Jan. 22, 2017 – Sanctity of Human Life Sunday                  Text:  Ephesians 6:11-18

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

Her name is Maggie.  I know her as a casual acquaintance because I played basketball and went to the seminary with her husband.  We talked periodically in the course of our time passing each other in life.  Maggie went on to become a mercy outreach leader in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  In the spring of 2014 she was diagnosed with a stage-four brain tumor.

Brittany Maynard is 29 and has a stage-four brain tumor.  Her fear is that this tumor is “out of her control.”  Maynard moved her family to Oregon to have legal access to physician-assisted suicide.  She doesn’t see it as suicide, even though quite literally she will take her life.

You and I are Christians living surrounded by these two life scenarios.  Our world occupies the epicenter of man and monster, kill or be killed.  Our life inhabits the edges of death and hell itself, the gauntlet of sin and survival, live and let die.  You can sit on fences about politics.  You may fall silent about controversies.  But there remains rules, and no matter how far you run, you will not escape.  You cannot slip beyond the reaches of the long arm of the Lord God Almighty.  Where are you?

“HERE WE STAND”

Many people, like Brittany, who choose assisted-suicide, are uncomfortable with the term.  In America we always have to dress things up so people will wear the terms.  We add polka dots with “aid in dying” or lace accents as we call it “death with dignity.”  No matter what we call it is bad law because we never see where it leads.  Marilyn Golden, a senior policy analyst for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, warned that “assisted suicide is not progressive, in fact, it puts many vulnerable people at risk, and we have already seen examples of that where it is legal.”

We carry grief so heavy and guilt so haunting that we believe it freedom to end our own lives.  We haul fear so chilling and failure so choking that we tolerate terminating our sons and daughters and advocate euthanizing our fathers and mothers.  We drag underbellies so vulnerable and blind sides so exposed that we separate children from marriage.  We lug spines so stiffened and skin so hardened that we settle for human rights instead of insisting on heaven’s gifts.

Maggie knows there is no dignity in cancer or any other debilitating illness.  She has been poked, prodded, radiated, chemotherapied, and cut open so many times that she stopped worrying about being dignified.  She knows death is out of her hands.  What is intolerable to the assisted suicide advocate is not suffering or dying, but not having control over life and death.

Here we stand knowing we are not in control.  The Lord God created us male and female in His own image.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit made us each a little lower than the heavenly beings.  We should know better, but our lives have been left broken.  We have become both victims and culprits of violence against life.  We have grown compromised, conditioned by our culture of death.  We have gotten ourselves impaired, captive to sinful selfishness, whatever our shape or stage from fertilization to final breath, heartbeat, and brainwave.  Nobody comes holier or with more worth than the rest.  No life proves more dignified than another.  We arrive, exist, and expire as neighbors by nature and brothers and sisters by birth, whether we like it or not.  We all require armor, a Savior, deliverance, redemption.  We all crave compassion, forgiveness, mercy, grace.  Here we stand.

Brittany Maynard did end her life on November 1, 2014.  She struggled with this decision even wanting to postpone it because she had been having fun with friends and family.  Here is her quote, “Today is the day I have chosen to pass away.”  There is no sense of the Lord or faith in that.  The key word is “I.”  She felt she was alone.

Maggie sent a letter to Brittany and even posted the letter on You Tube.  She wanted her to know she wasn’t alone.  Maggie writes, “Death sucks.  And while this leads many to attempt to calm their fears by grasping for personal control over the situation, as a Christian with a Savior who loves me dearly and who has redeemed me from a dying world, I have a higher calling.  God wants me to be comfortable in my dependence upon Him and others, to live with Him in peace and comfort no matter what comes my way.  As for my cancer journey, circumstances out of my control are not the worst thing that can happen to me.  The worst thing would be losing faith, refusing to trust in God’s purpose in my life and trying to grab that control myself.”

We do not stand alone.  We never stand alone.  Another One stands in your place.  He has armor.  He brings armor, and He gives armor, because He is armor.  Jesus Christ is the armor of God, the whole armor of God, for you and for us all.  He shelters, sustains, protects and defends any who cannot defend themselves.  The Lord will fight for you, and you only have to be still.  Fear not, stand firm, and behold the salvation the Lord works for you today.

The bare shoulders of Jesus dress the impaired life with God’s wrath-satisfying righteous sacrifice.  His punctured heart captures our wrongs and redeems us.  His shed blood arms all who are vulnerable with God’s life-justifying Word like medicine that cradles them away from the devil and hell.  Because Jesus stands here, here we stand, every human being precious at every stage in every state, no matter what she’s done, no matter what he can’t do.  Jesus is why we stand, and we stand with Christ, with the many blessings of abundant and everlasting life.

We stand with you because of the Church’s ministry and brotherhood and not by culture’s impulses or bandwagons.  You stand claimed and positioned in this baptismal Sacrament, crowned and preserved through this Holy Communion.

Maggie died on September 25, 2015.  Before she died she told her daughters and us, “For Christians, our death is not the end.  Because our Savior Jesus Christ, selflessly endured an ugly death on the cross and was laid in a borrowed tomb (no “death with dignity” there), He truly understands our sorrows and feelings of helplessness.”

Here we stand in joy and not out of anger, in hope and not out of fear, because we stand to forgive and not compare, to save and not compete.  Here we stand to relieve and release, not to accuse.  Here we stand to listen, assist, embrace, and befriend, not attack.  Here we stand speaking truth and sharing love because we stand overcoming sin and selfishness, death, and the devil, and not against one another.  Here we stand firm but gentle, strong but humble, even after so long and before such odds.  Here we stand, Gospel-motivated voices, Lutherans For Life, because we can do no other.  God help us.

Amen.

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January 15, 2017                                                                   Text:  John 1:29-42

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

What are you looking at?  If one asks that question emphasizing the you, it is a challenge to the other person.  But ask the question this way:  “What are you looking at?’  Now the emphasis is different.  Now you are challenged, but not to a fight.  Someone wants to know what has captured your attention.  It might be a teacher or a parent or a child.  It might be the Lord.  Oh, yes.  Was it really so different a question when he asked the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?”

“What are you looking at?”  Someone who is searching might ask that question.  It might not be put exactly in those words, but that is the question they are asking.  “What are you looking at?”  Who, me?  Oh, I . . . .

“LOOK TO THE LAMB!”

Last week we saw John baptizing Jesus.  Today he continues the shift away from himself.  “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (v. 29)  Don’t look to John, look to Jesus.

Our world is filled with all kinds of things to look at.  Magazine covers and newspapers, you tube videos and snap chats, commercials and infomercials promising life, and wealth, and happiness.  In the end, these are all shallow and help us pass the time.  They do not lead to eternity.  The voice of John cried to us today, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

Come back today, people of God.  Come back from wherever your eyes have wandered.  Look to Jesus.  “I have seen and I have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” (v. 34)  Look to the Christ of the cross and the empty tomb.  Look to Jesus, who forgives and gives you real life.  Gaze on him.  People are watching.  Like John, our lives can say, “Look to the Lamb.”

Advertising executives will tell us we need to encounter information six or seven times before we begin to pay attention.  Think of “K-A-R-S, Car for Kids” or “The Most Interesting Man in the World.”  You know because you have seen it over and over again.  John brings the same message to the disciples, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”  John points them to the one he wants them to know about – Jesus.

Two of the disciples start to follow Jesus.  Jesus then poses a question, “What are you seeking?”  They were seekers.  It is not just some 21^st century concept.  These men were seeking spiritual meaning.  The world is hungering for the same thing, except they look in the wrong places.  They may look to themselves, they make look to life coaches, they may look to nature or politicians or religious charlatans.  We seek that which we know and have learned through the Holy Spirit.  We look to the Lamb.

The disciples have what we would call a timid response.  “Where are you staying?” ((v. 38)  Was this the real burning question that John’s twice-insistent “Behold” had created in them?  Aren’t we the same?  Are we always clear about what it is we are looking for?  Even in Christ?

Jesus likes to ask questions.  He likes to challenge us.  He likes to breathe faith into us, then draw it out of us.  We know the grace of our faith again and again but sometimes we say silly things like, “Where are you staying?”  What spiritual seekers are these!

As with us, Jesus does not reprimand these first disciples.  His grace thunders in their ears with, “Come and you will see.” (v. 39)  Christ draws them to himself with these simple words.  He did not say, “You dolts!  Couldn’t you seek something more substantial than that?”  What Jesus said then, he says again today in our hearing, “Come and you will see.”  Look to the Lamb!

Immediately the disciples’ lives took on the nature of proclamation.  Andrew did not wait for someone to say, “What are you looking at?”  He found his brother and proclaimed, “We have found the Messiah.”

The Lord brings this change about.  Jesus had really found them.  This is what happens to you and me through faith in Christ Jesus.  Look no farther.  Look to the Lamb.  God has marked you in Baptism with the indelible mark of one who is his child.  Believe it when He says He loves you.  Trust Him when He says He is with you always, to the end of the age.  Look to the Lamb today and tomorrow and every day.

This is what our world needs – the people of God living by looking to the Lamb.  This trusting gaze will show in our lives this week.  People will notice.  How many lives will be touched by those of us here today?  How many eyes will see evidence of something in us that causes them to wonder?  How many opportunities will we have in these next seven days to say, “Look to the Lamb!  Come, and you will see”?  God will use our heart’s gaze, our soul’s fixation on Jesus, to proclaim to the people in our lives, “Look to the Lamb!”

Amen.