jesus Christ. It all started when I began to observe the faith in Christ I saw exemplified in the people of Ann's home church. None of them claimed to be perfect. But I saw in them a peace in the face of difficulty and a love in the midst of a crazy world that I needed to understand. 

As I studied the Bible and listened to the reflections on Christian faith of the people of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, I found myself being tugged toward Jesus. I began praying, even though I wasn't sure that the risen Jesus Who reveals the heart of God to the whole human race was there or real. I told Him that while I didn't yet believe, I was willing to believe. I don't know the exact hour or minute, but I do know that God heard that prayer. I fell in love with Jesus and I came to know that He wanted to save me from myself, my sins, my self-reliance. He made me see that going my own way--relying on own thoughts, my own will, my own heart--was, in the words of another song, "the highway to hell." He began to help me trust in the crucified and risen Jesus, "the way and the truth and the life," to receive forgiveness of my sins and for new life through Him. 

Faith in the risen Christ happens and is made stronger when God's grace meets our open minds, open wills, open hearts, whether as infants at the baptismal font or as needy sinners at the Communion altar. 

It happens when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we gladly hear and learn the good news of new life through Jesus. It's not a matter of doing anything, any more than it was for the first Christians. It's a matter of doing nothing and letting God do it all!

The disciples were skeptical about all of that as the first Easter began. But at least one of the apostles though, was curious about what the women said about the empty tomb. Verse 12: “Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.”

The gospel lesson ends with Peter still not believing that Jesus was risen. That would come later. 

For me, knowing that the first disciples were skeptical about the resurrection is evidence that Jesus did rise. If Hollywood had written the gospels, all of the disciples would have been waiting for Jesus to emerge from His tomb and immediately believed in Jesus’ resurrection and, without doubt or evidence, begun to tell the world. 

But it took time for their faith to get to that point. 

Jesus had to show Himself to them. 

He had to teach them some more. 

He had to send His Holy Spirit after He had ascended to heaven to help them remember so that they, in turn, could tell us so that we can remember. 

The initial mystification of the first disciples on the first Easter has about it the whiff of authenticity, telling me that they came to believe in the risen Jesus against their own worldly judgment in the face of seeing the risen Jesus, eating with Him, hearing Him, talking with Him, touching Him. 

The honesty of the gospels in telling us that the first disciples didn't originally think that the resurrection was true or even possible, tells me that because these skeptics came around, I can believe in Easter too!

Everybody, it seems, knows the most famous words Jesus ever spoke: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).” 

When we attend to Christ and His Word, turning from sin and to Christ, and when we open ourselves to faith in Him, Christ builds that faith within us. We will live in the certainty that He is with us always, even now, and that one day, we will have the greatest surprise of all: Jesus will raise from the dead all who trust in Him for to spend eternity with Him. This is the great promise of Easter. Never forget it! Happy Easter, friends. Amen

*Although they had seen Jesus call several people back from the dead.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]



In The Language of God, Collins, director of the human project, talks about how his life in the science of genetics, led him to faith.



[In Mere Christianity, Lewis, a scholar and one-time atheist, explains the Christian faith.]