January 29, 2023             Text:  1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Dear Friends in Christ,

In the morning fog of November 6, 1632, around 25,000 Swedish soldiers knelt in prayer.  The Swedish Lutheran king, Gustavus Adolphus, led them in singing “May God embrace us with his grace.”  The Swedes under Adolphus joined the Thirty Years War to salvage portions of Northern Europe and Germany for Lutheranism.  The fog lifted and the German city of Luetzen was set ablaze by Roman Catholic troops.  The king clapped his hands and shouted, “God’s will be done!  Jesus, help me fight to the glory of your holy name!  Forward!”  The troops engaged the enemy.  When the line collapsed, the king hurried in to rally the men.  He found himself in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy.  His horse got shot and then his left arm.  He kept encouraging the men.  Then he was shot in the back, fell off his horse, was stabbed and shot in the temple.  This 38-year-old warrior king who helped to save Lutheranism was now dead.  His death passed through the ranks, the troops rallied, and the Swedes won the most crucial battle of the war.  Victory in defeat.

Gustavus Adolphus was wise, powerful, and of noble birth, but even he tasted the way God works in the world.  God works with a heavenly wisdom made perfect in “weakness” and “foolishness” according to worldly standards.  Are you . . .

“A FOOL IN THE WORLD OR A BOASTER IN THE LORD?”

To find the fools in the world is easy.  They think they are wiser and smarter than the rest of us.  “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”  Paul then writes, “we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and folly to Gentiles.”  The world is constantly falling all over themselves with their silliness.  Crazy what the cross can do, right?

Look at it this way.  The world is dictated by Christianity.  Always has been, always will be.  We’ve numbered our years around Christ’s birth.  We’ve numbered our days – seven days in a week – since creation.  All major holidays are because of Christianity.  We talk of sin and grace and heaven and hell and good and bad and even say things like, “amen, brother” because of Christianity.  Most of the schools and hospitals and charities of the world have sprouted up because of Christianity.  We toil in work as the Bible says and still post the Ten Commandments in many of our courthouses.  And even when it looks like the world wants nothing to do with Christ, a football player gets injured in a nationally televised game and what does society do?  Everyone prays.  Where did they learn that?  Right, you know.  You see, the Lord is much wiser than the world.  He knows men and women are going to be fools.  Oh, how He must enjoy it when they think they have all the answers.  Do you ever join the foolishness of the world?  Follow after the talking heads?  Get led by the hand to believe the food you eat, the air you breathe and the Bible you follow is toxic?  Really now, is a woman praying silently outside an abortion clinic, a danger to society?  See, how foolish the world is?

God in the person of Jesus Christ came into this foolish world. Remember how many times he made the wise people look dumb.  The Pharisees, the teachers of the law, the Roman judges.  God chose the “low and despised” who is the source of our life – Christ Jesus.  The cross looked like a disaster.  But from Calvary came deliverance from death.  The mourning that came from Jesus in the tomb, actually brought forth life when He rose again.  All of this has been revealed to us who call Christ our Savior.  The Holy Spirit helps us to boast in the Lord because we know that we have righteousness and redemption and sanctification.  Call us fools all you want because we know who we are.  God’s child, saved by Him through Jesus.  We are forgiven our foolishness as we stand before His cross and eat his body and drink his blood.  God chose us to pray for the wise and the politically correct and those that are confused and caught up in the foolishness of the world.  

In South America, there lives a curious little spider which has its home underneath the water.  It forms a tiny air bubble around itself and sinks to the bottom of the pond.  It can remain for hours, living below the water, yet breathing air from above.  When it returns to the surface it is perfectly dry.  It is in the water and yet separate from it.  The spider only survives as long as it maintains contact with the air from above.

This spider survives because of its air bubble.  As Christians we only survive in the world if we remain in contact with God’s Word and Sacraments.  It insulates us from worldly thinking.  We cannot escape the world until the day we die.  The spider lives in the water yet remains separate from it.  We live in the world, but do not follow the foolishness of the world.  They see the cross as nothing or something to be afraid of.  We see it as “the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  We want to boast about the Christ of the cross and the Lord allows us to do that.  As with Gustavus Adolphus, death turns to life for us as well, and apparent defeat turns to victory.  In that, let us boast.

Amen.   

January 22, 2023 – Sanctity of Human Life Sunday Text:  Genesis 1:26-31a

Dear Friends in Christ,

Marriage is a blessing, a gift from God who created us.  Marriage promises companionship and pleasure.  But the meaning of marriage does deeper.  We are each fearfully and wonderfully made.  We each have a cardiovascular system, a digestive system, a circulatory system, all whole and fully integrated.  Only one system is not complete in each of us – the reproductive system.  When it comes to sex, we are complementary creatures.  Two become one.  Husband and wife together accomplish what they cannot do alone.  No amount of social engineering or perverted sexuality changes the fact – you need the sexual organs of a male and a female for life to be created.

God intended marriage leads to children.  Let’s recognize this – not every couple can physically bear children.  They may be past childbearing age or have infertility which can be a heartbreaking issue.  Children tie marriage together in permanence and life-long fidelity.  The Sanctity of Life and the Sanctity of Marriage go hand in hand.  This our theme for This Sanctity of Human Life Sunday . . .

“FIRST COMES LOVE, THEN COMES MARRIAGE, THEN COME . . .”

Marriage changes things.  Our family lived it and is living it.  Friday, January 13, at approximately 5:20 p.m. we were no longer just dad and mom.  We are now also father-in-law and mother-in-law.  Our verbiage changes.  It has gone from girlfriend to fiancé to wife.  If the Lord has it in His plans we look forward to grandpa and grandma, though personally I know we are much too young for that.

Husband and wife are an extension of God’s work of creation.  They become an image of Christ and the Church.  We are not just factory parts that reproduce.  Each of us comes from the creative hand of God who loves and uses procreation to continue His good creation.  The family that arises from this gives us a higher glimpse of love and a better perspective on God’s love.  Being a dad has enlightened for me what God gave up with His Son.  The sacrificial understanding becomes all too real when the Lord blesses with children.

The problem is we mess with God’s perfect plan.  We distort the one-woman, one-man marriage with all sorts of silly ideas that we want to play house with.  When we redefine the most important relationship from the beginning of creation then problems will ensue.  All of us can lose marriage’s intrinsic link to children.  When the “be fruitful and multiply” just becomes a suggestion then we see what is occurring.  People are having less children and marriage is becoming less important.  This has societal and economic impacts.  The good news – many Christian homes are having multiple children which bodes well for our future. 

Long before the push for abortion was the agenda of sexual liberation.  Margaret Sanger wrote that “through sex mankind may attain the great spiritual illumination which will transform the world, which will light up the path to paradise.”  The ultimate taboo for Sanger was large families.  She wrote, “The most serious evil of our times is that of encouraging the bringing into the world of large families.”  My sociological observation on this is limited, but the ones in large families I know have been blessed and happy.  

This has been a challenge for the church.  I know of very few LCMS churches who have larger Sunday Schools today than in years past.  We need to reaffirm self-evident truths.  Children are a gift from God.  Marriage was designed so these children have a father and a mother.  This gives us hope for the church.

Perhaps as Lutherans we would do well to recover the Hebrew wedding toast, “L’Chaim,” which means “To life!” – that is – “To new life!”  Marriage is more than securing financial stability and present happiness.  Children are a gift worth more than all the money and experiences in the world.  Like I have told our boys, “Someday you will know why mom and I have been so blessed by you.”  They have to experience it and I pray they will.  Children bring joy to a congregation.  A child can light up a room.  I viewed two youngsters at the wedding dance having the time of their life.  It gave me the warm fuzzies.  No wonder our Lord loved to hold children in His arms.

This is all said with sensitivity to the barren, the widow, the orphan.  This is life in a fallen world.  Let’s open ourselves up to the love of marriage as God intended.  We rejoice when a child is born.  We celebrate when that child is baptized.  In the waters, we see hope, we embrace the future, we taste eternity.  As we care for our children, our Heavenly Father cares for us.  We thank God for male and female.  We praise God for the good gift of children.  

In this dark world, there is this message of hope.  We have a life-affirming faith that stands in wonder at the birth of the Christ Child.  We give thanks that in Jesus, through His death and resurrection, our lives – and those of our children – will have no end.

Amen.