An Acrostic

Since I used the acrostic psalm 111 for the sermon text on Sunday, we used an acrostic for the children’s message.  Becky wrote the following one.  We gave the kids a little bag of Alpha Bits cereal.

S is for Savior, A to Z

A is for Angels

B is for Baptism

C is for Creation

D is for Deliverance

E is for Everyone

F is for Father

G is for Grace

H is for Holy Spirit

I is for “I am”

J is for Jesus

K is for King

L is for Love

M is for Mary

N is for Nativity

O is for Opportunity

P is for Prayer

R is for Righteousness

S is for Singing

T is for Thanks

U is for Unconditional

V is for Victory

W is for Worship

X is for Xross or Xrist

Y is for You – forgiven

Z is for Zest for the Lord.

Epiphany 4, 2012 Immanuel Chapel, Psalm 111

On the outer wall at the entrance to the library at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota are the words, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  These words from Proverbs and our Psalm today suggest that before a person sets out to study the ABC’s of human events, it is wise to begin with the ABC’s of the works and words of God.  The Psalm is set in the congregation of believers, giving whole hearted thanks for the great works of the Lord.

This morning, gathered as the congregation of the faithful, we peer into the glory and grandeur of God’s favor toward us as He forgoes punishing us for our sins.  First, God acted in grace and mercy in the past through his saving actions in bringing Israel of out slavery in Egypt.  Today we receive God’s grace and mercy through Jesus in the sacrament of Holy Communion.  The Passover was instituted by God for Israel to eat and drink in remembrance of and participation in the Exodus to freedom from slavery and death.  The sacrament of the Altar was instituted by Jesus Christ for us Christians to eat and drink remembering and participating in the Lord’s death until he comes.

 Israel suffered at length under the enslaving thumb of the Egyptian authorities.  When their numbers increased, it became national policy that all newborn boys be killed.  A woman’s pregnancy was not a cause for joy but was filled with apprehension and fear.  It was a shortsighted policy. The Egyptians had set in place the destruction of their own workforce.   At the same time they forced their labor force to scavenge for their own building materials, but did not reduce the quota of bricks to be produced.  These were horrific policies designed to grind down God’s people.

The great works of the Lord started quietly with the midwives outsmarting  the Egyptian authorities and the number of Israelites continued to grow.   They became more noticeable when one of those infant boys saved from death was called out of exile as an 80 year old senior citizen to lead the people out of slavery.  The Lord’s great and wondrous deeds burst in to the open through the plagues.  The Nile River, the only source of water in Egypt, turned to blood.  Frogs inundated the land.  Flies infested everything.   Hail flattened crops.   Locusts stripped the fields bare.  The magicians of Egypt acknowledged, “This was the finger of God at work.” Finally, in an ironic parallel to their national policy God sent an angel of death who in one night took the life of every firstborn male in the realm, from the lowest family to Pharaoh from the newborn to the older adult,  from the bulls of the herds, the bucks of the sheep flock and the stallions of the stable.

Protected by a lamb’s blood painted on the doorways of each Hebrew hovel, God’s people ate the first Passover meal anticipating the great and wondrous works of the Lord which were yet to come.

At the Red Sea Israel passed under Moses’ outstretched arms plunging into the depths of the sea, now made a dry highway by God’s breath.   Emerging on the other side they joined Moses in singing, “Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power, your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.”  As the bodies of Egypt’s soldiers and charioteers washed up against the shore, the congregation of Israel acclaimed the Lord, “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?  Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”

Having passed through their baptismal waters, Israel journeyed into the wilderness.  God’s great deeds continued.  He provided food, raining manna and quail upon the encampment.  At Sinai, God provided his sure and eternal precepts on tablets of stone to be performed faithfully and with uprightness.  He commanded a forever covenant with them in which he would be their God and they would be his people.  Finally, he gave them the land, the land promised long ago to Abraham.  God’s great works were remembered every year in the Passover meal.

  Jesus celebrated those great deeds of the Lord in the Passover festival, first with his family and then with his disciples.  The promise in the Old Testament lesson was fulfilled in Christ.  Jesus was the promised new prophet like Moses whom God raised up from the womb of Mary, an awesome and wondrous deed in its own right. God put His words in Jesus’ mouth. 

We heard God’s words in the gospel lesson.  Jesus silenced the powers of evil.  His words entered into the ears and hearts of his listening with astonishing authority.  His deeds were viewed in amazement.  The people had never seen anything like this.  “What is this?” they asked.  This was the good news of God’s kingdom breaking into a world of enslavements of every kind, the worst of which was being held captive by sin.  He came to destroy all the powers that would undermine, oppose and stand in the way His rule of grace and mercy.  Because of these deeds his fame spread.  But those were not the Deed and the Work he came to complete.

His greatest and most majestic work was done on the cross and in his resurrection.  During the Passover meal, he took the unleavened bread, eaten for more than a thousand years to remember the Exodus and giving thanks to God broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, “This is my body.”   Wondrous deed. He took the cup of wine used in the Passover and said, “This cup is the new testament in My blood…shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  Awesome words. The next day Jesus, the firstborn of God, was crucified and died. as evening descended on Calvary his cross stood vacant.  As morning dawned on the next Sunday his tomb stood empty.

Today in the Lord’s Supper Jesus provides food to sustain our journey of faith.  He remembers his new covenant ensured forever through his blood shed on the cross, his body given into death for our life and salvation.  He remembers, as we remember, that he gave himself into death for our life.

I remember Mrs. Keys who was a shut in when I first met her.  She had been raised in a church which didn’t regard Holy Communion as a sacred action bringing, forgiveness, life and salvation.  More than once she told how thankful she was to have discovered the power of God’s work in the bread and wine of the sacrament investing it with Jesus’ own body and blood.

For her, the works of God in Jesus death and resurrection came alive as she received Communion.  Today in the company of our congregation we have reason to give thanks to the Lord with our whole heart as we receive the power of Christ for our life and for our salvation, God’s food for the journey.

Each of us can exclaim, “I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.”  This is the beginning of wisdom.     

Psalm 111 is an acrostic.  The paraphrase below follows the 22 characters of the Hebrew alphabet in sequence.  The Hallelujahs are not part of the acrostic.  Psalm 111 emphasizes the works of the Lord.  Psalm 112 speaks of our response to the greatness of the works of the Lord.

Psalm 111

P. Hallelujah.

C. I, Acclaim the Lord with my whole heart.

P. Bless Him in the company of the upright congregation.

C. Great are the deeds of the Lord,

P. Discovered by all who delight in them.

C. His acts are filled with splendor and glory,

P.  Wonderfully, His righteousness endures forever,

C.  Zestfully, He made His works to be remembered.

P. Changeless are the Lord’s grace and mercy,

C. To those who fear him, He gives food,

P. “Yes,” He says to His covenant forever.

C. He Champions His powerful works before His people,

P.  Leaving to them the inheritance of the nations.

C.  His Mighty hands make truth and right,

P. Noting his precepts are ever trustworthy,

C.  Staunch for all time, forever,

 P. Fashioned in truth and right.

C. He Performed redemption for his people,

P. He Commanded his pact to be forever.

C. Kingly, holy and awesome is his name!

P. Remember, wisdom begins with fear of the Lord,

C. Sound judgment belongs to all who adhere to it.

P. Thanks and hallelujah be to him forever!

C. Hallelujah!

Timothy, Titus and Silas, Missionaries

Included in the introductory pages of the Lutheran Service Book, is a quote from the Augsburg Confession 21, “Our churches teach that the remembrance of the saints is to be commended in order that we may imitate their faith and good works according to our calling.” As we approach the end of January, the calendar is jam packed with opportunities to remember saints that we might imitate.  Having written concerning the conversion of St. Paul yesterday (January 25), I will share material from “Sundays and Seasons” about three of Paul’s coworkers on his missionary journeys.

Timothy accompanied Paul on his second missionary journey and was commissioned by Paul to go to Ephesus, where he served as bishop and overseer of the church.  Titus was a traveling companion of Paul, accompanied him on the trip to the council of Jerusalem, and became the first bishop of Crete.  Silas traveled with Paul through Asia Minor and Greece and was imprisoned with him at Philippi, where they were delivered by an earthquake.

LSB 517, 4

Apostles, prophets, martyrs,

And all the noble throng

Who wear the spotless raiment

And raise the ceaseless song

For these, passed on before us,

We offer praises due

And, walking in their footsteps,

Would live our lives for You.

Think of some of the people who have influenced you in your life and lived a life of faith worthy of imitation.  Who would you nominate to include on your church calendar as saints to be commemorated?  

It is accurate to say that the risen Christ appeared to a man named Saul (Paul) on the road to Damascus.  However, it fails to include the dramatic events that accompanied Saul’s turn around.
We first meet Saul standing by at the stoning of Stephen. (Acts 5 & 7).  Acts 8:1, “And Saul approved of his execution.”  Chapter 9 begins, “But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples…”  Stephen’s passionate witness to Christ had only inflamed Saul’s sense of urgency that this sect needed to be snuffed out.
With letters from the priest in hand he was on his way to Damascus to search out anyone who might be a follower of the Way when Jesus met him with a blinding light that knocked him to the ground.  Now blinded by Jesus, Jesus opened his eyes of faith.  At Jesus direction he sought out a follower of the Way named Ananias to whom the Lord had also spoken directing him to seek Saul.  At first Ananias was reluctant, wouldn’t you be?  But when he found Saul on Straight street, he blessed him with the Holy Spirit.  Saul regained his sight.  Now he could see with his physical eyes and with the eyes of faith.  With his new and renewed eyesight, he was baptized.
Our conversion may not have been so dramatic.  However, the same elements, as those in Saul’s case, were present.  Jesus confronted a sinner who was in open rebellion against him.  The eyes of our faith were still blind.  Yet, in our baptism the sinful person was drowned in baptism and also filled with the Holy Spirit.  
Immediately following his baptism Saul began to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God.  “Jesus is the Christ,” was his message.  How long ago were we baptized?  What message do we proclaim?
Almighty God, grant us ever to rejoice in the saving light of Your Gospel and, following the example of the apostle Paul, to spread it to the end of the earth; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.
 
   

Epiphany 3, 2012 Immanuel Chapel, Jonah 3:1-5, 10

             I was riding the bus home during my junior year of high school, when Ronnie Anderson commented, “You’re going to be a preacher.”  “No, I’m not,” I desperately denied.  “Oh, yes, you are,” Ronnie responded.  I was taking Latin by correspondence and had brought my textbook along.  The call to be the mouth of God is not easily accepted.

            Jonah denied his call to be God’s mouth by going in the opposite direction than God wanted. Jonah, whose name means dove, took flight.  Prof. Bruce Schuchard writes, “In fact, Jonah was most displeased, disillusioned, and determined not to be the instrument of the Lord’s mercy to that loathsome city, to the horrible inhabitants of Nineveh, who unquestionably deserved to get what was otherwise coming to them.”  Today, we encounter Jonah on the Mediterranean shore, a bedraggled, sea weed-draped, vomit-stained, traumatized prophet.

            We might want to ask, “How’s fleeing from God working for you, Jonah?”  We are good at remembering all the wrongs and failures of people, real or imagined. We can download them from our mental document files to rebuke and remind others of their sins.  It’s in the “I don’t forget” folder.

  Jonah had downloaded his file of all the atrocities of Nineveh. He thought that the congregation of Nineveh, to whom God called him, deserved to be hurled into the depths of Sheol, hell.  Instead, God hurled the prophet into the watery depths, into the tomb of a fish’s belly for three days.  However, when God encountered Jonah on the Mediterranean shore, He didn’t rebuke or remind Jonah of being a flighty dove.    Thank God, God forgets. Now having been drowned, buried in this baptism, God has given new life raising him from his gastrointestinal grave.  He is a new man, called to walk in newness of the Life which God has given him.  If that sounds familiar, then you are remembering St. Paul, “We were buried therefore with (Christ) by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”  For Jonah, there is now no word of condemnation, just as there is no condemnation for you and me who are in Christ Jesus.

The God of all grace gives you and me and Jonah a new start every day. In our catechism Luther speaks of us as a new person emerging from the water of baptism daily.  To Jonah, at the dawn of his new life, God simply reissues his call. “Arise, go…”   Jonah sets a good example for us.  He begins to walk as a newly created person according to the word of the Lord.  Instead of catching a boat to Spain, he likely catches a camel ride to Nineveh.  It will take him about forty days to cross the 500 mile distance of desert.  He has 6 weeks to ponder his mission.

God gave Jonah something to think about in his second call.  Originally, God asked Jonah to go and be His mouth of judgment against Nineveh.  “Their evil has come up before me.” Nineveh is like the world before the flood, Nineveh is like Sodom and Gomorrah, Nineveh is like any great city the news of which greets us every morning when we turn on our TV.

Now God says to Jonah, “Call out to Nineveh.”  There is a hint of grace here.  It’s like the voice of Isaiah, calling to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God.”  It’s the voice that says to Zion, “You God reigns.”  It’s the voice that proclaims the year of the lord’s favor.  It’s mouth of God speaking not only judgment, but peace and salvation.  It’s the mouth of God saying to us this morning, “for the sake of Christ, God forgives you all your sins.”  And as we leave the communion rail, “Go in peace.”

    God now identifies Nineveh as “the great city to God.”  Isn’t it adorable that God loves the loveless?  Good for God.  That God is the God of the forlorn is wonderful.  But sometimes his steadfast love is unnerving, unsettling, and shocking.  You mean he loves them all?  You mean he loves even the ugliest of the ugly, the most reprehensible of them all?  All of them?  Really?  Really.  Listen to psalm 24, “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell in it.”  We heard in the gospel lesson that after John the Baptizer was arrested Jesus came “proclaiming (not judgment and revenge) but “the gospel of God.”  When Jesus invited the two sets of brothers Simon and Andrew and James and John, to leave their fishing nets behind and follow him, he said, “I will make you become fishers of men.”  Including people like those who arrested and would behead John the Baptizer.  Jesus did not send them to lead an uprising and overthrow Herod and the Romans.  Jesus gave them a sermon they were to preach, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”   

So Jonah goes, according the word of the Lord, but the Lord hasn’t put his  message in Jonah’s mouth yet. While Jonah jostles his way on camel back through 500 miles of desert, I imagine God crafting his message for Jonah’s mouth to speak.  He writes and rewrites, edits, and hones until he gets it just right.  As Jonah enters God downloads his message to Jonah via the Holy Spirit.

Remember, a couple of weeks ago when I said my sermon would be in a poetic form.  I could tell that you were working hard to listen.  Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.  Then I said, “Amen.” I was done and you were stunned, “He’s done?”  The sermon God had crafted for his mouth, Jonah, was five words in the Hebrew, the same length as the one Jesus gave to his disciples.  The best we can do in English is, “Yet, forty days, Nineveh is about to be changed.”  Up Maple Street Jonah walked, down Pine Street over to First Avenue, preaching over and over again his five word sermon.  As the sound waves issuing from Jonah’s mouth went forth, change began to happen.   “The people of Nineveh believed God.”  From the least of the inhabitants to the king, the word from the mouth of the prophet caused the city to enter into forty days of Lent, with fasting, ashes and sackcloth.  Even the animals sported the latest sackcloth attire.  “Who knows,” declared the king, “God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”  An early church father wrote, “The city has truly been overturned, as it was proclaimed, but in its hearts and not its walls.”  Such is the power of the Word that comes forth from the mouth of God’s servants.  And a five word sermon did it.

How did the forty days of lent end in Nineveh?  “God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he not do.”  What god did not do to Nineveh, he does not do to you and me.  Let us be exceedingly glad and rejoice.  Be a big mouth for God.  Are you ready for it?  And all God’s people said, “Amen.”              

There doesn’t seem to be much reliable information about Henry, an English born clergyman who became bishop of Uppsala, in 1152 and is credited with bringing Christianity to Finland.  He traveled to Finland with the king of Sweden on a mission trip and remained there to organize the church.  He was murdered in 1154 by a man he had disciplined according to canon law.  Henry ‘s burial place became a center of pilgrimage.  He is popular in both Sweden and Finland.

A Nordic hymn sung to a Finnish folk tune is placed in the Advent section of Evangelical Lutheran  Worship (243), “Lost in the Night.”

Epiphany is the season of light and stanzas I, 3 & 4 fit well in that season.

Lost in the night do the people yet languish,

Longing for morning the darkness to vanquish,

Plaintively sighing with hearts full of anguish.

Will not the day come soon?

Will not the day come soon?

Sorrowing wand’rers, in darkness yet dwelling,

Dawned has the day of a radiance excelling,

Death’s deepest shadows forever dispelling.

Christ is coming soon!

Christ is coming soon!

Light o’er the land of the needy is beaming;

Rivers of life through its deserts are streaming,

Bringing all peoples a Savior redeeming.

Come and save us soon !

Come and save us soon!

There doesn’t seem to be much reliable information about Henry, an English born clergyman who became bishop of Uppsala, in 1152 and is credited with bringing Christianity to Finland.  He traveled to Finland with the king of Sweden on a mission trip and remained there to organize the church.  He was murdered in 1154 by a man he had disciplined according to canon law.  Henry ‘s burial place became a center of pilgrimage.  He is popular in both Sweden and Finland.

A Nordic hymn sung to a Finnish folk tune is placed in the Advent section of Evangelical Lutheran  Worship (243), “Lost in the Night.”

Epiphany is the season of light and stanzas I, 3 & 4 fit well in that season.

Lost in the night do the people yet languish,

Longing for morning the darkness to vanquish,

Plaintively sighing with hearts full of anguish.

Will not the day come soon?

Will not the day come soon?

Sorrowing wand’rers, in darkness yet dwelling,

Dawned has the day of a radiance excelling,

Death’s deepest shadows forever dispelling.

Christ is coming soon!

Christ is coming soon!

Light o’er the land of the needy is beaming;

Rivers of life through its deserts are streaming,

Bringing all peoples a Savior redeeming.

Come and save us soon !

Come and save us soon!

There are two kinds of confession.  The first confession is when we confess our sins at the beginning of the worship service.  Peter made a confession of sins after he denied Jesus.  Peter’s denial was included in our High Priest’s prayer to his Father from the cross, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”  This forgiveness was affirmed after the resurrection when Jesus asked Peter three times, if he loved him.  Three times Peter answered, “Yes.”  Three times Jesus told him that he had been restored to his calling to feed His sheep.

(I have a confession of a third kind to make, neither of sin nor of faith.  It is a confession of forgetting, that yesterday, January 18^th, was the day to commemorate Peter’s confession.)

The Confession of Peter remembers  the confession of faith. Peter made a confession faith as recorded in Matthew 16:13-19.  Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Our confession of faith is not dead words.  They speak of the God who is active in creation, in history and in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Yes, our confession of faith is based on words handed down through the centuries.  But they are no less the revealing work of the Father than the confession that Peter made.

Jesus said to Peter, “You are Peter (petros) and upon this Rock (petra) I will build my church.”  This is foundation on which God builds his church, the apostles and prophets, which includes Peter.  But the Rock that holds it all together is the Stone which has been rejected by many, but God has made the cornerstone, even Christ Jesus.

Prayer:

We give thanks Lord, that You have fitted us into the Your household in which we live in a temple solidly built on the Rock who is our Savior, a place where we find solid footing even when temples built of stone are shaking.

Antony of Egypt, about 356.  Antony was one of the earliest of the Egyptian desert fathers.  He was born into a Christian family from whom he inherited a large estate.  He took Jesus’ message to sell all that you have give to the poor and follow Christ, literally.  After he made arrangements for the care of his sister, he gave away his inheritance and became a hermit.  Later, he became the head of a group of monks that lived in a cluster of huts and devoted themselves to communal prayer, worship and manual labor.  The money they earned they distributed to the poor.

Pachomius was born in Egypt about 290.  During his service as a soldier he became a Christian.  In 320 he began living in an area of Upper Egypt near other hermits.  He organized the hermits into a religious community in which members prayed together and held their goods in common.  His rule for monasteries influenced other monastic founder such as Basil and Benedict.

We would do well to be reminded that at times we need to stand apart from the surrounding culture and not conform to the world but to the mind of Christ.  It might also be a time to become familiar with the Egyptian (Coptic) church.  The Coptic Church has recently come under attack in Egypt as have other Christians in parts of Africa.