OCT 2, 2011  SERMON ARCHIVE

Luke 12:8-12 (ESV) 8 "And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, 9 but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. 10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. 11 And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say."

In June, at the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League convention held in Peoria, Dr. Ken Klaus, Lutheran Hour Speaker Emeritus, shared the following experience about his preparation for the ministry.

"My years studying to be a minister had been good ones. How could they not be? I had been blessed to have a gaggle of great-minded professors enthusiastically making sure I was equipped in German, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. With each of them assigning homework as if theirs were the only class I was taking, I knew I was prepared for every eventuality. If someone had a question on the Confessions, I was their man. If they wanted to know why the Augsburg Confession was altered and why it shouldn’t have been, well, I knew.

"My years studying to be a minister had been good ones. How could they not be? I had been blessed to have a gaggle of great-minded professors enthusiastically making sure I was equipped in German, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. With each of them assigning homework as if theirs were the only class I was taking, I knew I was prepared for every eventuality. If someone had a question on the Confessions, I was their man. If they wanted to know why the Augsburg Confession was altered and why it shouldn’t have been, well, I knew.

In my third year at the seminary, I was assigned a vicarage congregation where I could apply all this newly given knowledge, where I could razzle dazzle the Lutheran laity with the wisdom for which they had been longing. With eagerness, enthusiasm, and excitement, I entered the presence of my vicarage supervisor.

Through a series of commandments, commandments not found in any translation or paraphrase of the Bible, he filled in the empty spots of my Seminary education. He shared that my education might not be as complete as I had thought. It was simple, the wise vicar doesn’t mess with his vicarage pastor.

The second commandment was like unto the first: the wise pastor doesn’t mess with the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League. The look in his eye, the tone of his voice told me: he was not joking. Over the decades since that meeting, I have learned many things. None has been more important than the truth I received that day: the wise pastor doesn’t mess with the LWML."

As a parish pastor, I resonate to Dr. Klaus’ experience. The wise pastor doesn’t mess with the LWML, but rejoices in the partnership of spreading the Gospel.

During the Civil War, as General Lee’s Confederate soldiers were coming up the Chambersburg Road towards Gettysburg, one German Lutheran lady, Hannah was her name, felt she had to do something.

Having nothing else to use as a weapon, she grabbed the broom from her door and started walking down the road to meet the enemy. When the Confederates were confronted by Hannah, to their credit, they gently brushed her, and her broom, to the side.

Some years later, at a quilting party, the Gettysburg ladies were reminiscing about the fight, and they had some good fun at Hannah’s expense. One of them, a Mrs. Bomberger, asked, "Hannah, what in the world did you expect to do with your old broom against the great Southern army?"

"Vell," said Hannah, with her Pennsylvania German accent, "I didn’t tink I vuld schlow dem down, but I vanted dem ta know vut side I vas on."

Hannah was a woman who lived on the edge, but she was hardly the first individual to do so. If you wish to meet those individuals, you will have to rise before dawn on a Judean Sunday morning almost 2,000 years ago.

If you do, you will meet four women. They are Mary, the mother of James and Joses; Joanna, wife of Chusa, the steward of Herod; Mary Magdalene whom Jesus freed from seven devils; and Salome, the mother of James and John. These four women got up early because they were going to finish the burial of someone they loved. You would agree that such a task is always unpleasant work, but in this case, the deceased had been gone for three days. The work would have been unbearable.

Follow them as they make the heartbreaking trip to Jesus’ grave. For the most part Scripture is silent concerning their conversation, but it doesn’t take much imagination to reconstruct what they might have said. Each might have spoken of what they had personally seen.

Salome, living in Capernaum, would have remembered the day her boys spoke of Jesus’ miraculous catch of fish, how Jesus had cast out a demon, healed a paralytic, or raised the dead daughter of Jairus.

Mary Magdalene, whom history has maligned and misinterpreted, might have spoken of how Jesus had cast out the seven demons that had possessed and plagued her. Joanna, with her husband’s contacts in Herod’s court, might have shared how Jesus had fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy (53:7) and refused to defend Himself at His trials. It had been so unfair.

They might have reminisced: "Had it been only last Thursday when Judas had betrayed Jesus with a kiss? Things had moved so quickly after that. Jesus had been taken to trial. Yes, a nighttime trial was illegal, but it had happened, hadn’t it? Bribed witnesses, charges which were changed, nobody had been with Jesus then; nobody had risked speaking on His behalf, nobody except for the Procurator’s wife who revealed the ominous contents of a dream.

As they walked they would have remembered how their hearts had been torn when the Governor had put a whipped-and-crowned-with thorns Jesus on public display. The next hours would not change their pain.

These women had lived on the edge as they stood at the foot of the cross. If those whom Jesus had healed, those whom He had fed, those whom He had raised from the dead, and most of His disciples were not there, these women would stay.

They would keep Jesus’ mother company. They would stay and hear what He had to say. Others might pass by mocking and maligning Him, but they would stand fast. If Jesus were able to look through the blood red veil of His pain, they wanted to make sure that He saw at least a few friendly faces. They knew their standing might not amount to much, but they did what they could, they gave their widow’s mite of faithfulness and loyalty. Surrounded by hatred, they showed love. They were living on the edge.

Keeping watch the women would have noted the moment of Jesus’ death. As long as He lived His body would have writhed, would have gasped for air, would have struggled, strained. But when death came, His body would have grown still and silent. When one of the Roman guards thrust a spear into His heart, it was an unnecessary anticlimax.

Thousands of years later it would be fashionable for critics to say Jesus had fainted, become comatose, been buried, and then had revived. These women knew differently. Jesus was dead and, like many women before them and many millions more since, these women gave thanks that the suffering of their loved One had ended.

Courageously they watched as His corpse was taken down from the cross; bravely they watched to see where He was buried; sadly they noted the preparation of His body was richly, but incompletely done. That was when they pledged: "After the Sabbath we will set this right."

If a person had reminded them of the stone in front of the grave’s entrance, or had informed them of the guard, well, that person would have learned: "You don’t mess with the LWML." With single-minded dedication they gathered the spices necessary to finish Jesus’ burial and, on Sunday morning, set out toward His tomb. There they intended to offer their final respects to someone whom they had loved.

As they approached the tomb they would have been astonished to find Jesus’ grave was open. Surprised, shocked, stunned? Their minds must have been racing as they asked, "Was it possible the tomb’s owner had had second thoughts about giving Jesus his grave?

Had somebody moved Jesus’ body? If so, where had it been placed? Had someone stolen the Christ’s corpse? Should they report the loss to the authorities? If they did, would these leaders who planned His death help find His remains? Who knows, maybe these very leaders had desecrated and destroyed His body?"

That Jesus had risen from the dead was the one thing which did not occur to them. That was because the simple, unassailable truth is this: people who are dead for three days don’t come back to life. Dead is dead. You know it; I know it; these women knew it.

Fearing the worst, the women gathered their courage and respectfully, slowly, and tentatively entered Jesus’ grave. The Gospel of Mark says what happened next. It tells us, They saw a young man sitting on the right side of the walk-in tomb. He was dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.

And he said to them, "Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen." Christ is risen! For the women it meant their Friend, their Rabbi, their Master, their Teacher, was also their Savior.

According to prophecy, completing His own prediction, Jesus had kept His promise. Before He had been arrested He had said, "I lay down my life that I may take it up again."

It was an outrageous statement, one that no man could keep. But, as these women found out in the next few minutes, Jesus was no mere man. A living Lord appeared to them and entrusted these women with a mission: tell the disciples Christ is risen. (He is risen, indeed!) That truth meant they would always be living with Jesus. It meant they would always live on the edge

Today, 2,000 years later their mission is yours, their message is yours. Christ is Risen and that means you who live with Him will also live on the edge. I say that because you, dear friends in Christ, you live in a land where the Supreme Court can open every session with a request that God Bless them, but who will not hear a case where a New Jersey football was fired because he prayed with his football team.

You live in an age where the President of the United States can ask for God’s blessing when he is installed; and after terrorists bring down the World Trade Center, where Congress can stand on the Capital steps and sing, "God Bless America." and yet a veledictorian in Monument. Co. Was threatened that should would not graduate unless she publicly apologized for using the name of Jesus in her speech.

You live in an age where Christians in Iraq are killed for worshiping in the name of Jesus Christ. It hasn’t been so many years since a very skilled and talented lecturer came to a town, a town not so unlike this one. He had achieved some degree of fame with his presentation which elevated humanity by demoting the Deity of Christianity.

One night the lecturer finished and an elderly lady stood up and said, "I paid good money to hear you tell me about something better than Jesus. You didn’t do that. I’ve been a widow for 30 years. When my husband died, he left me with six children. I trusted the Lord and He helped me. Each day He gave me enough to raise them. When a daughter died, He comforted me with the idea of a reunion in heaven.

The lady continued, "From what you’ve said tonight, you’re thinking that’s nonsense, it’s the imaginings of an old woman. Some here might believe that. I don’t. The Redeemer is real. Now, you can give me something better than what God has given or you can give me back my money."

With derision dripping from his voice, the lecturer responded: "Ma’am, you’re so content living in your delusion, I wouldn’t try to convince you otherwise."

Hearing that, she stopped him cold. "No, no, no, that won’t do. Truth is truth and your laughing at me doesn’t change things. Young man, your lecture shows me this: you have too high of an estimation of yourself and too low an idea of God. I will not let you take away my Savior who died to forgive me. Sir, I’ve met Jesus, seen Him, talked to Him; I’ve been saved by Him. Let me ask, sir, in place of Jesus, you would give me what?"

That was a Christian who was living in the Lord and at that moment was living on the edge. This room is filled with her sisters and brothers. All of you have met Jesus, talked to Him, been forgiven, and saved by Him. He has comforted you in life’s tragedies and given you a sure and certain knowledge of forgiveness.

You know that when unbelief has done its withering work in the hearts of humankind, when the world has tried to shove the Savior back into His grave, when it has tried to dethrone Him from His seat in heaven, when it has slammed shut the door of salvation, the questions of life remain and all the world can offer to take his place is a darkening despair and a future filled with fear of an open grave. You who live in the Lord, today I encourage you to live on the edge.

It is time to stand up and say to the world, "What do you have to offer which is better than Jesus? You have laughed at the Savior, His suffering, His crucifixion, His death, and His resurrection. Yet, the living Lord has comforted countless Christians as they stood by the bedside of a sick child or at the grave side of a departed loved one.."

It is time for you to live on the edge and ask the world, what do you have to offer which is better than Jesus? What can provide a better foundation than the Christ? And as you do this, as the Savior has asked you to, the devil will learn, as every Lutheran pastor has learned, "You don’t mess with the LWML." or with any Christian brother or sister.

Even more, he will know "vut side you are on."

Christ is risen!