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

What Heaven Celebrates

Here.

Repentance: Orienting Our Lives to Christ

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Matthew 3:1-12
As a seven year old who usually found worship less than exciting, young Jim Cymbala nonetheless found himself impressed by a preacher named Howard Goss. As Cymbala explains it, Goss, unlike many of the preachers who came to the Pentecostal church of his childhood, “didn’t rant and rave to make a point. Nor did he use emotional gimmicks as he delivered the Word of God. He simply explained the truths of Scripture in an easy, conversational tone.” Yet, something about Goss’ personal faith impressed the seven-year old Cymbala far more than anything Goss said.

Years later, himself by now a Pentecostal pastor, Cymbala met the son of Howard Goss. The younger man remembered “a big camp meeting” held in Canada when he was a kid. Every prominent preacher of their tradition was there and the event attracted huge numbers of people to the morning, afternoon, and evening preaching services.

As Goss’ son recollected, all the preachers jockeyed to be picked to preach at the evening events, when the crowds were bigger and the prestige greater. “Suddenly,” Howard Goss’ son remembered, “one of the leaders asked where my father was. He was…highly respected by everyone. They wanted to consult him [about the preaching schedule]…They finally heard that he was last seen in the kitchen and dining hall area, so [the son recalled] I went with them to find him. They could scarcely believe their eyes when they got to the kitchen. There was my dad on his hands and knees scrubbing the floor with some of the…workers!”

When told that the prominent preachers wanted to know what his preferences were on the preaching schedule, Goss demurred. “You don’t need to worry about me,” he told them, “But I found out that they’re short of help here in the kitchen so I thought I’d lend a hand.”

Here was a man, the direction of whose life was altogether different from what we see in the lives of most people in the world…maybe even in the Church. Most people allow the directions of their lives to be dictated by the sinful orientations with which each of us is born. As we cave in to these sinful orientations or impulses, we wander farther and farther from God, like the lost sheep that wander from the shepherd in Jesus’ famous parable. In these Advent and Christmas seasons, we remember that God has acted as a good shepherd seeking those who have wandered from Him and Who, through His death and resurrection, has done everything necessary to bring us back under the gracious rule of God, where we can experience life forever with God.

But, as I’ve said before, God does not force His eternal kingdom on anyone! Nor can it be earned by acts of religious piety. Nor can it be claimed simply because we were raised in the church, or held high offices—whether as clergy or laypeople—in the church, or because we were nice, polite people, or because we were in worship every single week. The people who enter God’s kingdom are like Howard Goss: They turn from the sin to which they are naturally oriented and they turn in faith to the God Who came into the world on the first Christmas in Jesus Christ!

Of course, when Jesus was born, few in the world took notice of it. He lived in obscurity until God the Father signaled that it was the right time for Him to begin a ministry that would culminate in His crucifixion and resurrection. Matthew 3:1-12. our Gospel lesson for today, the Second Sunday of Advent, finds John the Baptizer preparing the people of Judea and the world for the disclosure of the long-awaited Messiah. Today, John’s words can prepare us for the return of that Messiah, the crucified and risen Jesus, Who, at a time known only by God the Father, will come back to this world to fully establish His eternal kingdom. John was telling His original hearers and you and me to get ready to meet Jesus.

But how do we get ready? John says—in words similar to those Jesus Himself would later deliver in His own sermons: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” Turn from your sinful orientations and turn to God so that God transforms you from an enemy of God to a friend of God, John is saying.

It’s interesting, too, that the word, “Repent” in the original Greek of Matthew’s Gospel is in the present tense, meaning that repentance isn’t a one-and-done phenomenon. Repentance, constant reorientation to the rule and will of God, is to be part of the daily life style of a Jesus-Follower. This is no doubt why Martin Luther, who taught clearly that we cannot earn our salvation by obeying God’s commandments, nonetheless began The Small Catechism with a discussion of the Ten Commandments. Every grateful follower of Jesus will want to turn each day to God, asking God to show them where they have disobeyed God, so that they don’t, slowly and ignorantly, wander away from the gifts of God’s grace and salvation.

To repent then, is much more than to be sorry for one’s sins. In fact, it’s possible to feel sorry for a sin and not be repentant. Years ago, I met a woman in a nursing home. She was then in her eighties. But she had done something wrong when she was seventeen for which she still felt life-crushing shame. She refused to receive Holy Communion when it was offered to her because she was sure that God could not and would not forgive her. She acknowledged her guilt, but she would not reorient her life to the loving Lordship of Jesus over her life. She would not accept God's offer of forgiveness. It was incredibly sad! Repentance entails both the recognition of one's need of God's forgiveness AND the willingness to receive that forgiveness. For some reason, that woman saw her need of forgiveness, but couldn't accept it. She was like a person dying of thirst on the rim of an unseen oasis.

I sometimes try to explain what it is to repent in this way. In space, when a satellite wanders or gets knocked from its orbital path, the satellite must be re-oriented in order to avoid trouble, things like collisions with other objects or falling into the gravitational pull of the earth, resulting in a crash. But with a simple radio signal from ground control, the satellite can be re-oriented, put back into its orbit around the earth.

Each time we turn to God, asking God to show us our sins, to help us to turn from those sins, and to live differently, we’re responding to a signal from God’s Holy Spirit and, in repenting, God corrects the course of our lives, keeping us in orbit around Jesus Christ, “the way, and the truth, and the life,” the only pathway to God.  

Repentance then, is no small matter. Not to chase anyone away from the centrally important discipline of regular worship attendance, Mark Allan Powell, a professor of New Testament at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, points out that repentance is even more important than worship. In a book on the subject of worship, he writes:

…if worship is an appropriate response, it is not the ideal one. [Through Matthew’s gospel, we see that] the ideal response to [all that God has done for us] is repentance…[In fact,] Jesus never upbraids people for failing to worship or give thanks in this gospel…but he does upbraid those who have witnessed his mighty works and not repented…We know from Jesus' teaching in Matthew that people can worship God with their lips even when their deeds demonstrate that their hearts are far from God…

That’s exactly what John the Baptizer seems to accuse the religious leaders, members of the Judean sects of Pharisees and Sadducees, of doing in our lesson as they join the crowds flocking to the Jordan River to undergo John’s baptism of repentance.

“You brood of vipers!” he says to them. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that is worthy of repentance.” When we orient our lives to the Lordship of Jesus and the will of God, rather than our own sinful desires, our lives will bear fruit. There will be something different about us. We’ll swim against the cultural tide. Our values won’t be the same as the surrounding world. We’ll be in Jesus’ orbit.

Sometimes, the world will count us as weird as John the Baptizer must have seemed to the people of his day, foraging for locusts and wild honey, living in the wilderness that ancient Israel once escaped by crossing the very river in which he baptized.

How weird are you willing to be for Jesus? In his wonderful book, Learn to Dance the Soul Salsa: 17 Surprising Steps for Godly Living in the 21st Century, theologian and historian Leonard Sweet writes that driving our cars has, for many, become war by other means. So, why not engage in spiritual warfare when you drive?

“Other people talk on their cell phones…” Sweet says, “I talk to God. I know people think I’m crazy: sometimes I’m crying, sometimes laughing, sometimes talking out loud, sometimes lavishing impassioned outbursts into empty space.”

“In spite of the double takes” we may get from others, Sweet urges, “make drive time devotion time.”

In the end, how high a price is it to be considered strange or undesirable by a world ticketed for destruction, while remaining in the hands of Lord Jesus Who has conquered sin and death for those who trust in Him?

A song many of us were taught as kids tells us, “If you’re happy and you know it, then your life will surely show it.” On the banks of the Jordan, John the Baptizer taught a similar lesson, “If you’re repentant and you know it, then your life will show it. You will bear the fruits of repentance.”

This doesn’t mean that you’ll be some holier-than-thou snob! It means that your humility before God, your surrender to Christ, and your submission to the Word of God and the will of God will show up in how you live.

It might find you on your hands and knees scrubbing the floor of someone else’s kitchen.

It might find you telling fellow sinners where forgiveness and life can be found.

And it most certainly will find you, each and every day, turning to the God we know in Christ, praying with the psalmist, “Search me, O God, and know my heart…See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

It’s those who daily and authentically ask God to orient their lives to Him who are truly prepared for the kingdom of heaven, truly ready to meet Jesus! May we be prepared. May we live in daily repentance!