May 12, 2019                                                                                            Text:  Psalm 23

Dear Friends in Christ,

            Before worship today I help up a sign where the letters were altogether.  I wonder what you saw?  Many of you saw, “God is no where.”  But I wonder how many of you saw, “God is now here.”  Too often we focus on the negative.  When things go wrong in our life we figure God is no where.  We think He doesn’t care about us. 

            Our Psalm for today – Psalm 23 is that wonderful reminder that God does care for us.  God is here for us and always will be.  Sure, there are times we go our own way, drift from the Lord.  But the Good Shepherd doesn’t just let us roam freely doing whatever we want.  With the Psalm as our backdrop, it is a good day to ask . . .

“WANDERING SHEEP – WHO’S YOUR SHEPHERD?”

            For many of us this part of Scripture is a calming influence.  We hear, “I shall not want…lie down in green pastures…still waters…fear no evil…comfort me…my cup overflows…dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”  Doesn’t the heart stop racing?  The anxiety grinds to a halt.  The nerves relax. 

            But why do we need this calming influence?  Because we are dirty sheep.  Laura Ingalls Wilder in her book Farmer Boy had a chapter called “Sheep Shearing” in which the protocol is described.  First, the sheep need a good washing.  What comes to us as nice, soft wool starts out as filthy and muddy.  Once cleaned you better shear them right away or they are going to get dirty all over again.

            That is because sheep love to wander.  Sheep can also be headstrong and stubborn and not too keen on listening.

            Does any of that sound familiar?  Aren’t we as Christians good at picking up dirt?  How often do our actions and words reflect our non-Christian neighbors?  Instead of being content with our green pasture, we want bigger lawns and a nicer house on a beautiful street where all the neighbors are friendly.  We value our friends’ envy above our Lord’s goodness.  Instead of trusting God to vindicate our enemies, we smear them and speak evil against them and gloat when they stumble.  This why we confess our sins daily and weekly in the public worship.  As sheep we keep getting dirty and dirty again.

            We also wander.  We wander from God’s truth when influenced by friends or media or interest groups.  We push God away when a hurtful death occurs or a loved one rejects us.  We wander from His Word and Sacrament because we just cannot understand how this is the richest table anyone could spread before us.  Wandering sheep – Who Is Your Shepherd?  Isaiah said it well, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” (Is. 53:6)

            In order to solve this for you and I God had to do something radical.  The Shepherd of Israel, took on flesh and became the Lamb.  Jesus – the Lamb of God washed our dirt away with His blood.  When we wandered away, He searched for us.  His search took Him to a lowly virgin in Nazareth, to a humble cave in Bethlehem, and to a lonely Friday afternoon outside Jerusalem where the Shepherd died.  He conquered our willfulness by yielding his own will to that of the Father.

            The Shepherd became a lamb.  With His resurrection on the third day, the Lamb has become our Shepherd.  We might even say at our congregation – He is our Good Shepherd!  He feeds us in the pasture of His Word.  He leads us by the still waters of Baptism.  Our cup runneth over as He feeds heavenly bread and the cup of life.  Sheep, who could be in want, with the Shepherd providing all of this?

            To think this Shepherd loves us in spite of Him knowing us so well.  Our horrible thoughts, reactionary behavior and the stink of sin that surrounds our person.  Pew wee!  This wonderful Shepherd still feeds us and leads us and guides us through all the up and down spots in our life.

            Little by little, as we feed on his love and stay with his flock, He breaks our wandering and our stubbornness.  He makes us His servants who love and obey and trust in the Shepherd above all things.  We give so others won’t be in want.  We act as a calming agent for friend or family because of our faith.  We display goodness and mercy in a world that seems to love the opposite.

            Hopefully the next time you see a sign like I held up earlier, you will notice right away that “God Is Now Here.”  As we come together as His flock, the Shepherd is here now.  He speaks, we listen.  He leads, we follow.  We have His promise that He will keep leading “all the days of our life” until we “dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

                        Amen.    

May 5, 2019                                                                                       Text:  John 21:1-14

Dear Friends in Christ,

            The Day Jesus Fixed Breakfast.  I like a good breakfast, how about you?  Ever since I could sit down with a bowl of cereal, a pop-tart and the sports page at age 4 I have enjoyed the first meal of the day.  Breakfast provides nutrition for the day, helps you to wake up or for you early-risers it might provide some stimulating conversation before your day begins. 

            Jesus too knows the importance of this meal.  It happens on a shore of the Sea of Tiberias better known as the Sea of Galilee.  It involves a group of men who are still grappling with a resurrected Savior and their place in His Kingdom.  This Savior is ready for a third revealing on…

“THE DAY JESUS FIXED BREAKFAST”

            Peter wants to go fishing.  It is time to get back to the routine of life.  Six disciples join him for a night of fishing “but that night they caught nothing.”  They had plans, but nothing happened. 

            You know, we put a lot into this world.  We expect a lot back.  We might get some moments of excitement and elation and an honor or two but the sacrifices are astounding.  We could say this:  without Christ there is nothing.  How many honors or trinkets can be loaded in a casket?  People have been hauling garbage out of Egyptian pyramids and tombs for centuries.  Nothing from them made it to “the other side.”  Nothing.

            Malcolm Muggeridge made this interesting observation:  “I may, I suppose, regard myself or pass for being a relatively successful man.  People occasionally stare at me in the streets – that’s fame.  I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for a higher tax bracket of the IRS – that’s success…It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time – that’s fulfillment.  Yet I say to you – and I beg you to believe me – multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing – less than nothing…measured against one (drink) of the living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who they are.”

            On The Day Jesus Fixed Breakfast the first glimpse of the resurrected One came with no identification.  The boat was 100 yards out and the light of the day was still dim.  He addresses them as “children” an endearing term for these rugged anglers.  They have no fish but after a quick encouragement from Jesus the haul is so large it can’t be brought in the boat.

            Here’s what we must remember:  Jesus doesn’t take away the troubled moments of life…He doesn’t stop the tragedy.  He sees the sin – something we blabbed that a friend told us in confidence, undercut a co-worker, lied to our spouse, failed a child, not followed through on a promise, failed to live up to our profession of Christ.  What He does in these moments is this – He enters them!  He turns our nothing moments into something moments.  The Lord is everywhere entering people’s lives, even on a shore in the Middle East fixing breakfast.

            Jesus provides a miraculous catch of fish.  The thing is. . . did you catch this?. . the breakfast was already on the fire.  “Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish.” (v. 13)  He served them – just as He served and serves us in the Word – in Baptism – in His Supper.

            Why did He do this?  Why feed these men who argued about “the greatest” in his presence?  Why provide breakfast for these disciples who often failed to understand what he was saying?  Why be IHOP to these weak human beings who couldn’t stay awake for one hour?  Why quench the appetite of ones who abandoned him and denied him and locked themselves in fear because of him?  Why fix the breakfast?

            Why?  We know why.  He fed and comforted those disciples for the same reasons He feeds and comforts us.  Because they were and we are sinful, helpless and in need.  Because He loved them, as He loves us.  Because we have need for His love and forgiveness and assurance, and that’s exactly what He feeds us in the Word and Sacraments. 

            The Day Jesus Fixed Breakfast is the day He once again underscored His love, mercy, and forgiveness for fearful, lowly disciples.  That is why He stepped out of the tomb and put a lock on the death and hell we deserve.  That is why He called the world-weary disciples to leave their nets and continue following Him.

            He does the same for us.  Something smells pretty good. . . what is that a fire on the shore? . . . food for my world-weary soul . . . I have to get out of the boat, there is work to do . . . first, I need to by fed by my Savior. 

            And that is what happened to the first disciples and to you and I . . . THE DAY JESUS FIXED BREAKFAST.

                                                AMEN.